7 Signs and 7 Sermons: Lazarus

Jesus, um, John describes, um, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, these siblings who lived in the village of Bethany, uh, actually on the side near the Mount of Olives, just a couple miles from the center of the city of Jerusalem, uh, as the Mary who anointed Jesus' feet with oil and washed Him, uh, with her hair. That's an account that is reco is given to us later on in chapter 12. But Luke's Gospel tells us also this very lovely story in chapter 10 about Martha and Mary, um, Jesus coming to their house in Bethany and Martha being, as King James says, "cumbered with much care," with serving and so on, getting the meal ready, getting things ready for Jesus and so on, and Mary sitting there at Jesus' feet just soaking in whatever the Master has said, and Martha getting a little bit, uh, annoyed and saying, "Jesus, tell Mary to come help me."

And Jesus, "Remember," He said, "she has chosen the better part." But the interesting thing about this account is that really the person that Jesus is interacting with—Mary's there. He does interact with her. But the person that He's interacting with the most in this passage is Martha.

Okay? And what Martha has to say and her responses and so on, I think, are very important. But one of the things I want you to note here is Lazarus is sick. It's a deadly sickness. They know it's a deadly sickness. If he had had a cold, they wouldn't have bothered Jesus. But they feared for His life. And they knew that if Jesus was there, that He could heal them, that He could make him well, He could restore him. So they sent for Him. But Jesus wasn't around. He was across the Jordan. He had left Judea because of the threat of the scribes and the Pharisees because they were upset with Him with the things that He was teaching.

And so He had gone across the Jordan for a while. There He was teaching and He was preaching and He was healing and people were responding. Okay? And then they get this mess he gets this message: "Lazarus is sick."

Okay? And He doesn't go right away. He doesn't return right away. He actually waits two days. Now, in reality, you know, that's when you say, "Well, why the delay? Why the delay?" Well, actually, probably by the time if you look at the it says that He was in the grave for four days.

By the time Jesus got the word about Lazarus, that Lazarus is sick, Lazarus had already died. He was already gone. All right? But one of the things I would like you to note here in verse 3, it says, "The sisters said to Him, 'Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.'" And in verse 5, it says, "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

And in verse 36, as Jesus was standing there, uh, getting the news, uh, talking to Mary, that the people observed, "See how He loved him." He uses this term "love" three times. Now, in the first instance in chapter in verse 3, the Greek word is "philio," which oftentimes we identify or we describe as that brotherly love, that affection that people have for each other. Uh, it can also be the love of friendship, but often the love the familial love that we have. It is, in a sense, a natural love.

All right? And in verse 5, it says, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." In this particular case, the word is "agapeo," um, which sometimes is used to refer to a very special love, a love a kind of a, um, a love that is not really ba is not necessarily considered to be reciprocal, uh, but is a love that we just have, a care we have, uh, an extra special kind of love.

Um, it's sometimes used to describe God's love for us. Oh, it is. And then in verse 36, again, the love is "philio." F.F. Bruce, who is, uh, was a New Testament scholar of an earlier generation whose commentaries I have often found very useful, uh, makes the comment that in John's Gospel John does not really seem to distinguish between these two different kinds of love. Doesn't mean that maybe in some other places of the Gospel there's not a distinction made. But he says in this particular case, in John's Gospel, that does that kind of distinction doesn't seem to be, be, uh, made, that He uses these kinds of love sort of interchangeably.

But the thing that I would like us to keep and look at here and just think about is: Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? John tells us at the very beginning of his Gospel that He was the Word of God.

God tells us that He was with God and that He was God. And then God John continues to tell us that that Word came into the world, that that Word took on flesh and tabernacled or lived among us. He became a man, a real man, a real human being with flesh and blood. But not only with flesh and blood, but as Hebrews tells us, that He shares in our weaknesses.

He says for, uh, Hebrews says, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." You know, if you read through the Gospels, you'll see places where Jesus gets tired, where Jesus gets hungry.

We talked about a smo a time this morning where Jesus got angry with the Pharisees because they didn't want He knew what was in their heart, and they didn't want Him to help somebody. That upset Him. In this passage in, uh, verse 33, it says, when He was confronted with the reality of Lazarus' death, it says, "He groaned in the spirit and were troubled."

