John 11:17-36

Thank you, Roger Dale.

You have your Bibles?

Bring them with me to the gospel of John,

or you can watch the verses on the screen.

John 11.

Beginning in verse 17.

So I told you last time, this is the account of

the final miracle, the final public miracle,

that Jesus ever did in his ministry,

and it is the capstone.

of all his miracles.

Think of it after three years of ministry.

The nation of Israel as a whole, and

the leadership have rejected

Jesus as their Messiah.

And the religious leaders, as you know,

want him dead.

And this right here, we've already begun

to study this particular last miracle, this is part two,

This is Jesus' final...

in his earthly ministry before the resurrection, this final demonstration of deity.

And the strongest way possible.

I mean, he saves the best for last, right?

I mean, he raises a man.

back to life who have been dead for 4 days.

He does this at a very strategic time.

Notice this.

Just prior to Passover, in

Bethany, and remember, there was two Bethany's, this Bethany's,

two miles east of Jerusalem, on the road from Jericho,

a major highway, and that road

would have literally, at this time of

this miracle, would have been filled with pilgrims,

who were heading to Jerusalem for the Passover.

So, think about it.

This happens.

You know for sure.

Everybody coming that way on that robe would have heard the

story about Lazarus.

Nobody would have been able to stop talking about what had

happened, especially from the amount of people who witnessed the miracle.

And so certainly, from there, the

news of this miracle would have circulated throughout the city of

Jerusalem, which was filled to capacity with

people coming there, for Passover.

The raising of Lazarus certainly did, I

mean, there's no way it couldn't have, strengthened the faith of the disciples.

In a measure, it wasn't enough to keep them from running and hiding.

When Jesus was on the cross, right?

It wasn't that.

And then not being sure.

as they were when he rose from the grave,

but I will say that it did move the needle a

little bit for them, as it

gave them a preview of

the resurrection of Jesus himself.

This event was also a clear, as I

said before, an overwhelming evidence of

the deity of Jesus, who else

raises the dead, but God.

But also it pressed.

the issue of execution for Jesus.

Because as we've studied at this point,

He's gaining way too much influence.

But what does that also do?

It put his death exactly

on God's schedule.

What was God's schedule for him to die?

Passover week.

And in fact, exactly at the moment when the Passover

lambs were being slaughtered, as he's being slaughtered on

Calvary's tree, down to the pinpoint.

dead.

Now, before we pick up, before we where

we left off, I want to start by focusing on what Jesus says in

verses 25 and 26.

Look what he says.

Jesus said to her, I am, as we studied this morning

from RC, another I am, I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live.

Even if he dies.

And everyone who lives and believes in me, will never die.

Do you believe this?

And of course, the main question.

Do you believe that?

The main focus here is to demonstrate that

Jesus is who he claimed to be.

He is the resurrection and the life, and

if you believe in him with saving faith, you

will live forever in his presence.

That's his promise here.

It's really the whole point of the gospel of John as we've been over many times.

Years ago, John MacArthur used to go on Larry King quite a bit.

I don't know if you remember that.

I'm sure CNN is glad he's gone.

He recalls the time he went on CNN

right after 9/11, which we just celebrated the 25th

anniversary of the Islamic terrorists destroying

the Twin Towers, and he said, they never let me

know beforehand what the questions were.

And out of nowhere, on live

TV, Larry King

asked him about 9-11.

What does this mean?

And put on the spot, with no prior

warning about the question, John MacArthur said this.

You're going to die, and you're not in charge of when.

on live TV.

He further said right after 9/11, this doesn't have anything to

do, really, with international politics.

This doesn't have anything to do with nations coming and going.

It really doesn't have so much to do with religion.

It doesn't have so much to do with terrorism.

The message you need to get here, and there are messages

about all of that, but the primary message that

you need to get is, you're going to die, and

you're not in charge of when.

You're not in charge of where, and you're not in charge of how?

