The Death of Lazarus
Notes
Transcript
Just when you think food cant call you on your phone… boom onion rings…
Nasa is launching a space mission to say sorry to the aliens… they are calling it Apollo G.
ME
ME
About twenty years ago I randomly met a girl online… we started talking… we got together for a trip to WH… it was a great night we sat and talked until 3 am… that was december 3, 2004… over the next few months we spent many nights talking late and sharing meals and praying together… in fact… I was afraid… and she asked me if I was going to pray… and I fell more and more in love with her… So in February, I asked her to be my girlfriend… and in March I asked her to marry me… I was in love… and it made me do some things and move quickly because I loved her… and the following August we were married…
WE
WE
Maybe you have been in love and it has caused you to do some weird things… Maybe you are like the proclaimers and you would walk 500 miles… and 500 more to be that man that walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door… maybe you moved faster than even we did, maybe you got in a fight to defend honor… or maybe you
And what we see is love changes things and because we are in love we do things we may never do, but I think today we see Jesus expression of love for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in a way we may have never expected, and I am sure in a way that we have never experienced ourselves…
EXPOSITION
EXPOSITION
1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.
And this is a crazy thing, because John hasn’t even told us this part of the story yet. We haven’t seen this part and it won’t be until the next chapter we get to the place where we see this story, but the thing about it is, that John wants us to understand this is such a big deal and the most meaningful way he could describe Mary and the relationship that she has with Jesus is for him to talk about this story we haven’t heard about yet. It tells us how deep the relationship is between the two and how much she loves him because you would never do what Mary is about to do without there being an intense amount of love for the person.
And this is the first mention of love in all of this, its a pretty amazing statement and thing to do as we will see, but here we see John making sure that there is this idea of love going on between the people here and Jesus he wants us to know. And if you aren’t buying that, in the very next verse we are going to see it clearly,
3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
And there is the bomb of truth. The one who you love is Ill. You See its no longer a question John just explicitly says the things that we were thinking. And it is clear here the people who are asking for help are people he knows and cares for, it is not some random stranger he has never met, but someone he cares for.
What I also love about this verse is this is not the way we would deal with this, it seems to be familiar, but the thing we are missing if you don’t pay close attention is in this moment, they are reaching out to Jesus and they are saying we need you to come… we need your help the person that YOU love is ill.
See, this isn’t what we do at all. When we feel desperate and we feel like Jesus has the ability to help us but we aren’t real sure he will because we have prayed for things before and we know that he hasn’t always showed up, we start to pray things and we say Lord, you know how much I love you… or we say Lord you know how much THEY love you when we may be praying for someone else who is sick that we know has loved and devoted their heart to the Lord… we are appealing to our love for HIM. But this isn’t what the sisters do… and we can think maybe its because they realize how fallible human love can be and how incomplete it is and they realize how great the Love of God for man is, his agape love… but there really is no basis for that, but what they know is that Jesus loves Lazarus. And we know that Jesus Love for us is what really moves and causes things to happen. This is even more evident in John 3:16
John 3:16 (ESV)
16 “For The World so loved God , that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
But that’s not what it says, it says Jn 3:16
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
And it goes so well with what we know Paul said in Romans 5:8
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The next verse shows us what all of this is about… it is going to connect love and god’s glory in a way that we mostly cannot understand… Jn 11:4
4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
This whole thing is not about the illness… its about God’s Glory…. its about God getting glory in the situation… and its not even about the death… which He will die… if we know the story you know that Lazarus most certainly is going to die… and Jesus knows this as well… but he won’t stay that way… but this story as Jesus is telling us isn’t about any of that its about him and his father and how glorious and wonderful and amazing they are
And now what we will see is John showing us the love between Jesus and these people for a third time in this pericope. Jn 11:5
5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
And this is the third time… vs 2…vs3 and now again vs 5 that we see his love for them being talked about and I think what John is making this of the upmost importance because the stories we talked about this morning is how we view love… and how we think about love, but what we are seeing this morning does not sound like love to us and the way we think in our hum an terms… and if you know what is coming you may think there is no way that it is love that caused this, but it is most certainly so, and the key to all of this, to show this connection is the first word in verse 6 Jn 11:6
John 11:6 (ESV)
6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
And it is important, and if you read the Greek you will see that word staring you straight in the face, and it will hit you like a ton of bricks. Because it is a transition… it is connection the two verses….
