Now if you will turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 11.
I'm going to be reading from verse 1 through verse 16, then verse 38 through 44.
Last Sunday we began to look at the glory that we find in Jesus Christ.
And today we are going to look at another well-known story where Jesus shows us His glory in the
resurrection of Lazarus.
Let's give our attention to God's Word.
Now a man named Lazarus was sick.
He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha.
Jesus Mary, whose brother Lazarus was now sick, was the same one who poured perfume on
the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.
So the sister said word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick.
And when he heard this, Jesus said, this sickness will not end in death.
No, it is for the glory of God so that God's Son may be glorified through it.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days and then
he said to his disciples, let's go back to Judea.
So Rabbi, they said a short while ago, the Jews there tried to stone you and yet you're
going back.
Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours of daylight?
Anyone who walks in the daylight will not stumble for they see by this world's light.
It is when a person walks at night that they stumble for they have no light.
Mary said this, he went on to tell them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I'm
going there to wake him.
His disciples replied, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.
Jesus had been speaking of his death but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he told them plainly, Lazarus is dead.
And for your sake, I am glad I was not there so that you may believe but let us go to him.
Then Thomas, also known as Didymus, said to the rest of the disciples, let us also go
that we may die with him.
And now verse 38 through 44, Jesus once more deeply moved came to the tomb and it was a
cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
Take away the stone, he said, but Lord said Martha, the sister of the dead man, by this
time there is a bad odor for he has been there for days.
Then Jesus said, did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?
So they took away the stone and then Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that
you have heard me.
I knew that you always hear me but I said this for the benefit of the people standing
here that they may believe that you sent me.
And when he said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
When the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth
around his face.
And Jesus said to them, take off the grave clothes and let him go.
Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading of his word.
Our Savior this morning, we are in need of your glory.
The glory that does miraculous things from our perspective help us to believe just as
those disciples did who witnessed your glory firsthand.
I make this prayer in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Glory, greatness, distinction, grandeur, eminence, greatness.
That is what glory is.
And I want you to think of the children's blessing.
Perhaps you memorized it and had to say it as a child.
God is great.
God is good.
Let us thank him for this food.
That simple prayer contains an awful lot of theology.
The greatness and the glory of God and his goodness.
We're consumed by greatness.
The human greatness, at least that's what we hear and see.
And sometimes that's what we aspire to with sports, for example, where people want to
be what is known as the goat, the greatest of all time.
Such athletes as Tom Brady, right now, Kate LeClarke and basketball.
And there are other examples of that.
It's also in the political realm, our statesmen, who we erect monuments to.
We name libraries after.
And we know that they are great because somehow or another they've impacted our life or perhaps
changed this world for the good.
But that greatness is awfully short lived.
Only this week, O.J. Simpson, who at one time was the greatest of all time for running
backs, died of cancer.
Earlier another great sports hero and Heisman trophy winner, Charles White, also died.
They may have been great physical specimens at one time, but they don't last and their
bodies are broken.
And the records are past.
They don't last.
None of our human greatness lasts.
It's very short lived.
It is a derived greatness that God gives us for a time being.
But what we want is something a little more eternal, something that is much greater than
what humans can accomplish.
And today what I want to look at is the glory of Jesus Christ.
Now He is the friend of sinners.
I do not deny that.
I believe that.
You'll see this in this passage.
He really is a friend of sinners.
But He's also God.
He is great.
He does things that if we were there, we would be astounded and said, oh my, can it be?
Because of what He is able to do.
And this morning as we look at John 11, this is what the last of His sign miracles.
He's on His way to Jerusalem to death, to die for the sins of God's people.
And here He shows us though that He is the Son of God.
And He is willing to show His glory.
And let's ask ourselves a question.
Now does He show that glory to the people back then?
Let's take a deeper look.
And I say to you this morning that He shows us that glory through His love.
Jesus is moving on into the last phase of His ministry, the crucifixion.
And He and His disciples are at Bethany about two miles from Jerusalem.
They're there doing the work of the kingdom of God.
And while they're there, a message comes to them from His friends.
And I want you to notice Jesus has friends, people that He cared about.
The disciples, yes, but also people who were His friends, close associates.
And one of them is Lazarus.
Now when we look at Lazarus, there is another one in the Bible.
There's a parable about Lazarus who was very poor and died and went to heaven.
Not the same Lazarus.
This is a real person.
