Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus[a] was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”11 After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” 12 The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, 15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” 16 So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” 17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles[c] off,19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated 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 said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[d]Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”28 When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved[e] in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So 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 also have kept this man from dying?”38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Christ waited for days, we read in vv. 5-6 precisely because he loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus! He brings us into despair precisely because that despair is a tool in His hand of bringing us to Himself, and He is the greatest blessing that He can give us! We must acknowledge that not every sadness will be overcome in this remarkable way and turned, in a day or two, into indescribable joy.
The point is that the Lord holds our darkness in his hands and employs it for our blessing and it is our privilege to know that and to believe that if sorrow lasts through the night, joy will definitely come in the morning, however long the night must last, however sooner or later the morning will come. (RSR)
Listen to this wisdom from P.T. Forsyth. “It is a greater thing to pray for pain’s conversion than for its removal. It is more of grace to pray that God would make a sacrament of it. The sacrament of pain! It is to make it serve the soul and glorify God. It is to consecrate its elements and make it sacramental.
Whatever drives us to Him, and even nearer Him, has a blessing in it. And, if we are to go higher still, it is to turn pain to praise, to thank Him in the fires, to review life and use some of the energy we spend in worrying upon recalling and tracing his goodness, patience, and mercy…The sacrament of pain becomes then a true Eucharist…a true giving of thanks.” [The Soul of Prayer, 42-43]
Have you ever thought of what kind of life Lazarus lived after this? All we are told is that the authorities threatened the man and told him to stop proclaiming Christ or they would kill him. I wonder what he thought when they told him they would kill him… “Oh that again.” Lazarus died again some years later. And, as one writer asked:
I imagine his sisters, if they were still living, wept over the loss of a dear brother. But, do you not think that they also laughed through their tears? They had turned their pain into a sacrament, a means of grace to them, precisely because they now knew that this pain was the means to his blessing and theirs.
Don’t you suppose that later, Mary and Martha and the Lord’s disciples would find themselves in difficult or discouraging places and would be tempted to despair, depression, anger and irritation and then would catch themselves? They would remember what had happened at Bethany long ago and smile to themselves and say, “Oh no; I’m not going to make that mistake again!”
As an aside something to be careful of: Your enemy will not sit still and allow you no opposition to this kind of faith, and in fact, will work to bring to you two things that you know far too well, two enemies of faith and they are self-pity and anxiety. When circumstances are not as we had hoped and our eyes are not upon the Lord nor directed to the joy of our faith’s perfecting we begin to wallow in self-pity which is nothing but a form of pride.
Boasting is a response of pride, to the success or perceived successes that we have achieved. Pity is the response of pride to our sufferings and our trials. Boasting says; I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much, self-pity says I deserve admiration because I have suffered so much, it is as one author put it, the response of unapplauded pride.
Many of you have heard of Benjamin B. Warfield, better known as BB Warfield, he taught at Princeton Seminary for 34 years until his death in 1921. In 1876 at the age of 25 Warfield married Annie Pierce Kinkaid and took their honeymoon to Germany. During a fierce storm on that trip Annie was struck by lightning and was permanently paralyzed…on her honeymoon.
Warfield cared for her for 39 years until her death in 1915. Because of her extraordinary needs, he seldom left his home for more than 2 hours at a time during those years of marriage. She was never healed, in fact, never really improved much at all. There is no happy ending according to the wisdom of men, only the spectacular patience and love of a husband to care for his wife through 39 years of what was never planned, at least not by him.
Later in life Warfield wrote on Romans 8:28, (that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord)…would you blame him if in writing on that text there would be a bit of self-pity or bitterness? Listen to his words:
“The fundamental thought in this text is the universal government of God. All that comes to you is under His controlling hand. The secondary thought is the favor of God to those that love him. If he governs all, then nothing but good can befall those to whom he would do good…though we are too weak to help ourselves and too blind to ask for what we need and can only groan in unformed longings, He is the author in us of these very longings…and he will so govern all things that we shall reap only good from all that He sends us.”
God will take his ax and cut down the forest of thick trees of our earthly comforts so that we might not put our trust in anything that is false and not eternal…He will chase us to Himself. And the Christian, the one who really knows that He is the great I AM, understands why it is that Jesus is glad that our bodies ache and that we feel badly…The Christian understands why the Lord is glad when your business does not prosper, that you are not as successful as you want to be…Why He is glad to hold back the very blessings you are just certain you need. He is glad that you see your weakness, for He knows that without these you would never possess the precious faith which sees the reality of the unseen and the glory that is Christ’s and that is yours…not someday, but right now.
In conclusion, as we consider that Jesus is the resurrection and the life…not just theologically, but really, practically…not only at the end, but now…we stare death in the eye without blinking. And for our loved ones in Christ who have passed over the river already…we do not fret. It is easy to look at those situations and think that this world, this life, is over for them. And that is an unspeakably sad thing, unless they were driving into another world, into a far better and more beautiful world than any they had known here.
And it is the glory of the Gospel, and it is the great honor of Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life…and it is the immense privilege of human beings and of Christians especially that such a place exists and that there is a way to it from this world. And there the saints shall live forever and ever in unbroken communion with the Lord and in a world of beauty and joy that even the most perceptive among us but dimly see, but that we must see.
That is what Jesus taught Mary and Martha all those years ago…that He is hope, He is life, He is home, and we are to believe that and enjoy it now.
Prayer: Father, I know that I often live in anxiety and frustration due to the difficulty of my circumstances. I am often unable to lift my head and see Your love behind them. Forgive me for doubting You. Cleanse my heart, show me my sin that I might flee to You and be forgiven and begin being more careful and honoring to you with the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Psalm 130 (Click on show more for words)