Raising Lazarus

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

In his book, The Root of the Righteous, A.W. Tozer writes these challenging words:

So wide is the gulf that separates theory from practice in the church that an inquiring stranger who chances upon both would scarcely dream that there was any relation between them. An intelligent observer of our human scene who heard the Sunday morning sermon and later watched the Sunday afternoon conduct of those who had heard it would conclude that he had been examining two distinct and contrary religions...

He continues...

It appears that too many Christians want to enjoy the thrill of feeling right but are not willing to endure the inconvenience of being right.

Tension

I think there is a lot of truth in what Tozer writes. I certainly know that there have been times in my life when my Sunday afternoon conduct was not changed at all because of what I heard from God’s Word on Sunday morning and I’m pretty sure you have been guilty of that, too, from time to time. Today, we’re going to see that believing in Jesus must be more than just an intellectual exercise. Genuine belief always is reflected in how we live our lives.

Truth

Today we will conclude our current sermon series - Seven Signs. For the last seven weeks we’ve been studying the seven signs that Jesus performed that John included in his gospel account. Each of those seven signs reveal something important about the identity, mission and message of Jesus. Even though Jesus performed many other signs during his earthly ministry, John included these seven in his gospel account for a specific purpose:

John 20:30–31 ESV

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Individually, each of the seven signs would be adequate to accomplish that purpose. As a whole, they leave no doubt that Jesus is who He said He was - the Son of God - and that real life is found only by believing in Him.

The final sign is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The account of that sign is the longest and most detailed of any of the seven signs and it takes up all 57 verses of John chapter 11. So I’m not going to read the entire account this morning, but instead we’ll read certain key verses as I go through the message this morning. So you’ll want to open your Bibles to John chapter 11 and be prepared to follow along as we get to those passages.

Before we do that, let me share the main idea we’ll be developing today:

This seventh sign reveals Jesus’ power over death and His ability to give life.

I would suggest that this seventh and final sign reveals that which is really the culmination of everything Jesus has revealed about Himself in the first six signs.

All the things we’ve learned about Jesus in the first six signs are essentially just different aspects of His ability to defeat death and give life. His sovereign power over creation, distance, time, religion, sin, need, fear and blindness are all necessary elements in His power over death and His ability to give life – both physical and spiritual.

This sign is also more personal than the others for Jesus. He is good friends with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. When Lazarus becomes ill, Mary and Martha send word to Jesus. Jesus’ response to their message is quite surprising:

John 11:4–6 ESV

But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Like we saw last week with the healing of the man born blind, the purpose of this miracle goes beyond just the healing that takes place. God is going to use this sign to bring glory to Himself and to His Son, Jesus. Jesus has been ministering on the other side of the Jordan River because the Jewish leaders are looking to arrest Him and have Him killed. And He intentionally remains there for two more days before heading to Bethany, which is only a few miles from Jerusalem, where those leaders are waiting for a chance to arrest Him.

After the two days are up, Jesus leaves for Bethany and He reveals why He is going to perform this last sign:

John 11:11–15 ESV

After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Jesus is going to perform this sign for the same reason that He performed the first six - so that those who witness it would believe in Him. The word “believe” is central throughout this chapter. This is the first of nine times that it appears.

Although we would assume that the central character, other than Jesus, in this account is Lazarus, I would suggest that it is actually Martha. In fact, other than coming out of the grave when Jesus commands him to do so, we don’t really get any insight at all into what Lazarus is thinking here. Personally I think he might have been kind of annoyed at this entire event. After all, he is called back from being in the presence of God in heaven to live for a number of years back on earth before he gets to return there again.

So I’m mainly going to focus on Martha’s role and her response to what Jesus does.

Jesus finally arrives in Bethany and we are given this important piece of information:

John 11:17 ESV

Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.

The Jews believed that the soul of the dead person hung around for three days after death, and that after three days the body would be so decomposed that the face was no longer recognizable. So it certainly seems that at least one reason Jesus delays coming to Bethany until Lazarus had been dead four days is to make it clear that the miracle He performs is something only God can do.

Let’s pick up the account in verse 20:

John 11:20–22 ESV

So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha 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.”

