015 - Don't Open That!

When you pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? Well, join us today in John 11.

More Than Ink. Well, good morning. This is Jim. And this is Dorothy.

We are so excited today that you're joining us because we're in John 11 and John 11 is just, well, they're all astonishing chapters. But this is such a beautiful one. It is.

So personal. And at first reading, if you're cruising through the Bible for the first time, you might come to this and go, man, this is odd. This is like borderline cruel, maybe?

I mean, it's just strange. Well, at the beginning of the story. At the beginning of the story. And I think that's probably, if that's your reaction, that's probably what people at the time were thinking when it was unfolding. So you need to get to the end of the chapter instead of closing it halfway through and going, well, that's just dumb.

Well, and because everybody knows that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, called him out of the tomb, but they don't, we don't very often linger in the beginning of the story when Jesus says, hey, this has happened for a reason. Right. Right. And it's also to our disadvantage that we know the end of the story, like on any good murder mystery. Without the whole story. Right. So as it unfolds slowly, act like you don't know how it's going to end.

That'll help an awful lot. So, I mean, that's what Bible exploration is all about. Act like you don't know where this is going and just take it at face value and wonder at it.

So today we're going to talk about the death and the raising of Lazarus and we're going to read every single word because the narrative is so strong. And like we said last time we were together, we said, you know, after the healing of the blind man, where can you go from there? What can Jesus do to amp up his case for who he is?

Because everyone knows blind men are only healed by God. Well, what can you do now? So Jesus decides it's time to go all the way.

I mean, take the time. Well, before you start reading, let's just kind of cue people in. I want you to listen to the evidence that this is an eyewitness account. This is just unfolds in reality. These human relationships ring very true. The relationships with the disciples of Jesus, the relationships between the two sisters and their relationship with their brother, the response of the crowd. All of those things are very different and they ring very true.

This is the way human beings would respond in this circumstance. So it has every earmark of being a real story. So listen for that because it's really interesting. Yeah. By the way, I might add, you get that same kind of affirmation when we talk about the woman caught in adultery that we sort of passed by kind of quickly previously. It just, it just reads so true to life.

There's aspects that if you were writing fiction, you would not include. Right. So, uh, so let's just dive into it. This is exciting. I was thinking as I was reading through this again that, you know, if I was stranded on a desert island, I only had one book and they only had one book in the book. I would probably pick John.

I think I would too. Because this is just such a tremendous delight for us to be able to go through this and I hope it is for you too. So let's dive into Lazarus.

We're in chapter 11. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet in her hair, with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. By the way, that won't happen until the next chapter. Right.

So he's, he's just clueing in people who already know how famous this story is. But there is another event recorded in the other gospels where probably another woman does the same thing, but it's a different point in Jesus' ministry. That's right.

That's right. So we digress. Verse three. So the sisters sent to him, sent to Jesus saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said, well, the ill illness does not lead to death. It's for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified through it.

So we'll stop there for a second. So you can, you recap, he's ill. They remind Jesus you love him. Well, and they know where he is. They sent him a message. We know that at the end of the previous chapter, he had left Jerusalem and gone, gone out into the wilderness down where John the Baptist was, had been baptizing a couple of years before.

Right. So they know he's down there. So they could send him a message. Out of Jerusalem, so he's out of the immediate face of the religious authorities.

Yeah, because remember the friction's getting pretty bad and the leaders really want to take him down. They want to kill him. So Jesus is staying, you know, distant as much as possible, but they know where he is. They send him a message.

Doesn't look like they go themselves. They send him a message and all they say, they don't say come heal them. They just say the one whom you love is ill. He's sick. He's sick.

He's sick. And Jesus assures the messengers, well, this illness will not lead to death. But it has a purpose. But doesn't it lead to death?

If you're reading this Gospel for the first time, you're going, well, wait a second. We'll talk about that. Okay, but Jesus says it's for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified. Yeah, so what's glory then?

You've got to make sure we get that done. Yeah, let's put this on the table right now because we use the word glory a lot. We throw it around a lot and we say, oh, that's a glorious sunset. You know, what do we mean by that? Well, it's a huge word in the New Testament and the Old Testament.

It is. And it's going to come back, well, it's been running all the way through the Gospel. But, you know, glory, probably the first and foremost idea in the word glory is recognition of the essential reality of something, what it really is.

And then secondarily there's the idea of this outshining. Like, you know, we use glory probably to refer to glorious sunset because we mean, you know, the sunbeams are shining and it's glorious and it attracts your attention. And it's not a hidden truth.

