WWUTT 869 My Time Has Not Yet Come?

We often refer to Jesus as being fully God and fully man, or more accurately, very

God and very man. But have we ever really stopped to think what that doctrine really entails when we understand the text?

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the Gospel of John.

Chapter 7 is where we are this week, and I'll begin reading in verse 2 through verse 13.

The Apostle John wrote, Now the Jews' feast of booths was at hand. So Jesus' brothers said to him,

Leave here, and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing.

For no one works in secret, if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.

For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I testify about it that its works are evil.

You go up to the feast. I am not going to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.

After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.

The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, Where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people.

While some said, He is a good man, others said, No, he is leading the people astray.

Yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. The fact that Jesus' brothers doubted that he was who he claimed to be, sent from his father in heaven, just goes to show how human he really was.

Jesus was, and still is, vera homo, vera Deus, very man and very

God, or as we will sometimes describe him as, the God -man. And as I say, he is still very man and very

God. Well, Paul says that in 1 Timothy 2 .5, where he says, There is one mediator between God and man, and that is the man,

Christ Jesus, seated at the right hand of the throne of God. He accomplished all that he did in human flesh and then is seated at God's right hand, where he is interceding for us even now.

He is the mediator between God and man. And a day is coming in which Christ will return.

He who is the firstborn from the dead, meaning that there are others who are going to rise from the dead.

And when Christ returns, there are more who are going to join him with glorified bodies as he was the first to receive a glorified body.

So Jesus is the one who has fulfilled everything perfectly in human flesh and is himself

God And only the God -man can bridge this gap between man and God that exists because of our sin, separated from God because of our sinfulness and our rebellion against God.

Yet Christ fulfilled the law perfectly in his flesh, died for our sins, rose again from the grave, conquering death.

And it is only by faith in Christ that we now have this fellowship with God. But understand that when

Jesus was in his earthly ministry, he was so human that even his own brothers did not believe he was who he said he was from the father in heaven.

You would think that if there was anybody who knew him closer than anyone else, it would be his own brothers and sisters whom he grew up with.

And here in this particular section of the story in John 7, we have Jesus brothers mocking him and what they want him to do.

They have completely secular reasons for telling him to go to the Jews feast.

They're not religious reasons that they want Jesus to show himself. They want to see him do a sign just like the other

Jews were demanding that he do a sign in order to prove that he was who he said he was.

But what did Jesus say? The only sign that I will give to you is the sign of Jonah, Jonah, who was in the belly of a fish for three days and nights, just as Christ would be buried in a tomb and come back to life three days later.

And then his brothers believed in him, James, whom

Paul references in first Corinthians 15. Jesus appeared to James, the brother, the half brother of Christ, not

James, the brother of John. You know, sometimes it can be confusing because we have a lot of different Bible characters that will share the same name.

But in this case, Paul is clear in first Corinthians 15. It was James, the half brother of Jesus, whom

Jesus appeared to even after his resurrection. And James would go on to become the pastor of the

Jerusalem church. We read about that in the book of Acts. Jude also is another one who was a half brother of Jesus.

And he's the writer of Jude. Judas was actually his name, but that name is shortened to Jude because, of course,

Judas has a more notorious connotation. Jude associates himself as the brother of James when he writes his letter.

And so we can conclude he likewise is the half brother of Jesus. But before Jesus death and resurrection, his brothers did not believe in him.

And again, this goes to testify as to just how human Jesus really was.

Now, of course, there are those who will believe that Jesus was more human than he was God or a very popular belief.

And this is one that I run into a lot in my own community. A very popular belief is that Jesus was merely a man until his baptism.

And then he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. And then he could be called very man and very God, but not before that.

So that's a very common belief. People will tend to humanize Jesus more than they will consider his deity.

But we can also make the opposite mistake and consider that Jesus was more deity than he was human and that his flesh was just merely a disguise.

But the book of Hebrews is very clear. Hebrews 2, 17, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Now, of course, there are false teachers out there who will say that Jesus was not God at all in human flesh.

Bill Johnson, Bethel Church, he is one who has preached such a thing and takes that statement in Philippians 2, 7, where it says that Christ emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

They will therefore say that he was not God at all while he was Jesus in his earthly ministry.

He was God before he was God after, but he was not God during. Now that's heresy.

And the reason why Johnson and and many of those of the prosperity gospel preachers will preach such a thing is because they want you to believe that you are capable of doing exactly the same things that Jesus did.

Jesus was merely a model for us on how to do it. So he he stopped being

God. He became human. And then all the things that he did, he did perfectly. Looking at all of us is like, you know, here you can be doing the same thing that I'm doing.

