Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: John 11 – The Raising of Lazarus

The portion of God’s word that will be the sermon text for today is John chapter 11. John chapter 11. As we return to our series going through the Gospel of John, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

John chapter 11. Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary, and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

Therefore the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the son of God may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone you, and you are going there again?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. These things he said, and after that he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” Then his disciples said, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well.” However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought that he was speaking about taking rest in sleep.

Then Jesus said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sake that I was not there that you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go to him.” Then Thomas, who is called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go that we may die with him.” So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.

Then Martha, as soon as she learned that Jesus was coming, went and met him. But Mary was sitting in the house. Then 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 of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whosoever 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 to come into the world.” And when she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary, her sister, saying, “The teacher has come and is calling for you.” As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the town but was in the place where Martha met him. Then the Jews who were with her in the house and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out, followed her, saying, “She is going to the tomb to weep there.” Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” And some of them said, “Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha the sister of him who was dead said to him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?” Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.

And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me, and I know that you always hear me. But because of the people who are standing by, I said this that they may believe that you sent me.” Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes. And his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him and let him go.”

Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary and who had seen the things Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them the things Jesus did. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, “What shall we do? For this man works many signs. If we let him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.”

In one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.” Now, this he did not say on his own authority, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for that nation only but also that he would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.

Then from that day on they plotted to put him to death. Therefore Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews but went from there into the country near the wilderness to a city called Ephraim and there remained with his disciples. And the Passover of the Jews was near and many went from the country up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. Then they sought Jesus and spoke among themselves as they stood in the temple.

What do you think? That he will not come to the feast? Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a command that if anyone knew where he was, he should report it that they might seize him.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. And we pray now that your spirit would cause us to understand it, to marvel at it, and to be changed by it. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

We move from a topic that we’ve covered for four weeks kind of culminating in our Fest day celebration on Friday evening. Topic of great joy, the worship at David’s tabernacle on Mount Zion. Joy and celebration being a hallmark of what that worship was all about. And we move in very opposite fashion this morning. We move to a death scene. Scene where a man has been dead four days. Come to a portion of scripture where Jesus, who is of course the greater David, the greater one who rejoices and celebrates in the presence of the Father, who shows us what it is to be a Christian in the worship at Zion, which is joyful.

Jesus shows us another element of redeemed humanity, so to speak, who we are as Christians here. He shows us more, and he himself enters into mourning in great emotional distress.

What kind of man are we called to be as Christians? I ponder this a lot for some reason the last few years of my life. What is the model? How should we see ourselves? What’s the what do we, how are we supposed to be? Now, we know lots of things about the law of God, but what kind of men are we?

I pondered this last week as I looked at this text over and over and over. It is like every other text in scripture, a marvel and a delight. I believe that one of the things, one of the elements of the men that we’re supposed to be is that we’re called to be men with a sense of wonder, with a sense of awesome reflection upon God, certainly here in the context of the written word, but also in all of creation.

If you read through this text slowly, verse by verse, word by word, you’ll see so many elements of different things happening in the synoptic gospel accounts, different themes from John’s gospel itself, things that are connected to many different threads. It’s as if it’s a tapestry with all these threads sticking up out of it. You begin to pull on one little thread and it leads you to other tapestries and it’s all connected together in this wonderfully composed narrative.

One reason why I put a painting by the great Italian painter Giotto on the front of the order of worship is to give you this understanding that this text as it comes alive to us should bring us to a sense of wonder and astonishment.

Children, you don’t have a separate outline today, but you do have this picture on the front of the order of worship. You know, Giotto was the great master of Italian art that kind of brought, they said at the time, Greek art into Latin art and into the modern world at that time. We’re talking early fourteenth century. He was born in 1267. He painted for kings. He painted for the pope. He painted for some of the greatest churches at the time. Tremendous artist.

And one of the things he would do in his paintings was he bring an entire narrative together in a single frame. So as we look at this picture on the front of the order of worship, this entire narrative is the attempt to capture this narrative in a particular frame. So for instance, we see the two sisters Mary and Martha bending down beseeching the savior even as Lazarus has already risen. You see the point is that the whole narrative is sketched out for us here. Both the request on the part of the women as well as the answer.

The stone is being carried away on the right hand side. You can’t really see the full painting on the particular cut I gave you at the front of the order of worship. But that’s the stone slab being carried away. And that of course happened before Lazarus comes forth. But again, it’s there in the picture to bring us to a remembrance of this text.

And you know what Giotto does here in a marvelous way is to capture sort of a sense of what he sees as the center of the narrative. He doesn’t have Jesus or Lazarus at the center. They’re on either sides, the two main figures here. But in the center, he has these two men. And as if you look at that picture, children, do you notice the gesturing? Now, gestures are important here. Gesture, the prime gesture in this painting, the prime movement of the hand is the hand of Jesus. Notice it’s set against the sky. Well, you can’t see the blue sky, but in the color painting, it’s a blue sky. Jesus has on royal robes. He stands out, but he’s not at the center. But his hand of power, you know, the power of God set against the blue sky. Remember, this is the heavenly power of the father that’s at work.

