JOHN 11:1-57 - A Dying People and a Living Christ

Introduction

It’s always easier moving through life when you have connections, isn’t it? When you are faced with a problem that you don’t know how to solve or are dealing with a crisis that you don’t know how to find your way through, the most reassuring four words in the English language are, “I know a guy...” Whether it’s someone who knows how to rebuild a transmission or figure out your taxes or cut down the dead tree threatening your house, it’s good to know someone that is an expert; someone who is willing and able to get you out of your difficulty.

In the first three verses of our text this morning, we see Mary and Martha essentially responding to their brother Lazarus’ illness with the confidence of knowing Someone Who could help them:

John 11:1–3 LSB

Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. And it was the Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. So the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”

Jesus had been healing diseases all over Judea, Samaria and Galilee for three years; His fame had gone out all over the land, but Mary and Martha had an “in” with Jesus, didn’t they? They were close friends—Jesus loved Lazarus (v. 3); He stayed with them when He was visiting Jerusalem; they weren’t just anyone; they were like family.

So naturally, they had an inside track to Jesus; they knew that He would come and heal Lazarus’ illness—John even tells us specifically in Verse 5:

John 11:5 LSB

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

Which makes the next verse like a punch in the gut:

John 11:6 LSB

So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days in the place where He was.

Once again, we lose sight of the shock of this verse because we’ve read the story before and we know how it turns out. But think about this for a moment in light of the signs we’ve already seen from Jesus: This was a Man Who loved His friends so much that He didn’t want them to be embarrassed by running out of wine at their wedding. But he deliberately lets this friend die.

Jesus is able to heal a little boy’s fever from a long-distance, without even seeing him or being in the same town with him. All He had to do was say a word, right from where He was, and Lazarus would have immediately been healed. But He stays silent and lets him die.

Jesus has shown Himself to be the sovereign Master of all the natural world—walking on the sea in a storm, ruler of all nature. But here He lets nature take its course, letting Lazarus succumb to whatever tumor or infection or virus or organ failure he was suffering. This is what Jesus did when one of His closest friends in the world was suffering.

We have to face this, because how many people sitting in this room right now have had the exact same thing happen to them? You and Jesus are best friends—you have an inside track, you know that He is able to instantly and completely and permanently rescue you from your suffering. And you know that He loves you and you know that you belong to Him by faith; but the tumor doesn’t stop growing; the layoff still comes, the marriage doesn’t heal, the loneliness doesn’t ease.

We need to understand this sign that John records for us here; the seventh sign in his Gospel that he has written so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we might have life in His Name. And this is what I want you to see here in this sign—for you who have suffered from Christ’s seemingly inexplicable response to your plea, for all the times when you couldn’t understand why the rescue you so desperately wanted from Him didn’t seem to come, I want you to see here in this sign that

Christ reserves the BRIGHTEST BLAZE of His GLORY for the DEEPEST DARKNESS of His FRIENDS

I want you to take comfort in this sign; I want you to see that Jesus reserves the greatest display of His glory and the brightest evidences of his compassion and the sweetest expressions of His love for His friends’ darkest days. If you are walking through one of those dark seasons this morning, Christian, take heart—your dear Savior has not abandoned you; He has not given up on you—He is aiming to do the same thing in you that He did in Lazarus’ illness:

John 11:4 LSB

But when Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”

He aims to make the blaze of His glory burn brightly out of the midst of your darkness; to glorify Himself in it even as He meets you in it and delivers you through it.

Take heart in His aim to glorify Himself in the midst of your darkness, Christian, by understanding first of all

I. The STRANGENESS of His PROVIDENCE (John 11:1-16)

He could have healed Lazarus from a distance with a word—but consider also that Jesus could have also chosen a different family! Remember how we saw in John 5 that Jesus specifically chose the man paralyzed for 38 years—He went looking for someone to heal. Were there no other strangers in Judea who had just died that He could have raised? Of course there were—but He chose to perform this sign for Mary and Martha and Lazarus:

He ORDAINED their trial (vv. 6-11)

When He heard Lazarus was sick, He knew that he was going to be the recipient of the greatest of all His signs; He chose to wait two more days to make sure that Lazarus would be in his grave by the time He got there. Mary and Martha had asked Him to come and heal their brother, but Jesus allowed Lazarus to pass away so that Lazarus would be at the center of the most powerful sign that Jesus performed.

And then when He decided to leave for Bethany, His disciples protested that the last time He was there (John 10:31, 39), the Judeans tried to stone Him:

John 11:8 LSB

The disciples said to Him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?”

