Morning, brethren. All right, we're going to be in John
chapter 7. John chapter 7, and we'll be
looking at verses 1 through 7. And I want to begin by reading
verses 6 and 7 with you. Then Jesus said unto them, My
time is not yet come, but your time is all way ready. The world
cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it that
the works thereof are evil. I want to talk with you this
morning about the timing of our Lord, and His timing is witnessed
in the choosing of our God to implement His will when He wills,
and He does this according to His good will and pleasure. Over in Isaiah 55 verse 8, He
says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways
your ways. It's made evident in man just
how frustrating it can be to us in our flesh, how it can bring
out anger and unbelief and hatred of God in man just on the timing
of when the Lord does and implements His will and purpose. Now, The
natural man has plans. We make plans, we have thoughts
and ideas of what we're going to do or how things are going
to play out, how things are going to work, and what will or will
not happen. And then some Providence, some
unforeseen providence comes along, strikes it in the side like a
torpedo hitting a boat, and just knocks everything off course. Just changes everything that
we thought. How do we respond? Do we get angry? Do we get angry
with the Lord? Or do we resign ourselves to
trust the Lord? and to seek the Lord in it. How do we respond? Listen to
James 4. James 4 verses 13 through 16. He says, Go to now ye that say
today or tomorrow. We will go into such a city and
continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain. Whereas
ye know not what shall be on the morrow. for what is your
life? It's even a vapor that appeareth
for a little time and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say,
if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now
ye rejoice in your boastings. All such rejoicing, all that
confidence in self and thinking we know how things are going
to work, is evil. The world, the inhabitants of
the world, they get angry when the Lord's will opposes their
will. And it always does. They get
angry and frustrated and upset. But the Lord, He reveals His
power and His glory. And when he comes in that final
day, when he comes in judgment, we see, we're told that the world,
that whole system of Antichrist that's just about to obtain that
which it seeks to implement, we're told that the nations were
angry. They were angry in that day. You know who will be rejoicing?
people of God, the people of the Lord who are looking for
His return, who love Him and love His appearing and long for
His appearing, they're not angry. But those who are so busy doing
their own thing and implementing their own will and purpose in
the earth without a thought of the Lord and what the Lord wills,
they're the ones that'll be angry. And so our God, in grace, is
teaching His child. He teaches His children and grows
them in grace so that we're conformed in our desires, in our resignation,
and rejoicing in what the Lord is doing in our midst. He brings
us to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, even
as it is in heaven. And he gives us that prayer,
and he makes our will to conform to his will. I've titled this
message, God's Time, God's Time. Now our Lord in this passage,
he's speaking of his time, and he calls it my time, my time. And to those he's speaking with,
these relatives in our text, he calls their time your time. He says that's your time, and
man's time aligns with the world's time. They're one with the world. They're united in their thoughts
and in their time and what they think should or should not happen.
And in that context, he says, the world cannot hate you, but
me it hateth. And the reason that he gives
is because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. Now, when our Lord was here in
the flesh ministering, working salvation for his people, he
was testifying of the evil works of the world. And we were seeing
it predominantly in the religious world. It was in the religious
world. And we see him testifying of
the evil works of the world in the words which he said. Those
things which he said, those things which he spoke and taught the
people, it testified to the evil that's in man's heart. When he
spoke, he was oftentimes exposing the hypocrisy of the religious
Jews, those who trusted in their own righteousness. And then as
he did his miracles and worked those miracles and works and
signs which the Father sent him to do, It exposed in the heart
of the Jews, in the heart of the religious leaders there,
it was exposing the evil in their heart. It exposed their unbelief.
It exposed their hatred of God and his Christ. But we also see
that even in the timing of our Lord, when our Lord purposes
to do a thing, it too reveals enmity, and hatred in the heart
of the natural man. And we find that even we who
believe, we that believe on the Lord as He's grown us, and there's
things that we don't see or understand yet, the Lord's timing can be
a snare to us. If He allows it, it can be a
snare to us and we can stumble over His timing. And that's why
this salvation is all a work of grace. It must be by the Lord's
grace and in grace He conforms us in the new man which is created
in us of the Lord Jesus Christ. He conforms us to His timing
of all things." He's bringing us to believe Him, to trust Him,
to rest in His timing, to know that it's according to His good
purpose and will. Now the first instance about
time comes early in the part of our text. Look at verse 1.
After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not
walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him." And then
we're told that it's now the time of the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles,
and it's at hand now. And so his brethren, his relatives,
begin to speak with him about what they think he should do.