But the very center we have a couple of figures unidentified really and they kind of represent us in a way. And really the man at the very center is the one on the left next to Jesus, but they’re both kind of at the center there. And notice how their gestures are in concert together, so to speak. One is looking at Lazarus, the other is looking at Jesus. The one that looks at Lazarus is gesturing at Jesus. And the one that looks at Jesus is gesturing to Lazarus.

So what Giotto attempts to do here is to bring this long narrative of John 11 together in a single frame and to give us a sense of the motion of the thing as we move back and forth looking at the gestures of the men and looking at their awe and amazement and their sense of wonder at what has happened in the context of their very lives. The ones that saw this miracle firsthand.

Giotto attempts to take this narrative and bring us into it to engage us in the movement of events and in the movement and the awe and wonder of what occurs in John 11.

This text is a text that is filled with these kind of gestures and movements to various other places of the scriptures. The text itself has some very interesting things going on. We have Mary identified at the beginning of the text for instance as the one that anoints Jesus. And as we see when we get to chapter 12 in a month or so, that in chapter 12 the first thing that happens is he goes back to be with Lazarus just before going into Jerusalem for the feast and Mary anoints his feet. So we have the raising of Lazarus set in the context of some bookends of the anointing by Mary, then being said how she’s identified in chapter 11 and then the actual anointing taking place. And in the middle we have Mary and what is she doing as she comes to Jesus on the road to where she is? She’s bowing down at his feet. So she’s going to anoint his feet. She’s bowing at his feet and then she anoints his feet. There’s a movement.

Jesus comes from the wilderness, the other side of the Jordan. Comes into Bethany, the place of danger for him now as the end of his public ministry. And then after he does this, goes back across the Jordan. He comes from apparently where John was baptizing previously, it said, which was Bethany, a particular city, house of figs, but the other Bethany beyond the Jordan. And he comes to the Bethany where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. The Bethany that’s believed to be two miles from Jerusalem. Then he goes back apparently first to Bethany and then to this other place of Ephraim.

So there’s this movement that seems to be coming forth coming from across the Jordan, the wilderness into the land, going back to the wilderness. There are these little details in the text that tell us that there’s a tremendous amount of significance to what goes on here.

There are odd things in the text. There’s the great sovereignty of God, of course, is really what’s at the center of this. One could say the great power of the Lord Jesus Christ in raising one from the dead. One who was not just, you know, almost dead like earlier in the gospel account, the ruler’s son. This man is rotting, stinking dead. He has been in the tomb four days. There’s no recovery for this man. His flesh is rotting and his body puts off a putrid odor.

Notice, by the way, that Giotto accomplishes that too in the text for us. The figures on the right are covering their noses, reminding us that there’s a stench in this narrative that it’s supposed to be significant for us. This man is a picture of all sinners. We are the walking dead. The scriptures describe us as those who are dead in trespasses and sins.

And many a commentator has seen in this and preachers have preached on the wonderful sovereignty of God and bringing men to life who have absolutely no power to accomplish their salvation. Jesus irresistibly calls forth Lazarus, gives them the command of his word and calls him forth to life. You and I at some point in our earthly existence were brought as stinking dead, rotten men that had no good in us, no abilities in us. Jesus in his sovereign, irresistible grace calls us to himself and that sovereignty is pictured for us here.

The sovereignty is also pictured as the narrative comes to a conclusion where you have this just again one of those marvelous, awesome sense of wonder texts where the high priest is talking about we don’t want Rome to come away and take away the temple and the people. The place is the temple, you know, and we don’t want that to happen so we’re going to have to kill this guy. It’s better that one man die for the sins of the nation or one man die rather for the nation to keep them from the Romans.

And of course, we know that as high priest, he will actually, by this event at the conclusion of this narrative, he will be the one who slaughters the innocent Lamb for the sins of the people and accomplish the redemption. The conclusion of this text tells us, not just of the elect in the context of Jerusalem, but now those people from all over the world, the children of God, the offspring of God scattered abroad. Jesus will die for their sins.

We have particular atonement here, limited atonement, limited in terms of its scope. Clearly talked about here that his death is efficacious for the children of God scattered abroad. He didn’t die for those outside of the ones that he loved. But the high priest says, “Well, we don’t want our place and nation to be taken away so badly that one man die.” Well, that’s right. One man will die to effect the salvation of his people. But Rome will come and destroy the place and the nation.

The high priest will sacrifice the temple, which is Jesus. He will raise that temple up. God in judgment upon unbelieving Judaism will send the Romans to come forth and destroy them in God’s judgment upon them. It is the very sin of crucifying the owner of the vineyard that leads the father to send men to destroy those owners and to tear down the temple and to take the people into captivity.

