Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing if you're able,
and let's turn to John Eleven. John
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Eleven, we're going to be in
this chapter for a few weeks. On
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this morning I'm going to read verses
one through five. Now a certain man
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was ill, Lazarus of Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
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It was Mary who anointed the Lord
with ointment and wiped his feet with
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her hair, whose brother Lazarus was
ill. So the sisters sent to him,
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saying, Lord Him, he whom
you love, is ill. But
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when Jesus heard it, he said
this illness does not lead to death.
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It is for the glory of God, so that the son of God may
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be glorified through it. Now Jesus
loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus
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he may be seated. So this
story about Lazarus is going to be another
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one of those amazing stories in the
gospel of John. We've heard about his
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healing of the paralytic. I've heard
about Jesus's healing of the blind man in
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chapter nine, and now with Lazarus, he is going to cause a dead
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man to come to life. This
is going to be the last of these
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miracles before we come to the crucifixion
and eventually the Resurrection of Christ. In
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some ways, as one commentator put
it, this story about Lazarus is sort
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of a mini gospel of John.
All Right, here Jesus will later say
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I am the Resurrection Right, whoever
believes in me, I will have life.
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He says to one of the sisters, to Martha, says, do
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you believe? Right? This is
a this is the great question of John,
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of the gospel of John. It's
the great question that all of the
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scriptures demand as we encounter Jesus,
the resurrection in life, this one.
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Who can call dead men out of
their graves? Do you believe? And
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if you believe, you will have
the resurrection, you will have Christ himself.
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Let me start by just reminding you
a little bit of this story,
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because I didn't read the whole thing
and perhaps some of you are unfamiliar with
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it. You've got this group of
siblings, right, most of us here
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have siblings. You have brothers and
sisters. There's a set of brother there's
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a brother and sister set here,
Mary and Martha, sisters and their brother,
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Lazarus, and we read that Jesus
knows them and loves them verse five.
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Now, Jesus loved Martha and her
sister, which is Mary, and
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Lazarus. They're all from this town
called deathany. That's not the name of
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another person in the story, that's
the name of the town where they're from.
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So you have Lazarus, and you've
married and you have Martha. They're
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all from this town of Bethany.
But something bad has happened. Lazarus,
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the they are brother Mary and Martha's
brother, has become very ill and in
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fact he becomes so ill that he
dies. He dies, and this one,
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this is one that John Describes.
Lazarus, is one whom Jesus loved
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and Jeed's later we will read that
when Jesus hears of the news of his
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death, he weeps. So Lazarus
dies. Jesus doesn't come before he dies,
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he comes after he dies. In
fact, the scriptures tell us that
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he's been dead for four days and
one of the sisters even worries a little
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bit when Jesus wants to go to
the tomb where Lazarus has been that it's
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going to smell really bad. If
you've ever smelled something that has been dying
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or a decaying, you know that's
not a pleasant smell. It's a smell
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that tells us stay away, move
back right, whether that's an animal,
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perhaps it's died, or even something
in your fridge that maybe as a putrifying
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you get rid of these things,
right. We remove them from ourselves.
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We don't come close to them.
But that's what Jesus wants to do.
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He wants to come close to death
that he might call Lazarus out of death.
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And that's what he does. He
says, Lazarus, come out of
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your tomb, and Lazarus, who'd
been dead for four days and was really
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stinky, comes out of his tomb
with the linen cloths actually wrapped around him.
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is even his face seems to be
covered. He comes out of his
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tomb, maybe looking kind of like
a mummy, except he's not the living
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dead, he's living. Lazarus isn't
a Zombie sort of half dead, half
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alive. He's alive. Have you
ever had an animal, a cat or
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a dog, die and wanted so
badly for them to be alive again?
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Or maybe, even more seriously,
of a friend or a parent or a
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sibling? Mary and Martha I lost
their brother. Can you imagine losing a
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brother or sister, some of you
have, and how badly that you would
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want that person to live again,
to be able to talk to them again,
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to be able to see them again, that the power of death would
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not remain, that power that is
so strong to be able to simply say
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get up and, almost as if
they were sleeping, they just get up.
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Of course, that never happens.
It never happens. So we bury
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our dead, and that's what Mary
and Martha did, except in the case
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of Lazarus, he did get up. He did after four days, after
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coming and becoming smelly. When Jesus
says come out, he comes out.
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Amazing. Now this and we're going
to think about all of these things.
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I just want to remind you of
the story here at beginning. This results
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in interesting things, as is usually
happens with Jesus, there's two reactions.
