John 11:28-44 English Standard Version Jesus Weeps 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 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?” Jesus Raises Lazarus 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.” We are now to the seventh sign in the book of John. To recap, here are the seven signs that we've looked at during our study, with the purpose of each to show us that Jesus is the Son of God.
We spent much of the last article talking about Jesus' interaction with Martha. Martha then goes and gets her sister Mary who has been grieving in private and gives her a simple message. "The Teacher is here and He is calling for you." When she heard this she arose quickly and ran to Him. I think that's a great picture of us and what we need in our times that are dark and deep--we need to hear a friend say "The Teacher is here and is calling for you" and we need to run to Him. The people see her leaving quickly and follow her, assuming that she was going to the tomb to grieve and the Jews believed that they should weep with those who were weeping and usually had an entourage of "professional" mourners that would go with the family to mourn with them when they went to mourn--no one knew that Jesus was outside the village. Where Martha's conversation had been very private, everyone is going to follow Jesus and His conversation with Mary and what He was about to say and do would be very public. When Mary comes to where Jesus is, she falls down at His feet. Notice that while Martha called Him "Teacher," Mary greets Him with the title of "Lord," and she greets Him with a posture of submission and worship. Her emotions are similar to those of her sister, telling Jesus that if He had only come a little sooner that Lazarus would not have died. Now notice the next verse. Many assume that it is for His friend Lazarus alone that Jesus weeps in what is known to many as the shortest verse in the Bible, but like so many other verses in the Bible, Jesus sees the weeping of Mary and of the crowd of Jews that are following her he was moved with compassion and his heart was deeply troubled--the passage says nothing of Jesus weeping for Lazarus other than that being the people's perception of what what going on when they said, "See how He loved him," but others perception was skewed by their lack of faith as they followed this statement with, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” Jesus is about to answer that question loud and clear! Once again, Jesus is deeply moved as He comes to the tomb as He has asked Mary, "Where have you laid him?" and the scene now shifts from the place were Jesus and Martha first met to outside the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus orders them to take away the stone. Now, you must be aware that the Jews did not embalm bodies (and usually still do not to this day), as they believe in burying the body quickly and having it preserved for the resurrection of the dead. This meant that they would instead pack the body with spices and ointments to cover up the smell, but those would only last for so long, and by the fourth day, the smell of death and decay would have been overpowering. This is why the men replied, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” None of them wanted to be hit in the face with that putrid smell when they opened the tomb. Jesus' response though was interesting. The men being referred to here must have been Jesus' disciples as they call Him "Lord" and He refers back to something that He said to the disciples before coming to Bethany about this being done for the glory of God (see verse 4). He again reminds them, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” The men obeyed and rolled away the stone. Now Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and prayed a prayer to the Father out loud for the benefit of all those that were there to hear, both those who would believe and those who would not believe. “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.” That is still the question at hand--Jesus calls God "Father" implying that He is the Son of God, and by this implication, the Father should give the Son anything that He asks for (as long as He asks in accordance with the will of the Father). Jesus says this out loud for all to hear, but also to set the context of what is about to happen that this is going to be a sign to them that Jesus is who He has always claimed to be--the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. After this prayer, He cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" The man that was dead was brought back to life, though still wrapped in his graveclothes for all to see and probably his clothes still smelled of death, and he still had the linen cloth over his face and others had to set him free from these graveclothes (I think John includes all this as a contrast for what we are going to see in John 20:6-7 where we are told, "6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself." No one had to set Jesus free from His grave clothes during His resurrection and no one had to open the tomb to let Him out, but the angels opened the tomb of Jesus to let the disciples in.) So this final sign points forward to the Resurrection of Christ for sure, but it also points to the miracle of regeneration for each of us. We are all dead in our trespasses and sins and were REALLY dead like Lazarus. Jesus is the one the commands our tomb to be opened and calls us out by name and takes that which was dead and makes it alive. I'll go back to one of the things I say over and over again in my small groups, "Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, He came to make dead people alive." This is your story! You were Lazarus. You were dead in your trespasses and sins and everyone around you said, "If only Jesus had shown up a little sooner, maybe you wouldn't have died," but Jesus says that it is to the glory of God that it is done this way so that it will be obvious to all that Jesus is Lord of the living and the dead, that He makes all things new, and that He has the power over both death and hell. We may not have been called out of the tomb quite like Lazarus, but were were spiritually just as dead (maybe even more dead like the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37.). In fact, let me post Ezekiel 37 here for you as supplementary reading for today's passage. See if the words and images here don't bring back the words of Jesus that we've studied recently about His being the Resurrection and the Life, the Good Shepherd and that He is the true Temple. Ezekiel 37 English Standard Version The Valley of Dry Bones 37 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.” I Will Be Their God; They Shall Be My People 15 The word of the Lord came to me: 16 “Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ 17 And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand. 18 And when your people say to you, ‘Will you not tell us what you mean by these?’ 19 say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph (that is in the hand of Ephraim) and the tribes of Israel associated with him. And I will join with it the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand. 20 When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes, 21 then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. 22 And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. 23 They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 24 “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. 25 They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. 26 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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