The Enemy of Spiritual Life (John 7:1-10)
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jeremy_1_07-22-2025_135306: [00:00:00] How do you handle danger?
Now the last few weeks, our family was able to vacation in Oregon and the weather was much cooler, so we were able to actually enjoy some meals outside but one of the evenings when we were eating outside, there was a bee, and this bee just seemed to be fascinated with our dinner party.
One of our kids in particular really is afraid of bees, he's freaking out. We're trying everything we can to logically explain to him, Hey, the bee's not out to get you.
But nothing was working. So finally my wife decides she's going to Google B Facts. To make the bee not seem so scary. And so she starts reading these random facts about bees and it starts to calm him down a little bit until she gets to one fact where she goes, oh, apparently bees can recognize and remember human faces.
And we all looked at each other and [00:01:00] our eyes all get big, like. What, and let's just say that didn't help the sense of impending doom and danger, it was not alleviated by that little tidbit that maybe, in fact, the bee was targeting him and had seen his face and had locked in on him. That was not the most helpful thing, but that's how we often handle danger.
We figure out what do we do about it? Now, today in our store, we're gonna look at Jesus. Is in danger, and we're gonna see how this is gonna build, but we start to see that there are ongoing threats against him, and we get to see how Jesus handles that. So we're gonna read in John chapter seven, beginning in verse one.
After this, Jesus traveled around Galilee. He wanted to stay out of Judea where the Jewish leaders were plotting his death. Seems like a good reason, but soon it was time for the Jewish Festival of Shelters, and [00:02:00] Jesus's brothers said to him, leave here and go to Judea where your followers can see your miracles.
You can't become famous if you hide like this. If you do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world for even his brothers didn't believe in him. Now, here we have a change of context from a lot of the stories we see about Jesus. He's not having a conversation with his disciples. He's having conversation with his brothers.
The biological sons of Mary. And Joseph, now we find out that they didn't believe Jesus was some of the things that Jesus was claiming to be. So they give him a mock invitation.
Don't you want to be famous? Jesus, here's a great way for you to be famous. And I suspect that's really what they thought all of this was about. Jesus is just saying these things. He's doing these things. Because he wants the attention, he wants [00:03:00] the fame. I mean, can you imagine how hard it would be to be Jesus's little brother like have Jesus be the example that came before you?
All your teachers meet Jesus first, and then they compare you, oh, you're Jesus's sibling. I mean, that would be difficult, and you can imagine them working through this. Now we know from church history that at least one of Jesus's brothers is going to change his mind in the years to come. It's a brother named James.
In fact, there's a book in the New Testament called James that is attributed to the brother of Jesus. And in Acts 15, James is a key leader in the council of Jerusalem that the early church has. So James is going to become a key player. In this early church, but not yet. Not at this point in the story.
At this point. He's with the rest of his brothers looking at Jesus going, this guy's all about the hype. Now, Jesus knows that things are not safe for him right now. [00:04:00] He's from Judea. But he's not returning there right now because he knows that they're plotting to kill him.
What's interesting about this is we often to think today that Jesus is like the most safe person ever. Even someone who doesn't believe in Christianity probably likes Jesus or maybe loves Jesus, but just thinks that Christians have messed up, right? Most people have a high regard, a high view of Jesus.
We might even think of Jesus, like he's the safest person, the kindest person that ever was, and we depict him in images where he looks so safe. I don't know how Jesus always had a little lamb to hold as he posed for photos, we view him in this way, but I wanna point out that his contemporaries did not view Jesus in this way.
In fact, there was open hostility toward him and Jesus was well aware of it. How often do you hang out with people who [00:05:00] have open death threats against them? Now, it depends on your circle of friends and connections. Certainly I have known a handful of these people in my life, but the people I hang out with day in and day out don't usually have open death threats
against them. But if you were to hang out with Jesus, this was starting to become a normal part of that reality and Jesus is trying to grapple with this. Then we get to verse six. Jesus replied, now is not the right time for me to go, but you can go anytime. The world can't hate you.
But it does hate me because I accuse it. Of doing evil. You go on. I'm not going to this festival because my time has not yet come after saying these things, Jesus remained in Galilee. Check this out. But after his brothers left for the festival, Jesus also went though secretly staying out of [00:06:00] public. View.
I love this. Jesus does end up going, but he goes incognito. He goes without his disciples because that would draw a crowd and he just blends in and he waits till no one thinks he's coming. And then he goes, or a little bit of like a mischievous part of Jesus that we see in this story, but we certainly see he's not striving.
For fame, he's doing the opposite. In fact, he seems to be in no hurry at all to get to this festival where everybody is going to be. It reminds me of something that the lay author Dallas Willard wrote. He said that Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.
And here we see Jesus not hurried at all, very much at peace with how things are playing out. And then he repeats something that we have seen him say before in verse eight. He says, my [00:07:00] time has not yet come. We saw Jesus say this back in John chapter two when his mom comes to him and says, they have run out of wine at this wedding party.
That was the setup for Jesus's first miracle in John chapter two. Here we have him saying it again. No, no, no. My time has still not yet come. John is building the tension here. We sense like when is the time going to come, when we are gonna get to see Jesus fully reveal himself. Now, spoiler alert, if you don't know where this is going, Jesus does in fact reveal himself.
And if you wanna know where that is, that's gonna come in John chapter 12, in John 1223. We find this. Jesus replied, now the time has come for the son of man to enter his glory. See, Jesus will indeed become famous, but much to his brother's surprise. He's gonna [00:08:00] become famous because of the cross, because of his submission to death.
That's what's going to make Jesus famous. I would suggest that in this story, Jesus is modeling for us what it looks like to be grounded to have a sense of peace about what God is doing or what we are doing and the timing of everything. I would say that patience with the timing of God is a mark of deep trust in God, and we can determine whether or not we trust God like that.
So let me ask you this. What are you in a hurry to have happen right now in your life? Are you in a hurry for recognition? That's certainly what social media and everything online pushes us toward. Maybe you're in a hurry for healing
you want something that's broken to be fixed, and you're doing everything you can do to repair it or asking God to fix something or maybe you're in a hurry for clarity. You're tired of the doubt. You're tired of the [00:09:00] questions. You're ready for some certainty and to have those beliefs, but you don't have it yet.
Can we find the trust in God in the midst of what we're going through without having to be in a hurry for what's next? I wanna close with something that the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, I think about this quote often. He says, isn't it the characteristic of a man in contrast to an immature person, that his center of gravity is always where he actually is, and that the longing for the fulfillment of his wishes cannot prevent him from being his whole self wherever he happens to be?
Can we be exactly content with where we are, fully be us, where we are? And trust that God is meeting us in this space. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.
