Our Greatest Hope

Do for us Laura de we know that you are there. Even on those days, that it may not feel like it nor even in those times, when were questioning what's going on, what we're seeing, what we're hearing Lord, we know that you are still walking with us. And Lord we pray in the situation with Melissa and all the health challenges. She's been facing Lord. We put her in your hands and Lord, we just trust that your will will be done. Lord we pray that you will be with her family, be with the kids and Lord just help them to try to make sense of this. And Lord, we pray that throughout all of this, that your name will be glorified. Florida, we lift up the curry family Lord in the difficult times that they are facing and Lord, we pray also that Your name will be glorified in all of this and Lord help us as a church family too. Not join in the chatter, in the gossip that can happen, Lord, but to continually lift them up in prayer. And Lord, I pray that you'll be with Alice and help her. She has these treatments Lord, allow the doctors to be able to pinpoint it and to take care of it. And Lord. We thank you so much again, for all you do and largest all of the blessings in the hope that we find in your word. Amen.

so, as we continue on, With this series out. Today we're going to talk about The Story of Lazarus.

You know, we have been through the Easter season and we know Post Easter that you know, Christ has defeated sin and death as the songs we sang today said, you know, sins curse has lost its grip on us because of that.

And something important that we can learn from this Story of Lazarus, is that? A lot of the time, God doesn't necessarily meet our expectations.

But instead, he fulfills our greatest hopes. And sometimes he does that in ways that we don't understand. I'm on a time schedule that we may not necessarily like, but in the end he always fills those greatest Hopes And as Mark said and it's so true. You know, our greatest hope is in Christ. I mean if he has defeated sin, if he has defeated death, what more hope could you have than that?

You know, the Story of Lazarus in scripture foreshadows Jesus's death and Resurrection.

and we should know that for each of us, for every believer that Jesus death and Resurrection foreshadows what will happen with each of us and those end times For a Believer. It's a life cycle that we can avoid and roll. Really? We shouldn't want to as it results in our house, being resurrected with Christ, and it is because of what Christ accomplished that we don't have to fear death. We don't have to fear the consequences. Of sin. And just as Jesus was there to welcome Lazarus and call him by name, as he came out of that tomb, Jesus will one day be there for each of us as well, greeting us and welcoming us into that new life with him.

now, as we start into the story, you know, I'm not going to read through the entire story, but if you have a chance to, please certainly do that. As you know, it's 45 versus there. But it's a good story. And what we see at the beginning of the story is that even though Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick, He makes what appears to be an odd choice at first. He decides to stay put he doesn't rush off to see his sick friend. He decides to stay with his disciples where he is for a couple of dates. Then it's two days later that he decides to go to Bethany to see Lazarus. But by this time last year as his guide, And when was Sister, Martha heard that Jesus was about to enter the town, she runs out there to meet him. And we here, this very interesting exchange between the two of them. Starts out in John 11:21.

Lord Martha said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. She just gets right to the point there, doesn't she?

You know. You can't really read it, but I think as you read the story, you'll realize that I can imagine that she was saying that with a great amount of Despair and anguish in her voice.

You know, she has to be thinking that.

If you would only been here. but you weren't

You know, I have imagined there was also a bit of frustration because you know she's pretty clearly saying she's not just implying the fact that you know, Jesus wasn't there when she needed them. You know, she sent word to him. And her idea was since she sent word in time, that Jesus would get there just in time and her brother would be healed.

And you know it's like read that is how I was thinking about it, I thought surely that is a feeling that we can all understand. man, has there ever been a time in your life, where

you've been disappointed because you didn't feel like God showed up when you needed him to show up. Or maybe God showed up but he didn't necessarily show up the way you needed or wanted him to show up. And it makes you question things and I think that's exactly what's going on here with MRSA Martha. Jesus didn't fulfill her expectation. Her expectation was that he would come immediately and he would heal her brother immediately.