John 11:5–6 (ESV)
5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
6 So(therefore), when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
And it is certain Jesus knew what this delay would mean for Lazarus, but you have to realize that Jesus had already told us he was doing this for his glory so he knew what it would mean, but BECAUSE he loved them…. he had to let him die.
And let that sit on you for a moment.
Just let that hit you, and for some of us, that is raw. But it is truth.
I want to make sure we pause in that because that truth is hard to take and it can upend the way we think, because it is so crazily different from everything we know and do, and how we think about love and life and death.
And in that pause I know there are some of you that are immediately beginning to think, that this death couldn’t be considered that big of a deal because you are thinking his death wasn’t permanent he came back to life… and it is clear that Jesus made sure that Lazarus was dead… his delay and then his trip to see him would make it four days since Lazarus had died and when Jesus showed up… a true sign he was in the ancient world considered really dead… elaborate here… and Jesus would resurrect Lazarus and give him new life… and if that is what you are thinking… if you are immediately thinking his death isn’t a big deal because he will be resurrected… then praise the Lord, because if you to are a follower of Jesus Christ who has accepted him as your Lord and Saviour and followed him in baptism and are following the path he has before you for your life… he will do the same for you! He will resurrect you as well… he will resurrect all of those who are believers of him and have put their faith in his death and burial and resurrection… so if your first thought is his death isnt a big deal because he will be resurrected… then you are understanding that your death also is not a big deal because YOU will be resurrected…
But we will dive into some of those intricacies more in the next weeks, but the thing this morning that I think John wants us to ask, is how is that love? How can it be that love would allow death… when that is not something we could ever possibly imagine… we don’t believe it. And this is the question I think John was putting out there for us to ask…and it is clear Jesus loves them… we saw John point to it three times in these six verses… so then we ask the question, How can love allow death, and really the answer is written all over Jn 11:4
4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
It allows death for God’s glory. So the Son of God may be glorified. And he lets Lazarus die because Lazarus death will allow them to see the Glory of God in more ways than they could have ever imagined… and I think what these verses show us this morning is that Love is giving you what you need, and not what you want or desire… and the thing people need in this life more than anything… and what we need, and this is hard, is not always a healing, but a full endless experience of the love of God. That’s what we need. That’s what brings us into this relationship with Jesus. Thats what the WORLD needs… Love means giving us real Joy… and the thing that gives us that is this seeing the Glory of God…
And you can see this even deeper as we think about Jesus laying down his life for us… it was about our redemption and paying the sacrifice for sins, that is true, but it was also about showing God’s glory through his death and resurrection… his death for us was the ultimate symbol of Love… it was showing the world God’s glory
So ultimately the real expression of love as we see is helping people see the Glory of God in all its fullness…
YOU
YOU
So what does that mean for you, for some of you that does mean true love of your spouse or others may be the things we talked about earlier… it is giving of yourself and doing things that will show other people the glory of God… and we have to do that… and we show it by laying it down to show god’s glory… and sometimes… yes that may mean we have to lay down our life for our friends…
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
And we see that… and that is the most expansive and deep example of how we show God’s glory… and death is hard because death is finally and often times we cannot see what God is doing in death and how it glorifies him, and we may not realize it until after the resurrection, much in the way that Lazarus family didn’t see Gods glory until after Lazarus was resurrected and when he walked out of the tomb it was all so evident, so for some of us that are hurting, it may not be until after the resurrection that we clearly see how God is glorified in the situation… for some of us we can see it sooner… but if you are hurting and wondering… it may be then…
WE
WE
Can you imagine what the world would look like, if what we saw as the ultimate expression of love for our friends and neighbors was to point them to the Glory of God. What the world would look like if we realized loving our neighbors was pointing them to the glory of God, so we shared the gospel and didnt just hope that our actions showed them, but we stopped and told them and gave them the real love and truth they needed.