But Jesus knew that He still had work to do—His “day” wasn’t over yet:

John 11:10–11 LSB

“But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said these things, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him.”

Jesus saw to it in His strange providence that Lazarus would be in his grave by the time He got there—He ordained their trial, and in Verse 12

He REDEFINED their trial (vv. 12-16)

John 11:12–15 LSB

The disciples then said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be saved from his sickness.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He was speaking of actual 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.”

Think about this—when the disciples hear “death”, they know what everybody knows: Death is THE END. It’s over; there is no coming back. You go down into the grave, into Sheol, and someday everyone else will join you there, but you don’t come back.

But Jesus redefines death—see here His authority as God—Jesus can raise Lazarus from the dead as easily as you can wake up your sleeping child (depending on the child, in fact, it’s probably easier for Jesus!) Jesus completely redefines the darkness that Mary and Martha were going through—Lazarus’ death is not the permanent loss and irreversible condition they believe it is. And notice again that Jesus says He is glad for this trial, because it is going to result in His disciples believing that He is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they will have life in His Name.

Christian, you can take comfort in the strange providence of Christ in your life; when His work in your life doesn’t seem to make sense from your perspective—the darkness that He ordains for you is the means by which His glory will blaze even more brightly, as you rest in His promises to you.

This is what Martha does when Jesus comes to her—look with me as John continues the narrative starting in Verse 17:

John 11:17–22 LSB

So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about fifteen stadia away; and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to console them about their brother. Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Martha then 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.”

In the midst of her darkness and pain and confusion and loss, Martha still clings to the goodness of God to her in Jesus!

But it is not as though Christ’s glory is only seen through Martha’s faith in the midst of her darkness—after all, if God’s glory were dependent on our ability to buck up and put on a smile and keep a stiff upper lip while we are falling apart, God wouldn’t receive any glory at all!

But here is the way Christ’s glory blazes so brightly in darkness of His friends’ pain—see here in these verses

II. The SWEETNESS of His PITY (John 11:17-29)

We tend to have a negative reaction to the word “pity”—to speak of someone who is “pitiful” in our usage gives a negative or demeaning connotation; you’ll hear people object “I don’t want your pity!”

But Biblically speaking, pity is defined as a tender feeling towards in misery or distress—not only a tenderness of feeling, but a tenderness that drives a response.

See here in these verses the way Jesus’ tender compassion and pity towards Mary and Martha is expressed. First of all,

He assures their FAITH with His PRESENCE (vv. 23-27)

Remember—His disciples had warned Him that going to Judea might be a death-sentence (v. 8). But Jesus didn’t consider the trouble He might get into with the Judeans again; what He cared about was being present with Mary and Martha.

Again—we’ve seen from the previous signs that Jesus didn’t have to be present in order to restore Lazarus’ life. But He wanted to be with them in their grief—the grief He had in fact ordained. Never forget this, Christian: When the strange providence of God leads you into the darkness of pain or sorrow or death, He will never abandon you there! If He ordains that darkness He will join you in it. He never sends you anywhere that He is not willing to go with you.

He comes to Martha with words of comfort that are more immediate and powerful than she realizes—

John 11:23 LSB

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

And her response is that of a good faithful daughter of the Covenant:

John 11:24 LSB

Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Martha understands the hope that the ancient prophets promised:

Daniel 12:2–3 LSB

“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to reproach and everlasting contempt. “And those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.

Isaiah 26:19 LSB

Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.

Isaiah 25:8 LSB

He will swallow up death for all time, And Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For Yahweh has spoken.

“Yes—the Day of Resurrection will come; my brother will rise from the dust and awaken to everlasting life. I know this, Rabbi, but for now all I have is a broken heart!”

But Jesus tells Martha that yes—there is a resurrection on the Last Day, and that resurrection will take place because He will be there!

John 11:25–26 LSB

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever. Do you believe this?”

See how Jesus assures Martha with His presence: “Martha, you speak of the resurrection day that is coming. But don’t you see? I AM the Resurrection! Resurrection isn’t an event, it is a Person! The person of Jesus Christ Himself. He is resurrection; He is life!

And notice how Martha responds to Jesus’ question, “Do you believe that I am the resurrection and the life”?

John 11:27 LSB

She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who comes into the world.”

John is making it unmistakable here, isn’t he? In the midst of her grief and pain and darkness, her eyes are filled with the brightness of Christ’s glory; her faith in Jesus is actually strengthened and established in the wake of her brother’s death!

