John 11:17-44 His Glory Seen At A Graveyard June 22, 2014

Transcription

1 Transcription of 14ID1483 John 11:17-44 His Glory Seen At A Graveyard June 22, 2014 All right. Let s open our Bibles to John 11:17 as we continue our verse-by-verse study through the gospel of John. We told you last week that by the time we come to chapter 11, we fall in between the period of the Feast of Hanukkah or Dedication in December (chapter 10:22) and the Feast of Passover in April, when the Lord will give His life for the sins of the world (chapter 12:1). And so we are given this one story in chapter 11. It took place during those four months before the cross, sometime, and it is the story of one man s death and one family s tragic loss and two sisters who struggle with their faith and with Jesus not arriving in time. Last week we looked at the first sixteen verses, and we really looked at the things that the girls there in Bethany did not know. Lazarus became very ill. They sent a runner to Jesus. We learned in chapter 10 that Jesus was in Perea, thirty miles away on the other side of the Jordan. When He heard the news, He said to His disciples and to anyone listening (John 11:4), This sickness is not unto death. This is for the glory of God and so that the Son of God would be glorified. Jesus doesn t move. His unexpected response is to stay in place for two more days. Meanwhile, Lazarus dies. He is buried. And when the Lord finally does make the two-day trip into Bethany, Lazarus has been buried for four days. And we talked last week about God s delays, about God s purposes. He certainly wanted to strengthen the faith of these young ladies, as well as the faith of His disciples. He said in verse 4 that this sickness wasn t unto death. It was for God s glory. He said in verses (when He said to the disciples finally), Hey, Lazarus is dead, and I m glad I wasn t there, so that you might believe in Me. His purpose was to convince those around Him to believe and to find life. But it took a lot of stuff to go through to come to that faith, didn t it? By the time you get to chapter 12:9-11, it is Passover. There are hundreds of thousands of people in town. Everyone s heading for Bethany. They don t want to just meet Jesus. They want to see Lazarus. They want to poke him and touch him. Did you die? Were you really dead? Really dead? And because of it, many came to believe in Jesus. 1

2 By the way, when Jesus finally said, We re heading back into town, Thomas, the pessimist, said (John 11:16), Well, then, let s just go die with Him. Pretty faithful guy, really. That s not doubt, really. That s courageous, but it is pessimistic. Well this morning we want to pick up this story in verse 17 and, as we read this morning, down through verse 44. And then we ll leave the rest of the chapter for next time. But this morning we want to consider Jesus glory. You know, death is your last enemy. What stands between you and Jesus being face-to-face is you dying. That s all that needs to happen. You ve heard people say, Everyone s dying to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go there right now. We don t like to talk of death. It stands in opposition to our being with Jesus for all eternity. Paul said to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:26), The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. And then he said thirty verses or so later (1 Corinthians 15:55), to those who believe in Christ, O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? So, from God s point of view, certainly your death is glorious. Absent from the body, present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (Psalm 116:15). That s what we read in the Old Testament. And all of us live with an anticipation of death in one form or another. When you re young, you usually write it off to, Well, I m just young as if somehow that insulates you. And if you get old, you usually say this, Well, there re a lot of older people, and the line is long, and I m near the back. Or we deny that death is coming at all. If you are like most people, some folks fear death they just want to deny it, put it out of their minds. If you re wise, as a believer, you ll prepare for it. You re going to go one day, and you don t really have an assurance you re going to live to be 100. Death waits for all of us. The mortician signs his letter to you, Eventually yours because you re going to end up there eventually. And whether you re rich or poor, or come from a large family, whether you re popular or infamous, whether you re old or whether you re young, death spares no one. And really, there is only one generation that won t die, right? Those who (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) will hear the trumpet sound, and they will be changed. And I guess that s why we like that idea, right? We don t like funerals. I hate funerals. I mean, I like Christian funerals in the sense that there s hope, but no one likes loss. So, the appeal of the rapture to me, more than anything else besides being with the Lord, is we get to go together. The bus leaves, and we all get on it; not just one at a time. So that s important. But, beyond that, we re going to die. 2

