February 22, 2023
Pastor John Hering
John 11
John 11
Now a certain man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 This Mary, whose brother Lazarus was sick, was the same Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.
3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, saying, “Lord, the one you love is sick!”
4 When Jesus heard it, he said, “This sickness is not going to result in death, but it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed in the place where he was two more days.
7 Then afterwards he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.”
8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, recently the Jews were trying to stone you. And you are going back there again?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If anyone walks around during the day, he does not stumble because he sees this world’s light. 10 But if anyone walks around at night, he stumbles because there is no light on him.”
11 He said this and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.”
12 Then the disciples said, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well.”
13 Jesus had been speaking about his death, but they thought he was merely talking about ordinary sleep. 14 So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. 15 And I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
16 Then Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go too, so that we may die with him.”
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. 19 Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.
20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary was sitting in the house.
21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha replied, “I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the Last Day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even if he dies. 26 And whoever lives and believes in me will never perish. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
28 After she said this, Martha went back to call her sister Mary. She whispered, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet gone into the village, but was still where Martha met him. 31 The Jews who were with Mary in the house consoling her saw that she got up quickly and left. So they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.
34 He asked, “Where have you laid him?”
They told him, “Lord, come and see.”
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Jesus was deeply moved again as he came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
Martha, the dead man’s sister, told him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, because it has been four days.”
40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone.
Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
44 The man who had died came out with his feet and his hands bound with strips of linen and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus told them, “Loose him and let him go.”
The Plot
45 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what Jesus did believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. They asked, “What are we going to do, because this man is doing many miraculous signs? 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”
49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. 50 You do not even consider that it is better for us that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” 51 He did not say this on his own, but, as high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, 52 and not only for that nation, but also in order to gather into one the scattered children of God.
53 So from that day on they plotted to kill him.
I know we’ve had this discussion in Bible Class before, but “Would you want to know the time, the place, and the way in which you were going to die?” At first you might think, “Yes, for sure!” But, then you think about it a little bit. What if I knew I was going to live to be 94, in good health, only to die suddenly of a heart attack on a Thursday at 2:45 AM in 2057? I wonder if I would grow complacent in my faith? Would I go fishing 24/7, skip church, and ignore my Bible until a week before my heart attack, and only then get serious about my faith? Or if I knew at the age of 65 I was going to die from cancer after years of chemo and radiation treatment, wasting away inch by inch and placing a heavy burden on my family and friends, would I sink deep into a depression that would never lift? So, aren’t you glad you don’t know when and how God is going to take you to heaven? I’m not sure my faith is strong enough for that. Is yours?
Thinking about death and our futures in this way makes what Jesus did for us all that more amazing! Jesus knew exactly what lay ahead of him as he took his final steps. Heknew every plot of his enemies; every hateful word, every lash of the whip, every nail to cross, every ounce of God’s wrath and degree of hell’s eternal punishment until he could shout, “It is finished!” Yet Jesus took his final steps. Why?Because selfless love for you and me pushed him ahead every step of the way.
Tonight on Ash Wednesday we begin our pilgrimage of faith to watch our Savior take his final steps to save us. The Word will light up our path as we follow Jesus fulfilling God’s plan to save us all. Tonight we look at Jesus and see how . . .
His Final Steps Led to a Tomb
A tomb emptied for us and our faith
Jesus knew exactly what he was getting into by going to Bethany, home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. The village was only 2 miles from Jerusalem, the headquarters of Jesus’ enemies. They had been watching, waiting, hoping, and praying for Jesus to make a mistake. They tried everything and anything they could to discredit him or, even worse, try him and convict him for blasphemy—with the sentence being death. Yet there was no misstep, not a single word that could be used against Jesus. And then when his enemies grew so desperate that they were about to take our Savior by force, he “eluded their grasp” (John 10:39) and withdrew back across the Jordan River, somewhere remote, somewhere out of the reach of his enemies.
But now Jesus’ appointment with the cross was at hand. So when Mary and Martha sent word, “Lord, the one you love is sick” (John 11:3), Jesus knew what he must do. “When Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This sickness is not going to result in death, but it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’” (John 11:4). Then he waited, and that puzzled the disciples! John shares this insight: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed in the place where he was two more days. Then afterwards he said to his disciples, ‘Let’s go back to Judea’” (John 11:5-7). Why wait two more days? “So that the Son of God may be glorified” (John 11:4)! So that Jesus could tell his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11). So the disciples could respond, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well” (John 11:12). So that Jesus could then patiently explain, “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him” (John 11:14,15).
