The Strangest Funeral Ever - Part A

Why is Jesus weeping? I mean, he knows that within five or ten minutes he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead, right? He knows that within a few minutes those two sisters who are mourning the loss of their brother are going to be embracing him because he will be alive and that funeral will be turned into party zone central.

Why is he crying? John wants to show us and Jesus wants to show us by weeping that God enters into the sorrow of those that he loves. Welcome to Connect with Skip Weekend Edition. Maybe you've heard this song lyric, everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Doesn't that seem to be so true? Especially when we look around at all of the products available to help our bodies look younger and fitter and stronger. And you know, there's just one fact that those ads and products leave out. No matter how much work we put into maintaining our bodies and looking younger, one day death comes to us all. Now that may be depressing, but here's some good news.

Jesus is all about life and he's taken radical steps to stop death in its tracks. We'll hear more about that from Skip Heitzig in just a moment. But first, let's see what's going on at the Connect with Skip Resource Center this month. Over the years, Skip Heitzig has invited a number of notable speakers to come to Albuquerque. For an end of year resource, we want you to hear some of these amazing messages by speakers such as Tim LaHaye. I travel all over the country and speak on prophecy conferences.

And it's very seldom that you find churches that really recognize the importance of history written in advance only by God coming true so we can believe what we believe. Also a part of this pulpit package, the familiar voice of Pastor Chuck Smith. I'm overwhelmed when I see what God is doing here.

What a thrill to see the work of God being wrought here in Albuquerque. This package contains 10 full length messages available on CD or as a download. We will send it to you as a thank you when you make an end of year donation of one hundred dollars or more to support this program. Request your pulpit package at ConnectWithSkip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888. This resource is available through the month of December, and this pulpit package includes a classic teaching by J. Vernon McGee. I count it a privilege to be here to talk to many young people and especially those that are interested in Bible study. This is sure a high pulpit made for a tall fellow. Request your pulpit package at ConnectWithSkip.com or by calling 1-800-922-1888.

That is ConnectWithSkip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Open your Bibles to John chapter 11 as we join Pastor Skip for today's message. The strangest funeral ever. I was in a store some time ago and I was looking at the magazine racks and I was noticing the word life appear in a lot of different magazines. For example, there was a magazine no longer in print called Life Magazine. It's all about life. Another magazine, People Magazine. It's all about living people. There's a magazine called Best Life, another one called Natural Life, another one called Woman's Life.

Another one, Mac Life, if you're into the computers. It's all about living. You'll never see a magazine called Death Magazine or Dead People Magazine or Victorian Cemeteries. Victorian homes maybe but not cemeteries or Death Week Magazine. Even though we know that death is a very real part of life, that everyone who lives will die unless the Lord comes back before that time, which is a real possibility.

But other than that, people die. One clever mortician down in Florida, rather than signing his correspondence cordially yours, he signs it eventually yours. Spooky kind of a thought. But how many people get the chance to get back up from the dead on the day of their funeral? I heard about one woman who died and it was her funeral and after the service in church, the pallbearers grabbed her casket and were walking her out toward the hearse. One of the pallbearers slumped, bumped into a wall and it jarred the casket and a faint moan was heard from the coffin. They opened up the casket to find the woman was alive and that she lived 10 more years. Well, eventually she died and they had the funeral again. This time the real funeral, same church, same pallbearers.

And as they were walking the casket out after the service, coming close to that wall, her husband yelled out and said, Watch out for that wall. I'm not going to go there except to say that we now come to the funeral of Lazarus. He had been in the tomb in his grave four days.

A period of seven days was required called heavy mourning where mourners came around the family and they would often wail and shout and it was very emotive, followed by 30 days of light mourning. This is the fourth day and it's a strange funeral. I've done a lot of funerals in 30 years. I've buried lots of people, all ages, and you can imagine with that many funerals I've heard and seen some pretty strange things.

One thing that I can tell you about, I don't have the freedom to tell you all the things I've seen and heard, but one very vivid reminder or memory that I have was after a funeral service and years ago, this was years ago, I went out to the cemetery to intern the body and a musician was there with a guitar who was drunk. Now, I thought that the family had asked this person to come. They thought I had asked this person to come. The truth is, nobody asked this person to come. He just showed up and started playing his guitar and singing. He was drunk, by the way, and it wasn't until he was halfway through the first verse, he was learning his words and we thought, this isn't right.

We had to haul him off. I'll never forget that funeral. But this takes the cake in terms of strange things that happen at funerals. A resurrection would be the strangest. We're familiar with this passage. It's the most famous and I would even say the greatest of all of the miracles that Jesus performed.