But notice there about this, about what it says concerning
the Jews, that why he was no longer walking in Judea, why
he's spending all his time now up in Galilee. And we're told
that it's because the Jews sought to kill him. And so our Lord
is, is declaring the gospel of God,
and yet he's in obscurity. He's in little, small, rural,
obscure, tiny towns with few people. And the reason why he
was doing that is he was avoiding an open confrontation with those
religious Jews down in Judea, especially in Jerusalem, at the
heart of their religion. He's avoiding that, and we're
told that he would not walk among them because the Jews sought
to kill him. And one of the primary reasons
why they wanted to kill him is because recently, about six months
earlier, he had healed an impotent man on the Sabbath day. It was the Sabbath day. That
tells us it was about timing. It was about timing. In other
words, if the Lord had just healed the man a day earlier, or a day
later, any day but the Sabbath day, they may have not been quite
as upset with him. They may not have been as angry
with him, but the reality is they don't believe him. They
hate him. There is no love for Christ in
their hearts. And that's the reality, whether
there's a Sabbath or no Sabbath. And so the Lord, in wisdom, in
accordance with the will and purpose of God who sent him,
he chose to heal that impotent man on the Sabbath day right
in front of them in a manner that they would know, in a manner
that they would see This man just did a work on the Sabbath
day. And what did it do? It exposed
that in them, there's no love for God. There's no life in them. They have no life. They don't
have the spirit of God. As he said to the Jews later
in John 8, 42, if God were your father, ye would love me. for
I proceeded forth and came from God. Neither came I of myself,
but he sent me." And when the Lord healed that man on the Sabbath
day, those religious Jews saw it and it revealed there's no
life in them. But the disciples, his 12 disciples were with him.
And you know, they weren't offended. They weren't offended. They were
watching the Lord. They were learning. They were
hearing and taking in what the Lord was doing. In grace, they
were kept by the Lord. And we see that they weren't
turned off. They weren't offended by the Lord. They continued with
Him. So they saw the same things. They witnessed the miracle. They
witnessed the healing. They heard and saw what one another
saw and heard, and some were offended and despised. Their hatred for Christ came
out, and others continued with Him. Others were kept in grace. Others were preserved. They weren't
pricked and offended in their flesh, but they believed the
Lord. They trusted Him. They were watching
and waiting and learning, who the Lord is, and in His mercy,
and in His grace. And so, their hatred was revealed,
and the Lord says that they're just like the world. And He says,
the world hateth Me. Me it hateth, He says, and they're
of the world. It shows that the natural man,
and that man who has no grace, no life in him, hates the true
and living God, just by his timing. And so Christ stayed in Galilee,
and by his staying in Galilee, it gives us another example of
the difference in the timing between God and man. At that
time, it was the Feast of Tabernacles, and his relatives, Christ's relatives,
they began to give him advice. These would be those related
to Joseph and Mary and grew up around the Lord Jesus Christ.
And they said, go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see
the works that thou doest. For there's no man that doeth
anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If
thou do these things, show thyself to the world. And it shows that
they knew nothing of Christ. They knew nothing of Christ.
Our Lord had said a little earlier, I receive not honor from men. And he's saying there, I'm not
seeking man's honor. I'm not looking for the praise
and the accolades and the oohing and the ahhing of man and getting
a big following. That's not why I'm sent. I'm
not here to entertain and to perform for these people. But
these relatives here, they're urging him to go to Jerusalem,
the very center of Judaism, and there in the midst of the religious
Jews to perform his miracles because they knew at that feast,
there was gonna be multitudes of Jews there. There was gonna
be people from all over Israel that were there, and they'd see
and witness what he was doing. And they added this telling statement,
if thou do these things, if you really are doing these miracles,
if you're able to do these things, go there and do them, so everyone
can see it, if you do them, if you do them. And it shows that
they doubted him just as much as the Jews that were there in
Jerusalem. And so we see there's no faith.
