Amen. If you would, please turn within your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 7, beginning at the first verse.
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 brother 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.
But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, ‘Where is he?’ And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, ‘He is a good man,’ others said, ‘No, for he is leading people astray.’ Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.
About the middle of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, for all that it tells us about you, about the instruction it gives, about the hope it brings. Help us to hear your word, to receive it, and let it guide our lives in ways that help us to be faithful and obedient to you in all things. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So during his life on Earth, Jesus was an anti-politician. However, I don’t mean that in the sense that Jesus is entirely opposed to politicians or to the political sphere because even now he reigns as the highest political officer in the universe. Jesus is not anti-government, nor is he generally against those who operate the wheels of political power. But what I do mean by saying that Jesus is an anti-politician is that he refused to play along with the political game.
Jesus refused to play according to the ordinary accepted human rules that governed the social systems of the day. Jesus was not a professional politician; he did not think like one, nor did he act like one. That simple fact in certain ways greatly explains why people did not understand him or many of the things he did. He was always acting outside of their common frame of reference and their expected social norms.
But if Jesus had been trying to do or accomplish what many people assumed or thought that he was trying to do, then yes, according to their ordinary expectations, he was doing everything wrong. If his goal was political power and if his purpose was the reestablishment of a temporal Davidic Kingdom, then yes, Jesus went about everything wrong. But we know that was never his purpose or goal.
Today’s passage showcases his unwillingness to play our political games by our rules. To recap, after performing a sign with his miraculous feeding of over 5,000 men in the Galilee and after performing another sign by walking across the Galilean sea in the dead of night, and after he accused the crowd following him for following him for all of the wrong reasons—after many of those followers abandoned him because what Jesus was teaching and what he expected of them was just too hard and difficult for them to accept—the Apostle John resumes his narrative, picking up after about six months’ time.
Writing, ‘After this, Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him.’ See, during this intervening period, we remain assured by the other gospels that Jesus did not stop his itinerant ministry across Galilee. He did not take a break, stop, reset, and then begin a whole new campaign. He continued to visit the many towns of the region, teaching in their synagogues. Despite John’s noted reduction in the size of the crowds that followed him, Jesus and his ministry continued to be both popular and controversial.
It was those controversies that kept Jesus in Galilee; they kept him away from Judea and Jerusalem because that was where the Jewish leadership and religious establishment were—those whom John references whenever he writes ‘the Jews,’ meaning the priests, Pharisees, and scribes. It was there that they had the most power, influence, and authority. He stayed away because they were looking for an excuse to kill him. John implies that they did so because Jesus was not playing by their rules; he was upsetting the status quo of their social and religious systems.
Jesus was just a simple carpenter, without any formal religious instruction like that. Nor was Jesus pledged to the sect and strictures of the Pharisees, which, if he were, would have offered him a kind of legitimacy as an accepted human authority in their eyes. Instead, Jesus kept himself to the outskirts of Jewish society, associating with and teaching the lowborn common folk. By avoiding the political centers of social power, he had a greater impact and influence upon those we might today call ‘We the People,’ thereby building what they feared was a populist movement that might be transformable into revolution.
Nor did Jesus hesitate to answer anything controversial or other sensitive subjects whenever he was asked. When he did, he did not stay in line with their conventional wisdom or their popular opinion. Jesus spoke authoritatively, speaking under his own authority and speaking with his own wisdom, rather than regurgitating the teachings of earlier Jewish experts and leaders, not quoting or citing the opinions and interpretations of the so-called experts. Thus, Jesus disrupted everything that they considered important, making them all feel very uncomfortable.
So it’s no big surprise that the Jews wanted Jesus out of the picture since they considered some of his teachings to be blasphemy, particularly his claim of divinity. If Jesus were to travel around in Judea, then he would have been giving them an easier opportunity to remove him.
But while it was safer for him to stay in Galilee as a devout Jew, there were still regular times, according to Torah, when he must go up to Jerusalem. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. The Feast of Booths was the third of three annual religious festivals that required every male Jew to appear before the Lord at the temple in Jerusalem for worship. Therefore, attendance was not optional for righteous, Orthodox, and observant Jews like Jesus— for anyone who would keep the law.