And that all of this pain and grief that she was feeling wouldn't even have to happen. If he'd only been there when she wanted him to be there. Then in the next verses Jesus said to her in verses, 23 and 24, your brother will rise again. Martha answered. I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. She's jumping to thinking about the end times, she's thinking of, I know what you're saying. Jesus, when we all are with, you and Heaven, yeah my brother will be there, but that's not what Jesus is talking about here, but that's easily where her mind went.

You know, but what Jesus was meaning, was no Lazarus is going to rise again today. She wasn't expecting that. And that gets at my point that, you know, Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, but he fulfills our greatest hopes.

You know, we have to remember that God, has a much different perspective on our lives and on all of human history of where he sees the whole picture, he sees the big picture, he knows things, we don't know, he understands things, we don't

That's not what Martha can see in the midst of her grief. All that she can see is that he's already failed to live up to her first expectation. And that was that he would show up immediately and heal her brother. Didn't happen.

You know, azeris could have been healed, so she's devastated and she's hurt. Spry thinks you called Lazarus a friend. Why weren't you here?

But, you know, As any of us live life. I think we come to understand that God's activity seldom matches up perfectly with what we expect to happen in life. Often doesn't match up. And you know, then when he doesn't show up when we expect, when he doesn't provide, what we expect when we expect in, he doesn't prevent what we expect God to prevent. We kind of fall into this thing where we start thinking, okay? Either a God doesn't care.

Or be he cares?

But I just don't understand what he's doing. And like I said, that's when we have to realize that God has a much different perspective on reality than we do one, that is often tough for us to understand.

So if we're thinking about that, you know what should our expectations of God be? I mean do we expect him to protect us from hardships and sufferings to be expect him to protect us from death and loss you know what about other things that happen in life you know layoffs from jobs or bankruptcies or sickness or disease what should Our expectations be. From a God who claims to love us.

Yeah, that's a big and difficult question.

Yes, we come back to our story.

How did Jesus answer that to Martha? Are we seeing verse 25? Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Yeah. Jesus is speaking about both the present tense and the future tense.

You know, today he will lay resurrect Lazarus but not just today. It will happen in the future like Martha said to. And today we have to understand that Jesus is our life, our Eternal hope. And He is wanting to make each of us a new everyday.

so to say that we believe that Jesus is the Rex Resurrection in the life, is to say that we truthfully believe that one day Jesus is going to heal it all One day, Jesus is going to put everything right? As it should be. No one day. He's going to wipe every tear from every eye. He's going to heal every sickness. He's going to heal every disease. One day there will be no mourning or crying or pain. The old order of things is going to pass away, even death will be defeated forever. Now, that is a hard thing for us to wrap our mind around. Just got to realize that was the exact same struggle that Martha was going through. Because she knew Jesus had the power to do all these things. She had seen these things happened before. Why wasn't he doing it? So, we can understand where her frustrations coming from. Then Here Comes Mary, you know, the other sister running out to meet them as well. And

You know, I think it's obvious from her. Quote hear that? She and her sister had been talking about why isn't Jesus here?

John 11:32 says, when Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

You know she's right. Jesus wasn't there when she expected him to be. and, you know, they had every right to think that God was absent. And their struggle. You know, they called for him, they requested for him to come. He didn't come when they needed him to come.

You know, that's something I want to talk about for a minute. You know, what happens when we are in the midst of pain, when we were, in the midst of suffering or death and God seems distant or absent.

You know, I think that issue is a big part of this story and it's important for us to look at this in scripture because this is a common experience.

Everyone at one time or another goes through the loss or death of a loved one and all of us prior to that experience, spend Countless hours in prayer and you know, petitioning God. But it doesn't always result in the person being healed the way we want them heal.

I said it's just part of the reality of life and we go through these difficult seasons and it's very common. When we walk through these difficult seasons for God to feel very distant. For us to wonder where he could be in the midst of all this.