Jesus waited two days before he took these final steps to Bethany because he knew what needed to be done for two grieving sisters, surrounded by friends who joined them in their mourning. For Martha, who would meet Jesus on the road and break our Savior’s heart with her words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). Jesus knew she needed to hear him say, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23). And when Martha realized Jesus was talking about judgment day, she’d hear the words we need to hear when we stand in cemeteries next to the caskets of our loved ones—when those caskets are lowered into the grave and the pastor takes some dirt and sprinkles it on the casket while saying, “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth.” For such moments we need to hear our Savior say, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even if he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never perish. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25,26). Yes, Lord! We believe it! Then comes his next steps as Martha goes back to the house and brings Mary. Then the second sister twists his heart with the same words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32). And he hears her weeping and all the others weeping. And though he was “deeply moved in his spirit and troubled” (John 11:33), he knew his next steps.
He had to take those next steps: to a tomb, to a cave with a stone rolled against it. “Take away the stone,” Jesus said. Martha objected, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, because it has been four days” (John 11:39). Had we been there, we would have objected too! After all, the Jews didn’t embalm their dead, so by this time there would have been a smell because Lazarus was already decaying. The scene inside could only be nightmarish—yet not for the one who is the resurrection and the life! Not for the Savior who now guaranteed,
“‘Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The man who had died came out with his feet and his hands bound with strips of linen and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus told them, ‘Loose him and let him go.’”
John 11:40-44
Jesus took his final steps to a tomb that needed to be emptied for Mary and Martha, two grieving sisters who miraculously got their brother back. He took those steps for Lazarus who ever after knew how the Lord could indeed make all things work together for good (Romans 8:28)! Jesus took those steps for his apostles, the men who were eyewitnesses of the Savior’s power and glory, the same men he commissioned to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)! And Jesus took those final steps for our faith! We need his words, “I am the resurrection and the life.” We need to hear Jesus’ shout, “Lazarus, come out!” We need to see the man who had been dead for four days come out of the grave. Here is our proof that nothing is impossible with God. Here is our proof that the apostle Paul’s shout of triumph is forever true: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:54-57). Today is Ash Wednesday, with repentant hearts in dust and ashes we hear our comfort! It is our comfort when we mourn a loved one who has passed away. Here is our hope and our confidence when we struggle to take our own final breaths. We know that for a believer, death is nothing but a sleep! For Jesus Final Steps Led Him To a Tomb Emptied For Us and Our Faith! How comforting for you and me that our Savior’s final steps led to a tomb that he emptied! It was also…
A tomb emptied for God’s plan to be finished
Oh, the irony of this empty tomb! The enemies of Jesus had been watching and waiting for Jesus to make a mistake, and instead Jesus made a miracle that is arguably the greatest miracle of Jesus’ life—other than his own resurrection on Easter Sunday! Lazarus was raised from the dead after four days in the grave! That’s impossible! And you say, “Well, yes, of course it is! Only the Lord can perform such a miracle!” But the Jews who witnessed it may have been even more shocked and surprised than we would have been. Why? Because according to Jewish thinking recorded in the Talmud, the Jews were convinced that the human soul hovers around the body for three days after death. For three days the soul is lost and confused, hoping, waiting, and praying to be reunited with the body in life. But only three days. After that, the soul is taken home to the Lord, and a resurrection can no longer happen. So now do you see why Jesus waited two days before going to Bethany? Why he made sure that four days had passed since Lazarus had died? News of this miracle spread like wildfire! The raising of Lazarus from the dead became the event that caused God’s plan of grace to be set into motion. John informs us,
“Many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what Jesus did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. They asked, ‘What are we going to do, because this man is doing many miraculous signs? If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all. You do not even consider that it is better for us that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’ He did not say this on his own, but, as high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for that nation, but also in order to gather into one the scattered children of God. So from that day on they plotted to kill him.”
John 11:45-53
The irony! It wasn’t a mistake by Jesus but a miracle by Jesus that set the enemies’ plan in motion!
Jesus’ final steps led him to a tomb that needed to be emptied for God’s plan to be finished. Emptied so that the hatred of his enemies would boil over into an insane hatred to arrest and kill Jesus. And kill him they did on the cross. So, I can point to the cross today and tell you, “Jesus died to pay the penalty of all your sins. Everything is going to be okay.”
Everything? Yes, even when the day comes that you die. I don’t know when you or I are going to die. But Jesus does. (I almost choked to death on a Turkey bone in my lunch soup on Tuesday – tell the story). That’s why he took his final steps: So that our sins would be washed away by his blood and we would be ready and wouldn’t have to be afraid to die. So that the words he spoke at the beginning of his ministry would ring forever true: “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He is not going to come into judgment but has crossed over from death to life. Amen, Amen, I tell you: A time is coming and is here now when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who listen will live” (John 5:24,25). Amen.
