From Death To Life

Where Grief and Faith Meet

I want to show 3 things from this text:

Our suffering and sorrows are for God’s glory and our faith (belief).

For the Christian, grief and faith come together.

Jesus addresses our greatest need.

Main argument to my audience:

Only in Jesus Christ do our greatest desires AND our truest needs come together.

Martha deeply desired to have Lazarus back but she also knew that Jesus could do anything and demonstrated faith in the words she used. However, her vision was short sighted.

Lazarus would die again. Therefore, she didn’t NEED Lazarus back, she NEEDS Jesus.

The point of this text isn’t even Lazarus, it’s Jesus, it’s what this points to. Jesus is the only One who can give new life. Jesus is showing that apart from Him, there is no resurrection leading to life, and a resurrection without Jesus is not something you want!

Have you ever wanted to go back and redo something you had done? Go back and change the way you reacted in a fight with your husband, wife, parents, or kids? Ever wanted to redo the last 10 years of your life? Timothy Keller brought these questions up, and it is so true of us all, that we often have regrets and want a do over.

Jesus didn’t come to get you a do-over, let’s be clear about that.

But Jesus is all about making things new, about giving us a glimpse of what He is doing in the resurrection. When He was hear walking this earth, He was healing people everywhere, He was performing miracle after miracle, and as we see from this text, raising the dead to life. This points to the garden of Eden where sickness and death had yet to reign in power, and it points to the new heavens and Earth that Jesus is going to bring down, where death and sorrow will be no more.

You see, at the end of this book, the writer says that Jesus did so many more miracles and signs pointing to His divinity that simply aren’t written in this book. But those that ARE written, were written for a purpose. That you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name. John 20:30-31

John 20:30–31 ESV

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Your greatest need is not your health or the health of your family, it’s not your financial situation, it actually has nothing to do with your circumstances. It’s Jesus. Without Him, what is health? What good is it to live only these short years then spend eternity separated from God? What is money? What good is it to spend your life chasing after something so common and eternally useless as money? What good is family, if in a matter of time you’ll be separated from them anyway?

Our greatest need is Jesus. He is the Resurrection and the Life, With Him… You will live forever, you will be rich in love beyond your wildest dreams, and you will be forever joined to a family that will never disown you, in which the Spirit of God joins you, where Jesus is your true and better older brother, and the Father in Heaven is your true Father.

John 11:25–26 ESV

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Let’s pray.