Certainly, he has raised dead people before. In the scripture, a boy and a girl, the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, she was dead for a short period of time, a son of a widow at Nain who was dead for about a day, but Lazarus has been dead for four days. So if the disciples were ever to release an album called Jesus' Greatest Hits, this would be hit number one, the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. We've spent a couple weeks already looking at it.

It's a long passage. Week number one, we considered the delay. Jesus stayed where he was when he heard Lazarus was sick and we dealt all about the delays or the denials of God. Last week, the second week, we looked at the interaction between two people and Jesus, Mary and Martha, and what was going on in their heart as they poured it out before the Lord.

Now we come to the main event. This is the ultimate proof of the claim that he made back in verse 25, which is the key verse to the whole chapter. Jesus said, I'm the resurrection and the life. It's a wonderful thing to say. But somebody listening to that could have said, prove it.

He's about to. Four hundred years before Christ, a man named Socrates, the great philosopher of Athens, drank the poison hemlock and laid down to die. While he was on his deathbed and friends gathered around him, they asked the great philosopher, will we live again? And Socrates, with all of his wisdom and all of his experience and all of the great knowledge that he had, this is what he said when his friend said, shall we live again?

Here it is. Here's the great wisdom of the sage. I hope so. Really? You can't do any better than that? Will we live again?

I hope so. But no one can ever know. Well, what Jesus is about to do completely blows Socrates' notion out of the water.

But there's three strikingly odd things about this funeral. I'll show them to you, but let's read our verses so we see where we're at. Verse 33. Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, that's Mary, and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

And he said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, see how he loved him? And some of them said, could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there's a stench for he's been dead four days. I still like the old King James the best.

By this time he stinketh. There's nothing better than that. That's just cool. Jesus said to her, did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth.

And Jesus said to them, loose him and let him go. There's a few things that are odd about this, strikingly odd. Number one, tears. You go, tears?

Skip. It's a funeral. People cry at funerals.

No, I'm not talking about people crying. It says in verse 35, Jesus wept. It's the shortest verse in the Bible, by the way. John Van Doren says it's the shortest verse, but it's the longest sermon.

It goes to show that less is more. Jesus wept. It's the kind of passage that you've got to do more than analyze it.

You've got to do more than study it. You've got to feel this passage, enter into it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached two separate messages on that single verse, two words Jesus wept, and this is what he said. There is infinitely more in these two words than any sermonizer or student of the word will ever be able to bring out of them, even though he should apply the microscope of the most attentive consideration.

Here's what's important to see. When it says Jesus wept, he wasn't weeping like the other people that are mentioned are weeping, Mary and Martha and the crowd. The word that is used for their weeping is the Greek word klyo, and it means to wail. When it says that Jesus wept, it's a word used nowhere else in the New Testament.

This is the only place, and it's the Greek word dakruo, which means to silently weep or to burst out quietly in tears. So just picture Jesus standing there, and tears are now coursing down his cheeks and filling those omniscient eyes. The question is, why is Jesus weeping? I mean, he knows that within five or ten minutes, he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead, right? He knows that within a few minutes, those two sisters who are mourning the loss of their brother are going to be embracing him because he will be alive, and that funeral will be turned into party zone central. Why is he crying? You'd think this is the guy who's coming to the funeral with the Kleenex box saying, dry it up. Stop crying. Just watch what is about to happen.

He doesn't do that. Jesus wept. Here is God incarnate. Here is God in a human body. Now, by now, you know that that's one of the great themes of John is that he presents Jesus in his deity.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and that's Jesus Christ. But what is interesting to me and a tremendous truth is here is John who exalts the deity of Christ, has no qualms at all about showing us his humanity. Jesus wept.

Why does he say that? Why does he include that in this book? John wants to show us, and Jesus wants to show us by weeping, that God enters into the sorrow of those that he loves. He enters into the sorrow of those that he loves, and that's the reaction of the mourners at verse 36. After Jesus wept, it says, see how he loved him.

Now, think about this. The very sorrow Jesus could have himself prevented, he now fully enters into. Could have prevented it. If you'd have been here, Lord, my brother wouldn't have died. Both of them said that.

You could have prevented that. Now, the very sorrow he himself could have prevented, he fully enters into. He's moved by what he sees and what he knows. He's moved because he loves Mary. He loves Martha.

And he certainly, as a friend, loved Lazarus. I think this is important to muse upon for a moment. And I want you to think in a comparative way. Compare the Greeks, for example. They had their belief system at this time. The Greeks had many gods and many goddesses. Did you know that the chief characteristic, according to the Greeks, of their gods and their goddesses and their pantheon was summed up in a single word, apatheia in Greek, which means apathy. The chief characteristic of their gods is they were apathetic, indifferent, unable to feel human emotion and didn't even care about it. They were apathetic.

