The Raising of Lazarus (John 11:28–44)

0:00 It was in 1965 where I had the opportunity to sit in the balcony of the historic First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh during an evening service. The balcony looked right down on the elevated pulpit that was made of stone. And that evening, the guest speaker was a distinguished professor, scholar, and president both of a Christian college and of a Christian seminary. And in the midst of his remarks, he said to the congregation, My dear friends, I'm afraid that we suffer from a penurious epistemology, that tends to be myopic. And I broke out laughing. I said, I wonder if there's anybody in the congregation that has any idea what that man just said. Well, he used the descriptive term myopic, which is the adjectival form of the noun myopia, which refers to nearsightedness, a malady with which I am afflicted. And so this morning I have to beg your indulgence when I do my Mr. Magoo imitation, because for reasons beyond my control I have to be without my contacts for two weeks so I have normal improvement vision for these glasses but with them I can't read the text without them I can't see you I'd rather read the text But in order to read the text, I have to look at it very closely, and so this won't take but a couple of weeks not to read the Scripture this morning until we hope that this problem

2:06 is corrected. But in the meantime, it's going to look a little strange to you, so I hope you'll bear with me. And we're going to continue our study of the Gospel according to St. John, reading today from 11th chapter verses 28 through 44 and I'd ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the word.

5:44 He who has ears to hear the word of God, let them hear it. Please be seated. When last we looked at this narrative in John's Gospel, we looked at the discussion that took place between Jesus and Martha, in which we had Christ's affirmation of his being the resurrection and the life. And we read at the close of that passage the words of confession of Martha, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come to the world. It's at this point that we pick up the narrative this morning, where we read after she said these things, she went on her way and reported to Mary that the Master had come. The one they had summoned, the one in whom they had placed all of their hopes and trust, had finally arrived now four days after the death of their brother.

7:00 The teacher has come, she said, and he's calling for you. And so as soon as she heard these words, Mary arose and came to him. And we're told Jesus was still not into the town, but was in the place where Martha met him. and there were Jews who had gathered from Jerusalem, friends of the family, who had come to participate in the mourning for the death of Lazarus with their friends Mary and Martha, and they heard this exchange between Mary and Martha that Jesus was at hand. And so when they saw Mary get up quickly and rush out to meet with Jesus, they got up and followed as well, but they assumed that they were following her to the tomb. They assumed that she was going to move the place of her mourning to the grave site.

8:01 Let me just comment parenthetically about this incident, this minor detail in the narrative. the Scripture tells us it is better for us to go to the house of mourning than to spend our time with fools. There is something sacred, something holy about people coming together to bring human comfort to those who have lost loved ones. I can remember when my father was an invalid for three years, sat in this one chair all day long. I said to my mother, Mom, why is it that none of dad's friends ever come to visit him? I don't understand this because I remember how he would always be the first one in their homes when trouble arose. And I was becoming bitter about this as a boy. And my mother said, Son, it's okay, they're just too embarrassed to see your father like this because they don't know how to handle it. They don't know what to say.

9:31 Have you ever felt like that? when you go to a funeral home or visit someone who's just lost a loved one, you're nervous because you're thinking of some profound way to express your sympathy, what do you say?

9:55 The answer is, it doesn't matter what you say. In fact, you don't have to say anything. Just go. Touch them. Squeeze their hand. Put your arm around them. Words fail in times like that. And these friends of Mary and Martha, thinking that Mary was going to the tomb to continue weeping and mourning, they just wanted to be with her. I don't think they were going anticipating a miracle. but they were being friends. Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet saying, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

10:59 Again, I hate to think that this was a rebuke or just an expression of frustration or even a confession of faith. I know, Lord, this wouldn't have happened if you would have been here. But there is a hint, isn't there, a suggestion that the anguish of the loss of her brother is intensified by Jesus' failure to be there when she needed him and when she expected him. And in a sense, what Mary is saying to Jesus now is, Lord, you're too late Again, in the 60s, Bess and I had the privilege of living in the Boston area for a couple of years during the heyday of the Boston Celtics that had an annual date with the world championship.

