Looking toward the Resurrection
Notes
Transcript
I’m starting this morning with what may perhaps be an uncomfortable question, and I don’t mean it to be - and in fact for believers in Christ it shouldn’t be.
What will happen when you die?
If we ask the average person in church any given Sunday the response would be “I’ll go to heaven.” I’m sure most of you would answer the same.
How do you know? What statements in the Scriptures do you hold to as that promise?
If you are like most people you don’t know, you just believe it. So let me help you a bit.
When the Apostle Paul writes from prison to the Philippian church he writes, Philippians 1:23
I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
indicating believers anticipate direct fellowship with Jesus following death. And of course there is Jesus promise to the thief on the cross beside him, Lk 23:43
And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
There’s more, 1 Pet 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
These are just a few - and what you may not realize is that the resurrection was known and thought of before Jesus resurrection that we see at the end of the Gospels. It was not a universal Jewish belief; it did develop during the second Temple period, which began about 516BC when the temple was rebuilt following Israelites return from exile. It was during this period that the Jewish Talmud emerges and the Hebrew Bible is finalized.
In our passage this morning we see Martha expressing her belief in the resurrection: John 11:24
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
This is before Jesus’ resurrection. So what is Martha thinking of?
The belief in resurrection developed very late in the Jewish experience in the pre-Christian era. The earliest clear reference in Scripture appears in Daniel 12:2
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Not everyone believed in the resurrection, you may remember that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection. They were the only group of Jews in Jesus’ day who denied the belief in the resurrection.
The Jewish understanding of resurrection was distinctly physical, not simply a disembodied spiritual existence after death.
Lazarus’ resurrection was fundamentally different than the one expected by the Jews in the end times - creating a striking theological tension within the Gospel of John.
Jewish believers in resurrection did not anticipate it occurring in the present age. Martha’s response to Jesus shows this view - she connects Lazarus’s rising specifically to the final resurrection, not an immediate restoration. John 11:24
Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
The Jews view was that bodily resurrection was a future, collective event at the culmination of history.
But there is a big difference between Jesus raising Lazarus and the final resurrection. When Lazarus is raised it is not as one who has been transformed, who has gained an imperishable quality - in fact he is restored to bodily life and to the prospect of dying again.
A friend of mine wrote a song Blues for Lazarus - about him having to die twice. Yet he would be able to look forward to his future resurrection as well.
There are three individuals recorded in the Gospels that Jesus raises from the dead: Lazarus of Bethany as we see here, a widow’s son in the town of Nain in Luke 7, and the daughter of a synagoguge ruler recorded in Mark.
Each of these reveals Jesus’ authority over life and death, and His compassion. It is from Jesus raising of Lazarus that we get the promise John 11:25-26
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.”
We read perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The idea of eternal life, of resurrection permeates our entire belief and faith as Christians. We read these verses and have visions of heaven - many of which come from John’s Revelation in the last book of the Bible.
As we look at the raising of Lazarus, it functions as a concrete sign pointing to theological truth and stands as the culmination of Jesus’ miracles in the first half of John’s Gospel. It is in this chapter that Jesus begins the turn towards Jerusalem and the cross.
In chapter 11 of John, at verse 7 we read of Jesus saying to His disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”
And I believe it’s telling to hear Thomas’ response, John 11:16
So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John clearly is pointing towards the fact that this will be Jesus’ final trip to Judea and Jerusalem. Jesus raises Lazarus dispite his sister’s fear of the odor after he’d been in the tomb for four days. Jesus responds, John 11:40
“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
Everything now in John will turn towards Jerusalem, in the next chapter we will see the triumphal entry and the plots to kill Jesus will increase.
This morning we are going to be celebrating the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Holy Communion. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church the words I often use as part of our remembrance:
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
That last verse is profound - “you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
We know that Jesus died for our sins. We know that by his stripes we are made whole. We know that Jesus will return again for us, Heb 9:28
So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Jesus death on the cross conquered sin, and His resurrection conquered death. Resurrection by its definition is a transformation.
Christian hope for personal resurrection centers on several interconnected realities:
the redemption and transformation of the body,
participation in God’s eternal communion,
and the ultimate establishment of justice and peace
Christian hope affirms the goodness of the created body and anticipates its redemption through the resurrection.
Looking toward the Resurrection
Looking toward the Resurrection
One of the things I’ve become more and more convinced of as I read the Scriptures and recognize that God lives outside of time, is that the separation between what we might call heaven (what comes after this life) and earth (this life) is very thin.
What I know for sure is the promise of a resurrection where we will be like Him. 1John3:2
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
I look forward to that day, and I know you do as well.
May we all set our sites on heaven, and seek to glorify God in all that we do. AMEN.
Let me pray for you.
