The Stronghold of Unbelief

Transcription

1 GLORIA DEI LUTHERAN CHURCH, April 2, 2017; Fifth Sunday in Lent Lectionary / Selected: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:1-11; John 11:1-53 (NLT) Sermon Hymn: In the Cross of Christ I Glory (LBW 104) Anthem: The Stronghold of Unbelief A bishop was an avid duck hunter, and was in the market for a new bird dog. His search ended when he found a dog that could actually walk on water to retrieve a duck. Shocked by his find, he was sure none of his friends would ever believe him. He decided to try to break the news to a friend of his, a pessimist by nature, and invited him to hunt with him and his new dog. As they waited by the shore, a flock of ducks flew by. They fired, and a duck fell. The dog responded and jumped into the water. The dog, however, did not sink but instead walked across the water to retrieve the bird, never getting more than his paws wet. The friend saw everything but did not say a single word. On the drive home the hunter asked his friend, Did you notice anything unusual about my new dog? I sure did, responded his friend. He can t swim. You know, this bishop s blockhead friend would have fit right in with the folks who saw Lord Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. Instead of being glad, they were so concerned and offended by it that they felt they had go to the religious authorities and report this serious politically-incorrect action! People don t come back to life after dying, you see, particularly so after being buried in the grave for four days! This was most upsetting! And it had to stop! Why, people were starting to believe in Lord Jesus! This could

2 not be allowed to continue. Why, it s just the same today when students in public schools are suspended if they even mention the name of Jesus, or quote a Bible verse in an assignment. Heaven forbid if they should bring an actual Bible to school. They risk expulsion. For the Bible is such a dangerous weapon that could seriously and irreparably harm so many impressionable children! But as heinous as all that is, both when Jesus physically walked the earth, and in our own day, there is so much more that we can learn from this incident. One of the most famous Bible verses is found within it probably most famous for being the Bible s shortest verse. Just two words in many translations. Three words in the New Living Translation we just read. John 11:35: Then Jesus wept. That single verse, those two-three words literally speak volumes. It s so easy for us to think of the Lord as some ultra-holy, superhero guru who somehow achieved an enlightenment that renders Him impervious to the messiness, ugliness, pain and suffering of normal human life. He is often thought of as like a Stoic, who, if they actually feel emotion at all, so contain and control it that it has no effect on them whatsoever. In a way, this picture of the Lord is sort of like making Him a unemotional Vulcan, of the fictional Star Trek universe. But no, Lord Jesus was totally human, in fact more human than any of us. He was perfectly and completely human. Like we were originally created to be. But He was subjected to the same fallen, decaying earth that we live in. And, like we heard a couple!2

3 of weeks ago, from John 4, our Lord got tired enough that He needed to sit down on Jacob s Well, and so parched that He needed to drink. Here, He felt such sympathy and compassion for the people crying and mourning over the death of Lazarus that He was moved, both to tears and anger. He wept. And He got mad at the ugliness of it all. People were never created to have to endure such pain and suffering. But this was the real reason why He had come to save us all from all of the woe and misery of this sin-filled earth, restoring both us and all creation to the magnificent, beautiful perfection it had had in the beginning. The people in Bethany, like most people alive now, didn t much care for death. Regardless of what they thought would happen to people after they die, people didn t like dying, and those there were distraught that good Lazarus had died. His sisters Mary and Martha were especially grief-stricken, as we d expect them to be. Death was final. There was no coming back from it. But Martha had such faith to believe that Lazarus would be raised to life again at the Last Day when all sinners are judged, when the righteous receive their resurrected bodies joining the Lord in heaven, and the unrighteous receive their forever decaying bodies in hell. But while Martha expressed her absolute faith in Jesus, yet there was still a stronghold of unbelief working in her and all the others there. This particular unbelief was that once a person physically dies, they re not coming back to this life. And especially so after they ve been dead for four days, buried in their!3

4 grave. Even though Martha knew that Lazarus would one day live again, as would she herself, she could not conceive that he might come to life again while the funeral itself was still going on! Yet this is exactly what happened. And from then on, Lazarus would live many more years and finally die a normal physical death of old age. He was brought back to life, and healed of the very sickness that had caused his untimely death in the first place. This was a stupendous miracle. Lord Jesus could control the weather. And His simple spoken word could cause a totally dead and decayed body to come alive again! This, in a way, shouldn t have been so surprising since the prophecy in Ezekiel 37 speaks of an even greater miracle. There, there was not just one person involved, there were perhaps millions, and these people had been dead for not just days but thousands of years. They were not just decayed, there was nothing left of them but bones. They were totally dried up, broken, dismembered skeletons scattered over the dry valley. Sure, we see this as symbolic and not literal. But in some real sense, this prophecy is being fulfilled in our own day. The German Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews. Six million were starved until they were literally skin and bones, killed, their bodies burned, going up in smoke. And yet, just three years later, the nation of Israel was reborn. It stood up, and the Jews have been flocking back to the Promised Land ever since and Israel s population is increasing, despite the many nations continually trying to exterminate Israel since 1948.!4

5 Some people weren t happy that Lazarus was resurrected. When the Pharisees and other religious leaders heard of it, they were jealous of Jesus, saying in John 11:48: soon everyone will believe in Him! They were also terribly afraid. But their prognostications about what would happen in the future were totally off base. So like the multitudes of pundits and so-called reporters and journalists that fill our airwaves, newspapers, magazines, in print and online. The Sanhedrin predicted that unless they did something about Lord Jesus, saying in the same verse, the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation, they were convinced they had to put Jesus to death to save the nation. Actually, it was because they later put Jesus to death that the Romans destroyed Jerusalem some three decades later and exiled them all in faraway lands. They simply could not believe that Lord Jesus was who He said He was, who He showed them He was. They could not believe in Him, and were bound and determined to prevent as many others from believing in Him as possible. But they, and all others like them, even in our day, will find out sooner or later that they are fighting against God Himself. [A group of] Christians, all converts from islam, were worshiping at a church in [the] Central Africa[n Republic] when a mob of Muslims, angered by the recent evangelistic efforts of the believers, stormed the church, according to a report from Bibles for Mideast, an underground Christian ministry that distributes Bibles and conducts evangelism in Asia, South Africa and the Middle!5

6 East. The mob, brandishing swords and iron bars, shouted allahu akbar allah is great while destroying the church and ripping off the church roof. Then, they turned to the Christians, determined to kill them for their faith. One man stabbed the pastor s neck with a large sword. Suddenly, Pastor Musthafa, the leader of the church, felt an invisible person who he later identified as a huge warrior angel pull him away from the blade. The attacker, unable to regain his composure or aim, ended up injuring himself with his own sword. Furious, the attackers began beating believers. Amid the chaos, heavy rain and blustery winds unexpectedly formed with thunder and lightning, swirling around the church and surrounding area. Massive drops of rain fell on the attackers like stones, throwing them into disarray. Miraculously, the believers stayed dry and protected from the downpour and suddenly, everyone then became aware of a large cloud overshadowing the church, shielding believers from the rain. The Christians then saw the Lord Jesus in the cloud, and fell to their knees before Him. Terrified, the Muslim extremists fled, fighting to run through the hailstorm. Within minutes, the rain ended and the cloud disappeared, reads the report. Believers could not stop praising and thanking the Lord for His mighty protection from persecution, from what had seemed certain disaster, and that they had seen Him with their own eyes in that amazing cloud. So, never let the stronghold of unbelief determine what you think the Lord can or should do in and through your own life.!!6