No. It's a very public outward shining. But primarily it has to do with recognition of something for what it really, truly is. It is glorious when you've discovered that. So when we talk about the glory of God, what we're doing is we're talking about the wonderful nature of who God is and made manifest for all to see. So it's, glory always has a public aspect to it. I always talk about equating it to a billboard.

It's taking something that's true and sticking it on a billboard where no one can miss it. So here we're actually going to talk about who God is, what he's like, what's his heart for us, and we're going to make that very public. So Lazarus' death, Jesus assures them, is going to be about making them who God is.

Okay. And Jesus had said that about the man born blind back in chapter nine. He said this guy endured his whole lifetime of blindness just so that the glory of God could be revealed in him.

Right. So we hope that in this process of learning how to study the Bible, you made that connection and you went back and said, yeah, there it is again. There it is again. So what he's accomplished through healing the blind man, he's going to accomplish through Lazarus. So let's move on in the story and see what happens. In fact, the next verse starts off with a very odd phrase. I'll just read it.

We'll talk about it for a second. Verse five. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

Why even mention that? Well, as we were just talking before, it's because if you think that Jesus doesn't love you, then what follows makes sense. He's just not going to bother to come. But John says that is not the case. Now Jesus absolutely did love Martha and Mary and Lazarus.

So he preps us up front and in a way he's saying stick that in your hip pocket and hold onto your seats as we read what happens next. But don't ever suspect that Jesus does not love these people. So verse six. So now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Why didn't he rush to help them?

Wouldn't you rush to help them? And then at the end of that, after this, he said to the disciples, let's go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you and are you going there again? Jesus answered, aren't there 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he doesn't stumble because the light, oops, he doesn't stumble because he sees the light of this world.

But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. And after saying these things, he said to them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to wake him. Well, people who are sick go to sleep and then they wake up and they're better. And the disciples said to him, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll get better. Now these guys have been walking with Jesus for two, three years at this time. They've seen him heal again and again and again, but he deliberately doesn't go when Lazarus is sick. So then verse 14, then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died and for your sake, I'm glad that I wasn't there so that you may believe, but let's go to him. So Thomas called the twins said to his fellow disciples, well, let's also go that we may die with him. Yeah, they're sure they're going to die if they went back there. Right.

So I think the original thinking was maybe Jesus is delaying two days because he's trying to decide whether it's worth going in and dying. Right. Yeah. Right.

It's dangerous. Right. And then he's hesitating from that. But in a moment we find out it has nothing to do with cowardice or trying not to get killed.

I mean, it has something much more purposeful. But it's a deliberate expression of his love to show them to look past the death. Exactly. But in our limited view on life, we would say, as he said in verse five, if Jesus really loves them, why would he not rush to their side and help him? We do this, don't we?

We get bad news from somebody and we think that if we drop everything and race to their side, we can make things better. Right. And it's unloving to do anything else.

And it's unloving not to. Right. And sometimes that's true.

And sometimes it's better to take a breath and hold still and let God act. Exactly. Exactly. So we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves. But in a larger sense, Jesus is going to show his love in a much larger scale than anyone could ever imagine by letting Lazarus die. And before a huge crowd of people. Exactly. And as the sisters will bring up in a moment, it looks pretty clear that if Jesus had hustled over there, he might have saved him. That's what they expected. That's what they expected.

I mean, come over and keep him from dying. Right. Yeah. So let's pick up the narrative after that.

So 17. Now when Jesus came, it's been several days now, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Four days.

And if you know anything about body decomposition, especially in Mediterranean climates, this is a bad deal for the body. He's been in the tomb for four days. So John explains to us some geography. Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles off and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him.

But Mary remained seated in the house. So if you can get the picture, Jesus coming into town, somehow word gets to the household ahead of him that he's coming. And so Martha gets up and goes and meets him before he makes it to the house. But this is among the evidences we said to watch for that Lazarus was really dead. Dead. For one thing, there were people there mourning, right?

A group of people had gathered. They had been there for several days. Active mourning. And he had been in the tomb four days. He was really dead. He was dead.

So there's just no question. He didn't swoon. He didn't have a cold. He wasn't sleeping in that day. He was really dead. And there were mourners, many of whom presumably came out of Jerusalem because it's close by, many mourners who were there making a big deal about it.

So he's dead. So Martha comes and wants to, it looks like she wants to talk to him privately. And so she hustles out of the house and she goes to Jesus in 21. So Martha says to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. And Jesus said to her, well your brother will rise again. And Martha said to him, well I know that he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day. And Jesus said to her, well I am the resurrection of life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? And she said to him, yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Messiah, the son of God who is coming into the world.