You know, I'm not going to try to whitewash that or make it sound like it's wonderful. I know, it's difficult, it's hard to walk through those times. There are no easy answers when we're walking through those things when we're going through the emotional and physical spiritual pain That we might be going through in those things because God feels absent. It is reality. It's something we all face at one time or another in our walk with Jesus.

Like I said, I wish I could have some great answers to give you for that but it's one of those hard realities that I think we all have to, you know, dig into our relationship with God. To continue to search his word and overtime. God gives each of us. Our answer there. But I do have some other things that we can take from this story that I think give us some clues that provide a little bit of comfort and wisdom as we go through that.

Cuz you know I don't know why there is pain and suffering in the world. I wish there wasn't. I don't know why we all have to go through the seasons of suffering and pain and loss. But we do The only answer I have for that is we live in a fallen world? It's not God's creation as he intended it. But he will fix it one day. But I also know that we follow a God who has experienced deep pain and suffering himself. He understands it.

Your Christ experienced suffering and hardships. This Story of Lazarus is one of them.

you know, I think that we don't think about that, you know, often we think of Christ in his suffering, the only suffering we think about is what happened on the cross, right? We don't think about here. He just lost a front.

and I imagine it was really hard for him to have his sister's friends come out to him and say Lord, if you'd only been here, none of this would have happened because Jesus knew they were right. If he had come there it wouldn't have happened, you know, he could have just spoke a word from wherever he was and it wouldn't have happened but he knew it had to But I believe that still brought him pain is every time he sees one of us going through loss and pain, it brings him pain because he understands that he knows it but also think about the other pain and suffering he went through.

I mean. You know, his message that he was trying to give to the people, you know, we talked about how so much of his teaching was the exact opposite of what the Pharisees had been teaching the people, you know, they were talking about an angry vengeful God, and he was talking about a loving forgiving God. And so, he was often rejected and dismissed as being crazy and not knowing what he was talking about,

We've all had those moments, right? Where we've been rejected, where we've been dismissed, they don't feel good. He felt that on a regular basis. He had friends and family members who turn their backs on him because they didn't want to get sucked into this. He was betrayed by those friends.

And you know when he was going through his deepest darkest, most difficult moments there before his crucifixion, all of his friends had run away by that point in time he was left all alone and he was even for the first time ever in his existence separated from God. That had to be very painful as he endured that excuse rating, painful death of crucifixion.

And, you know, when we all go through our dark Seasons, ER, times of loss are times of, fear are times of great anxiety.

It should bring us Comfort to know that we don't serve a God who doesn't understand that. We have a savior who went through, all of those things himself, who can readily, identify and relate to those experiences when you're having them. Jesus relates because he's been there too. He's done that.

So God gets it. He's gone through this. He understands what it feels like. So, we don't worship a God, who knows only comfort and security, and all the happy things of life. He came so that he could be one of us to experience the hard things of life as well.

so the only thing I can really say about it is that when we're in the midst of our pain and our suffering in our grief and all those things, And God feels absent.

We have to just trust Jesus that he isn't absent. You know. We can trust what it says in Scripture that in the midst of those times when God seems farthest away, is actually when he is closest, He's Not absent. Jesus is with you because he loves you. He's walking with you. You may not feel him at the time because you're feeling so many other emotions. But trust me, he's there. He is grieving with you, he is feeling your pain with you. He is walking that road of suffering along with you. Millicent that what we expect? Any of our other family members or friends to do for us during those times, you know we expect them to come around us to help us through those times. And that is what God is doing.

You may not totally understand it but you have to trust him.

So continuing on back to our story, you know, Jesus is still just at the edge of town. He's just arriving but by now both sisters have come to him and then like where were you?

John 11:33. Says, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and trouble?

Then just a few verses later, we see that Jesus himself start sweeping and goes to the tomb, where Lazarus had been laid and in John 11:38. Again, it tells us Jesus was once more deeply moved.

An interesting thing of these two verses is that if you dig into the original language and you look at the word that was used there to describe Jesus being deeply moved, it's a word that indicates anger.

