John 13 chapter 7 Timing is Everything

[HKHaugan]

Vs.1-5 Now is when things really start to get dicey. It's time for another Feast, the Feast of Tabernacles also known as The Feast of Booths. It celebrates the coverings the Hebrews lived in along the way in their wilderness wanderings before they entered the Promised Land. We are still in the context of the miracles and signs that have made Jesus well known and a center of public attention and debate. So much so that He has become a threat in the eyes of Jewish leadership who now look for a way to kill Him. He stays clear of going to the Feast not out of fear but because because it wasn't the right time for Him to do be there (vs.6).

The issue is now His brothers. They make clear they are not His disciples nor do they really know and understand Him when they tell Him three things. First, if He wants to be a public figure (not His motivation), secondly, He's got to do more miracles (worldly scheming) so thirdly, they have to be done in front of His disciples (worldly methodology). They definitely don't understand Him and, in Mark 3:21 it is noted, they even go out to “take charge of Him” because they thought He was out of His mind. “For even His own brothers did not believe in Him (Jn.7:5).” It seems they mirror the blindness caused by sin in human nature. Since we know that Jesus never sinned then His brothers may be showing a kind of jealousy, envy and pride that gives them an excuse to ridicule others who get attention. Also sin always has a way of prompting us to know and judge, like His brothers, what everyone else ought to be doing. We are the exceptions, of course (TIC- tongue in cheek).

Vs.6 There are a number of times Jesus alludes to “the right time.” For Jesus timing is everything. But this is not world time (chronos). It is spiritual time, God's time (kairos) which is every next moment, event, encounter, choice and decision requiring the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is the moment of the call to be faithful in the Lord according to His Word. This is precisely where we see 'right' at work in Jesus. Everything He did was always the right thing, the right choice, the right reply, the right teaching, the right reaction, the right emotion, the right action when faith was demanded. The measure of God's timing is always His will. That is, faith in obeying His will, faith in His Word as His will and faith to engage every next moment and event to please Him. That's what kairos is. In Jesus we become more right through faith in letting Him and His Word motivate us. It's called justification by faith. It's faith in Him that counteracts our sin.

If we think about the qualities of God, His grace, love, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, correction and discipline, it takes faith in the Lord and His Word to know when they are called for and what action is necessary to bring them out. Now we are talking about God-ly timing. Think of the shape of the Cross. Our horizontal beam is chronos and the responsibility to be punctual and honor our commitments in the secular world. However, while we are on the way to our chronos events it is the vertical beam of kairos calling that will punctuate itself while we are on the way to and even during the chronos events.

Maybe an example will suffice here. I'm on the way to a meeting or an appointment (chronos). I always leave early anticipating traffic or other delays (I try to be responsible). While I'm on the way I run into someone at the gas station I hadn't seen in a long time. They have a problem going on. Knowing I've got extra time and there's not much traffic I listen and then make a time to see them later to talk more (kairos). Remember Mary and Martha (Lk.10:38-42)? Martha was so busy with her details and Mary chose to sit at Jesus' feet. It's taking up our cross in the chronos and being aware of the kairos.

Now for vs.7-13. Jesus replies to His brothers that His time for action was not then. He will do His chronos duty by going to the festival but only when it was the right kairos for Him. For them, kairos seems to have no meaning. Their hearts are far from Him. For Jesus kairos is following the leading of the Spirit and exposing the world's evil, the compromised leadership of Jewish authorities, their conspiratorial methods and the fear driven hearts behind them.

He does go to the Feast, but secretly. At the Feast there was a mixture of those who were conspiring against Him and those who thought He was a good man. Perhaps He was there assessing the extent of human confusion about Him.

Vs.14-19 Half way through the Feast He is at the Temple and teaches. For Him it was a kairos choice and a kairos action. It must have been the right time because the same leadership was amazed at His teaching causing them to wonder about the source of His learning without having studied. Their assumption must have been based on what they considered the 'in' or acceptable way to be educated. Could it be that Jesus waited until there was sufficient festal time to pass and then appear in the middle of the Feast to bring a new meaning to it, that He was the new booth, the new covering for their lives in the wilderness of this world? In fact, all the Feasts point to Him as their fulfillment. He is the Feast of Feasts. At the Last Supper, His personal Passover, He tells His disciples that He will not drink of the fruit of this vine “until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's Kingdom (Mt.26:29).”