The stories are filled with irony here in the context of this particular account. I mean, they go on and on and on.

We don’t understand why there’s this long, what some have described as an agonizingly slow movement of Jesus to where Lazarus is. You know, he waits. He loves him, so he doesn’t go. And then when he does go, it’s like it takes a long time to get there. Martha comes out to meet him on the way. Mary comes out to meet him on the way. And finally, he gets there. And it seems very significant. But what is the significance? It’s hard to understand.

It is impossible to understand the depth of the significance of any real portion of scripture. It’s the word of God we’re talking about. It’s not some novel by some current man who’s popular. This is the word of God. It has infinite depth. And when we read a text like this where these infinite levels become rather obvious and you can see many of them and you can’t figure out any of them, or at least you can’t figure out all of them, then I think our response is we have a sense of wonder and for that sense of wonder to characterize a large portion of who we are as we walk through this world.

Understanding the word of God is really a picture of God’s actions in the context of our lives. Our reality is just like this. I mean, the story of the high priest and his decisions remind us that these stories are given to remind us of what God is always at work doing. Every bit of our lives are filled with this.

You know, I heard an old expression from my brother years ago that paranoia is the cutting edge of the awareness that all things are connected. Paranoia is the cutting edge of the awareness that all things are connected. And I think there’s truth to that. And that is the root of much mental illness. However, that same truth is also at the center of a tremendous relaxation and rest.

Because for us, we read narratives like this, so carefully composed and telling us that the actual events of the narrative portray that all things are connected. That this narrative has many, many contact points to other places in scripture. And we see this played out in our own lives where things are connected. We meet people in very odd circumstances. For the first time, we have this cutting edge of the awareness that all things are connected, but not in some sort of fearful, unknown, understandable way, but a way that is mediated through the grace and love of God.

So this cutting edge of knowledge that all things are connected to us doesn’t produce fear. It produces a sense of relaxation, rest, and a freedom to engage as men in the world around us knowing that we’re moving in the flow of the sovereign God whose hand is upon the created order.

Texts like this bring us a sense of wonder. They bring us a sense of delight and worship to God the Father.

Various bookmarks going on. I mean, I could talk for an hour about just the various ways this text is related to other texts. You might notice that at the end when he’s at the tomb, there’s connections to Jesus’s tomb, right? He says, “Where has he been laid?” And later, the women will be the one asking where is Jesus laid. So, and then the tomb with the stone that has to be moved out of the way. When Jesus is resurrected, there first is a stone that had been moved out of the way and it’s out of the way.

The burial clothes of Lazarus are important. They’re wrapped around him. But then it says there’s also a cloth for his face. When we get to the accounts about Jesus, he’s not in the tomb. It’s empty. The stone is rolled away, but his burial clothes are there. Two separate kinds of burial clothes, just like Lazarus. So, there’s this connectedness to the resurrection of Lazarus to the resurrection of the savior.

There are these beautiful connections throughout these texts. You know, Jesus says, even if you think of the synoptic gospels, we had Mary and Martha in one of the earlier gospel accounts, a story, you know, the story where Mary devotes herself to hearing the teacher and Martha’s busy serving. And so, here we have Martha and Mary. And if you’ve read the other gospel accounts and you get to John as you’re reading along, you’re just like the church that received John’s gospel in probably the 60s AD. Thirty years after Matthew had been written, ten or fifteen years after the other ones have been given to you, and you’ve read the story of Mary and Martha, and now you have a new story of Mary and Martha, and there must be some connection between that story and this one.

You’ve never heard about their brother Lazarus, but you have read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about a different Lazarus, or at least in one of those synoptic accounts. I’m not sure if it’s in all three. Remember a different Lazarus. Unusual name, Lazarus. Not sure the origins of it. Well, we read about a different Lazarus. The Lazarus who was the poor man who died. And Lazarus dies, the name that history has given to the rich man in the account that Jesus gives of the rich man and Lazarus. And Lazarus is in Abraham’s bosom being comforted and the rich man is tormented and he says well send Lazarus, my servant, send someone back to tell them, you know, this bad thing has happened. And what does Jesus say? He tells the rich man, well you know they’ve got the law and the prophets. They got the word of God. And if they don’t believe the word of God they will not believe what, they won’t believe one sent back from the dead. And we always read that in terms of the resurrection of Christ, appropriately.

But here we have another Lazarus story. And if that’s really in our heads, we understand that from the other gospel accounts. So now we get this gospel account. Here’s a Lazarus again. It’s going to remind us of this guy. And now we see that Lazarus is the one raised back from the dead. And what do many of the Jews do? Now they plot not just to kill Jesus. Now they’re going to kill Lazarus, too. They’ve rejected the word of God. And so they’re going to reject one brought back from the dead, Lazarus.