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One reaction is a group of people
who believe in Jesus, who say this
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is amazing. I'm going to stake
my life on this person, everything about
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me is going to be dependent upon
him because, well, look at him,
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look what he's doing. He's causing
dead people to raise from the dead.
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I don't want to die. He's
saying that up. I believe in
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him. I too will never die. So that's one group of people.
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They believe in him. The other
group of people are so threatened by his
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power that, instead of seeking his
favor and seeking that his power would be
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used to benefit them, they try
to attack him, arrest him, and
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eventually they do and they kill him. Kind of an ironic and foolish thing,
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you might laugh and scoff out a
little bit. To try to kill
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someone who just cause someone to rise
from the dead seems a little bit like
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a fool's errand and indeed it was
right, because Jesus didn't stay dead,
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he rose from the dead. Unsurprisingly, at least it shouldn't be, but
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of course we all remember how much
sin and blinds us, how much Hay
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and anger and pride consume us.
Yet another reason why we need to go
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to Jesus when he's offering US forgiveness
and life. So with the gospel of
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John Here and the Gospel itself and
Jesus and in our minds as we see
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him through these actions, in this
resurrection of last risk by the name and
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by the way, a name that
means God helped one who God helps Lazarus.
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Let's think about these first few verses. What it means to go to
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the Lord, what it means to
go to Jesus and looking for help.
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Mary and Martha are in a bad
place. They are scared, vulnerable,
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hurting, sorrowful. Their brother,
whom they love, who Jesus loves,
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he's sick and he's dying. I
know that some of you right now have
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friends and family members that you're worried
about, that are sick, that are
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dying. Perhaps you yourself have things
going on in your body that you don't
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understand and you feel vulnerable to you
feel the weight of your own mortality and
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you are trying doctors and you're trying
different therapies and your various protocols and trying
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to know what things better. But
it's the scary situation. You wonder about
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the future. What's this going to
look like a month from now, two
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months from now, a year from
now? This is how Mary and Martham,
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of course, Lazarus are feeling when
they come to Jesus. It seems
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that they probably didn't come directly to
him, because in verse three it says
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the sisters sent to him on there, probably staying with Lazarus and they send
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messengers to Jesus. I'm saying,
Lord, Him Whom you love, is
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ill. We find ourselves, not
just in terms of our bodies, but
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in all kinds of different life situations, in places like this, in very
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difficult spots where we feel hurt,
when we feel scared, not knowing what
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to do. There is an orderliness
to the world right. Proverbs talks about
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this. There are a way in
which a typically leads to be cause and
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effect. You work hard, you
tend to make money, you live your
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life honorably, you tend to have
honor, these kinds of things. But
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we also know that after proverbs comes
ecclesiastes and that life under the sun is
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not always a to be cause and
effect in the way that, at least
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we would like it to seem,
that there's vanity to things, that you
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can work really, really hard and
turn up short, that you can take
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care of your body and get exercise
and sleep and do all the right things
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and then get a disease. This
kind of world, these kind of unexpected
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things, often turn us on inside
out. They put us in these spots
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where we don't know what to do. Relationships to write we invest in friendships,
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we invest in organizations, we we
get tied up in them and then
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they turn out not to be what
we had hoped. Friends turn on us,
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family members leave us, death happens, all kinds of things. This
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is life under the Sun. There
is an orderliness to it, but at
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the same time it's crazy, it's
whacky, it doesn't always make sense and
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we go often find ourselves in spots
like Mary and Martha Do. What do
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we do when we feel the weight
of that? What do you do?
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Do you turn to food or will
power or drugs or other things? Where
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do you turn? Where do you
turn for help when you feel backed into
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a corner, when you don't know
what to do, when you're anxious and
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you're depressed and you are lonely and
you're suffering? What scripture is calling us
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to do? What Mary and Martha
so rightly do, is they go to
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Jesus and they say, Lord,
he whom you love, is ill.
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And what does Jesus do? Does
he rebuke them? Say Why do you
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bother with me with these things?
I've got better things to do? Does
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he say, why do you think
I love you? You despicable creatures?
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Are always disobeying and singing against me. Does Jesus turn them away? Does
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Jesus know? Over and over again
through this passage we are reminded that Jesus
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loves them. He loves them and
he loves them deeply, and because of
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that he acts according to this love
in good and gracious ways. One of
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the things that we do, and
we ought to do when we find ourselves
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in these difficult life situations, in
these hard places in life, is to
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go to Jesus, remembering that he
loves us. Jesus isn't just throwing guy
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out there. He's not some bureaucratic
someone up there. He is not a
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power that we're trying to tap into, an access he's the one of God
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who loves you. As we read
earlier in Romans Eight, those whom he
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for knew, he predestined and justified
and glorified. That word, for no,
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doesn't merely mean that he sort of
sees into the future. It has
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a more specific meaning, a kind
of choosing in love. It's kind of
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what Paul says an Ephesians, that
in love he predestined us for adoption.
