Delayed But Not Forgotten

Audio Transcript

This morning, we continue our study through the entire Bible, and specifically now for the last two years, studying through the life of Christ. So I would ask you to take your Bible and turn, please, to John chapter 11 today.

John chapter 11.

In the elders meeting yesterday, they were kidding me a little bit about how far ahead I try to plan sermons, not that it’s rigid and can’t change because it does sometimes, but this message today has been planned for this date for a very long time. And I struggled the last couple of days just thinking, “Lord, are You serious? You want me to bring a message today on the resurrection of Lazarus after what has happened this week in our church family, after one of our families lost a child this week? That just doesn’t seem like good timing to me.”

And so I struggled even to yesterday afternoon. And it’s kind of one of those convicting moments where, you know, just trying to put it in my own words, the Holy Spirit said, “Phil, just shut up and preach the Word.” So here we go.

You don’t have to answer this out loud, but I wonder… I wonder if you have ever felt disappointed with God because He didn’t answer your prayers in the way that you hoped He would, or because He allowed things to unfold in your life in a way that you never would have allowed.

Today, we meet a good family who felt just like that.

In order for what we’re going to look at in John 11 to really make sense, we must understand the context of this. And the context begins in the, in closing verses of chapter 10. I didn’t put all those on the screen for you, but you can scan back through there and see, you know, in our study so far, the last two years of the life of Christ, we’ve seen many times that the religious leaders wanted to take hold of Jesus. They wanted to kill Him, and in fact even tried to kill Him.

And that plays a direct part in everything that happens in John chapter 11 today. The end of John chapter 10, we’re told that they once again tried to seize Him, but He escaped from them. And it says that He left Jerusalem and He went all the way over east. In fact, show that map if you would. Went all the way over east to a place called Bethany beyond the Jordan.

So Jesus has traveled from Jerusalem, where you see that red arrow, over to a place called Bethany beyond the Jordan. Now the reason they added beyond the Jordan is because there was another Bethany that you see circled in green there. It was right outside Jerusalem, just a little under two miles. It’s still there to this day. That is where the events of chapter 11 take place, but as they take place, Jesus is over where that red arrow is pointing. Now keep that in mind as we read these opening verses of John chapter 11, starting in verse 1.

“Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who had anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent word to Jesus, saying, ‘Lord, behold, the one You love is sick.'” Verse 4, “when Jesus heard it, He said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.'”

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, so, when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days.”

John tells us twice in these opening verses that Jesus loved this family. They lived in Bethany, the one you saw on the map circled in green, the one right outside Jerusalem. Their home was His go-to home whenever He was near Jerusalem. In fact, the last week of His life, He would travel each night back to Bethany and spend the night there in the last week of His life. Well, Lazarus has become so sick that his sisters are afraid he’s going to die. And they send a message to Jesus all the way over to Bethany beyond the Jordan. This wasn’t a text message.

They literally sent a messenger to take a message and make that journey over to where Jesus was. This wasn’t a “come whenever you can” message. This was an urgent 911 call. “We need help now.” Imagine if you had a life-threatening situation on your hands, and you called 911, and you gave them your information, and they said, “Well, listen, let’s see, today is Sunday. I think we can be there by Wednesday.” You wouldn’t say, “All right, well, thank you. That sounds good.” You would be insistent. “No, no, you don’t understand. You must come now.” This is what Mary and Martha are conveying to Jesus. Lazarus didn’t have the sniffles. He didn’t have a tummy ache or an earache. He was dying.

And I find it lovely that Jesus knew this family so well that when the sisters sent the message to Him, they didn’t even have to use Lazarus’ name. They said, “Lord, the one You love is sick.” And Jesus knew immediately. Wow, wouldn’t that be great, if we knew Jesus that well, and He knew us that well?

So He receives the message, and here’s where things get really uncomfortable. Verse 6 says that when Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days.

