Week 56 — Jesus, Lazarus, and Kairos
John 11:38-53
From Mary and Martha’s perspective, Jesus arrived four days late. But as the Karen Peck song from 2000 states: “Isn’t it great, when he’s four days late, he’s still on time.”1
God is always on time. Many state that God exists outside of time. There is much I do not understand about God and time. For example, ‘Daylight savings time’ — I have no idea how missing an hour of sleep saves daylight. There are things too difficult for me to grasp. I do not understand eternity, but I take God at His word when he says he is eternal. I can not grasp the idea of eternal life, but I know the God who promised it to me, and I am confident in his promises. I know Peter tells us,
2 Peter 3:8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
That concept is hard for me to comprehend. I read Paul tell Timothy in a letter that
2 Timothy 1:9-10 [God’s] grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus
If we want to see how God interacts with time, we must go back to when time began. On the fourth day of creation, God created the sun, moon, and stars:
Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.”
This verse explains why God created the sun, moon, and stars. They were created for signs, seasons, days and years. We understand that the sun and moon regulate the days and years. We have a solar calendar with 24-hour days regulated by the earth’s rotation on its axis and solar years of 365.25 days regulated by the earth’s rotation around the sun; our year is divided into 12 months. The calendar of the Old Testament also had a solar year and 24-hour days, but it had 12-13 months each year, determined by the moon’s phases. So, we understand how the heavenly bodies regulate “days and years.”
They are also there for signs. We see many examples of this in the Bible; for example, the magi from the east say:
Matthew 2:2 “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
The sign was a star God placed in the heavens.
So we understand God placed the heavenly bodies for “signs’ and for “days and years,” but how about “seasons”? We need to take a closer look at this one because I think that translation is not as descriptive as the Hebrew word used there. The Hebrew word translated as “seasons” is ‘moedim’ which is the Hebrew word for “appointed times” (the singular is ‘moed’).
Appointed times are times set aside for communing with God. The Tabernacle is called the “Tent of Moed” and translated as the “Tent of Meeting.” It is a holy place in that it is a place for a moed, an appointed time. It is not a permanent place as the tabernacle moves and is set up at different locations. What makes it holy is not its location but that it is a place set aside to have a time to commune with God.
When God called Moses to the burning bush on Mount Sinai, he told him to take off his shoes, for he was on holy ground. That ground, that dirt, was holy at that time because it was a place where time was arranged for Moses to commune with God.
God designated one location as holy forever: the site of the temple in Jerusalem. This is the same place where God supplied a lamb for sacrifice in Isaac’s place and where God said He placed his name forever.
2 Chronicles 7:14. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.”
But if you study the Bible, you see God is more interested in Holy times than in holy places.
So let’s look at these moedim, these holy appointed times. The first he set up at the beginning of the world was the Sabbath. The seventh day was a day God rested. It is commanded in the Old Testament as a day of rest from the other 6 days of labor and a time to dwell in God’s presence. Rabbi Abraham Heschel called the Sabbath “God’s Sanctuary in time.”2
Then, there are the seven appointed times of gathering: Passover, Firstfruits, Unleavened Bread, The Feast of Weeks, The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. They were set apart times to celebrate what God had done for them, like a visual aid to assist in their knowledge of God. We use the same idea of visual aids with baptism, a visual representation of what God does for us in salvation, and Communion, a special time to celebrate and remember what Jesus did for us on the cross. When the word ‘moedim’ is used in the Old Testament, it most commonly refers to these seven appointed times.
And then there are also a few other specially appointed times:
Psalm 75:2 At the set time that I appoint; I will judge with equity.
Daniel 11:35 …and some of the wise shall stumble, so that they may be refined, purified, and made white, until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.
Now, let’s look at these Feasts of Moedim in more detail. These moedim are arranged in 3 seasons: the spring brings the feast of Passover, which includes Passover, Firstfruits, and Unleavened Bread. These teach us about God’s deliverance. The next season is a single feast, The Feast of Weeks, which we call Pentecost. It falls 50 days after Passover and teaches us about God’s power. The third season in the fall contains The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These teach us how to enter God’s rest.