Jesus assured Martha’s faith by His presence—and as the narrative continues in Verses 28-32,

He comforts their SORROW with His SYMPATHY (vv. 28-36)

Jesus goes on to meet with Mary, after Martha went and told her that the Teacher was asking for her (v. 28). See here the different ways that people handle their grief—Martha needed to cling to the assurance that the promises of the Scriptures were true, that her brother would rise again. And Jesus responds by strengthening her faith to see that HE is the Resurrection; that HE is life itself.

But Mary needed something very different from Jesus; His pity toward Martha was to strengthen and encourage her faith. Mary needed something different—she needed someone to weep with her:

John 11:33 LSB

When Jesus therefore saw her crying, and the Jews who came with her also crying, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled,

And as she walked with Him to her brother’s tomb, Mary’s tears became His own:

John 11:35 LSB

Jesus wept.

Christian, see here the sweet pity of your Savior—in the weakness and brokenhearted grief of your darkest hour, He does not stand far off in Heaven, watching from a distance. He is drawn to you, to weep with you, to sympathize with you in your weaknesses because He has felt them too.

But never forget, beloved, that while Christ may weep with you in your grief, He does not do so because He is weak. We weep at the grave of a loved one because we are helpless in the face of death. Jesus may weep with us in our deepest darkness, but He is not lost in that darkness with us: He aims to make the brightness of His glory blaze in our lives through

III. The SUPREMACY of His POWER (John 11:38-46)

When He comes to the tomb, He is once again “deeply moved”—His sweet pity and tender compassion for His friends continues to stir Him—He directs them to move the stone away from the entrance to the tomb.

It is important to understand the way burials were practiced at that time—this was probably a “family tomb” that belonged to Lazarus’ ancestors, and had been used for generations before him. The process was to place the newly deceased person’s remains on a ledge in the tomb and seal it up for about a year to allow the natural decomposition of the body. After that time the family would unseal the tomb and gather the bones up to be placed in the back of the compartment, usually on an ossuary shelf with the bones of earlier occupants of the tomb (Gives perspective on the Biblical euphemism for death as being “gathered to their fathers!”)

And this is what Martha is thinking about when Jesus commands the tomb to be opened—”Oh no! The process has started, the stench is going to be overwhelming!” But see here the supremacy of Jesus’ power—

He is greater than the INDIGNITY of DEATH (vv. 39-40)

One of the greatest horrors that death visits upon its victims is the ugliness of the decay and rot and stench and ugliness of death. The 17th Century philosopher and physician Thomas Browne famously said,

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us (Religio Medici,. Section 40)

Death is not, as is so often claimed by the world around us, “just a natural part of life”, something to be embraced and accepted as something normal. It is not—Death is an intruder; it is a monstrous and disgraceful end that we were not created for. Death was no part of God’s original creation; it was only when sin entered the world through Adam and Eve that Death became a reality, with all of the stench and decay and pain and misery and ugliness that it brings with it.

Martha cringed at the door of Lazarus’ tomb because she was expecting the stench of Death to roll out of that dark chamber, but what happened instead was that Life rolled into that Tomb from the Source of all life, Jesus Christ!

John 11:40–44 LSB

Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. “And I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd standing around I said this, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” And when He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Death was overcome by Life; decay was reversed with a Word; fear and grief and confusion vanished in an instant, and Jesus demonstrated once again that He is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God! Up to that moment, all anyone knew was that life was short and death was forever. But with this sign, Jesus demonstrated that in Him, DEATH is short and LIFE is forever!

And look at what happens next—not only is the supremacy of Christ’s power greater than the indignity of death, but

He is greater than the GRIP of UNBELIEF (vv. 45-46)

In Verse 45 we see this sign doing exactly what it was meant to do—to create and sustain faith on the part of those who see it:

John 11:45 LSB

Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

There is a kind of misperception in Reformed circles when we talk about the “Irresistable grace” of God. As John Piper points out, God’s grace is resisted all the time by sinners! That doctrine does not mean that no one can resist God’s call to salvation; it means that God is completely able to overcome resistance, no matter how entrenched or no matter how fierce.

No doubt many of the people who saw Lazarus come out of the tomb had been resisting Jesus’ claims as Messiah; holding Him at arm’s length, not sure they believed all the hype, skeptical that He could really be everything that He claimed to be. But with this sign, Jesus swept all of their objections away; they could no longer hold out in their unbelief; all of their slam-dunk arguments against His identity as the Christ, the Son of God vanished like a snowflake in a furnace. A man who had been dead and rotting in the grave for four days was alive in front of them.

Consider the amazing brightness of the glory of Christ that was revealed through this tragedy that Mary and Martha suffered—Jesus turns their grief and heartbreak into their greatest joy; He reveals Himself as not just the One that works resurrection, but the One Who is Himself the Resurrection and the life!

