Joseph Prince - God Makes Everything Beautiful In His Time
This is an excerpt from: Pray For Good Success Today
The year of kairos, the kairos year of right time, right place, amen. And the verse we're gonna start off with for today's Word from God is Ecclesiastes 3, verse 11. "He has made everything beautiful in His time". He has made everything beautiful. Everything is everything. In the Hebrew, "kol," the word "kol," everything. He has made everything beautiful in His time. And this word "time" in the Hebrew over here is the word "eth," which I mentioned before. And the counterpart in the Greek, the Septuagint version, the Greek version for "time" is "kairos". He has made everything beautiful in His kairos. So we're learning from the Lord that God gives times of refreshing, and literally that's kairos.
God gives you kairos of refreshing. There are seasons of refreshing. We just, even like specifically, we just went through that just now, a time of refreshing, reviving, reinvigorating our entire beings, spirit, soul, and body. Do you know that right now you are stronger, you are healthier, you are more energized, amen, for having been in the presence of the Lord? You're experiencing something that the people, the Galileans, the people who followed Jesus, the multitudes that flocked to Him when He was here on earth, they sensed, they sensed the presence of the Lord, the majesty of the man. They sensed the princeliness of that carpenter, by all outward appearances a lowly man, and yet there's such a dignity. The Bible says, "Excellent as the cedars of Lebanon".
There's meekness and yet majesty. I just love looking at Jesus in the Bible. And to be like Him, you need to understand why we wanna be like Him, because there's no one as lovely as Him. He has no characteristic that preponderates one is greater than the other, you know? His meekness is not at the expense of His majesty. He has it all in beautiful balance in the holy sanctuary. When He's kind, He's not soft. I've said before, amen? When He's zealous, He's not fanatical. For us, we go into extremes and we are all known for a certain characteristic. You look at Solomon, he's known for his wisdom. You look at Paul, he's known for his revelation of the church, of the mysteries of the New Testament. You look at Peter, you see a person who is very zealous for the Jewish things, for his nation Israel. Different ones have different characteristics.
All of us like that, but Jesus has all of them altogether lovely. The Bible says, "Altogether lovely," that verse in the Bible. And I see many times that He's not vexed. He's not easily vexed. Look at you and I. We are so easily vexed. Look at Him every time, you know, the people interrupt Him. And these are people who are anti-Him, all right? These are not friendly people. These are people who have animosity in their hearts towards Him, and yet He's never vexed. He's never frustrated, amen. Sometimes He will speak sternly, especially the Pharisees, but He never speaks sternly in that way to the tax collectors, or the prostitutes, or the sinners, the common sinners of the day. It's only those who are blind that Jesus used strong words, and yet such a beauty even in His words, even in His strong words. That gives us revelation. And man, He's a real man's man, a man who single-handedly drove out all the money changers from the temple.
Now, you know, right, money changer and their money, no one can separate them, amen? He did it single-handedly. He spoke two words, "Follow Me," and strong fisherman who have worked for years in the industry look at Him. And He's not a fisherman, but two words, "Follow Me," that the Marines have copied. The US Marines have copied down through the years. "Follow Me," and they left everything and followed Him. What man is this? That's exactly what the disciples says when He was sleeping at the end of the boat and there was a storm, and He was still sleeping. What calm, what majesty, what beauty, what peace that you and I can have looking at this man. When He rose from the dead, He's still the same Jesus, amen.
And that's why He asked them for broiled fish and honeycomb. Why did He eat in their presence? To show, "Hey, I'm not a ghost. I have a body you can touch and feel, except now I can appear and reappear". There's no coming and going anymore, it's an appearing and reappearing, a vanishing and appearing. Vanishing to physical sight. That's our new body next time. So if you look at Jesus, even when they came to arrest Him, His mind is on His flock, His disciples. "You have found Me, let these go," amen?
As He's carrying the cross, on His back that's so brutally lacerated by the stripes, and they put the cross, no wonder they had to ask Simon the Cyrene to help Him carry that cross to Calvary, because His back was so badly lacerated. Your thoughts would be all about your pain, yourself, amen? You and I, mere you and I, we who boast so much that we can do this, we accomplish this, right? Look at that man as He falls and He carries that cross. And then His thoughts is not about Himself. He looked at the women crying, He paused, and He tells them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for Me. Do not cry for Me, but cry for yourselves and your children," amen?
