His Time, Not Theirs

John 6 ended with a crowd walking out and a traitor sitting among the Twelve. John 7 picks up months later. The Passover from the hillside feeding has come and gone, and now the Feast of Booths is near. That’s the fall festival when Israel lived in shelters for a week to remember the wilderness and thank God for the harvest (John 6:4, 7:2) (Leviticus 23:34, 39-43).

Jesus is staying in Galilee, and John gives the reason. The leaders in Judea wanted Him dead, so He kept to the north (John 7:1, 5:18).

That wasn’t cowardice. He’d lay down His life at the hour the Father set, and He’d do it of His own accord. Until then, He walked where the Father sent Him (John 10:17-18).

John 7:2-5 — Advice from His brothers

His brothers have a plan for Him. They tell Him to head south to Judea so His followers there can see what He’s doing. A man who wants to be known doesn’t work in a back corner, they say. If He’s really doing these things, He ought to step out in front of the world (John 7:3-4).

That’s the world’s PR advice, and it hasn’t changed in two thousand years. Get on the big stage. Build the platform. Strike while the crowd is warm. The devil’s pitch in the wilderness had the same shape: he dared Him to prove He was the Son of God (Matthew 4:5-6).

Then John adds the line that explains it all. Even His brothers didn’t believe in Him (John 7:5).

These men grew up in the same house. They ate at the same table in Nazareth and watched Him work the same trade. Mark names them: James, Joses, Judas and Simon (Mark 6:3). Earlier, His family had gone out to take Him home, convinced He’d lost His mind (Mark 3:21). The psalm had said the Messiah would be a stranger to His own mother’s sons, the same psalm John cited when Jesus cleared the temple (Psalm 69:8-9) (John 2:17). He came to His own, and His own turned Him away, starting at His own table (John 1:11).

Think about that. They’d spent thirty years beside the only sinless man who ever lived, and it didn’t make them believers. Being close to Jesus never saved anyone. Only the Father draws a man to the Son (John 6:44, 65).

But John 7 isn’t the end of their story. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to James, and the brothers are in the upper room praying with the apostles before Pentecost (1 Corinthians 15:7) (Acts 1:14). James became a pillar of the church in Jerusalem, and Jude opened his letter calling himself a servant of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:9) (Jude 1). God had set a day for those brothers too, and it came right on time.

John 7:6-7 — His clock, not theirs

Jesus answers them plainly. His moment hasn’t arrived, but any moment works for them (John 7:6). Their calendar is wide open because nothing in the plan of redemption hangs on when they show up. His is fixed to the hour.

That thread runs through the whole Gospel. At Cana He told His mother His hour hadn’t come. Twice John says nobody could lay a hand on Him, because His hour hadn’t come. Then, the week of the cross, He announced that it had (John 2:4, 7:30, 8:20, 12:23, 13:1). The Father set that timetable before the world began. Priests, Herod and Pilate all played their parts, and every one of them did exactly what God’s hand had decided beforehand (Acts 2:23, 4:27-28) (Galatians 4:4).

Then He tells them why the world treats Him differently. The world has no reason to hate them. It hates Him because He tells it the truth about itself, that what it does is evil (John 7:7).

The brothers are at home in the world, and it’s comfortable with them. Christ exposes it, and men who love the dark hate the light that shows them up (John 3:19-20, 15:18-19). That’s what their PR plan missed. Jerusalem didn’t want a better miracle show. It wanted Him silent.

John 7:8-10 — On the Father’s word

So He tells them to go up to the feast without Him. He isn’t going up to it on their terms, because His time hasn’t fully come (John 7:8). And He stays behind in Galilee (John 7:9).

After His brothers leave, He goes up too, quietly, without the public entrance they’d pushed for (John 7:10).

That wasn’t a contradiction. He turned down their plan, not the trip. He went when the Father’s time came, and He went the Father’s way. Before the feast was over, He’d be standing in the temple courts teaching in the open (John 7:14). Jesus didn’t take His orders from His family any more than from His enemies. He did what He saw His Father doing, and He always did what pleased Him (John 5:19, 8:29).

John 7:11-13 — Whispers in the crowd

Meanwhile, the Jewish leaders were hunting for Him at the feast, asking around for where He was (John 7:11). The crowds buzzed about Him in low voices. Some said He was a good man. Others said He was leading the people astray (John 7:12).

Both camps missed it. A man who calls God His own Father and makes Himself equal with God is a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord (John 5:18, 10:33). “Good man” sounds generous, and so does “great prophet,” but those are the options Jesus never left open.

And for all the talk, nobody spoke about Him openly, because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders (John 7:13). That fear shows up again and again in John. The blind man’s parents ducked the question, and later even some of the rulers believed in Him and kept quiet, because they loved men’s praise more than God’s (John 9:22, 12:42-43). Fearing men is a trap, and it springs every time (Proverbs 29:25).

Notice the irony. His brothers wanted Him on display, and the crowd kept Him a whisper. Jesus is the only man in the passage who isn’t steered by what other people think.