JOHN 11:28-44
INTRODUCTION
A preacher was addressing the people one Sunday,
trying to impress upon them the importance of faith. “All you people of this
congregation,” he cried from the pulpit, “one day you’re going to die. Do you
hear me? All you people of this congregation, one day you’re going to die.” One
little man sitting in the front pew started to laugh, so the preacher asked
him, “What’s so funny?” The man answered, “I don’t belong to this congregation.”
Today we are continuing our topic on
“The Miracle of a Dead Man Walking.” Last Sunday, we ended the message at verse
27 where Martha confirmed her faith in Jesus Christ by saying, “Yes Lord; I
have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into
the world.” The phrase, “I have believed” is a perfect tense, which indicates
something that took place in the past but still going on in the present. In
other words, Martha was saying to Jesus I have not stopped believing that You
are the Christ, the Son of God. What a profound statement. Jesus says that no
one can call Him Lord, unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to that person.
Therefore, there was no doubt in the mind of Martha that Jesus is indeed the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.
I. THE
ENCOUNTER BETWEEN MARY AND JESUS VV. 28-37
After responding to Jesus’ amazing and profound
response to Martha, she runs to the house to call her sister Mary. As Mary gets
up to go, all the professional mourners follow her. Their explanation was that
Mary is going to the graveside of Lazarus to weep. Do you know that there are
some people who take delight in death? They are always looking for a place
where funeral rite is being observed and loved ones are weeping.
Mary comes out, her eyes puffy and
bloodshot. The flood of emotions is still swift and turbid. She falls prostrate
before the Lord like an earthenware vessel dropped to the ground, her heart
shattered, and her tears spilling over His feet. Then she says, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother
would not have died.” There is regret and disappointment in the tone of
Mary’s voice. In effect, she is saying, Lord, it is too late my brother is
already dead. As a mortal being with limited understanding and vision of Jesus
Christ, Mary has concluded that it is over.
Both sisters approach Jesus with the
identical words, “Lord, if You had been her, my brother would not have died.”
But whereas Martha said them to Jesus’ face, Mary cried them at His feet. Maybe
that is why Martha’s statement evokes only a theological truth, while Mary’s
evokes the tears of Jesus. We now come to the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” The tears of the suffering
sisters of Lazarus touch the heart of Jesus and not only that but also in
Lazarus, Jesus has lost a friend He loved. The sympathy with human sorrow is
not less part of Jesus’ nature than the union with divine strength. Twice the
Scriptures blot the tears of our Lord. On a hill overlooking Jerusalem 11:28 ).
How do the tears Jesus shared with
Mary fit with the theological truth He shared with Martha? Who can reconcile
the words, “Jesus wept” with “I am the resurrection and the life?” It
is so strange that one with such absolute power would surrender so quickly to
so small an army as tears. Yet He does. All through this chapter of John’s
Gospel, we have a valuable testimony to the naturalness of Jesus’ human
emotions. How amazed we are at the miracle of His humanity—He loved, He needed
the comfort of a home, He could be glad, He groaned, and He wept. And for a
beautifully tender moment, we are given the privilege to glimpse one of the
most provocative embraces between deity and humanity in all the Scriptures.
In this episode the apostle John shows
us that we have a God who cares. Jesus cares for us to weep with us in our
sorrow. Today we have people who say that strong men do not weep. Jesus was a
man’s man and yet He wept. Weeping does not mean you are weak. Rather, weeping
says you are strong but you have emotions that demonstrate that you care.
II. THE SHOUT OF
COMMAND VV. 38-44
When some of the people were debating whether Jesus
could have prevented Lazarus from dying, He came to the tomb. The Bible says
that the tomb was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. In those days,
tombs were usually caves carved in the limestone rock of a hillside. A tomb was
large enough for people to walk inside. Several bodies would be placed in one
tomb. After burial, a large stone was rolled across the entrance to the tomb.
On our way to Lazarus’ tomb we stumble on
still another question. Jesus approaches the gravesite with the full assurance
that He will raise His friend from the dead. Why then does the sight of the
tomb trouble Him (v. 38)? Maybe the tomb in the garden is too graphic a
reminder of Eden Paradise lost and of the
cold, dark tomb He would have to enter to regain it. Perhaps it reminded Him of
His own impending death and subsequent burial in a tomb.
Whatever may have moved Jesus deeply
at the sight of the tomb, it is remarkable that our plight could trouble His
spirit and that our pain could summon His tears. What a Savior our Lord Jesus
Christ is!
