Title: God's Time
Contents
♡♥♡ God's Time / John 11:17-27
*** Introduction
Ladies and gentlemen, there is one big difference that is clearly felt in life in this world and life in the eternal kingdom of God. It is 'time'. Life in this world cannot cross the 'limit of time'. All creation in the world is ‘limited by time’. However, there is no such thing as 'time' in the kingdom of God or in hell where eternal life takes place. It literally means 'forever'. The best expression of this fact is 2 Peter 3:8, “Beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” ‘A place where a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years’ is the kingdom of God, and ‘the One who regards a thousand years as a day and a day as a thousand years’ is our God.
At the beginning of today, I am talking about time to think about the world of faith that we Christians feel in our lives. We often experience that we pray earnestly to God in a frustrating environment, but no answer is given. In other words, we pray while expecting the difficult environment to change, but the environment does not change at all. The pain increases and the conflict in the mind becomes more severe. But still, God has not answered. At times like this, even people with good faith will succumb.
Even Prophet Elijah, who walked with God all his life and worked, collapsed in the face of difficult trials. On Mount Carmel, he won the battle of faith against 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah and confiscated them and killed them. And he showed the existence of God in front of the hesitant people. But before Queen Jezebel's vengeance, he fled, and sat under a broom tree in the wilderness, begging for death. “It is enough, O LORD; take my life now. I am not better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4).
Elijah had God's answer and also showed amazing miracles. Nevertheless, the situation of the coming crisis and the stuffy environment did not change. On the contrary, the environment was getting worse. In this environment, although Elijah the prophet who ascended to heaven without seeing death, he suffered the frustration of faith. Those who walked with God and those who received God's love and approval also faced the same trials and pains. How much more so, wouldn't there be more people like us?
The same thing is happening in today's text. We try to think about God's intentions for us through this event. This is how God, who is not limited by time, treats those who are limited by time. I hope you can feel the hand of God in your life from these words.
1. There is an environment of trial that tightens the hearts of the saints.
There is a small town called ‘Bethany’ just about 2km away from Jerusalem. In that village lived Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. They were receiving special attention and love from Jesus. It seems that the Lord had a special interest in it because it was a difficult family living without parents.
However, a crisis has come to this family. The older brother Lazarus, whom the two sisters considered as pillars, fell ill. The sister, who was desperate, sent someone to the place where Jesus was and reported the emergency. As a sister, turning to Jesus was the only way she could ask for help.
In this way, the crisis of life also comes to those whom Jesus loves. We, the saints of today, are no exception. If you ask the great men of faith in the Bible, ‘Where was the most unforgettable and abundant place of grace in your life?’, they would probably say ‘the darkest and coldest place in your life’.
The background that made Abraham the father of faith was the painful agony of having to offer up his son Isaac, who was 100 years old, as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. Joseph had an unfair and painful time of being a slave and a prisoner. The Apostle Paul crossed the river of tribulation, where he faced many times of death, persecution, tribulation, and eventually martyrdom.
The more we draw closer to God, the colder we get from society and neighbors. The world does not easily tolerate Christians whose lives are different from their own. In 2 Corinthians 6:14 and below, we read, “How do righteousness and iniquity coexist, what harmony between light and darkness, what harmony between Christ and Belial, what relationship between believers and unbelievers? How can we agree?” And in John 15:18-19, Jesus said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it has hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.”
Therefore, the deeper your faith, the more distant the world becomes. And we shouldn't be surprised by the trials and crises that are coming in the world. It is because the Lord who goes before us and the forefathers of faith have gone this way, and we cannot escape it.
2. God's thoughts are contained in the crisis that the saints met.
Jesus heard the urgent news from Mary and Martha. Jesus said, “This sickness is not a mortal disease, but for the glory of God. That the Son of God might be glorified through this.” He said, calmly, doing other things. The disciples did not notice the exact situation at all.
But two days after hearing the news, Jesus suddenly said to his disciples, “Let’s go to Judea.” When the disciples did not understand, they said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going to wake you up.” He showed his intention to go to Bethany. Jesus said that he would go to raise Lazarus from the dead.