And he is a brother of Mary and Martha.
And later on we will hear about Mary and Martha in John's Gospel.
That is where Martha is running around, getting everything ready for dinner, for Jesus and
His disciples.
And then you've got Mary who's just sitting there.
And Martha is very upset.
That's who we're talking about.
These are the friends of Jesus Christ.
These are the ones that He shared a meal with, shared stories with, taught, probably went
on walks together and told each other their needs.
And listen to what Scripture says here in verse three.
It says, they sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick.
Now notice, it did not say, Lazarus said he loves you.
It says, Lord, the one you love is sick, which shows us the affection that Jesus must have
had for this man.
And a little later on in verse five, it says, now Jesus love Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
Don't think that Jesus was like a stoic.
He loved people.
And he loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus.
And when that request came, Jesus does not immediately go.
And in fact, at first he tells them, well, this sickness, it won't last.
Well, he doesn't say it exactly like that.
But he's basically saying, no, we're not going to go.
He's sick.
But why aren't we going?
Well, it tells us in verse four.
This sickness will not end in death.
No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it.
Why does he delay?
Is it because of a lack of love?
No, because there's something greater.
So he stays.
And there is a delay.
And finally in verse 14, he tells his disciples plainly, Lazarus is dead.
Now, you're right.
Jesus could have packed up immediately had gone.
But keep in mind, it is not because of a lack of love for these people.
He's going to show them his love in a greater way than they would ever have expected.
And don't think now in all of this that Jesus does not care.
Notice in one of the shortest verses in the Bible, what does it say about Jesus?
He wept tears because of the loss of Lazarus.
When your friends die, when your relatives die, when your spouses die, you weep.
Jesus wept.
And I think it tells us something about the heart of our Savior.
He understood fully what it means for human life to be disrupted.
And I often think that we have forgotten that perhaps Jesus may weep over us as well in
our pain, our despair, and the dissolution of our bodies.
And there is glory here.
And I think what is very glorious about this is the love that our Savior shows to that
family, that he cares enough to weep and ultimately cares enough to do something about it.
And keep in mind also, when we think of the glory of God and we don't get the answers
to our prayers that we want right away, that there may be a delay, it is not because God
doesn't love you, maybe it's because there is something else he has in mind that may
be greater and more glorious for all of us.
Yes, Lazarus does die.
And Jesus wasn't there.
But keep in mind what Romans chapter 8 says about the glorious love of Jesus.
Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God and of Jesus Christ.
And now we've mentioned people this morning like Wilma who's getting closer to death,
Lowe who may already be dead or have just hours left to live.
And we may think that death is all powerful.
Death is not all powerful, but the glorious love of Christ which cannot separate us from
him is all powerful.
There's glory in this passage.
The glory of his love.
And there's more because that's not the only emotion that we see here, is it?
There's another.
Because Jesus also shows us the glory of his anger.
Anger you say?
Yes, anger.
I want you to look at verse 33 for a moment.
Look at what it says about Jesus.
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was
deeply moved in spirit and trouble.
Now if you look down to verse 38, again what do you see?
Jesus once more was deeply moved.
In many of the translations they have a different rendering.
Some say he groaned.
Others say he was deeply disturbed.
And in other times that word is used in the Bible, it's scolded.
What the Bible is telling us here is Jesus is upset.
And not just weeping, even though he does do that too.
He is upset about something.
He is angry.
Could it be that he's just angry?
Because the crowds don't believe him.
You could say that from verse 37 where someone is a little snarky in the crowd and says
could he not have, who opened the eyes of the blind men, have kept this man from dying?
But I think there's more to it.
Yes, he may be upset over the unbelief, but what he's upset of is what death and decay
is doing to the human life.
What you've got to understand is that we were created to live and not die.
Death is unnatural.
We were designed to live forever and have the joy of God always.
But because of the fall of man we were cast out into a world we are not prepared to live
in.
And how can I say that?
Well, think about it this way.
We have to have clothes, don't we, because of the atmosphere and the weather.
Now my dogs come into the world, they don't need coats, they don't need clothes.
They're made for this world.
We aren't.
It may have traces of Eden, but we're going to die.
That is not what God has made us for.
We were meant to live forever.
That's why death is so unnatural to us.
And Jesus also knows that when someone dies there is that loss of fellowship that we
have with each other.
I think what grieves us the most is not only the pain that we go through, but the times
where we miss those who once were with us.