So, Jesus had to go. Being who and what he is, in order for him to fully keep God’s will, he had no choice except to travel to Judea and risk the wrath of the Jews. So at that time, Jesus’s brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples may also 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.’ What they were suggesting for him to do, by encouraging him to reveal his works more publicly in Jerusalem, was to do all that he had been doing in Galilee in front of the biggest crowd possible—not just his disciples, because everyone who is anyone would be present there as witnesses.
Why did they suggest this? They suggested this because they believed they were looking out for his best political interests and maybe their own by extension. They were suggesting that he leverage his popularity into political populism. Because if he wanted to be successful and lead a movement for social, religious, and political change, then he needed to begin playing the game.
But by telling Jesus, ‘For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world,’ they merely proved that they were only worldly wise men because they could not understand or imagine that if what Jesus claimed were true, he might want to keep his power and abilities hidden. They expected that if someone were blessed with such miraculous power as he exhibited, then they must have been given it to use it and enjoy it—to take advantage of it and exploit this providence to the fullest extent possible.
They could not understand or imagine why their brother Jesus, if what he were saying were true, would not want to build social, political, or religious power. They believed that he was going about it wrong, if he was trying to achieve the ultimate goal that they assumed: to claim the Throne of David and put an end to Roman rule in Judea. They did not, and could not, understand what Jesus was doing or why, because they were not yet redeemed. They did not understand.
So Jesus explained things to them, saying 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.’ They belonged to the world, fallen cosmos. They belonged to the world’s time. They were loved by the world because they’d not yet been turned away from it; they were not yet redeemed from Satan’s dominion.
Conversely, Jesus knew and explained that he was hated and feared by the world, proven by the crowd abandoning him, proven by the Jews’ animosity, hatred, and fear of Jesus and his teachings, proven by the religious establishment’s ardent opposition to Jesus, which was therefore a defense of the world’s satanic doctrine and evil works. The world hated, and the world still hates Jesus because he testifies that its works are evil.
He declared the truth about the world’s fallen moral character. He shined a brilliant and divine light into the satanic darkness and misery; a light for the cosmos to see itself in, a light to drive back the darkness, a light to call and draw the elect out from their love and fellowship with the cosmos, to bring them into the company of Christ instead—a light to purge and cleanse the elect of all their prior evil, their wickedness and their sin, a light which justifies them before the Father, and a light through which he would save the cosmos by redeeming the elect from every nation, tribe, family, time, and place.
And he told his brothers, ‘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. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went, not publicly but in private.
Now, we read that plainly and most simply; we’re challenged with something that may be problematic. Did Jesus just lie to his brothers? Did Jesus break the Ninth Commandment? We know the answer, of course, must be no.
But how? The key to understanding that, to understand why, is found in what Jesus’s brothers wanted him to do and be, and also within the question itself of time. John shows us that his brothers wanted Jesus to reveal himself and His glory, although they did not understand what they were really asking. They wanted him to reveal himself as a political Messiah. But Jesus was more concerned about the time—that it was not yet the correct, appropriate, and divinely appointed time for him to reveal himself in glory as God’s chosen Messiah, the suffering servant.
Remember, one of the defining characteristics of John’s Gospel is that John was more concerned with marking the specific passage of time or ‘Kronos,’ as in chronological or clock time, than the writers of the synoptics. John’s narrative focus emphasizes Jesus’s greater concern with ‘Kairos,’ God’s divinely appointed time—the foreordained and planned moments and events which were necessary to achieve our redemption within history.
In three times in this passage, Jesus relies upon the ‘Kairos,’ talking with his brothers: ‘My time has not yet come.’ Jesus’s time—the moment when he would do what he came into the world to do—had not yet come. It was not yet time for the completeness of his humiliation, nor was it time for his glorification.
‘But your time is always here,’ the present time which belongs to the world. To whom do they belong? The present moment which belongs to Satan, the present ruler of the world and their enslaving master. ‘I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.’
That is why Jesus would not go up to Jerusalem openly as who he truly is. Jesus would not be going up to Jerusalem for this feast in power and glory. Jesus would not go up to this feast as the revealed Messiah, because it was not yet God’s ‘Kairos.’ Jesus would not go up to this feast as the Christ, but he would go as Jesus of Nazareth, the man.
