John 11 - Memorial for Jim Giggy

Introduction

Nancy tells me that she met Jim at Kersey High School 65 years ago. She was asking around about him, and was surprised to find out that he was spending his time in Bible study over the noon hour. She was determined to “get” him, but by June of 1956, on a Youth Group outing to South Park, she knew that the LORD had gotten her instead.

Jim and Nancy fell in love, were engaged in 1957, and married in 1958.

I met Jim only a few weeks ago, after he and Nancy returned to the area and began reconnecting at Bethel, and even in that short time it was clear to me that Jim was one of a kind. He loved you so much, Nancy, but you know that.

You told me he three words to describe him were giving, patient, and loving. But it is clear to everyone who meets you both that a love shines through you that goes beyond the two of you. Nurses and doctors couldn’t help but see it. The love you had for one another was an echo of an even greater love. The joy and hope that you both shared pointed others back to the God who had proven that He was trustworthy.

Turn with me in the PEW BIBLES to John 11:25-26, page <<PAGE #>>. Here’s the source of Jim’s hope:

John 11:25–26 ESV

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus was loved by this family, Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus. When Lazarus fell sick, Jesus came to Bethany four days after his death

Martha ran out to Jesus on the road. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she said. Mary and the Jewish mourners all said something to the same effect. Jesus had a reputation - he could heal the blind, he could heal the sick, if he’d made it four days earlier, he could have healed Lazarus.

In verse 21, “Even now,” Martha said, “I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

Jesus’s response to Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” If it was anyone but Jesus saying it, it could have been taken like a cliche funeral phrase, like the 1st century Jewish equivalent of “He’s in a better place.” The kind of thing we say when everyone is hurting and nobody knows what to say.

Martha’s response, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” For Martha, it was a vague, distant hope that didn’t help her much in her grief.

When death comes close but your idea of God is far away, not much comfort

Vague, wishful-thinking spirituality is like that. But Jesus had more to say.

In John 11:25-26, Jesus confronts wishful-thinking religion and transforms Martha’s entire understanding of life, and death, and the afterlife. Death has become personal for her, and now, in Jesus, life & resurrection will become even more near, more personal, more real for her.

The question for us today is this: When death is no longer distant, but personal, where can we turn for life? Let’s look at Jesus’ words in four sections.

FIRST: Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

There is only one life-giver.

Declaring that in him, all God’s promises in the Old Testament that He would send a Messiah, a Savior, a Christ, to rescue his people from their sin & death, fulfilled in Jesus

- Jesus declaring that He is God, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the source of life and life itself.

“I am the Resurrection” - future, judgment, eternity, afterlife, not a vague notion but a person

APPLY: Faced with the reality of death, a hundred ways we could go - denial, avoidance, obsession, despair. Only this answer: “I AM the resurrection and the life” answers the personal reality of death with an even more personal answer from a personal savior. Only the great I AM, God himself, the creator of all life, could be the resurrection, the source of future hope, when all other hopes have gone.

Jim knew Jesus. He met the Resurrection and the Life about 70 years before he died, and so he could face death without fear. Can you?

SECOND: “Whoever believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives & believes in me will never die” GOSPEL

THIS IS Promise: Hope not for a vague afterlife, but the promise of a future in HIM, a hope as tangible as Jesus

Death jars us with the realization that we are in desperate trouble. We’re all born into a beautiful, but broken, world. Death reminds us of the brokenness. In fact, death is the quintessential and defining aspect of the world’s brokenness. That’s just how God said it would be.

No matter what we tell ourselves, when death comes close enough to touch, we long for there to be another answer, another way. It’s not just a natural part of life. It’s not meant to be this way. But no matter how much we try, our best plans can’t stop the clock.

It’s the tragic outworking of our alienation from LIFE - because God - He is LIFE, and every one of us has walked away from Him.

All our decisions to walk apart from God, every time we’ve chosen the easy way over the right way, every time we’ve glorified ourselves rather than God, every unholy or immoral thought, word, or deed, make up what the Bible calls “sin.” Sin is the reason we are so far from God and can’t seem to get back. We can’t.

We can’t even fix the brokenness in our relationships with each other - how could we fix our alienation from God?

And death is the final curtain that seals our alienation forever.

But Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. The great I AM. And into our brokenness, He breaks through like dawn in a mountain pass, piercing death with life.

Truly God and truly man, both Lord and Messiah, he lived and died as one of us, yet without sin, without alienation from God. He fulfilled what we have all broken, and suffered himself in a substitutionary death in payment for all the sins of those who believe. And just as darkness cannot stop the light from shining, death could not hold the Resurrection and the Life. Jesus rose in victory over death on the third day so that you and I could share in the same resurrection and life that He offered to Martha that day.

BECAUSE:

THIRD: “Whoever lives & believes in me will never die”

For those who live, promise that life after death is not temporary, cannot be lost

There are two tiny words repeated in these two statements: “In me.” Belief and life in Jesus are like climbing into the Ark when the floods of death surround you.

Every day of our lives, the flood waters get just a little higher, and we don’t know how long we’ve got, but Jesus says, “Enter this refuge, and I’ll take you through. Through death, and you’ll have life. And the eternal death of God’s judgment for sin will never be upon you, because I’ve weathered that storm for you.”

Jim entered that refuge - he put his life in the hands of the author of life - and faced death knowing not some vague notion of an afterlife that might or might not be, but the certainty of resurrection in Jesus. Why do I say “certainty?” For that, we turn to the fourth and final part of Jesus’ words here at the end of verse 26:

FOURTH: “Do you believe this?”

When Jesus spoke these words, he invited Martha into the refuge that would take her safely through the storm of death. To enter into life by faith. Her next words begin, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

Emphatic, words of poised confidence. Martha was not taking a leap in the dark - Jesus was right in front of her.

Earlier in their conversation, Martha had stated twice what she knew - she knew God would give Jesus whatever he asked, and she knew her brother would rise at the last day. But that knowledge wasn’t enough. Having a vague commitment to a belief in an afterlife was nothing compared to meeting Life Himself on the road, and the promise of resurrection - eternal reconciliation to God and life in Him. So, faced with death, she ran to Jesus. And now, the question is for you to answer:

CONCLUSION

Jim Giggy passed through death to eternal life on September 21st, because he first met Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, when he said, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

It was his hope that you would hear Jesus’ question and answer: “Do you believe?”

There is no other source of life than Him. And this is no idle speculation. You can search the world and all the religions and philosophies of the world, and you will find no other name under heaven whereby people are rescued from sin and death by God Himself in love.

There’s a foretaste of our own Resurrection a few verses after today’s text. Jesus calls to Lazarus, and he comes forth from the tomb. But when Jesus shows up at a funeral, he’s there to wake more than the one in the tomb. He calls to you, today, as he called to Martha. “I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe?”

Jesus goes to funerals to wake the dead.

To call you back to Him. To call you back to life. No matter how far you’ve run, no matter how far you are from God, if you hear His voice today, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life,” His words are for you. Come out, he says, and live.

John 11:25–26 ESV

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”