Today
I want to speak to you about Lazarus, and the gist of the story is, Lazarus
died and Jesus brought him back, but I’ll do more than that.
You’re
going to love this miracle. It is the
crown jewel of all the miracles that Jesus ever did. This one is the tops, and I want you, as you listen to this
story, I want you to think, “Has there anything that died in my life?” Has anything died in your life? Maybe you have a relationship that has
died. Maybe your health died over the
past few weeks or this year. Maybe your
bank account has gone south. Maybe your
job has fizzled out. With Jesus, there
is hope for a new beginning, and that’s the story of Lazarus, right? You may say, “I’ve experienced a lot this
week. You don’t know what I’ve been
through. This happened to me and that
happened...” With Jesus there is always
a new beginning. Don’t forget
that. That’s the story of Lazarus.
Let’s
go to John now, chapter 11, and let’s start with verse 1, because this is an
exciting story. It says, ”Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the
village of Mary and his sister Martha, and the sisters sent word to Jesus, and
they said, ‘Lord, the one You love is sick.’” And what did they expect?
They didn’t ask, but they expected.
As soon as Jesus hears that the one that He loves is sick[snap], He’s going
to go. He’s going to come. He’s going to heal him before he gets too
bad, and Lazarus and his sisters were members of an elite family. A lot of the leaders of Jerusalem were
members of this particular family, and Lazarus was one of the most faithful
disciples of Jesus even though he was not listed among the 12. Jesus loved him and he was sick. Now think about that. Saints get sick, and Jesus loves sick
saints. How many of us are sick? All have sinned. Jesus loves us all, sick or healthy. He loves us. That’s the
message of this. Jesus loves sick
saints. Well Lazarus was dying. He was sicker than sick.
I remember back in 1996, when my father who lived here in
Collegedale got sick. He was 90 years
old. He came down with cancer, and we
all came close to his side, and we prayed for daddy, and I remember holding his
hand. His hand was always warmer than
my hand, and I would hold his hand, and I just prayed, “Lord, if some of my
strength could just come into my daddy’s life, You know, maybe he could be
healed from this,” and he just got weaker and weaker. On the day he died we were there with the church hymnal. We were singing hymns, and he died to the
sound of his family, singing. Songs of
hope. That’s how it was with your
family.
My dad died, and I can visualize Mary and Martha. I kind of know what they were going through,
and I can
picture the runner that they asked to go.
“Would you go and tell Jesus, and hurry because he’s really sick. Go.
Run. It’s 20 miles. You’ve got to go from Bethany to where Jesus
is. You can do it, and tell Him, ‘The
one you love is sick.’, and that’s all you have to tell Him and He’ll know what
to do. He’ll come[snap] just like
that.” And so this runner headed off
with the message, the precious message, and he ran as fast as he--he ran
through crowds, he ran through villages, and finally he found Jesus, and breathlessly
he broke the news, and what did Jesus do?
Look at verse 4 now. “And 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.’” Verse 5. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus, and yet when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was
two more days.”
Why
does God wait so long to answer our urgent problems? We have emergencies, as human beings, and God just waits. He--I just don’t understand, sometimes, why
God doesn’t [snap] come when we want Him to come. We’re back there in Bethany praying, and Jesus is out there doing
who knows what. He doesn’t come. You pray over and over and nothing
happens. Mary and Martha waited. Their brother got worse and worse. They waited some more, and I think they
said, “Lazarus, just hold on. If you
hold on, Jesus, He’ll be here any minute.
He’s coming. I know He’s
coming. He would not not come.” But Lazarus finally lost consciousness, and
finally his battle was over and he died, and I can just picture Mary and Martha
saying, “Why does this happen? Jesus
heals whole town-loads of people and He can’t even come here and heal the one
that He loves! He could have saved our
brother. He was only 20 miles
away. We know where He is. He’s had the message and He didn’t
come.”
