- [Don Carson] The passage
before us is a long one, but what better way can we spend
our time than reading a significant block of
Holy Scripture? John 11. And I will read verses 1-53. John 11:1-53. I hope you'll follow along. There are parts of this message
that will make a lot more sense if you can jump around in the
text with me, as we follow the line of thought. "Now, a man named Lazarus
was sick. He was from Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister, Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus
now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord
and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to
Jesus, 'Lord, the one you love is sick.' When he heard this, Jesus said,
'This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so
that God's Son may be glorified through it.' Now, Jesus loved Martha and her
sister, and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus
was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. And then he said to his
disciples, 'Let us go back to Judea.' 'But Rabbi,' they said,
'a short while ago, the Jews there tried to stone you and yet
you are going back?' Jesus answered, 'Are there not
12 hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime
will not stumble for they see by this world's light. It is when a person walks at
night that they stumble for they have no light.' After he had said this,
he went on to tell them, 'Our friend Lazarus has
fallen asleep. But I'm going there
to wake him up.' His disciples replied,
'Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.' Jesus had been speaking of his
death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly,
'Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I am glad I
was not there, so that you may believe, but let us
go to him.' Then Thomas, also known as
Didymus, said to the rest of the disciples, 'Let us also
go, that we may die with him.' On his arrival, Jesus found that
Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now, Bethany was less than two
miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to
Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was
coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary
stayed at home. 'Lord,' Martha said to Jesus,
'if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God
will give you whatever you ask.' Jesus said to her,
'Your brother will rise again.' Martha answered, 'I know he will
rise again in the resurrection at the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the
resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will
live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing
in me will never die. Do you believe this?' 'Yes, Lord,' she replied,
'I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,
who is to come into the world.' After she had said this,
she went back and called her sister Mary aside. 'The teacher is here,' she said,
'and is asking for you.' When Mary heard this,
she got up quickly and went to him. Now, Jesus had not yet entered
the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been
with Mary in the house comforting her noticed
how quickly she got up and went out,
they followed her, supposing she
was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place
where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said,
'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.' When Jesus saw her weeping,
and the Jews would come along with her also weeping,
he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you
laid him?' he asked. 'Come and see, Lord,'
they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said,
'See how he loved him.' But some of them said,
'Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept
this man from dying?' Jesus, once more deeply moved,
came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid
across the entrance. 'Take away the stone,' he said.
'But Lord,' said Martha, the sister of the
dead man, 'by this time, there is a bad odor for he has
been there four days.' Then Jesus said, 'Did I not tell
you that if you believe, you will see the
glory of God?' So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said,
'Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me,
but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here,
that they may believe you sent me.' When he had said this,
Jesus called in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out.' The dead man came out. His hands and his feet wrapped
with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them,
'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.' Therefore, many of the Jews who
had to come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did,
believed in him. But some of them went to the
Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the
Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. 'What are we
accomplishing?' they asked. 'Here is this man
performing many signs. If we let him go on like this,
everyone will believe in him. And then the Romans will come
and take away both our temple and our nation. Then one of them named Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year, spoke up, 'You
know nothing at all. You do not realize that it is
better for you that one man die for the people than that the
whole nation perish.' He did not say this on his own. But as high priest that year,
he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. And not only for that nation,
but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them
together and make them one. So from that day on,
they plotted to take his life." This is the word of the Lord. So often, God surprises us. Moses thought so. As a young man, he thought he'd
bring about revolution. He ended up on the backside of a
desert for the next half century or so. And finally, when God called
him, Moses was already 80 years old, time to retire
