Death and the Glory of God (John 11:1–6)

Series: “John: Life in Christ’s Name”Text: John 11:1–6

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: December 10, 2023

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: AM Service

Introduction

The holidays can become harder the older we get. Today, our church continues to grieve one of its eldest members. And it’s at these times that we remember the loss of our loved ones. We are reminded of the times that they were there, and it increases our longing to see them again.

It is within the Lord’s providence that, having come from the graveside of our dear brother, we should come Sunday morning to talk about the death of Lazurus. This chapter features one the most dramatic miracle of the New Testament, outside the resurrection of Christ Himself. It is with this penultimate raising miracle that our Lord proves that He is the resurrection and the life (v. 25), giving us hope that the dead will live again.

Yet, to get to the point of our faith becoming sight, we must suffer death but a little longer. We must take it on faith that God has a reason for what we endure, and that He will demonstrate His glory on that last day. We must grieve with Marthas and the Marys until our Lord comes and makes all things new.

There is a way in which the glory of God is present in death, though we don’t always see it. This morning, as we consider the account of Lazurus’s death, we’re going to briefly consider that suffering even demonstrates the Lord’s love in an unexpected way. We’ll note that those whom the Lord loves suffer, but they can sidestep stumbling blocks and survive in Christ.

Those Whom the Lord Loves Suffer (vv. 1–7, cf. v. 14)

Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” But when Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was. Then after this He said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” …So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”

We have introduced here Lazurus, who we know the Lord will eventually raise from the dead. What else do we know about him? We know that this isn’t the Lazurus from Jesus’s parable of the beggar Lazurus and the rich man — this Lazurus appears to be a part of an influential family, given the number of supporters who come to mourn and comfort the sisters. The name Lazurus was a common one, short for Eleazar. His name means “God is my help,” and he lives in Bethany, just about a couple miles from Jerusalem on the southeast slope of the Mount of Olives.

We also see that the Lord knows this family. Martha welcomed Jesus into her home, where Mary sits at the Lord’s feet (Luke 10:38–39), and Jesus would spend the night there (Matt 21:17). Of course, v. 2 notes that this is the Mary who will later bless the Lord with that ointment and wipe His feet with her hair (in John 12:1–3), indicating she had a deep devotion to Him. Moreover, they send word to Jesus, calling Lazurus “he whom You love;” the word is phileō; the love of friendship and affection. Verse 5 notes that Jesus loved the three of them. So, there is a deep connection here with this family.

Based on v. 5, we can assume that Martha was eldest sibling, followed by Mary and then Lazurus. Scripture usually lists the eldest first. Mary may have been named first in v. 2 because she was the more recognizable of the two names, explained in v. 3.

They send word to Jesus because they are obviously concerned that their brother won’t make it. At the end of the last chapter, we saw that Jesus was in the Transjordan, which meant that it would have taken about a day for the message to reach Jesus. Despite the danger for Jesus from Jerusalem, they are likely giving a subtle request for Him to come and heal Lazurus.

Verse 4 says, “But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.’ ” We might assume He’s addressing His disciples, but context seems to indicate that this is a reply to the messengers who carried this message to Him. That means He’s sending this word to Martha and Mary.

This creates a problem for us. At first blush, it appears to be a false prophecy — Lazurus does die. In fact, based on the timing given in the text, Lazurus may have passed while the message to Jesus was still enroute. However, as one commentary notes, this “means not having death as its final result.” Jesus is saying that the Father has something planned that will glorify Him.

Still, this is difficult. We assume that if we live lives of righteousness and are on good terms with Jesus, we will avoid sickness and death. Yet, that isn’t the case. Here, we see a man Jesus cared for overtaken by suffering. We’ll see that this fact even causes our Lord anguish and grief, but because of the effects of sin, we all must die at some point. This is why there’s the groaning in our spirits for the coming redemption of our bodies.

Yet, sickness can be to the glory of God, just as Jesus said in John 9:3 of the blind man. There is coming a time when it will make more sense to us. In some cases, we see God glorified in our lives, like with the raising of Lazurus, and we rejoice. At other times, we have to wait. But we do not need to doubt that God has a reason, and that, in love, He’ll turn our pain into glory.

