“After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works 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 up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.’ After saying this, he remained in Galilee.”

1. God’s Plans are Precise

Jesus is fully God, and fully man. There are times that, in viewing Him as a living, breathing person, the God element gets diminished or overlooked. Much of the world is more than willing to accept that loving your neighbor and tending to the needy are good and virtuous behaviors, without really being able to qualify why these things are morally right. When Jesus is viewed as only a man, there’s no greater sense of authority or order to His words. The world looks at the Christ, both in His time and now, and counts Him as a man who said a mixture of things, some good, and some crazy. When we take in who Jesus is and what He tells us in the full and proper context of seeing Him as God, we get the true picture instead of fragmented lies. In knowing Jesus as God we gain perspective on the depth and authority of His teaching, on the gravity of His sacrifice, and the magnitude of His love for us. It also helps us see and understand that He was not just a man who conducted a ministry for a period of time before being silenced. The movements of His ministry were precise, tactful and calculated with a divine foresight and brilliance that goes beyond the capabilities of man. This can be seen in individual interactions, like with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, or the crippled man he healed by the sheep pool in John 5. People that He knew and sought, intersecting with them at specific and significant times. Similarly, when we see Jesus call His first disciples in John 1, the timings aren’t accidental, but perfectly planned and executed upon. Playing into today’s passage, we see how Jesus conducted Himself in His position with the religious leaders of the time. Knowing that His ministry is leading to the cross, from the time we see Jesus cleanse the temple in John 2, He begins an adversarial relationship with the ruling Jewish teachers. His provocation is precise, doing things like cleansing the temple and healing on the Sabbath that infuriate the teachers of the Law, but then delivering such profound or staggering responses that they’re brought up short. His declaration in John 5 that He is the Son of God turns their hatred of Him into a pointed desire to kill Him. But in a similar fashion to John the Baptist, He holds such authority and popularity with the crowds that they fear the repercussions of moving against Him. This is a factor that influences their actions all the way up to the crucifixion, but even in instances where they fly into a fury and seek His life immediately, or when He is rejected at Nazareth in Luke 4 and they seek to throw Him from a cliff, He simply slips away. These aren’t the comings and goings of a man fleeing for His life, but Jesus calculatedly, and with divine precision, poking and prodding the religious elite in their unrighteousness, to the ultimate fulfillment of His glory on the cross. While the primary focus is on the religious teachers, the Pharisees in particular, Jesus is also purposefully on the radar of the Roman authority, Herod Antipas specifically. In the aftermath of sending out the twelve, Luke 9:7-9 says,

“Now Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen. Herod said, ‘John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?’ And he sought to see him.”

Immediately after this we see the feeding of the 5,000, which took place in the heart of Herod’s territory. This was another calculated move that sent a message, and communicated to Jesus’s followers and to Rome that political revolution was not His aim. All of the precision of Jesus’s movements, the timing and placement of his actions all point to His deity the perfect and divine planning that led to the cross.

2. God’s Plans Defy Simple Familiarity

“After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand.”

We closed out John 6 by seeing a large number of those who called themselves disciples of Jesus leaving Him, and conversely, an affirmation of the position of the twelve, save one, who is called a devil. This helped to see the ever-present line between aims that are worldly and those that seek the will of God. Picking up in John 7, we see that Jesus continues with His work in Galilee, but avoids the southern region of Judea, as the ruling Jews are actively seeking His life. Time passes and the Feast of Booths is approaching. The Feast of Booths, also referred to as “the Feast of Tabernacles” or “the Feast of Ingathering” is outlined in Leviticus 23, and serves to honor God for His provision at the end of harvest. This was also when the people would spend seven days living in “booths,” that based on their description were tent like huts, fashioned with, “branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook.” This was to commemorate God delivering them from Egypt, and their time spend in the wilderness where He cared and provided for them. Interestingly, there is also a working theory that Jesus’s birth took place around the Feast of Booths. This is partly based around the seasonal activity of the shepherds, but some commentators cite John 1:14 as supporting this theory,

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The word used for “dwelt” has implications of occupying a tabernacle or tent, drawing significant to God coming to dwell among His people in the flesh. This makes sense, as Paul refers to the body as a “tent” in 2 Corinthians 5:4. While the symbolism of the current time of the year in which we celebrate Christmas is significant (honoring the Light of God coming into the world to redeem us at the time of year when the days are at their shortest, and physical darkness is most abundant), tying the birth of Christ to the Feast of Booths also carries great significance for what God has done for His people. The Feast of Booths is also one of the three feasts noted in Exodus 23:14–17 where God commands that the men of Israel appear before Him.

“Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord GOD.”

If we look ahead, we see that Jesus does in fact attend the feast. This makes sense, as it is Lawful that all able-bodied men of Israel make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But it also makes sense that playing into His plan, and the divine timeline, it is done with discretion.

“So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works 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.”