What an opening they provided for Jesus to respond and He did. He told them it wasn't His teaching. It was from His Father who sent Him. Jesus assures them that if they want the same experience all they have to do is choose God's will over theirs. This is the meaning of Ps.25:14 which declares that He will confide in those who fear Him and further that He will make His covenant known to them. This means a personal heart to heart relationship as well as an ongoing leading in and through the whole of His Word. In that Psalm the fear of the Lord is complete respect for His will and presence, not halfhearted lip service to Him.

Jesus gets right to the core issue when He says that anyone who speaks on his own tends to do it to glorify himself but when you do something to give honor to who sent you that is the truth being conveyed. Even in secular society someone who obeys their boss and shows others that example is being truthful. It's right here at this point in his discussion with the Jewish leadership that He really confronts them with the fact of their hypocrisy. They look to the authority of Moses but not one of them keeps the Law so why are they trying to kill Him?

Vs.20-24 raises up the hostility of the locals who accuse Him of being demon-possessed and asking Him who is trying to kill Him. In modern terms we would say that they were accusing Him of being paranoid. But He again jabs at the Pharisees in the crowd. So He healed a man on the Sabbath and made him whole again, why is that wrong? They circumcise on the Sabbath so that Law of Moses is not broken. Is not the whole man the real issue rather than their legalistic attitude which excludes the Spirit of God? The Lord is not about appearances but right judgment through spiritual discernment which is spiritual judgment. “We live by faith not by sight (2Cor.5:7).”

Vs.25 Jesus' argument seems to have made a dent in some of the gathered onlookers who asked, “Isn't this the man they are trying to kill. Here He is speaking in public and they're silent. Have the authorities concluded He is the Christ? We know where this man is from but when the Christ comes no one will know where He came from.” Right here it's important to get what Jesus says in reply. Sure they know Him and where He's from geographically but that's only half. The other half is the most important. They don't know the truth about Him; who He really is, why and when He was sent into this world. He not only knows the 'why' but also the Who (His Father). They get the implication and try to seize Him but couldn't because His time had not yet come (vs.30).

Many in the crowd believed in Him and wondered if the Christ comes will He do more miracles and signs like this man? Interesting question isn't it? They seemed to believe in Him but not as the Christ, rather as a miracle worker. This crowd's partial leaning set the Pharisees course for sure. They were set on having Him arrested. So Jesus makes a statement about His future that really gets everyone there to ask the best questions about His identity. Best, because they involve every generation since that time. Basically they can be summed up, “Is He the Prophet, the Christ, God the Son or isn't He?”

Vs.33-44 Let's break down the summary questions and the statement Jesus makes that evokes them. His statement went like this, “I am with you only for a short time and then I go to the One who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me,” and “Where I am, you cannot come.” (Something similar occurs again in Chapter 14.)

The questions were basically these:
“Where is He going?”
“Is He going to where Jews live among Greeks to teach them?”
“What is this about where He's going and we can't find Him?”
“Why can't we be where He is?”

Here on the last day of the Feast His intermission statement is made that divides the crowd even more,”If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him (vs.37-38).” Vs.39 makes it clear that it is the Holy Spirit He 's talking about as He did when He was talking to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.
They will remember this later when He is glorified in the Resurrection and at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is given and all of Scripture will come alive (Is.58:11) and Jesus makes Himself personally available to and in each heart..

But more statements and questions are raised:
Some said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”
Others, “He is the Christ.”
“How can the Christ come from Galilee?”
“Doesn't the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David's family and Bethlehem where David lived?”
Some wanted to get Him arrested but it just wasn't His kairos for that yet. It would indeed come as we will discover later.