The same Jesus who dropped everything to heal a centurion servant from a distance with just a spoken word. The same Jesus who touched and healed lepers that no one else would touch. The same Jesus who took time to raise a widow’s son He’d never even met. That Jesus hears that His close friend was dying, and He didn’t rush to his bedside to help him.

He waited.

I don’t think we can do the calculations exactly precisely on how long this turnaround took from the time the messenger left that Bethany near Jerusalem and traveled over to the other Bethany. It seems to be about a day, a day and a half’s journey one way. Then Jesus delayed two days on top of that and then had to come back another day and a half’s journey, looking at about five days. I wonder how often during those long, aching, agonizing days, Mary and Martha went to the doorway and looked down the road to see if Jesus was coming yet.

You know they did. Straining their eyes. Sending word out into the village that was on the way. “Any news? Have you seen Him yet?”

“Nothing.”

And hours turned into days. Lazarus got sicker. But still Jesus didn’t respond to their call.

Surely this has been common for all of us. If you’ve ever prayed urgent prayers into what felt like silence, if you’ve ever wondered why He seems to be taking His time when your world is falling apart, and you’re in good company because Mary and Martha wondered the same thing.

We’ve all had times when we wish God would move faster. But here’s what I want you to see. His delay is not abandonment. It’s His plan.

He said it plainly in verse 4. Let’s look at that again. “When Jesus heard it, He said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.'” Now, Jesus didn’t say, “Lazarus won’t die.” He said, “It won’t end in death.” Some translations say, “It won’t lead to death.” That’s a very unfortunate choice of words because it’s confusing to our English ears. His sickness did, in fact, lead to death, but it means death won’t be the final outcome.

Well, that’s one thing for Jesus to say that miles away when He heard the news, but Mary and Martha didn’t know that yet. By this time, their brother has already died. Surely by the time the messenger got there, Lazarus is already dead. Jesus says, “It’s okay. It’s not going to end in death.” They didn’t know that.

Sometimes God asks us to trust Him even when it doesn’t make sense. And I’m telling you, church, you’d better have some solid truth to anchor your life to during those times.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “God is too good to be unkind and too wise to be mistaken. When we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”

You and I will all have times like that in life, when what God has chosen to do doesn’t make any sense at all. Regardless, we’re called to trust Him. Easier said than done from up here. I realize that.

So now we mustn’t miss this. Jesus has said… See, we read John 11, and I have to skip ahead here and, you know, give the story away, but you know it already. We know Lazarus will be raised from the dead. Sorry, spoiler alert, but too late.

And we read John 11 and we think that is the grand finale of this story. It is not. Raising Lazarus from the dead is not what this was all about. Jesus said it. He said the purpose for all of this is so that God would be glorified.

Often we want to… we want God to fix the problem right now. “Right now, Lord, fix it right now.” And when we press for that, we miss completely that He’s trying to reveal Himself through it. We short circuit His process because the pain is too intense. “Lord, I cannot do this for one more day. Please take this away. Please heal this. Please fix this. Please resolve this now.”

But on God’s timetable, He’s saying, “Oh, you’ve just got a little while longer. You need to wait. You need to trust Me. Because I’m trying to reveal Myself to you through this pain.”

Is God good? Does He bless us? Is He kind to us? Does He want us to be joyful? Yes, all of that. Times a billion. Yes. But that is not God’s main purpose for our lives. We live in this country that has been so blessed. It has twisted and warped our theology. We think that a good God will give us every desire of our heart, everything we want, every blessing, a full bank account, perfect health.

We must understand that the thing that God is most interested in in your life is to make Himself known to you and to be glorified through you. That’s what He wants.

Can I urge you, don’t measure God’s love for you by how much suffering He keeps out of your life. Measure it by how much of Himself He shows you in it.

He wants you to know Him, that He may be glorified through your life. The Bible says, “Let not the rich man boast in his riches. Let not the strong man boast in his strength. Let him who boasts, boast in this: that he understands and knows Me.”