Jesus then gives the command for the
stone to be removed. I have shown you throughout this series that Jesus employs
human instrumentality in His miracles. He could have performed every miracle
without getting humans involved, but as feeble and weak as we are, He involves
us in the performance of His miracles. Therefore, Jesus commands them to remove
the stone. We are not told who removed the stone. Martha raises an objection
against what Jesus is asking the people to do. She says, “Lord by this time
there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Why is it that as
Christians we sometimes want to operate by faith but at times we want to walk
by sight? Martha, who not long ago has presented a profound statement of faith
in Christ, is now operating with human logic.
I believe that Jesus’ answer to Martha
in verse 40 was a gentle rebuke to her. You see how easy it is to be on a
spiritual mountain but in a short time you fall into the valley of doubt. We
see the same thing in the life of Peter in Caesarea Philippi. When Peter had
given the Holy Spirit inspired answer to the identity of Jesus, in a twinkling
of an eye he became a stumbling block to Jesus when Jesus said, that He was
going to Jerusalem
Here Martha is doing a similar thing.
She is becoming a stumbling block to the miracle God is about to perform. Be
careful that you do not become a stumbling block to the work of God. Be careful
that you do not stand in the way of the Lord. Have you ever prayed and as soon
as you get up from your knees, you begin to doubt the prayers you have said?
The flesh and Satan always want to do work in your mind. Therefore, renew your
mind on daily basis.
After Jesus’ gentle rebuke they
removed the stone. I want you to see something in Jesus’ prayer of thanksgiving
to the Father. He prays, “Father, I thank
You that You have heard Me.” Once again the phrase, “have heard” is a
perfect tense indicating that Jesus has already asked the Father to raise
Lazarus from the dead. The Father always hears the Son, because Jesus has come
to do the will of the Father not His own will. Jesus has given us the secret to
answered prayer. The secret to answered prayer is obedience to the will of God.
When you do the will of God, He hears your prayers. When you are obedient to
God, He hears your prayers. That was the difference between Jesus and the
religious leaders of His day.
After Jesus’ prayer on behalf of the
crowd at the gravesite of Lazarus, Jesus gives the shout of command, “Lazarus,
come forth.” He who vanquished death and all its powers caused His voice to
echo through the chamber of death and without any interval between the call and
the life, Lazarus came forth. Someone has said that if Jesus had not called the
name of Lazarus all the dead in that cemetery would have come forth from their
graves. In my sanctified imagination, I could seek the shock, trembling, and the
mouth dropping of the bystanders that were witnesses to this incredible
miracle. Here we see a dead man walking. As Lazarus comes out of the tomb bound
hand and foot, Jesus says, “Loose him and let him go.” Lazarus was raised from
the dead but he still had his dead clothes on, but he needed to be set loose.
There are some Christians who have been raised from spiritual death but are
still bound by their past. Jesus wants to set you loose from those bondages.
Some are bound by childhood abuse. Some are bound by unforgiving spirit. Some
are bound emotionally by things that they have suppressed in their subconscious
mind. Jesus wants to set you loose. Jesus wants to unbind you and give you
freedom from your past. I like what the text says in verse 44. The verse says,
“The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot.” There is no doubt that
Lazarus was dead. The man who came forth from the tomb was no person other than
Lazarus. Here there was no question of identity crisis. There was no
hallucination; there was no day dreaming, and there was no fuzziness of sight.
Jesus said to the people, “Unbind him
and let him go.” Here too, Jesus involves humans in the miracle. Had Jesus
spoken to the stone to roll by itself; had He spoken and Lazarus been set free
from the wrappings, the miracle would have become too impersonal, but when He
got people involved there was no question in their mind that they had witnessed
something that is spectacular.
The lesson of the stupendous miracle
is evident. Christ is the Quickener of the dead, spiritually and physically. He
is able to quicken the souls of those who are dead in their trespasses and
sins. His life-giving miracle of grace is as truly remarkable as His quickening
miracle of power. Then at the appointed time, Jesus will raise all those who
have been redeemed by His precious blood for glory with Himself in the Father’s
home and at the consummation of the world, He will raise all who rejected Him
for the resurrection of judgment at the White Throne.
However, for those of us who have
received Him as our Lord and personal Savior, if He does not return in our
lifetime and we have to go home by the way of a grave, He will still be closer
to us than flesh or world or friends in our last hour. Then we will reecho the
comforting word of the Psalmist, “Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for You are with me.”
The raising of Lazarus is the most
daring and dramatic of all the Savior’s healings. He courageously went into a
den where hostility raged against Him to snatch a friend from the jaws of
death. It was an incredible moment. It revealed that Jesus was who He said He
was—the Resurrection and the Life. But it revealed something else, “the tears
of God.” And who are we to say which is more incredible—a man who raised the
dead or the God who weeps with us. I exhort you to surrender your life to Jesus
Christ today if you have not done that already.