Vs.45-53 The temple guards returned to the chief priests and Pharisees and were asked why they came back empty handed. They replied that they had never heard anyone speak like Him which those leaders read as Jesus being deceitful. Of course none of the authorities believed in Him...yet, the name Nicodemus pops up. He cuts in with precisely the right question, “Does our Law condemn anyone without first hearing him and finding out what he is doing?” He gets rebuked, “Are you from Galilee too (an insult)? Look into it and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee (social superiority).” This is followed by a cryptic note, “Then each went to his own home.” Does this statement come after the crowd leaves or after the passage about the adulterous woman?

This raises another very important question. Why is the authority of the following passage about the woman caught in adultery put to question in a footnote but then included in this translation? (NIV 7:53-8:11):
“At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
It appears to me to coincide perfectly with a passage from Jeremiah 17 which gives the story of the adulterous woman its validity (17:13). It has that spiritual flavor and that 'Jesus moment (kairos)' we all long to experience when the two Testaments 'fit together.' When scholarship tries to out distance its source with a footnote, in this case--- “the earliest and most reliable manuscripts don't have” this passage---, it presents a spiritual lapse of faith indented on the rest of Scripture. In this particular case the King James translators can be trusted to have captured the Spirit's intention to include it without a footnote.
Also the passage shows how the spirit of legalism can use Scripture as a weapon instead of a means to heal a broken soul,---Pharisaism in the raw. As believers, we are taught to wait on the Spirit to guide us to use that part of the Word that makes compassionate sense at the moment of need. Here we can see Jesus' oneness with the Word, the Spirit of truth in action, God's will meeting the woman's need and the Pharisees' hearts exposed to their internal realization. Consumed with fear, they were cruelly exploiting a broken human heart for their own purposes which, in this case, was to get at Jesus (Is.58:11).
The whole of Chapter 7 is geared to setting the stage for Jesus being revealed more and more as the substance behind all existence. Creation is the personal expression of God the Father acting through His Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the central figure in Creation. He is the Mind, the Heart and the Spirit of God in the flesh. It means Creation is spiritually, personally and relationally founded and grounded.
There is no more powerful and dynamic statement of self-revelation in all history than that made here about Jesus in the Gospel of John. Here Jesus is proclaimed as the ultimate spiritual person through Whom the entire universe got its shape and came into being. In this Gospel we see in Jesus God revealing Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As God the Son, His self confidence, self awareness, self assertion and self assurance is Him living out His Father's will in faith. That singular attitude is the Holy Spirit in Him. His attitude is the highway He has paved for us to navigate spiritually in our wilderness He called the world which is secular society. We are His most important project in Creation as the ones called to be His agents of recovery. He starts us on a course with but one focus, Him, and He says, “Come, follow me” as He sets the pace.
Jesus takes the lead as He shows us what it means to be a person. He is the exact image of God in Whom we see the Father and the Spirit, Three in One and One in Three. Jesus is the only One who can enable us to see ourselves as He intended, three-fold images of Him, each with a mind, heart and spirit to believe, trust and act in faith. We walk when He says walk. Listen when He says listen. Speak when He says speak. Think, ponder, analyze, pray and act as He directs. That's how we recover our true humanity, our individuality, our true personness. With our eyes on Him He then calls us to share all that with those who need to be in His recovery program. So, if we want to know what it means to be a human being, an individual person, we look at Jesus. He's it.
Rather than being conceited and feeling superior, which are secular hallmarks, it has the opposite effect. It's humbling. It humbles us because the One who reveals it to us humbled Himself to experience death so that we could experience life in Him. His mind in our mind, His heart in our heart and His Spirit in our spirit. His Resurrection proves it. This is salvation in the raw, open, complete, gifted and beyond our comprehension but giving us a foothold in the ultimate forever that inspires us to share Him with whomever, whenever and wherever we are led by the Spirit.
Now we can see how Paul picked up on this when he calls us to be ambassadors for Christ. He knew that an ambassador only reflects the desire and attitude of the leader he serves (2Cor.5:20). In one sense Jesus was His Father's ambassador.

But it's also exactly what Paul meant when he wrote, “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him (Col.3:17).”

And, like Jesus, Paul pointed to the Scripture to embrace the person of Jesus, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2Tim.3:14-17).”