and slow down. Besides, Moses didn't have
any gift of speech, he wasn't comfortable. It was a bit surprising that God
would call in an 80-year-old. Mind you, I have more and more
sympathy for 80-year-olds, I have to say. Habakkuk thought it was a bit
surprising too. God is surprising. He could understand how God
could use a regional superpower to chasten His covenant, people,
because of their idolatry. What he didn't understand was
how God could use a regional superpower which on every graph
was socially more corrupt, was morally more corroded,
was more violent, was more destitute of grace and godliness
than the Israelite people that they were sent to chasten. How could God do that? Paul thought that
God was a bit surprising. I mean, he could pray for people
and they would be healed. He saw the hand of God's power
in the alleviation of illness. Now he has this thorn in the
flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment him, and he prays,
and God says, "I'm not going to do it. I'll give you grace instead." Which, initially, didn't
satisfy Paul at all. He prayed diligently,
setting aside repeated times for intercessory
prayer until Paul learned, "My grace is
sufficient for you." So often, God surprises us. And then, of course,
there's Abraham, promised this son who finally showed up,
and then God tells Abraham to slaughter him. But one of the things that is
most striking about the gospel is that at its heart,
it is a gospel of surprises. Who amongst the apostles
anticipated that God would redeem His people by sending His
son to die for them by taking their place? Who expected Jesus
to rise from the dead? Not the women who
went to the grave. That had ointment
to pour on his body. Not the apostles, they were busy
hiding in an upstairs room. They weren't saying, "Yes,
I could hardly wait till Sunday." They were scared they were going
to be arrested and crucified themselves. The gospel is the
gospel of surprise. And, despite all of the passages
from the Old Testament scriptures that anticipate the
coming of a Messiah, who would be a servant,
slaughtered lamb, glorious King, a triumphant conquer,
and a bleeding sacrifice, despite all the scriptures that
talk along these lines, many of them using typology,
rather than mere verbal prediction, to point
in that direction, the truth of the matter is,
it wasn't, by and large, picked up. Which is why when Jesus walks
with the two on the Emmaus road, after the resurrection,
he can rebuke them and say, "Oh fools and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have written. Ought not Christ
to have suffered?" Fact remains, it was a surprise. So when we come to this passage,
where Jesus demonstrates that he is himself, the resurrection and
the life, the passage is marked by surprise after surprise,
after surprise, until we come to the greatest
gospel surprise of all. Number one, Jesus hears a
desperate plea for help. And demonstrates
his love by delay. Verses 1-16, we're introduced to
Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. I love the description, "Lord,
the one you love is sick." Have you noticed this even in a
church with a good pastor? That just about everybody in the
church thinks they're the pastor's special friend. They feel loved. And that's true in
larger familial relationships as well. One of the remarkable things
about John's Gospel is that the evangelist simply calls himself
"the one who Jesus loved." That does not mean,
"He loves me more than you." It's just that he feels so loved
himself that that's the way he likes to designate himself,
"the one whom Jesus loved." And there are the sisters,
referring to their brother, Lazarus, who is ill. "Lord, the one you love is ill." Isn't it a wonderful thing,
we should go around our relationships and our
familial responsibilities, and think of ourselves as,
the one whom Jesus loved? Isn't that what Paul prays for
in Ephesians 3? That you might have power,
together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and
high and deep is the love of God, to know this love that
surpasses knowledge, so that you might be filled with all the
measure of the fullness of God. In other words, that
you might be mature. The implication is, you can't be
mature, unless you experience for yourself more and more
fully, that you are loved by God. It's already being picked up
in Jesus' personal earthly relationships,
"the one whom you love is sick." "When he heard this,
Jesus said," verse 4, "'This sickness will not
end in death.'" Well, it won't end in death,
it will go through death on the way. "No, it is for God's glory." Not in order that God may
receive glory, that's not the idea here,
but that God's glory may be displayed. This is for the display of God's
glory in displaying the glory of Christ as he raises him
from the dead. That's why this man is so sick. Verse 6, "So,"
it's a strong word, "Therefore, when he heard that
Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days." How do you like that for a
demonstration of love? "Oh, I sure love
my disciple, Lazarus. So when I hear that he's
definitely ill, I hang around two more days before I
set out to help him." That's what the text says. And, in fact, the timing is
underscored again and again, and again in the narrative. He waits two days, we're told. And then, after two days,
he says, "Let's go back to Judea." And it turns out in the
following conversation that Jesus has come to know,
supernaturally, that Lazarus, meanwhile, has died. So, he hears that Lazarus is
sick, waits two days, knows that Lazarus has died,
and then wants to go back south, about a three-day,
three-and-a-half day walk. "After Jesus arrived," verse 17,
"he discovered that Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days." So, if he had set out
immediately, Lazarus still would have been dead. He would have been dead
for two days. Why wait for two more days?
