The Lord had thus propounded His humiliation and His death, with His ascension to heaven, completely setting aside the carnal expectations then prevalent as to His kingdom. He had done more than this; He had taught the absolute necessity of appropriating Himself, both incarnate and dying, for eternal life. He had pointed forward all hope to resurrection at the last day, however unintelligible to the Jews, and repulsive even to many of His disciples. They looked for present honor and glory through the Messiah; they could not bear death with Him, opening into resurrection life and glory.
“[And] after these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for he was unwilling to walk in Judaea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the feast of the Jews, the tabernacles, was near. His brethren therefore said unto him, Remove hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples too may behold thy works which thou doest; for no one doeth anything in secret, and seeketh himself to be in public. If thou doest these things show thyself to the world. For not even did his brethren believe in him.” (Ver 8:1-5.)
Thus we see the Lord in the despised place, the True Light, not in the city of solemnities, where darkness reigned the more, because it was least suspected; and in Galilee He walks about on His errand of love. He does not wait for souls to seek Him; He seeks them, that, believing, they might have life in Him. Judaea He avoids, knowing that the people of that part of the country, identifying themselves with the murderous hatred of their rulers, were seeking to kill Him. He was unwilling, not (one need not say) afraid, to walk about there. He was subject to His Father's will in this. He must complete the work given Him to do. As He said to certain Pharisees who sought to move Him by naming Herod's desire to kill Him, I cast out demons and accomplish healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I am perfected (that is, reach the end of my course); but I must proceed today, and tomorrow, and the next (day), because it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. He knew perfectly the end from the beginning. He feared not man. He goes up at the appointed moment to do and suffer all the will of God, as well as all from man and Satan.
The festival then at hand, the feast of tabernacles, tests man afresh, or rather our Lord tests by means of it. Those attached to Him by natural kin, His brethren, were impatient at His Galilean sojourn, at His separateness from the center of religious life and honor. As the Passover closely connected itself with the truth of the last chapter, so the Tabernacles furnished the occasion for what the Lord brings out here. There the blood of the lamb, itself eaten by the Israelites, points to His death, let them hear or forbear. Here the gathering of the people to rejoice was after the harvest and the vintage, types of the various forms of divine judgment at the end of the age when Israel, at rest in the land, will remember their former days of pilgrimage. It was preeminently the season of triumph, which proclaimed all the promises, fulfilled.
But was it really so now? Because Jesus, the Messiah, was there, and working each works as He did, was the time come for the accomplishment of Israel's hopes? So His brethren thought, because they wished it for themselves, though they put forward His disciples, and their need of seeing His works, and this in Judaea. No thought had they of God, not the faintest conception that in the obscurity of Galilee Jesus was glorifying the Father, and manifesting the Father's name to those the Father gave Him. They betrayed their own condition, their ignorance of God, their lack of self judgment, their unconsciousness, not only of their own ruin, but of the world, their unbelief of Him who deigned to be born of their family—who He was, and what He had come to do, was in none of their thoughts. They reasoned from self, not from God, and were thus so much the more hopelessly wrong as it concerned the Lord. “No one,” said they, “doeth anything in secret, and seeketh to be in public. If thou doest these things, show thyself to the world.” It was what they would have done. They sought, and conceived that every wise man must seek, present glory. Had they never heard One who taught even His disciples to do their alms, and pray and fast, in secret to their Father, who will render accordingly? If they had, the truth and will of God certainly had left no impression. The real ground of the wish and words was in this, that, as the evangelist solemnly adds, even His brethren did not believe in Him.
“Jesus therefore saith to them, My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify concerning it that its works are evil. Go ye up to the feast. I go not up to this feast, for my time is not yet fulfilled.” (Vers. 6-9.)
In no sense does flesh profit, and the friendship with the world is enmity with God, Satan taking advantage of both against man as well as God. Jesus abides in perfect dependence (to speak of this only). His movements were invariably in obedience. In everything it was a question to Him of the Father. His single eye saw that His time to show Himself to the world was, and could be, not yet. Death, as He had implied even before His Galilean ministry began (John 2:19- 2219Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21But he spake of the temple of his body. 22When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. (John 2:19‑22)), and still more emphatically opened out in John 6, was before not displayed to the world. This will be in its due time; but here, as ever, the order is the sufferings that pertain to Christ, and the glories after these. First must He suffer many things and be rejected of this generation. Man's time, contrariwise, was always ready. They spoke as of the world, and the world heard them. They loved the world, and the things of the world; and the love of the Father was not in them, but, what they valued more, they were loved by the world as its own. Terrible position for His brethren, but not more terrible than true! How could the world hate those who so prized its honors? Jesus it did hate with a deadly hatred, because He bore witness about it that its works are evil; a testimony most of all galling to the religious world, to the men of Judaea and Jerusalem. Hence the Lord bids them go up to this feast, while He tells them that He goes not up, His time not yet being fulfilled.
The significance of this is the more marked by His action in contradistinction from theirs, and, as read above all, in the light of His subsequent testimony on the great day of the feast. “Having said these things to them, he abode in Galilee. But when his brethren had gone up, then he himself also went up not manifestly, but as in secret. The Jews therefore sought him at the feast, and said, Where is he? And there was much murmuring about him among the crowds. Some said, He [is] good; others said, No; but he deceiveth the crowd. No one, however, spoke openly about him because of fear of the Jews.” (Vers. 10-18.) The seventh chapter of John, for the truth taught is based on the sixth, has this point of view; it supposes the Lord not only in death but in ascension. There is a manifest break with the world, and flesh is treated as no longer capable of association or communion. It really never was capable; but now it takes its own way, and the Lord withdraws. His brethren go up to the feast of tabernacles without Him; He does not go up, but abides in Galilee. Only after they had gone does He go, and then not manifestly, as they desired, but as in secret—more so than ever before. He is content to be, as it were, hidden, type of that which He really is now, and we with Him, as far as our life is concerned—hid in God.
This gives rise to questions and whispers about Him among the crowds, some speaking patronizingly, others with the utmost ill will and contempt; but even so there was no discourse in public, or plainly. The leaders of Judaea kept men in fear.