So
I can see them still with hope. You
see, they have to prepare the body, and so while they do that they do it
slow. Slow preparation. Wrapping the wrappings around slow. “Maybe Jesus’ll come, because we remember,
we remember this girl, Jairus’ daughter.
She died and Jesus brought her back to life and He could do that with
Lazarus,” so they wrapped him slowly, and I can see them dragging their feet as
the funeral procession makes its way to the tomb, and “Any minute, Jesus is
going to come. I know He’ll come. He wouldn’t not come,” and they remembered that time when Jesus
interrupted a funeral procession.
Remember that? The widow’s son
had died and Jesus raised him back to life, there in Luke, verse 7, and He
might do it again. He could do
that. All the way to the cemetery they
kept watching for Jesus to arrive.
But Jesus didn’t even bother to
come to the funeral or the burial.
Neither one. He did not show up. In the hour of their greatest pain, Jesus
was absent. Why!? Why would Jesus do that?
Actually,
let me tell you something. Jesus does
not exist to minister to our perceived needs.
He has a higher plan. He knows
what’s best for us, and the older I get, the more I think that I just need to
pray, “Lord, may Your will be done in my life.
It’s better than my will, and may I fit in with Your will.” That’s the higher prayer. His purposes are high and our understanding
can’t fathom them very often.
Today, We want a God that
smoothes out all the ripples in our road.
We want a God who jumps when we pray.
We also want a pastor that jumps when we call on the phone. It pains us to wait on God. We get discouraged.
Jesus
deliberately waited until the fourth day before He arrived, and His purpose in
the delay was to glorify God. That’s
His purpose. You see, God is never late
to any appointment. We live in a world
called time. God does not live in a
world called time. He’s never
late. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had a grand purpose in the death of
Lazarus. Jesus knew the instant that
Lazarus died. Jesus knew it. Jesus later said in verse 15, “I’m glad I was not there.”
He didn’t want to be there.
Look
at John 11:11. “After He had said this, He went on to tell them, ‘Our friend
Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’",
and I will tell you that death for the Christian is always a temporary
sleep. It’s a nap. That’s all it is, for the Christian.
Finally
Jesus said to His disciples, “Let’s go.”, and you know what the disciples tried
to do? To convince Him not to go. “It’s already too late. Don’t go.
He’s already dead. He’s died,
and besides that, remember, those people in Jerusalem, just on the other side
of Bethany is the Mount of Olives and over the Mount of Olives, You are a
wanted Man. Your picture, Your poster
is there. You’re among the most wanted
Man of all Palestine. There’s a price
over Your head. They’re going to kill
You. The Jews are going to get
You. Don’t go.”, and remember doubting
Thomas? We don’t think too much of him,
do we? Look at what doubting Thomas
says. Look at verse 16. “Then Thomas (called
Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die
with Him.’" “We’ll just
all die. It’s ok. Jesus is going to be killed. Let’s all go.” He was a brave man, wasn’t he?
He wasn’t just a doubter.
Now
obviously, Lazarus had died four days earlier which means that he died before
Jesus got the request to come, so Jesus’ delay in no way was responsible for
Lazarus’ death, and you know, in Palestine, most of the people believed that
after the third day, the soul left the body, and this was the fourth day. They believed that serious decay sets in on
day number 3 and the soul hovers around the body, they believed, until that
time, and then it leaves. Now, of
course, we don’t believe that. What is
a soul? I’m looking at several hundred
of them right now. There’s one right
there. We are souls. A soul is you, but anyway, after the fourth
day, there wouldn’t be one chance in a zillion zillions that Lazarus could be
alive. He was as dead as a door nail.
And
Martha heard that Jesus was in town on the fourth day, and so she went running
out of town to find Jesus. She finally
found Him and in verse 21, "’Lord,’ Martha said to
Jesus, ‘if You would have been here, my brother would not have died, but I know
that even now God will give You whatever you ask.’" She had
faith. Verse 23, “Jesus said to her,
‘Your brother will rise again.’”, and Martha
was a Seventh-day Adventist, and in verse 24 she states it correctly. She says, in verse 24, "I know he will
rise again,” when? “In the resurrection
at,” when? “At the last day.” She was a good Seventh-day
Adventist. She had it right. Verse 25.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the
Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he
dies’”. And Desire of Ages says,
“In Christ there is life, original, un-borrowed, and
un-derived.” He is the Creator
God, and when you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got life.
