Episode Transcript
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Pring your attention to God's Word in
John Eleven. I'll read this passage and
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here from the end of John Eleven, and then preach on it this morning.
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John Eleven. Let's start in verse
forty three. Lazarus, friend of
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Jesus, brother of Mary and Martha, has died. He's been dead for
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four days. He is stinking dead
and he's in a tomb, sealed in
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a tomb, has been. Jesus
now brings him from death to life.
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He raises a dead man from the
dead and makes him live. Will hear
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this and the reactions that follow.
May God bless his word to us.
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Verse Forty Three. When he had
said these things, he cried out with
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a loud voice Lazarus come out.
The man who had died came out,
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his hands and feet bound, with
linen strips in his face, wrapped with
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a cloth. Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go.
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Many of the Jews, therefore,
who had come with Mary and had seen
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what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the
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Pharisees and told them what Jesus had
done. So the chief priests and the
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Pharisees gathered the council and they said, what are we to do? For
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this man performs many signs. If
we let him go on like this,
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everyone will believe in him and the
Romans will come and take away both our
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place and our nation. But one
of them, Caiaphas, who was high
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priest that year, said to them
you know nothing at all, nor do
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you understand that it is better for
you that one man should die for the
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people, not that the whole nation
should perish. He did that. He
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did not say this of his own
accord, but being high priest that year,
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he prophesied that Jesus would die for
the nation, and not for the
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nation only, but also to gather
into one the children of God who are
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scathered, scattered abroad. So from
that day on they made plans to put
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him to death. Jesus therefore no
longer walked openly among the Jews, but
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went from there to the region near
the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim,
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and there he stayed with his disciples, or with the disciples. Now
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the pass over the Jews, who
was at hand, and many went up
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from the country to Jerusalem before the
Passover to purify themselves. They were looking
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for Jesus and saying to one another
as they stood in the temple. What
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do you think? That he will
not come to the feast at all.
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Now the chief priests and the fair
he's had given orders that if anyone knew
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where he was, he should let
them know so that they might arrest him,
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maybe seated here in our passage.
We have this question. What are
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we to do? On the chief
priests and the Pharisees gather this counsel together
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and say, what are we to
do? There's a kind of handwringing right
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what's going on? I don't know
what, a frustration and anxiousness. What
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are we to do? This is
a question that is that God never asks
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of himself. God never is sitting
in heaven wondering, waiting, deciding,
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trying to figure things out. This
is something we do all the time,
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every moment and in a sense,
in every way, we are constantly asking
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this question. Maybe it's a much
more mild form. What's next? What?
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What? What's the next thing to
do? And sometimes it's a much
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more anxious question, a fearful question. What are we to do? But
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God, as I say, he
never he never asks this question because he
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always works according to his will,
and his will is perfect in every way.
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Consider what Ephesians, when eleven says, says that God works all things
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according to the counsel of his will. Isaiah for ten, the counsel of
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God stands and he does his good
pleasure. We are also reminded that God's
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will is eternal, perfectly wise.
It is good, as we have heard.
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So God, in his perfect wisdom, is never like US trying to
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figure out how to match the means
to the ends. How do I get
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from A to be? That's wisdom, right. It's knowing the right end.
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What's the thing to obtain? What's
the good thing? First of all,
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knowing what it is, and then
how do you get there? Challenging
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things, but not for God.
God's wisdom is perfect. God's wisdom is
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unsearchable. God's wisdom is grounded in
his will, which is also eternal,
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which means that God is not continually
deciding things, sort of reacting to events
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in time and space, but it
is set perfectly eternal, forever made.
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All things that fall out in God's
Providence. All things that happen in our
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world happen because God is never asking
what do we do? What do I
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do? This is, of course, a question creatures ask all the time,
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as I've said and as I hinted
at earlier in our service, part
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of it's just ignorance, right.
It's not necessarily sinful. We're just limited.
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We can't see everything, we don't
know everything as God does. We
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also have very limited power, we
have very limited abilities and what we can
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choose to do. We're also moved
all the time. There's thousands, millions,
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billions of variables constantly affecting every moment, all interrelated and interacting. It's
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really impossible to have a hundred percent
certainty about anything, at least in the
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way that God knows things. We
are creatures, we are limited, and
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there's nothing wrong with that. That's
how God made us. We are not
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God's we shouldn't try to be.
But there is something sinful that is added
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to this. Of course. We
don't simply a limited creature. It can
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still trust and rely fully on the
Lord. A creature can go to his
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or her God and say, I
don't know everything, but you do,
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and so I'll trust you. A
limited creature can say I cannot always determine
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the best thing, I don't always
know the best way, but you do
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and I will trust you. Sin, of course, doesn't do that.
