I AM the resurrection and the life

Introduction

I have to head up to Pitlochry tomorrow for work,

and to be honest,

that wasn’t my original intention.

On Friday,

I tried to get up there.

But there had been an accident on the A9,

the diversion routes were jammed with breakdowns,

and after spending two hours sitting in Dunkeld getting absolutely nowhere,

I gave up,

turned around,

and decided to come home.

I'll head back on Monday instead.

As someone who travels the A9 plenty,

it is an endlessly frustrating road.

It’s a road I hate:

endless roadworks,

slow traffic,

and I would love for the Scottish Government to stop pushing back the deadline.

I’d love for that project to just be done.

It doesn’t seem that hard most of the time to just get moving and get it finished.

But dualing the A9 isn’t a quick patch-up job.

It requires cutting through solid rock,

building new bridges,

raising new viaducts,

and reconstructing entire landscapes.

It takes time to create a road that will last.

What feels to us like an endless, frustrating delay

is actually the slow, costly work of proper engineering and total reconstruction.

Christ shows love by showing glory;

and in His glory,

we have life.

When crisis hits our lives,

our human instinct is to demand immediate fixes.

We want instant relief from our discomfort and a clear road ahead.

But in John chapter 11,

when news reaches Jesus that His friend Lazarus is dying,

He doesn’t rush.

He doesn’t come with a quick remedy.

He doesn’t even come to heal him from the sickness.

He allows the situation to collapse into total disaster.

Not because He is indifferent,

but because He loves Martha, Mary, and Lazarus too much to give them a temporary patch.

Instead,

He delays so that He can reveal His eternal glory.

This morning,

I want us to look at this story of Lazarus through three points:

First, The Crisis—

a man lying in a tomb,

dead for four days,

where all human hope is completely gone.

Second, The Claim—

Jesus declaring,

"I am the resurrection and the life."

And finally, The Proof—

Jesus speaking into the darkness of the tomb and raising Lazarus back to life.

The Crisis,

The Claim,

and The Proof.

The Crisis

Lazarus is sick.

A message has been sent to Jesus:

"The one whom you love is sick."

In verse 5,

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So, what does he do?

This week my wife Rach has been quite unwell.

She phoned me one day saying she needed me to come.

In love I came.

She needed,

she was unwell,

I came.

I cancelled work.

That is what human expectation of love is,

but that is a divine contrast to how Christ shows love.

Instead, Jesus,

hearing that someone in a family he loves is sick and dying,

stays two more days and is in no hurry.

Christ showing love is showing his glory.

Do you see the contrast?

Do you see the logic of divine love?

Human love rushes to relieve pain immediately;

Divine love delays to reveal glory eternally.

The thing that mankind most needs is God's glory,

Christ's glory.

In love,

that is the greatest thing he can give us—

better than any physical relief by any stretch.

The sisters are in crisis.

I'm sure Lazarus is lying on what is his deathbed in crisis.

And Jesus tells them this is no crisis.

Christ lays out that this sickness is for God's glory.

As we get into this story,

that is our anchor.

That is why Lazarus was sick,

why Lazarus died,

why Jesus stayed—

it was for God's glory,

for you to enjoy God's glory,

for you to see in Leven this morning God's glory.

Lazarus died 2,000 years ago,

and Christ had no rush to get to him so that you this morning could see His glory.

He allows the story to unfold,

the tragedy to progress,

the crisis to reach a climax.

It is intentional.

He says,

"I am glad I was not there."

He's glad because they are going to believe through this.

His absence is purposeful to deepen their faith.

The sisters don't know this yet.

All they know is God didn't come to save them.

The distress hasn't been answered.

They are sitting there knowing the message was sent out,

but they don't get a text to say,

"Sorry to hear your brother's sick, I'll be there in a few days."

They are sitting there with no answer.

Their friend,

the one they are trusting in,

has not arrived.

When he does eventually arrive,

Lazarus has been not just lying dead there four days,

but he's been in his tomb for four days.

These details matter.

The Jewish belief of the time was that the soul lingered near the body for three days,

but on the fourth day,

death was irreversible.

The soul left,

the body was decomposing,

all hope of natural recovery was gone.

Many Jews come to console the sisters,

the community gathers,

the rituals are underway.

This is not a fresh loss where there is hope still flickering away.

Lazarus' body is decomposing.

It is finished.

The sisters have him buried and they are planning a life without him.

Have you ever been on day four with God?

There has been no answer to your prayer.

Your hope is decomposing.

"God, if you're going to arrive, it's too late now."

I know I have been there.

I know I have been in suffering where you feel there is no way God is going to use this for his glory.

This feels beyond God's glory now on the fourth day.

Maybe you're here today on day four.

Jesus arrives,

and he arrives first of all to accusations:

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

The implication hangs in the air:

Why didn't you prevent this?

Why did you not save this man that you say you love?

This may be our crisis,

this has been our crisis.

Why did you not act, God?

And the crisis faced by Lazarus is worse than just death.

It is the same crisis we face in our sinful state.