Again, F.F. Bruce in his translation renders this as, "He became deeply agitated and spirit and shook with emotion."

Again, in verse 35, it says, "Jesus wept." Bruce again renders that as, "Jesus burst into tears." And in verse 38, again, it says, "Jesus again groaning in Himself."

These responses of our Lord are like unto the responses we have when we are confronted with things. They're just so overwhelming. We think about the sadness and the grief. I'm sure there's been tears shed over the last week, over the last months.

Jesus responds in the same way. These were people that He loved. These were people that He had a close relationship with. These were people that He cared for in a natural kind of way. And to me, that just says so much about His humanity.

As the prophet says, "He was acquainted with grief."

Jesus knows all our sorrows. He understands the things that we have gone through because we see can see Him here in this story going through the same kind of things, experiencing the same kind of things that we have experienced when we are confronted with death, with sorrow, with departure, when things seem to overwhelm us.

Oh, what a Lord to have. Oh, what a Savior to have.

You know, He's not distant. He is not detached. He is not far away. He understands our frame because He has shared in it. And it's such a comfort for me to read this passage and see how Jesus responds and to know that the very thing that we have been going through this week, He has also gone through. He understands.

And the beautiful thing is, He offers us a solution for that.

Now, in verses, uh, 3 through, through, uh, 16, Jesus is there across the Jordan. He gets this news. He waits two days. And then He says to the disciples, "We need to go back to Judea. We need to go because Lazarus is sick. Lazarus is asleep. And I am going to go and wake him." And His disciples, they're thick. They don't get it. They're often clueless, as we are often thick and clueless and don't get it.

All right? Well, they say, "Well" and first of all, they say, "Lord, Rabbi, Teacher, we don't want to go back there. You know that they were threatening your life. If you go back there, they might kill you." And Jesus said, "I have to go back."

Uh, "Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him." This is the one of whom it was said, "He lightens every man that comes into the world."

I think what Jesus is simply saying is, "Now is the task at hand. It's time to walk in the day, to go to Bethany in the full light of the day, to do the task that God has come has has set for me to do." Because as He said just previous to that, He said, "I must go and do what I have to do so that my Father will be glory the for the glory of my Father and that the Father may glorify me through what I'm going to do." He's going to do it in the bright light of the day and reveal the glory of God.

As I said before, they're a little clueless. They don't get the point of what He's saying. And so He has to just simply come out and said, "Lazarus is dead."

And Thomas' response, this doubting Thomas that we read about later on in the Gospels, who says that, "I will not believe unless I touch the nail prints in his hand and the wound in his side that he has actually risen from the dead." And people are critical of Thomas about that. But you have to remember that all the other disciples had already seen the risen Lord.

They saw and they believed because they saw. And Jesus when and Jesus honored Thomas by showing him the handprints, showing him the wound in his side. And He said to him, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." But here we have Thomas saying, "Okay, if Jesus is going to go to Judea and if He's going to be killed, let's go and be killed with Him."

Now, that is quite a statement. That is a statement of loyalty, of love, of allegiance, okay, willing to go into a dangerous place because He loves Jesus.

Then we have Jesus coming to Bethany. And Martha and Mary are surrounded. People have come to mourn with Him, to be with Him, to sympathize with Him. And they heard that Jesus was coming. Martha left her house, went out, and she met Jesus. And this is what she said to Him, "Lord, if You would have been here, my brother would not have died."

Martha knew that Jesus could have, if He was there, could have prevented the death. He could have healed His brother, her brother. He could have restored him to health. And Jesus' response is, "Your brother will rise again." And Martha says, "Yes, Lord. I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day." She had this hope and this assurance that, yes, there is going to be a resurrection in the last day. And my brother will rise in that resurrection. But right now, he's dead.

And I am missing him. And I am sad. And I am grieving.

And, you know, I think about this. We do have this hope in the resurrection, in the last day, the last day. And yes, that is a thing to look forward to. And it's a thing to realize and to understand. And it helps. It helps to mitigate the pain and the sorrow and the grief. But it doesn't take it away. It doesn't eliminate it. Okay.