Watch. All I have to do is believe hard enough and bam, see, I'm just as human as you are.

So you can do this, too, along with me. That's why they teach that. So they can fool you into believing the whole name it and claim it gospel.

If you say it, then it will be. But Hebrews 13, 8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So there was never a point where Jesus was not God. But when we read in Philippians 2, 7, that he emptied himself, emptied himself, we understand that this is flowing from what had previously been said in verse six, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.

In other words, Christ set his divine claim aside. He could have stayed on his throne for all eternity and he would have been worthy of praise regardless.

But it is out of his mercy and grace that he set his divine claim aside and took on human flesh and became completely submissive and obedient to the will of God.

Being found in human form, Philippians 2, 8, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And it's Christ's obedience that is for our justification and our sanctification.

J. Gresham Mackin said every event of his life was a part of his payment for the penalty of sin.

And every event of his life was a part of that glorious keeping of the law of God by which he earned for his people the reward of eternal life.

This is often referred to as Christ's passive obedience and his active obedience.

The active obedience was doing what God's law required of us.

His passive obedience was suffering for his people. But all of this was for our benefit.

It was not for his benefit. It was not for Christ's benefit. He doesn't gain anything by keeping the law because he is

Lord of all. So no obedience was required of himself. But he was obedient in every way and submissive to the will of the

Father. And again, this was for our benefit, by the grace of God. Remember 2

Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake, he God made him

Christ to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

And Jesus had to be like his brothers in every respect. He had to be completely human in order to fulfill the obligations of the law that we could not keep.

And so in every way, Christ was human. And yet he was also God, the hypostatic union.

It's divinely mysterious. How can we possibly say that Jesus Christ was completely human and still he was completely

God? These are things that are divinely mysterious to us. We will continue to speak about the mysteries of these things as long as we exist on this side of heaven.

But then once we get to the other side and our glory, our lowly bodies are transformed to be like his glorious body, as Paul talks about in Philippians three, then we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.

First, John three, two. So these things that are that are so beautiful for us to ponder now, but yet we will never come to the end of we will never be able to fully grasp it or understand it.

Yet there will come a day when we will see it perfectly as God means for us to.

And oh, I long for that day. It's the the day that Horatio Spafford so eloquently put it as the day that my faith shall be sight.

For now, we believe in things that we cannot see, but there is a day coming in which faith will no longer be needed, because when we join our

Lord forever in glory, those things that we hope for now will become our reality and the things that we believe without seeing will be the things that we see.

It's it's beautiful. It's awesome. It's wonderful to think about. And this is the stuff that makes me delight so much in the word of God.

And here we're just talking about this regarding Jesus brothers not believing in who he was because who they see is a mere man.

They see a guy who was an apprentice of his father, Joseph, who was not alive at this particular time.

We know that because on those various occasions in which Jesus brothers and his mother came to him seeking after him,

Joseph is never mentioned. It's likely that Joseph had probably died shortly before Jesus had started his earthly ministry.

And this may have been one of the motivating factors behind Jesus mother and brothers trying to come and get him because he was the oldest and he's supposed to be taking care of his mother.

And then we see in the gospel of John at the cross. He tells the apostle John to take care of his mother, who is now

John's mother. And Jesus said to his mother, behold, your son, as though John was going to be his

Jesus mother's son to take care of her because it was

Jesus responsibility to do that. Why did Jesus have to do that if Jesus still had half brothers around who could take care of Mary?

Well, because Jesus was the first born. So it was his job to take care of his mother, who was at that time a widow.

When we read a passage like Mark chapter three, verse thirty one, and Jesus mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called him and a crowd was sitting around him.

And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. And Jesus answered them, who are my mother and my brothers?

And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. And so Jesus was doing the will of the father, which at that particular time did not include taking care of his mother at home.

Now, he surely went back and saw her at this particular occasion in John chapter seven. He is in Galilee and Jesus brothers are trying to move him along.

They're trying to get him to go elsewhere. They want him to reveal some sign about himself as the other

Jews were pleading of him or insisting of him. And so that's why they tell him to go up to the feast and reveal something amazing to all of the people who are there.

So we know that Jesus was in Galilee at this particular time and around his family and even his own mother.

So he was certainly there and he would visit and he would take care of her. But he was not one who had a home for himself and taking his mother into his home to take care of her as she was a widow.

But he fulfilled the obligation as a firstborn to make sure that she was taken care of when the time called for it, which was appointing

John to do that work. And again, we have that come up for us a little bit later on in the gospel of John.