Dead is still dead. But the significance of the four
days is stressed again and again in the book. For example, down in verse 35,
"Lord, by this time, there is a bad odor for he has
been there four days." We forget what burials were like
in hot countries, where the custom was to bury the deceased
within the first 24 hours. There was no embalming unless
you came from extravagantly wealthy homes and then it would
be a process that could take months. He was dead and buried and was
decomposing enough that, as the King James Version memorably
puts it, by this time, he stinketh. But because there was no
embalming and no medical practitioners of the
contemporary sort that are needed to declare
a person dead today, occasionally, what happened was
the heart started fibrillating. The breathing was so shallow
that you couldn't even detect it. And there were reports of people
being carried out in their caskets to the grave when,
suddenly, as they're being carried out, you hear, "Teck,
teck, teck, teck, teck, teck, teck," the body inside
is resuscitated. This led to a number of
Jewish theories. For example, in one
1st-century document, we read, "When a person apparently dies,
the soul hovers over the body of the deceased person for the
first three days, 'intending to re-enter it,' but as soon
as it sees that the appearance changes," that is
when decomposition has set in irreversibly,
"then it departs." Now, I'm not suggesting
Jesus is buying into that. But he knew jolly well,
that if he had healed Lazarus or apparently raised him from the
dead after only two days, some people in the crowd would
have said, "Just two days, spirit's still hovering around. Impressive, but not that
impressive." But four days, and
by this time, he stinketh? Jesus loved Lazarus,
and Mary and Martha, therefore, he waited two days. And in waiting two days,
he established such spectacular certainty of Lazarus' death,
that when he raised him from the dead,
no one could say anything slanderous, or cynical
or skeptical. "I am glad that I was not
there," Jesus said, "for your sake, so that you
would believe." You would believe that I really
do have the power to raise people genuinely from the dead,
without any spooky stories of delayed spirit departures
and that sort of thing. Jesus demonstrates his love,
in this case, by delay. And that is often the case. It's the child who lives in the
immediate now. Our son, when he was three years
old, three and a half years old, had a voracious appetite
of a teenager. My wife runs by
ordered schedules. And as we got close to the next
mealtime, she wouldn't start passing out treats to
stave off hunger. "It'll spoil your appetite." I personally never thought you
could spoil Nicholas' appetite, but that's another matter. But he became her little shadow. And finally, she would turn
around and say, "Nicholas, it's only 10 minutes. Just go away, and it'll be ready
in 10 minutes." But his attitude was, "Now, now. I'm hungry now." And similarly, that's the way we
want our blessings from God. "Now, I need it now." And sometimes God expresses his
love instead, by delay. And by this means, He teaches us
such things as perseverance and faithfulness. What's transcendentally
important. Don't we read, for example,
in Romans 5, "We glory in our sufferings
because we know that suffering produces perseverance,
perseverance, character and character, hope.
