Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. I always think it's one of the saddest cases in the Bible. You go to heaven, and now they send you back. You see, and we would think, oh, it'd just be so great to be back.
Listen, if heaven's heaven, it's not going to seem that great when you get back. You see, that's the point. That's what we were created for. But it says then, many of the people saw it, and most of us would say, I would, I would. That's what I, I believe that.
If you saw that, not true. Notice the next verse. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things that Jesus had done. They explained in detail the miracle. They don't believe.
They don't. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.
Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. Now, she does show some of her faith, though, when she says, I know anything you ask God to give you. Is that anticipating some miracle? Not necessarily, but it certainly implies that she knows his power. She's not denying that. She just is. She's extremely emotional at this time. She loves her brother. Jesus said to her.
Your brother will rise again. Interesting words, but are they comforting? Not to her. You can tell by her response. Notice how she responds then. She said, I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day. Now, how does she know that?
Because she understands some passages in the Old Testament that are very obscure. In Job 19, verse 25, Job writes, he said, Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I will see God. Whom I see, he said, whom I shall see for myself and not another.
Job is confident. I will see God in my flesh. I'll have a resurrection. Daniel, chapter 12 and verse two has the promise in it that the saints will rise.
Not only will the saints rise to everlasting life, but everyone else will rise to everlasting contempt. Daniel says that. She knows this. That's remarkable. You see, and what makes it remarkable is Jesus is obviously a great teacher, but in that culture, women never sat under rabbis. Rabbis only taught men. Not Jesus, but rabbis did.
You only teach men. She knows this stuff. She gets comfort from this stuff. And so she says, I know there'll be a resurrection on the last day. Then this incredible I am statement.
There are seven of them in the Gospel of John as well. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?
Wow. You understand what Jesus is saying here? Jesus is not saying I can muster together the power to even raise the dead.
It's not what he's saying. He said, I am the life. I am the life. I am the resurrection and the life.
I am life. You see, when Jesus created in this creation, he's creating out of his own life. He's not just creating life.
You know, it's sort of not the evolutionary idea that we teach that, you know, by chance and circumstance, if there's a certain amount of all these different molecules and chemicals that come together in some primordial soup at a perfect time, then out of nowhere you get a single cell. Jesus is saying, I'm the life. When I create life, I'm just giving life from my essence.
I'm not creating something. I'm alive forever. You see, I am the life. I am the resurrection. Not that I know about the resurrection or I know how to give you life.
I am that. He said, everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. That's his word.
Clear. But he asked that question. Do you believe this? Makes all the difference in the world, whether you believe this or whether you don't. She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Messiah, the son of God, you are deity and even he who comes into the world.
That's remarkable. Has anyone else ever said that in the gospels? Peter.
Peter and Matthew 16, remember, he said the same thing. I know who you are. You're the one that's come into the world. You're the Messiah.
You're God incarnate. You're the son of God. See, Peter said that. And remember with Peter, what Jesus said, he said, You didn't come up with that on your own. Remember that he said, flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you. My father in heaven revealed that to you, Peter.
Wow. Because remembers right after that, then he rebukes Peter because Peter isn't going to let him go to Jerusalem and die. And he said, Get behind me, Satan. None of that with this lady. Now, God revealed it to her, but not like this. Jesus never says about that.
She came up with that on her own. I know who you are. You're the Messiah. You're the son of God.
You see, I know who you are. It's an amazing statement for someone like Martha to make to him. Such an insightful thing. And when she had finished that, it said and she had said this, she went away and she called Mary her sister, saying secretly, the rabbi is here and he's calling for you.
I love that statement. The rabbi is here and he's calling for you. And when she heard it, she got up quickly and was coming to him. Mary is an amazingly spiritually sensitive woman. Every time she shows up in the scripture, she's at the feet of Jesus, learning, anointing his feet. She's an amazing woman. Everything that the disciples didn't get, she got.
She understood exactly what was going on. Now, Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha met him. And then the Jews who were with her in the house and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got up quickly and went out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there, back and forth in the tomb to the house.
Now, there are dozens and dozens of people we don't know. Lazarus, the rich man, it could be even more than that with her. They see her get up. Let's go with her and let's go weep with her. She's going back to the tomb to weep some more. Therefore, Mary came where Jesus was and she saw him and she fell at his feet just like her. And notice what she says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Somebody has been talking to each other. That's the conversation Mary and Martha had on several occasions.
They said the exact same thing. Why didn't he come? Why didn't he come? He loves Lazarus. He did this. He does all these things for strangers.