He reveals Himself to Mary and Martha and Lazarus—his dear friends—in a way that no other recipient of His signs ever received—He never wept over the crippled man at Bethesda, He didn’t risk being stoned by angry mobs by going to the wedding at Cana; He never spent time consoling and tenderly speaking to the blind man’s family members. The darkness He ordained for Mary and Martha to walk through and the grave that He appointed for Lazarus to wake up from were meant both for His glory and their joy! They would never have chosen that path for themselves, but Christ’s purposes were so much greater, and the glorious joy they found at the end of it was far better than they could have ever imagined!

Christian, when you reach out in the midst of your pain or loss to Christ your best and closest Friend and it seems as though He is hesitating or standing far off, it is not because He does not care. When you cry out for Him to deliver you from the shadow of death that falls across your path and His answer does not seem to come and you have to plunge yourself into that cold, lonely darkness, your tears become His. His compassion for you does not fail; He has not stopped caring for you—He does not entrust strangers to glorify Him in their darkest moments; He looks to His friends to magnify His glory as they trust Him in the dark; as they say along with Martha, “Even now, I know that whatever you do it will be wonderful!”

Jesus’ love and compassion and good eternal purposes for you are not threatened by your suffering; your suffering is the arena in which His greatest glory and your greatest joys shine most brightly! Trust Him in it; even when it is so dark that you cannot see it, know that He is standing by you with your tears staining His face! Not because He is helpless, not because He does not know what to do, but because your heartbreak deeply moves Him! And He will not leave you or forsake you in any of the darkness His unsearchable providence has set for you!

And for you who stand far off from Christ this morning—like those crowds that stood at Lazarus’ tomb out of curiosity over what this Man could do in the face of death—this sign has been recorded by John so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This testimony is true; this account really happened. This was the moment when so many skeptics’ defenses fell: When they saw a dead man rise from his grave, they could not deny that Jesus was exactly Who He said He was.

But notice the last verse of this account—many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what Jesus had done believed in Him—

John 11:46 LSB

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done.

There were those who saw the same things that everyone else saw—they saw Jesus pray, they saw Lazarus walk out of his tomb, they saw unmistakable proof of Christ’s identity as Messiah and as God—and they went to rat Him out to His enemies. The rest of Chapter 11 is a record of the chief priests and Pharisees’ plot to have Jesus murdered to keep Him from jeopardizing their wealth and power (v. 48). And the chapter ends with a standing order to abduct Him as soon as His whereabouts became known.

The plot they put into motion to kill Him succeeded a week later. His own friend betrayed Him and had Him ambushed in Gethsemane when He went to pray. He was taken into custody, put through a kangaroo court that pronounced Him guilty of blasphemy, and had Him turned over to the Roman authorities to be executed. And so, just over a week from the time Jesus commanded the stone to be rolled away from Lazarus’ tomb, an angel rolled a stone away from Jesus’ tomb. And just as Lazarus stepped out of that chamber of death and was unwrapped from his grave clothes, so Jesus neatly folded His face-cloth and laid it beside His grave-clothes and stepped out of His tomb.

The death that Lazarus died was the first of his deaths; he would go on to die again; and this time his bones are still waiting for the Day when Jesus will call him out of that grave, along with every other human being who ever lived throughout the entire history of this world. John writes of that Day to come in Revelation 20—

Revelation 20:11–13 LSB

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sits upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. Then I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.

That Day is coming. One day you will be called out of your grave and all the decay and rot and stench of death will be reversed, and you will stand in a resurrected body before the very Source of Resurrection and Life Himself, Jesus Christ. What will you do on that Day, when the books are opened and every deed you have ever done will be examined in the presence of His perfect righteousness? There will be no place in heaven or on earth to run to for refuge from Him on that Day, because heaven and earth themselves will have already run away.

The only way you will be able to stand on that Resurrection Day is if you have already been raised to new life in Christ, if you have already traded the death-stench of your transgressions and sins for the New Birth that comes from the richness of the great mercy and love of God to you in Christ; if you have traded the rotten grave-clothes of your self-righteous pride for the pure white robes of His righteousness; if you have obeyed His voice calling you to repentance and faith in Him. These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His Name.

Why would you stay in the grave of your sin any longer? Why would you continue to refuse His invitation? There is no other refuge; no other Name; no other Word that can call you out of death to life, and out of condemnation into freedom, out of guilt and into joy, out of despair into hope—hear His call to come forth and be raised to new life in your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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