Well,
Martha ran back home and told Mary.
Martha had to get back to her dusting and her cooking, and in verse
32, “When Mary
reached the place where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet and she
said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’" You know, Mary spends an awful lot of
time at Jesus’ feet, doesn’t she? She
washes them with her tears. She dries
them with her hair. Here she is again,
at His feet, with the tears dripping on His toes.
Jesus,
it says, was “troubled”, and then here comes the shortest verse in the
Bible. What did Jesus do? He wept.
“Jesus Wept.” The shortest verse, but the longest, I think, in spiritual
meaning. Jesus loved Lazarus. Jesus suffered every pang of hurt that
Lazarus suffered. Every disappointment
that Mary and Martha suffered, He suffered, and here He is, weeping, but I want
to tell you, He is not weeping for Lazarus.
Jesus is not weeping for him.
Remember, Lazarus is going to be alive in 20 minutes, and Jesus knows
that. He’s not weeping for him. Who is He weeping for? He sees every person that ever died from the
first one to the last. He sees you as
you suffer. The death that Adam and
Eve’s sin brought on to the world causes pain in the heart of the Creator.
Verse
38. “Jesus,
once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid
across the entrance. Jesus said, ‘Take
ye away the stone’”. That’s significant.
You
know, Lazarus was down and out, and when people are down and out, instead of
throwing stones at them, let us remove stones that separate them from
Jesus. We have just the
opposite... When you hear, “Oh the
pastor did this, and it’s in the newspaper,” we all pounce, or when we hear
that somebody went bankrupt, “Well, they should have known better,” you
know. Let’s not throw stones. Let’s remove the stones that separate them
from Jesus.
So,
they took away the stone. Who took away
the stone? They did. Who is they? The church! The people of
the church. They took away the
stone. The church rolled away the
stone, and if a large stone blocks the way of your spiritual relationship with
Jesus, our church wants to help you remove it.
We want to do everything we can to help you establish that relationship
with Jesus Christ. That’s what the
church is for.
Now
who removed the heavy stone that was on Jesus’ tomb? Angels. They came and
they rolled it away, but here, Jesus commanded them to roll the stone
away. Why does Jesus..? I mean, Jesus could have called 10 thousand
angels. Isn’t that the song that we
heard this morning, and they could have vaporized that stone. Jesus could have placed wings on that stone
and made it fly up through the skies, leaving a vapor trail of stone writing
the words ‘Lazarus is alive again’. But
He didn’t do that.
Why
did He get them to do it?
There’s a lesson here. Hang with
me. Why did He get them? Because they could. Because they could. Do what you can. They couldn’t raise Lazarus, but they could remove the
stone. Do what you can. In other words, let me bring this home. God wants, He wants participants more than
spectators. The old saying is true, God
helps them that help themselves. In
other words, you need to pray for food.
That’s ok. Pray for food, but
get out there and plant your garden and weed your weeds. Pray that God’ll help your marriage, but be
willing to go to a councilor. Do what
you can with what you’ve got.
One day I made a visit.
This was up in Michigan. I used
to pastor in Michigan. It’s a great
place, and I went to visit an overweight member, and he said, “I’ve got high
blood pressure. Would you pray, Pastor,
for my high blood pressure?” We talked
awhile, and I had come at an unfortunate time.
He was eating and he said, “Well come on in anyway. Just sit at the table.” So I watched him eat. He consumed nearly a whole bag of potato
chips. Then his wife brought in a big
load of french fries, and he used almost the whole shaker full of salt on those
things. You know, we should pray for
help, but we need to slow down on the salt.
Do what you can. Roll the stone
away. You get the message there?