Even if you decide to kill yourself, you're not in

charge of the circumstances and exigencies that

led you to that bad decision in a moment of time that is irrevocable, irrevocable.

You're not in charge of your death.

And you better be ready when it happens.

So, you can probably see why

they're probably glad he's gone.

Right?

In fact, it, for the last maybe

decade of his life, they didn't even let him go there anymore.

Ecclesiastes ain't.

Verse 8.

What it says.

No man has authority to restrain the wind with the wind.

Or authority over the day of his death.

When the day of death comes, look at Job 18, 14,

what it says about man.

He is torn.

from the security of his tent.

And they march him before the king of terrors.

The king of terrors is death.

Job 14, 1 2, says, man is born of woman,

is short-lived and full of turmoil.

Like a flower, he comes forth and withers.

He also flees like a shadow, and does not remain.

In Psalm 90, verse 10, I quote this at

most of the funerals I've ever preached in my life.

As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years

or due to strength, 80 years.

If their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone.

Then we fly away.

1 Timothy 6 7.

Says, for we have brought nothing into the world, we

cannot take anything out of any...

And is that it?

Is that where evolution has brought us to after supposedly

billions of years of existence?

I mean, to a non-existent state called

death, where we go out of existence,

and go in the ground, and are eaten by worms, a

memory less existence, if this life, is

all that there is, and all of us are stupid for

not being raging hedonists.

Wouldn't you agree?

I mean, get everything you possibly can out of this world, if that's what's happening.

All that our lust and our pleasure desires before

it's all over with for good.

What are we doing sitting in here?

How depressing.

That thought is.

Thank God, that's a huge lie.

But sadly, many people

buy into that lie.

John MacArthur also said the reality is, we are way more

than protoplasm waiting to become manure.

Get this.

Every single human being

will exist forever.

I don't care whether you believe that or not.

Whether you believe that or not has absolutely no effect on its reality.

That's from the word of God, from the creator.

And not only will every person live forever in spirit,

One day, every person will live

forever in a resurrected bodily

form, both in heaven and in hell.

I don't care if you don't believe that or not.

It's true.

In one place with a body that will exist in the blessing and

the presence of God, and in another place with a body that

will be able to absorb eternal punishment.

You will exist forever.

You will be raised from the dead.

Every human being will.

In fact, guess what?

Jesus is the one who's going to raise you from the dead.

Death is not the end of anybody.

And the opposite place of heaven, what the Bible calls outer darkness.

That is a place you do not want to go.

There's no emergency exit door.

You can't get out once you're there.

And the only way that you don't line up there and find

yourself in heaven when you die is by believing

in Jesus and everything that scripture reveals about Jesus.

Remember, that's why John wrote this gospel, that you might

believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son

of God, and that believing you might have life in his name.

That's John's purpose statement in writing this gospel.

Look what Jesus says here in verse 25 again, I

am the resurrection and the life.

The life.

That's such an important statement.

I want you to remember what Jesus said when we studied it back in John one.

Verses 3 and 4.

Where he says, All things

came into being.

Through Him.

As we know, There are times when all

doesn't mean all every single person without exception, like all

of Judea went to go here, John the Baptist

down at the river Jordan.

That doesn't mean every single person in the whole nation of Israel

all went down there to, doesn't mean every single solitary person.

Sometimes all doesn't mean all in that fashion, but right here it does.

All things.

Everything.

came into being through Jesus.

He's the agent of everything that has come into

being, and in case you didn't get it, John

goes further, and apart from him, apart from Jesus,

nothing came into being that has

come into being.

And further than that, further than that is

this tremendous little phrase, in him was life.

That is how everything came into being.

Because it's beyond mind boggling.

What that means is,

Everything that has ever had life, has life

now, or ever will have life, he

is the source of all life.

All things came into being through him.

In him was life, the source of life.

He has the power.

to create out of nothing.

The word of his power.

Jesus doesn't draw his life from anything,

or anyone else.

He is uncreated.

This is a tremendous statement.

Oh, that you get this statement.

It comes from RC.