So, Jesus did not lie to his brothers because he would not go up to Jerusalem as the public figure whom they wanted him to be. Instead, he would go up as himself—privately and simply as a humble worshiper of the Lord. Jesus refused to be manipulated for the sake of worldly politics. Instead, he would stick to God’s plan and follow it just as God the Father had decreed from all of eternity, and just as he, as God the Son, had agreed to do.
So Jesus’s brothers went up to Jerusalem, and then a little while later, Jesus went up separately. Jesus distanced himself from his family, from the crowds, and from his public persona. Jesus went up privately to lose himself within the crowds of Jewish faithful. This was a time when he could simply worship His Father in heaven without being distracted by his mission.
Jesus took time to pause and worship God simply, purely, and earnestly. Just as all who trust in the Lord should. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the Jews were looking for him at the feast, saying, ‘Where is he?’ The religious leaders were looking for Jesus; they were all on guard, on high alert, looking out for this popular teacher from the north because they considered him a political threat to their comfortable status quo.
They knew about his popularity among the people—that people loved him for his alleged miracles, signs, and wonders. They knew about Jesus and his teaching, how it was radically different from theirs, being more spirit-centered rather than works-based, and that it was changing hearts and changing lives. Similar to John the Baptist, they knew he was unafraid to speak against their established order.
They feared his popularity being converted into a populist movement, a revolution against their religious and political establishment with Jesus at the head. They feared what might happen to them personally and how Rome would respond if Jesus did become a successful anti-establishment political revolutionary. They feared their whole world being turned upside down.
If Jesus had been playing their political game, then they would have been right to fear him for this. So while the Jews were worried and wondering, there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, ‘He is a good man,’ others said, ‘No, he is leading people astray.’
See, Jesus’s popularity was so great that he was the talk of the town, even when nobody knew he was around. That chatter is proof of Jesus’s original social impact because even during the first century in Judea, everyone who heard about Jesus had an opinion about him, and no one was apathetic about whether their opinion was positive or negative. Jesus and his political influence could not be ignored.
And although it was not his intention and was contrary to his purpose, the idea of Jesus as being a social revolutionary developed its own great political weight and became dangerous for everyone involved. As for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. Whether someone loved him or hated him, supported him or opposed him, all talk of Jesus was political and dangerous because Jesus is naturally disruptive to every part of the system.
Because the system of the cosmos is fallen and corrupt and diametrically opposed to God’s system. If someone openly supported Jesus, then they risked the ire of those in authority. Or, if somebody openly opposed Jesus, then they were risking the ire of the people, the crowds, and the masses. However, despite the continual ease with which that idea becomes popular, Jesus was not born to be an agent of social or political change.
God the Son did not become incarnate to merely bring about social reformation. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us to give us new life, spiritual life, and to give us new lives as sons and daughters of God instead of remaining children of wrath that we were born as. Christ came to deliver us from our bondage to sin, our willing service to Satan and the cosmos.
He came to reimpose the divine political order—the kingdom of God—upon the world. A kingdom which has been breaking through and has been growing ever since Jesus was born, and which we await the consummation and completion of, as every Christian awaits the return of Christ.
And although the goal and purpose of the Incarnation was not our social reformation, it is a consequence of our justification, adoption, regeneration, and sanctification that Jesus has affected. We are being reformed, transformed, and renewed in our whole selves—mind, body, and spirit—living now as God’s obedient children.
We should be living righteously, justly, mercifully, and with love for all others now that Christ’s Holy Spirit dwells within us. We belong to a completely different political system. Despite not playing the political game, Jesus is a political figure and force. Even though he refused to play the world’s game in the world’s way, Jesus is political.
Instead of playing politics to achieve temporal power, instead of trying to sway and direct the minds of people through persuasion and influence, he played to win our salvation and affect permanent change upon our hearts. So now, because the Father in Heaven has given him all authority and power, he transforms and renews our hearts and minds, giving us his Holy Spirit, who regenerates us, sanctifies us, comforts us, and educates us in the way of Christ.