And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has
been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,
who has been given to us. James 1 makes much
the same argument. God sometimes displays His love
toward us in delay. "You fearful saints
fresh courage take. The clouds you so much dread are
big with mercy and shall break in blessing on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble
sense, but trust Him for His grace, behind a frowning
providence, He hides a smiling face. His purposes will ripen fast,
unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste,
but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err,
and scan His works in vain. God is His own interpreter,
and He will make it plain." So here's the first surprise. Jesus hears a desperate plea
for help and demonstrates his love by delay. Number 2, Jesus comes up against
devastating loss and consoles grief by directing attention
to himself. Verses 17-27. "On his arrival, Jesus found
that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was two miles outside of
Jerusalem and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them." Now, you must understand how
this comfort takes place. In a lot of Anglo-Saxon
cultures, you demonstrate your Christian maturity at funerals
and the like by a kind of stiff upper lip. You watch a widow or widower at
a funeral and maybe a tear or two escapes but it's all rather
disciplined and sedate and afterwards, you summarize it
by saying, "She was very strong, you know." Whereas in many cultures,
it doesn't work like that. The way you demonstrate your
tears, your grief, your godly sorrow, is by wailing
and crying. In fact, in the 1st-century
Judaism, you made sure that you hired a professional wailing
woman to help if tears were drying up a wee bit,
and there was not enough crying, she would start blubbering,
and, granted the sensitivity of everybody's feelings, pretty
soon the whole crowd would join in, and they would often
hire professional musicians to play dirge music. At the very least, even in a
poor family, you were supposed to have two flautists
playing dirge music. This was a wealthy family. So, maybe they had an old
orchestra playing dirge music. And now, they've come from
Jerusalem to comfort Mary and Martha. We'll see how they do so
in a few moments. They comfort them by providing
the background to encourage wailing and gnashing of teeth. When Martha had gone out,
always the activist, to meet Jesus, Mary
stayed at home. And now, in verse 21,
Martha finally finds Jesus and falls
at his feet. "Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died." Now, you could
read that cynically. And imagine that Martha's
blaming Jesus, "It's your fault. If you'd been here where you
should have been, you would have been able to heal him
when he was sick. He wouldn't have died
if you'd been here. Why were you away?
Don't you love us after all?" But that's just too cynical.
It's too cynical by half. And, Martha herself realizes
that she could sound like that. So she asked immediately,
verse 22, "But I know that even now God will give you
whatever you want." But you mustn't think that this
means she was, therefore, expecting her brother to be
raised from the dead immediately. That she is
not expecting it is very clear for even when Jesus gets to the
tomb later in the chapter, verse 38, she protests that the
stone should not be taken away, it's too late. "By this time, my brother is
emitting a bad odor." She's not expecting
a miracle at this stage. She's merely trying to say,
"I'm not really blaming you, Jesus. I know that you're wonderful. I know that God will give you
what you ask Him." Jesus answered and said,
"Your brother will rise again." Spectacularly ambiguous. She responds at the level of
good Jewish conservative Orthodoxy. "I know, Lord. There is a resurrection at the
end of the age. My brother will rise then." She's Orthodox. But it could be understood,
"Your brother will rise again in the next few minutes. She doesn't pick up
any of that possibility. And then Jesus says the most
important words in the entire chapter. "I am the resurrection
and the life. The one who believes in me will
live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing
in me will never die. Do you believe this?" Now, the thing to see initially
before we look at these words closely is what Jesus
does not say. He does not say, "Oh,
you poor woman. Let me give you a hug. I'm praying for you. You know, God still cares
and loves us." What he does is
direct attention to himself. It's not enough to get her to
confess Orthodoxy. "Oh, yeah, he's going to be
raised on the last day. Death is the last enemy,
it does not have the last word. Yes, yes, I know that." He goes way beyond that. He points to himself,
"I am the resurrection. I am the life.
Do believe this?" Earlier, in this Gospel,
Jesus has spoken of the resurrection that takes place in
the last day and of his authority within it. For example, John 5:21,
"For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life,
even so the son gives life to whom he is pleased
to give it." That sort of claim is made
several times in Chapters 5 and 6. And now Jesus says it a bit more
poetically, "I am the resurrection and the life." There are two claims,
"I am the resurrection. And I am the life." And what he means by each is
unpacked in the following words. "I am the resurrection.
The one who believes in me will live even though they die." Death does not have the last
word. And, "I am the life. Whoever lives by believing in me
will never die." That life begins now and in the
deepest, most eternal sense, in terms of connection to the
living God who gives life, you will never, ever die. You have eternal life. Now, I am the resurrection
and the life." In one of the bloody revolutions
that mark the history of modern France,
France, at the time of the Fourth Republic was
in chaotic disrepair, and it was not at all clear that
it would escape civil war. And Charles de Gaulle was asked
by some newspaper people, "Where is the state now?"
