The Gospel of John

The Great Warfare

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 18- 70

Genre:

Track: 018

Dictation Name: RR197K20

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Oh come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that our times are in Thy hands. Thou knowest better than we how often we fail when we try to take the helm of our lives. But by Thy grace Thou art ever there to make all things work together for good for us in Christ. And so we come joyfully into Thy presence our Father to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. Minister to our needs, watch over our loved ones, bless Thy work the world over, give strength, patience and grace unto Thy servants wherever they labor and grant that Thy kingdom indeed may come and Thy will be done in and through us and in all the world. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from the Gospel of John, the seventh chapter, verses one through nine. Our subject: The Great Warfare.

“After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

2 Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand.

3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.

4 For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.

5 For neither did his brethren believe in him.

6 Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready.

7 The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet full come.

9 When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee.”

The incarnation of our Lord was certainly not problem free. One of its penalties was that our Lord was born into a family in which not all at this time were redeemed persons. At this time we are told in verse five his brothers did not believe in Him and this was a painful fact. Nowhere is trouble more painful than in the family, we do not know what their father Joseph may have told them while still alive nor what Mary might have said about the birth of our Lord, in any case, they were apparently resentful of the attention Jesus had brought to the family. At the same time Jesus was staying away from Judea because He had more to do before the time of His atoning death arrived. As a result He stayed in home country, Galilee. This was the former territory of the Northern Kingdom of Israel with Samaria as its capital. The feast of tabernacles referred to in this passage fell slightly after the middle of the Hebrew month which straddles our September and October, beginning approximately in the middle of our September and going to the middle of our October. As a result the events described in these verses are about six months later than the events of the previous chapter. This feast lasted a week but an eighth day was often added in terms of Leviticus 23:36. The feast of tabernacles followed the yearly Day of Atonement, it is called also the feast of booths and the feast of ingathering. The booths were slight structures of branches to give shade. They were a reminder of their wilderness life during the exodus. When as they traveled they camped out and they erected a little shelter in front of the tent in order to be cool when they ate or rested.

Sacrifices were prescribed for this festival. Certain psalms were sung and the festival was limited to the covenant people. Our Lord’s brothers were right in holding that this feast was an appropriate occasion for Him to reveal Himself for whatever He said He was but they apparently knew also that the leaders of the people wanted Jesus dead. The brothers of our Lord refused to believe in man’s depravity, in verses three and four they urged Jesus to go and reveal Himself openly, they were evidentialists, they were people who believed that all you had to do was give some rational proofs and evidences and people would believe. Go to Jerusalem they were saying and give to them proofs that demand an answer. Provide they said the great crowds in Jerusalem for the festival with enough evidence and they will surely believe. We have today many groups within the church who believe that the nation will be captured for Christ if only we make use of the right arguments and technologies. They refuse to acknowledge that men hate the truth and want no part of it. This false view of man marks much of modern evangelicalism. They can vindicate themselves by pointing to their own numerical gains but they cannot claim legitimate kingdom advances. The brothers of our Lord tried to command Him, depart hence, or leave here and go, its blunt, it’s in the imperative. He is also told ‘be known openly’ or be open and honest about yourself and your claims. If you are the Messiah and if you have miraculous powers why hide yourself. For them the matter was a simple one.

As evidentialists they believed that the authorities in Jerusalem would give a fair and impartial hearing to Jesus. He could present them with proofs that would demand a favorable answer. Like all evidentialists these men did not know the reality of the fall and of sin. Men do not live in terms of what is right but in terms of their will. My will be done is the attitude of fallen men. Well our Lord does not tell them that He will not go. He simply said ‘I go not up yet unto the feast for my time is not yet fully come’. He had more to do, not the least of which was the training of the twelve disciples. He tells them their time is always ready because your appearance at the feast requires no great price of you. The disciples were aware of our Lord’s miraculous powers but they were still ready to instruct Him as though He were lacking in common sense. They told Him to go and to work miracles as though this summed up His life’s work. Because His brethren are friends of the world they cannot see that Jesus would pay a price for an open appearance. They want Him to make a public display of His power, this is why our lord says the world cannot hate you, you are a part of it and my failure to be a part of it is not due simply to your poor public relations but to radical differences of a moral and religious nature. The world hates me because I call attention to its evil nature and works, he tells them. The fundamental difference among men is a moral and a religious one and it is precisely this difference that mankind wants ignored.

