Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: John 11:38-44

N:

Welcome

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship!

I’m senior pastor Bill Connors, and it is my humble honor and privilege to get to shepherd this wonderful body of believers here at Eastern Hills.

Thank you to those of you who are here in the room this morning, and thank you to those who are joining us online.

I also want to say thanks our praise band and children’s ministry for helping us to give thanks to the Lord for our country this morning.

Announcements

It is certainly fitting and proper to celebrate the fact that God has created the United States of America and to thank Him for providing us with the blessing of getting to live and worship as her citizens.

And tonight, we will get to join together for the great American pastime of fun, food, family, and fellowship.

Independence Day celebration tonight at 5pm.

We likely will wrap things up a little before dark, so we won’t be doing any lighted fireworks here on the church parking lot (we’ll have pop-its and sparklers for everyone, but I’m not too sure how well they’ll sparkle in the dusk).

Plan to come and celebrate the blessed freedom that we have in the United States of America with our church family.

Today is the first Sunday that we are taking up our annual missions offering for World Hunger/Disaster Relief.

Our goal for this year’s World Hunger/Disaster Relief Offering is $5,700, taking through July.

Please ask the Lord how He would have you give, and respond in obedience to His prompting.

Opening

We are nearing the end of our series called “Signs,” during which we have looked at the miraculous signs that Jesus performed and that John recorded in his Gospel.

Each of these signs point to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah and that Jesus is God, and that is the perspective we’ve sought to take on each one.

If you’d like to go back and get caught up on the series, you can do that on our website, our YouTube channel, or our Facebook page.

This morning, we are looking at the raising of Lazarus in John 11.

Let’s open our Bibles or Bible apps together, and stand in honor of the Word of God as we look at this miraculous sign together:

PRAYER (Cornerstone Community Church in Rio Rancho, Pastor Floyd Silva, currently raising funds for a building)

John 11 is one of my favorite chapters in Scripture.

In a way, it is the pre-crucifixion/resurrection climax of John’s Gospel, because it showcases both an incredible work that Jesus performed and the change of direction of John’s telling of the life of Jesus, shifting clearly toward the cross.

Raising Lazarus from the dead is the last and greatest of the miraculous signs recorded by John.

In this series, we are saying that Jesus performed one greater sign—His own resurrection—but for John’s purpose in this book, that was the final declaration of who Jesus is, not a miraculous sign that Jesus performed.

We’re going to basically look at this entire chapter this morning, and in it, we will see 5 characteristics of Jesus: His knowledge, His confidence, His identity, His pain, and His power.

1: The knowledge of Jesus

What a fascinating thing it would be to know everything, all at the same time.

Who am I kidding?

For us, it would be fascinating to know the total working of just one future sequence of events ahead of time.

I’d even like to know the total working of just one PAST sequence of events!

One aspect of God’s character is His omniscience: At all times He knows all things, and all things about all things.

Jesus is God in the flesh.

He is the Second Person of the Trinity, totally God, but also totally human.

As He is God, He has a full understanding and knowledge of everything: both things that are, and things that will be.

We catch a glimpse of this in the first part of John 11:

The act of Mary in anointing Jesus with perfume and wiping His feet with her hair was a well-known occurrence by the time John wrote his Gospel, and John uses that event’s notoriety to give us a reference point to understand who he is writing about.

Lazarus was the brother of this Mary, who along with their sister Martha, lived in Bethany just east of the Mount of Olives.

Jesus was up in the region of the Galilee at this point, following His run-in with the religious leaders of the Jews at the Festival of Shelters after what we looked at last week in John 9.

A messenger brings notification from the sisters to Jesus of His friend Lazarus’ illness, and it was a grave illness indeed.

First, it was grave because of Lazarus’ life.

Second, it was grave for the sisters because Lazarus was likely their primary means of support in a culture that generally looked down on women making money.