That’s what God was about to do for Mary and Martha. Not primarily to spare them from grief, but to display God’s glory through it. I’m going to repeat this this morning until you’re tired of hearing it. This is everything from this chapter.

Show that next map if you would. So as I said, the messenger has traveled now from the Bethany that’s just outside of Jerusalem over to the Bethany beyond the Jordan. He’s delivered the news about Lazarus, and now Jesus and the disciples have to make the trip back.

And we don’t have time to get into it today, but in verses 7 to 13, you can scan there. Jesus has a conversation with the disciples. They’re saying, “Please don’t go back there. They want to kill You.” And Jesus made a comment, you know, “Lazarus is only sleeping, but I’m going there to wake him up.” And the disciples said, “Well, if he’s sleeping, then leave him alone and he’ll get better.” So that all happens in 7 to 13.

And in verse 14, they leave to make the trip back. And as Jesus is leaving, He makes this unusual statement to His disciples who are trying to understand the situation and His timing and His reasoning for all of this. John 11, 14 and 15. “Then Jesus said to them plainly,” because they didn’t get what He was saying, “Hey, fellas, Lazarus is dead.” You ready for this? “And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.” Why? “That you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go to him.”

So what have we seen here already? The first reason Jesus said all of this is happening: so that God would be glorified. Now He’s just given us the second reason all of this is happening: so that you will believe. You got that? For God to be glorified and so that you will believe.

Well, they make the trip back, and by the time Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus had been dead and in the tomb for four days.

That is not an incidental detail. That detail matters immensely. He had been dead and in the tomb for four days. Jewish tradition said, now this is not biblical, it was one of their superstitions. Their tradition, their superstition said that the soul of a dead person lingered near the body, hovered around the body for three days trying to re-enter it. In fact, sometimes loved ones and friends would set up a watch outside the tomb around the clock. They would sit outside the tomb for three days hoping for life to return.

But after that third day, they folded up the chairs and they went home because they believed the soul had now departed forever and there was no coming back. Don’t miss this.

Jesus didn’t arrive on day one or day two or day three and raise Lazarus when a skeptic could have said, “Well, he probably wasn’t dead anyway. According to our tradition, the soul just happened to come back into the body.” No, Jesus intentionally delayed so that He would arrive precisely when Lazarus had been dead for four days. Because on the fourth day, it was past the point of all human hope. It was even past the point of all their superstitions. So when the miracle came, God alone would receive the glory.

Verse 20. “So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet Him. But Mary stayed at home.” “Martha said to Jesus,” now just picture her. She’s not neatly put together. She’s frazzled, she’s exhausted, she’s frustrated, she’s disappointed. She runs out to meet Jesus before He even gets to the house, and she says, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Martha bolts out of the house to see Jesus. Mary doesn’t move. We don’t know why. Was she just crushed in grief? Was she angry at Jesus? We don’t know. Martha reaches Him, and she blurts out what can only be taken as an accusation: “Lord, if You had only been here, my brother would not have died.”

And if we jump ahead for just a moment to verse 32, we’ll see that Mary did finally come out of the house and she also went to see Jesus. Look at what she says. Verse 32, “Then Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet and said to Him, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.'” She said exactly the same thing Martha said. Why?

You want to know why? I would bet my life on this. Because those two sisters had been sitting in that house for four days, mourning the loss of their brother, and they had said this line to each other over and over again for four days: “If He had only been here. If He had only been here.”

It was the one thought they couldn’t get past. “Lord, if You had come sooner, You could have healed Lazarus and he would still be alive.” Have you ever thought that? “Lord, if You had only answered when I prayed, this would never have happened.”

But I’ve only read half of what Martha said. Let’s go back now to Martha, verse 21 again. And we’ll add 22 this time. “Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, but even now, I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.'” Oh, this is such a beautiful summation, such a beautiful snapshot of the Christian journey.

First, “Lord, I don’t understand why You let this happen.” But then, “Even so, Lord, I have faith in You.” That’s my journey. Is that yours? “Lord, this doesn’t make sense. I wish You would have done it differently. But I still trust You.” I’m like the father who said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe. But help my unbelief.”

