Introduction

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.

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. When 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!

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.”

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.

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 they 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.

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!

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.