He has the power of being within himself.

The power of being, meaning there is never a moment when

he doesn't exist, ever.

In him was life.

In him is the power of being.

No one else has that.

No one else.

He has the power to raise the dead.

Why?

Because he is life.

He's the source of life.

Life itself exists in him.

He's the source of all life.

Think of it.

Everything that exists in both the spiritual and the physical world,

he made.

Amoeba.

Mosquitoes, whales, sharks, planets.

Everything.

DNA.

Inanimate things, animate things, all from the smallest cell

to the full complexity of the machines

that we are, that can see and can hear and

can think and can reason, to everything that lives.

all came into being.

through Jesus.

Therefore, he will himself raise all

of the dead at the resurrection.

And he will assign every human

being who has ever lived on the planet

Earth, a body, suited

for an eternal dwelling place.

Again, death is not the end.

Death is just a split second transaction to

the next plane of existence.

If you died right now, you'd go to that next plane immediately,

as a believer, you'd be absent from the body present with the Lord.

And then after the only other change after that is the resurrection.

And then after that, that's it.

Now, as we started to look at last time, what it

was that set the resurrection of Lazarus apart from

the other miracles of resurrection, that Jesus performed,

and we looked at those last time, was the fact that Lazarus,

again, he had been dead a full four days.

The other people that Jesus raised, they had just died.

And remember, I told you, the Jews did not embalm.

They did absolutely nothing to stop the decay of the body.

They wrapped the body, and they put all these spices all over it

to deal with the smell, and they put it straight in the grave.

Now, this is not going to be fun, but

I have to do this.

I need to tell you what happens with a dead body over the course of 4 days.

It's pretty grisly.

But you really need to know this.

Because in knowing this, you're going to better be able

to grasp the magnitude of the miracle

that we're talking about right here.

Once the heart stops beating, the body cells are deprived

of oxygen, and they start to die.

Blood drains from throughout the circulatory

system in pools in the low places.

Muscles begin to stiffen, and what is commonly

known in the Latin as rigor mortise.

That sets in after about three hours after death.

By 24 hours, the body has lost all its heat.

The muscles then lose their rigor

mortis in 36 hours, and by 72

hours, rigor mortis is completely gone.

All stiffness is gone, and the body is very soft.

Looking a little bit deeper into this, as cells

begin to die, bacteria,

go to work.

Whether you like it or not, your body is filled with bacteria,

but that's another subject for another day.

The bacteria in the body of a dead person starts to

attack, breaking the cells down, the

decomposing tissue takes on a horrific look.

and a dastardly smell.

And it emits green liquids.

by the 72nd hour.

And tissue, tissue releases

hydrogen sulfide, and methane as

well as other gases.

And when that happens, an

unmistakable smell is emitted, and if you've ever smelled

it, you know it's unlike any other smell you've ever smelled.

The body's outside, insects and animals will consume parts of the body.

If they can get at it, meet

Lazarus.

When Jesus got to the tomb.

There he is.

That's the condition he's in when Jesus arrives.

And that's important because there's no death in anyone's

mind that was there that day, this man is dead.

And Martha says down in verse 39 of this 11th

chapter, Lord, by this time, there

will be a stench.

I prefer the King James, he stinketh.

Now, Very unlike

us in our extremely most comfortable time in human history

2026 America, these people lived in

a world of death.

They didn't live in our sterile world of mortuaries

and undertakers and embalming fluid, making the body

look presentable with makeup for the future and getting the hair done.

These people lived with the horrors of death

up close and personal.

All the time.

Especially during this time of Roman crucifixion,

where people would be lined on the roads, gasping for air,

asphyxiating in live and living color as

you're walking down the road so the Romans could uphold justice.

This is what's going to happen to you, if you don't fall in line.

It's also important to understand that when somebody died in that time,

there was a certain expectation

of what a funeral was to be like,

and that was a reality here with Lazarus's death.

And particularly with these Jews.

When somebody died, with these Jews, man,

there was family, friends, neighbors.