11:55 In the days of John Havlicek, Bill Russell, Casey Jones, another Hall of Fame basketball player. But there was a man on that team who you almost never hear about anymore, who was one of the best shooters on that championship Celtics team, whose name was Sam Jones. And he was known for getting his shot off faster than anybody else in the league. In fact, he was so fast that when they'd pass him the ball, he'd make his jump shot, swish, and they would say, too late. So he was known as Sam Too Late Jones. But that was a compliment to Sam Jones. It's not a compliment to Jesus. Lord, you're too late.

12:47 In our prayer this morning, we prayed for Rick Grasa, for the loss of his brother this week in Pennsylvania. Rick traveled all the way to Pennsylvania to be with his brother in his final hours. And he told me this morning what happened. when he drove up in front of the home, pulled into the driveway,

13:13 and Rick's father came out to greet him, leaving his brother alone for a few moments. And he said, I'll go in and tell your brother you're here, Rick, and then I'll come out and help you down off the truck so that you can go in and talk to him. And in those brief moments, in that momentary interlude, The father went into the house to talk to Rick's brother. He told his brother that Rick was here. His brother gasped twice and died.

13:46 Rick's father came out and said, Rick, your brother just died. Imagine going all that way and miss it by a minute. but Rick said that he spent precious time with his father in the room where the brother had just died, precious time of communication, and ultimately, he was not too late. You know, ladies and gentlemen, this is something about God. They say of God that He's an eleventh hour God. I don't think so. It's more like one second to twelve is the way He operates. But we want God to do what we want Him to do now, not later. But the truth of this passage in Scripture when everybody in Bethany and everybody who knew anything about it in Jerusalem was convinced that Jesus was too late, they didn't understand that Christ is never too late.

15:01 Not for Lazarus, not for Mary, not for Martha, not for you, and not for me. See, God doesn't know how to be late. Listen to this. When Jesus saw her weeping and her friends weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. I'm troubled by this verse. I'm troubled by this translation because I have a sneaking suspicion that the actual statements here in the Greek bothered the translator and the translator didn't want to be exact in translating the term. Maybe I'm being unjust at this point, but the force of the verb here is much stronger than to say that Jesus was troubled.

15:53 A more accurate translation would be, and Jesus was irate. He sees everybody around him crying, Martha, Mary, their friends, weeping, sobbing at the tomb of Lazarus, and Jesus groans in anger. Why? Some commentators suggested maybe Jesus was angry at Mary and Martha and at the crowd for their lack of faith. Hadn't he just told Martha that he was the resurrection and the life? And now there she is weeping. Maybe he's just so frustrated with their unbelief. What do I have to do to convince you people that I have the power over life and death. If you don't get it now, are you ever going to get it? And you think that maybe that's what creates this deep irritation of Jesus. I don't think so.

17:00 I think that which caused the anger of the Son of God to boil up and overflow in his spirit was that he was in the presence of the ravaging destruction of the greatest enemy to mankind, even death. This was his enemy. This was the enemy that only in a few days forward, he was going to confront head on in the throes that he would experience in the cross, dying that death to conquer death.

17:41 Sometimes when I go to a hospital and I see people suffering with cancer, I walk out of there and I say, I hate cancer. The affliction is so great. The pain is so enormous. And Jesus entered into the affliction of His people so deeply that He was moved within Himself at the travesty of death. And he said, where have you laid? And they said, come and see. And then the shortest verse in all of the Bible, but one of the most pregnant, Jesus wept. Not that Mary wept. We already read that. Not that Martha wept. We read that. Not that the Jews were weeping. We already read that. But the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept. Jesus wept? Did Jesus give in to despair? Did Jesus not know what he was about to do? Why would he weep?

18:59 does not the Word of God teach us to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice? This is the man of sorrows acquainted with grief, who even though he's on the verge of perhaps his greatest miracle, he enters into the feelings of despair of those whom He loves, He weeps with them at the tomb of Lazarus. And the Jews said, see how he loved him. But others said, couldn't this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? What's the answer to that question? Yes. Of course he could.

