The Resurrection and the Life (John 11:1-54)

The Resurrection and the Life
John 11:1-54
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead demonstrating
the truth that in Christ all believers who have died will be resurrected
and those remaining will be changed at the first resurrection.

The Scripture Text – John 11:21-26

      "Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not
      died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it
      thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I
      know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto
      her, I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were
      dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

Introduction

      Those words of Jesus form the very heart of our message because I want to talk
about the main theme of the resurrection and the life as is demonstrated in the claims and
words of Jesus. We also will look at this great acted parable of our Lord in raising
Lazarus from the dead.
      Chapter 11 brings us to the close of what is called the book of signs in John. It
brings to us the last and final and great sign, miracle sign, wrought by Jesus as recorded
in the Gospel of John. We have seen already six great miracles. This one is the seventh
and most climatic and most supreme.
      Here also is another one of the great "I am's" of Jesus, this being the fifth one. We
have seen four already and we will see two more because there are seven great "I Am's"
of Jesus. But this particular sign which seems to be the most important of all in the
ministry of Jesus, especially as it's recorded by John, brings to a great climax the miracle
working power of Jesus Christ. It demonstrates His power over confusion and darkness
and the evil of the world and His power over death and hell itself.
      So I want us to look at the story – the story of the raising of Lazarus from the
dead.

A. The Setting

1. Jesus Delays His Coming to Bethany
      Jesus and His disciples had gone away into another region when Lazarus became
sick and was about to die. His sisters sent for Him. They summoned Jesus to come and
they wanted Him to hurry. They needed Him then because their brother was sick unto
death. But Jesus delayed returning to them. Actually, He wouldn't have had time to get
back before Lazarus died anyway. But He just delayed going back two or three more
days.
      This is another one of those occasions when Jesus is put upon with some human
pressure and human request. He does not immediately respond to it as the people desire.
We have seen that before and we will see it again in this great Gospel. But in each time
when He is put upon with human pressure and a special request, He answers it in His own
time in His own way in a far deeper and a far more important manner and method. It's a
way that will be far more helpful to the people who have asked than if they just get their
way automatically.
      I would say to you and urge you that if the Lord does not grant every request you
place before Him – if He does not hear every prayer that you put before the throne of
grace, if He doesn't hear you the first time immediately just when you think He ought and
when you would like for Him to – it may be that He wants to test your faith a little bit or
your stickability. It may be that He wants to come in His own time, in His own way, to
work out His perfect and divine will in your life.
      You can believe one thing. He will never come to you too late. He will always
come in time to meet your need according to His will. Whe n He comes and works it out
according to His own divine direction and leading, you will be happy and you will be
thrilled and you will be satisfied.

2. The Resistance of the Disciples
      So he stayed for a while. Then finally He said, "Now let us go and return there."
Some of the disciples said, "Lord, you must not do that because you know that the Jews
of late have just tried to stone you to death and you're going back there under that awful
pressure? Why they'll probably kill you." And Jesus said, "Well, that's all right. We must
go back. There is so many hours in the day and the sun shines and you walk in the light
of it." He gives them a parable to let them know that God's light is shining upon His life
and nobody can take it and snuff it out until God is ready – until God is ready for Jesus to
be offered up.

3. The Loyal Despair of Thomas
      So He starts to go and Thomas reacts. Here's one of the first mentionings of
Thomas. Each portrait we see of Thomas shows him in an act of reaching out and
struggling – somehow trying to understand and trying to believe God and trying to hold
on to the reality of God. Here is that first picture where he turns. He wants to be loyal to
Jesus and yet he is afraid of what he may find. So here is a kind of loyal despair when he
turns to the others and says, "Let us go too that we may die also."
      Thomas is going back all right – in loyalty, and he expects death. But Jesus is
returning in His own time and in His own way and He is going back for a reason--for
revival, for renewal, for demonstration of divine power. Hallelujah! I want to tell you
sometimes when you walk with Jesus, you may not anticipate the greatness of what may
happen to you out there. Sometimes when you walk with the Lord you may think you are
walking through dark places and may have sort of a loyal despair about you and say,
"Well I'll go on even if it takes my life or it causes me hardship or trouble." Like Thomas
you go on even though you fear death itself.
      But hear me! When you walk with Jesus, you can always expect the miraculous.
When you walk with Jesus, you can always expect the demonstration of His glorious and
mighty power. When you walk with Jesus, never be surprised at what He may do.
Hallelujah!
      For when you expect the worse, He brings the greatest. Whe n you expect
darkness, He brings divine light. When you expect suffering, He brings health and
healing. When you expect even death, He brings life and that more abundantly.
Hallelujah!

