God s Time and God s Truth John 7:1-9 Dan Brooks, Pastor September 22, 2013 Introduction: How have we gotten to the point as a society that we are writing articles with titles like this: A Woman s Guide to Me Time? (And I am not singling out women. Because men struggle with this too.) And observations like this: "We're a multitasking society. If we're having a conversation with a friend, we're thinking about the other things we have to get done," says Allison Cohen, MA, MFT, a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles. "Instead, you need to be present in the moment. Whatever you're doing for you, don't be thinking about your grocery list or the PowerPoint presentation. There's a lot of time in our day that we could be enjoying, but we lose it because we're focused on what we have to do next." You don t need a lot of time, either. Here are ideas for making the most of even 5 minutes of "me" time. And advise like this: If You Have 5-10 Minutes Sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Or a cup of coffee and no newspaper. Just watch the clouds go by. No phone or calendar allowed. Call a friend to chat. This doesn't mean planning the bake sale or organizing the neighborhood watch -- just talk, without an agenda. Move. Get up from your desk, stretch, and walk around the block or up and down a flight of stairs. Breathe deeply. While you're sitting in your office, car, or home, focus on breathing slowly and gently for five minutes. It's OK if your mind wanders a bit, but don't start planning what you have to do next -- just follow your breath. Pet your pet. Focus for five minutes on cuddling with cat or dog. You'll both feel better. Put on your ipod and hit shuffle. Then just sit and listen. How have we let this happen to us? We are so busy with so many things that we are desperate for me time. But I do not believe that what we really want is me time as much as I have come to believe that what we want is significance. I am beginning to think that we are looking for significance in so many places at one time that we have overscheduled and overcommitted our lives. Our culture reflects that desperation in many different ways. As you read the Gospels and observe the life of Christ, you never encounter a man who is talking about me time. He s careful to find a private place for prayer and commune with the Father. He doesn t always give Himself to the masses of people looking for healing or miracles. There is a steady resolve and determination about Him to accomplish something significant. I. THE SETTING A. Jesus has remained in Galilee (1) 1. 6:4 dates those events with the Feast of Passover. 2. 7:2 dates these events with the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles. 3. This is a period of about 6 months (cf. April October for us) B. The question arises, Why would Jesus remain in Galilee when so many have walked away from Him? 1. The answer is found in v. 1: He would not go about Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him.
P a g e 2 II. 2. 5:18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. THE CONFUSION OF UNBELIEVING SOULS. A. His brothers see the Feast of Booths as an opportunity (2-3). 1. The fourth annual festival was the feast of tabernacles.... Its observance combined the ingathering of the labor of the field (Exod. 23:16), the fruit of the earth (Lev. 23:39), the ingathering of the threshing floor and winepress (Deut. 16:13), and the dwelling in booths (or tabernacles ), which were to be joyful reminders to Israel (Lev. 23:41; Deut. 16:14). The booth in Scripture is not an image of privation and misery but of protection, preservation, and shelter from heat and storm (Pss. 27:5; 31:20; Isa. 4:6). The rejoicing community included family, servants, widows, orphans, Levites, and sojourners (Deut. 16:13 15). The feast began on the fifteenth day of Tishri (the seventh month), which was five days after the Day of Atonement. It lasted for seven days (Lev. 23:36; Deut. 16:13; Ezek. 45:25). On the first day, booths were constructed of fresh branches of trees. Each participant had to collect twigs of myrtle, willow, and palm in the area of Jerusalem for construction of the booths (Neh. 8:13 18). Every Israelite was to live for seven days in these during the festival, in commemoration of when their fathers lived in such booths after their exodus from Egypt (Lev. 23:40; Neh. 8:15). 2. Thousands of pilgrims would make their way to Jerusalem. People would be in a celebratory mood. Their minds and hearts would almost certainly be open to the spectacular working of signs and miracles such as Jesus has previously done. 3. 3 So his brothers said to him, Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. B. His brothers seem to think that he is laboring in obscurity (4). 1. 4 For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. 2. to be known openly: (παρρησίᾳ) being in the public eye rather than being concealed (John 7:4 [cf. John 7:10] 1 (4) 3. show yourself to the world: (φανέρωσον) to manifest oneself, show oneself openly, appear; with the dat. (John 7:4, show thyself to the world, appear publicly; 21:1 2 a. World: (κόσμῳ) they use it to refer to a huge crowd. 1) If you were say, I think all of Greenville was at the mall yesterday, no one would believe that you actually meant all citizens and residents of Greenville were at the mall Saturday. 2) Such an expression uses hyperbole or exaggeration to make a point. b. Our Lord s earthy brothers are making a point that this is a grand opportunity to not only regain the momentum He has recently lost in Galilee, but potentially to gain the following of thousands more! c. Talk about ministry potential! d. But this suggestion is not motivated by faith in the Son of God or an understanding of His mission. This is the thinking of unbelieving hearts. C. His brothers think that he is wasting His life (5). 1. 5 for not even his brothers believed in him 2. Jesus faced this same kind of thinking early in His ministry as He faced the devil s temptation in the wilderness. a. The devil carried Him up to the pinnacle of the temple and tempted Him to cast Himself down. 1 Spiros, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000). 2