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He sort of sets his eyes on
US and chooses US and saves us,
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just as he did with the blind
man, just as he did with the
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paralyzed man. He sets his eyes
on us, he pities us, he
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loves us, and this is something
you must remember. It's something Jesus is
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reassuring us throughout this passage. He
loves you, and you may not believe
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that, but it's still true.
It's so true, and you can hear
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it in his words here, and
you can hear it in his actions,
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in his weeping for this lost friend, in his calling him out of a
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death and his promising that this illness
will not lead to death in verse,
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for it is for the glory of
God, so that the son of God
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may be glorified through it. I'm
going to remind you of several things here
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that you ought to sort of in
bed, deeply in your in your hearts,
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as you think about how to go
to the Lord and in difficult spots.
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One is to remember that Jesus loves
you. The second is to remember
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that Jesus is love is not equivalent
to your timing. This is something we
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often get confused about. We think
that if Jesus loves us, that he
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will do things when we want him
to do them, that he will show
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up when we think he needs to
show up, that he will act when
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we think he needs to act.
The thing is is this is almost never
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true. It almost never works out
like we think it should. We think
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that Jesus needs to do something at
a particular time and in a particular way,
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but Jesus almost never acts according to
the ways that we think. There
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are many reasons for this. Perhaps
the most important one to remember is that
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he loves us, just as a
parent does not always do everything exactly what
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their children ask, when they ask, Skid and how they ask it,
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but instead does the thing that's best
for them, no matter what, even
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if it makes the child upset temporarily, even if the child stamps and says
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you don't love me, the parent
still knows and reassures yes, I love
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you and that's why I'm doing these
things. Jesus is timing, is not
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our timing, because he loves us. How great is your timing, you
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might ask yourself. How well do
you execute all things in your life?
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How consistent are you and keeping your
promises in predicting events, in timing things
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out, in knowing when a leads
to be, leads to see if you
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graded yourself, what would you give
yourself if perfection was a hundred percent?
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Thirty, thirty percent, forty percent, if you're generous? We're not very
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good at this right. We are
not very good predicting events, even our
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own lives. We're not very good
at staying consistent with our plans, at
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timing things out. Partly it's just
our human limitations. There's billions of variables
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that we can't account for. Even
people who go to school and get master's
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degrees and PhDs to think about forecasting
and predicting still know how difficult these things
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are. The other part is not
just our human limitations, but our sinfulness.
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Right, we often bake into our
predictions and our forecasting in these kinds
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of things are sinful desires, things
that we want that we really shouldn't even
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be wanting, gaming for things that
shouldn't even be sought for. Praise God
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that he doesn't work according to our
timing. Praise God that he does things
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according to his perfect will and his
perfect love and not when we want things
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or when we think we need things. But that's so important to remember that
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God's love that is given to us
in Christ does not necessarily equal our timing,
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because a lot of times, when
we find ourselves in these hard situations,
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we impune God. We we say
bad things about him because we think
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he's not loving, because we think
his timing is bad. Of course that's
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not true. God is not dependent
upon a leads to be kind of world,
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nor is he subject to of a
wackiness and craziness of unpredictable things.
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God is operating above and superintending all
things. If you want to learn more
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about that, come to our essential
questions. Class after Church or after worship
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this morning, will be thinking about
what are the decree is of God?
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What does it mean that he determines
things according to the counsel of his will?
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The point here is simply to say
that God is sovereign, the God
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is supreme in all things and that
God, as he is supreme, is
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loving towards his children. He does
things for our good and he does things
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not according to the principles of this
world, even principles and logic that he
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is laid out, but he's done
things according a most to first and foremost
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according to his will. So number
one is that Jesus loves us. Number
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two is that his love does not
equal our timing. Number three is that
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he hears our prayers. He doesn't
rebuff Mary and Martha. Instead, he
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does eventually go to them and he
answers them according to his goodness and according
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to his love. He doesn't explain
everything, he doesn't give them all the
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answers. He never does, even
though we do have some here. We
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have the benefit of hindsight, right
we know what's going to happen at the
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end of the story. They didn't
at the time. All they heard was
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this illness does not lead to death. But he died. Lazarus died.