Looking at Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John 12, each gospel records the triumphal entry of Jesus publicly coming into Jerusalem for the week of Passover, which will culminate in His crucifixion, we see that He essentially comes with a parade escorting Him. What His brothers are mocking Him with, and what He declines is this sort of loud, public entry. Given His massive following, miracle work, and the general scope of His ministry, His brothers have to be at least somewhat familiar with what He’s now spent years of His life doing. This means they should also know something of His standing with the religious rulers in the Judean region. But in their disbelief, they goad Him and encourage Him to travel south. Following the departure of large numbers of His disciples, they tell Him to go out and prove Himself to His followers. The comment that “no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly” when Jesus’s public ministry has been thriving for years is laughable. But this is the transgression of overfamiliarity, and leaning on worldly understanding. This is something I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about, as what we consider general knowledge relates to the Bible. If I Google, “how old is the earth?” the first thing that comes up is from National Geographic, and it says 4.543 billion years. If I read on, it states, “Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years.” If I divide that by what Google tells me the average global life expectancy is (which is 71.33), that means the world started 63,689,892 of our lifetimes ago, give or take 771,068 lifetimes. The fact that anyone can say that this is cold hard fact with a straight face is absolutely bananas. And to be clear, I’m not a young earth theorist or an old earth theorist – I know that God is the Master of time as He is all things, and that the numbers work out by His hand, and that’s what matters. Is there harm in being curious? I don’t believe so. But trying to guess the “precise” age of the earth is like standing on top of a mountain, looking at a city in the distance and trying to measure the square footage of a room in one of the buildings… without tools. It is an impossible task that is approached with such confidence by so many. Part of the problem with our perception is that we’ve only existed for as long as we’ve been alive.

It can be hard to really drink in what a miracle it is to have life to begin with. Hearts beating and brains firing, our very existence is a testament to God’s power. This often gets overshadowed and muddled by the fact that for the most part, we don’t really know what it means to not be alive in the flesh. We don’t see or have awareness over the majority of our internal workings, unless something goes very badly wrong. So life itself becomes watered down through familiarity, and we often fail to see God’s glory revealed in creation. It is the Spirit, not the flesh that transcends time and grants knowledge and wisdom beyond a personal scope. Jesus’s brothers grew up with Him, in their minds He is a man and nothing more. Their familiarity with Him, of knowing Him as a person before His public ministry began, causes a sort of blindness. This is what enabled the Israelites to stray and worship other gods, even after God had delivered them from Egypt, and led them through the wilderness. It’s what allows a famous atheist like Richard Dawkins and others like him to publicly call themselves “cultural Christians.” Jesus’s brothers exemplify the worldly trap that is not taking God seriously, because we reap the benefits of His common grace, of the ordered world He created, even without submitting to Him as Lord. He gives us the proof of His existence, but gives us the freedom to doubt His glory and lean on our own understanding – though not without consequence. His plans are beyond worldly comprehension, and His glory too massive for our minds to absorb. But just because we can’t force God into a box that we can fully comprehend and manipulate to our will, doesn’t mean He isn’t very real and very much in control.

3. God’s Plans are Against Evil

“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 up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.’ After saying this, he remained in Galilee.”

Ephesians 2:1-3 says,

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

The ultimate aim of worldliness is the death of God, the removal of Truth, and it’s replacement with self-satisfying lies. We’re reminded here again of the perfection of God’s plan, of the divine foresight Jesus has and the precise timing for the hour of His glory on the cross. Jesus acknowledges this here, that despite the mocking encouragement of His brothers, the time has not come for Him to march into the hands of His enemies to be offered up as the perfect sacrifice. But what He also says serves as a firm rebuke toward His brothers. His time may not have arrived, but they are free to walk into the world without receiving hate because their minds are in line with worldly thinking. If the world hates Him because He sheds light on its wickedness, then conversely it does not hate His brothers because they are in step with the world. John summed this point up beautifully in 3 John 1:11,

“Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.”

By Jesus’s words and by their actions, we can see plainly that although His brother’s obviously knew Him, they didn’t know Him. Who and what He really is, remains hidden from their eyes, veiled by worldly certainty. We also know that this position was not maintained by all of Jesus’s half-siblings after the resurrection. James and Jude at the very least (though there may have been others), came to serve as prominent figures in the early church, with each writing one of the epistles, and with church history holding that each was martyred professing Christ as resurrected Lord. Their doubt did not endure coming face to face with the resurrected Jesus, but on the occasion of John 6, we see how their mockery is in line with other doubters. What Jesus says here fits seamlessly with what He told Nicodemus in John 3:19-21,

“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. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

By Jesus’s words and example we’re given a barometer for our conduct as Christians. While we have no cause to be oppositional for the sake of it, if the ways of the world have become familiar and comfortable, it’s time for a reality check. Our highest calling is to profess Jesus resurrected, to shine as reflecting lights of God’s glory, and be filled with fruits of the Spirit. The world in it’s wickedness can only stomach so much of this before it’s hatred is turned to us, as it hated Jesus before us. There’s an old quote (which I thought was from Winston Churchill, but the internet tells me he may have borrowed it, and that’s not really the point here anyway), “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” While I appreciate the sentiment, we as Christians are called to reflect the love, mercy and peace we’ve been shown. We are also called to remain faithful in sharing the truth of Christ. When the apostles are threatened and told to keep silent about Christ’s resurrection, they reply to the Sanhedrin in Acts 5:29–32,

“But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.’”

While we shouldn’t make enemies for the sake of having enemies, we should, if redeemed, find ourselves at odds with the world, and not smoothly in step with its practices. We, as obedient servants of the will of God, should seek to be in line with His plans. Plans that have stretched back to the beginning of time and beyond. From before the fall, through the ancient world, into Egypt, into the wilderness, into the promised land, as Israel was established, destroyed in their inequity, and reformed, through the intertestamental period, to the Roman occupation, to the detailed movements and timings of the ministry of Jesus Christ, God has always had a plan. His face has always been set against that which is evil, His aim is always to His glory, His righteousness, and the good of His children. It’s not a matter of whether or not the ultimate triumph of good over evil is real, or true – it’s simply which side you choose to be on.

Pastor Landon’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwn26-GCvnY