P a g e 3 III. b. Quoting the promises of the Psalms, the devil tempts Jesus to make a spectacular deathdefying appearance in Jerusalem. THE COMMITMENT OF CHRIST TO GOD S TIME AND TRUTH. A. Jesus is committed to God s appointed time. 1. My time has not yet come (6) a. Time: (καιρὸς) appointed time 1) Carson: right time b. Who sets that time? c. Galatians 4:4 5 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. d. 1 Timothy 2:5 6 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. e. Acts 2:22 23 22 Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. f. Time in this sense may be understood as a decisive moment determined by God (Beasley- Murray). g. The Lord Jesus has an appointed hour that he is destined for. h. Neither the temptations of the devil himself nor the well-intentioned suggestions of his own brothers can divert Him from the purpose His Father has established. 2. Jesus brothers have their own agenda. a. Your time is always here b. You think that anytime is the right time for Me to perform miracles, because you are men who actually live on your own time. c. Point: Their lives are not surrendered to God the Father. They live according to their own plans and devices. d. The evidence is found in Jesus next statement. B. Jesus is committed to God s eternal truth. 1. The world cannot hate you (7) a. His brothers are worldly men; they are not born-again. b. There is nothing in them that the world would hate because their lives have not been reoriented by the new birth. c. Since they neglect God s καιροί, they determine their own lives, and so lead a meaningless existence in the world of which they are a part. That is why the world cannot hate them; the world loves its own (15 19). 3 d. Point: Their suggestion is a revelation of what they would do were they in His sandals. e. Jesus remains at odds with the world. 2. It hates me: (μισεῖ) usually implying active ill will in words and conduct, a persecuting spirit 4 a. Question: What creates that kind of ill will that the world should respond to someone like Jesus with such hostility? 3 George R. Beasley-Murray, John, vol. 36, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2002), 107. 4
P a g e 4 IV. b. He has spared a bride and groom humiliation at their wedding feast by turning water into wine. c. In Capernaum He healed a nobleman s son who was at the point of death. d. In Jerusalem He healed a man who was lame for 38 years. e. He has fed 5,000 men plus the women and children who accompanied them until they were full. f. Is this mercy and grace so offensive? 3. Because I testify about it that its works are evil a. Testify: (μαρτυρῶ) to testify to the truth of what one has seen, heard, or knows. 5 b. Evil: (πονηρά) evil by nature; evil in a moral or spiritual sense; corrupt 1) Evil according to whom? 2) What standard of judgment are we using? c. 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. d. Point: The world hates to be told or shown that its works are evil. 1) Who are you to tell anyone that abortion is immoral? Especially if you are a man who has never carried a fetus. 2) Who are you to tell our culture that marriage has to be between one man and one woman? 3) Who are you to tell us that sex between consenting adults is sin? e. Jesus possesses the right to assess the work of our lives, our thoughts, our motives, our attitudes, our words and our actions. f. It is His prerogative to judge their moral value. g. The world hated Jesus because of His testimony against it. 4. John actually develops this same thought later in his first letter showing that the hostility existing between good and evil may be traced to the opening years of human history. a. 1 John 3:11 15 11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. 5. What is in your heart this morning? a. Some are angry and hostile toward family and friends for no other reason than that your works are evil and you hate righteousness. b. You would like to make a defense along the lines of their imperfections and sins against you, but the reality is that their sin is not the cause of your hostility. c. You love darkness. You love the darkness of your pornography more than you love the light of God s truth. d. You love the gloom of your miserly greed more than you love the light of God s grace and generosity. e. You love the dimness of your self-righteousness criticism of others more than you love God s mercy and forgiveness. APPLICATION A. What does this passage teach us concerning the world and Jesus? 5
1. Can we expect to be true followers of Jesus and also be loved by the world at the same time? 2. How should our lives be different from the world? B. What of God s time? 1. Are you resting in God s absolute sovereignty over the days and hours of your life? 2. Are you more like Christ or His brothers in your understanding and use of time? 3. Do your schedule and plans reflect a humble submission to God s right time? 4. What needs to change about the way you are thinking of and using God s right time? P a g e 5