3 And this morning, we will read two of the most important verses regarding death that you have in the Bible. They re in verse 25, they re in verse 26. They re delivered by a Lord who loves a grieving sister, as the disciples watched and listened. Jesus had predicted His resurrection in veiled terms, way back in chapter 2. He had said to the Pharisees (verse 19), Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. And He had shown His power over death. In fact, in the last year or so (and we re near the end, now, of these 3 ½ years of public ministry), Jesus had raised from the dead Jairus daughter (there in Luke 8); and in chapter 7 of Luke, had interrupted a funeral of the son of a widow who had come out of the town of Nain. The Lord had shown that He was, indeed, the Lord. This is a unique miracle besides, obviously, His own resurrection because this man, Lazarus, had been dead for four days. His body had begun to decompose. The rabbis taught that resuscitation could only take place for three days, max, because then the spirit departed. And so I find it interesting that twice in this chapter you hear the words four days. Kind of like, Okay, you think that s all, huh? Watch what God can do. And as Jesus puts Himself on display, there s this application. He s been dead for four days, and He says so twice. So, Jesus will raise him up, and in so doing will verify that you can hang onto verses 25 and 26 with all that you have. In fact, by the time He, Himself is resurrected, and the boys receive the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and the church is born, and the Lord sends His people out, it is the reality of Jesus power over death that makes this first generation group of saints fearless. If we die, we die. But we re going to go and do this because we realize, now, that the Lord has victory over death. And you get to the book of Acts, and you see their boldness, and you realize they were convinced that Jesus is over those who live and over those who die. Verse 17 says, So when Jesus came, (when He finally came from Perea those thirty miles) He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. And many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother. Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Now, by the time Jesus hits Bethany two miles up the hill, over the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem s East Gate - the funeral service was long over, but the grieving had just begun. And there, at the home that really is no longer a home without their brother, Mary and Martha sit, and they weep, and they wonder. We have the benefit of seventeen verses where we re told by Jesus what He s up to. The girls have none of that. All they have is the wonder of why the delay and, now, the anger at Jesus for not coming. Martha 3

4 does what s pretty much true to Martha s character she gets up and moves. She, in fact, according to what we will read in verse 30, runs out of town to get in Jesus face. Mary also does what s true to form she sits still. Hebrew practice was that when someone died, for thirty days you would grieve at home. The first seven were the worst you would not eat, not bathe, not anoint yourself, sackcloth and ashes, much wailing, the tearing of garments, the setting aside of food. You would even, if you had money, hire professional mourners. Not because you were insincere but because you wanted to have everyone hear how grieved you were. And so people would actually come, and you ll find them in the Scriptures, that could wail on cue. I don t know what kind of job that would be or what it paid, but that would be a tough gig. Again, notice the mention of the four days. And Martha heads out and makes a beeline to Jesus and, like I said, finds Him outside of town. And she arrives angry. Notice in verse 21 that her words to Jesus are, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You. Martha comes disillusioned. She comes in despair. She had seen Jesus minister to people for years, and when they had need, He helped them. And yet they, who felt close to Him like family ( phileo love, remember we read that last week), felt like they were let down. Most people, in dealing with grief or loss, invariably go through stages of grief. Not everybody goes through all of them, but it usually runs from denial to anger. First, This can t be happening. This won t happen. This is not going to happen. And then when it does, anger at God. Usually anger at God. Sometimes anger at people, you know? People who lose loved ones get angry at the loved ones for leaving them. You see it all the time. And then there s usually a bargaining phase. Lord, I ll do this if You ll do that. And if that doesn t work out, then there s great depression that follows or discouragement. But eventually if your eyes are upon the Lord, you ll accept what He s doing. But that s usually what goes on. So here comes Martha. First of all, she s angry. Hey, if You d have been here! Second of all, bargaining. Hey, is there anything we can do? Now understand, by the time we get to verse 39, and Jesus said, Roll away the stone, she s going to say, No, no. He s been dead awhile. She doesn t really believe anything can be done at this point, but she s reaching, isn t she? She s trying to cope with what she s facing. She s angry with the Lord, and she wants Him to know it. I have found over the years counseling people who have lost those that they love - (And I should tell you that, in a church our size, we literally do a funeral a week or more. There is always a dad, a brother, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a child, a friend at work who s dying. And so we spend 4