God is firmly committed to his calendar of appointed times. He arranges the major events of the Bible to happen on the same day so that we can clearly see His plan. God has gone to great trouble to ensure that these events happen on the appointed days.
For years, the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their people from the tenth plague of death by the blood of the Passover lamb, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, and their journey to the promised land. Over a thousand years of Passover feasts pointed to a coming messiah who would be the “lamb of God” slain on that very day of preparation for Passover, whose blood would deliver them from the sentence of death we all walked under. God arranged events so that Jesus would be crucified on that very same day and at the same time as the Passover lambs were being slain, so he would then be resurrected and presented to the Father on the day the Jews had been celebrating for thousands of years as Firstfruits.
So this season of feasts teaches us about God’s deliverance, from death and slavery to Egypt – with the Passover lamb, and then 1500 years later deliverance from sin and death through Jesus- our Passover lamb
Fifty days after Passover was the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, celebrating the gift of the harvest of grain and the day when they witnessed God’s awesome power and received the law from God on Mount Sinai. God came on the mountain in power with a rushing wind and fire. And 50 days after Jesus was crucified, as Jews from around the world had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate this feast, God again showed his incredible power in a rushing wind and in the fire that appeared over not a mountain but over the people. These people were the first to receive this outpouring from the Holy Spirit, a gift from God to us also so that we may live in His power. The gift of the Holy Spirit comes on the same day they celebrated the gift of the law on Sinai for years.
God is painting pictures in history for those who have eyes to see. The Bible is one unified story—the story of God’s redemption through Jesus. So, these four feasts that originated in the Old Testament found fulfillment in the days after Jesus came, but the three fall feasts remain.
God established the fall feasts with the Day of Trumpets to announce a new time coming, which is a new year, and then the Day of Atonement when God judges individuals and the nation and deals with sin, and then the Feast of Tabernacles, a festival of rest. These fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled, but one day, the last trumpet will sound, announcing a new time coming, The Great Day of the Lord, with God’s ultimate intervention in history — then there will be a great judgment, the final day of atonement, followed by God’s people gathering to rest with Him.
These are the moedim, the appointed times on God’s calendar, established in the Hebrew Bible, then fulfilled in the New Testament times and our future.
But Moedim is a Hebrew word, and our New Testament comes to us in Greek. So, the most commonly used Greek words for ‘time’ are chronos and kairos. Chronos is what we usually think about when we say ‘time.’ It is A quantitative measure of time, the time on our clocks and calendars. This is the time on your watch and your day planner. This is where we get our English words chronicle, chronology, and chronic.
Kairos is a qualitative measure of time. The special time when God has arranged circumstances to be ripe for action. God’s appointed time, his moed. It is the time of decision, that anointed time where God brings you to a fork in the road. It is a time of opportunity.
I have had many moments in my life in which I can see that God has moved in the background, arranging people and events to put me in just the right place at just the correct time. I have told you before of the time God arranged for me to meet a man who had hitchhiked from Louisiana. He just happened to be the father of a young woman who had delivered a premature baby the previous week that I had cared for. I had been trying to contact that mother but didn’t have her correct address or number. So God put this hitchhiker from Louisiana on the curb of a gas station in my path and told me to approach him and give him a ride. It was a God-arranged meeting time – a kairos moment.
Now, let’s look at how Jesus understands his time. Jesus was well aware of the short time he had on earth. His ministry was just over a year long, and he died on the cross as a young man around 30 years old. He was aware of how he must accomplish his tasks right on time, and the gospel of John really points this out.
When Jesus is at the wedding in Cana, and his mother asks him to solve the problem of the lack of wine, Jesus asks her,
John 2:4 What does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
When his disciples ask him if he is going to Jerusalem with them for the Feast of Tabernacles, he tells them,
John 7:8 You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.
Jesus does go to the feast, departing later, and while he was in Jerusalem teaching, the authorities wanted to arrest him, but we are told,
John 7:30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.
Jesus is on a timetable. God chose this time in the timeline of history for Jesus to come, and God has arranged it so that Jesus will die on the cross on a certain day in a certain year. God established his appointed times when he created the world.