We all know how it feels to trust Him. We do trust Him, but we don’t always understand why He does things the way He does it.

It’s interesting to me, Jesus didn’t scold the sisters for saying this. Not at all. In fact, His response was filled with encouragement. Verse 23, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha replied, ‘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, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.'” And then this thunderous question: “Do you believe this?”

That’s the question for the ages, is it not?

Martha believed in a resurrection that would happen someday in the last day when all the dead will rise. See, that’s a, that’s a safe belief. You got any safe beliefs? That’s a belief that’s so far out in time it can’t be tested. “Oh, I believe God will do this, and He’ll do that somewhere down the road.” Do we really believe, because it can’t be tested right now?

Martha says, “Oh, I know, I’ve read the scriptures. I understand at the last day, a resurrection will happen.” Jesus says, “No, Martha. Resurrection isn’t a date on the calendar. The resurrection is standing right in front of you. I am the resurrection. I am the life. I’m not asking you to believe in a doctrine, Martha. I’m asking if you believe in Me.”

Listen, it won’t do you any good to believe in a denomination. Heaven help us. We’re all so messed up down here in this church thing. We’re not doing this right by a mile. But we’re striving to. It won’t help you at all to believe in a church. It won’t help you at all to believe in spiritual things. You must believe in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our elders prayed yesterday, “God, shut this church down before we ever preach anything but the gospel.” You should be thankful for elders like that.

Jesus isn’t saying, “Martha, do you believe in a creed? Martha, do you believe in a theology?” He’s saying, “Do you believe in Me?” That’s what everything comes down to, folks. Everything.

This is why Jesus said, “He who believes in Me is not condemned, but he who does not believe in Me is condemned already.” Why? “Because he has not believed in the only begotten Son of God.”

You say, “Well, I believe in God, but not so much Jesus.” Sorry. Can’t do that. Jesus is the one God testified about and said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” You can’t have God without Jesus. Jesus said, “I am the way. No one comes to the Father but by Me.”

And boy, Martha, from the midst of her griefs, makes this bold, beautiful declaration. Verse 27, “She said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ.'” What have I told you that word means? Messiah, Savior, the Promised One, the Son of God who is to come into the world. Time won’t permit me to dig into this and tell you what a remarkable statement this was for a Jew to make. They never threw these phrases around casually. They would never dream of calling someone the Son of God if he was a mere human. Never. It was blasphemy.

What Mary is saying here is not, “Lord, I believe You’re a good teacher.” She’s saying, “I believe You are the Christ, the Promised One, the Savior of the world. That’s what I believe about You, Jesus.”

Verse 33. “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.’ And Jesus wept. The Jews said, ‘See how He loved him.'”

I want you to think about what this means. Let’s not blow through the scriptures at 90 miles an hour. I want you to think about what we just read. Jesus wept.

Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead just minutes from now, but He wept anyway. Why would He shed tears over a grave that He was about to empty? It says, when He saw their tears, when He saw their tears, and stood by the tomb with all those others who had gathered and were grieving, He wept.

What have we seen again and again as we’ve studied the life of Christ for two years now? We’ve seen His tender heart, how He loves and cares for the broken and the hurting. He seeks them out to spend time with them. He’s not a distant deity. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He bears our griefs. He carries our sorrows. He is near to the brokenhearted. He’s touched, He’s moved by the feelings of our infirmities and our struggles, Hebrews says.

If you’re grieving today, you need to know. Jesus doesn’t give you a theology lecture and then walk away. He enters into your sorrow with you. The psalmist said poetically, “He collects all our tears in a bottle. They are all recorded in His book.” Those thousands and thousands and thousands of tears you’ve cried over that issue, you know the one, He’s counted them all. And He has entered into your grief with you.

Verse 38. “Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. And Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be a stench for he has been dead four days.'” Martha wasn’t being faithless. She was being practical. She was being honest. She knew exactly how dead her brother was.