Even loosely collected strangers,

they would just pour into the scene.

And everybody showed up.

And in the case of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, they must have been a very

prominent family as we're going to see.

And we're going to pick up this story up where we left off in verses 17

and read through verse 19.

Look with me.

So when Jesus came, He

found that he had already been in the tomb 4 days.

Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem about 2 miles off,

and many of the Jews had

come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

So there was a big crowd there.

You will remember from last time that what led up to Jesus coming

here, the two sisters sent word to Jesus

saying, Behold, he whom you love is sick.

Remember?

He wasn't dead yet.

And Jesus was a whole day's journey away.

And then what did Jesus do?

He waited on purpose for 2 days.

before getting on the road to come back to where Lazarus was.

And if you remember, Lazarus was a very close personal friend of Jesus.

He loved this family.

Look at verse 5.

says, now Jesus loved Mary, Martha,

and her sister, and Lazarus.

Remember also the disciples did not want Jesus to come to Bethany

that was just 2 miles away from Jerusalem, because in their mind,

dude, you just escaped a stoning there in

Jerusalem.

Why would you want to go back here?

And then many people were believing up there in the other Bethany

that were many miles away.

Why would we want to mess that up?

All these people are coming to faith.

And Jesus says, we're going.

And Thomas.

resigns himself to the inevitable.

Well, let us also go so that we may die with him.

Right?

But you know what Jesus knew?

The only death seemed to come to pass was going to be his own.

On God's timetable.

Now, Jesus comes, not only because

of his friend, and not only because he's sympathetic

and has compassion for this family, but it's also the purpose of God.

For the glory of God, that he would raise this

man from the dead in a very public place

with all these numbers of people around to see it for themselves.

It's a huge crowd of Jews at this funeral.

Again, this village is on that road from Jericho to Jerusalem.

It would have been filled with people heading to the Passover.

So, I mean, we don't know the exact number, but, I mean, there's

literally the potential that there was hundreds of people that were around this

tomb when this took place.

And every one of them.

is going to be an eyewitness to a resurrection.

Now, let me further set this scene here by describing a little

bit of what a Jewish funeral was back then.

As I said, when somebody died, They buried them right away.

And as a result of death, people

would be notified.

Everybody connected to the family would be notified, extended

family, friends, everybody, and then, boom, they would all come to the house.

There'd be a procession immediately to wherever

they were going to place that body.

They're not necessarily digging a hole like we do, but

kind of like Jesus, put into some kind of cave.

There were a lot of caves in and around the area of Jerusalem,

so it's likely they put him in some kind of a cave.

It could have been a constructed tomb, but most likely a cave on

some kind of shelf, kind of like they did in the catacombs.

Those type of places.

That would have been the kind of place where they would have put Lazarus.

And then after the burial, the procession

of people would then go back to the house.

And the mourners would stay at the house for seven

straight days.

That is how long the initial part of the funeral lasted.

They couldn't even eat until that body was buried.

And they didn't want any kind of joy expressed

at all until it was done.

They actually designed a meal of bread,

hard boiled eggs and lentils.

It was a traditional meal, and that was what

was fed to the people who stayed at the house to mourn.

But the people who stay, they

didn't just sit quietly at the house like Job's friends

and say nothing, kind of like we do at

the people's house we go to after the funeral.

They mourned out loud.

They wailed.

Loudly.

The women led this, so it was kind of a screaming situation.

It was a wailing, loud screaming.

Now, they saw this as comfort.

Because of the sympathy behind it.

Matter of fact, it was so traditional, it was expected.

At a Jewish family funeral, for seven days,

this wailing went on.

personally, I'm kind of glad we don't have that tradition.

So, when Jesus comes, And

Lazarus has been dead for four days, this

is all still in full bloom.

And by the way, they actually had hired mourners

there in addition to the family and friends, professional

whalers that kind of led the thing for

everybody else, right?

And if it starts getting a little quiet.

They kick it up a notch and everybody kicks it up a notch, right?

