John: Words of Life - Timing Is Everything
March 14, 2021

Due to technical difficulties, this morning's worship service video cut off about 10 minutes into the sermon, and unfortunately the rest was not recorded. If you would like to read the text of today's sermon, it is available here for your convenience.

I am not much of an entrepreneur. Some people are gifted with the special kind of crazy that it takes to start your own business - and can do it incredibly well. I know many here have run and continue to run successful businesses that you built - that have your names on them. Somehow I always knew that would not be me - that I would be working for something already established, and I am absolutely blown away by people who are able to succeed at this type of business venture. Actually, I am way impressed by people who actually try - whether they are successful or not.

I imagine, for those of you with successful businesses, there have been peaks and valleys. In fact it is very likely that at one point or another it seemed like your business might not make it - or was maybe even doomed to fail. When things are going along smoothly and we experience setbacks, it can be so disheartening that it seems almost easier to give up.

Born in 1857, this American businessman could never stay in one place for very long because his father was constantly starting new jobs. He had attended 6 different schools by the time he was 13 and dropped out to learn a trade. His first internship was at a printing company; however, 2 years later he accepted an apprenticeship with a candy maker. This sparked his love for making candy and led him to open a candy shop in the heart of Philadelphia, which never profited. Years later he tried again, in New York City, but it also failed due to lack of finances.

Rather than give up on his dreams, he tried once again to start a candy business, except this time he would only sell caramels. His caramel shop was a huge success! After opening shops all over the country, the man sold his caramel business for $1 million in 1900. 5 years later, under the leadership of this man Milton Hershey, the first Hershey Company factory opened for business. Since the factory was in the middle of nowhere, Hershey bought the land and built an entire community around his factory, now known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. This tourist destination includes a Hershey theme park, Founder’s Hall at the Milton Hershey School, Hershey Theatre, and so much more.

After dropping out of school in his teens and losing two candy shops, Hershey built an entire candy empire. Today, the Hershey Company sells and manufactures more than just chocolate, including other candy brands, such as Almond Joy, Cadbury, Reeses, and Twizzlers. The estimated net worth of this enterprise? $18.8 Billion.

From the moment Soiciro Honda sighted his first vehicle, he knew he wanted nothing more than to work in the automotive industry. At 15, he left school to become an apprentice at Art Shokai, an auto repair shop in Tokyo. He went on to open his own branch of Art Shokai in Hamamatsu 8 years later. While working at Art Shokai, Soichiro Honda created automotive parts in 1936 for Toyota, but they were rejected.

However, Honda didn’t let Toyota’s rejection get the best of him. When gasoline became scarce shortly after World War II, Honda offered a solution. He created a small 2-stroke motor that needed very little gas to operate and was designed for people to attach to their bicycles. The Honda Motor Company was founded shortly after and released its first motorized bike in 1949. Twenty years later, they began manufacturing cars and have since won countless awards for Best Car of the Year, Top Safety Pick, and Best Value.

Turning Honda down may be one of Toyota’s biggest regrets, since the Honda Motor Company is one of their top competitors. Honda is famously quoted as saying “Success is 99% failure.” His enterprise today? $59.8 Billion.

Please open your Bibles to John 7. Jesus has delivered some hard truths to His followers, and now He has seen many of them unwilling to accept it, turning around and leaving Him. Yet even in this he never compromises His message. He is in Galilee and his entourage is shrinking by the day as he keeps away from Judea and Jerusalem for the time being. Read passage John 7:1-13.

There is no other way to put it at this point. To the casual observer, it would appear that Jesus’ movement - his ministry is beginning to fall apart. Many of the disciples have left him - and this in his own home area - His old stomping grounds. He has made the declaration that one of His closest followers is a “devil” and knows his betrayal is coming. Finally, he is hanging around in Galilee despite their rejection of Him because the people in Judea want Him dead. This is a sequence of seeming setbacks that might discourage anyone.

Then, basically on cue, Jesus’ brothers show up. And with likely the best intentions, they encourage Him. They tell him “Sure there have been setbacks - but now is the time! The people are headed to Jerusalem - go there so that everyone at once can see everything you are doing.” This is the opportunity - the best shot to make it famous. The festival is coming, get out there make people listen to you - this is your chance to make a difference - get your name known! They saw in Jesus what most of us, myself included would see in light of everything that had happened - he needed to be encouraged to get back on the horse and strike while the iron is hot and whatever other cliche you can think of to sally forth and not give up.