5 time with a lot of people that are at that place of loss) - and I have found that you really can t hold people to what they say when they re suffering grief. They will say things that are just amazing. What?! But I don t think they mean it. They re just trying to cope with all they re going through, and the grief kind of overwhelms them. And Martha s no different. I remember reading in Psalm 13:1-2 when David was so broken before the Lord and having such a hard time that he said, How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? Well probably not forever, David. How long are You going to hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? And he just unloaded on the Lord. He was honest, but it was that grief that drove his honesty, and he needed to learn to let God be God. And so does Martha. Martha s words to Jesus in verse 21 will be repeated verbatim by her sister in verse 32. And I suspect it s because they talked these last four days, and they d shared their frustration together as to why Jesus didn t come. He would have fixed things. He could have answered prayer. He could have avoided this for us. And both girls are now stuck in a hard spot. They believed in Jesus, but He didn t do what they wanted. And so now, What do we do with that? We ve seen Him be kind to others and help them. We don t feel like He did that with us. We re disappointed. And invariably, believers who know the Lord when they lose someone that they love, especially if they re younger, if they re children (I lost my wife at 25, so did Pastor Gerard) - there is this tendency to want to battle with your faith. Where is God when you truly need Him? And, Why doesn t He answer? I hear people all the time, at funerals, say, I don t understand why the Lord took them. They re such good people. They were so kind. And then they tell you of all the rotten people that He should ve taken. (Laughing) And I can t disagree with them. In fact, Here, put that name on the list. I ve got a couple of names for You as well! But if you re God, you re only going to take the best, aren t You? So I understand God s point of view as well. But there is always that battle between faith and understanding the ways of God. Grieving is certainly natural. Learning that God knows best is much more difficult. And being forced to have an eternal perspective of life is something that you usually are only given when you lose people that you care for; when heaven starts to have hands and feet and faces and lives that you knew. Then you begin to look at things from an eternal perspective. Jesus first answer, and you remember from verse 5 the words, Now Jesus loved Martha and what s-her-name and Lazarus. Remember? We looked at that last 5

6 week. He loved Martha. So whatever comes out of His mouth now is the epitome of good counsel from God to grieving man over loss. And He says this, verse 23, Martha, your brother is going to live again. He could have said anything He wanted, and that s what He came up with. The wonderful promise that this life doesn t end here. That s huge. Most folks who don t know the Lord when I meet them at funerals they are overwhelmed because they don t know what comes next. The door looks like it s shut. The handle s on the other side. No one comes back to tell you how it was (regardless to what movie you ve seen recently). It doesn t work that way. Right? We have very limited information except that we know that the Lord will be there. Absent from the body, you can be present with the Lord. So the finality of death to those who are lost is bitter and frightening. But for you and me, we know that there s a life to be lived beyond this life; that death doesn t end life. In fact, it begins it in many ways. When Job lost his family and if you ve read the book of Job, you know that Job lived in the time of Abraham; early guy with very limited understanding of God because the revelation of God is progressive in the Old Testament, right? he trusted the Lord with all of his life. In fact, the Lord s testimony of Job was that he was the holiest guy on the planet. I m pretty sure He said there s no one like him (Job 2:3). So when Job, in one day, loses ten children to violence, to natural occurrences, to accident, the bad news kept coming Job was leveled because his faith in God had been exemplary for everyone who lived. His wife immediately caved. She said (Job 2:9), Look, we ve got to just curse God and die. She gave up. His friends were sure that, with this much suffering, Job must have done something extremely bad because God absolutely must have been very angry, and they gave him horrible counsel. Job tried to maintain his position of faith. Oh, he got real close to defending himself and accusing the Lord. Wouldn t you? He struggled a lot. But by the time he gets to chapter 14:14 of the book of Job, this is what he says out loud, to no one in particular, If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, till my change comes. If I knew that loss was temporary, as bad as it is, I could make it through. And that certainly is true for us. Nobody loses somebody that they love and not suffer. It changes you permanently. And it should. People leave permanent marks. But, to know that this isn t the end of things, that these 60 or 80 or 100 or 20 or whatever, 5, whatever years you re given isn t it; Jesus addressed the very thing that so troubled Job and that brought him rest when he finally discovered it His greatest love for this woman was to say to her, This isn t it. It doesn t end here. Your brother will live again. 6