In this case, we see that Lazurus and his family’s suffering will be a chance to glorify God. Not only that, but Jesus says “the Son of God may be glorified by it.” He places Himself equal with God, saying that both the Father and He will receive glory at the end of this particular road.

And this is something that will turn into a greater benefit for all involved. Again, v. 5 says that Jesus loved them, and John uses a slightly different word there — agapaō. It’s possible that John is just using a synonym for “love,” but this love indicates a deeper spiritual attachment and an all-encompassing dedication.

It’s important to see that as we read what’s next. Verse 6 begins “So” or “therefore.” Because Jesus had this deep love for them… He delayed! Though we might expect His love to motivate Him to depart immediately, it does the opposite; we waits two more days. The first day of lingering would have allowed the messengers to return to the sisters with Jesus’s words which sounded like good news, but they would return to find Lazarus has already died soon after they departed to Jesus. One more day would pass, allowing the sisters to process the pain of their loss as well as this message from the Lord. It is only then that Jesus departs after the messengers.

This seems cruel to the modern reader, and it may even remind us of times we’ve prayed with the Lord seemingly denying our petition. As one commentary notes, “Humans generally interpret any delay in rendering help as cruel because of our perspectives on the avoidance of all pain and because of our general commitment to the immediacy of action as it pertains to time.” However, this doesn’t arise from a place of unkindness. For instance, we must not think Jesus delayed to allow Lazurus time to die — we later learn that Lazurus was already dead when Jesus received the news.

So, why did He wait? First, it’s been rightly noted here that the urgency of others doesn’t control Jesus, but the timetable of His Father. Still, contextually, Jesus waits as an unexpected demonstration of His love — healing was never Jesus’s primary ministry, and He wished to turn the opportunity into the best teaching time possible. Still, Jesus’s message to them was clearly an indication that He intended to help Lazurus, but He waited until no one could, as one study Bible puts it, “misinterpret the miracle as a fraud or mere resuscitation.” This is so God will be glorified and they would know more about Him for the wellness of their eternal souls.

So, His delay was an expression of love, albeit an unexpected one. And, as I said, Jesus does intend to go and set things right. Ultimately, though, it’s not just Bethany that’s His goal; Jesus says Judea. His focus upon the cross, and has been for a while; Luke 9:51 says, “When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to go to Jerusalem.” The best expression of love will not be just raising a beloved brother from the grave, but the salvation of souls, which Jesus will ultimately accomplish on the cross in Jerusalem.

His disciples don’t understand any of this. They don’t know yet that Lazurus is dead, and they just are not ready to hear that Jesus is heading for the cross. Instead, they’re fearful and need to hear what comes next:

Those Whom the Lord Loves Sidestep Obstacles (vv. 8–10)

The disciples said to Him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”

They are stunned by Jesus’s announcement. Twice now, the Jews in Jerusalem had so rejected Jesus that they have sought to stone Him (John 8:59; 10:31). The instance in the previous chapter is why they left and came across the Jordan River to minister. Not too much time has passed, so they initially meet His words with incredulity.

We often fear the unknown. While we don’t always find ourselves in a place where persecution may cost us our lives, we wonder about the future. We wonder if our next decision will be a costly one, one we may regret for the rest of our lives.

So, Jesus rhetorically asks, “Are there not twelve hours in the day?” Of course, He’s not referring to an entire rotation of the planet; rather, as one study notes, He’s “referring to the average number of hours of sunlight in the summer in Jerusalem.” He’s pointing them to the daylight hours, the time in which we can see.

He continues, “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.” The light is, of course, the sun, but also referring metaphorically to the light of God. As one study notes, “Light was a common metaphor in Judaism for God’s providence and guidance.” Jesus can have confidence that He will be safe until His time, with each time He escaped without stumbling being a testament to God’s guidance.

They will be safe, too, for this light applies to Jesus, as well. The disciples don’t have to fear death until their time as they walk in God’s will. In fact, as v. 10 indicates, the light is in them (or will be through the Holy Spirit). Those who stumble ultimately do so because they lack the light of God’s guidance.