So after the 7 days of intense wailing,

they would, they would then go into mourning for 30

more days, but then, you know, the whaling.

I mean, come on, 7 days is good.

And in that, 30 days.

There would be further expressions over the 30 days

of eulogies and remembrances and stories and really,

whatever was necessary to comfort the family.

I mean, it was a very powerful custom.

Think about it.

Very different from us, right?

I mean, we maybe have a wake the night before.

Even that is going away.

I'm finding, as I do, funerals, you don't even hardly see weights

the night before, unless it's a very massive amount of people,

usually the wake and the funeral, now, or on the

same day, and usually the whole thing is just a couple hours or less.

As Al Mohler once said, we dig a hole, put them in the ground,

and go back to the house for potato salad, and then it's done.

That's it.

We go on with life.

They didn't do that.

So these folks at Lazarus' time of mourning are all going

through the regular rituals that I just described for you.

They don't have any idea what they're being set up for.

To be eyewitnesses.

to this dead man.

Coming back to life.

I mean, there are many, verse 19 just said, who came to console

Mary and Mark.

Many.

There's a lot of people here.

So let's move to verse 20.

It says, Martha, therefore, when she heard that

Jesus was coming, went to meet him.

But Mary stayed at the house.

Most likely, Martha heard that Jesus was

coming from the messenger that she sent to tell Jesus that

Lazarus was sick.

So she hears Jesus is coming and she goes out to meet him, but

not Mary, our sister.

She stays at the house, and here we come to these two sisters again.

And their actions match their

personalities, and you can learn about them

more in the Gospel of Luke.

You remember the story.

Jesus and disciples were traveling along, stopped in

Bethany, and Martha welcomed them all into her house.

And Luke says she had a sister named Mary, who was

sitting at the Lord's feet, listening to

his word as he taught.

At the same time, Marta was distracted making all

her preparations to feed the people that were in the house,

and she comes up to Jesus, says, Lord, do

you not care that my sister left me to do all the serving alone?

She's pretty bold there, wouldn't you say?

She's saying, hey, tell sister to come help me.

I got dishes to wash.

But Jesus says to her, Martha, Martha.

And boy, when you get your name twice from Jesus,

You know you're probably in trouble, right?

You are worried and bothered about so many things.

And in a sense, he says, those things don't matter.

Only one thing is necessary for Mary has chosen

the good heart, which shall not be taken from her.

In other words, no.

I'm not going to tell her to go to the kitchen.

She's chosen the right thing.

From there, we start to see two very different personalities

in these sisters.

Mary seems to be more pensive

and thoughtful, inward, maybe

kind of a melancholy personality, as we're

going to see in a moment.

Martha's the busy one.

She's always moving.

She's got the more aggressive personality, as you

can see, in the way she approached Jesus.

And we see that in John 11, too, Martha gets

word that Jesus is coming.

She charges off immediately in that direction to go

meet him, but what does Mary do?

Mary stays back at the house.

She's probably brokenhearted and sad over the loss of her brother.

She doesn't even want to move.

Matter of fact, she doesn't even know Jesus is coming because she doesn't

even find out until verse 28 when Martha

comes back and tells her.

She just caught up in the loss of her brother.

Just a total personality difference.

And years ago, I can't remember who Chrissy and I were listened to.

It might have been Diane Lacy, and Christy

brought up the fact, hey, don't be too hard on the mark.

And she said that because Christie, as you know, is a Martha.

I mean, I sat at the table yesterday for hours,

working on revamping this, and a little bit of Hebrews,

she never sat down all afternoon, grandkids running around, she's making food.

That's her personality.

She says, hey, don't be too hard on Martha.

People had to be fit.

Things had to be tended to.

And that was her personality.

But again, what did Jesus say?

She chose the better part to say.

Well, in context, how often did

you have the god man Jesus Christ in your house to teach?

So if ever there was a time, say, hey, get your own food, right,

this would have been the time.

But I say that to note the personality difference.