So many actions. I could go on and on and on. There’s many of them in the context of these scriptures. But God wants us, I think, if nothing else to take away from this text. You know, if we can enter into this narrative, we can enter into this narrative as portrayed by Giotto and we can see ourselves as that guy in the middle who’s just wondering and with astonishment at this and this, you know, Lazarus and Jesus and what’s being what’s going on.

And the world is a far more mysterious place than we understood it to be. And Jesus is a far more exalted figure in our mind than we had before we came to it. And we come to this narrative and we want to see that. I think we see in this narrative, as I said, we see in the details of this narrative the pure, the emphasis again on the sovereignty of God. We could probably get at least four of the five points of Calvinism directly from this account.

Unconditional election. Lazarus is dead, heads stinking dead. There’s nothing good in him that sees. The emphasis in the tale is on the love of Jesus Christ, right? That’s mentioned several times. We’re going to get back to that as we move to the end of the sermon. But the love of Jesus, God knows his foreknowledge of you is why he chose you. Not that he found something lovely in you. Lazarus is rotting, stinking dead here, but his love for Lazarus is what calls him forth. And it is unconditional election, his unconditional love of you because he has sovereignly for his purposes set his love upon you from all time. That’s why you’re here today. That’s why you’ve been called forth.

Irresistible grace. Clearly, Jesus commands Lazarus to come out. Lazarus has no ability. And yet, he is irresistibly raised from the dead by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Total depravity. Again, the stinking, rotting, dead man that Lazarus is a picture of all of us. We’re depraved. We’re sinful. We res that results in our death. We are dead in our sins and trespasses before God and we have no ability to bring salvation to ourselves. And as I said, limited atonement. Jesus dies the discussion of that at the end of the chapter specifically for the children of God throughout who’ve been scattered abroad. He will bring them together.

So this text is certainly a text that emphasizes the sovereignty of God. He is great and exalted and he will accomplish his purposes in the world. And as I said, the high priest narrative portrays that as well. The meeting of the Sanhedrin.

We’re going to sing. We’re going to start learning soon a different response to the absolution of sins that we’ve used before. It comes from Jim Jordan, teaching us last October. And it goes, “Alleluia. Praise to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Glory to you, O Lord, both now and forever. Alleluia. Alleluia. Praise to God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Glory to you, Oh Lord both now and forever. Alleluia.” It moves in and it comes back out.

And one thing I like about it is the two matching bookends referring to who it is that we’re singing alleluia to. Alleluia. Alleluia. Praise to God. The Hebrew term Elohim is translated God. Strong one sovereign. Elohim. God. Praise to God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Glory to you, O Lord. Now and forever.

God is God. God is Lord. Old Testament, Yahweh, the covenant name of God. We’ve talked about this in Genesis, the opening chapters. God is identified to mankind as the Lord God, father sovereign. Father sovereign. We see sovereign here clearly. But in the very text that is probably one of the clearest accounts in all of scripture that five-point Calvinists have used for decades to teach the sovereignty of God. In this very text, we don’t have just God. We have the Lord. We have the loving father reflected in the actions of the son here.

The son is pivotal to all of this reflecting the father and the holy spirit to us. That they are not just God, not some giant frozen emotionless ice cube in the sky. God who controls everything. But this God is also father to us. He is father sovereign. Jesus loves these people. Jesus weeps over these people. Jesus gets angry in protection of his people. Jesus is deeply moved here. And so we have this wonderful picture in this particular text of things that we tend to think of as kind of opposite ends, but the scriptures bring them together. And it brings them together in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s talk a little bit about some of the narrative structure here. Not by no means all of it. But first understand the centrality of Martha in this narrative. And I’ve given you on your outline how verses one and two go. “There was a certain man who was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, town of Mary, her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair. Whose brother Lazarus was sick.”

You see how it moves in, moves out. Sick and sick. Sick. Lazarus. Mary Martha, Mary, sick, Lazarus. Why is this text so carefully constructed in this way? Because it wants us to focus on the person of Martha. It wants us to identify, I think, with Martha in this text in a particularly important way. She is at the center of the very introduction. So, it sort of sets us up for what Jesus is going to do with Martha is one of the ways that we should interpret this narrative. One of the things we should marvel at is his interaction, particularly with Martha not just there but the travel narrative itself in verses seventeen to thirty-seven. He hears the news, he goes there, he arrives and resurrects Lazarus. That’s the way the story moves along. The very center of that is this travel narrative.

And you know if we look at this and you can look at these individual verses what we see is this reference to death. In verse seventeen, it says in verse seventeen you know that Lazarus, when he finds out that he had been in the tomb four days. So it references before the travel as the travel narrative begins. It says Lazarus will have been dead four days. And then the Jews are described in verses eighteen. Bethany’s near Jerusalem. So there are lots of Jews there comforting the women over the loss of their brother. So it talks about that. And then Martha, not Mary, comes out in verse twenty to meet Jesus on the road coming into Bethany. And then Jesus talks to Martha in verses twenty-five and twenty-six. I’m sorry, I got a little ahead of myself. Verses twenty-one to twenty-four. Jesus says, “Well, you know, he’s going to be okay.” And she says, “Well, I know he’ll be raised up in the at the last day.” So, she talks about her belief in the resurrection of the dead. She believed the Westminster standards. She believed that, you know what all is about. She understood the doctrines and the doctrine is that there’ll be a resurrection and her brother be raised in the resurrection.