in these men, in these relatives, there's no faith, there's no
interest in Christ. They don't see him as the God-man
mediator sent of the Lord. They don't see him as the surety
of his people, the salvation of his people. They don't see
him as the sacrifice, the blood sacrifice provided in love and
grace and mercy by the Father for his people to redeem them. with his own life, to lay down
his life, to die our death in our place, to put away our sins,
to obtain forgiveness and mercy from God for his people, that
we may have life in him. And so according to their fleshly
understanding of what Christ would do if he were the Christ,
they said, show thyself to the world. and they showed that there's
no real faith. There's no life in them. There's
no faith of God. There's no work of grace in them. They're no different than those
Jews who said, how long dost thou make us to wait? When are
you gonna tell us? Are you the Christ or aren't
you the Christ? It's your fault. And natural man puts all the
blame on God and looks to him and charges him with all the
fault and all the evil when the evil is in our own hearts. The fault is in us, we're the
sinners. And they said this because neither did his brethren believe
in him, verse five. And the point is for us who believe,
we all have friends and relatives, people that we care about that
are not believers. And we seek for their salvation. We wanna speak to them. we're
praying for opportunities to speak to them and that the Lord
reveal himself to them. And because they know we have
an interest, if we haven't burned bridges with them in the past,
but because they know that we have an interest, some of them
are willing to speak with us and they'll speak to us about
religious things. They'll speak about religious
topics or they'll point out how awful the world is knowing that
we hate sin and they'll talk about religious topics and they'll
give their advice, but all the while know that they don't believe
Christ. There's no faith in them. There's
no love for the Lord's salvation provided to us in the Son. And it may be that they've tried
to believe at one time or another, that they've said some prayers
and gave God a chance to prove that he is and that he is the
true and living God. But when the Lord didn't answer
their prayers or the Lord didn't appear as they expected him to,
they just threw up their hands and said, see, I knew there was
no God. and they were angry and tired and they put it off because
this world has expectations of who God is and who is Christ
is and what his salvation is like. They're looking to their
own hands and they're looking to God to fulfill their will
and their expectation. I think God should do this here
and that God should do it this way and he should do it now.
God needs to do something and show me that he's God. And when
he doesn't act according to man's expectations, they conclude that
it's his fault. He missed out. He missed out. He's either not real or he doesn't
care about me, so I don't care about him. And so they're turned
out of the way. And it reveals that man by nature
is ignorant to the things of God. He's yet in darkness. He
doesn't know the true and living God, he doesn't have the spirit
of God, he has the spirit of the world, and therefore he cannot
receive the things of the Lord. And what the Lord is showing
us is that without grace, without his grace, no man will believe. And he's showing you that do
believe him, and you that wait upon him, that he is gracious
to you. He hasn't left you to yourself.
You haven't been turned out of the way because He's keeping
your foot. He's keeping you in the path
of Christ. He's sustaining you by the life
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You're His child, and you're
His child of grace, and that should be a great comfort to
you. Christ said, therefore said I
unto you that no man can come unto me. except it were given
unto him of my father." John 6, 65. Now this was on my heart
because I've been writing and corresponding with someone and
they have a great concern for their spouse and it's a good
concern. We should be concerned for our
spouses and our children and friends and family members that
are dear to us. we should, and this woman, she
writes a lot of good things, encouraging things, she's heard
a lot, a lot of gracious truths that the Lord reveals to his
people about Christ being all our righteousness, all our hope,
that we're not saved looking to the law, that the Sabbath
is not a legal day, but that the Sabbath is Christ. He himself
is our Lord. And she wants her husband to
hear what she's heard. And she told me recently, he's
read the whole Old Testament, and he goes to a very legalistic
church, and now he's gonna begin reading the New Testament. And her hope is, she's so hoping
that when he reads that New Testament, he's gonna see exactly like she
sees. She's gonna know that Jesus is
the Christ, that he is our righteousness and all our salvation. And she's
so confident in that, that I sent her an email just laying a good
foundation that shows that our God is sovereign and he saves
his people. He cannot fail. He saves whom
he wills, when he wills. Because that's what delivers
us from the snare because We've all gone through things with
people who went through the exact same things that we went through,
heard the same words we heard, read the same scriptures. attended
the same services, went through the whole thing, and yet, one
of us hears and believes Christ, and one of us hears something
totally different, and is looking to the flesh for some confidence,
for some hope in us, and we're not looking to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so, that can be a snare to
a young believer, to witness and behold, well, why aren't
they, why don't they believe? Why don't they hear? And the
world, if they're not kept in grace, they'll fall away too
because they'll be discouraged. But the comfort to the believer
is, no, our God is sovereign. And he's working all things according
to his perfect will and pleasure in the timing that pleases him,
which is perfect. And he's going to save all his
people. He's doing his work and his will. And so there's nothing for us
to be anxious about. We don't need to be anxious or
worried or shove things down people's throat as fast as we
can. Pray for them. Pray for opportunities and speak
peaceably with patience and kindness because it's the Lord who reveals
it in the heart of his people. This is the Father's will, which
hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me, I should lose
nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And so we can trust our God and
rest in Him because He'll reveal His salvation in the hearts of
all His chosen elect sheep in the appointed time of their love
for them. Now this leads us very nicely
to the final takeaway where we see that even believers can be
tried by the timing of our Lord. Even believers can be tried by
the timing of our Lord And it's a part of how he grows us in
grace. He's teaching us. He's ever teaching
us and growing us through the ministry of his word and through
the experience of our trials and the experience of providence
and the experience of disappointment and learning things the hard
way. And we always seem to need to
learn things the hard way. And it's difficult for us to
hear, but our Lord in grace is always teaching us. He's always
growing us. When he first saved us, we're
children. We're children. And as Peter
said in 1 Peter 2, 2, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk
of the word that ye may grow thereby. And we also read at
the end of his second epistle, 2 Peter 3.18, that we're grown
in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. And it's a humbling process.