Believers die too, as we’ve already noted. Yet, we don’t have to fear all the hundreds of ways to die like the world does. We don’t have to be full of anxiety and care, for we know we will be safe in the arms of our loving Lord until He calls us home. God keeps us safe in hundreds of ways, just by giving us light. Glory to God, that is evidence of His love, as is the next point:

Those Whom the Lords Loves Survive (vv. 11–16)

This He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” The disciples then said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He was speaking of literal sleep. So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” Therefore Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.”

By survive, I don’t mean that no one dies. Again, that is not promised to us. False teachers would have you believe that you can live forever, but that is not what we see here, despite the miracle in this chapter.

So, what do we see here? First, Jesus gives them a minute with His words. That’s the best way to understand “This He said, and after that He said to them.” He spoke, He paused, and then He continued. He wanted them to consider the fact that neither He nor they will stumble in Judea until the appointed hour.

Based on what Jesus says, and how the disciples respond, we can see two truths about how we survive in the Lord. We survive until the resurrection, which means our faith also survives. Let’s consider the first of these:

We Will Survive Until Resurrection

Jesus tells them that Lazurus “our friend” has “fallen asleep.” He wasn’t just loved by Jesus (v. 3), by the way, but was a friend to all the disciples. Now, we understand what they don’t, that Jesus is talking about death. They don’t understand why sleep would require their presence, but Jesus tells them plainly that Lazurus has died (exercising divine insight). Scripture often speaks of the death of the righteous as sleep (Matt 27:52; Mark 5:39; John 11:13; Acts 7:60; 1 Cor. 15:51; 1 Thess. 4:13). It’s a euphemism to speak of the state of the body after death.

To be clear, the soul is eternal and separable from the body. Jesus made the point with the Sadducees in Matthew 22:32 that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive now, for God is a God of the living. Of the other Lazurus, Jesus describes his soul as being carried away by angels (Luke 16:22). He will later tell the robber on the cross that he’ll be with Jesus on that day in paradise (Luke 23:43). This all means that physical death does not put a pause on the existence of the soul.

Now, that means that this passage isn’t evidence of soul sleep. Some have drawn from the “sleep” verses that the soul remains with the body in the grave until the day of resurrection, unaware of the passage of time or the events surrounding it. However, in 1 Thessalonians 5:10, Paul describes both those who are awake and asleep as alive in Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5:8, Paul says he would prefer to be “absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” Believers who die depart their earthly abodes and are present with the Lord.

God provides this, carrying us up on angel wings and bringing us into His presence. The intermediate state involves conscious fellowship with the Lord. How this is accomplished is a mystery. There will be some sense of a temporary spiritual body that we receive while we await the resurrection of our bodies, and we can know that we and those who have already departed will be sustained by the Lord.

If that’s the case, then we can know that even our bodies will be raised in Christ one day. He is the resurrection and the life, and His raising of Lazurus will prove it. This is why Jesus rejoices in v. 15, so that they will see and believe. He is happy to prove to them what we also need to know, that we will survive in Him!

The Lord will allow trials in our lives often to grow our faith. Yet, we don’t have to fear failing those trials. That brings me to the last point (and the last verse):

We Will Survive in Faith

If we are promised to survive in Christ until the resurrection, then our faith will certainly persevere. That’s what we see in v. 16. We read there, “Therefore Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.’ ” This is ultimately an example of faith.

Why is that? We often refer to Thomas as “doubting Thomas,” but he was more of a realist. He could see that death awaited Jesus with the current levels of hatred, and he was right. However, his response wasn’t to reject Jesus’s words, and neither was that the response of the rest of the disciples. Thomas leads the charge here with a kind of pessimistic bravery. Though they struggled, he and the others pushed through. Their faith survived.

Conclusion

Jesus is coming again one day. At that time, He will begin setting things aright. We will see Him begin to turn back the curse, and even death itself. Though it seems like He’s delaying, He will come at just the right time.

Until then, we must contend with suffering. We may fear whether our faith will survive loss and temptations, but it will. We may wonder about those who go on before us, like our departed loved ones in this Christmas season, but we know that they are celebrating before the Lord right now. We can take comfort in the fact that we are protected, and the Lord will do this to His glory.

I hope you believe this. If you have not placed faith in Christ, then trust in Him for the sake of your soul. You don’t know how many days you have left. You can have confidence in the Lord, if you but call upon Him for salvation.