And Chrissy and I have talked about this, and I'm talking.

Matter of fact, I asked her about it yesterday again.

But as Martha reached Jesus,

The thought, no doubt had plagued

her mind, and she had been sharing

this thought with Mary for four days, you can

be sure, was that Jesus should have been there.

If he hadn't left,

This wouldn't have happened.

Now look at verse 21.

Martha then said to Jesus, Lord.

I mean, stop right there, man.

That is a great confession.

But look next at what she says.

If you had been here, my brother would

not have died.

Here she is again telling him what to do.

I mean, this is definitely her.

The first time she said anything to him, she was telling him what to do.

Can you go in there and tell my sister to come in here and help me wash the dishes?

And really, this here, it's kind

of a scolding again, right?

I mean, if you would have done what you should have been doing, you would have been

here, and this never would have happened, and Lazarus would be here with us.

Now, she knew for sure Jesus had healing power.

But she obviously didn't think he could do anything with dead folks.

Probably the speculation, I think this is true, about

the other two people that were raised from the dead and certainly the news

of that had gone all around the country of Israel.

It's probably, I bet, added in there, well,

you know, they probably weren't really dead, because people popped

up that people thought they were dead, even at funerals sometimes,

and they popped up in those days, and they weren't all the way dead.

Because it was just actually way too crazy to think somebody could do this.

Even other miracles that they had seen Jesus do, but raising

somebody from the dead.

And she knew if Jesus had been there, no

question, he would have healed Lazarus.

He healed a bunch of strangers that he didn't even know, so

surely he would have healed his friend, that he loved.

So she knew that Jesus was capable

of healing.

But her faith comes short of believing he

can raise Lazarus from dead.

If Jesus had only been there, and we're

going to see, her and Mary had talked about that.

In a sense, think of it, they're kind of

sitting in judgment on Jesus, right?

I mean, there's there's doubt.

There's question here about his wisdom, if you read

between the lines, even about his power, but next,

there's a little ray of hope.

Look what Martha says.

Verse 22.

Even now, I know that

whatever you ask of God, God, will give you.

So Martha clearly knows

who she's talking to.

Remember, verse 21, she said, Lord, Later,

look down in verse 27 what she says.

Look at this.

Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the

Christ, the Son of God, even he who

comes into the world.

And that is some sound theology right there.

That is a great grasp of Christology right there.

She understands the lordship of Christ.

She understands that he is the Christ, the Messiah,

the anointed one.

She understands that he possesses the nature of

God, with the title Son of God.

She understands that he came from heaven into the world.

That's the incarnation.

She also understands by what she says in

verse 22 that in his incarnation, Jesus

has submitted himself to the Father's will.

Whatever you ask of God, she says, God will give you.

It looks like some kind of way.

When she was in the kitchen doing them dishes, she

was overhearing what Jesus was saying to Mary.

This woman is very doctrinally sound when it comes to Jesus.

No doubt he'd stated her house many times.

But somehow, with all that she knew, there

was this pain, that testifies

to a faith, that comes short of

believing in his power to raise the dead.

Verse 23, Jesus respond.

Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.

And then, She shows off a little more.

of her theology.

Look at verse 24.

Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection

on the last day, so she also has a pretty solid eschatology as well, right?

She knows there's a future resurrection on the last day.

And by the way, she could have known this just from the Old Testament itself.

Look in Job 19, verse 25 to 26,

all the Jews had this.

As for me, I know that my redeemer lives, and at the

last, he will take his stand on the earth, even after my

skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh, I

shall see God.

That's Joe.

Daniel 12, too, many of those who sleep in

the dust of the ground will awake, these 2 everlasting

life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

That's Old Testament.

So she had all of this great theological

understanding, even about the resurrection of all people, and she's

saying to Jesus, hey, I know that.

I mean, I understand that Lazarus is going to be raised then,

but That's not helping us now.

It's not helping us today.

And then Jesus responds to that.

verse 25.

Jesus said to her, I am.

The resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live.