We won’t have time to read it, but it’s interesting that when Jesus goes to Mary, she says exactly the same thing that Martha says here. Both of them believed that if Jesus had come earlier, He could have healed Lazarus. So they both believed in Jesus, but we see here that their faith was limited. They believed that Jesus could have healed their brother before he died, but they didn’t even imagine that it was possible that Jesus could raise him from the dead.

Martha, however, does leave the door open a bit, indicating that she believes God will give Jesus whatever He asks.

Verses 23-27 are really the heart of this account:

John 11:23–27 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 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. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

At this point, Martha has what I would call an intellectual faith. I want to call your attention to the verb “know” in verse 23. The underlying Greek word there means to know something intellectually, to have what we might call “head knowledge”. Her theology here is based on an accurate understanding of the concept of resurrection that could have been known from the Scriptures that were available at that time – what we would refer to as the Old Testament. She understood that there would be a time in the future when the Messiah would come and at that time there would be a physical resurrection from the dead.

But Jesus reveals to Martha that the Messiah is standing in front of her right now and that He has the ability to give eternal life to those who believe in Him right then. He is the resurrection and the life right at that very moment. There was no need to wait until a person dies or until the Messiah returns in order to experience eternal life since that is a quality of life as well as a quantity of life.

Jesus then proceeds to asks Martha the same question that He is posing to all of us today: “Do you believe this?” And Martha responds positively and indicates that she believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. But I think that her faith is still limited to an intellectual belief here. So Jesus is going to give her a chance to demonstrate that her faith is genuine.

Let’s jump ahead to verse 38:

John 11:38–40 ESV

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

Just as an aside, this is one of those places where you just can’t beat the KJV which translates the end of verse 39 like this:

John 11:39 KJV 1900

Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

Jesus is now asking Martha to demonstrate that her faith is real by removing the stone. And Martha is reluctant to do that because she still doesn’t seem to believe that it is possible for Jesus to raise her brother from the dead. But Jesus gently reminds her of what He had said earlier. If she is willing to believe, then she will get to see the glory of God. And based on her response to what Jesus says to her, it appears that her faith has finally become more than just intellectual. Let’s read what occurs next:

John 11:41–44 ESV

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Here we see Jesus restore physical life to a dead man. That is clearly something that only God can do, so with this sign Jesus once again proves that He is God in the flesh. But just as each of the physical signs we have studied represents a deeper spiritual truth, this sign also reveals that only Jesus can give life to those who are spiritually dead.

There are obviously a number of parallels here to what will happen to Jesus in only a matter of days. Jesus would die and be placed into a tomb which was covered by a stone. And His Heavenly Father would raise Him from the dead and roll away the stone that covered the tomb. But in this case it would not be so that Jesus could get out, but rather so that His disciples could get in and witness the fact that He had risen from the dead. And no one would need to unbind Him because His resurrected body would merely leave His burial clothes, which would remain behind undisturbed.

And it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that would make it possible for all who would have genuine faith in Him to have not just physical life, but also real spiritual life. That is why we have said today that...

This seventh sign reveals Jesus’ power over death and His ability to give life.

Application

Let’s use our remaining time to make this really practical and talk about four...

IMPLICATIONS FOR ME

What I believe is more important than what I feel

We live in a culture that is focused on feelings. Just for the fun of it, this week I Googled “How to get in touch with my feelings” and got over 400 million hits. And if that’s not enough evidence then just post some Biblical principle on your social media that conflicts with how most people feel about that subject and see how many people will immediately take offense.

Unfortunately that often spills over into religion and our relationship with God. Many people are looking for some kind of experience where they can feel the presence of God.

But what we see here is that Jesus is much more interested in what we believe than what we feel. Certainly Mary and Martha and their friends were grieving over the death of Lazarus. Even Jesus feels for His friends and weeps. But even though performing this sign did help all those people feel better, that was not His main purpose. As Jesus makes clear right up front, the purpose of this sign is so that those present would believe in Him and receive eternal life.

That doesn’t mean that we might not have some emotional worship experiences or that we might not sense the presence of Jesus in our lives at times. What it does mean, however, is that our faith must be rooted in the belief about who Jesus is and our trust in Him alone and not how we feel.

Genuine belief is always accompanied by action

In every single one of the signs we have looked at for the last seven weeks, those who believed in Jesus demonstrated their belief by taking some action. For Martha and the others present at the grave of Lazarus, it was rolling away the stone and unwrapping what they thought was nothing more than a decaying corpse. For Lazarus, it was walking out of the tomb when Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out”.