You know Jesus was not weeping just because he's incredibly sad at the death of his friends are sad at what the sisters have been saying or the pain. They're going through Jesus is angry at death, because death is not a part of God's Eternal nature.

Death is God's enemy. That's why it says that Jesus defeated sin and death. He beat it, it's his enemy death separates, death, divides, death breaks relationship. So Jesus is weeping and deeply troubled because he knows all these things. He has felt all these things and he's feeling a deep anger for that because since he is a loving caring, God, it would be his desire. That none of us ever have to experience that

But because sin is in growing, our world, we do. so death is his enemy and he is working to fight it and yo, Jesus knows how this whole thing's going to go from the day. He first came to Earth.

And it had to be so hard at times like this. When people he knows people, he loves are grieving and having such a difficult time and he's been trying with all the things he's been, teaching them to explain. What's going to happen? But nobody's getting it yet. They don't fully understand what's going to happen for us that seems difficult cuz we have the whole Bible, right? We have the whole story we see what it happens in the end there. Living this out real time. They don't get it. but I think that feeling that they felt is what so many of us feel when we go through those times of loss,

So here's Lazarus, he's entombed in this cave, and the stone has been laid across the entrance. Like I said, it's totally foreshadowing. What is about to occur with Christ? Then and John 11:39 Jesus said, take away the stone.

Now, the sisters chimed in again and Martha says, you don't want to do that. He's been in there for four days and, you know, back then they didn't do all the same things, we do. They pretty much just wrap the body, put some smelly stuff on it, like spices and oils and put them in there. And we're talking about the desert so it's been warm so we can all imagine where that's going and that's what she's saying. kill all of that is because she doesn't realize that Jesus is about to fulfill her greatest expectations. Something that she feels is totally Beyond happening at this point.

Not the part of the Jewish belief, that they would have had that your spirit stays with your body for 3 days. And on the fourth day it leaves. That's why they make such a point here that it had already been four days.

So, it's past that point of no return, right? I mean that would have been their mindset that would have been their thinking, Then as we see in the next verses, in John chapter 11, verses, 43 and 44, Jesus called in a loud voice Lazarus. Come out. The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face.

And I can imagine everyone's tears of sadness changed. Tears of joy, as they finally understood what Jesus had been trying to say over the last few days. But they still didn't see the bigger picture. Cuz we see them all go through the same cycle. Again, when Christ is in the Tomb, not long after these events,

you know, what I want is to hear and see from this story in from the Easter story, is that God is calling each of us to come out of our tomb as well.

So, often we let things that bring us fear things that bring us anxiety. Trapezius. and, you know, immobilizes to the point that, you know, we almost are dead spiritually because we forget that Jesus calls us by name that we are to come out and live. Sin and death, no longer have that. Hold on his butt. That is so hard for us to wrap your mind around. To truly hear Jesus when he says, I am the resurrection and the life.

But we have to understand that just as Jesus called Lazarus out of that tomb, he's saying to each of us come out of your fears, come out of your shame, come out of your darkness and live the life I intended for you to live. You don't have to remain trapped by these things.

Like I said, I think that's the beauty of the story realizing that. Jesus is our greatest hope, but he's so much more than that.

And it's so easy for us to forget when we go through these dark difficult times in life. But that is why we have a church family. that we can come around each other, remind each other of this truth and continue to lift each other up in prayer so that we can Cling to that. Hope that is there. Please bear with me in prayer. Lord Jesus. You are indeed the resurrection and the life. We asked you to resurrect each of us now today and give us life where sin and darkness have set in and taking control. Lord, give us hope where despair has replaced our joy. Lord help us to know that. You aren't just the god who's going to fix everything in the end. Nor that you are The God Who is working each and every moment of Our Lives.

To bring us back to you. Lord help us live as you lived. Help us to trust the father is you trusted the father and Lord help us to love each other? As you loved us we pray this all in your most holy name. Amen.

Number 117 in your songbook.