At the cross, who was He thinking of? The criminals on His side, right? They were actually, both of them started off, you know, persecuting Him, insulting Him. And He said to one who turned to Him, later on he repented when He saw the way Jesus says, "Father, forgive them. Forgive them all, for they don't know what they are doing". I believe that one of them repented and looked at Jesus, says, "Lord, remember me". In fact, the other one was still sort of, like, persecuting Jesus, mocking Him from the cross, and the other one corrected and rebuked the other one. You see, we got what we deserved. This man has done nothing amiss. The centurion, when the centurion saw how Jesus died, the centurion, the strong, you know, heathen centurion who doesn't believe in God said that certainly this was the Son of God, seeing the way He died.
Even the one who betrayed Him, Judas, threw the money down and says, "I have betrayed innocent blood". Even the... again, a governor that governed the land, whom everyone is afraid of because he represents Caesar, all right, and doesn't worship any god except Caesar, what did he say? He says that, "I find no fault in this man". You are looking at a man that even the world, the enemies will say there's no fault in Him, amen. But when we look at Him, we see Him deeper. We see Him altogether lovely. To be like Him. I said, "To be like Him". I look at myself sometimes, you know, I still have that shortness of temper. I still have that irritableness. I still have that being easily vexed. I look at Jesus, He's not irritable. He's not easily vexed, amen? He moves among people, but He's independent of them. They don't control Him just by saying, "If I say this, you will jump. You'll get angry at me. See, I say this, you respond".
You see, we are all people who respond. We react. He doesn't react. To be like Him, amen. To have peace. When they woke Him up, all right, it wasn't the cry of the storm, all right, the ferocious storm that stirred up the Sea of Galilee. It was the cry of His own disciples. It's like a mother, you know, sleeping through the storm, you know? The moment her baby cries a bit, she gets up. The storm never woke her up. It's like her hearing got prejudiced, you know? Right? The Lord hears your cry. In the midst of the loud storm, when they said, "Lord," He got up. He rebuked the storm and there was a perfect calm. And they said the same thing I said just now, "what kind of man is this"? What kind of man is this? Then He turned around.
Now that He has rebuked and quieted the outside storm, He quieted the storm in their hearts by saying, "Peace. Why is it you have no faith"? Why is it, amen? And the word used there is "mega-storm" in the Greek. I don't have to define for you what's mega. And the word that says there was a great calm. Have you noticed that, right, in your English Bible? "There was a great calm". The word "great" is mega-calm. You might be going through a mega-storm, but He can, in one word, give you mega-calm. To be like Jesus.
Now, do you wanna be like Jesus? All right, the simple man, amen? And I wanna say something else. He's humble. He will say things like, you know, "I don't do these things. It's the Father within Me," amen? "I don't do things out of My own initiative, but the Father speaks to Me and I do, and I obey Him". And look at us, we're so disobedient, amen? We do things our own way, and yet the humility. And the humility is not like something, you know, you look at a person who is like, there is no standing, that's completely poor, and he's a sorry sight, you know, when you look at him. It's not that kind of humility. It's a humility that has dignity. When He is humble, no one takes advantage of Him. They tried, but they couldn't.
Even the disciples who lived in and out with Him, you know, they say you are not a hero to your own valet. You know what that means, right? It's an old saying from ancient times. No one is a hero to his valet. So the guy goes into battle. He's dressed, he's clad in his shiny armor. He wins the battle. He comes back. The whole town, the whole village, the whole place, the whole country praises him, right? He's the hero, but to his valet, he's never a hero. So no one is a hero to his valet, to his armor-bearer. You know why? Because they see the inside and out. They see all the temper that you have lost. They see all your irritability. "Now put it on properly, lah".
Now, they see all that. And we are all like this, right? But Jesus is never like that because when He's with His disciples, and remember this, they go through all kinds of situations. They sleep in every, you know, most of the time they sleep outside, right? Where you must go together to wash, and bathe, and all that, and they are together in and out. And yet the Bible says towards the end of the journey, they were discussing who'd be the greatest, and the Bible says, "None of them dare ask Him". There was that dignity of the Lord that they dare not even. Definitely He's not a hero to His valet in that sense. He is truly the Lord Jesus to them, amen?
Okay, Ecclesiastes 3, verse 11. I just wanna let you know when the Bible says that we are all to be conformed to the image of Jesus, amen, you need to know what's the image of Jesus. What kind of man is He? A man who speaks and it's done. You must include that as well. To be conformed to the image of Jesus is someone who speaks and it's done, amen. And I see that parents, we need this in our lives, not force our will upon our children, not to make them obedient by threats and bribing them or blackmail, but we speak and it's done. The effect goes right into their hearts. I wanna speak more on this awhile on, okay? But let's go to Ecclesiastes 3:11. He's made everything beautiful in His kairos, in His eth, in His favorable time.