So, we have a description of Martha’s belief and then Jesus talks to her. And like he always is doing in John’s gospel, he takes it another level deeper or higher, whatever you want to call it, he moves her ahead to a particular profession. And then she comes back with what may be the kind of the pairing up with Peter’s confession in the synoptic gospels. Martha’s confession in verse twenty-seven is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And so she comes to a fuller confession and then Mary comes, without Martha. And that’s the way the text works in those verses. It says Martha but not Mary. Then it says Mary but not Martha. So again, it kind of has brought us into this conversation between Jesus and Martha.

Then we read about the Jews again in verse thirty-one. The Jews that were with the women and they, you know, observe Mary, Mary and Jesus. So we talk about the Jews and then finally again he arrives at the tomb and the guy’s dead. So the travel narrative itself seems to draw our attention into this interaction between Jesus and Martha. Just like the introduction prepared us for that.

Here we see in the actual movement of the story, there is some kind of center here. When Jesus talks to Martha and what does he say to her? This is point two on your outline. The centrality of the person of Jesus, we’re having a picture here of the person of the sovereign loving God, father sovereign. And that is just what is at the center of this travel narrative. That’s the interaction with Martha that Jesus has. It says the same thing. It picks us, it sets us up for all these personal allusions to Jesus’s love and care for you, individual Christian, for each of us.

It sets us up to that. How does it do that? Well, you look at how this thing works. And I was talking about this. You know, this is a song that many of us have learned this chorus a long time ago.

“I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

Right? But why does it say it that way? It seems awkward. Whosoever liveth and if he believes in me, he will live. He that lives and believes. So why is it? It sounds awkward. Oh, if he’s living, then belief. What is that about? It seems awkward, but it’s part of these carefully constructed narratives that again show us kind of a central section to something.

What does it say? I’ve got it on your outline. “I am.” Remember, “I am” is an important statement in John. “I am” various things he’s told us. And it is identification with Yahweh. Again, “I am that I am” in the Old Testament. “I am the resurrection and the life.”

So, he is life. He’s saying he is realized eschatology. She’s saying, “Well, I know the doctrines and I know that eventually everything’s going to be okay.” He says, “I am the end of all things. I am life. I have come that you might have life. You might have it abundantly. I am the end of all things.” Eschatology has intruded now into your world. Things are not about something far away. I’m here now and I’m going to bring life to your brother now.

“I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though you were dead, yet shall he live. Whosoever liveth, as opposed to one who had just been dead and believeth in me belief for and after shall never die because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.”

So there’s a movement: life, never dying, death, live. And at the very center the declaration that he shall live, shall live is what Jesus is pointing to at the center. And then at the end: believe thou this. If we look at the structure that it takes us to a central point here, it shows to us the importance of the opening and closing bookends.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe that?” Not, “Do you believe some generalized Christian or Judaistic doctrine about the eschatology and people that believe being raised up eventually?” Do you believe in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ here standing before you that I am God? I am father sovereign. I have come to reveal him to you. I will accomplish these things because I am the very essence of life. I am the lifegiver. Do you believe that? Do you believe in my person? My humanity, my deity, who I am.

Now, in the context of your life, that seems to me to be one of probably several centers in this particular narrative. It focuses on the person work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not some abstract nice set of reformed doctrines. We have a person at the center of this narrative. We have a person. We have realized eschatology. We have what Jesus has talked about. He says that the one who hears Jesus’s word and believes in him in John chapter five has eternal life and he has already passed from death to life. And now he gives a picture of that in Lazarus who will hear the word and come forth to life in John 5:25.

“The dead will hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear it will live.”

And we think of those things as far off. But Jesus says this is going to happen now. And that is what salvation is about. The person of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to the unregenerate and bringing them to life now in the context of realized eschatology. And our bodies will go through a transformation. But this reality of the eschatology that has now come into our life and into the created order is at the center of all this. And it comes to the center through the work of the person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is an exegesis of the person of God. Remember in John 1:18, “Why does the son come? No one’s seen the father at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father, he has declared him.” And so John tells us at the beginning of this gospel, we get to something that looks like, well, gee, maybe this is a humanity of Jesus. No, don’t. No, no, no. When you see Jesus doing things in the text, he warns us in chapter one, he is exegeting the father to you. Jesus doesn’t do what the father doesn’t do. What he sees the father doing, that’s what he does.