This reaction hits me incredibly close to home. We talked about 2 months ago about surrender to God - giving Him the things that you can’t control, and giving Him some of the things that you think you can control. I mentioned the issue of finances then - what we do when an unexpected expense comes and we are living paycheck to paycheck. For me, I immediately look at ways to go out and earn more money, or sell something, or otherwise provide for myself - I almost never stop and ask God to provide. Shortly after that sermon, we were faced with that exact issue. I did not know how I was going to pay my tuition - close to $700 for this semester, and Eleia and I immediately set to looking at where she might pick up more hours or I might get some extra school bus routes. It occurred to me then to “gasp” practice what I preach - and I even mentioned it to her that way - I’ve been preaching reliance on God to provide, we need to be doing that. 

We agreed to pray that God would provide the money to pay the tuition. The very next day we learned that although we did not technically qualify because of the money I made in 2019, we had been granted a stimulus because of my early tax filing status as a new pastor. The money paid for my tuition and helped us catch up on some other sorely needed things.

The fact is, when things are not going well, or when we experience setbacks or failure, we look for opportunities for growth - for improvement. Jesus’ brothers, who were fully aware of what Jesus was able to do, if not yet fully aware of who He actually was - they saw the opportunity for Him to gain back what He had lost and then some. It was a golden opportunity. If you want to be famous, you have got to get yourself in front of the people. Even his brothers who saw Him as a miracle worker could not yet see Him for who he was - the true Messiah. They saw this as an opportunity for damage control - to resurrect this faltering business of His.

We see a theme all throughout this Gospel - a theme about timing. We see it through a series of divine appointments - we talked about that with Nicodemus and then with the woman at the well, and the disciples in the sea - each of Jesus’ movements is governed by a timeline that is not His own, but the Father’s. Even at the wedding in Cana when Mary asks Him for help, He tells her “My hour has not yet come.”

Here now with His own brothers, we return to this idea, though he uses slightly different language. He tells them “My time is not yet here” using the the greek word kairos for time - and this is the only place in this Gospel where he uses this word. Normally, when he speaks of His time or hour, he uses the word hora or the word chronos - just as he did with his mother at Cana The word Hora carries with it a strong theological meaning - it almost always represents a connection to Jesus’ crucifixion and exaltation, while chronos deals specifically with the flow of time itself.

Why would He use kairos in this instance then? This use suggests that Jesus was making a rather simple point - that it simply was not yet the right time for him to go to this feast. Perhaps he knew that in the first few days the Jewish leaders would be expecting him and would seek to kill him. For his brothers there were no such concerns. For them ‘any time is right’. This approach is confirmed by Jesus’ next words: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me.” Because ‘the world’ (here meaning ‘the Jews’ hostile to Jesus) had no reason to hate his brothers, they could go to the feast any time they liked. It was different for Jesus. He had to choose his time carefully because ‘the world’ hated him and planned to kill him. The reason it hated him, he said, was because I testify that what it does is evil. 

So he encourages them to go to the feast without Him. Then he makes a statement that has caused concern for biblical scholars since the moments of the early church. He says “I am not going up to this festival, because my time (kairos) has not yet come. Here is where we have to speculate on meaning, and may never understand the full meaning of His words until we meet him face to face. Jesus tells them that He is not going to the festival, and then in a few verses we learn that He does in fact go to the festival in secret. How can a sinless Jesus tell His brothers a lie?

As I read that verse, in many of your Bibles - those who have an older version of the NIV especially, may have noted an added word, where it reads as “I am not yet going up to this festival.” That word yet makes the passage safe from controversy, yet many scholars believe the word was added for exactly that reason by a scribe along the way, as most of the earliest manuscripts do not include it. According to textual criticism, a case can be made for either - not going or not yet going - provided that there is an understanding of meaning, especially in light of the different words being used for time. The meaning as accepted by most biblical scholars is that Jesus was not indicating that he would not go at all - only that it was not the right time for Him to go, and he would not go with His brothers or for the reason they specified. After he told them this, it says that He stayed in Galilee.

