Call to Worship: Isaiah:1-3, 6-7
Primary Passage: John 11
Goals for this morning:
This is a large passage with many rich elements, so to help us navigate it together I want you to be listening for a few key things.
To highlight a few of the tensions the scriptures put us in around topics like Why God might allow suffering, grief & worship, and how it is that some people can encounter Jesus and draw different conclusions.
To help us understand the events leading up to the triumphant entry, capture, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Why did the Jews finally decide to capture and kill Jesus?
To set us up to understand how incredible it truly was for Jesus to ride a donkey into the heart of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There’s a reason his doing this caused quite the ruckus. He knew what he was doing. This was bold.
Before we read…
I want to set up the scene. In chapter 10 Jesus is asked to plainly state whether or not he is in fact the Christ - the foretold figure descending from the line of David who would usher in what they thought would be a physical kingdom akin to the first kingdom of Israel from which they would reclaim their place atop of the world, out from under the Roman rule.
Jesus’ response was to claim that He and the Father are one. In claiming to be God or equal to God, many Jews prepared to stone him on account of his blatant blasphemy. But instead of backing down, Jesus doubles down, pointing to his works which clearly align with the work of God.
After this incredibly tense moment, Jesus pulled back near the edge of the wilderness, where he was first baptized by John the Baptizer where he remained for some time. It is here, on the edge of the wilderness where our Passage begins. Understanding this will help you understand the disciples & set you up to understand the weight of Palm Sunday as well as to understand the weight of the miracle - as we will see, resurrecting Lazarus here, at this time, in that place is a strong statement.
Read Passage
A few takeaways…
Why would God allow this suffering?
One of the tensions this passage gets across is the tension between what we perceive the right response to suffering should be and God’s response to suffering. Mary & Martha send word about the state of their dying brother - whom the text tells us Jesus loved. It offers a few consolations and thoughts.
Jesus’s initial response is to say that Lazarus’ sickness will not end in death and that this sickness, in some way, will serve to glorify God and the son of God (Jesus.) (vs 4)
We have a tendency to take a limited view of our lives and situations we find ourselves in - especially in times of suffering. We fixate on what is immediate and our minds often run to the worst ending our minds can concoct. We become unable to see any good, we lose sight of the broader story all our suffering takes place in: All of your life, the good and the bad happens within the story of a good God who loved us before the foundation of the world. (Eph 1:4)
The story of a God who sent his son to live, die and rise again on our behalf to adopt us as sons and daughters. (Gal 4:4-5)
The story of a God who refuses to allow the sin we brought forth to have the final say over anything in this world. He is the beginning and the end. (Rev 22:13)
As we endure hardship in this life, let us not lose sight of Christ who stands ever before the Father interceding for us, until that day when He will come again to destroy Satan & sin forever, casting death with him and all his demons into the Lake of Fire (Rev 20:10.)Sometimes God responds in ways we don’t expect. Jesus heard of the urgent need and waited 2 days. (vs6)
Anyone who has walked with God through suffering knows exactly how this feels. To cast yourself upon the Lord, hoping against hope for a miracle of one sort and the response from heaven seems to be silence.
Here is Jesus, the one who healed a man’s son from afar, who commanded the winds to cease and the tapered off completely. Everyone assumed He would act to prevent Lazarus from dying (the disciples thought he was simply resting (vs 12) and Martha says it plainly, she expected that if Jesus had come “my brother would not have died.” (vs 21)
Note, both the disciples and Martha display incredible faith here. It’s taken at face value that Jesus would not let Lazarus die. There’s a tendency among some circles to tie answers to prayer to levels of faith. Here everyone had faith and yet, Jesus did not do as they expected. Instead as Jesus said, He was acting in accordance with the “light” walking in the “day.” (vs 9) That is, he was walking according to the will of God. Don’t be duped by this. To suffer the effects of sin is punishment enough, don’t also allow Satan to undercut your very faith and use prayers not yet answered as tools against you.