And then, third the sisters would have believed that it was grave for Jesus, because they knew that Jesus loved Lazarus.

They even said in the summons, “the one you love is sick.”

Just a little side note on that statement.

Notice that the sisters didn’t say, “the one who loves you is sick,” but “the one you love is sick.”

In his 2004 book Scandalous: The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus,

“Those who draw really close to Jesus think of themselves first and foremost as those loved by Him, rather than those who profess their love for Him.”

— D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus

What a great shift in perspective that is…

These sisters knew how much Jesus loved Lazarus, and so they sent for Him to come and rescue their brother from this serious illness.

But something happens that might be surprising to us.

Jesus doesn’t just drop everything and head over there.

Instead, He said that this sickness will not end in death, and even though He loved Lazarus and his sisters, which John is making completely clear in this first 6 verses, Jesus waited, saying that this illness would ultimately show His glory.

There’s a double meaning to this statement of Jesus.

First, He will be glorified when He displays the power of God in raising Lazarus.

This is the obvious first meaning.

But then, the raising of Lazarus sets in motion the final push of the Pharisees to kill Jesus, thus bringing about His crucifixion, thus His resurrection, and thus His ultimate glory, which we will look at next week.

They were going to kill Lazarus as well, because it was his resurrection that was bringing so many of the Jews to faith:

None of this was a surprise to Jesus.

He knew that He was going to raise Lazarus from the grave.

He knew that He would come under increased pressure from the religious leaders, and that this turn in the path would take Him right to the cross.

Jesus knew exactly how this was going to go, and He knew exactly what He needed to do so that He would be glorified in it.

And what He needed to do was to wait for two more days before heading to Bethany.

I’ll explain exactly why in a minute.

Jesus knows everything about everything.

We simply don’t.

And since that’s the case, we can trust His knowledge about how our lives should be lived.

He knows what is best, and what needs to happen to bring Him the maximum amount of glory, which is why we exist.

Unfortunately, not everyone in this narrative in Scripture had the same assurance of Jesus’ comprehensive knowledge.

But this doesn’t shake Jesus’ resolve to do what He knows is best.

2: The confidence of Jesus

Jesus simply will not be shaken.

He would never doubt, never fear, never fail to do the will of God.

The waiting had a reason, but as we continue to read this chapter, we find that after 2 days it was time for Jesus to head back to Bethany and reveal His glory through the death of Lazarus.

The disciples aren’t particularly fond of this plan:

Jesus shows His confidence here in two ways: 1) He’s not afraid to go back to Judea, even though in John 10:31-39, the Jews wanted to kill Him; and 2) He is absolutely sure of what is going to happen when He arrives at Lazarus’ tomb.

In John 10:31, it actually says that the Jews had picked up rocks to stone Jesus.

Obviously, this would have been kind of a dicey situation for His disciples as well.

He is, after all, their teacher.

So the disciples point out that going back south to the area around Jerusalem might not be the best idea if you’re wanting to stay alive.

But Jesus will not listen to their arguments.

Instead, He uses the contrast of walking by day and walking by night to explain that He is not afraid, and they don’t need to be afraid either.

This is because Jesus knows and has complete confidence in the plan that God has for Him.

He will not stop any sooner than He is supposed to stop.

He is actually hearkening His disciples back to what we saw last week in John 9: that Jesus is the light of the world while He is in the world, even using a very similar picture with day and night.

So Jesus is not afraid.

He’s not going to be stopped before He has completed what He came to do.

The disciples are being challenged to trust Him with their lives (which Thomas says in verse 16 that they are likely to lose if they go to Bethany, so I’m thinking Thomas missed what Jesus was saying here, even if he shows great gumption.)

I’ve been listening to and reading The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, and in the second chapter of the book was a block that cut me to the heart regarding how much I trust myself vs. how much I trust Jesus:

“We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety.

This is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends.

But we need have no such fears.

Our Lord came not to destroy but to save.

Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.”

—A.

W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God