This is the crisis we face:

Not just death,

Not just decay,

Not just mourning,

Not just loss,

But absence from God in our death.

We lose His favor in our death.

Martha's accusation shows her faith.

She knows that if Christ were there,

Lazarus wouldn't have died.

But this exposes the true crisis we face:

death without God.

There will be no saving if we die without Him.

And what have we seen in the crisis of the story?

A horrible earthly reality.

Panic,

pain,

suffering.

And maybe a reality that seems a little bit similar for us:

the God who we know deeply loves us,

who has told us He loves us,

withholds Himself and allows us to pass through pain before He comes to our need.

This is the drama and the scandal of these early verses.

Love and delay are not opposites.

They're intertwined.

God's purpose is not to make us happy in life,

but to make us holy.

He knows pain could be spared if he went without waiting those two days,

but the glory would have been reduced.

He loves us too much to save us from grief and suffering when glory and holiness can be revealed in its place.

Because Christ shows love by showing glory.

The sisters wanted a rescue from their distress.

They cried out to the Lord in their trouble.

They wanted saving from their distress,

but instead they received transformation.

It wasn't a delay that was cruel pretending to be love;

it's the love of God which operates on a different logic than ours.

Even in the shadow of His love,

there is always mercy.

Our sorrow is always shared by Him.

He comes to us in our pain.

A delay is not abandonment.

Jesus will come and He will weep with them.

He will sympathize—

and to sympathize literally means to suffer alongside them.

He will come alongside,

weep with them,

and meet them.

Martha has stated in her faith,

in her knowledge of who He is,

that if He was there,

Lazarus would not be dead.

This opens the door for Jesus to respond,

to show that resurrection isn't just a future event,

and to redefine what she thinks she knows about her true need.

The Claim

Martha is quickly corrected.

Martha knows her theology.

Jesus says to her,

"Your brother will rise again,"

and Martha knows that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

This isn't ignorance;

this is Scripture knowledge.

Standing on both the law and the prophets,

she expresses her faith in the end times,

the resurrection that Jewish believers anticipated.

Her faith is so focused on the last day,

on the future,

that she isn't seeing the Savior standing right in front of her.

Martha is faithful,

she is intelligent.

So often in these interactions with Jesus,

you can listen to the person he's conversing with and think,

Why are you not getting it?

Martha gets it.

She just hasn't had everything revealed to her yet.

She sees her dead brother and thinks his immediate resurrection is insurmountable.

Martha looks in faith to God's calendar.

She looks to the timeline of Lazarus' restoration.

She wanted a date for comfort.

Instead, Jesus gave her Himself.

Jesus said to her,

"I am the resurrection and the life."

In the glory He's about to reveal is life.

In His glory,

we have life.

Resurrection isn't just something that happened to a few people in Jesus' time.

Resurrection isn't merely a doctrine,

a chapter of theology,

or something we only look forward to in the distant future.

Resurrection is this man,

the Son of Man,

standing right in front of Martha.

Resurrection is Christ.

Life is in Christ.

While Martha looks to the end of time,

Jesus turns her attention to the one who is in her presence right now—

the very one who brings resurrection and life to fruition.

What Martha waits for in the last days is standing right in front of her.

It is Christ,

Jesus Himself,

whom she anticipates.

Christ goes on to elaborate:

"The one who believes in me will live,

even though they die;

and whoever lives by believing in me will never die."

Do you believe this?

This statement operates on two levels at the same time.

Jesus guarantees that faith in Him secures the resurrection of life one day,

but His statement is also present.

Not only will the dead rise if they believe in Him,

but those who live and believe in Him will never die spiritually.

Eternal life isn't just something to be had in the future.

In Christ,

eternal life is here now.

You as a believer are already united with Christ in resurrection.

You are already in eternal life.

The "already, not yet" tension in Jesus' statement isn't just promising what will be experienced in full at the end of the age;

it is telling us what eternity brings to our present state through faith.

Everlasting life starts now.

Even though it hasn't reached its final fullness,

the last days have arrived.

When we have union with Christ through faith,

the believer's spiritual life is already resurrected.

In spirit,

you are already regenerated—

passed from spiritual death to life—

and physical death is merely a threshold to full glory.

Jesus declares Himself to be the fulfillment of traditional Jewish expectations.

He is the one who has the power to raise the dead.

He is the one who gives life.

They are not just truths for the distant future;

they are realities for right now.

Why?

Why do we see these amazing truths about Christ?

We see them because He waited two days,

because when He arrived at the tomb,

Lazarus had been in it for four days already—

all for the glory of God to be revealed

so that Martha, Mary, the disciples, and we today can see the resurrection and the life.

Jesus is not saying that believers will not physically die,

but that physical death will not be the last word.

Oh death, where is your victory?

Oh death, where is your sting?

There is no cruelty here;

it is by divine design.

Jesus holds power not over sickness only,

but over death itself.

He is the Son of God.

He is able to do this.

He speaks to His Father and declares Himself the Son of the Most High.

The Proof

So we come to the climax.