Even if he dies.

That's the 5th of the I Ms.

The Gospel of John.

I am the resurrection and

the life, the source of all life.

He doesn't say, I can raise the dead.

No, he says, I am the resurrection.

I am the life, the source of all life.

He who believes in me will live, even if he dies.

Look at verse 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me

will never die.

Do you believe this?

Do you believe?

That's the most compelling question there is in all of questions.

If you don't, You're without excuse.

Especially if you come to charge here.

Do you believe that he is the resurrection and the life.

God in human flesh.

Come down from heaven, the savior of the world.

Do you believe that he is Lord?

She believed all of that.

She gave testimony to that.

Look at her response.

verse 27.

Yes, Lord.

I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, even he who has come into the world.

She says, yes, Lord, I have believed, meaning

I've already believed that you are the Messiah, the

Son of God, even he who has come into the world.

Guess what?

She didn't even know about the cross yet.

She didn't know nothing about the cross.

Why?

It hadn't happened yet.

She didn't know anything about his resurrection either.

Because it hadn't happened yet.

But she believed everything that had been revealed.

Up to that point, you want an example of an Old Testament

saint, an Old Testament believer, here's an Old Testament saint right here.

Fullest extent, from that day to this, if any person doesn't

believe, it's not because there's not enough evidence.

Especially in America.

The evidence is massive.

The testimony of the power that is about to be displayed before

a huge amount of witnesses right now, he appeared to 500

people at once on that hill in Galilee after he rose from the dead.

There's so much evidence.

If you don't believe you're just like the Jews who didn't.

I will not have this man to rule

over me.

So many people in our country are like that.

Now look at verse 28 to 30.

When she had said this, she went away and called Mary,

her sister, saying, secretly, the teacher is here, and is calling for you.

And when she heard it, she got up quickly and was coming to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in

the place where Martha had met him.

So Martha goes back to the house, whispers

to Mary that Jesus is there, and they rush to the

place where he would be waiting.

And next we get a little picture, again, of the kind of comfort that

was being provided by friends.

Look at verse 31.

Then the Jews, who were there with her in

the house and consoling her, when they saw that Mary got

up quickly and went out, they

followed her, supposing that she was going

to the tomb to weep there.

So that's why I say, when Martha first ran out and heard from

Jesus and Mary stayed in there, it appears that she was inconsolable.

I mean, she's just weeping.

This is four days in.

They're still there at the house with her, consoling her.

But then, all of a sudden, when Martha comes in and whispers to her, boom,

she jumps up out of the house, and they're thinking, man,

she's so overcome with grief, she's running back to the grave, she

just wants to take her sadness over there, just weep at

the grapeside, now, instead of at the house.

But what this does is provide more

eyewitnesses for what it is about to happen.

Oh, don't you know Jesus always knows what he's doing.

He lets everybody get down there to the great.

He plans it out perfectly.

Verse 32

Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw him and fell

at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.

Now we know where she got that from.

Martha.

had passed on that discontent to

her meek, quiet little sister.

She fell at Jesus' feet.

She calls him, Lord, just like Martha, but just like Martha,

she says, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Oh, you could have stopped it all.

This didn't need to happen.

But look at Jesus' response in verse 33,

when Jesus therefore saw her weeping.

And the Jews who came with her, also weeping.

He was deeply moved in spirit,

and was troubled.

Oh, don't pass this.

This is quite a scene.

The weeping in the Greek of Mary and the Jews is still

this strong kind of weeping and wailing.

It's a sobbing, and when Jesus sees

all this sobbing, it says, he

was deeply moved.

And that word means a deep emotion.

It can even mean an angry, deep

sorrow.

It just sort of, it just grabs, this

phrase just grabs everything with deep emotion.

It even says he was deeply moved in spirit.

You see that?

In his inner person.

And lastly, it also adds to that, that he was

troubled, meaning, he

allowed himself to feel the trouble.

He let himself feel everything,

as we're going to learn in Hebrews later, he was in

all points tempted, like as are we.