When Jesus gets angry, when he weeps, when he moves in the context of an emotional empathy with the people who are facing death. It is not just Jesus the son who is being pictured to us. It is the father and it is the holy spirit. So, so the text tells us some things about Jesus that I want to talk about.

Who are we supposed to be as men? We want to, you know, have a great appreciation for the sovereignty of God, but we don’t want an ice cube God. We don’t want to set up dry doctrines at the midst of who we are. We want the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what he told Martha. That’s what he tells us today.

What is he like? What should we be like if we’re Christians?

Well, the first thing he’s like is love. Children, you know what you can do with this little outline here is you can write stuff in here, these main points. You know, what is all this picture about? Well, you know, you could write down who these people are. This is Jesus. He stands out with that robe of authority. He’s going to come with the power of the father. His hand represents that against the sky. It’s a heavenly power. You got Lazarus over here. Obviously, we got the Mary and Martha bending down here. The tombstone being taken away. All that stuff is good. “Sense of wonder.” “Sense of wonder.” That would be good for you children to write in the context of this. We’re like this fella here. We read this narrative and which it brings us a sense of wonder. And you could write up here, “love.”

Jesus loves them. That is stressed over and over in the narrative. Verse three, “therefore his sister sent to him saying, Lord, behold he whom you love is sick.” Verse five, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister in Lazarus.” Verse thirty-six, “the Jews said, see how he loved them.”

Love is a main attribute of the person of God. And love is what Jesus is portrayed as having here for Lazarus. It is a personal love. He loves Lazarus as an individual. It is not some sort of vague generalized love that God has for all his people as his people. There is that sense in the scriptures. But here he very personally loves Lazarus. And he personally loves Matt and Brad and Carolyn and Roger. He loves us personally, individually. You see? His action in your life was directed at you as an individual, not just you as part of the mass of the church throughout all ages.

God is not a frozen ice cube. God is a loving God. God is a God who seeks you out because he has set his love upon you from before all time. God eternally loves and his love is expressed in your life.

Secondly, Jesus, he doesn’t have the kind of love we do all too often. Our love rushes right in and fixes everything immediately. No, Jesus is in control. Love is an emotion. It’s faithfulness. Here it’s obviously talking about his emotional feelings for this family. And by the way, we can talk about that profitably. This is before the resurrection. This is the last of the great seven signs. And this is a sign that’s instituted in the context of family. And the first of the great seven signs was at a wedding, the beginning of a family. And here’s a family of brothers and sisters brought together. And that’s important. And in the context of this, his love for these people is real, but his control is evident as well.

And in fact, we don’t understand why. I don’t understand why it says it this way, but it says he really loved them. And so, he stayed two more days where he was. I don’t know what that means. Some people have said, well, it’s a love that knows that what they need is him to be rotting dead. And that’s why he tries before coming back. But, you know, maybe it’s that, but maybe it means he was intending to go further away, but he waited for a couple of days. He didn’t go on the rest of his mission. He stays here, finishes it up and then goes to where they are. I don’t know. But what I do know is that Jesus changes his plans, so to speak. He is controlled in his love. He doesn’t rush right in to try to fix the thing and relieve anxiety. It’s not that kind of love.

His, the person of God has a deep love for us, but in that love, for whatever reason, it’s connected this way. In that love, he leaves us where we are in trials and tribulations for a season. Remember the story from the middle miracles of John’s gospel of Jesus walking on the water, the lake. They’re going across the lake all night long. Jesus loves them. This I know. The Bible tells me so. But he watches and waits all night long. They strain at the oars. And here again, it’s the story of Lazarus. We can enter into this. We know there are things that are deeply distressing to us. Like a sister experiencing the death of her brother. Deep distresses to us. And we can be tempted to think that God is sovereign. He’s that ice cube, but he doesn’t love us. because he hasn’t met our need immediately.

And God says, “Don’t think that way. I love you, but my love is what you’re supposed to be learned to be like in terms of love. You are careful in what you do for other people. You’re not uncontrolled. You’re not driven by your emotions. Instead, you have to take a wise perspective on things.” And God in his wisdom delays what he did. The Jews say, you know, well, you know, this guy could have if he would have come, he could have saved him. And the sisters say that, too. And we’re frequently think that. Why didn’t you come earlier?

Jesus says, “You may not understand it. Appreciate the sense of wonder of knowing that it is great love for you that even leads to my perceived delays on your part. It’s love at work for you when I delay to come to you.”

The text clearly tells us that love is controlled. It’s not a purposeless, passionate sort of thing that just loses all control. The emotions of the Lord Jesus Christ. No, that’s love that is effectual for meeting the deepest needs of who we are.

Third, Jesus is emotional. There’s just simply no way to get around this. I don’t know why we would want to, but it seems like frequently in reformed circles, we have trouble with this.

Verse thirty-three, Jesus comes and he sees people weeping and he groans in his spirit. Now, what that word probably, the connotation that is not usually carried through in most translations. There seems to be anger here. This is an angry response of Jesus. So, he’s angry. He’s troubled emotionally. And he weeps.

