John 11:28-44 “The Miracle of Lazarus”

1:05I'm the father of two daughters. One of them, my oldest, who I call Red, is an animal lover. I'm not saying that she likes animals. I'm saying she loves them. All kinds of them. She loves farm animals, horses, snakes, lizards, and birds. I don't know of an animal that she doesn't like or doesn't know all about. When she was in the third grade, she got a couple baby leopard gecko lizards. Now, most kids are going to have these lizards for about a year, and sadly, the lizards will die, but not Red's lizards.

1:54She goes off to college in a week and a half, and guess who will be feeding those same lizards a steady diet of worms and crickets? Her mother. To me, lizards are just snakes with feet. Now, not every lizard that she has had has been as hardy as the first ones. In fact, when Red was around 13, Dan and I went out of town to a conference I had for work. Now, Red and her sister Bug were old enough to stay in the house alone by themselves, but not old enough to spend the night alone.

2:36And we're blessed to have our parents live here, so their Gigi would shuttle them back and forth to take care of all the animals and let them spend some time on their own and in their own home. And one day they had come home, and Red noticed that one of these lizards, which had not been doing well, was dead. But it had Just died. Of course, Red was very upset. She was crying and trying to do all that she could do to help this dead lizard.

3:13My sweet father-in-law cannot and would not stand by and let his favorite red-headed granddaughter weep over a dead lizard. Not on his watch. So he sprang into action, and all his medical training as a PA in a cardiovascular team resurfaced. He snatched up that lizard and he began giving it chest compressions. I'm not lying. Then he took a straw and gave it mouth to mouth or straw to mouth. He was willing this little lizard to life.

3:52And sure enough, the thing revived and lived a few more days just long enough for me and Dana to come home to the aftermath of a dead lizard. So, of course, I nicknamed this lizard Lazarus because it had been raised from the dead. This morning, our text is probably one of the most well-known miracles that we associate with Jesus. In fact, I would bet, but I'm a Baptist, so I won't, I would bet that just about anyone who has ever been to church at any point in their lives has heard of Lazarus. There are TV series, books, science experiments, named the Lazarus projects.

4:37They all deal with the raising up of something dead, or at least the effort of raising up something from the dead. This story is so famous and interwoven in our Judeo-Christian culture that Lazarus is synonymous for coming back to life. And we'll see why Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is important. But this morning, we're also going to talk about doctrine. That is, doctrine that is often assumed and rarely taught. And I think this prominent passage in the Bible is one of the best passages that shows us Jesus' humanity and his divinity and how they exist at the same time in the Son of God.

5:30This passage shows us that Jesus was fully human and he experienced a range of emotions just as we do. But he did so without sin. And he was able to see the eternal significance in a moment when all the others around him were lost in grief and confusion and accusations. And of course, this passage also shows us that Jesus. Is fully God who is able to bring the dead to life. So, what we'll see today is that Jesus is fully man, fully God, and he came to destroy sin and death for the glory of God. So, let's pick up in verse 28.

6:20When he had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you. And when she had heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now, Jesus had not come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 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. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying, Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died. And 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. Now, Jesus had already talked with Martha, and I think Pastor Mark did a great job of sharing with us what we can learn about suffering from Martha last week.

7:22Martha, having been in the presence of the Christ, the Son of God, runs to get her sister Mary. And Mary came running and said the same exact thing to Jesus as Martha said when she saw him: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. As Pastor Mark explained last week, I don't believe that this is an admonition. This is a statement of faith, a statement that acknowledges that Jesus can heal the sick.

7:58But that is as far as Mary and Martha's faith went at that point in time. If you put yourself in their shoes, we all understand everyone dies. Death comes for us all. Remember, earlier in this account, Martha said she believed that Lazarus would be resurrected in the last day. And what did Jesus say to that? He said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this, Martha?

8:41But it still had not crossed Martha or Mary's mind that Jesus could raise Lazarus right then and right there. Martha thought that she understood what Jesus was saying. And in some ways, she did, but Jesus was telling her so much more. And Mary, who had not heard those words, was still in her grief from losing her brother. How many times in our lives have we believed God's word was telling us one thing, only to realize it was telling us either more or something totally different? This is one of the reasons that the elders at New Life consistently look at the doctrines that we teach you. We look over our statement of faith and the practices in which we lead you to tear it apart and ask the questions all over again. Because we understand that even in a plurality, we can misunderstand.

9:41And we can sometimes understand partly. So we need to seek to understand wholly. Mary and Martha, though they are a bit confused, they are in the general ballpark, though. They both love Jesus and they believe in him. Maybe not in the way that we're going to see until later, but they believe that he is the Son of God. However, there is a group of people in this story that add to the confusion and angst when it comes to Jesus and who he is.