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Would that be an easy thing for
you to hear? I want you be
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really honest with yourself. If Jesus
himself told you that your brother would not
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die and then he died, how
would that make you feel? How would
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you react? Would you hold on
to your faith in God? Would you
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hold on to his promises? Would
you hold on to him as your savior,
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as the resurrection, as the life? Mary and Martha Do, and
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it's amazing. What they remember is
that God's ways are not our ways,
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that his thoughts are not our thoughts, that his timing is not our timing,
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that he's the boss, he's the
king, he's the father, and
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we are not the even when we
don't fully understand what he's saying, we
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still depend on him. Now,
of course, we are able to see
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how this all works out. Of
course he died, but eventually Lazarus would
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rise from the dead again, but
in a glorified form. Jesus never lied.
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Jesus just didn't explain everything. Now
we know that. Right from the
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end, we can explain that.
We could tell Mary and Martha, Hey,
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this, don't worry about this,
but think about it at that moment,
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what it would have felt like to
hear those words and yet put Lazarus
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into the Tomb and day one passes
and day two passes and day three passes
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and day four passes, more than
a week and he's still dead. These
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things try us, they are hard, but they should cause us not to
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flee from the Lord, but to
lean into him all the more, to
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remember who we are, to remember
how weak we are, to remember how,
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in our understanding of events, how
in our timing of things, how
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in our power over this life,
we are at his mercy, at his
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footstool of love and grace and mercy. And so we ought to go to
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him in prayer, as they do, and Jesus answers their prayers and eventually
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he does come to them and he
does call Lazarus out of that tomb and
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he does give him life. Yet
again, Jesus says this illness does not
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lead to death. It is for
the glory of God that the Son of
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God might be glorified through it.
And, of course, as the son
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of God is glorified through it,
so all who are connected to him.
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That's why Jesus says to them in
Verse Twenty Five, I am the resurrection
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and the life. Whoever believes in
me, though he die, yet shall
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he live. Our lives ought to
be tied up in his life, because
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he is the resurrection life, though
we die, if we are in him,
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we shall be saved. This means
that in Jesus is acting, we
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have salvation, we have love and
we have hope. Now one thing before
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we bring this to a conclusion.
Jesus says that it is for the glory
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of God that Lazarus's death or illness
would not lead to death, and we
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often think, AH, yes,
the miracle right Jesus causes him to rise
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from the dead, and this of
course, gives glory to God and it
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does right praise God, and this
is this miraculous, amazing thing. But
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notice that this event also leads to
another set of events. It leads to
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the death of Jesus. This event, this Jesus raising jet Lazarus from the
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dead, leads yet again to the
desire of the people on to arrest Jesus,
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a plot to kill him and destroy
him. In Verse Fifty Seven,
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we read at the end of this
chapter. Now, the chief priests in
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the Pharisees had given order that if
anyone knew where he was, he should
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let them know that they might arrest
him. And do you remember? Who
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eventually knows where Jesus is and lets
them know where he is? It's one
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of his own disciples, Judas himself, who goes and kisses the Lord on
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the cheek, lets them know,
and he's arrested and eventually crucified and put
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to death. Again. We might
say, well, where is the glory
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of God in this? Of course
it is there, because it is in
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Jesus's death. But the judgment of
God is turned away from us and we
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are forgiven of our sins. Jesus
is death, is his glory. It
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is hard to see this, isn't
it? It is hard to see how,
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in people dying, God is glorified, but it is. It happens
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this way so that God can show
his our weakness and the weakness of sinful
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human flesh and the power and the
judgment it deserves, but his great and
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Glorious and Awesome Grace that comes to
us through the Christ and that's why,
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throughout this Gospel and in this passage
is well, we have this continuous call,
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this heralding that keeps going forth again
and again. Do you believe?
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Do you believe? Are you trusting, not just once but all the time,
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when you're in these hard spots,
when you're feeling the weight of your
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mortality, when you are seeing people
die around you, when you find yourself
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some difficult situations, are you fleeing? Are you trusting in Jesus? You
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must, you must, because in
him is the glory of God, in
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Him is the resurrection, in the
life, in him is the one who
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has power over death, so that
you might not die but live forever in
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perfect peace with him. Lazarus's illness
did not lead. It led to death
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in a momentary way, but it
did not end there. That was not
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its final place. Lazarus rose again
from the dead, and one day Lazarus
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and all of us will enjoy the
resurrection of the dead. When Jesus comes
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to gather US home, put your
faith in him. Let's pray