7 And Martha accepted those words. Verse 24, Martha said to Him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. It is almost as if she agreed with this distant, future significance of the resurrection, but she found no personal comfort in it whatsoever. It is almost as if she said, That s great, but I d like to have Lazarus back. I appreciate that we re going to live forever, but maybe You could leave him here until later. And You didn t show up. Well Jesus, then, responds with words that are more than just some distant theological truth. He brings the truth of who He is to a personal, eternal perspective level that would change the way this woman and her family, and those who know the Lord, look at life. He says this (verse 25), I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. That s pretty awesome! Ego eimi, I AM. It s the fifth of seven declarations of divinity that Jesus claimed, that John writes out in his argument to convince you to believe in Christ. By the time you get to the end of the chapter or, for that matter, by the time you get to verse 44 the end of this study today the I AM was. He didn t just say, I can raise the dead. I m the Lord over the dead and over the living. He then went to a guy who s dead four days and goes, Hey, Lazarus. Yeah, you re going to have to come back. What?! Yeah, I m sorry. My glory and stuff. You ve got to come back. (Laughing) People need to know who I am. If Jesus is involved, death doesn t stand a chance. It s an awesome claim, isn t it? And when you face death and loss, it s the ultimate question. What do you believe about God? What do you think He does when you die? What has He done to provide for you when you face these times? How are you handling loss in terms of faith? Always the same questions. In fact, notice that Jesus, at the end of verse 26, said these very four important words to Martha. Do you believe this? What if she had said, No. Used to, but then You let me down. I am writing You off. You re getting off the Christmas list. You are not part of our family anymore. Then she would have had no comfort or hope. We sit with people all the time. And to be honest with you, oftentimes at the funerals that we do, there re more unbelievers than believers. Somebody goes to church here, but the family, the friends they don t necessarily go to church. And so you sit with them in a family meeting, and you want to tell them about the hope that they can have in Christ, and a lot of people don t want to hear it at all. To them it doesn t, somehow, get to where they are. I m brokenhearted, and you 7

8 want to preach to me? No, no, no. I don t want to preach to you at all. I just want you to have the hope that God gives you because it s the only hope I have. If you don t want Him, I don t know what to tell you. I can t say to you things that people said to me when my wife died. Oh, things ll get better with time. Well that s baloney. They don t get better with time. You just kind of forget about it, but it s not any better. Or they said this. Oh, she s much better off now. Now that was true. She was saved. But there s a worse place to go. This isn t always true, They re better off. Oh, they re in a better place. Are they? You want to be sure of that! Worldly comforts don t help much. But for Jesus to look at this woman that He loved, in great despair and angry and in denial and accusations, to say, I am the One who controls life after death. You live and believe in Me, when you die, you won t look at life the same. Death will be different to you through your eyes as a believer in Christ than it is to the world who has no hope. As Paul said to the Thessalonians, We don t grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Do you believe that? You see, the death and resurrection of Jesus for my sins has to be personally applied. Here s the personal application Martha, do you believe who I am? And He would say the same thing to you. Can I, as God, offer life to those who have died? And can I convince those who believe in Me that dying here won t mess things up there? It ll be better, not worse? Look, it s an unconditional promise here, right? If you believe in Me, you die, you live. You live believing in Me, you don t look at death the same way. Do you believe in Me? For the saints, death is coronation day. It s graduation day. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. It s a good day for the saints. We may grieve for those we love. We should never grieve for their condition. They re dancing. The only person that really got bummed out Lazarus. You know he and his sisters did not get along from that day, forward. (Laughing) Don t you? I was there! Now I may get hit by a bus. You don t know. I don t want to do this again. Martha do you believe this? She said, verse 27, Yes, Lord. I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is come into the world. But having said that, verse 28, She went her way and secretly called Mary her sister, saying, The Teacher has come and is calling for you. Her response is far short of total agreement with His claim. She confesses her faith. She believed that He is the Messiah. The pronoun is emphatic. It literally says I, even I, I m the one, I truly personally believe that You re the One that was to come. But then she walks away, and in verse 39 she tries to stop Him. So, she s working it out. It s a long way to 8