That was their chief characteristic. Now, here is Jesus who presents a god totally different from that nonsense. Here's Jesus. He's not stoic. He's not aloof.

He's not detached. He is representing God, the Father, who are one in purpose, as one who cares deeply with the sorrow of man. How did Isaiah predict Christ? Isaiah 53, he would be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And 10 chapters later, Isaiah 63, 9, in all of their distresses, he too was distressed.

Now, just get this truth. We serve a god who really cares about all of those he loves who are sorrowful. It moves him.

He's not detached. The writer of Hebrews was so clear about this when he said, we don't have a high priest or a representative who is unable to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but he was in all points tested like as we, without sin. That's the love of God. And the love of God, I've always loved the hymn about the love of God. It sort of sums it up in one little stanza. The love of God is greater far than ink or pen can ever tell. It stretches to the farthest star and reaches to the lowest hell. And could we, with ink, the oceans fill and we're the skies of parchment made where every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade to write the love of God would drain the oceans dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the hole though stretched from sky to sky. People don't write songs like that anymore. What a truth, the love of God. And here's a little picture of a god who cares. Jesus wept. So he wept and they said, see how he loved him. They picked up on that and John recorded it.

Verse 37, and some of them said, could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? Now it sounds to me like the crowd has picked up on the same attitude the two sisters had that we noted last week. They said, if you'd have been here, my brother wouldn't have died. They're sort of picking up on that. And they're confused by it. Here's Jesus weeping over somebody he loves and they're thinking, well, if he loved him so much, why'd he let him die?

And it's interesting that they are reaching back to a memory. They mentioned the blind man that was healed. That's way back in John chapter nine, several months before. There was a man in Jerusalem that Jesus, remember he spat in the mud, made a little spit mud ball and put it in the guy's eye and said, go wash in the pool of Siloam. That guy was a total stranger. So they're thinking, here's Jesus. He heals a guy who's a total stranger. His own friend, Lazarus, whom he loves, he lets die.

Why? Now I find this to be, their question, I find this to be the philosophy of most people at a time of loss. It seems that whenever we lose something, even among believers, among Christians, there is the same predictable banal argument, how can a God of love allow people to suffer, especially me, as if they are somehow to be immune from all the troubles in life and God's never allowed to let anything bad happen to build character in anyone.

And so they bring up this argument. By the way, if you're a parent, answer that argument. Well, how can a God of love allow anything bad to happen to his kids? If you're a parent, you answer that question.

You can answer it. Here's a question for you, parents. Do you intercept every decision your children ever make? If they're going to make a bad decision, do you say, well, I see what's coming.

It's a bad choice. I'm not going to let them make that. You might do that in the formative years, but as they grow older, if you intercept and stop every choice they make, you will develop emotionally stunted, unable to cope with life kind of individuals.

There needs to be consequences that everybody faces for growth. But when you deny your child something he or she wants or you discipline your child when they do something wrong, one of the things they say, you don't love me. Now, parents, is that true? When you deny them something and they say you don't love me or if you spank them and they say you don't love me, does your denial or your discipline demonstrate that you don't love your children?

Of course not. It demonstrates you love them. They just don't get it right now. They will. It's not important what they think of you today.

What's important is what they think of you when they're 18 and 20 and 30. So here's this crowd, typical. Why would Jesus allow this to happen? So number one, his tears, they're odd.

It's strange. He's crying. He knows he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead.

Number two, anger. Jesus is angry. Verse 33, Therefore when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping, look at this, he groaned in the Spirit and was troubled. Verse 38, Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb.

It was a cave and a stone lay against it. We read that twice, groaning. The word groaned is a very interesting word that literally means the snorting of a horse.

Just sort of intricate. What does that sound like? What does a horse sound like when it snorts?

You don't want to do it, right? Something like... Maybe that's not a good horse, but you get the idea. Embryaomai is the Greek word, the snorting of a horse. When it's transferred into human emotion, it speaks of outrage, anger, indignation. You know, God is moved by our sorrow. He loves us and desires to see us grow. Some encouraging reminders from Skip Heitzig today, and that was just part one of a message that Skip has entitled The Strangest Funeral Ever. We're glad you've joined us today. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to bring more people into God's family and connect listeners like you to His timeless truth. That's why we make teachings like this one today available to you and others on air and online.

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Thank you. Join us next time as we see a preview of coming attractions and God's future plan for your grave site with this message, The Strangest Funeral Ever, right here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection, connection. Connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.