You can say you believe Jesus all you want, but if that belief is genuine, it will always be demonstrated by what you do. As James reminds us:

James 2:17 ESV

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

There are some of you joining us this morning, who may think that you believe in Jesus, but what action have you taken that demonstrates that belief? Have you told someone else about your faith? Have you been baptized? Has your life changed in some way because of your belief? Have you joined and become active in a local church? Are you serving others in the name of Jesus?

Eternal life is both a quantity and quality of life

We touched briefly on this earlier. Martha did believe in a future resurrection, but she didn’t really believe Jesus could do anything about her situation right there and then. But it is important to note that Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life”, not “I will be the resurrection and the life”.

That means that eternal life begins at the very moment we believe in Jesus in the way we have just been talking about. And that eternal life continues when we die physically, which is why Jesus claims here that everyone who lives and believes in Him will never die. So it is not only a quantity of life, meaning that we will live forever, but it is also a quality of life that we have right here on this earth.

That means that our belief in Jesus should impact the way we live our lives right here and now. In a sense this life here on earth is a “dress rehearsal” for the way we’re going to be living for eternity.

Jesus’ glory is more important that my relief from trials

Raising Lazarus to life obviously relieved Mary and Martha’s sorrow. As I mentioned earlier I’m not so sure how Lazarus felt about that. But that was not Jesus’ primary purpose here. In fact, He allows Mary and Martha to experience an extra four days of grief and sorrow because His primary purpose, as He told His disciples right up front, was to do something that would reveal His glory. And He reminds Martha of that again to convince her to go ahead and roll away the stone.

As we’ve seen throughout this series, Jesus is more than capable of giving you relief from all of your trials - whether they are physical, emotional, or spiritual. But often He chooses not to do that because He wants to use that trial to ultimately demonstrate His glory. Sometimes that might involve a miraculous healing. But more often, it takes the form of bringing about a transformation in your life that can only be explained by His intervention. And when that happens, Jesus gets the glory He deserves.

Action

We’ve seen this morning that...

This seventh sign reveals Jesus’ power over death and His ability to give life.

We’ve spent seven weeks now looking at these signs of Jesus and how they reveal that He is the Christ, the Son of God. But the purpose of these signs is not just for us to gather some more intellectual knowledge about Jesus. To put it in the words of A.W. Tozer that we looked at as we began this message, God wants us all to bridge the gap between theory and practice so that those who watch our conduct won’t conclude that there is no connection between the Sunday sermon and the way we live our lives the rest of the week.

I’m convinced that every single one of us, and I’m including myself, needs to take some concrete action or make some observable change in the way we’re living our lives as a result of what we’ve learned. I can’t possibly list all the possibilities, but what I can do is to close with a few questions for you to prayerfully consider as you ask God how He wants you to apply these messages:

Do I need to genuinely believe in Jesus for the first time and place my trust in Him alone?

Do I need to demonstrate my belief by being baptized, joining TFC or taking some other action?

Is there some area of my life where I need to quit living based on my feelings and be obedient to Jesus?

If I’m currently going through a trial in my life, how can I use that to bring glory to Jesus?

The good news is that whatever God lays on your heart, you don’t have to try and do that on your own. One of the reason that Jesus established His church was so that we have others who will walk alongside of us as we grow in our relationship with Him. That’s why every week at the end of the message, we let you know how you can contact us so that we can help you take your next steps in that relationship.

But I can’t remember the last time anyone actually did that. I suppose there are several different reasons why that might be the case:

Maybe Ryan and I have explained everything so well in the sermon that there just isn’t any reason you would need help. I can assure you that neither of us are that good.

Maybe you’re so smart and have everything figured out and so you just don’t need anyone to help you. If that’s the case, you are way smarter than I am because after decades of being a disciple of Jesus I still need help.

Maybe you won’t ask for help because of pride. You’re afraid to let anyone know you have questions or need help. Being self-sufficient might be a desirable character trait according to our culture, but in the body of Christ asking for help should be the norm. The old cliche that the only dumb question is the one that is not asked is actually quite true.

Maybe Ryan and I are just too scary. I think we’re both pretty nice guys, but our other Elders, Steve and Joel, are far less intimidating and they’ll be happy to help.