B. The Resurrection Is a Person

1. Jesus' Conversation with Martha
      When they got back to Bethany, outside Jesus was met by Martha. Her complaint
to Him was purely natural. She came running up to Him and said, "Lord, if thou had been
here my brother had not died." I can sort of imagine how He must have felt in His own
heart. You know as a pastor for some thirty years, I've had times when I had to delay
going to see about people and to delay answering their requests and to delay about
visiting them and to delay about getting to their needs and sometimes plain forget
responsibilities and feel so bad and then only to have them sort of reproach me later and
say, "Why didn't you come sooner," or "Where have you been?"
      I can understand how He must have felt when she came out of her own sorrow
and grief and some bitterness and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't
have died." Well she had some faith even though she was saying it sort of in a negative
way with just a little bit of a fussing attitude. She was saying, "I know it would have been
different Lord if you had been here." What she failed to recognize is that there is no
distance in the presence of the Son of God because He can be with you all the time.
When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He is there.
      But she didn't recognize that right then. She said, "If you had been here – in your
bodily presence – my brother would not have died." And Jesus says, "Yes, but your
brother will live again." And she said, "Oh I know he will be raised in the resurrection of
the last day." Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life and he that believeth on me
even though he be dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth on me shall
never die."
      Oh, I tell you, I'd love to just stop there and preach on that text for a while. Let me
just drive it ho me to your thinking right now that when you believe on Jesus Christ you
have eternal life. When you put your trust in Him, you don't have to be afraid of life or
death. When you trust in Jesus Christ, you never have to worry about the sting of death
because He liberates you from that bondage. He sets you free from that fear and He lets
you know that death is only a door through which we pass and explode into the regions of
God's eternity where there is unlimited development and revelation and excitement and
life forever and forevermore. Hallelujah!
      He is saying the resurrection is not a day--but the resurrection is a person. Life is
not a period of time. Life is a person – Jesus Christ the Son of God. In Him is life and
that life is the light of this world. Hallelujah! When you have Him, you can forget about
time. When you have Him, you don't have to be afraid of death because He transcends it
all and lifts you so far above it until you need never be in bondage of fear of dying.
      I have stood at the bedside of saints of God who left this world. I've held their
hands in a moment of death. I have felt the chill creeping up their limbs but still watched
them as they stared away into the regions out of this world and the smiles on their faces
as it looked as if they welcomed the heavenly host to come and accompany them to the
regions of eternal bliss forever to be with the Lord. HE is the resurrection. HE is life.

2. The Lord's Conversation with Mary
      Then Martha went and got Mary out of the house where quite a number of
neighbors and friends had gathered to mourn with them. And she said, "The Master has
come and He calleth for thee." Mary left. She was weeping. Martha thought that she
would just send Mary on quietly and she would keep the guests there in the house, but
they knew something must be astir because when Mary left they started leaving and
following her too.
      Mary came with a heart of love and yet with a heart of grief and bitterness as well.
She just echoed the very same words of her sister Martha and said, "Lord, if you had been
here our brother had not died."
      Jesus' response when He saw her weeping and He saw the crowd around them –
His response struck Him so deeply within until the Bible says that He groaned within His
spirit and was troubled. He groaned and was troubled. Those two words translated,
groaned and troubled, are powerful words from the original text. That groaning meant
that He groaned violently. He was shaken in the very depths of His whole being. This
kind of groaning is used sometimes in reference to just real snorting of anger and
convulsive kind of groaning – overwhelmed with grief but touched also with anger. Grief
because people have to suffer. Grief because death comes. Grief because men and women
have to face things they do not understand and they suffer separations and trials by death.
      But also He was angry. Angry at death itself and angry at the critics who stood by.
Angry at the people who would look on and who would falsely accuse Him and try to
take His life. In the midst of it all He felt the irresistible claim of the helpless love of
Mary compelling Him to act. He said, "Show me where you have laid him."

C. The Lord Wept

1. The Lord's Grief and Wrath
      Then the Bible said, "Jesus wept." He stood there, His soul bursting with a
mingling of grief and wrath. That's what that word troubled really means. Three times we
will see it used of Jesus in this Gospel. But it's a time when His heart is breaking and He
is violently shaking from within and trouble has hold of Him with a mingling of wrath
and sorrow and grief.