Shortest verse in the Bible. Jesus wept. All of our kids learned that first. It’s a good verse for me to learn first because it’s a reminder that this is not Jesus in his humanity apart from his deity. Jesus is showing us here the love and emotions of God the father, son, and holy spirit for his people. God has emotions whether we like it or not. It’s not like that Greek God up there abstract and removed. No, emotionally has emotion. It has the proper use of anger as well as sorrow in his weeping.

Why is he angry? Well, I think he’s pretty angry over the effects of the sin on his people. He’s angry over death. He’s angry over what people have to go through as a result of sin. What does it say in the Psalms? “You that love the Lord, hate evil. Be angry with the sin.” We have a rather grizzly resurrection going on yesterday and today here in Oregon City. And it is an event that should bring us great anger at the effects of sin in the context of lives. Those girls are apparently being unearthed in a home just a couple of miles from here, our turf, Oregon City, where God has planted this church.

And it reads like some kind of Twin Peaks story going on over there. Horrific elements of what’s happening. We should hate that stuff. We should have a burning desire in our heart to do something about it. That’s what Jesus does here. He gets angry, emotionally involved, and as a result of where is he? Let me get at it. I want to take away death. I want to raise him back from the dead. I hate the results of sin. I hate the death that you have to go through and the sorrow you have to go through.

These are signs. Signs in the Bible are not just sort of sort of empty picture like Giotto’s painting. A sign means that Jesus is rolling back the effects of the curse really and definitively. He rolls back the effect of sin here. Rolls back the death-like effects. We should hate the sort of sin that’s been going on in Oregon City. We should pray against these kinds of sins and these kind of people that commit sins. And we should desire to convert this city so that we’re not known nationwide for a bunch of people whose lives represent something out of Peyton Place or some sort of other trash novel. It’s horrific. And the results of these families are horrific. And we should care for them. We should have an emotional response of sorrow and anger for what’s happened here in the context of this community. Jesus did. Jesus had an emotional response.

The Holy Spirit in Romans eight says grieves. Prayer for us with groanings too deep to be heard or comprehended. The spirit of God is just like Jesus. He is emotionally involved in what we grow through. And he wants to is in the process of redeeming us and showing the reality of the sons of God and moving creation along and changing the whole world. Spirit of God groans just like the Lord Jesus Christ groans and Jesus exegetes the father as groaning for us and hating evil and the results of sin.

This is not an emotional state that is sympathy. This is an emotional state that is more like empathy. Sympathy says, “Well, I see what you’re going through. It really makes me feel bad.” Empathy says, “I hurt when you hurt.” Empathy is like that. Giotto tries to bring you into an empathetic involvement with the narrative of John eleven by this painting. He tries to suck you into it. You see, Jesus was sucked in. He wept and got angry because he saw entered into the weeping of Mary and Martha whom he loved. That’s why he did it. Jesus is empathetic. Jesus cares about what people are going through. He is empathetic with you. And this means he’s empathetic with each of you individually.

Troubled, grieved over the difficulties you have to go through. When you pray to him, when you pray to God and the holy father, son, and holy spirit, you do not pray to someone that’s not moved. He has like passions like us. And that’s because he created us in his image. He created us in his image. That’s why we have emotions. That’s why we have the capability to look at one another as we’re suffering and enter into those sufferings. Not just destructively entering in. Some of us, people that began this church many years ago, we have lots of death, more and more death in our lives. More and more people are going to die as we get older.

And this text can inform us what do we do when we see the horrific effects of sin. When people die. How do we console people? Well, the text tells us here. You know, Jesus weeps with those that are weeping. He wants them to know how much he loves them. Now, we can’t, you know, raise people from the dead the way he did with Lazarus, but we can certainly enter into that empathetic expression of love and concern for people that Jesus has here. We’re supposed to be that. We’re supposed to be redeemed away from our sinful tendencies, which break off from caring for people and want to make ourselves little individuals walking around islands all over the place.

No, Jesus wants us to hurt with each other. Part of the extended community of Christ. We’ve talked about rejoicing together. That’s good. But Ecclesiastes says there’s a time to dance and we did it. Time to sing and have joy. There’s a time to sorrow. There’s a time to weep, to refrain from dancing with one another. Time to come alongside and not just tell people, “Hey, it’s okay. They’re going to be seen in heaven. What’s the big deal?” Not what Jesus does. He knows the horrific effects of sin and what it works in the context of human personalities. And he is not wanting us to pretend that’s not real.

He is into the real suffering that is portrayed for us here in this account of the raising of Lazarus.

And then finally, so you know, we should be so if you’re kids, you know, love, control, however, control over here. It’s not an uncontrolled love. Emotions. Jesus has emotions. Jesus has empathy over here. It’s an emotional that goes into the emotion of other people. Love, control, empathy, emotion, a sense of wonder, fulfilling the whole thing.