So here we have Jesus brothers egging him on verse five, not even his brothers believed in him.

And Jesus said to them, my time is not yet come, but your time is always here. Now, that that is kind of an interesting statement to me.

And I can't say that I really understand all the ins and outs of why Jesus said what he said here in John seven, six.

One possibility is that not all of Jesus brothers would end up believing, but it could be that Jesus is merely evaluating the present state of their heart and not necessarily the permanent their permanent condition, because we know that James and Jude again,

James and Jude would end up becoming those who would be faithful ministers of the gospel of Christ after Jesus resurrection and his ascension into heaven.

So when he says my time is not yet come, but your time is always here, that statement is probably evaluating their present condition.

The way that you are now in doubting me and mocking me the way that you are is the same as the rest of the

Jews, the rest of the unbelievers at this particular feast, which is why I'm not going up to them.

They want to kill me. So you are in league with them. You're trying to send me to a place where people want me dead.

So your time is always going to be here. The world is not going to hate you as long as you're like this with the rest of the people in the world.

But the world hates me, Jesus says in verse seven, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it, that its works are evil.

Now, when he says the world cannot hate you, he says later to his disciples that remember when the world hates you, it hated me first.

So who they are actually hating here is me. When they hate you, it's because they hate me.

They hate Jesus. But Jesus is saying in John seven, seven, the world cannot hate you.

And the reason why he says that is likely because they do not love him for who he is as the son of God who has been sent to do the will of the father.

Therefore, the world cannot hate you. You are part of them. You are part of the world.

As long as you are in that state, not believing in me and who I am, you are therefore in league with the rest of the world.

So the world cannot hate you. It hates me. It doesn't hate you. You're part of the world, though there's going to be strife and animosity and all that kind of thing that happens among people.

Even those who are worldly, you expect that of them because they are of the world. We expect unity and harmony within the body of Christ because we are of one spirit worshiping one

Lord and we have the same father, one baptism, as Paul illustrates in Ephesians chapter four.

So whenever we are divided from one another in the body of Christ, we're acting contrary to who

Christ is and what he has made us into by his blood. We are sinning and we must repent and be unified again in Christ.

But for those who are acting divisive with one another in the world, well, that's expected because they are worldly and Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy.

He he means to separate people one from another when a person is ultimately going to be condemned before God and cast into hell.

Those who did not believe in Jesus Christ, they're going to be sent to a place where they are eternally separated from God and from the people of God.

There's there's no unity in hell. There is no unity among the people of the world. Even now, though people can be friends with one another and they can be in league with one another.

Yet we are before we are in Christ, we are hated by others and hating one another is as Paul points out in Titus three, three.

So that's what Jesus is likely saying to his brothers here. My time is not yet come.

Your time is always here. And the world is always going to be in a state of fallenness until Christ comes to judge the living and the dead.

The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.

You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.

After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But then we see next that his brothers go to the feast and Jesus does eventually go.

So did Jesus lie to them here? No, this might just be a translation problem.

And scholars have debated this the way that it reads in the Greek actually makes more sense than we can make it make in English.

Sometimes the English does read better than the Greek. Sometimes we have English words that can say it better than the

Greek words can. But in this particular instance, the Greek probably reads a little bit easier than we can put it in English.

It's understood well that Jesus is saying to his brothers he doesn't mean to go up to the festival now, and he's certainly not going to go up to the festival the way that they mean for Jesus to go up to the festival.

He doesn't go in that way. He later goes in secret, and then the people find out who he is. But if he were to just go and announce himself there, he would be put to death.

And that's why Jesus says that my time has not yet fully come for a time is eventually going to be in the fullness of time, according to the will of the father.

When Jesus will go and show himself and be arrested and put to death because because the

Jews, the teachers know him to claim to be the son of God.

That's the very reason why they want to kill him, as stated in John chapter five. So we'll continue with Jesus exchange here at the

Feast of Booths tomorrow and maybe conclude this particular section. Let's finish with prayer.

Our wonderful God and Savior, we thank you for the salvation that has been given to us in Christ. We thank you that you sent your son to become like us in every respect that Christ might fulfill everything that we could not do.

And what a beautiful thing to behold. May we never come to the end of the mysteries of Christ, but we desire to know them all the more so that we can see what

Christ is fulfilled in his flesh and is therefore called us to in our flesh, a life of holiness and purity following after Christ as he had set before us, shaping us all the more into his image as we grow in sanctification day by day.

Help us to find more ways that we submit ourselves fully to you this day in Jesus name.

Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching, and we thank you for including us in your

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