It's a humbling process to this flesh, because this flesh is
always contrary to the will of God. This flesh is, it's always
the time for this flesh. We're always ready to do something
and to take things into our own hands. But to wait on the Lord
is a humbling process. And we're confessing, Lord, I
don't have the strength, the wisdom, or the ability to effect
and to do what I think should be done. And so, Lord, I'm waiting
on you. We're waiting on the Lord. And that can be very humbling.
And what the Lord is doing for us in this is that the new man
in us, which is created of Christ, is being conformed to our God's
time. Our God's time. We're being conformed
to his time. We're learning patience. We're
gaining in experience. And he's filling our hearts with
hope whereby we receive and know the love of God, which is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. And so we that love the
Lord and trust the Lord, he's teaching us to wait upon him.
wait upon Him, to trust Him, to know that He is God and He
has everything in perfect control and everything's happening exactly
according to His time. His time. We wait upon Him to
reveal a thing to us. We wait upon our God to appear
to us in mercy. We wait upon our God to save
a loved one, looking to Him, waiting upon Him. We wait upon
our God to answer our prayer, to be gracious to us, to give
us grace when we are wronged. We wait upon our God for patience,
for patience for others and for patience when we're tried. We
wait upon our God to give us light when we're in darkness,
We wait upon our God to comfort us when we're afraid. We wait
upon Him. We wait upon Him to heal us if
He's willing. Lord, I know that You are able.
If You're willing, You can heal me. And we wait upon Him. And
we wait upon Him to grow us in grace so that in all things we're
being conformed to our God's time. For without me, ye can
do nothing, He said. And we're learning that. We could
do nothing without Him. And so we're learning that to
everything there's a season and a time to every purpose under
the heaven. And in this flesh we're always
ready, always ready, but now in the Spirit we wait upon the
time of our God, our God's time, because His will is perfect. He knew what He was doing. Our
Lord knew what He was doing. He was speaking to His relatives.
They were urging him to just go and have at it, get into a
full blown out battle. But our Lord's purpose was to
redeem his sheep. It was to redeem his people. And so he was waiting for the
appointed time. Because once he went there and
did those miracles, their wrath and their anger and hatred of
him was going to be stirred up to such a level that they would
be moved to crucify the Lord. And it was all to be done in
the appointed perfect time of our God. He did that for us. He did that. He followed God's
time. He followed his father's time
perfectly. And so we too can certainly trust
him to bring to pass the will of God perfectly for our good
and for our keeping. So brethren, rejoice in the timing
of your God. Rejoice knowing that He does
all things well and it's for a purpose. Wait upon Him and
trust Him. I pray you bless that word to
your hearts. Amen. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for how patient, how gracious and kind you are to
us. Lord, we see how your timing
can be a snare to this flesh, how it can trouble us and reveal
weakness in us and reveal sin in us. But Lord, you're so gracious
to us. You're so tender to us. You don't
leave us to ourselves, but Lord, you're conforming us in the new
man which you've created of your son. You're conforming us to
your will. to see and behold the glory of
our God and how perfect you are, how sovereign you are, and how
gracious you are to us, and teaching us, Lord, to be gracious and
patient and kind to others. Lord, we pray that your will
would be done here in our midst. Lord, we see we have a need,
Lord, and Father, we're looking to you. And Lord, we're waiting
upon you. Lord, teach us. Teach us to wait
upon you. And Lord, reveal your mercy and
your grace and kindness in our midst. Lord, we pray that you
would bring your people out from dead-letter religion, out from
the lies and the hypocrisy and the works of men. and gather
them here together with your sheep, and that you would fitly
join us together in one body to do your will, to be one people
under our God, our Savior, our one Lord, our one faith, our
one spirit, our one baptism, our one God and Father of all,
our one hope. Lord, we thank you for your works. And we seek you for this, Lord,
because we know that you will be sought for these things. You'll
do them, but you will be sought by your people. And Lord, we
do care, and we are looking to you, and we do know that it's
all of you, Lord. Father, have mercy, establish
us, and keep us. It's in the name of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ that we pray these things. Amen.