Do you understand? If this happened to me, would you understand? Why is it that you don't come to heal me before I die, but wait for you to die and then go back to life after you die? If we change our position and put ourselves in the position of Mary and Martha, then Jesus would be very savage. In an emergency, I even told Jesus the news, how hateful it would be that Jesus deliberately waited for Lazarus to die. In this way, we prayed to God with an urgent heart when we encountered the hardships, pains, or crises of our lives, but there are many cases where the situation does not change at all and on the contrary, it worsens.
Dr. Chester Swar, who was physically handicapped from an early age and had a great influence on young people, traveled all over the country to preach the Lord very much. From my youth, I have lived a submissive, devoted, useful, and active Christian life. Few people in America have influenced young people as much as he did. He often said:
“I will serve God with the best I have, and I know he will be there when I need him.”
One day, in Ardens, Georgia, his car had a tragic accident. He slipped out of the car in an accident and fell unconscious on the side of the road. He bled so much that he almost died. But the unbelievable thing happened: the first car passing the accident site was unexpectedly with doctors and nurses in it. They gave Dr. Swar first aid and brought him to the hospital. So he saved his life. When he was discharged, his limbs were in much better condition than before.
God wanted to reveal His holiness and glory through our pain and crisis. Therefore, sometimes circumstances and circumstances do not make sense even by faith. But even until then, if you seek God's will and serve God with all your heart, God's will of glory will be accomplished. God's intention for us is peace and all is well. This is Jeremiah 29:11. “I, the LORD, saith. My thoughts toward you, I know, are not calamity, but peace. This is to give you hope for your future.”
The reason we must seek God's will in the midst of pain or crisis is because we do not know all of God's will for us. So, the first part of the prayer that the Lord taught us is to seek God's will. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven… ”
3. God's will is done in God's time.
When Jesus arrived in Bethany, four days had passed since the funeral of Lazarus had been held and he had been placed in the tomb. The worldly rationale is that corruption is already underway. When Jesus came to the tomb and told him to remove the stone that blocked the entrance, Martha said, “Lord, he has been dead for four days, and he already smells.” In the human mind, this situation is already over. It is impossible to live again.
As such, there are times when we feel that the Lord is working too late than we think it is appropriate. There are many things like this in the Bible. God promised Abraham that he would give him countless descendants, like the stars in the sky and like the sand on the seashore. However, he said that he would come and give birth to a son only after he reached 100 years of age and became impossible to conceive. King Saul had to offer a sacrifice to God before the war with the Philistines, but the prophet Samuel did not appear even after the promised week. In the end, Samuel appeared when he was born after doing something that he shouldn't have done as a king, and this begins, and he is branded as a disobedient king, Saul, and walks the path of destruction. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the furnace without bowing down to the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. The Lord was in the fire. Even in the days of the early church, this kind of thing happened a lot.
All of this was God's plan to know if we truly believe and depend on God. Not only that, but God revealed the fact that God accomplishes all things through these works. This is for all to reveal the glory of God.
In this way, God is not bound by people's time, thoughts, circumstances, and circumstances. God's will is done in the time God has planned. Prophet Habakkuk said that the wicked prosper and prosper, but the people of God were rather persecuted and afflicted by tribulation, so he complained and listened to God. Then God speaks in Habakkuk 2:3. “This vision has an appointed time, and its end will come soon, and it will not lie. Even if it delays, wait, and it will surely come without delay.”
It is never too late for God. And he never deviates from his appointed time. It's our people who think it's too late or too early. Time is meaningless to God. Time is just a limit set in creation. We must see and trust the Lord at work beyond this hour.
The darker the environment and the more crises, the more our trust in the Lord shines. And trust in God must be ‘present’. Martha confessed, “If the Lord had come before my brother died, I would have saved him.” When Jesus spoke of the resurrection, Martha confessed, “I do not expect to rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Martha's faith is past and future. The most important “present” is missing.
The Lord told us to believe in the power of God who works “now”, not in the past or the future. Let's look at verses 25 and 26 of the text. These words speak of the power of the Lord at work now. And the Lord raised Lazarus.
Do you believe in the power of God working on you now? Even if there are circumstances that do not make sense, the Lord continues to accomplish His will and guides us. Let's not lose faith in this Lord. I pray that you will always live a life that brings glory to God and answers our prayers with the wisdom of knowing how to wait for God's time with patience and gratitude.