Waiting On God To Move

The theme of reflection this week in my Ignatian exercises is the revelation of God, and how He chose to reveal Himself in Jesus. I was reading this morning though the first couple of chapters of Luke's Gospel, and was drawn back to a theme I have reflected on from time to time, namely the quietness of Jesus' life prior to His ministry. Not only was His life quiet, but so was John's prior to His release into ministry. What I find interesting is how God moved in power for both John's and Jesus' conception and clearly was moving on the earth, after about a 400 year drought, and then waited about 30 years before revealing them to the world. The following verses date the time of John's beginning ministry:

Luke 3:1-3 NIV
[1] "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar---when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene--- [2] during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. [3] He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."

One wonders about the purpose of the waiting, the time of quietness prior to their release into ministry. I include John for he was the last of the Old Testament prophets, and from the perspective of the Hebrew people, they had been waiting for a very long time for God to speak again through an prophet. The common belief is that the last prophetic book Malachi was written about 430BC, shortly after the return of Jews from their Babylonian exile. This is an incredible amount of time without a visitation of God, and I wonder if they were ravenous for a fresh word of God, or if their hearts had grown accustomed to the dryness.

Good question for us is how long has it been since we were stirred by a word of God for us? How long has it been since you felt the touch of God in your life? How have you responded to this time of quietness?

It is evident that there was a hunger in the land by the time John is released to preach the message of repentance, or turning back to God, for shortly after his ministry begins there crowds coming out to hear him speak. In Luke 3:15 it says "The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah." Clearly 430 years had not put out the fire of faith, for many people were waiting, and when John started speaking they knew he was from God.

So again I ask myself, why did God wait another 30 years or so from the time of Jesus birth to reveal to the world this new move on the earth?

I can think a of a few answers, and also draw from the writings of some of the commentaries I read. First, God chooses to work in both natural as well as supernatural ways. He could have just appeared as Jesus, as a human, but that would have caused us to question whether he became fully man, which was essential to the fulfillment if the law. He chose to come as a human, and to completely embrace our condition, down to being born of a woman. He didn't accelerate the natural process of pregnancy, but chose to limit Himself, to that which was already known and understood.

This is really a significant point, for so often we expect God to always work in supernatural ways, and yet in the birth of Jesus we find a very normal and natural birth (other than the external angelic announcements). God allows the natural to bring about the supernatural. He works within the confines of time, patiently allowing the natural course of things to work out. Jesus grew in stature and maturity as a normal child. So often we want to accelerate everything, to have Him move in power right now, and yet when the world desperately needed a savior, when it had been waiting for 400+ years, God still chose to be patient and take a low and slow approach. He allowed Jesus to become fully man, growing through his childhood, teen and even all His 20s, before He started to move and reveal himself. I wonder how many moves of God we are missing because we are looking for the supernatural, while God is patiently working things out in the natural? Clearly the Jews would have had a completely different response to Jesus, if He had come surrounded by all sorts of supernatural signs, kingly pomp and trappings, and miracles from the time of His coming, yet He chose to be born into a lowly life and live in relative obscurity until He turned 30.

The second possible reason that Jesus and John were not released into their ministry until their 30th year has to do with the law and also the life of David. The required that a priest be 30 (Num 4:2-3), and King David although anointed as King over Israel while still a youth, did not begin his actual reign until he was 30 (2 Sam 5:4). Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy concerning the reign of David's line, and so the parallelism was significant. Again we find God choosing to wait on the time lines He had previously established, rather than supernaturally accelerating things.

God sees all things, know all things and having an eternal perspective, is always perfectly on time. We must learn to flow in the ways of God, and understand that sometimes He will allow the natural course to set His timing. We must learn to see God at work in the natural, and enjoy the times He works in the supernatural.

Lord, open our eyes and hearts, and help us to see and know You more, and help s to learn to wait.