May 1, 2023
God’s Timing
“So, they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come. But many of the crowd believed in Him; and they were saying, ‘When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will He?’” John 7:29-31 (NASB)
Have you ever had a time you couldn’t believe what happened only to realize later it was for the best? I remember being transferred out of a detective unit, back to an assigned patrol unit squad. As a 12-year veteran deputy sheriff, I interviewed for the permanent assignment in the Domestic Violence Unit. I lost out to an 18-month-old deputy who told supervisors she couldn’t handle the stress before she undertook the assignment. I almost became bitter about the reassignment. It wasn’t fair. The Under-Sheriff even told me he realized it wasn’t fair but needed experienced deputies on the street. In spite of my feelings, I trusted God. After 3 months of answering calls for service, I realized I could go home each day without carrying the burden of a huge case load every day. As I drove down the road, I told God, “Thank you for seeing ahead.” “Help me to trust you in the future.” “You saw what I really needed.” As I drove down that road, I drove with a smile on my face and a better attitude about the future. He knew the time table.
“So, they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” After the previous response which set the leaders back on their feet in verse 26, we see an interesting trend. God’s plans will not be thwarted. In verse 26, when the crowd said, “Look, He is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to Him,” the people were amazed their leaders remained silent. Yesterday, I said the truth had been spoken and they couldn’t refute it. God’s voice supersedes human intelligence. In today’s passage we see why; “because His hour had not yet come.” The leaders could not seize Jesus, as “His hour had not yet come.” God controlled the circumstances, not mankind. Jesus was on a timetable which the Father controlled. Nothing could happen unless God allowed. Looking back to verse 8, we see the same statement again by Jesus, “Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast because My time has not yet fully come.” Jesus told his brothers, it was not His time yet, but later went to Jerusalem “in secret.” Jesus’ timing was that of His Father’s. All this was prearranged and predetermined by God. Then something amazing happened, “But many of the crowd believed in Him.” In the middle of all the chaos, there were those who, “believed.” “Pisteuō,” means to believe, entrust.[1] This belief or trusting of Jesus is, “to entrust oneself to an entity in complete confidence.”[2] These people were also part of God’s timetable.
I recently bought a pocket watch with a mechanical movement. I can set the time to whenever I choose, but the timepiece does not work until I push the crown back into the watch. Then the mechanism begins to operate. It only works when the crown is pushed in. Today, God is the mover of all things. He is the hand that pushes the crown, then the mechanism of time moves. Nothing works without His permission. Even in this crazy world, all things are in His hands who allows time to function for His purposes and His glory.
[1] Robert L. Thomas, New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Dictionaries : Updated Edition (Anaheim: Foundation Publications, Inc., 1998).
[2] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 817.