Martha knows who her God is,

but she hasn't witnessed the proof yet.

Jesus moves to demonstrate the glory He promised to show.

He doesn't just make a claim that He is the resurrection and the life;

He now proves it,

and in proving it,

He brings transformation.

He commands,

"Take away the stone."

Martha protests:

"By this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."

The King James Version puts it far more vividly:

"Lord, by this time he stinketh."

He's rotting,

and opening that tomb is going to be unbearable.

She's not lacking in faith;

she's being realistic about the condition and situation she finds herself in.

Jesus responds by asking her,

"Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"

Has Jesus lied?

She must trust before she sees—

and this is the pattern throughout John's Gospel:

faith comes first,

understanding follows.

The stone is removed.

Jesus prays aloud,

not because He needs to for Himself,

but because He wants to make it clear that the Father and the Son are acting together in raising this man from the dead.

"Lazarus, come out!"

He speaks with absolute authority,

absolute power,

using only His word to raise the dead.

Lazarus did nothing to raise himself.

Lazarus was dead.

His corpse was decomposing.

Only by the effectual calling of Christ could he come to life.

Only by the calling of Christ can we come to life.

There's one detail here that shows the sheer scale of what happens.

In that three-word sentence,

if Christ had omitted the name Lazarus and simply commanded,

"Come out!"

every grave in Bethany would have burst open.

That is the raw, omnipotent authority of the voice of God commanding death to cease.

Lazarus comes out,

still wrapped in his burial cloths.

He's been dead four days,

but now the dead man is free from death;

resurrection has arrived;

life is present.

He walks,

and the resurrection is undeniable to everyone standing there.

This is the greatest sign they have seen of the Son's purpose on earth.

The way the Son shows us love is by showing us His glory.

This act demonstrates that the Father and the Son work in perfect harmony,

withholding nothing.

Christ holds ultimate power over life and death.

He can overcome total decay.

We try to protect ourselves from the ugly aspects of death—

the physical and emotional pain.

Anyone who has seen a loved one die needs no further explanation.

But Christ's power goes far beyond that.

This is our hope as Christians.

We have hope for the immortality of the soul,

but also that we will experience the physical resurrection of the body.

The body matters.

Physical death and decay matter,

and Christ's power extends over all of it.

Nothing is beyond His reach;

no one is too far gone for Him to restore.

This miracle is not just a display of power for power's sake.

It transforms and gives life to those who witness it.

Mary and Martha don't just witness a miracle;

they encounter Christ as the Resurrection and the Life.

They are overcome with joy instead of grief.

Their doubt becomes faith.

They are given life by witnessing the Son of God at work.

It is a direct foreshadowing of Jesus' own resurrection and the promise of ours.

The sisters move from "if only" to "Yes, Lord, I believe."

They have seen what Jesus can do.

They have witnessed His power.

Yet the consequences of Lazarus' resurrection extend far beyond the joy of these two sisters.

Raising Lazarus is the pivotal event that seals the Jewish authorities' decision to put Jesus to death.

They see what He has done,

and they recognize Him as an absolute threat.

He can draw crowds.

He can command the dead.

He possesses unmatched authority.

In their eyes,

He needs to be stopped.

This is the turning point of John's Gospel.

From this moment on,

the narrative moves directly toward the cross.

Christ, in His sovereignty,

knew that raising Lazarus would bring the public attention that would lead directly to His own execution.

In calling Lazarus out of the tomb,

Jesus signed His own death warrant.

If He had merely healed a sickness,

the authorities might not have been so adamant to eliminate Him.

In His delay,

in His glory,

in His love,

He gave Himself up for Lazarus.

In order to give Lazarus life,

Jesus secured His own death.

He traded places.

That is the supreme demonstration of glory and love.

He commands,

and He becomes victorious over death.

The crisis has been answered.

Landing

This story is a very real window for all of us.

The delay,

the sickness,

the death of Lazarus—

it was all a window for us to see Christ's glory and find true life.

Jesus sovereignly waited for Lazarus to be decisively dead.

He came with the full authority of the Father and raised him from the dead for His own glory.

This story is a window into our own souls,

our own eternity,

and the power Jesus has to raise us from spiritual death.

Like Martha,

we can easily fixate our theology only on the last day—

when our bodies will be resurrected to live in the new heavens and the new earth.

But Christ says,

"I am the resurrection and the life."

That isn't just a promise for the end of time.

That means for us right now,

we have life in Him.

We are called to live as people who possess eternal life today.

Death has lost its sting for you, believer.

Life is yours in Christ—

not just this earthly life followed by another later on,

but everlasting life given to you right now.

"Christ shows love by showing glory.

And in His glory,

we have life everlasting."

My grandfather was a minister his whole life.

He spent his days sharing the good news of Jesus.

On his gravestone are written the words:

"I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?"

Friends,

it is infinitely important that we believe this is who Christ is.

My heart aches for anyone here who does not yet believe this.

Ultimately,

the most important question in all of life is whether you can answer "Yes" to Jesus' question:

"I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?"