And he said, simply, [Foreign Language] "I am the state." Now, of course, at an
ontological level, that doesn't make any sense at all. He's not the state, he's just a
man, he's going to die. But the state was so bound up
with de Gaulle and his authority at that time that you understood
exactly what he was saying. Let me try another example. The first fast-food chain that
developed here in North America was not McDonald's. The first big one was
Kentucky Fried Chicken. And everywhere, there were
pictures of Colonel Sanders and his finger-licking good secret
recipe of 11 herbs and spices and so on. So you could imagine that at
some point in the advertising, and I never heard this,
but you can imagine at some point in the advertising,
Colonel Sanders saying, "I am Kentucky Fried Chicken." That wouldn't not be an
ontological claim. He wasn't a chicken, Kentucky
Fried or otherwise. But you could understand
what he meant. He was so much tied up with
Kentucky Fried Chicken that without him, without his chain,
without his restaurants, without his finger-licking good
secret recipe of herbs and spices, there was no
Kentucky Fried Chicken. All the rest was phony. "I am Kentucky Fried Chicken." That's the kind of thing
Jesus is saying. He's not making
an ontological claim. He's saying, in effect,
"I am the resurrection of the dead.
I am life. There is no resurrection
from the dead, there is no eternal life whatsoever
apart from me. I am the resurrection
and the life." He's focusing all the
attention on himself. "Do you believe this? It's one thing, Martha,
for you to believe that there is a resurrection at
the end of the age. You're in line with Orthodoxy
in Jewish circles. But do you believe that I am the
resurrection and the life?" And if she answers positively,
then the miracle that takes place
is almost a kind of acted parable of what will be
at the end of the age. He is not asking her if she
believes that he is about to raise her brother from
the dead immediately, but if her faith that there will
be a resurrection at the end can extend to deep trust in Jesus as
the only one who grants eternal life now, and will resurrect the
dead on the last day. In short, if he can trust him as
the resurrection and the life. And if she answers positively,
then the raising of Lazarus, as I've said, becomes a kind
of acted parable of the life-giving power of Jesus
anticipating the end. Hence, verse 27. "Yes, Lord, I believe that you
are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world." Her reply carries the narrative
forward, for clearly she believes that the one who is the
resurrection and the life must be such by virtue of the fact
that he is, himself, the promised Messiah. But the surprise in all of this,
from the point of view of modern health, and counseling, and
grief counseling, and so on, is how much of it we find Jesus
pointing simply to himself. In fact, when you stop to think
of it, that's what he's doing constantly in the gospels. He points people to himself. Consider, when John the Baptist
points out who Jesus is, he says, humbly, "He must
increase but I must decrease. I'm not worthy that he should
loosen even my sandals. He's the bridegroom,
I'm just the best man. There's no comparison. I'm not the Messiah." It's not false humility,
he's just telling the truth. But in Matthew 11, and Luke 7,
when Jesus bears testimony to John the Baptist,
far from saying, you know, "He's a pretty great preacher
and I try to follow in his train," There's no
sort of mutual humility, each side trying to be more
humble than the other side. What he says is,
"I tell you the truth. John the Baptist is the greatest
man born of woman, because he introduced me." Now, supposing Tim had sat down
after introducing me tonight... this noon and then I got up and
said, "Listen up, folks. I'm telling you the truth. Tim Keller is the greatest man
born of woman, because he just introduced me." But that's exactly
what Jesus says. He is the Elijah who was to
come, the one who announces the way of the Lord, who points out
who Jesus is. Oh, there is a sense in which
Abraham points out who Jesus is. And Moses points out
who Jesus is. And David points out who Jesus
is, and Esther points out who Jesus is. There is a sense in which all of
these things, these people, their institutions, their places
in history, point forward to who Jesus is.