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Sin Doesn't say what do I do, and then hand that question over to
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God and rest in him. Rock
of ages, cleft for me know,
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the creature wonders out of God,
out of that protection, out of that
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certainty, and tries to forge his
or her own way, to do things
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according to our own reason, our
own decisions, our own will. This
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doesn't mean, of course, that
we don't make decisions and we don't have
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choices to make and all of that, but it's a question. The focus
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here is on dependence. Are we
depending on ourselves at the root of what
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we are doing? Are we dependent
on who we are and what we do
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and all and and our ability to
be in the world, to control the
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world, to decide the world,
to know the world? If we do,
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it's a fool's errand for one,
in our sinfulness we go against the
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grain. God has ordered this world
in a certain way and in our sinfulness
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we always push against the way that
we shouldn't go. And we all have
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examples of this. We can put
put point to in our lives things where
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our parents have said, if you
do this, this will happen, and
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then we do the opposite, and
then we go man, I should have
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listened. All of us have lost
jobs and friends and gotten ourselves in all
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kinds of bad situations because we've not
done the thing that we know we ought
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to do, or we've left undone
the thing we know we really should have
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done. We're fools, and it's
not just a problem of ignorance, it's
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a problem of sin. We go
against the grain, not only in our
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actions but also in our minds.
We often purposefully misread things in order to
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justify our own actions. We we
look at situations and we say, well
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then, if that happens, I
have to do this. We use faulty
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reasoning. There's all kinds of crazy
things going on here in the reaction of
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the Pharisees. They're trying, for
example, to kill a man who just
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caused someone to rise from the dead. How do you think that's going to
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go? Right? They are.
They go even against the advice of Caiaphas,
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see Kiaphas, even though he's not
he's it's a political maneuver that he
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get offers here. He even recognizes
their foolishness. They say, if we
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let him go, everyone will believe
in him, as if they have any
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control over that. They're thinking all
about themselves. The Romans will come and
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take away our place, our nation. These words are emphasized in the Greek
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as well. Kiaphas stands up and
says, you guys don't know anything at
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all. You're making excuses because you're
upset. This is not the way to
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handle this. We don't trust God, we don't reason according to his principles,
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we aren't willing to endure suffering.
There's all kinds of things. We
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could go on and on and on. We've put ourselves and we find ourselves
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in all kinds of terrible situations and
asking ourselves, what are we going to
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do, and then even answering that
in bad and foolish ways. This is
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what happens with the Pharisees. Some
of these people who go with Mary have
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this amazing experience of seeing Lazarus rise
from the dead and they believe in Jesus
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and says and then in verse forty
six. Some of them, though,
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they go to the Pharisees, and
it seems like there's some like tattletelling going
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on here. They told them,
Pharisees, what Jesus had done. Dude,
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can't you believe what he did?
There isn't a sense of our one
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er or majesty. There's no trust. Here. Is the God of the
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universe. He just caused a man
to come from death to life. It's
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like they're they're complaining about something when
they ought to be praising a god for
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it. And then the same goes
for the Pharisees. Here we have what
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is fulfillment of God's prophetic word and
Psalm to. We have recorded the WHO
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will stand against the Lord and his
anointed? The people of the world.
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They Murmur, whisper, they take
counsel together to stand against the Lord and
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is anointed, to break apart their
bonds. And this is exactly what happens
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here. The chief priests, the
the important leaders in the church and the
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Pharisees, they gather the counsel together. We got to have a meeting.
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What are we going to do?
And notice what they're trying to do,
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notice what their goal is. They
are afraid. They are afraid that everyone
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will believe in him and that somehow
this will cause the Romans to take away
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both our place and our nation.
This, by the way, is how
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we usually get ourselves in trouble.
We try to control the things in our
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lives, thinking that we have ownership
over them all, this is my place,
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my right, my whatever, and
they become our idols. Doesn't mean
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we don't possess things, of course
we do, but when we possess them
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in such a way that they possess
us, when we possess them in such
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a way that they have control over
us and they guide our every thought,
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in every action, that we're willing
to disregard the glorious work of God so
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that we can protect the things that
we have, that's when we get ourselves
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in trouble, and unfortunately, that's
what the Pharisees are doing here. They
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are they are concerned to protect,
to control, the things in their lives.