10:16And they are following Mary, right on her heels, weeping because they had lost a member of their community, sharing in the grief of Martha and Mary. This is the scene that Jesus pulls up on. And he's seeing numerous people grieving. And the word says that he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. Now, the Greek word used here for deeply moved is embry malmai. You should see the notes I have on that one, just to pronounce that. Embry Malmai.

10:55It does not relate to sadness. It relates to a stern response or a scolding. Another way to translate this word is indignant or irate. Look at what R. C. Sproll says in his commentary on John. He says, I have to wonder whether the actual meaning of the original Greek bothered the translator, so that he didn't want to be exact in translating the term. I say this because the force of the verb here is much stronger than is indicated by the word troubled. A more accurate translation would be, Jesus was irate.

11:38Jesus saw everybody around him weeping and groaned in anger. I believe instead of asking the following question later on in the text, asking the following question like this, where have you laid him? He said it more like this, Where have you laid him? Jesus was angry. The one he loved died. His family and community was in a deep state of grief, and he is angry. There are two instances that we know for sure when Jesus becomes angry. This one, and the other instance is when Jesus clears out the temple. Jesus experiences this emotion that so many of us experience.

12:33Why would Jesus be angry? He has the power to raise Lazarus up from the dead, which we will see. That's a spoiler alert. He was told to come in ample time to come and heal Lazarus before his death occurred. So why was he angry? Because Jesus looked all around him and saw that the wages of sin were real. He knew that the world was not as it should be. He knew the world before sin and death, and now he's seeing the effects of sin and it makes him angry.

13:14Last week, Pastor Mark rightly taught us that we will all experience death. It is inevitable. He's absolutely right. Death is inevitable. But it's not normal. Death was in. Introduced to the world through sin, and we have all learned to accept it as part of the normalcy of life. All you have to do is go to the pediatric ward in a hospital and stand next to that window glass where all the friends and family gather to look at the little babies. And at some point, some old man is going to quote Ian Fleming: Yup, you start to die the moment you're born.

14:01I know this seems morbid and insensitive, but it's very true. Look at what Bruce Milne wrote: He said, The spectacle of the distress of Mary and her companions enraged Jesus because it brought poignantly home to his consciousness the evil of death, its unnaturalness, its violent tyranny, as Calvin puts it. In Mary's grief, he sees and feels the misery of the whole race and burns with rage against the oppressor of men. It is death that is the object of his wrath, and behind death, him who has the power of death, and whom he had come into the world to destroy.

14:52We can learn a lot from Jesus here and how he expresses his anger. Every single one of us have been angry. I think it's pretty safe to say that we have all sinned in our anger. Let's look at Ephesians 4:25 through 27. The Bible tells us, Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

15:34The way that Jesus deals with this anger in this case is similar to the way he expressed his anger in the temple and the money changers. We like to refer to it as righteous anger. And I've heard many people, especially in dealing with social justice issues, express their anger as a righteous anger. In other words, they're saying, if I am angry because of the right thing, then I am justified or right in being angry. And that is partially true.

16:12But we fail when our response in our anger does not line up with righteousness, with right standing with God. Personally, I have never met a single person who claimed that they had righteous anger and did not sin. In their anger. They might have been angry about the right thing, but their response was not right. And I include myself in this. I'm the number one offender. So, how do we know our anger is righteous and our actions line up with righteousness?

16:52Look at the actions of Jesus when he was angry in the temple. Look at John 2, starting in verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple. With the sheep and oxen, he poured out all the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade.

17:31His disciples remembered that it is written, Zeal for your house will consume me. So the Jews said to him, What sign do you show us for doing these things? And Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days. But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

18:10When Jesus cleanses the temple, he is confronted by the people in it. They ask, by what sign, by what authority do you have to do this? They did not realize, but ultimately Jesus says, my authority. I'm going to the cross, and I will die. Then I'm going to rise from the dead. I'm going to die for you. I'm going to take your punishment. And then I'm going to defeat death. That is righteous anger. Righteous anger propels us to love and sacrifice.

18:55It propels us to set something right at our own expense. Righteous anger propels a person to forgive wrongs. It seeks to set things back to normal, to set things back to right standing with God. In this case, Jesus steps up, he goes to the tomb, and he raises the dead to life. He set the wrong to right, the wrong that is written in our DNA. He faces this enemy and he destroys it. And we'll talk a little bit more in a few minutes about why this is important. But we must recognize that Jesus, once again, in his anger, comes to the tomb of Lazarus to set things right, not just to express outrage.