That's all true. But it fell on one man,
John the Baptist, to say, "There, that's the
promised Messiah. I have come to prepare
the way for the Lord. He is the one." And Jesus gets up and says,
"That's what makes him the greatest man who ever lived,
because he introduced me." There is such a spectacular,
self-conscious awareness of who he is in Jesus' mind and words,
that it makes no sense whatsoever to view him as
merely one more of a type. One more of a breed,
one more prophet. So, yes, God spoke to the
ancestors by the prophets at many times and in many ways,
but in these last days, He has given us the son
in revelation. There's a wonderful pair of
lines at the end of Chapter 10 of John's Gospel. "Jesus went back across the
Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing
in the early days. There he stayed, and many people
came to him. They said, 'Though John never performed
a sign, all that John said about this man was true.' And in that place,
many believed in Jesus." You who are preachers of the
word of God, how would you like that as your epitaph? "Don Carson never performed a
miracle, but everything that he said about Jesus was true." John was the greatest of all
those born of women up to that point because he pointed out
who Jesus is. And in this passage,
Jesus brings comfort to a lonely, battered,
grieving sister. Not by talking in abstract terms
about life and death, or in eschatological terms of
about final resurrection, but by pointing her to himself. "I am the resurrection
and the life. Do you believe this?" And in the comfort we give to
Christians going through hard times, or facing bereavement
and loss, that's where our focus must be. Pointing, always, always,
always, to Jesus, to Jesus, to Jesus. Third, Jesus comes up against
implacable death and displays his sovereignty over it by tears
and outrage, more surprise, verses 28 to 44. Jesus apparently stays outside
the town, Bethlehem, not because of some desire for
anonymity, but he's letting the mourning take place and his
disciples themselves are trying to protect him. He knows that he's in danger
from the authorities. But Martha goes back
and calls Mary, and Mary joins Jesus. But this time, the crowd
observes Mary leaving. "'The teacher is here and is
asking for you.' When Mary heard this,
she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had
not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where
Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with
Mary in the house comforting her noticed how quickly she got up
and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the
tomb to mourn there." When she approaches Jesus,
she uses exactly the same words that her sister Martha had used. "Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died." Probably they had
talked about that together. And that was the conclusion at
which they had arrived. But now the conversation goes in
a very different direction. Because this is not a private
interview between Jesus and Martha, and now
Jesus and Mary, rather, the crowd is there. "When Jesus saw her weeping,
and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping,
he was..." well, our English translations all have some form
of "deeply moved in spirit and troubled." I don't know why, because it's
simply not what the original says. Interestingly enough,
in this case, the German translations,
all of them, have it right. The English translations
have it wrong. The verb that is used,
deeply moved, does not suggest simply depth of emotion
or the like. A better translation would be
something like, "He was outraged and troubled." And then again, verse 38,
"Jesus, once more outraged, came to the tomb." You see, we notice the tears in
verse 35, "Jesus wept." And, we automatically think in
terms of the tears we shed at our funerals. And we say Jesus wept because of
the loss of his friend. Really? Jesus knows that in three
minutes or so, Lazarus is going to come forth. Sounds like
crocodile tears to me. If the reason for the tears is
because he's missing his friend, he's only got
three more minutes to go. No, no, no, no. He's deeply outraged, and
troubled, and weeps. Why? The narrative tells us. He sees Mary weeping,
and the Jews who come along with him also weeping. And this is a lot of noise. Culturally, this demands cries
and outburst and orchestral dirges. More tears, more weeping
and Jesus is outraged. For what he sees is death,
the last enemy. It is outrageous. We have domesticated death so
much in our culture, the experts come in and take
away the bodies, and then they're embalmed, and everything
is played with soft music at a funeral hall, and it's all
domesticated. But it's not the way it is in
many cultures around the world where death is desperate. It's not for nothing
that the Apostle Paul insists that death still remains
the last enemy. No, it does not have the last…
it does have the last, it is the last enemy. We ought to be outraged by it. We lay our spouses in the tomb. We bury our babies. We bury elderly parents. And, of course, there's part of
