John 11:28-37
Notes
Transcript
Text: John 11:28-37
Series: Seeing Jesus Clearly
Setting: Gospel Community Church, Price, Utah
Chapter 11 of John starts off with
A man named Lazarus becomes I’ll and two sisters of Lazarus, Martha & Mary send for Jesus.
It tells us that Jesus knew all of them and that He loved them. In fact the Mary here is the same Mary that poured ointment on His feet and rubbed is feet with her hair.
We see that this illness leads to death and by the time Jesus gets to Martha & Mary, Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.
And today we’re entering into this story with verses of mourning, faith, questioning, and deep emotion.
To help with context we’re going to start with John 11:20
So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 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?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
And today’s verses.
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.
When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”
So many truths in these passages today.
Truth #1: Death, it’s real. As much as we don’t like to think about it and believe tomorrow will always come. The truth is, death comes for all and none are guaranteed the very next breath.
It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Why death?
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Sin, unrighteousness, wrong doing, anti-God’s righteous ways, disobedience against a Holy and Just being.
Death is a consequence of our actions. Just as water and oil don’t mix. Righteousness and unrighteousness don’t mix.
You can’t be all good and sinful.
God is all good, no sin whatsoever. To allow sin to go unpunished is wrong. Why, because sin brings destruction. And destruction is not good. Especially for something or someone you love.
Therefore death is real for everyone that has sinned.
And what has everyone of us done? Sinned.
Truth #2: We are capable of love and we do love. Therefore we cherish relationships given.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
We are made after God, with His likeness!
What’s God’s likeness?
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
One of God’s likenesses, love!
We’ve all been breathed into our lungs the breath of life from God!
Made by God with the ability to love and see where love comes from, along with the ability to not.
But the point of all this is, we love and therefore we mourn when sin has brought it’s destruction against someone we love.
It hurts, we miss them, we cherish them, we love them.
We see that today in today’s passages.
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
There’s a great love being shown here.
From the sisters to their Jewish friends, there’s a great mourning over this loss of a loved one.
We can so relate here, we all have felt love, and we all have felt the destruction of sin.
We mourn, because we love.
Truth #3: We’re not all knowing and to prove this, questions arise.
Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
and
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Why God, why this way, why now?
I don’t understand!
And God tells us, we won’t understand everything.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
This right here is a dividing part of man and God.
We have two ways to accept this.
One of humility and one of pride.
Humility says I don’t understand everything but there is One that I see all around that does.
Pride says I understand enough and the way you operate is wrong.
Today’s story shows the depth of our misunderstanding.
Was this pain real? You bet. But in Christ, this pain is temporal.
The truth of this, 2,000 years later we’re here still talking about this and witnessing the Truth of God!
How many have been led to eternity with Christ through this experience?
I don’t know. But the same can be said about so many of our misunderstandings of hardships.
This bears the question...
Where are you? This is an important question.
Humble before His ways or prideful before His ways?
The storm is out there, it my be here now for some of us.
What are we built on?
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
This is one important aspect of this reading, both sisters ran to Jesus, not away from.
Did they have questions, you bet they did.
God is big enough for our questions.
But more importantly He’s more than big enough to put all our hope in Him.
This is the very thing we are all called to do.
Have faith in Him. He gives us enough to sustain this faith but He doesn’t give full understanding or sight to all of it, hence faith. And we have more than enough given for this faith!
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
We run to, not away!
Truth #4: Jesus wept
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.
Jesus wept...
Why, some might ask?
Some say it’s obvious why.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
others said it doesn’t make sense, He could of stopped this.
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”
First of all, Jesus wasn’t just fully God but also fully man. Meaning He felt, He walked, He hurt, He understood.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Jesus sympathizes with us during our weakness.
Jesus, we love, we miss, we cherish, please God, don’t take them. I don’t understand.
Our weakness...we don’t understand.
In this time of not understanding, our God isn’t calloused or unloving.
He sympathizes with us, He mourns with us, He’s there with us, He has compassion, He loves!
He wept!
Second of all. Jesus wept over the calamity of sin.
Calamity = an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress
Calamity of sin, this one event that brought sin and death into the world.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Innocence gone, replaced by shame and guilt.
Something made pure and holy became impure and unholy.
Just as warned death arrived.
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Jesus, in His great sympathy and compassion for His creation is angry with this calamity of sin.
This falling of man.
Why do I say this?
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
The words “he was deeply moved” is translated from the Greek word embrimaomai (em-brim-ah'-om-ahee).
And what does (em-brim-ah'-om-ahee) mean?
to snort with anger and to snort is referring to how a horse snorts.
See how the NLT words it to help our English limitations of Greek translation.
John 11:33 NLT
33 When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him,[f] and he was deeply troubled.
Jesus is angry with the calamity of sin and the destruction it brings.
This fall from grace and it’s consequences are very real and Jesus is fully aware of it.
Maddened by it even.
Something loved so deeply entered into destruction.
We’re no different.
We can get angry with the paths our loved ones have chosen, from our children hanging out with a rough crowd, to sitting in a hospital next to a loved one that has overdosed.
We mourn over the destruction of sin!
It hurts, plain and simply!
But this is not the end.
God made a declaration.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
God didn’t just release His wrath upon His creation and say game over.
No, He said I’ll fix this.
The offspring of woman will come and do more than just bruise a heel, he’ll bruise your head.
And the offspring of woman is important here, why? Because the offspring of the woman does come but not through the corrupt seed of Adam but through the pureness of the Holy Spirit by giving a child to a virgin. The virgin Mary!
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Our redeemer!
Our Savior
Immanuel, God with us.
The One, to come to right our wrongs.
To conquer death!
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Point to the cross.
This is the fix for our sin, our death problem.
Justice had to be had. Our God is a just God!
Jesus was born through a virgin, Jesus really did live a sinless life, Jesus really died a sinners death and was buried.
Great story so far right? Well that’s all it is unless...unless He does what He says he’s going to do.
As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed.
If this one thing doesn’t happen, it’s all just a great story and we’re still held captive to death.
But that’s not what happens!
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Jesus is alive!
And we’re all changed for the good because of it!
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
In Christ death is no more!
This is great news!
All it takes is faith in Him and death is no more.
Share this folks, believe this folks.
Repent and believe.
Share the truth of the wrong unrighteous ways of the world, for the truth of the true life sustaining ways of God!
Repent, stop change direction. Quit following the world and turn to life.
Second, believe. Have faith in the powers of God and that your fully forgiven in Christ.
And therefore we may hold fast in the words of Jesus
John 10:10b ESV
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Amen!