Why wouldn't he do this for us? When Jesus, therefore, saw her weeping. And that word weeping is clayo. And that word means wailing, crying loudly, sobbing. This is wailing, weeping. This isn't little tears down your cheek. This is really weeping.
And the Jews came also weeping with her. He was deeply moved in the spirit and was troubled. I wish they didn't have that translational word, not troubled. The word's terrazzo.
If you look up the word almost all the times terrazzo is translated, it means angry. It can also mean outraged. He's angry.
What is he angry at? Death. Death. He hates this. One of the things I'm most proud of that I have in common with the Lord and often Satan funerals is I hate death. And I know Jesus hated it, too. We weren't created to die. We brought this on ourselves. He knows the anguish. Just imagine being an all knowing God and seeing every second around the globe, people dying every second and all the anguish that death causes.
Just enormous anguish to people. Yeah, he's outraged. He's troubled by this.
I can't blame him at all. So he said to them, Where have you laid them? And they said, Lord, come and see. Shortest verse in the New Testament. Jesus wept. This is much more pensive word. This is he couldn't hold it back anymore and he starts just sobbing. Now, you love Lazarus.
That's fine. And he identifies with Mary and Martha. But I think this is so much more, you know, this is much more transcendental than that. This is about death. It's heartbreaking. It's just heartbreaking.
Everybody goes through that. I mean, it's amazing how the rest of us go on about our lives and we feel a certain way. But when you lose someone you love, a spouse or a parent or a friend, there are people everywhere just grieving. I can't drive by like I can't go by Lakeland on the interstate and look over and not think this is the worst day of some people's lives right in that building. They're grief.
Now, we're not we're just driving along and doing our thing. But that's what death does. Brings tremendous heartache. And Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, see how he loved him.
He did love him. But that wasn't what he was weeping about. He was he was weeping about what death has done. But some of them said, could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind and have kept this man from dying? Well, of course, he could have. You see, of course, he could have. He didn't need a messenger to tell him Lazarus was sick. He knew that long before then.
So the next time we see a sow again from 17 to 38, we move into the miracle. So Jesus, again, being deeply moved within, came to the tomb and it was a cave and a stone was lying against it. And Jesus said, remove the stone. Now, who said that? Jesus, right? OK. Now, you are the son of God, your deity. That's what Martha said.
If. I want you to see how this happens. Remember when the disciples were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee in Mark four? And Jesus, let's go over to the other side. And they he was asleep in a boat and they were thinking they're going to die.
They wake him up and they say to him, you know, you know, what are you doing? We could you don't care. We're going to die here. Now, what was really wrong about that statement? Jesus said, we're going to the other side.
What's that mean? You're going to the other side. He's he's the son of God. You see, if Jesus said that's what's going to happen, he's already thought through every possibility and he's picked the best one for this. Jesus says, remove the stone. Now, what's Martha's response?
Martha, the sister of the sea, said she said to him, Lord, by this time there will be a stench for he's been dead for four days. I just want to give you information I didn't think you had. You see what I mean?
What is that? The lack of faith. She's not she's just and she's I totally empathize with the pain that she's in and what the embarrassment. But notice how Jesus responds to her. Did I not say to you, if you believe you will see the glory of God? I just told you that.
Maybe half an hour ago. Now, if I told you that, what are you going to see? The glory of God.
Didn't I just teach you this? It shows us how we are, what circumstances do to us. And so they removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but because of the people standing around, I said it so that they may believe that you sent me. That's a great public prayer. Understand something. Jesus said, I'm going to pray out loud. Now, that's not between you and me. You already heard me.
You know what? I'm just here to do your will. But these other people need to hear me pray out loud because then they'll know when I pray out loud to you that you sent me here to do this.
So he prays out loud, not for God, but for the people so that other people will be able to listen to what he's saying. And when he had said these things, he cried out with a very loud voice, Lazarus. Come forth. Just those words, Lazarus.
And it's much louder than that. Come forth. I said in the past, when I've talked about this passage, he had to say the word Lazarus, otherwise all the graves would empty because of who he is.
There's going to be a time, by the way, Paul tells us the Corinthians, when he's going to do that for all of us. The dead in Christ will rise first. That's his power over death.
He's its master. Lazarus, come forth. The resurrection and the life shout into the cave of death. Death has no bearing. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?
He's master of death. Do you ever imagine what the angelic response would be to this? Think of the angels in heaven that are watching this.
Just think what they'd be like. I can see them all smiling. The Lord has spoken.
Look at that. They know who he is. He just spoke. Now what about the fallen angels, all the demons?
What would their conversation be? Oh no. Oh no.