9 go, but she s learning. But she has great hopelessness. I don t know if Jesus actually called for Mary. It s not recorded. Or if Martha thought, I probably should send Mary to talk to Him. She understands Him better than I do. I don t know what the motivation is. But just hearing that He wanted to talk to her, verse 29, was enough for Mary who, As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to Him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met Him. Then the Jews who were with her in the house, and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out, followed her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there. Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet (and by the way, you only see Mary three times in the Bible all three times at Jesus feet; if you want to find Mary, you re going to have to look down), saying to Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Her friends following her, thinking she was going to weep and needed to spend some more time at the grave, followed her out. And Mary came to Jesus, fell at His feet; but she has the same words of despair. Her expectation - also overwhelmed. Her faith, I think, also undermined and rattled. And I want you to notice that Jesus sees this lovely, faithful woman whom He loved as a family, in such anguish of heart and so grieved within and she has no understanding of what He is doing. And we read in verse 33, Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. The word troubled means to shake or to tremble. But the word groaned literally translated to snort like a horse. It is an expression of extreme anger held in, not expressed, but it is that anger when you find something that just isn t right. In fact, we will read Jesus, in verse 38, groaning again. It s the exact same word. Jesus - facing the consequences of sin in the lives of people that He loves, seeing their despair and their weeping is moved with great anger and indignation at death and sin. And it just isn t something that sits well with Him. God s intention was life, not this. Seeing what death and sin do to people, He hates it. He s angry with it. He came to save us from it. He says in verse 34, Where have you laid him? I think He knew where he was. But they said, Lord, come and see. And then we read, verse 35, Jesus wept. The Greek word is klaio. It literally means to cry silently. So, get the picture of Mary and Martha and a house filled with loud wailing. And standing next to them Jesus - the Lord of all with tears rolling down His face. Silently weeping. 9

10 Not for Lazarus, but for the suffering that sin and death brings to man. I can t begin to tell you how often, at funerals, I just want to say to people, Look, if you d just give your life to Jesus, this will be all right. It s the shortest verse in the Bible; probably somehow has the longest sermon in it, somewhere there. He wept. Dakruo. It only appears here as a verb. Isaiah said, He is a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). And one of the greatest griefs that He faced with these folks and Jesus, imagine, He comes to the funeral He weeps for what sin and death have done to man; the hopelessness that people face apart from God s solution. Maybe He s even weeping for Lazarus because He knows he s about to be upset. Now He s going to fix all of this in ten minutes, but He s going to fix it temporarily. And unless those at this funeral realize who He is, they re going to have to go through this over and over again. This weeping without hope. And it isn t that there won t be grieving. There s grieving because we love people, but grieving without hope is horrible. Horrible. There s nowhere to turn. Then the Jews said, verse 36, See how He loved him! And some of them said, Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying? Always in the midst of hopelessness comes the sneers of unbelief. I don t doubt that it grieves Jesus when, in His Word, He tells us everything s going to be all right, that we think, No it isn t. Well, All things work together for good (Romans 8:28). No they don t. But faith and rest in Him can deliver us from a lot of grief. So the people in the crowd said, Oh, look, He s crying. He loved him like we love him. The other people went, I thought He could help us. Not much good now. Then Jesus, again groaning (snorted like a horse) in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God? When did He say that? Back in verse 25 and back in verse 26. Martha had told Jesus she believed who He was, but this wasn t on the register for her. So she raises her voice in protest. Decomposition has set in. This is not going to be a good thing for us. And Jesus said, Let Me just show you who I am. Believe in Me, and I ll show you who I am. I love the verse. Very rarely does the Lord strip everything away and say, Check this out. A couple of times. A couple of places. Certainly the miracles of God did that. But here, in a very demonstrative way, with lots of people around, at a graveyard after a funeral had long passed, Just believe Me, and I ll show you what 10