It's a consolation. But it does not eliminate the sorrow and the pain.

You know, I think about the fact that when somebody dies, particularly when they die in the Lord, their sorrow, their pain is over with. Ours have just begun.

Because we have lost them. They're no longer here. We would like to have them here. Okay? We would like that. And so and that's normal. It's understandable. And so on. And Jesus knows that because He felt, I think that and I think about the fact that He knew that He could raise Lazarus from the dead.

But He still felt that sorrow, that pain, that grief, that emotion, that groaning inside of Him.

Death is an enemy. And death is a terrible thing.

I remember when Lynn died, Wilma saying, "It's so permanent." And that's true. It is permanent. It's done. There's nothing we can do on our own to reverse that. Our hope is in the resurrection to come. But Jesus says to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." Do you believe that?

And, you know, Jesus is here talking about the fact that resurrection, new life, eternal life, the defeat of death, the defeat of sin is embodied in Him. He brings it, as the prophet says, with healing in His wings.

And notice Martha's response, even in the midst of her sorrow. "Yes, Lord." And I don't know that she really clues in yet that Jesus is going to raise her brother from the dead, is going to restore him to a natural life.

But she does say, "Yes, Lord. I believe that You are the Christ." Andrew had made that confession in the beginning of the Gospel. And then she goes on to say, "The Son of God, Nathanael, made that confession in the beginning of the Gospel." But Martha puts them together. And she says, "I know that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, who has come into the world.

He has become flesh and made His dwelling place among us.

He is the Christ, the Anointed One, the King who has come to rule over us, whose dominion we must acknowledge and submit to, the prophet who brings the word of God and teaches us God's way and the way we should go, the priest who has not only who has been the sacrifice that pays the price of our redemption and redeems us from the power of sin and death. He's the Christ. And He is the Son of God.

As at Him we sang, "This morning says, begotten, not created."

She believes this. Even in the midst of her sorrow and of her pain, she believes in Jesus.

All right?

Then we have the encounter with Mary. When she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary, saying, "The Master is here. The Teacher has come. And He is calling for you." Mary comes out. The rest of the people there notice that. They follow her. They think she's going to the tomb to cry and to weep and to sorrow.

And when Mary came to Jesus, He says the same thing that Martha said. "If You would have been here, my brother would not have died."

And, you know, Jesus at that point broke down. And He became troubled. He groaned in His spirit. And He became troubled. Or again, as F.F. Bruce says, "He became deeply agitated in spirit and shook with emotion."

I remember when my grandfather died. He was I was very, very close to him. He was actually more important in my growing up years than my father was. He invested a lot in my life. I was away in college. I knew he we all knew that it was going to be soon. But I got the word. I was kind of prepared for that. I was ready for I mean, I realized that. Had to come up to the funeral and so on. And I stayed with I decided to I was going to stay with my grandmother while I was there.

I was holding it together pretty well.

But when I walked into my grandparents' house and I saw my grandmother there and I saw how she was, I just broke down. I just lost it.

And I cried. And I cried. And I cried. And I cried.

That's what Jesus is doing. He sees how this death has impacted Mary.

And it's also impacted Him. And her sorrow resounds with His sorrow. And He loses it. He loses it. He breaks down. Isn't that a marvelous thing about the incarnated God, the One who has come and dwelt in our midst, that He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?

And it says here He wept. I remember when I was a child, it was sort of a joke. What's the shortest verse in the Bible? Well, Jesus wept. That short verse in his midst of a very, very somber, deeply emotional event here.

And the response of the people around Him when they saw how deeply troubled Jesus was, see how He loved Him. And then they said, "Well, why didn't He show up? He healed people. He could have come and healed this guy. Why did He let him die?

Why did He let him die?"

Well, Jesus tells us at the beginning and in the next section, He tells us why this has happened. And remember, John says at the beginning of his Gospel that He is telling us these things, the things that Jesus said and that He did, and the signs that were given were so that people would believe.

They would be confronted with the irrefutable evidence that the Word who has become flesh and dwelled amongst us is the Messiah and the Son of God, and that if we believe in Him, we shall never die. We shall have eternal life.