So when people start trying to accelerate God’s calendar, Jesus has to be careful to stay on God’s schedule. So you see his hesitation to perform miracles at times. And you see him sternly warn some people not to tell who healed them. And then at times, as in John 7:30, when people try to take Jesus too soon, God intervenes and allows Jesus to escape, or Jesus withdraws. Remember when Jesus fed the 5000, and the crowd was so excited about Jesus that they wanted to make him king right away? What did Jesus do? He withdrew and went into hiding a bit. It was too early then. There would later be a crowd shouting to make Jesus king, and he will allow it. But this will be in his final week, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. But it had to happen on God’s timing.
When Jesus preached in Nazareth, it was a sermon they didn’t want to hear,
Luke 4:28 When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
It wasn’t his time to die. This was not God’s schedule, so God just froze everyone in place while Jesus just walked through the middle of the angry crowd untouched.
So back in December of AD 27, Jesus was staying with Lazarus and his sisters and going to Jerusalem in the daytime. And the religious authorities wanted to arrest him then after healing the blind man.
John 10:39 Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
Jesus conflict with the religious authorities had reached a boiling point. This is why Jesus left Jerusalem after Hanukkah and went to teach in Perea. John tells us:
John 10:40 Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days.
It was not time for him to be arrested and then crucified, this was not God’s timetable.
Only one thing can make Jesus return to Judea before it is time for him to die. And that is the story we have been discussing for several weeks. His good friend Lazarus becomes ill and Mary and Martha send a messenger to Jesus. As we discussed 2 weeks ago, Lazarus died shortly after the messenger was sent. By the time he travels a day’s journey to find Jesus, Lazarus is already in the grave. Jesus tarries 2 days and then tells the disciples he is headed back to Judea. When Jesus tells the disciples he is headed back to Judea, how do the disciples respond?
John 11:8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
The disciples think Jesus is walking into a death trap if he returns to Judea. They don’t yet understand God’s timeline. But they are willing to follow Jesus there, despite the danger.
John 11:16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
But it was not Jesus hour yet. But it is getting close.
John 11:18-19 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.
Jesus is about to do an undeniable miracle right in front of the Jewish authorities and a huge crowd of mourners. This raising of Lazarus will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And all of this introduction and background brings us to our scripture, the rest of the Lazarus story.
John 11:38-53 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
“Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.
It is now set in motion. The high priest Caiaphas has concluded Jesus must die. Caiaphus was appointed High Priest not as God ordained but by the Romans. The high priesthood had become corrupted and was at this time merely a political appointment and position. It was a position that would give great wealth, so Caiaphas was a man of great wealth, but he was not a righteous man. Even when Lazarus died and came back to life, he would not be persuaded to believe in Jesus. Caiaphus had 5 brothers (or brothers-in-law) who would also be high priests, and they were not convinced to follow Jesus even after he returned from the dead. Wait! Haven’t we heard this story before? This is Jesus’ parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Remember this wealthy unrighteous man asked to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his 5 brothers. He was told they wouldn’t believe him even if Lazarus returned from the dead. And they did not. Oh, what you see when you read the Bible and study it closely.
And did you see that in the scripture? God used Caiaphas to make a prophecy that he really didn’t understand himself. He decided it was politically expedient to kill Jesus so they would not have an uprising or rebellion that would cause Rome to destroy the Jews and his personal source of wealth and power. Do you see the irony? The man who said “you know nothing at all” did not even understand the words coming out of his own mouth. God used him despite his corrupt nature.
Since it is not quite time for Jesus to die, Jesus leaves Judea after raising Lazarus . He has seven weeks left before Passover, his appointed time to die. So he has time to make one last tour to teach and preach in Samaria and Galilee.
