JUST IN TIME

Just in Time

 The phrase ‘just in time’ is related to the idea of manufacturing or ordering products when they are needed rather than cluttering up warehouses by keeping them in stock. It’s a ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ approach as opposed to a building of bigger barns to store all our stuff. It’s not hard to see that there’s a deal of trust involved in this, trust that the supplier will fill our order in our time of need. Trust for the Christian is, as it says on American banknotes, ‘In God We Trust’.

Take Noah for example. How must he have felt as he was building the ark with the great global flood looming, trusting that God was going to send him what he needed to fill the order ‘just in time’? That’s trust! ‘By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith’ Hebrew 11:7-8. Noah ‘condemned the world’, which is to say that he condemned the God-scoffers. ‘Good examples will either convert sinners or condemn them’ Matthew Henry. ‘God did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly’ 2 Peter 2:5. Just in time God sent to the ‘floating zoo’ all the prototype birds and animals from which our present air and land creatures are descended. Many aquatic creatures could survive outside of the ark even though ‘all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened’, no doubt with accompanying earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. When the post-Deluge dry land began to appear, the contents of the ark were emptied on the mountains of Ararat: ‘Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.’ Genesis 8:19. And as the glaciers of the Flood-generated Ice Age began to retreat God populated the vacant lands with suitable inhabitants ‘just in time’.

Whether it be through Shem or Ham or Japheth, his three sons, we are all descended from Noah. Jesus, as to His humanity, is descended from Noah through Shem, thus making Him a Semite (Luke 3:36). And, just as there were scoffers in Noah’s day and in Jesus’s day, so there are scoffers today – even in the face of ample evidence of the Global Flood (such as billions of fossils throughout the world’s rock layers). Jesus is the Saviour of the world, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.’ John 3:16-17. God supplied the world’s need by sending Jesus ‘just in time’. But just as the world in Noah’s day saw no need for an ark, so the world today sees no need for Jesus. Indeed, He was nailed to a cross and was mocked: ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ, the chosen of God.’ Luke 23:35b. He died on that cross. But just as Noah and his entourage exited the ark into a new world post-judgment, so the resurrected Christ exited the tomb and will be joined by His entourage on the New Earth post-judgment. Are you going to be saved ‘just in time’ or remain scoffing? ‘Knowing this first: that scoffers will come … saying, "Where is the promise of His coming?"’