So Jesus comes to the tomb, again groaning in Himself, deeply agitated. It was covered with a stone. And He said, "Take away the stone." And Martha, in her practical sort of voice, says, "Oh, Lord, it's been four days. He'll stink. He'll stink."

Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you that if you would believe in Me, you would see the glory of God?" So they rolled away the stone. And Jesus lifted up His eyes. And He prayed to God. And He spoke aloud to God, not for Himself and not that He doubted God. Okay? He knew that God was going to do whatever He asked Him to do. But He's praying so that the people around Him can hear Him make this request to the Father.

And after having prayed that, He gave a command. And He said, "Lazareth, come forth." And Lazareth came forth. And they had to take the winding sheets and the cloths around Him off his head. They had to loose Him and let Him go.

You know, it doesn't tell us in this passage how Mary felt. It doesn't tell us how Martha felt. I imagine that they were besides themselves with joy. But you know, this was simply a resurrection to a natural life.

It is not that resurrection that Jesus is talking about earlier where He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me shall never die." Okay? That's not the resurrection that Jesus brought Lazareth up from. He simply restored him to a natural life.

At some point, Lazareth died again. And he was buried. And he was not raised from the dead. At some point, Mary and Martha died. And they were buried. And they were not raised from the dead. This was a resurrection to a natural life.

Okay? But nonetheless, it had the effect that it was to have. Not only did it restore Lazareth, it certainly restored Lazareth to a natural life. It restored him back to his sisters. It turned their sorrow into joy. But it was a temporary joy.

It's a temporary joy.

And it glorified God. God's glory was revealed. And through that, God glorified Christ. And through that, many of the people who were there believed in Jesus. Now, these people had said, "Well, you know, He healed people. Why didn't He come here and heal Lazareth?" Well, apparently, the healings hadn't caused them to believe.

But raising Lazareth from the dead, I mean, that is something that's a little hard to get around, isn't it?

But I'd like to help us to keep in mind what Martha is saying here where she says, "I know. I know that He will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

And that seems far off to us. And it may be. It may be tomorrow. We do not know that. But she was right. She was right. And Jesus told her that the way in which you can participate in the resurrection, that resurrection at the last day, is to believe in Me, is to put your trust in Me.

Let's go to First Corinthians 15:50.

Now, I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trump will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption. And this mortal must put on immortality.

So when this corruption has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." O death, where is your sting? O Hades, O the grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's what we have to look forward to. Not a resurrection to a natural life, but a resurrection to a glorified life. Jesus revealed the glory of God in raising Lazareth from the dead. And in that, glorifying the Father, the Father, in turn, glorifies Him. And we'll see more of that as we go through the rest of the Gospel of John.

Okay? We'll see more of that. And that points people to the reality that we will be glorified. We will be given glorified bodies, unfazed by corruption, untouched by mortality.

I was thinking about this. You know, we have these souls out here, these our friends, our loved ones that are buried in this grave.

And the Bible tells us, Paul tells us that in a that the last trump will sound, in a twinkling of an eye, we will the dead in Christ will rise, and they will meet Him in the air. They will rise with glorified bodies, able to go through that six feet of dirt. That's a different kind of body than we have today.

You think about the story later in the Gospels where they were in this room, the doors were closed, and suddenly, Jesus was there. He went through the walls. The glorified bodies that we have, they will be real bodies.

They will be able to be touched, even as Jesus' body was touchable. Okay? But they will not be limited by what in the ways in which our natural bodies are limited. That's a beautiful thing to think about. That's a wonderful thing to think about. That is a hope to hold onto and remember and to keep before us as we face these times of sadness and sorrow and grief.

But to participate in that, you have to put your trust in Jesus.

And I think about, you know, we have some folks here getting to those times, those days of their lives where they should be thinking about this if they have not already made that decision, if they already have not made that commitment, if they have not already put their trust in Jesus.

Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to say your first yes to Jesus. And then to make sure that the rest of your life is one prolonged, unmitigated, continual yes to Jesus.

As Paul says here at the beginning, "Therefore, my brethren, beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." That's what I have to share as a response to the message.