The Resurrection & The Life
Notes
Transcript
Handout
** We can take comfort knowing Jesus Loves Us
** We can take comfort knowing Jesus Loves Us
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 11
3 So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”
Jon Courson’s Application Commentary Chapter 11
Like Martha and Mary, I don’t approach the Lord on the basis of my love for Him. You know why? Because my love for the Lord is fickle and feeble. But His love for me, however, is fixed and firm. He’s never surprised by what I say, never taken aback by what I do. Therefore, wise is the man or woman who approaches the Lord based on His love.
Ironically, the word used here not the traditional word for love the we think of when we think God loves us - It is not agape - the word used here is phileo - the brotherly type of love, the love for a friend.
15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
** Jesus Dealt With Life & Death
** Jesus Dealt With Life & Death
Jesus dealt uncertainty of life but also the certainty death. Notice that!? One thing is UN-certain and the other is Certain!
Life is uncertain - none of us in 2020 would have thought we would be gathered around our screens in our pajamas watching worship!
This is why I want to urge you to continue to get up and get ready for the Lord is still at work. He will speak to you on your couches and arm chairs just as easily as He can in the pews!
This church is not empty - this church is out on Mission. We have all discovered something that preachers have harped on for years. Each of have connections and each of have people within our reach.
This is the mission of God. To reach those people.
Be like Mary and Martha - Take your anxious thoughts to the Lord and let Jesus hold them.
Verse 5 says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” He loved them both for all their differences. He loved them.
He loves all of the people in this church.
** Jesus is the Resurrection & the Life
** Jesus is the Resurrection & the Life
Starting in verse 11, Jesus gets to the real crux of this account.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 11
11 This He said, and after that He *said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.”
The disciples misunderstand as humans are prone to do and they think, “Well, he will recover.”
And Jesus gets very plain - “Lazarus is dead.”
I don’t know anyone who has succumbed to this COVID-19 virus. But let me remind us all that Jesus is the LIFE!!
Here is the certainty of life - we will all die! No matter how many airbags you have in your car, no matter how much Vitamin D and Vitamin C you take, everyone one of us will die.
The one thing that gives hope beyond recovery of a virus beyond the worries and uncertainty of life is that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life!!
Of all the wondrous times to share the Good News of Jesus with someone in your life. When LIFE IS UNCERTAIN - JESUS IS CERTAIN!!
Here is the certainty of life - we will all die! No matter how many airbags you have in your car, no matter how much Vitamin D and Vitamin C you take, everyone one of us will die.
Martha’s statement in verse 21 is more one of remorse when she says,
20 Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house.
21 Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), .
All of us are trying to extend the time that we live. But rarely do we spend the same amount of time and effort preparing for the life after life. It is the life after life that truly matters.
All of us are trying to extend the time that we live. But rarely do we spend the same amount of time and effort preparing for the life after life. It is the life after life that truly matters.
I don’t want to stand before the casket of any of my loved ones and feel remorse that Jesus had not come into their lives!
Martha is not rebuking the Lord. She just knows that Jesus could have handled the sickness had He been there.
Jesus does what He often does in Scripture. He takes a questioning heart and raises it to a more heavenly view.
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 11
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
DO YOU? Do you believe it. I have not thought about death as much in recent times as I have lately. It is going to hurt when I lose someone I know to this virus. But it hurts when we lose anyone to death.
tells us that Jesus is near to the brokenhearted and hears their cry. More than that, he understands the pangs of death!
says, ‘Jesus wept’
He wept for unbelief
Samaritan’s Purse Hospital in NYC - https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/609388/central-park-hospital/
It is convicting because there is so much backlash to the mobile hospital
“a field hospital was opening in Central Park, New Yorkers breathed a collective sigh of relief. The 68-bed respiratory-care unit would accept overflow patients from Mount Sinai, which was running out of hospital beds. It was a necessary contribution to a public-health crisis.
But the next wave of news wasn’t so optimistic. As it turns out, Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian relief organization behind the field hospital, is run by a fundamentalist preacher (Franklin Graham) known for his anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic rhetoric. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed serious concern.”
It should not lost on us that the world says to us, “Give us your hospital care, but leave your Jesus at home!”
For the Christians medical workers that we have been praying for we need to be praying that they will find a way to be on mission for Jesus
https://gothamist.com/news/de-blasio-samaritans-purse-central-park-coronavirus-hospital
I almost feel sorry for Lazarus because he had to leave the glories of heaven to come back to the world of the living.
It is the life after life that truly matters. I almost feel sorry for Lazarus because he had to leave the glories of heaven to come back to the world of the living.
There are people are out there on the internet now that are saying that this virus is going to sit events in motion that will lead to the rise of the antichrist and the second coming of Jesus.
I don't know if that is the case or not. However, I do one valuable piece of information - the Day is nearer now that it ever was.
We can be sure from scripture that no one knows the day or time when the Lord will return. But, we know the scripture teaches we must be ready when he comes.
The one thing that gives hope beyond recovery of a virus beyond the worries and uncertainty of life is that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life!!
Of all the wondrous times to share the Good News of Jesus with someone in your life.
Sleep and death are compared in the Scriptures.