Next
come all the excuses. “Lord, we can’t
roll the stone away. We can’t do what
you’re asking us to do. We can’t do it. It’s been four days and he’s
decomposing. We can’t roll the stone
away.” The King James says, “He stinketh.” He stinketh. Why do they put stones over the entrances to
tombs? To keep the stink in there. “We can’t do what You want us to do, Lord. It’s impossible what You’re asking us to
do.” Do we ever say that? “It’s too late Lord. He’s already dead.” In our judgment, with our limited knowledge,
we see doom where Jesus sees hope.
Don’t ever not do what God is asking you to do. Be sure of what God is asking you to do. Be sure it’s Him and what it is, and then do
it. Do it!
Do
you have some smelly problems in your life?
Perhaps there are some rotten issues that you would rather leave
buried. I’m beginning to preach now. You want to let that can of worms be
unopened, right? “Let’s not open
that.” You don’t want it to be open,
but, let me tell you. In order to
receive your miracle you must be willing to unearth the innermost stinking
problems that you’ve got in your life and let Jesus deal with them. Be willing to open those festering sore
places. They’re never going to heal
unless you open them, and invite Jesus to deal with your problems. Have you ever watched that program on TV called
Dirty Jobs? Is that the name of
it? Mike Rowe. He might not want to touch your stinking
problems, but Jesus will always handle the smelliest issues that you can bring
to Him.
I
like Mary and Martha’s attitude. They
may have thought, “You know, Jesus wants to see His friend one more time, and
we shouldn’t open this up, but our love for Jesus is stronger than our good
judgment, and so, yeah, go ahead. Roll
the stone away. It’s alright.” The
sisters trust in Jesus caused them to obey Jesus. You know, you’ve got to have faith, even after the funeral. So they gave permission to open the tomb,
and I do think that a strong, overpowering stench came out of that tomb,
and they said, “Eww!” and they held rags over their noses, and they said,
“Mmmmm!” and everybody could see the dead man in there lying down, wrapped up
in the wrappings and they could smell this terrible aroma. Nobody there could ever believe that he
wasn’t dead. He was dead!
And
Jesus began to pray. And Jesus prayed, “Father, I thank You that You have heard me.” When did He pray. He’d just started His prayer and He says, “I thank You that You have
heard me.” in past tense. You know what
I think Jesus did? I think Jesus prayed
to His Father all the way there, that whole 20 miles. I think you need to bathe your problems in prayer just like Jesus
bathed His problems in prayer. You
can’t pray enough. When you’re at night
and you can’t sleep, what do you do?
Count sheep? No! Talk to the Shepherd.
Verse
43. “Jesus
called in a loud voice,” and I’m not going to
do this on this microphone. He said, “Lazarus, come forth.”
Come forth. Come out. He didn’t say,
“Come down,” or “Come up”. He
came out. He didn’t come down from
Heaven. He didn’t come up from
Hell. He simply came out. He was in the tomb “sleeping in Jesus” and
Jesus woke him up and asked him to come out, and prior to the resurrection, in
other words, he was not in heaven. Not
there. He was in the tomb, and prior to
your resurrection, if you die and you’re buried and you are raised at
the last day, you will not be in heaven.
You will not be in Hell. You
will not be in purgatory, and you will not be in limbo. Where will you be? In the grave, where Lazarus was.
That’s where you’re going to be.
“Sleeping in Jesus,” and when Jesus calls your name you’re going to come
out, just like he came out, and you’re going to come out to a new life just
like he came out with a new life.
Lazarus was alive, and his new life was overwhelming evidence that Jesus
Christ was divine. That Jesus was the
Creator, and the priests said, “We give up.
The only thing we can do to stop this wretched thing called Christianity
is to kill Him and kill Lazarus,” and they were both placed on the death
list. See, the Pharisees claimed that
Jesus never did raise Jairus’ daughter back to life because she wasn’t really
dead, but they could not say that with Lazarus.