That's huge. Jesus is really unveiling the glory of God right here in terms of what death is all about and what true death is and what, you know, not, I won't say false death, but there's death and then there's death. Well there's physical, there's death of the body and then there's death of the eternal person, the soul in whom, the spirit in whom God lives. So, you know, this makes me think back to John 5 when Jesus had said, and I'm just going to turn here and read it to you. John 5 21. For just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son also gives life to whomever he wishes.

Not even the father judges anyone, but he's given all judgment to the son in order that all may honor the son even as they honor the father. So here he's talking about if you glorify the father, you will recognize his glory in me. In verse 24. Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life.

So Martha at somewhere along the line had believed that. And now verse 25, John 5 25. Truly I say to you, an hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear shall live.

So he's giving Martha a chance to kind of put, put leather, shoe leather on. Do I really believe that he can speak life and a dead body can raise? Right.

And is there life beyond the grave? Which is really a big step for Martha because she just, her expectation was he would just come and heal Lazarus before he died. Right. Right.

And so she, she's naturally just confused and we would be too. Like if you had been here, he would not have died. And that's a true statement. If Jesus was there, he could have kept him from dying. Well, but Jesus had raised people from the dead. He had. A couple of other times. And John doesn't even allude to those, but the crowd knew that Jesus had raised people from the dead.

And we can give you more details on that. So she knew and everyone knew that there'd be resurrection on that last day when the Messiah is there. Um, but she does make a wonderful proclamation in 27. You are that Messiah.

You're, you're the guy, you're the son of God who's come into the world. Good for Martha. Good for Martha.

Okay. Let's continue the story. When she'd said this, she went and called her sister Mary saying in private, the teacher's here is calling for you. And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. So they're outside.

Right. But when the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, there we have the mourners again, saw Mary rise quickly and go out. They followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Same line. And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come also with her weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come see. Jesus wept. So the Jews said, see how he loved him. But some of them said, couldn't he, who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying? See, they remember.

They remember and they're still confused as well. You know, and it's interesting if you contrast Mary and Martha, you know, they say the same line to Jesus, but the only thing that's really different is Mary comes and falls at his feet. She does. Yeah.

So there's something more hopeful. We don't want to read too much more into that because Martha had it all together. She had it all together, but Mary's just crushed.

I mean, she's emotional. And Mary was utterly devoted to Jesus. Right.

Right. And so then Jesus pushes it along. He understand what's going on. He's deeply moved, greatly troubled. People see that and note how much he must love them. And so any, by the way, anytime you're in deep distress because of the goings on in life, don't ever suspect that God doesn't feel your pain or hasn't even experienced that.

I mean, he knows what you're going through. John tells us Jesus was deeply moved in his spirit and he actually, he wept, he cried. The tears ran down his face and he's going to tell us again in verse 38 that he was deeply moved when he stood at the tomb.

So let's do that. So Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. And Jesus said, take away the stone, which by the way, sets a lot of expectations.

You think? Take away the stone. And Martha, the sister of the dead man, always practical, said to him, well Lord, by this time there will be an odor or like the King James says, he stinketh.

Right. Because once the tomb is sealed, you don't go back in there until a year or two has passed. He's been dead for days. And Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God. So we're going to see the glory of God now.

We're going to see something about the nature of God. So they took away the stone. Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, and he's praying now, father, I thank you that you have heard me.

I know that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me. And when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And the man who had just and then who had died came out, his hands and feet bound to linen strips and his face wrapped with the cloth. And Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go.

Oh, the drama of the moment. Well, he was, had been really dead. Dead, right. They had handled the dead body and wrapped him and bound him.

Spices the whole nine yards. I mean, he was actually now close to maybe dying again if they didn't unwrap him. Well, and this is something we don't always think about that Lazarus was resurrected to this life. He was going to have to die again at some point in his life, but this is astonishing. Yeah.

Yeah. And now we've seen the glory of God. So what do we know about the character of God? Jesus says, you'll see the glory of God.

What do we know about the character of God that we didn't know before? Let's just, someone's calling us. If that's you, stop calling us. Okay. No, let's just keep going here. Okay.

Are you really sure? Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. So what do we know about the glory of God? What do we know about the character of God that we didn't know about before?

And then there's a couple of things. I mean, even if you just look at Jesus, Jesus emotionally weeping over this. I mean, he hates death as much as we do.

He hates the loss. He hates the separation and he grieves with us when we grieve. And he also finds nothing impossible even when it comes to his, his dedicated love toward us. Remember the good shepherd brings life and brings abundantly. Here he is bringing life and bringing it abundantly. And he will allow the physical body, the body we live in to die in order to demonstrate his glory that we will be absolutely certain and reassured that he has the power to give life even to a dead and decomposing body. Right. And it could very well be that God's deliberate design in your life is that you suffer in some things to such a degree that he can come and bring life and that contrast will glorify who he is to the people who are watching your life.

