Latest / The Daily Word / August 5 – Following God's Timing
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Well, hello, and welcome to another Daily Word podcast. It's Pastor Jenny here, and today is August 5th, which means we are in John chapter 7. So I'm gonna dive right in because I want to read the very first portion of the chapter today. So it starts as like this: it says, 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 say 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. Verse six 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'm not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come. But after saying this, he remained in Galilee. Or after saying this, he remained in Galilee, no but. Now there's a but verse ten. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, Then he also went up, not publicly, but in private. So if you keep reading on, the Jews were looking for him. They're, you know, where is he? Where is he? and Jesus does end up teaching. so I won't ruin the rest of the story for you. I'll let you read if you haven't done your reading today. But there's a few things that really stuck out to me from these first ten verses or so. And I want to highlight that for you today, just some of my observations. So let's start with these first couple of verses. So Jesus was in Galilee, and it says specifically in verse one that he would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. So we see Jesus was making an intentional choice not to do something because he was aware of. The fact that the Jews were trying to kill him. Now, as soon as I read this, I s I just kind of paused there be and I just kind of felt in my spirit like, man, what wisdom did Jesus have? And it can seem at first glance like, well, duh, why would Jesus go somewhere where someone's trying to kill him? But the reason I think it popped out to me is because I feel like while it is great wisdom and it can seem like obvious wisdom, it's not so obvious in the sense of I feel like so often we can find ourselves in the the opposite scenario. How often can we find ourselves in a situation where despite knowing that something may harm us or hurt us, we put ourselves in harm's way, I'll say. so while we can maybe read this easily and think, yeah, like duh, why you know, Jesus, of course he's not gonna go to Judea. It it was just it was a sh it was a reminder for me today of when I know there's something that is going to harm or hurt me, I need to pay attention to that and be aware of that. Now, let's keep reading. So, there was an event coming up and those around him said, Well, you need to go to Judea. You need to go do this so that people can see you, can see who you are. So now things are elevated. So Jesus knew he shouldn't go to this place that's gonna put him in harm's way. But those around him are like, yeah, but you have important work to do. So shouldn't you go make yourself known? Don't you want to elevate yourself and make yourself known? What you're doing is important work. Shouldn't everyone see? Verse 4 for no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. Let everyone see. You know, it doesn't say they don't explicitly say this, but surely they're indicating to Jesus, well, what you're doing's for the Lord. So shouldn't everyone know the works that you're doing for God? But I love Jesus' response. He responds because he was in tune and in sync with what God was telling him to do. He didn't allow his own personal ambition to cloud his judgment. He says, My time's not yet come. It it wasn't his time. It wasn't supposed to be a time where he was publicly and I'll say showboating and he wasn't to elevate or put himself out there. And so he tells them in verse eight, You go to the feast. I'm not gonna go, 'cause it's not my time has not yet fully come, he says. So they go. But then after they go, we see where He's he does end up going, just not publicly, but in private. So I just I love this in this passage because again we can glean a few things from it. It's that while, you know, one, I think there's a personal edification that we can find to be reminded, but A, we should be intentional to not put ourselves in harmful situations. But B, we should also be careful and cautious that while we sometimes it can be easy to not put ourselves in harmful situations like on our own accord, we have to make sure as we're growing that maybe there's that next level of, okay, maybe at first it's easy to to not put ourselves in a difficult position, but then maybe we go to the next layer. And we're given an opportunity that says, Well, but what if you have an opportunity for your ambition to get in the way? Don't you wanna and it's f you know, the carrot is dangled up, but it's for God's glory or it's for this. But if it's not really God's will for you to do something, then we have to weigh and we have to be sure that in all things we're asking the Lord, Lord, is this my time? We we have to be careful that we're never elevating ourselves. So we wanna be intentional to always like Jesus was. He got up, he was up early, he stayed up late. you know, how we're in sync with the Lord, you know, I'm not saying you have to get up early, you have to stay up late, but the point is, is God was in our Jesus was in sync with the heart of the Father to know when his time was, when it wasn't, because we see he didn't want to go publicly, but he did end up going privately. He did end up teaching. Which ended up being a public thing, but it wasn't this big thing that drew the crowds at first. So, hope I'm making a little bit of sense. again, these were this was my scri the scripture that stood out to me. These are my observations. The application for me is just that I'm reminded and I'm drawn in today that in all that I do, that I have to be led of the Lord, I need to be in tune with the Lord. I can't be distracted by even those around me, because as we saw here, even the motives of those that were around Jesus, while they might have seemed okay on the outside because it was like, hey, don't you want to make your things public? We really see the scriptures reveal their motives were not pure because they didn't even believe in what Jesus was doing. they actually in their hearts were questioning what was happening. But Jesus was confident of who he was and what God had called him to. And so he walked in that path. So be confident today in who God's called you to do, what he's called you to do, and when he's called you to do it. So Lord, we come before you. We thank you for your word. We thank you that it is a light unto our path and a lamp unto our feet. We thank you that you will continue to lead and guide us in all that we do. Lord, we open our hearts, we open our minds to hear from you today, so that you are the one that is speaking to us. It is your voice that we hear the clearest and the loudest. Would all of the other voices around us melt away? would we not be drawn by our own personal ambitions? Would we die to ourselves and lean into your perfect will and all that we do to your timing, not ours, in Jesus' name. Amen.