19:52He acts as a mediator between God, the Father, and man. He speaks life into a dead man. But before we get there, we must first recognize another emotion that Jesus experienced. That is sorrow. And in his sorrow, he wept. The shortest verse in all the Bible. It's a good memory verse. It's the shortest verse, but it is so important. It shows us that Jesus experiences sorrow. He wept. Sorrow for his friends, sorrow for his friend's family, sorrow for the state of the world, being held captive to death.

20:40Perhaps, or most likely, Jesus experiencing such a sorrow that we could not have known or experienced, because he was seeing the utter despair since the fall into all of the rest of eternity. Now, there's five things that we can learn from Jesus. His sorrow. Jesus shows us how to experience sorrow without being overcome by it. He feels it. He feels it to the point of genuine weeping. Not just crying, weeping. Full-on, ugly face, runny nose, weeping.

21:29But look at what Jesus doesn't do. Number one, he does not blame others for his sorrow. He doesn't say it's your fault. If only you would have brought, wouldn't have brought sin into the world, Lazarus would still be here. He doesn't say, why did God allow my friend to die? No, he wept. He doesn't blame himself. Why didn't I come sooner? Instead, he wept. He doesn't dictate how others are to console him in his sorrow. Look, I'm full of sorrow. Please don't come up to me and say some silly thing to comfort me. Something like I'm praying for you or God knows what you're going through.

22:28Brothers and sisters, how often in our Sorrow. Have we told people who have good intentions that their words made it worse? In our sorrow, we become so absorbed that we become selfish and ignore or reject others when they just want to help us, to console us. Jesus didn't do this, he wept. Number four, he doesn't let others dictate how or why he is expressing his sorrow. When they said, See how he loved him? Didn't you heal the blind? Couldn't you have kept this man you loved from dying? It's your fault, Jesus.

23:20He didn't listen to that. He wept. And finally, number five, he doesn't let sorrow stop him from doing what he was put there to do. In verse 38, Jesus, then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. He did not wallow in self-pity. He experienced sorrow. He experienced it deeply, but it did not cut him off at his knees. It did not stop him from doing what he had come to do. He went to the tomb.

24:00I know that there are many of you who have great cause for sorrow. Honestly, as a pastor, many times you're with people on their worst days. You see people lose their marriages. You're with people who have watched their children be put in the ground, or their brother or sister, their father or mother, taken from them just as Lazarus was taken. You see people who have been abused and molested, discarded, treated like trash. I know you have cause for sorrow. And I want you to do what Jesus did. I want you to feel that sorrow. I want you to weep. I want you to weep hard, but then go to the tomb. Do not stay in your sorrow.

25:06Our mighty God has more for you to do. And he has given you the power of the Holy Spirit to get up and to do it. Now, I don't know what that might be. Perhaps someone you know will come to new life in Jesus because you shared the gospel with them in your sorrow. Perhaps you teach someone else how. To get up and move on from their sorrow. Brothers and sisters, for some of you, it's time to get up.

25:41It's time to get up and continue with the mission that God has for you. You can do it with tears in your eyes, but you have to get up. John shows us the humanity of Jesus by sharing with us the emotional turmoil that Jesus was walking through. It's pretty easy for us to focus on the full divinity of Jesus, especially in this passage, because he's raising someone up from the dead. But honestly, in my opinion, one of the greatest miracles in this text is how Jesus perfectly and righteously handles his anger and sorrow.

26:26Those are two overwhelmingly human emotions that give us the most difficulty in a fallen world. They're the ones that we are most apt to get lost in and to sin. Amen? But no, we get, but now we get to see Jesus in full humanity express and show us his full divinity. In his anger and sorrow, he goes to the tomb. Of Lazarus. Let's pick up at verse 38. Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone.

27:16And 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. Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 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.

27:48When he said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The man who died came out, his hands and feet bound in linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go. Jesus caused them to take away the stone that covers the cave. And Martha says, there will be an odor. When my wife's grandfather was still alive, we call him Papa. When Papa was still alive, I used to go over to his house every now and then and do some work for him every, you know, every week. Once in a while, he would always call me when he needed some heavy lifting to do. I don't know why.

28:38And I would sweat because I'm a champion sweater. And somehow he would always work in this scripture, but he would say it in this King James Version. But Lord, he stinketh. The Hebrew people believed that it would take three full days for the soul to completely depart and leave the body. The soul would completely abandon the body at the point at which decomposition begins. And that was usually within three days. And Lazarus had been dead for four days. Decomposition had begun. And I don't know if you've ever been around a decomposing corpse, hopefully not a human corpse, but maybe an animal corpse. It stinketh.

29:30Jesus reminds Martha of what they agreed to do. But Lord, it stinks. He stinks. There's an odor. And he says, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? I can imagine Martha's face at that point. Some of you are teachers here. And one of the best moments as a teacher is watching the light bulb come on. The student. Their face shows that moment of realization, and there's a relief and joy of having finally understood that thing that was so hard to grasp.