And I know after Lynn Hebe died there was a time I kept expecting him to walk through
that door because we missed him.
That's what death does to us.
You miss their presence.
And there are so many people today who say, oh, death is natural.
It's part of the biological process.
By the way, keep a stiff upper lip.
Did Jesus keep a stiff upper lip?
No.
He wept and he also got mad.
Mad over what Satan and death were doing to his creation.
And what does this tell us about Jesus Christ in the heart of the Savior?
Death is his enemy.
No wonder in 1 Corinthians he says the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Jesus hates what is happening to us.
And there's no wonder at the end of the Bible in Revelation 21.4 when this world is finally
restored, listen to what it says about the life we should expect.
He will wipe away every tear from their eye.
There will be no more death or moaning or crying or pain for the old order has passed
away.
Jesus' mission when he came into this world was to die for your sins.
But it was also to restore to his people what they were originally intended to be in the
garden, living in the presence of God forever.
And ultimately what this glorious act of God shows is the glory of his anger.
So angry that he is going to do away with death once and for all.
The good news or the Christian messages, Jesus hates death.
What gets Christ angry?
What gets Christ disturbed?
Death.
And he has done something about it.
That is what is so glorious about Jesus.
And that's what we always need to remember every funeral we go to.
Jesus hates what is happening to his people.
And I think here there's times where we need to weep at funeral.
But I would also say to you there are times we need to get angry.
Angry what has fallen upon us because of the sins of the first couple.
Being in mind that Jesus also is angry enough to act.
And while we see his glory and his love and his anger, we also see the glory of his power.
Now today people come up with all sorts of ways that they can beat death and aging.
You can read the newspapers or the journals online and what will they tell you that some
scientist is coming up with a way that he can live and beat death.
Or at least live beyond the normal life span.
Maybe it is because of the power of a new drug.
Maybe it is by the power of an exercise regime.
Maybe it is by some sort of supplement.
Do they work?
No.
None of them work.
None of them.
We're going to die.
And there's only one person who can do something about that.
Jesus.
And I want you to know what he did here.
Listen to how he treated this whole issue with Lazarus.
He goes to the tomb.
They don't expect the body to rise from the grave.
He tells them, you've got to believe.
Martha said in the NIV, this time there is a bad odor.
I like what the King James says.
He stinketh.
They don't expect a miracle.
But Jesus stands outside of the tomb and says these words for the benefit of those listening
so they will believe.
Does he say, Lazarus, come out.
He speaks.
It's done.
Lazarus comes out and they've got to unwrap him.
It should remind us of something, shouldn't it?
How was this world created?
How did life come into this world?
The Word of God.
Life comes when God speaks.
In Genesis 2.7, it says that when man was created, he became a living being that God
breathed life into him.
That's power to speak and there is life.
No one else can do that.
No scientist can do that.
No politician can do that.
No athlete can do that.
All those groups that we look up to, but who doesn't?
Jesus.
That's glorious.
That's real power.
Seeing who can run a thousand plus yards in a football season, oh impressive, but not
that glorious compared to the power of Jesus Christ to raise people from the dead.
I'm going to make you promise.
I don't make a lot of promises from the pulpit because a lot of times I forget what I promise.
If you ask me to pray for you, I'm not going to say I promise to you.
I usually do it right then so I don't forget.
So I'm going to make you promise this morning and here's the promise.
One day you are going to experience the same type of glory that Lazarus did.
Didn't you say?
Well one day you're going to be in a similar position to some of the people we prayed for
this morning.
Your life in this old order of the world will be ebbing away.
Glorious event number one will be when you awake and you see Jesus.
Glorious event number two is at the second coming when you get the new body.
And you're going to be sitting there I think.
I know what I would do.
I'm going to be pinching myself.
Hands, legs, more hair maybe.
And I'm going to tell you that's going to be the most glorious event of all and then
we are all probably going to sit there and bow down and say what a savior.
Glory to God in the highest for his love, his hatred of death and his power to bring
new life in its fullness.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father we ask now that you will convince us of the glory of Jesus Christ.
That glorious power to take away our worst fear and to bring us everlasting life.
Not a life in which we will be simply ghosts in heaven, but fully human being who live
and act and breathe in a new world that is really made for us.
Oh Lord our God, we praise Jesus.
I make this prayer in his name.
Amen.
Our last hymn is when the roll is called up young.