So, as much as Jesus himself was an anti-politician, even the idea of Jesus remains political. Jesus was neither Republican nor Democrat, liberal nor conservative, libertarian nor communist. He is political in that sense, and many of those isms contain viewpoints which are contrary to the gospel and to the kingdom of Christ.
Our elections and earthly government are not what Jesus is most concerned with. But even still, our faith in Christ must guide our politics. Remember, all earthly authorities are appointed, established, and upheld by God so long as they serve justice and the cause of righteousness.
Yet, as Christians, we take comfort knowing that when they go bad, we remember they are just temporary and subject to him. Even now, God is sovereign; Christ is our King, and they will be held accountable.
Now as then, everybody has an opinion about Jesus, and anyone who expresses their opinion today, whether it is for him or against him, risks the ire of the opposite side. It’s a grievous flaw in our culture that we’ve transformed Jesus into a political football because it only proves our ignorance and our lack of understanding.
Because Jesus is never on any one political side. The better question is whether a political side is on his or which side is closest to his. Since we still live in the world but are no longer of it, it’s challenging and very important for Christians to remember that Jesus did not live and die to save the United States of America, Great Britain, Russia, China, Iran, or even the nation of Israel, but to save the world—the cosmos.
His work of salvation transcends all divisions of nationality, ethnicity, and politics. Jesus died to redeem people—individuals—not countries or political systems. Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world yet. And it’s not our job, nor is it the job of the church, to try and establish the kingdom of God on Earth. God will do so when and how he chooses, when it’s his proper ‘Kairos.’ And he does not require our help, nor can we hurry him along.
Today, we who believe and trust in Christ are citizens of his kingdom first and foremost, and so we must live accordingly. Although Jesus himself refused to play politics, sometimes we should and sometimes we must, in order to be obedient to God.
We must follow God’s law and keep his commandments while we also follow the laws of the country in which we reside. We must work for the benefit of our hometowns, for our state, our country, and even the world because all human persons are our neighbors.
We do this not in the hope that we will somehow transform the world and bring about Christ’s kingdom on Earth, but because it is the right, loving, and most God-glorifying thing to do. We do this because we are loved by God our Father and because we want to be obedient children and bring Him glory.
We are citizens of that heavenly country and residents of this earthly land, so we should not be afraid to speak about our King, Jesus Christ. We must not worry that we might cause offense to others by talking about Jesus and telling them about God’s grace and what he has done.
Because it’s their choice to be offended; their offense is not our fault. It’s their response to the gospel, and the fallen cosmos will always be offended by the gospel. Jesus never worried about causing offense when speaking God’s truth because he understood that the problem was in others—in their sin.
Jesus simply lived and did what God commanded. He followed God’s eternal divine plan. He spoke the truth to people in love, and he loved people in truth. Jesus spoke and showed the truth about who God is—loving, gracious, merciful, and just—as well as who people are—in need of God’s grace, sinners in need of redemption—and what God requires of us: faith in Him, our absolute trust for everything.
Meanwhile, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit take care of all the rest, calling the elect and changing our hearts and minds.
So regardless of what the Jews thought or feared, Jesus was not an anti-establishment populist. Instead, he was actually the true establishment, and he is anti-populist. His power is not derived from the people. Jesus is not concerned with popularity or public opinion; he’s concerned about what is right and with God’s opinion, the only opinion which ultimately and eternally matters.
Sovereign Lord is the true establishment, and he does not care about our opinion because it’s our duty and our privilege to align ourselves with him. For as John Knox said, ‘One man with God is always in the majority.’
God does not need to play the political game, and Jesus does not need to play by our human rules. When God came to Earth, entering into our time and space to do his great work of salvation, he did not do it our way because our way was what created the problem in the first place. The consequences of doing things our way is why and what Jesus was born, lived, and died to undo.
Because a broken system cannot fix itself. And sometimes parts of a broken system can’t be repaired, but oftentimes the only thing you can do is replace the broken system and reset everything to factory defaults.
So we should all be grateful that Jesus did not play politics and that he did not do things our way. Says the one who made the system is the one who knows it best and the only one who is trustworthy and reliable enough to restore it. It’s precisely because Jesus did not play politics that we can trust and be confident, believing that when he said ‘Tetelestai’ on the cross—saying it is finished—that it truly was.