The problem is, and I don’t pin this on her because I struggle with this every day of my life, the problem was she was still unable to see past the physical.

Little girl’s mother died. And the father was doing his best to explain to her. She said, “Daddy, where’s Mommy?” And he was trying his best to fumble his way through and explain, “Mommy’s in heaven, sweetie.” And at the graveside, as the casket was lowered into the ground, the little girl peered over the edge and she said, “Daddy, is that heaven?”

You see, she couldn’t see past the physical. She couldn’t see past the pain that was right in front of her.

Martha’s stuck in the physical. “No, Lord, don’t do that.” And so Jesus immediately has to turn her focus back from the physical to the spiritual. Look at this, verse 40. Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

It doesn’t have to do the same for us sometimes. We get our eyes so fixed on the problems around us that we can no longer see the promises ahead of us.

Verse 41. “Then they took away the stone, 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 here, I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.'” Jesus prayed out loud, not because He had to, but for the sake of the crowd standing there, so that they would know beyond any doubt that what was about to happen came from God, not from a trick, not from sorcery, not from human power.

Verse 43, “when He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth.'” And the man who had died came out bound hand and foot with strips of linen or grave clothes, it could be translated, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him and let him go.”

Think about this. We are so stuck in the physical that we have problems computing what we just read. Jesus spoke, and a dead man obeyed. No pulse, no breath, no brain activity, and yet he obeyed. Why? Because Jesus has power over life and death.

He would later go on to say in Revelation 1:18, “I am He who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of death and Hades.” In this language, saying you had the keys to something meant you owned it. You were the boss.

Jesus spoke and out came Lazarus, dead for four days, and now as alive as he had ever been. Can you imagine the women screaming? Can you imagine the children clutching their mother’s garments? Can you imagine the grown men stumbling backwards with wide eyes as they see a dead man walking?

And Jesus gives one final, tender command. I love this so much. “Loose him and let him go. Loose him and set him free.”

As I try to wind this down, we must come back to this. And I’ll tell you for the final time, why did Jesus say all this happened? It was not so that Lazarus could be raised from the dead. All this happened so that God would be glorified and so that you would believe.

See, Lazarus being called out of death into life is a picture of Jesus calling people from spiritual death into new life, freeing us from those old grave clothes and setting us free, letting us loose from all that has bound us. I love this so much. I had to include this. Ephesians chapter 2, listen to this. If I said to you this morning, “Hey, you ever been dead?” you’d go, “Are you nuts? Of course I’ve never been dead.” You sure about that?

Ephesians chapter 2, this is speaking about, written to the church, just like you and me. “And you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world.” Verse 4, “but because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” That’s what Jesus does for everyone who believes in Him.

This resurrection is a picture of the new life that Jesus offers to everyone who believes. Why do you think He said again and again and again the word believe? It’s all through John. Believe, believe, believe.

But there’s something more. Lazarus being called out of death into life points ultimately to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the day when He would lay aside His grave clothes and walk out of that tomb, never to return. Problem is, poor Lazarus, somewhere past John chapter 11, had to die again. Can you imagine this again? Come on!

Jesus walked out of His tomb never to die again. And His empty tomb means everything to us. It’s His promise. It’s His guarantee that because He conquered death and lives forever, all who believe in Him will conquer death and live forever. That’s what the empty tomb means.

Romans 6 says it beautifully. “Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.” And all who believe in Him can say the same thing.

So let me close by asking you what Jesus asked Martha. “Do you believe this?” Not do you believe something vague about life after death. Not do you fiddle with spiritual things. Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection, the only one who can speak life into your spiritual deadness now and the only one who can give you eternal life forever? Do you believe this?

The entire reason John wrote this Gospel, he gives it to us toward the end, the entire reason he wrote this Gospel was so that you would believe and that by believing you would have life. I close with this verse, John chapter 20, verse 31. “These things are written that you may believe.” Believe in what? Believe in religion?

No.

“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior, the Promised One, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

Do you believe this?