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They want, at all costs,
to protect their authority. That's why
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they're afraid of Jesus. They're afraid
because he puts the things that are most
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valuable to them at risk. And
God does this all the time with all
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of us. We all have things
in our lives that we are afraid to
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lose, whether it's our health,
our money, certain relationships, freedoms,
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and it doesn't mean those things aren't
valuable. They are the that's why we're
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afraid to lose them. Is Why
we love them. They are God's goods,
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gifts, and they shouldn't be despised. We shouldn't turn away from these
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things, good things anyway, when
God is given to them to us,
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we should accept them and love them
and hold them with appreciation and value them,
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but we don't clench down on them, we don't elevate them to the
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status of God. We don't say
I'm not okay if these things are not
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there. We don't make our lives
entirely dependent on those things, because our
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lives are only ought to be only
dependent on one thing. Quotes for those
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who are listening on the Internet,
God. Our lives ought to only and
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always be dependent on God. And
here is God in the world, raising
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dead people to life. Here is
God challenging those idols, challenging those things
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and giving themselves, giving them everything, offering to them eternal life, showing
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his glory and his power in this
amazing way. When God does this in
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your life, when God reveals his
word, when God reveals Jesus to you,
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as he is doing right now in
the preaching of his his word,
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in the hearing of his word,
as you hear Jesus, do you turn
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away and you say I'm going to
protect my country, my things, my
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people, my relationships, my money, or do you hear and receive the
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Gift of God that is given to
us? Do you believe one of the
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ways we see God use these kinds
of crises in our lives is in Chiaphas
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here? This is one of many, many examples we could see from this
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passage and from the rest of John
and all of scripture really. But notice
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what happens with Caiaphas. There is
this kind of political maneuvering that's going on
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all over the place, and he
says, you guys don't know anything at
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all, nor do you understand it's
better for you that one man should die
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for the people, not the whole
nation should perish. Like let him go,
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leave him alone, let him do
his thing. If the Romans find
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him and he dies, you know
will be better. But what he doesn't
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realize is that God uses this as
a way to preach his word. He
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takes these this these political the political
maneuvering, and he does so throughout the
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rest of John as well, and
he used it as at able as a
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blessing, and so we see in
verse fifty one. But being high priest
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that year, he prophesied that Jesus
would die for the nation, and not
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for the nation only, but also
to gather into one children of God who
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are scattered abroad. Out of dirty
politics, God brings a prophecy, and
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this is a kind of prelude what
the Cross of Christ is all about.
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Out of the murder and execution of
a political threat, we have the salvation
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of the world. Out of the
sinful acts and choices of men, God
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brings us not just the salvation of
his people in Israel, but through people
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scattered all over the world, into
one lovely family, through the cross,
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through the execution, through the murder
of the son of God. And this
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is what God is always doing.
This is how the glorious life that we
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have in Christ will come, death
to life, suffering, trial, tribulation,
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but ultimately leading to glory the Pharisees, and unfortunately, many of us
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want nothing to do with that.
We're don't want to suffer, we don't
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want to wait, we don't know. We want our country and we want
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our place and we want our fame
and whatever it is you want to list
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and we want it now, and
we want it without trial, we want
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it without tribulation. But this is
not the way of Christ, just isn't?
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We see it in the death of
Lazarus and him waiting before rising rip
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cause it calling him to race from
the dead. We see it in his
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I'm going into the Wilderness and being
alone, in his in his loneliness and
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his separation. We will see it
ultimately when Jesus is hung on a cross.
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But why does he do this?
He does it so that the death
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and the suffering and all those things, the the that we face in this
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life, would be once and for
all, finally put to death. We
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of course want to alleviate these things, we don't want to endure them,
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but there is no way that we
can conquer them on our own. When
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we try to the just these little
towers of Babel, to borrow a story
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from the Old Testament, but just
we try to reach our way up to
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heaven, and it's just it never
works. It doesn't work. But when
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God decides to overcome death, when
God says I will give you my grace
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in such a way that all your
sins will be forgiven, you will have
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eternal life forever. I will gather
you in from the farthest places, from
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the most dangerous situation, from the
most costly thing, and I will give
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you more blessings than you can ever
imagine. That is a work that will
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be completed, and that is a
work that was completed by our Savior on
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the cross, and that's why we
trust in him and him alone, and
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we turn away from our foolishness and
our our sin and we say no more,
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I don't care about my idols enough
to lose my life, and besides
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that, it's a sin against God. But we see in his love and
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His grace given to us this perfect
freedom and this perfect life. And so
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my encouragement to you is to trust
him, to believe in him, this
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one who not only raised Lazarus from
the dead, but took up his own
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life after his own death and rose
with authority over death, having conquered it
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and all sin and all suffering,
and done so. Finally, if you
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leave off on your own into the
world and try to establish your own kingdoms
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in your own places, in your
own way, in according to your own
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reason, even if you do a
really, really good job at it,
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by human standards. It'll all be
lost. Moths eat things up, rust
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destroys the steel. Death comes to
us all. You will face only a
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life like the author of ECCLESIASTIES describes
it, a life under the sun that
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is just vanity after vanities, chasing
after the wind. But if you receive
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a life like Lazarus did, if
you receive a life that is given to
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you by God, Almighty creator of
the world and Redeemer of the world,
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your life will be perfect, consummated
in glory and forever. Trust in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, trust in him
alone. Let's pray