11 I can do and who I am. And those were the last words out of her mouth. She didn t say anything else. It would be the greatest and most glorious miracle ever the dead are raised. So Jesus says to the guys working at the graveyard, Get rid of the stone. Now that s not to let Jesus in. That s to let Lazarus out. And I ve always thought about that because it does seem to me when the Lord does miraculous things, always entwined with it is stuff people are just supposed to do. Hey, get rid of the stone. Couldn t He have just rolled it away? Well, I think He could have. But so can you. When Lazarus comes out all wrapped like a mummy Jewish burial clothes they said, Cut him loose. He could have just had him come forward and have it drop off. It would have been just as swift. No, no, no. He does what we can t, and we do what we re supposed to in obeying Him. So, Martha, didn t I tell you if you would just believe Me, you ll see the glory of God? And so they took away the stone (verse 41) from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me. Always for the people Martha, Mary, the workers, the crowds. Always so that they would believe. Now, you won t find Jesus praying in public very often. The Pharisees tended to do that a lot. They liked to be thought of as spiritual, so at prayer times, they d be in the middle of the street with their prayer rug, and they d be loud as could be. People think that they re spiritual. But Jesus doesn t pray out loud very much. I don t know if you ve ever been to places where people pray, and you just could swear that they re praying at you. Like if you go to a prayer thing, and somebody goes, Father, thank you that most of us were here on time this morning. (with eyes peeking open) but a few of us weren t. And those of us who were, obviously we re more spiritual. (Laughing) You just feel like you don t want to be there anymore, you know? Jesus is really up front here. He says, Father, I know that You always hear Me. But I m praying so these folks around Me, standing here, will know who You are. He just lets Him know in prayer exactly what the agenda called for. He was sure of the Father s will, but He wanted to be sure that they could be sure of it as well. And then, in verse 43, having prayed that little prayer, He cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth! Imagine if He had just said, Come forth! You see, the whole graveyard might have just emptied out. (Laughing) So, he circled in on 11

12 the one guy. I suspect everyone would have come, Hey, how you doing? It could have been quite a deal. One word from Him, things happen. Let there be light, there was light. Let the waves be still, they were still. Lazarus, come forth! And here comes Lazarus. Cut him loose. I love when Jesus introduces Himself to people, and He unwraps them from death sets them free. So, Lazarus comes out. We re not told what happened to the girls. I imagine they pass out. I d have passed out, wouldn t you? Oh, my goodness. I don t know what happened to Lazarus, or how happy or unhappy he is. I know he shows up in chapter 12 being a pretty good witness for Jesus. And, by the way, I ll give you a little insight into a couple of weeks from now - Lazarus is a guy that never says one word in the Bible. Not one word. He s just standing around alive from the dead. People are getting saved right and left. Never opens his mouth. Sometimes it s better to just be quiet, I think, and live the life. But in any event, that wasn t for today. So Jesus here, weeks before the cross, sets out His Person, His glory on display, and it s just a sample of what He s about to do Himself. He s going to die and rise. Back in John 5:28, He had said to the disciples, Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice. You might remember in Matthew 27:51-53 that, when Jesus died, the Temple curtain was torn from top to bottom. The earth quaked, the rocks were split. And it says, the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep (dead, for the believers) were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. I think that had to be a cool week, you know? (Sound of knocking at a door) What s for dinner? Hey, it s Uncle Harry! He s back! Really? He s been dead ten years. What happened to this guy? Then he could write a book and make a movie. (Laughing) Look, one day at your grave and at mine, we re going to rise. Right? Just like Lazarus. And only that one generation who is alive and remains when the Lord returns will not see death, and I think we re pretty close to that. Look around the world. We re sneaking up on it anyway, aren t we? The rapture of the church is the only non-prophetic event that doesn t have a timetable to it. The minute the rapture takes place, everything else you can figure out by time. But just for the rapture, you re just told to wait and look up and be ready. And if you knew when the Lord was coming, you would have been prepared. So we have to be ready. Resurrection is a pretty important issue, though, for you and me living in this world because God has saved us from the penalty of sin through His death. He is saving us from the power of sin today, as we walk with Him. But one day, we re going to be 12

13 delivered from the presence of sin. The minute you die, you re going to leave sin behind. There is justification just as if I d never sinned. There is sanctification God setting you apart. And then there s glorification. Only Jesus can bring life to dead people. And we re all dead in our sins. So, look, if you don t believe in Him, no matter what you hope for, it s not going to help because He s the only One that can give you life. I am the resurrection and the life. He didn t say, We have a committee of them. Or, I and a bunch of guys. He just said, I AM. It s Me. You believe in Me, you die, you live. You believe in Me, you live, and you look at death differently. You ve just got to believe in Me. If you don t, we re going to give you an opportunity. You can come this morning and pray with one of the pastors. Put your faith in Christ. That s where life is found, right? So, hey, death is hard. Losing people, we hate it. You see way too much sorrow when it comes to that. I say to people at funerals sometimes, I know you re weeping. So is the Lord. He weeps over us suffering. He doesn t want this for us. He has better things in mind. So hang on to Him because sooner or later, you run out of gas, you know? And then what? Then you go to stand before Him. Submitted by Maureen Dickson June 24,