My interpretation varies slightly, and we’ll see if you can see my point of view here. I come back to this idea of divine appointments. I believe that when Jesus said he would not go to the festival that in fact he had no intention of going to the festival. This is supported by his continuing to lay low in Galilee. Yet I believe that once again we see Jesus’ life as led by God’s plans and not His own, and he was led - directed - to attend the festival later.

The Festival of Tabernacles was an interesting festival. It is also called the Festival of Booths, and was meant to commemorate the Israelites time wandering in the desert. It was structured like many festivals were - it was 8 days in length, and it would begin and end on the Sabbath - times of solemn reflection and contemplation. The intervening days, the people would gather and live in tents, or booths, as a reminder of the time that their ancestors had lived in temporary dwellings as God led them through the desert. Jews would flock to the wilderness around Jerusalem for this festival - it was a time when the whole nation of Israel would be a captive audience. This is why the officials were looking for Jesus - they expected that this would be an occasion to capture Him and murder him - or at the very least silence Him.

So here is Jesus, secure in Galilee as the Jewish leaders are unable to find Him at the festival, when He is led by the Father to travel back into the hornet’s nest at the time when he was being hunted, so he goes without question. When He arrives He keeps a low profile even as they continue to look for Him.

Now it doesn’t say this specifically whether Jesus heard the talk of the people, though I think we can safely assume that He did - it simply says that many in the crowds there whispered about Him - that such talk was “widespread.” Jesus makes His way, unassuming, through the multitudes and the Bible says that many were speaking of him favorably, saying that He was a good man. Many had heard about or even seen one of His miracles, or had otherwise been touched by his presence.

Yet this is not how everyone feels about him. There are those saying that He is a deceiver - even though they are afraid to speak out against him formally. And I wonder - how many of the disciples which have turned away from Him have now made their way to Jerusalem and begun to spread their discord with others? How many have not just walked away, but allowed bitterness and resentment to settle in their hearts over this man who was not what they expected - not what they had hoped for? He now has leaders seeking to kill Him and former followers who are spreading lies about Him and defaming him to those who will listen - the setbacks are worse than He could have thought. Yet they will not openly challenge Him because of fear - they, like their ancestors grumble and complain in misery as they sleep in tents and wander around for a few days without any direction.

Timing is everything in business. Look at the stock market - fortunes are made and lost based on timing. Companies succeed and fail based on timing in the market. Timing is also everything in ministry - evangelism finds us speaking into people’s lives at different stages of cultivation, and sometimes we come along at the time when they are ready to surrender themselves. This principle is what keeps many people going in spite of failure - maybe the venture was not wrong, just the timing was wrong. Eventually the timing will be right, as we saw with both Hershey and Honda. And Apple. And Microsoft. And Google. And Facebook. And airbnb. And Walt Disney. And Jesus.

Sometimes, the time is right and we don’t recognize it. Sometimes God leads us in a direction but allows us to resist Him - to learn. We see this most famously with Jonah as he literally ran away from God’s calling. Yet here we are presented with the perfect example of unqualified obedience through Jesus. He isn’t saying He’ll obey his Father according to His own plans - but that He will obey the Father regardless of anything He has planned. Regardless of the public opinion, regardless of politics, and regardless of his available resources, Jesus lived according to both the kairos and the hora as established by God.

Timing is everything. Earlier we sang the song “In His Time” which causes us to recognize that His timing is what creates beauty - His schedule keeps us safe and secure. This is so easy to forget when we are waiting for something to start, or even waiting for something to end. We wait for things to arrive, we wait for things to happen. We are impatient - each of us, especially as our society tells us more and more that we are entitled to instant gratification in all areas of our life.

Has your time finally come? Are you in a place where God has been working on your heart, and it is time for a change? We normally do an altar call for this portion of the service, but I would like to open it up further this morning. Maybe God has been working on your heart for a while. Maybe it is to lead you to accept Him, or maybe there is something in life that you need to get rid of. Maybe this is your time to confess, to ask forgiveness. Either way, if you are struggling with sin, or struggling with hurt, or feel the pull on your life to accept Christ, I will be up here with the deacons - please find one of us and we will pray with you and help you get hooked with someone so that we can prayerfully walk with you as you make this change. I am saying if you are waiting for the time to come - waiting for the sign, the two by four - let this be it. The time is now. I am going to pray and then ask people to come forward. Let’s pray.