us that remembers, with a certain kind of joy,
that death does not have the last word,
and this aged mother, my mother, who died after nine years
of Alzheimer's and couldn't recognize any of her children,
she wakes up in glory. And she is in the
presence of Christ. And one day she will be raised
from the dead in bodily form as well in the new heaven and
the new earth, the home of righteousness. Of course, that's glorious,
but it doesn't detract from the tragedy, the ugliness
of Alzheimer's and death, and sorrow, and bereavement. And all of that, as was
eloquently put in the last address, all of that
because of sin. Jesus sees sin, and the tears,
and the death, and the loss, and he is outraged and
troubled, and weeps. These are tears of the same
sort when Jesus pronounces his woes upon the City of Jerusalem,
and at the end of the chapter, weeps. Compassion, yes, but outrage. There is a sense in which we
ought not to domesticate death by so emphasizing what comes
after death for Christians, that we fail to see
how ugly this thing is. It is appointed unto all of us
once to die, and after that, the judgment. There's no escaping it. And it's the fruit of sin. It is inevitable, it is
unavoidable and it is ugly. So, he confronts
implacable death. And sovereignly addresses it, as
we'll see, but with tears of outrage. Some people want to focus all
the attention on the fact that Lazarus is finally resurrected
from the grave. And we wonder what he was
thinking about. He's been there and come back. Why don't we hear anything about
that side of things? Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a
poem called <i>In Memoriam</i>, that tries to imagine why there's
silence on these matters. "Behold a man
raised up by Christ. The rest remaineth unrevealed. He told it not,
or something sealed The lips of the evangelist." What does the
evangelist portray? Jesus outraged, saying,
"Take away the stone." "But Lord, there's a bad odor." "Take away the stone. Didn't I tell you that if you
believed, you would see the glory of God, that is,
the display of God's glory manifest now in what I do?" So they took away the stone
and Jesus prays. He prays, understanding that
this prayer is a public prayer, and therefore it needs to be
worded a certain way. Public prayers are not to be
shaped exactly the same way as private prayers, because
although you may be addressing God, you know that
people are listening in and they are learning something from it. Hence, "Father, I thank you that
you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me. But I said this for the benefit
of the people standing here, that they may believe that
you sent me." This is part of the display of
the glory of God in Christ Jesus. Then when he had said this,
he called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." Some wag has observed that if
Jesus hadn't prefixed his command with the name, Lazarus,
every tomb in Jerusalem would have spit out its dead. "The dead man came out,
hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and
a cloth around his face." That's where the focus is,
not on what was passing through Lazarus' mind. Was he saying,
"Nice to see you sis?" Or, "Oh, good grief,
have I got to come back here?" We're not introduced to
any of that. It's secondary.
It's not important. What's important is the
manifestation of the glory of God in Christ Jesus even over
sin and death, the glory of God displayed. And finally, the greatest
surprise of all. Jesus comes up against moral and
spiritual death and gives life by dying himself. The crowds respond predictably. Some believe Jesus when they
perceive the miracle. How genuine their faith is,
the text doesn't explore at all. But some of them are simply
going to rat Him out to the Pharisees, verse 46, see
what trouble they can stir up. And this generates a meeting of
the Sanhedrin, trying to see a way out of the conundrum
in front of them. "What do we do with this chap? He's pulling in such great
numbers that eventually the Roman authority, the Overlord,
the vassal state bows to the dictates of the regional
superpower. Surely there is a danger. They'll send in the troops
and mow people down. They're taking away our temple.
They're taking away our place. They're taking away our
privileged status, all because this chap is drawing big
religious crowds, and it looks like an insurrection." "If we let him go on like this,
everyone will believe in him and then the Romans will come and
take away both our temple and our nation." So Caiaphas speaks. The language he uses
is condescending. "You bunch of nincompoops,
you know nothing at all. You ignoramuses. Don't you realize that it is
better for you that one man die for the people than that
the whole nation perish?" This is royale politic. It's brutal expediency. No concern for justice or truth. No reflection on what might be
properly concluded from the fact, the
well-established fact with lots of witnesses, that Jesus had
raised Lazarus from the dead. No reconsideration of their
assessment of Jesus. No worship, no adoration.