19:53 But he didn't. so Jesus again groaning in himself came to the tomb it was a cave and a stone lay against it and he said, take away the stone. Now Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, we can't do that. Don't you understand? My brother's been dead for four days, and if you open up the tomb, there's going to be this blood-curdling stench. Now that's the more recent version, the old version I liked even better, where it has Martha saying, Lord, if we do that, he's been dead four days, and he stinketh. That's the Elizabethan way of describing the condition of Lazarus. After four days, he stinketh. Well, in any case, Martha now is concerned about protocol.

21:07 And Jesus said to her, didn't I say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? You know, one of the cruelest words in the English language are the words, I told you so. Did you ever use those terms? How do you feel when somebody says that? Didn't I tell you that that was going to happen? How would you like to have Jesus say that to you? I can imagine that if the books of God's judgment are open before me and I am going to be tried on every count and every trespass, I would think at least a hundred thousand times Christ is going to say to me, didn't I say this and you didn't believe it, R.C.? Didn't I say this, R.C., and you ignored it? Didn't I tell you this and didn't I promise that, but you didn't trust me? That's why I say to you again and again, it's easy to believe in God.

22:11 It's believing God that is the test of the Christian life. And here we see one of the closest friends of Jesus forgetting in an instant the promise of Christ to her, and he has to remind her. Didn't I say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? so they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying, and Jesus lifted up his eyes, and listen to this. This is wonderful. Jesus says, he addresses himself now to God, Father,

22:49 I thank you that you have heard me. And I know you always hear me. but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. We've already had this conversation, Father, and I know you've heard me. You know what I want. You know what I'm going to do. I know you've authorized me. I have the conviction that you're going to heed what I request of you. I know that, but sometimes, Father, I have to pray for the benefit of other people that they may know what's going on here. have you ever listened to people who really know how to pray?

23:33 And it's like eavesdropping on a private conversation between a believer and God. One of the banes of the ministry is that sometimes we as preachers are guilty when we give our prayers to really not speak to God, but to speak to the congregation and sort of get in an extra few moments of the sermon when we're actually speaking to the people instead of God. That's a terrible thing because that's an abuse of prayer, but that's not what Christ is doing here.

24:08 Now, after He had said all these things... I violated all the terms of oral interpretation when I read this text originally because I didn't follow the instructions in the written page. When I said before, when I read it to you this morning, I said, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. Now what's wrong with that? if we read it according to what the text says, we would say, and Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus! Come out of there! he didn't whisper an invitation to the corpse it wasn't general conversation that he used Jesus cried we are told with a loud voice recalling the power of the word of God in creation where the Lord God omnipotent said let there be light and the lights came on it reminds us of Christ shouting to the sea in the midst of the tempest saying peace be still and instantly the sea was calm because of the power of a divine command.

25:28 Sometimes we use the expression facetiously, we're so noisy we could wake the dead. well Jesus was noisy enough to wake the dead because through the grave cloths through the deafness of the dead through the silence beating of the heart through the cessation of brain waves Lazarus heard the call of Christ. In the moment the voice of Christ called upon Lazarus to come forth, Lazarus heard the voice of the one who was the resurrection and the life, and in that very instant the heart began to beat again. Brain waves began to function in his head. The rotting, putrefying flesh became whole and healed instantly. And the man gets up and walks out of the tomb while there are grave wrappings around his hands, grave wrappings around his legs and around his feet, looking like a scene from Boris Karloff and the mummy.

27:09 He comes out with this gauze wrapped around his face. and he's alive. what do you do if you see something like that I'm sure there were people passed out others stood there paralyzed with fear with astonishment gasping at what their eyes had just beheld Jesus' concern is still with Lazarus. and he says take those grave claws off of him unbind him loose him set him free I am the resurrection and the life. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the one who has the power of life and the power of death in His hand and in His Word, the same Jesus who calls us from spiritual death, who makes us alive together with himself by his spirit, and who guarantees to all who put their faith in him everlasting life.