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You are here: Home / Devotions / TAKE 5–AUGUST 3, 2017

TAKE 5–AUGUST 3, 2017

August 3, 2017 by beardonnam Leave a Comment

After this, Jesus traveled in Galilee, since He did not want to travel in Judea because the Jews were trying to kill Him. The Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, so His brothers said to Him, “Leave here and go to Judea so Your disciples can see Your works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he’s seeking public recognition. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” (For not even His brothers believed in Him.) Jesus told them, “My time has not yet arrived, but your time is always at hand. The world cannot hate you, but it does hate Me because I testify about it — that its deeds are evil. Go up to the festival yourselves. I’m not going up to the festival yet, because My time has not yet fully come.” After He had said these things, He stayed in Galilee.
John 7:1‭-‬9

Jesus was now facing new levels of persecution because the Law-loving religous leaders were trying to kill Him. Consequently, He hung out in Galilee more and more. So while His home was in Galilee, as the Hebrew Festival of Booths approches, most devote Jews head for Jerusalem to the temple.
Now Jesus had 4 younger brothers that we know of and some sisters too (Matthew 13:55-56). The two we know the best were James, who went on to pastor the church at Jerusalem and Judas, who later wrote the book of Jude in the Bible. At this point in time, however, none of Jesus’ brothers believed Him to be the Messiah.(“For not even His brothers believed in Him.” (vs 5)) So, as brothers do, they taunt Jesus a little by encouraging Him to go on to Jerusalem for the festival where His ministry could gain more “press”, What Jesus said in response to this, I believe is one of His greatest testimonts of being “God in human flesh”! He responds by saying, “My time has not yet arrived …” (vs 6). Through out the book of John, we see this theme, “My time has not yet come . . .” (2:4, 7:6, 7:30, 8:20) Jesus, being God in human form, was well aware of the importance of God’s timing, especially from the perspective of the scriptures as a whole-yet as a human, He was well aware of His physical frailty if this timing got out of synch. Gal 4:4 says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law . . .” Jesus knew that if the timing was wrong, His glorification, including His death would be in vain! Finally, in John 12:23-28, the night before His crucifiction, Jesus says, “The time has come for Me to be glorified”, BUT, THE NEXT DAY He’s crucified!

So from all of this we see that, 1. Jesus was well aware of GOD’S TIMING and 2. His GLORIFICATION came by way of DYING!
Jesus didn’t go to Jerusalem in a high-profile fashion as suggested by His brothers because it was NOT time for His death and His and our enemy’s mission is ALWAYS to kill us (John 10:10) and because His death would ultimately result in His people realizing that He was God, the Messiah-the revelation of His “GLORY”! A premature death in Jerusalem at the hands of the religous leaders could not accomplish that.
In a very real sense, “timing IS everything”!

The right deeds performed outside of God’s timing or “will”, will NEVER produce God’s intended purposes! We as Christ followers, like Jesus, we have Holy Spirit working in and thru us
We can have as much of His Presence as we desire, but we have to yield to Him. He will tell us all things and He will remind us of what Jesus taught us (John 14:26). God is NOT hiding His will or His timing from us-He’s just waiting on us to LISTEN TO HIM!
Don’t run ahead! Don’t fall behind! Operate in God’s timing!
Think about it!

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