It's all politics. What he proposes is a
substitutionary death. Better for you that one man die,
however unjustly, than that the nation
should perish. And, of course, the deep irony,
as anybody who reads this book knows, is that in another 40
years, the nation would perish. Jerusalem would be crushed,
the temple would be destroyed. And the death of Jesus from that
political perspective was all for nothing. But John see something deeper. He comments, "Caiaphas did not
speak on his own, but as high priest that year,
he prophesied." Born along by
the Spirit of God. "He prophesied that Jesus would
die for the Jewish nation." Well, that's exactly what
Caiaphas had said. It's not that God by His Spirit
was using Caiaphas the way God spoke through Balaam's ass. When Balaam's ass gave his
counsel to the prophet, Balaam's ass was not giving it's
considered opinion. It was empowered to speak by
the miraculous display of God's power, that's it. But Caiaphas was giving
his opinion. And he was speaking of a
substitutionary sacrifice. He just got the
directions all wrong. He thought of a sacrifice in
which one man would take the place of the nation in the
physical arena to stave off a political coup. But as often in John's Gospel,
sometimes people speak better than they know. He bore the death of his people,
not only the Jewish people, but of the scattered children of
God, whose death would be sucked up, borne, exhausted,
in Jesus' own death. He died as a substitute
for them. Jesus comes up against moral and
spiritual death and gives life by dying himself. One of the briefest forms in
which this is expressed in the history of the church is a
little four-line poem, "He death in death laid low.
Made sin, He sin o'erthrew. Bowed to the grave, destroyed it
so, and death, by dying, slew." We live this side of the cross. This is so elementary and
fundamental, a part of our Christian confessionalism. We can't confess Jesus as the
Messiah, the Son of God, without embracing, within that
confession, the truth that Jesus died for our sins
and rose again. He is the resurrection
and the life. But when these words were first
spoken, not even the apostles had a very good understanding. When Peter confesses that Jesus
is the Messiah, he doesn't include in his confession that
this Messiah must die, for when Jesus goes on to talk about his
impending death, he says, "Never Lord, this shall
never happen to you," earning him the immortal rebuke,
"Get behind me, Satan. You do not understand
the things of God." That does not mean that Peter
was overtaken by demon possession, and
it wasn't really Peter speaking, it was really the devil himself. Peter was giving his own
considered view, just as Caiaphas was giving
his own view. But when Peter spoke,
he was serving as the devil's mouthpiece. When Caiaphas spoke in God's
great providence, to everyone's surprise,
he was serving as God's mouthpiece. And suddenly the strands of
Old Testament line and thought come together. Why all those sacrifices on the
Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippurim, year after year,
year after year, after year? Why the slaughter of the
Passover lamb that turns away the wrath of God, year after
year, after year, after year? Why all this death? Why the picture of approaching
God through a mediating priest once a year under God's
prescription on Yom Kippur to bring the blood of atonement,
both for the sins of the priest and for the sins of the people,
and splatter it upon the top of the Ark of the Covenant? Why all this?
Where does it end up? Where does it go? The fact of the matter is,
people didn't guess where it went, because they didn't have
a big enough category for God. They couldn't imagine that God
would reconcile people to Himself by this means even
though all the images were there, all the
prophecies were... they didn't see it,
they didn't see it. The gospel itself came as a
spectacular surprise. And even while we confess the
truth that Christ died in our place, Christ rose
from the dead, and that is elementary
confessionalism for us today, there are still millions of
people who have heard these truths and don't believe them. And then when, by the Spirit,
they are unable to see, the surprise is gone and they
see and believe. No wonder Peter can talk about
Old Testament saints, striving to understand the
nature of the prophecies that they were writing. When the Holy Scriptures spoke
of the sufferings of Christ and the things that would follow. We are so, so privileged,
brothers and sisters in Christ, to live this side of Calvary,
and the empty tomb. We see. And it is elementary Christian
proclamation that announces this news again, and again, and again
in our generation, in the earnest hope and expectation
that God, by the proclamation of the gospel, will enable
others to see and believe. Let us pray. Even angels desire to
look into these things. Oh Lord God, have mercy upon us
that we may plumb the depths of your grace as disclosed
in Holy Scripture. And be eager not only to
understand and believe, but to proclaim this good news
to a needy lost, broken world. For Jesus' sake. Amen.