Jesus’ claim that He is the resurrection (vss 25-26) is an invitation for us to see Jesus for who he is in the midst of our suffering. And in this passage it is a call for Martha, Mary, Lazarus and all those watching with open hearts to see that he is the Son of God. Martha had hope she would see her brother again in a future resurrection, which is true (vs 24); but Jesus was calling her to place her whole hope in him - that somehow in him and through him the very reality of resurrection would be made possible.
Jesus is not merely a prophet able to perform miracles. He is the very source of life itself. Likewise our hope should rest firmly and fully on Christ himself - not his benefits. It’s important to get that right. We DO believe in the future benefits, but it’s because we are intimately familiar with the one who secured them. We mix those two up to our own detriment.
To be a Christian, is to thrust yourself wholly into the person of Christ. That is what Jesus is inviting the friends & family of Lazarus to see just before he himself is cast into the grave, covered by a stone, and resurrected days later.
Where is your hope anchored this morning? May it be anchored in Christ. Apart from him there is no light, or life. As Paul says later, “If there is no resurrection, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is for nothing.”
But we know Christ has been raised. And since he has been raised, we possess an unshakable hope.In this story we see that even the greatest enemy of life, death, is no match for Christ. In that we see that Jesus is Lord over every enemy, difficulty, challenge and setback we experience on this earth.
In the resurrected Christ is a hope that has no challenger. A peace that is untouchable. A promise that cannot be broken.
Lazarus died, so that those who hung onto a future vague hope of better days ahead would cling to the one who loved them and came for them. He died so that their dead faith would come alive. He rose to spark hope into every weary heart that there was an answer, even to death.
Just as John the Baptizer was the runner up to Jesus’ ministry, so Lazarus becomes the runner up to Jesus’ defining moment - his own death and resurrection.
Lazarus’ sickness did not lead to death. Instead it led to eternal life for countless people that day and throughout the rest of time.
In the same way, not one ounce of our suffering will be wasted in the hands of Jesus. All of it, forever, will be a testimony to the power and love of our God.
Why did the Jewish leaders finally decide to kill Jesus and what does that tell us about Jesus’ triumphant entry which we will celebrate next week on Palm Sunday?
Many believed… but some went to the Pharisees… (vs45-46)
The hardness of our hearts should not be understated. I’ve heard a number of Atheists say “If God did X I would SURELY believe in him.” Well here we see a man raised from the dead 4 days after he died. And yet, how did the crowd respond? MANY believed but…
Some went to the Pharisees to tell them what Jesus had done. The very Son of God resurrected someone before their eyes and yet…some remained spiritually blind.The Pharisees were worried about their grip over the people, and worried the Romans would take away everything they had known. They wanted to stop Jesus because they didn’t want to lose what they had. They were unable to see who Jesus was, because they were too fixated on what they had now. In fact, God sent Caiaphas a dream explaining that the death of Jesus would unite Jerusalem and draw the far off children of God back. Which we now understand to mean Jesus’ death & resurrection would restore all those with faith in His Son back to him, and that the faith would cover the whole globe drawing sons and daughters of every tribe, tongue and people back to Him.
But Caiaphas took it as confirmation from God that if they were to kill Jesus, it would restore and increase their power and bring strength back to the Jewish people.
And so now, what had been tempting before became a fixed plan. They would see to the death of Jesus. They gave word that anyone who saw Jesus was to report him immediately to them as the Jewish people gathered for Passover - something Jesus himself would almost certainly do. (vs 55-57)And it's in THIS context that Jesus will enter into Jerusalem, the heart of those seeking to destroy him, riding calmly on a donkey. He is not running. He is looking his future squarely in the eye and entering with confidence in his Father. He enters, as a warrior king, bringing peace and all the crowds go wild over it. He isn’t afraid. He isn’t daunted. He is walking in the day, in the will of His Father… but that’s for next week.
We have barely scratched the surface here. There is so much rich gold we left untapped. I’d encourage you all to go re-read John 11, read John 12, compare notes about Mary & Lazarus