2. Why Did the Lord Weep?
      Why did He weep? Not because He is sorry for Mary and Martha because He will
soon make them glad. He weeps not because of the death of Lazarus because he will soon
be restored. Why does Jesus really weep and why is He filled with such emotion and such
wrath and such grief all at the same time? I'll tell you why. Because He knows when He
speaks the words of life to Lazarus and He brings him forth from the dead--He knows He
will be signing His own death warrant and He will have to die to give life. That's why He
groans violently and shakes within Himself--because He knows the hounds of hell will
cause Him to stand at bay when He stands before that tomb and cries, "Lazarus, come
forth." He knows from then on that's the turning point they will seek to kill Him.

3. The Grief of Rejection
      That's the greatest grief of all in this world. When you know you're doing the best
you can for somebody and you lay your soul and your life on the line for them and yet
you know they will not appreciate it and as a matter of fact, they may turn upon you to
wrench you and tear you into pieces. When you know that it's going to cost you dearly to
be a blessing to somebody else and yet you plunge on in more concerned that the y be
blessed than the damage that comes to your own life.
      That's the spirit of Jesus. That's why some people can lay down their lives for the
sake of the Gospel and they can lay down their lives for others and they can reach out
with a hand of kindness eve n though they may draw it back wounded and bleeding. They
can speak forth with a voice of love even though they know that they may be rejected to
the face. They can reach out with a heart big enough to embrace the whole world even
though they know that some will turn and-wrench upon them. He weeps because He
knows the price He'll have to pay for Lazarus to live.

D. Jesus Raises Lazarus

1. He Commands that the Stone Be Rolled Away
      Groaning in Himself and shaking violently He moves to the cave – the tomb,
that's covered with a stone. Here, as in all the miracle signs recorded in John, Jesus
imposes a command upon people to do certain things. He uses that human element in all
the miraculous in order to involve people in the glorious power of God.
      Oh, if somehow we knew how in these days to give ourselves in His hands and
say, "Lord, here I am. Use me. Deliver me from every hang- up and every thing that
stands between me and you and the free flowing of your spirit through my life." If we
knew how to do that, friend, oh, that stream of divine life and grace and power would
flow through us in such abundance it would bring redeeming grace and saving love to the
lives of people.

2. They Resist His Command
      He said, "Roll the stone away." They protested and said, "Lord, by now he stinks
because he's been dead four days." It was the idea of the Rabbis and the teaching of the
Rabbis that when a person died that the spirit hovered and waited over the body for three
days.
      If per chance there might be the opportunity for that body to come to life again
and that spirit reenter, by four days it was hopeless. In the eyes of the Jews and in John's
time and according to this Gospel this makes this miracle all that more miraculous and
sensational because he is past being revived. Deterioration is already set in his body and
by now, "he stinketh" they said. It's too late because his spirit is no longer close to him.
The real Lazarus is gone somewhere. He's not hanging around. He's too far away to be
brought back now in this tabernacle in this body.
      But oh listen! I want to tell you as far as Jesus Christ is concerned, one day
amounts to no more than a thousand years and just as surely as He can lift a man from the
grave after being dead four days, He can just as surely lift a man from the grave if he's
been dead four thousand years. You hear me, there's no limitation to the resurrecting
power of God. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me
though he were dead yet shall he live." Oh, hallelujah! Praise God!

3. Jesus Commands Lazarus to Come Forth
      When they rolled the stone away, Jesus stood there trembling and shaking and
groaning and snorting out like a great trained war- horse that stands pawing the ground
snorting and ready for the signal to go charging into battle. That's really the picture. Jesus
stands at the gates of death and he's about to crash the gates of death and He's going to
liberate a man who has been bound by the power of death itself. He's about to crash the
very gates of Hades itself to bring back a man who has left this world and he cries with a
 loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth."
      Oh, if he hadn't said "Lazarus," every body in every tomb in that country would
have come forth on that day. But let me remind you that the day will come when that
voice will sound again with a loud voice.
      John said, the time comes when they that are in the graves will hear the voice of
the Son of God and they that have done right shall come forth unto life everlasting. Oh,
praise His name! I'm listening for the sound of the voice of the Son of God.
      Suddenly, suddenly Lazarus stood. Lazarus stood bound in grave clothes, bound
around his face but standing there. Jesus said, "...loose him and let him go free."
     Listen friend, Jesus is concerned that you be free that you be loosed that you have
no fear of death or darkness or sin or this world or the world to come. He has conquered
sin, conquered death, conquered hell and the grave. You don't have to live in fear. You
can be loosed and go free.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead demonstrating the truth that in Christ all believers who have died will be resurrected and those remaining will be changed at the first resurrection.
Denomination: Church of God
Thompson's Chain Reference: 2409 (Resurrection)
Author(s): F.J. May, D.Min.