Waiting Time

When you come into the land and have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as uncircumcised. Three years it shall be as uncircumcised to you. It shall not be eaten. But in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, a praise to the LORD. And in the fifth year you may eat its fruit, that it may yield to you its increase: I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:  23 – 25.

Our bold, firm, faith-affirmation is that there is learning in the quoted text for us. We have come to this change of heart and mind because we have been confronted by truth and have accepted it all. If then, our faith allows us to accept that all Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, then so too is Leviticus 19:  23 – 25. If we accept that it is given by the Holy Spirit, then it is for our instruction in righteousness. We now wait to be instructed in what our Lord wishes us to know. Remember, it is God Himself who wishes to equip us as believers, for every good work.   

Earlier, when we were given the text, we were shown three times or periods. First, there was the Wait time, then the Worship time, then the Welcome time. How is this being revealed to us, to our edification and spiritual growth? We are made to see Jesus as our new place, the place we come into when we are regenerated.  We know that as born again people, we move from flesh to Spirit and it is in Jesus that we have our being.  It is in Him therefore, that we see these times. When we speak of times, let us not come to it in our natural understanding. This is all of the Spirit and not of our carnal reasoning or understanding, as we reckon time. Peter reminds us, Do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter 3: 8b. And in Moses’ prayer, as he addresses God, he says this about Him. For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. Psalm 90: 4

Waiting

In the text, the waiting time was three years. Three years it shall be as uncircumcised to you. It shall not be eaten. Three years may seem long to us, but it is God’s ordering and His times are perfect. Do you remember the Hebrew people, when they were brought out of Egypt by God, through His servant Moses? They had a three-day experience, which seemed more like three years to them. They travelled for three days in the wilderness and found no water. O how they railed and murmured against Moses. We can understand them, for those three days truly must have felt like three years, with such life-debilitating thirst. But it was God’s own timing and ordering of three days without water, until He, through a marvellous miracle, gave them good drinking water.

We look at God’s own Son, to whom He gave a timing of three days in the grave. Three days without life in the flesh is what God ordered. I ask you, did it not seem like a long time for His disciples? O yes, it surely might have seemed like three years to them, for in such heart-sorrow and in one’s anxiety, waiting time always seems so very long, as time seems to drag its feet. Jesus Himself, told His own disciples about His death, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Luke 9: 22. 

There was a waiting time for Jesus, which meant that there was a waiting time for His people. Will you see the disciples in this new life with Jesus, and everything is going well? Many different kinds of experiences are blossoming and being enjoyed. Then, as you are settling down to reap and appreciate such deep Spiritual times with your Lord, you are forbidden anything. Yes, forbidden to have any kind of alive, lively, exciting times with Him, because it is a waiting time for you.

There are times when we are in total sadness as we wait, sometimes not knowing what is happening to us. Those are the times when, like Peter, we go back to our old jobs, because we are so beside ourselves with emptiness and sadness, not having fellowship with Jesus. Will you take this seriously? Will you see our heavenly Father as the author at this time? Will you hear Him and accept it as a waiting time? It is His will and way and He is the one who sets the time and ends it. Jesus rose on the third day.