John 11:54 tells us that due to the increased pressure on Jesus, he withdraws to a small Village, Ephraim, for a few weeks. This town was about 15 miles north-northwest of Jerusalem and just outside Judea in the region of Samaria. Jesus will then head through Samaria and then through Galilee one last time. There, he will join the people from Galilee on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover. And Jesus arrives with this crowd of pilgrims, spending the night at Martha and Mary’s home in Bethany before the next day, when he will ride a donkey into the city on Palm Sunday. It is just after this Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem that Jesus declares his time, his kairos, has come. John’s gospel that has told us throughout Jesus’ ministry that “the hour has not yet come” now quotes Jesus saying,
John 12:23 The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
John 12:27-28 “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
This is why Jesus came. And now the hour has come, Jesus kairos moment. And a few days later when he sends his disciples into the city to find a place for the last supper, Jesus tells them:
Matthew 26:18 Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My kairos is at hand.
From Mary and Martha’s standpoint, Jesus was 4 days late. But he was right on time for that kairos moment, and for every kairos moment of his short life on this world.
God is sovereign in this world. He is still in charge of time. And I have seen in my life that God has special moments arranged for me. You can call them godly coincidences, or divine appointments, but in the words of the gospel writers they are kairos moments. They are special appointed times that God, the King of the Universe has arranged for me.
I have quoted Ephesians 2:10 at least four times in the past year in sermons. I want to give a larger context for that verse.
Ephesians 2:4-10 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Paul had no problem with the idea that our salvation comes through grace by faith, not works, and yet we are created to do good works. In adjoining sentences he says, yes our works do not save us, but we are saved to do works.
Why are we here?
The great philosophies of the world try to answer this question: “Why are we here?” What is our purpose for existing? I did not enjoy my philosophy classes in college. I just didn’t see much point in studying man’s attempt to understand the universe if that attempt didn’t start and end with God and His word. But I was required to study it, so let me tell you how philosophies answer this question: The Existentialists say we are born into a world without a pre-determined purpose, and it’s up to us to create our own meaning. The Stoics say we should focus on living in accordance with nature and finding meaning in virtue, reason, and self-control. The Nihilists say life is inherently meaningless and that there is no objective purpose or value. And those are but three of the many empty answers you get from man’s philosophy.
But my God says we are created in Jesus in order to accomplish something – good works. And not just any works, but works that were set up by God ahead of time. God created us in a certain way and gave us certain talents and traits. It was God who arranged for me one day long ago to meet a new friend from a different town. A lady who would one day in the future need a kidney donation. And it was God who arranged my body at the moment of my conception to have just the proper genes and antigens to be the 1/1000 donor for this lady. And it was God who put that desire in my heart. It was kairos. A time set by God to do a work that he created me to do. And I can look at my life and see many other such times. Each of us is uniquely qualified to do certain good works, works that God set up in advance.
We should walk through our lives preparing ourselves for those moments, those special God-ordained moments. That kairos time that God has arranged for you to do a work you were uniquely created to do.
So, what is your purpose for living today? I don’t believe many people want to believe, like the Nihilists, that there is no god, that life is meaningless, and there is no purpose in life. But many people live their lives just like that, just like there is no purpose in life, and they are free to do whatever they want because nothing matters. But God created us for so much more. He has ordained our steps and designed us for specific tasks at specific moments. Yes, we have free will. We can choose to ignore God, to pretend He doesn’t exist, and we can go our own way and never reach the potential that God created especially for us. The Army used a recruiting slogan, “Be all that you can be.” Today I am asking you to be all you were created to be. Don’t miss your kairos. Today, the lesson you learn, the scripture you study, the task you practice, or the person you meet may be God’s preparation for a future moment of kairos. Jesus was aware of his purpose long before his time came. We may not recognize our moment of kairos until we are in the middle of experiencing it or when we look back on it.
Why don’t you take some time now to talk with your Father. A moed. An appointed time to meet with God. God is waiting to hear your “Yes!” Yes, Father, I want to be the person you created me to be. I want to follow your plan for my life so that I may be ready to do the work that you created for me to be able to do. I want you to tell God that you don’t want to miss your kairos moment and that you want to fully reach the potential that God has placed within you. This is your time; this is your moment to talk with your Father.
- “Four Days Late” by Karen Peck and New River. From “A Taste of Grace”. 2000.
- Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath. 2005.
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