This is who we are to be. Yes, we know sovereign God, but we know him as our father.

And then finally, the last thing I want to point out about Jesus’s actions here is self-sacrifice service. And I maybe you put a little cross off here in the distance that says service on it. Why do you say that, Dennis? Why do you say Jesus’s death?

Well, we see the portrayal of Jesus’s tomb, the rock, all that stuff obviously related here. But notice something else in the text. In verse four, when Jesus wants to go back and his disciples say wait a minute, we read that Jesus when he heard it said this sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God that the son of God may be glorified through it. So Jesus is going to be glorified through the resurrection of Lazarus and we normally think of that. And there’s a sense in which this is true that is the glory of Christ. He is the power of the father. His hand is out there against the blue sky. He brings heavenly realities and he raises people up and glory be to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

But I think there’s another thing going on here because the text as it draws to his conclusion at the end of chapter eleven, what happens? The council meets. They decide to put him to death. What is Thomas worried about? What are the disciples worried about? They’re going to grab you. They’re going to kill you. And he says, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to go and raise Lazarus and they’re going to kill me as a result.” Remember that in John’s gospel, we’ll see this in the high priestly prayer chapters thirteen through seventeen. Remember in John’s gospel, the glory of Jesus Christ is him dying for his people and being raised up for their salvation.

And so, you know, it’s interesting that the synoptics, some people have talked about how the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they all had the cleansing of the temple as the incident that produces the death of Christ. He comes into Jerusalem for the Passover, that third year of his ministry, cleanses the temple. They get mad. They testify against him. He said he’s going to tear down the temple. So, that’s the incident that’s related. But in John’s gospel, what does he do? He talks about the initial cleansing of the temple in year one of his ministry. He puts it way forward. It’s an important image for us in terms of what he is accomplishing. But he puts it way forward because it was actually there, but because he doesn’t want to record the last cleansing. He’s got something special at the end of the gospel narrative here in John that’s different from the cleansing of the temple as the incident that’s going to bring the death of the savior. And this is it. Lazarus’s resurrection from the dead. This is what according to the narrative before us is the reason why they’re going to kill Jesus.

Jesus serves Lazarus by laying down his life that his friend might live. “No greater love is anyone than this to lay down his life for his friends.” He talks about that in this gospel. That’s what Jesus does here. He is by going to Jerusalem close to two miles away. By resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, he is sealing his fate. That’s what this narrative wants us to understand. It says right after that, that’s when they get together and they say, “We’re going to put him to death.”

And then we’ll see that chapter twelve just before he goes in final supper not with the disciples but with Lazarus and his sisters. So here at the conclusion of what Jesus portrays is that as we go about being Christlike as we have a love that seeks the well-being of people that enters into empathetic emotional states for other people. We do this and serve other people by laying down our life and taking up their difficulties to assist them. This life of service is at the very center of the portrayal of father sovereign for us.

The father is one who gives up his beloved son. The son is one who comes because he exists in the form of God and dies for his people. That is of the nature and essence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to serve one another and to serve his people. And God says that’s at the center of who we are. You know there’s not a businessman here who will be successful in the eyes of God, nor probably successful long term with the accumulation of wealth if service is not at the center of what you do in your business. Self-sacrificial service, not seeking your own well-being through your vocation. Jesus gives us here a true picture of vocation. Vocation is service to other people. Self-sacrificial service, a desire to assist the people that God has chosen as your clients, your extended family, your friends and loved ones.

Love is the motivation for capitalistic free market enterprises that are proper before God. Self-sacrificial energy and activity is the basis for correct business relationships. What we have here at the center of the narrative of Lazarus, this beautiful picture that gives us a sense of wonder as to who this God is we serve is a picture of who we are called to be. What we are called to do in the context of our vocations and at the culmination of that is the Lord Jesus Christ being willing to die that we might live.

We can also identify with Thomas. We see where the savior went. We see what he has accomplished. We knew that he was sealing his own fate by serving the ones that he had loved and he was called to serve. And we can say with Thomas, let us go also that we may die. As we go forward with the savior from this day, that same refrain runs through. It’s like every other saying in the gospel. It seems like there’s several meanings, but the true meaning here, I think, to take away is that’s right.

We follow our savior to the table. We enter into his death and resurrection. And we go into this week then that we might die, that we might put to death our own self-interest, our own coldness, our own ice cube likeness, and that we might live in the resurrected power of the Lord Jesus Christ who lays down his life and serves others. This is what God calls us to do to walk in the steps of his disciples.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this narrative. We thank you for bringing us this sense of wonder as we consider the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you father for causing us to meditate upon him that he is the resurrection and the life. Help us father as Martha was moved to a deeper sense of her confession of the faith that you had given to her to have that same confession for us that Jesus is indeed the Christ sent forth into the world and may we be Christians sent forth as well called to serve in the context of our world. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.