At the beginning of chapter 7 of the gospel of John, when Jesus’ relatives tell Jesus to go to the feast of Tabernacles in Judea and do his miracles before those huge crowds, so that he can attain the notoriety he was obviously looking for (or so, they thought), John ‘s editorial comment is simple: for neither did his brethren believe on him. Yet, in what follows, Jesus is about to show us how unbelief is anything but simple.

There is something else that also sounded deceptively simple: the message the Herald, John the baptizer, first preached – the same message that Jesus began His ministry with, when John was put in prison: Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.

It is a simple statement; but its implications are immense. Only one King can rule over a land. Two kingdoms cannot coexist at the same time, over the same people. The people will either love one king and hate the other or vice versa. And since the Kingdom of God is in complete opposition to the kingdom of the world, there is no common ground, and therefore it is impossible for any one of us to remain neutral.

We may like to think neutrality is possible. We may pretend that it is because we like to compartmentalize our lives, our minds, our choices. After all, just because my favorite football team is the Bengals and yours is the Cardinals, we can get along, can’t we? And maybe you like Thai food, and I think it’s too hot. That doesn’t make us enemies. And I vote for these candidates, and you vote for those other guys… we can still be friends, right? I have my lifestyle and you have yours… This is a free country, isn’t it?

We live our lives thinking that our choices, our opinions are all equally valid.

And that may appear to be a safe worldview until the day I decide that I should be able to breathe underwater as well as I breathe out in the air… or the day I decide that the Law of Gravity has no right to be an absolute truth… because, after all, I did not vote to pass that Law, and I really want to be able to fly when I jump off the roof of this building…

You see, only one of the choices deals in absolutes.

We are talking about a Kingdom.

Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is at hand. He chose that simile to that form of government on purpose. If He had wanted to, He could have said something like the Senate of Heaven and so alluded to that form of law-giving government familiar to all the Gentile Romans. Or He could have expounded about the fairness of the Republic of Heaven, and so appealed to the familiarity that that whole culture had with the citizen-powered democratic government of the Greek polis. But no, He chose the image of a Kingdom, on purpose… the image that God the Father has always chosen.

And I think you would agree that the way a citizen of a kingdom relates to the King is very different from the way a citizen today relates to the mayor, or the governor, or even the president. You see, the King, a true absolute King, is the Law and the Law is the King. Yes, that kind of absolute total power is scary in the hands of any human being. But we are not talking about a human being. We are talking about God, the Creator of the Universe.

We need to keep that in mind when we read things that Jesus said that give us pause, that make us uncomfortable. For instance, His reply to his relatives seems a bit harsh…

John 7:6-9 Jesus therefore says to them, My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hates, because I bear witness concerning it that its works are evil. Ye, go ye up to this feast. I go not up to this feast, for *my* time is not yet fulfilled. Having said these things to them he abode in Galilee.

Does this seem harsh to you? If we had been there we wouldn’t have missed the implication: (1) The world is evil. (2) Jesus exposes that evil. (3) As a result, Jesus becomes the enemy of the world, and the world hates him. So, what does that say about me if the world does not hate me?  There is no other way around it: I must be a friend of the world, complicit with its evil.

The world cannot hate you, but me it hates… because… its works are evil.

That is quite an accusation. Jesus, knowing that His relatives do not believe on Him, tells them plainly what the consequence of that choice is: There is no such thing as being neutral. It is an Either-Or that not one of us can avoid: You either choose the Kingdom of God or you choose the kingdom of the world. Making no choice is indeed a choice because it means rejecting the Kingdom of God.

And once we make that choice, we live in the world… tolerated by the world… even entertained by the world. Oh sure, life may not be easy but, by and large, the enemy leaves us alone to our own devices. The world doesn’t need to hate us; we present it no challenge, no danger.

All it does is tell us: “Live your own way, do your own thing, love yourself… take care of number one and let everybody else worry about themselves. Look, life is short: Get all you can while the getting is good because there is nothing on the other side.”

It has nothing to fear from us because we certainly cannot expose its lies or its evils… because (a) we are too busy hiding our own and (b) we are not even able to tell the difference between right and wrong. Remember, in the world, there are no absolutes; everything is relative.

It is too late to claim ignorance.

Once the Herald arrived, the clock started ticking for Israel… because they were warned by the prophet:

Malachi 3:1-2 Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord whom ye seek will suddenly come to his temple, and the Angel of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he cometh, saith Jehovah of hosts. But who shall endure the day of his coming?

And then, after Jesus’ resurrection, the rest of the world was put exactly on the same boat. As we will see, in chapter 16:

John 16:7-11 But I say the truth to you, It is profitable for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you. And having come, he will bring demonstration to the world, of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe on me; of righteousness, because I go away to [my] Father, and ye behold me no longer; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Since that time there is no excuse for any human being. The Voice of God, speaking through His Spirit to our spirit cannot be ignored. We can pretend we do not hear… But that is a lie. And to refuse to listen, is to reject that Voice… it is to choose the kingdom of the world.

James 4:4 …know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore is minded to be [the] friend of the world is constituted enemy of God.

That is exactly what Jesus told his relatives.

There is something else implied in the words of Jesus to His relatives: When we let the world blind us and deafen us, we become subject to it and live clueless lives. The clock is ticking, and we have no idea what Time it is.

In Jesus’ reply to His relatives, that word that is translated as time is the Greek word Kairos. It means time measured by opportunity. As Strong’s Concordance says: kairós (“opportune time”) is derived from kara (“head”) referring to things “coming to a head” to “take full-advantage of“.

What opportune time is Jesus referring to?

The time to do our job; the time to work out (manifest) our purpose.

This was of utmost importance to Paul the apostle:

Ephesians 5:13-18 …all things having their true character exposed by the light are made manifest; for that which makes everything manifest is light. Wherefore he says, Wake up, [thou] that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee.

See therefore how ye walk carefully, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time (kairon), because the days are evil. For this reason be not foolish, but understanding what [is] the will of the Lord. And be not drunk with wine, in which is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit…

Jesus called us to follow Him in order to send us the same way that the Father sent Him (John 20:21). Remember John 3?

John 3:33-38 … My food is that I should do the will of him that has sent me, and that I should finish his work. Do not ye say, that there are yet four months and the harvest comes? Behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and behold the fields, for they are already white to harvest. He that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto life eternal, that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. For in this is [verified] the true saying, It is one who sows and another who reaps. I have sent you to reap that on which ye have not laboured; others have laboured, and ye have entered into their labours.

Matthew 9:35-38 And Jesus went round all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every bodily weakness.

But when he saw the crowds he was moved with compassion for them, because they were harassed, and cast away as sheep not having a shepherd. Then saith he to his disciples, The harvest [is] great and the workmen [are] few; supplicate therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth workmen unto his harvest.

Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus coming up spoke to them, saying, All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth. Go [therefore] and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you. And behold, *I* am with you all the days, until the completion of the age.

There is a whole world of people all around us living the way we used to live, blinded and deafened by the world, living from day to day on a timeline whose only purpose is to tick the hours, the days, the years away; living on the scraps the world decides to toss our way, missing the opportunity to live life the way the Father meant it to be lived.

But it is not hard to find our purpose. Really, it is actually very easy to move from the dry mechanical Chronos to the living dynamic of Kairos. All we have to do to start is Love…

John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves.

…Because once all know whose disciple we are, the world will also know, and we will have chosen a side.