And
so the Bible continues talking about Lazarus,
“He came forth, his hands and feet were,” what? “They were wrapped up with strips of linen,
and there was a cloth around his face, and Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the
grave clothes and let him go.’"
He
looked like a mummy. His legs were
wrapped. His arms were wrapped clear
down to the fingertips. His body was
wrapped. His face was covered with a
linen cloth. He was just like a
mummy. His body was in wrappers.
And
you know, the devil loves to keep your eyes bound so you can’t see God’s truth,
so you can’t see God’s will. He loves
to keep your hands tied up and busy with so much stuff so that you can’t do
God’s work, and he keeps your feet bound so that you cannot go on the path
where the light is shining for you to walk.
Jesus
commanded the friends to take off the grave clothes. Why did He do that?
Because the man was unable.
Remember? He’s wrapped up clear
to his fingertips. He had no way to get
hold of anything. All he could do is
shuffle out of there. Angels probably
helped him up. I don’t know. Out he came. He was unable to remove the shroud himself. He had experienced death, burial and
resurrection but he was still enveloped in his death pall, and how many of us
experience baptism which is the true symbol of the resurrection of Christ, the
death, burial and resurrection. That’s
baptism, and we still wander about in our old clothes. We still wander about in the wrappings of
our old man.
Now
think about this. Here he was, still in
the wrappings of his former death experience.
We still, when we’re baptized, some of us still battle the old habits. Now be honest. That happens. Those old
habits cling to us like drowning rats to a floating piece of stove wood.
And
he had the power to shuffle out of there but he needed friends to remove the
old clothing of the former life, and you may have some bad habits and you may
need some friends to help you. You may
need an accountability partner. You’ve
got to have people to help you, and the friends, that’s the church. That’s your family. That’s the people that are going to help you
get unshackled from the old habits of a sinful past. So get ahold of your wife, get ahold of your husband. You can’t unbind yourself. You’ve got to have help, and we’ve got to be
unbound from whatever it is that keeps us and prevents us from doing God’s
will.
Now
imagine Lazarus, picture Lazarus there all unwound and unbound from all these
wrappings. The wrappings are in a big
pile, and here stands Lazarus completely unwrapped. It’s just him, and the crowd looks at Lazarus. What do they see? His skin is probably like that of a baby. It’s brand new. It’s just been created.
He’s standing there with new life, and Desire of Ages says, “His eyes beam with intelligence and with a love for the
Saviour.” [DA 536] Isn’t that a great
description? I love Desire of
Ages. Lazarus became a living
demonstration that Jesus was the Christ. That Jesus was divine.
Jesus
healed Lazarus, and did more than that.
It was an act of absolute creation, and Lazarus was loosed for what
purpose. What did Lazarus go out and do
after this? He became a witness to
Jesus Christ. So much of a witness,
everybody would come around him, “Oh, yes, it’s really, you’re the one. We used to know you, and here you are
brand-new.” I mean was just the living
witness that Jesus was the Christ. And
he went around doing that. He was not
one of the 12 disciples but he didn’t allow that lack of position to prevent
him from being a successful witness. He
hit the trail running. He went
out. He convinced hundreds of people,
and hundreds of people joined the cause of Jesus Christ because of him, and I
believe that someday, faithful Lazarus will again experience a wonderful
resurrection, and this time it won’t be a resurrection so he can just die
again. It’ll be a resurrection so that
he can live throughout eternity.
Eternal life, and he’ll be raised by his Redeemer. His Redeemer.
Jesus
is our Redeemer. I want us to sing our
closing hymn. I Will Sing of my
Redeemer, and I want you to know that the final score in the great controversy
between Christ and Satan will be death zero, and Jesus won. Jesus is the winner. Let’s sing of our Redeemer.
Hymn of Praise: #36 Oh Thou In Whose Presence Scripture: John 11:25,26 Hymn of Response: #343 I Will Sing Of My Redeemer
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McDonald Road Sermon transcribed by Steve Foster 9/19/08