That could actually be the case. So, well, we're running short on time. But the grieving is okay. Grieving is okay.

Right. And you know, every time I go to a funeral, I remind myself of this. I say, you know, I hate sin too, and God hates. And this is something we need, we need to learn to practice, to recognize that grief, profound grief, the expression of grief is okay for believers in Jesus, even though we know he has promised us life beyond the grave.

I am leading a group of women right now into a study of lamentations where we are going to explore godly lament and godly expression of grief over the destruction of sin. Yeah, yeah. So we can allow room for that. And that's totally fine.

Jesus wept there too. Well, let's finish the story. What do you say? Okay.

You want to start at 45? So many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, you think? But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus has done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered in the council and said, what are we going to do?

This man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. Okay, wait a minute. They're not even interested in the fact that he's called a dead man out of the tomb. They didn't seem to see the glory of God in this. You think?

No. They were only worried about losing their own glory. That's right. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it's better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish. Now, he didn't say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. Gotta kill him.

That's the only option. They gotta do away with Jesus. So isn't it interesting that Caiaphas, and John tells us this, in his function as high priest, he prophesied, he said something that he was saying to his compatriots, saying, you know, we gotta kill this guy. Don't you recognize this?

This guy has to die in order to preserve our status as a nation. And yet, John tells us, but that was a prophecy of God, that on the greater eternal level, this one man would die, not just for the Jews, but for all of us. And by the way, we see the pattern in the Old Testament too, where God speaks through people who are not necessarily faithful to him. And they don't even realize they're doing it. And he gets the message out anyway. Exactly, exactly.

So they're threatened for their position and for their power. So 54, Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples. So it just wasn't quite yet time yet. If he mingles more with the Jews, they're out to kill him, it could speed up the timeline to his death in a way that he didn't want.

So he kind of puts himself away. So 55, so now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. And they were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, well, what do you think that he will not come to the feast at all?

Well, now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should let them know so that they might arrest him. You need to rat on this guy as soon as he shows up for Passover. So you understand Passover is a big deal.

A million people in town. What's going to happen at the Passover? And this is the last Passover, right? This is the one that as part of which Jesus was crucified. So what happens at the Passover? They select the lamb, they slaughter the lamb, they take the lamb's body home and eat the lamb, and they're celebrating their deliverance out of slavery in Egypt. Yeah, it's a perfect timing from God's perspective for the Jews to make a point about what the crucifixion is all about, because they'll be thinking about the sacrifice of the lamb.

And that's exactly what happens. Well, listen, we're out of time. We're out of time again. And next week when we come to John 12, if you read John 12, you're going to come up with absolutely a billion questions. But this is where Jesus uncorks the glory of God in me.

He says it just so clearly. But if you think in chapter 11, we're leaving behind Mary and Lazarus. We're not actually. They show up again as we get into the next chapter. There's a lasting effect because of that. And then we go to the triumphal entry where Jesus enters Jerusalem in a way that fulfills an Old Testament prophecy. It's just thrilling.

It's just thrilling. So just to kind of wrap this up, I want to encourage you to think about what you've read in the Gospel of John so far. Think about what miracles John records, because he only records seven big, gigantic miracles. Isolate them, compare them. What does each one indicate about Jesus? I would encourage you to think about what you have read.

Look at each one. So this is going to require you to thumb back through the Gospel as you've read it and think. Apply your mind. Sometimes the truth leaps off the page and pounds us in the head, but other times it requires some thought, some careful consideration. Yeah, so context is a big deal. And context means going back and seeing where you've come from lots of times. And so do that.

That's just a great thing to do. So next week, actually, when we come back together, we will come to the end of Jesus, pretty much three years of his public ministry when we start into the last week of his ministry that leads up to his crucifixion and resurrection. And everything will change. From here on out in the remaining chapters in John are all about this last week. And actually starting in chapter 13, it's all about the last night and the next couple of days.

So the time frame accelerates rapidly. So we're glad you're with us. We hope you're really enjoying just exploring through John like we are. I could do this again.

I could just dial back to the beginning of chapter 11 again, just start all over again. But we've got to push forward. So we're glad you're with us. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're excited about how God is glorifying himself through his word. I hope you're meeting him here just as we are. We hope you're hearing the voice of the Son of God who calls the dead to life.

That's right. So we'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Bye bye. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. We'll see you next time.