John: The Resurrection
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Intro
Intro
Kids: Anastasia is a great name. Have you heard it before? Do you know anybody called Anastasia?
Our baby is almost due, do you think we should call it Anastasia if it’s a girl?
Do you know what Anastasia means?
It’s almost a direct rip-off a Greek word: ἀνάστασις (anastasis), it’s a word found in our passage today.
The word means: Resurrection.
There you go, you learned a Greek word today!
In our passage today, Jesus uses this word about himself, he says “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jn 11:25.
Can someone tell me what Resurrection is?
Jesus is the Anastasis - he is the Resurrection - and he will resurrect all his people from the dead! Who are Jesus people? He tells us how we can be Jesus followers:
“The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." Jn 11:25–26.
This is the greatest news!
Recap:
John wrote this book to help us believe in Jesus and have life in his name
He has shown us time and time again how Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
We’re entering the high point of the narrative; this passage marks the climax of Jesus ministry which will feed into the triumphant entry.
The remainder of the book will focus in on the last week of Jesus ministry, with a lot of teaching.
We’re going to press pause on John after next week and return to it next year.
Mixed in this passage are the themes of God’s timing, God’s Glory and Believing in Jesus.
4 important announcements! (Kids, see if you can catch each one!)
#1 (v1-16)
#1 (v1-16)
Setting the scene: Lazarus, Martha & Mary, friends of Jesus.
Jesus gets word of His friends illness (after he fled the area from death threats)
Jesus says something amazing - the first important announcement!
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
There was more going on here than just the natural progression of life - Jesus saw a purpose of the sickness that while is would lead to death, it would not end in death.
Lazarus trial would be to glorify God and the Son of God.
On that basis we are told something surprising:
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,
Because Jesus loved Lazarus he stayed 2 days longer! What?
We think it terms of the crises and critical time frames, our immediate pressing need overwhelms us! Not Jesus.
Jesus’ timing, and God's timing are not ours, and you can see this once again comint to the fore in the way that the disciples respond in the next little bit.
Jesus says it’s time to go back, but the Disciples aren’t so sure! Jesus speaks to them of timing.
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
We need to understand something here… We have a very forensic view of time, a second based on vibration frequency of caesium atoms. That means when days get longer or shorter in summer or winter it doesn’t change the length of an hour. As for these guys back in the day, their hour was based on a 12th of the time between sunrise and sunset. So there was always 12 hours of daylight.
Jesus makes this comment to highlight the fact that there is time allotted for the tasks at hand. If you want to walk around in a time before streetlights and battery powered torches, you had to do it during the day when you could see.
It seemed strange that Jesus was heading back into the “hornet’s nest” at this time but Jesus is saying that he has to do it now, because it is the proper time.
Explaining further Jesus says that Lazarus has fallen asleep so they had to go “wake” him.
This was misunderstood as a literal sleep, and they said essentially “ah good, if he’s just sleeping that’s a good sign that he’s probably on the mend, we don’t need to go to Judea after all!”
The “sleep” was actually death - Jesus says he was glad that he wasn’t there, but why?
So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Jesus is “glad” that he was not there to heal his friend - because it would help the disciples believe!
I’m glad Jesus wasn’t there so that this history would be recorded down to help us believe today!
In the end all death will glorify God. How will your death glorify God?
A martyrs death for the proclamation of the Gospel?
A life expended in devotion and love, spent with all your strength for the Lord?
Both to rise again on the last day as grateful recipients of God’s grace?
Or as one who is justly judged for a life wasted and lived in rebellion?
#2 (v17-27)
#2 (v17-27)
Jesus Turns up 4 days after death - no question of his deadness
Mourning crowd had gathered
Martha came out to meet Jesus
You’re late! “If you were here you could have healed him...
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
...but I still believe you’ve got God’s blessing.”
“Your Bro will rise again”
Martha misunderstands it as a reference to the future resurrection.
Jesus drive her to consider how that resurrection would take place. It is not some far off thing, but the power of reurrection was standing right infront of her!
This is the second important announcement:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Wonderful revelation! Jesus is the one through whom the resurrection shall take place!
Source of Life! (Just like the creation!)
The astonishing confession:
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Do you believe this? Here today? Perhaps you see this as a nice story, but it is more than that - it is a call from God fro you to take up faith in Jesus Christ in 2022.
If you do, though you die, you shall live!
#3 (v28-37)
#3 (v28-37)
Martha tells Marry Jesus has arrived and want to see her,
Mary rushes out to see Jesus, the mourners follow thinking she’s off to the grave.
Once again Mary remarks that Jesus seems to be late.
Much crying and emotion. When Jesus sees all this, he too responds in the Third important announcement:
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
Moved and troubled. Sadness and indignation/irritation.
What does this mean? Speculation somewhat, but the most natural reading is that Jesus was saddened by the effect of death on those around him and kind of frustrated or agitated about sin & death.
It goes on, it is expressed outwardly:
Jesus wept.
Burst into tears - Jesus not sentimental - we live in an age with of rivers of sentimentality - so do lay that on Christ. But, there is a clear emotion here,
Jesus wept, despite knowing the outcome, and the power that he had, he still mourned the state of humanity and the power of death in the loss of his friend.
A third comment on the “lateness” of Jesus
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
We bemoan the losses around us,
couldn't God have healed so-and-so?
couldn’t God have stopped this disaster?
overthrown that tyrant?
God’s time frame is not ours, but nevertheless he sympathies with us, he know our frame, walks with us in our suffering for a better future - an future where God’s glory is revealed!
#4 (v38-44)
#4 (v38-44)
Jesus is still deeply moved, asks them to take away the stone.
They protest, the body has probably started to decompose
Jesus presses for Mary to have faith, to beleive so that she would see the glory of God!
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
No blind faith, they knew the power of Jesus.
They comply and then Jesus takes this moment to pray!
But this is our forth important announcement
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
Jesus had confidence that the Father heard his prayer. We may take this for granted, but it is important for us to know!
Jesus continues praying, showing that this prayer out loud was for the benefit of those listening - so that they may believe:
I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
This isn’t Jesus working on his own-some, he is working in concert with the Father. This prayer was to help them believe the he was the messiah sent by God.
This leads into what Jesus does next (I love the way the ESV puts it)...
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.”
Wow! “The dead man came out”
We are dead, spiritually, and one day physically. We need a resurrecting power! It comes through Jesus...
We can have confidence in Jesus promise of resurrection, not only because he has proved he can do it, but because the Father hears him! He has the Father’s ear, and so his promises can be delivered.
We look forward to the day that Jesus will call us forth from our graves and say “unbind her and let her go”
Yet even now we are raised from the Dead in Jesus, something symbolized in our baptism and wonderfully put by Paul:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Why didn’t he get a look-in in the other Gospels? This has led some to think that because Lazarus was living, walking talking proof of Jesus power to raise people from the dead and thus a target for assassination, and because the Gospel of John might have been written after the other Gospels, that the earlier Gospels left out Lazarus name to “keep the heat off” while he was still alive, but by the time John wrote, Lazarus had dies or the heat had come off.
So What?
So What?
God’s timing is for God’s Glory, even if it means great pain.
Jesus is the source of life and resurrection
Jesus is a real person, who has feeling, who can sympathize with us, who cares and acts to rescue.
Jesus can raise us because he has the Father’s ear - even now we are spiritually raised to the right hand of God!
References:
Hendrickson’s commentary on John