Why? That's our great power over people. That's the great fear we can put in people. Death. He just said come forth and he's coming forth. Oh no. Wow.
Well, the man who had died came forth. Wow. You ever wonder how? Remember he's bound. They put the wrappings all around him like this. You think? Or you think he just moved?
I think he just. But it's interesting because he doesn't have the wrappings off yet. He's wrapped up pretty tight. And so he comes forth. He said bound hand and foot with wrappings. And his face was wrapped around with a cloth.
And Jesus said unbind him and let him go. What a miracle. It is incredible. Countless people seeing it. Countless people got to see this. He just spoke it and he came forward. This miracle is such a profound personal thing.
How do you respond to it? The key phrase in this. Verse 45. Therefore, many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what he had done, they believed in him.
Wow. Would have you? I mean, you knew he was dead four days. You were there when they put him in the cave.
You knew what happens to the body. And now this guy walks out. Now just imagine this as he's walking out.
Another way of looking at this. Lazarus is absent from the body and he is present with the Lord in heaven. Now you ever wonder what he's doing? Maybe he's sitting there with Abraham and Moses talking. Just talking about the Lord.
And then over the PA system in heaven. Lazarus, you're one and down below. And like Abraham looks like, I don't know what that means. People don't go back that way. You never think about it from Lazarus's point of view.
He's going back. The Jewish tradition is, by the way, lived 30 more years after that had happened. That was the Jewish tradition about Lazarus. But the point of it is he's back.
I always think it's one of the saddest cases in the Bible. You go to heaven and now they send you back. You see, and we were thinking, oh, it'd just be so great to be back.
Listen, if heaven's heaven, it's not going to seem that great when you get back. You see, that's the point. That's what we were created for. But it says that many of the people saw it and most of us would say, I would, I would. That's what I believe that if you saw that.
Not true. Notice the next verse. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things that Jesus had done. They explained in detail the miracle. They don't believe. They don't.
They went right to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. Wow. I thought seeing is believing.
It's not. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. That's what the writer of Hebrews says. But watch. Therefore, the chief priests in the Pharisees convened the council and they were saying, what are we doing?
For this man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him. And then the Romans will come and take away our place.
We'll get replaced. Notice they don't deny the miracle at all. It's that we've seen what he's done and now we know what he's done. He raised the man who was dead four days in the dead. This guy is going to convert everybody and then we're going to lose our place. Wow. That's the unbelieving spirit. I will not believe. I don't care what I say. I will not believe.
Wow. You see, the most important thing of this is for you and me is do you believe this? Do you believe this?
This is the most important question of your entire life. Do you believe this? You see, that's what Jesus said. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. Everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? That's what makes this such an important thing.
John leaves his readers right where he leaves us. But I can tell you this. If you say I don't believe it, it's not because of a lack of evidence.
It's there. Years ago when Josh McDowell converted, he decided to do an investigative report on all the evidence concerning Jesus Christ. You see, and then he wrote a book called Evidence that Demands a Verdict. But he said, once I looked at all the evidence, I realized I could not live in my unbelief because I said there's not enough evidence.
I could not do that anymore. Jesus displayed this in front of a lot of people. Many of them believed. Many of them did not. The Pharisees and the chief priests and the Sadducees, they heard the report, knew it was true and said, I'm not going to believe.
I'm not going to believe that because I'd lose my place if that's the case. But John ended this epistle where we started this series in John 20, 31, and says, All these signs have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing you may have life in his name. That's why John wrote any of these.
That's why the most important thing about this chapter is simply this. Do you believe it or not? And if you don't, I beg you to put your faith in Christ, to believe this statement, because it's going to make all the difference in the world. He that believes in the Son has life. He that doesn't believe in the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
The choice is yours. Let's pray. Father, the story is so profound and we've seen it so many times that we almost commonize it.
But it's like no other. How Jesus Christ displayed his heart, his love for people, his compassion, his power in this miracle was unparalleled. And the question that he leaves is the same question he leaves with us. Do you believe this? Father, I pray for anyone who hasn't put their faith and trust in Christ. I pray that they decide to do this.
I pray that they don't hide behind some flimsy excuse not to. Father, we all live with this sort of trepidation of death. If there's one thing that the Bible teaches us is we don't have to fear it. It's simply a transition from this life to the next.
It's what we were created for. And even though there's an anguish in it, especially when you lose somebody you love, and there's suffering in it often when we lose our own life, all of it turns for good when we see Jesus Christ face to face and we begin our eternal existence under your blessing. So much is at stake, Father. I pray that we come to a clear confirmation of our faith.
In Jesus' name, Amen. Listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. A gift for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.
That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
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