He's been touched with the feelings of all our affirmities,

as our great high priest.

Now I want you to put this together.

This man was his friend.

He loved his friend.

And now he's lost his friend.

And he loved Mary, and Martha, too, and as

we're fixing to see in just a minute, everybody there is going to recognize

how much he loved them.

But you have to understand, this is Jesus.

The pain that he feels here is so

much more than just the loss of a friend.

The pain that he feels here is so much more than

just sympathy for the two sisters.

This is God.

In human flesh.

He feels a far more transcendent

pain here.

At that moment, he understands, at that moment, that

he is absolutely surrounded by

unbelievers, and a lot of them who are representative

of a whole nation that he has revealed himself to

of unbelievers, and he realizes at

this moment, as he's standing there looking around, that they

are all headed for eternal judgment, because

they have absolutely rejected him, because they

will not receive him, and then broad

that out at the same time.

He understands the pain and the suffering of

all humanity, and the human experience, all

through history, that faces the same inevitable

hour of human loss when they lose a child

or a mom or a dad or a grandparent,

and he feels it all at the same time, like nobody

else could ever feel it.

That's what's hitting him here in this verse as the god man.

And he knows perfectly.

How severe the loss is for every person who

steps out into eternity, having rejected

him, he feels all of this.

This is a massive moment of agony for Jesus.

He not only enters into the sorrows of these people who

are broken because they've lost the one that they love.

He also sees way, way infinitely more than

that, over all the centuries of human experience.

He understands perfectly what sin has done

to this world and what unbelief has done to

these people who are gathered all around him in this moment.

Now look at what Jesus says next in verse 34.

And said, where have you laid him?

They said to him, Lord, come and see.

And then in verse 35.

We have the shortest verse in the Bible.

Jesus.

When.

Now the Greek word for wept here.

It's not the one we saw earlier.

It's not the word for weeping and sobbing that the Jews

and Mary...

This is another word.

This is a verb in its form here that

means a sudden outburst

into open tears and open,

serious crying, immediately.

What it demonstrates is as he's feeling all of this emotion

that I just described, he literally cannot

hold it in at this moment.

This is the man of sorrows.

Acquainted with grief.

And he can't contain it.

In his humanity, he just can't contain it.

Because what he sees going on in his own loss,

and the loss of the sisters, and in the unbelief of the crowd,

and all the coming generations of centuries

of people who will feel the same agonizing

separations from their loved ones that sin has produced

all of this at the same time, and he can't hold it in.

It just burst out of him.

In Opus, serious crying.

This is not sentimental tears.

This is not prolonged warmer tears.

This is a shocking outburst in

his humanity of our sympathetic, high priest.

So much of a moment this was.

Look what it says next in verse 36, so the

Jews were seeing, saying, see how

he loved.

It impacted everybody that was there with great effect.

They were right.

His tears stood out above everybody's tears, by far.

See how he loved him.

They used filet oh, how much affection

he had for him, but they didn't see the whole picture.

They couldn't understand the whole picture.

We can't fully comprehend the whole picture.

They didn't know that what led to this outburst was

far more than his affection for Lazarus.

It was all the reality of sin and death and judgment in God's wrath.

that was behind that scene.

Unmistakably, including what he was fixing to have to go through.

for sinners who believe, and he stands

there, at

the edge of the tomb, and he's sobbing.

And feeling the full weight all of this.

And what happens next?

It's astounding.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this marvelous, wonderful account.

Oh, Lord, we don't even deserve to be at

this tune, but yet you have put it in

place in your word, for

all of your church, for all of the

centuries of time until you come again, to be right at this tomb,

for what happened that day, the most remarkable miracle

of raising Lazarus from the dead, Lord.

Help us to feel, and

know, and understand some of

the weight, of the reality of the full person

of who Jesus, the God man, is.

I pray it has affected every heart, and

that we would not leave from this place the same in the way that we think

about our king, and that

everything we've done today has been done to your glory.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.