They resent anyone or anything which calls attention to the moral difference. A saying of the era of the 1960s on moral revolution holds ‘whether I’m right or whether I’m wrong I’ve got to be me’, do you remember that? That’s the standard of our time. Our Lord could therefore say to His brothers your time is always ready. People who are fallen are in touch with the times, they are in touch with the spirit of the age. In verses six and eight when our Lord says that His time is not yet come the word used for time is not ‘orah’ meaning God’s destined hour but rather ‘kairos’ which means rather the opportune moment. No man could force our Lord’s hand. To date Jesus had only performed one miracle in Jerusalem, the curing of the man in the pool of Bethesda and for that they wanted to kill Him because He did it on the Sabbath. The brothers held that Jerusalem was a proper place for miracles, bigger crowds of spectators, more important like the people likely to be present and so on. Provide them with the evidence and they will believe if your claims are true, this was their stand. In verse one John uses twice a word which we have in the English word peripatetic. It is translated first as walked, then as walk. This was a word regularly used of a peripatetic rabbi, a rabbi who went here and there like Sunday school missionaries in our time to teach. And the tense that it is used here in the Greek indicates that this activity of Jesus went on for a considerable time.

In other words He traveled the length and the breadth of the country teaching. John Marsh has commented on verse seven:

“The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.”

“This is more than to acknowledge that Jesus is a moral critic of the world. It is a claim that by His actual presence the world is being judged, judged by its reactions to Him.” Unquote.

This is still true. Wherever the word of God is faithfully preached it is a judgment on people whether they are good or evil in terms of their reaction to it. The hatred for Christ was intense and total because He was in His person an indictment of this fallen world. It should not surprise us therefore that some of this hatred is manifested against all who try to be faithful to Him. The war of the ages is this fallen world against Christ and His new human race. We have many today evidentialists who argue like our Lord’s brothers ‘show yourself with the right proofs and they will believe’. What are they saying? That the fall did not take place, that man is not fallen and depraved, that the fallen man can be convinced by reason which is nonsense. In other words too many people in the church today have lined themselves up with these brothers of our Lord who before the resurrection were apparently unconverted. We cannot use the world’s arguments and be with the Lord. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word and we thank Thee that Thy word convicts and judges. Make us faithful, make us joyful in Thee and in Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us, we thank Thee that we can boldly say the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me. Give us therefore Father the faith to rest and to trust in Thee and by Thy spirit to act and to serve. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] You pointed out one time in one o…

[Rushdoony] Could you speak up?

[Question] You pointed out one time in one of your messages that how Peter used evangelism as warfare…[become s unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Over the centuries Christians have been told again and again that their life is a warfare. That because they belong to the new human race whose Adam is Jesus Christ they are inescapably at war with the old world. With the old Adam and His humanity. And I think one of the reasons why the church is in such a disaster today is its failure to recognize that there is a line of division and that to be a Christian means that you cross lines when you become Christ’s, from one army to the other. And that’s not easy to do. It can be very painful.

Moreover we have become too much subjected to a very false doctrine, the medieval doctrine of the [unknown], in other words that the natural man is okay as he is, he just needs a little extra thing, to believe in Christ, and then his life will be perfect, it’s like putting the cherry on top of the sundae. It’s that little extra touch. And the doctrine of the [unknown] refuses to face up the fact that this is a situation of total war, not merely of the lack of some little climax to everything. Total war is very real and if we don’t fight it the enemy is always fighting it. So we have to recognize that to be a Christian is to be in a war. If we’re not a Christian then we are in the great mass of humanity that’s going its own way and God is at war with them! Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] Could you elaborate a little bit more on the word used for time when Christ says his time is not yet?

[Rushdoony] On what?

[Question] The Greek word, the Greek word for time was kairos, and I wanted you to elaborate a little bit more on that word.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. Well, kairos means the opportune, the exact, the right time. For example if you are playing in a baseball game you can swing your bat endlessly but you cannot call it the right time unless you swing it so it hits the ball. It’s the opportune, the fitting moment, whereas hora refers to any time. Time as such, the last hour, the next minute, the next ten minutes, and so on. It’s nondescript but kairos means the fitting time, the opportune moment, exactly the right time. Does that help?

Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer. Our Father we thank thee that in this holy war Thou hast given us the assurance of Thine absolute victory. And Thou hast summoned us to be the people of victory. Make this ever a central fact in our memory, in our thinking and our living so that as we face the battle as we are hurt by the burdens, the battles, the problems of life we are ever mindful that in Christ Jesus we are more than conquerors. Grant us this we beseech Thee and now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.