30:13I think that this is Martha's face right about now. And then Jesus has a conversation with his father. Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew you always hear me, but I have to say it out loud so that everyone watching will know that you sent me. Will know that the Son has been sent by the Father to do away with death once and for all. Now, the resurrection of Lazarus was not permanent. He would eventually die again. As we'll see in a couple weeks, you'll see the raising of Lazarus did Lazarus no favors. The Pharisees wanted to kill him just as much as they wanted to kill Jesus. And there's some debate, but the Pharisees arguably succeeded in having Lazarus assassinated.

31:14Jesus states that he has come to show the glory of God, which is to defeat death. And at the end of John's account, we'll see that Jesus ultimately is resurrected from death and never dies again. Instead, he ascends to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, and he intercedes for us. Lazarus is a precursor to what Jesus will eventually do forever. Jesus is calling his shot here. I'm not a boxer. I'm not really much of a fighter. But before Jesus saved me, I was known to get in a little tussle or two.

31:58And one thing I learned is that you can't bring the haymaker right away. It gives your opponent a chance to move out of the way because you're telegraphing what you are doing. So you put in a jab or a kick or you throw something at them to distract them from the thunder that is hopefully going to put them down for the count. Here, Jesus looks at the devil and he telegraphs exactly what he's going to do.

32:32He babe roosts it. He steps up to the plate, points to the wall where he's going to hit the ball, and then knocks it over out of the park. Brothers and sisters, the devil is real. And it is his goal for death to be the final blow that solidifies your eternal enemy, your eternal distancing from God. I say, I say, I say. Sorry. I shouldn't have put that in there. But Jesus came to give us life and to give it more abundantly. He came to defeat Satan and take the only weapon that the devil really has, which is death.

33:18And he shows us that it easily falls when it comes and is put up beside the glory of God. Jesus brushes it off by simply speaking out loud. He says, Lazarus, come out. And the bound-up, decomposing Lazarus, who stinketh, is raised from the dead. Jesus, showing that he is fully God, showing the glory of God, shows the prince of death that even death is in subjection to him. Look at the screen behind me at 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 28. It says, For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says, all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself. Will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

34:49But Jesus' final words have probably occupied my mind the most when studying this text. He says, Unbind him and let him go. Certainly, Jesus was telling those that witnessed this miracle to unbind Lazarus so he could clean himself up and begin living again. But I think he was speaking to someone else, too. I think that Jesus was speaking to the devil as well. Unbind him. Your weapon is no good on those who believe in me. Death, unbind him and let him go.

35:40Perhaps you feel like Lazarus this morning, and you're hearing Jesus calling to you, come out, come out of your addiction, come out of lying, stealing, come out of sexual immorality, and all the other things that keep us as enemies of God. To come out of sin that brings death and to be unbound and to be set free. Jesus was fully human. He had the same emotions as me and you. Hebrews 4:15 and 16 says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who, in every respect, has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then, with confidence, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need.

36:48He was fully human, and he was fully God, and he has defeated death. He was nailed to a Roman cross, taking our shame and sin upon himself as a propitiation. That means he was paying the price for our sin. He was the price. He was perfect without sin, but he took our sin upon himself. The Bible says he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he mediates for us.

37:26So, no matter what you've done, no matter what you may do in this The future. Jesus put it on himself and paid the penalty. And one day we'll stand in judgment before his throne. And none of us can stand there in righteousness of our own. Lazarus was dead. In the words of Jerry Clower, he was graveyard dead. He could not will himself to life. He didn't even have a will. He was dead. But Jesus chose to call him back to life.

38:14You cannot will yourself to new life through good works. You cannot wrestle yourself into grace and mercy. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the glory of God, as Romans says. Our hope is in Christ, the defeater of death, the fully man and fully God's Savior. Romans 10 says, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

38:52You will come under the righteousness of Jesus, and you will be raised up from death to life. If you feel like Lazarus today, you can be unbound and set free. Please talk to us if you have questions about that. Today is the day to be raised from the dead, to be unbound and let go. And for those of you who have been walking in life, perhaps you need to see that Jesus really did experience everything that you are going through.

39:39He knows anger. He knows sorrow. He walks perfectly through it. So when you fail, you are covered by his blood. Because he was perfect. When you seek forgiveness, it is given to you. But just as important, he has given you the power of the Holy Spirit to help you walk in these emotions in a way that sanctifies you and refines you and brings glory to God. Because we exist just like Jesus to bring glory to God.

40:21We do that because Jesus is fully human and fully God. And he successfully came and destroyed. Sin and death. Let's pray. Father, we proclaim that you are Lord over life and death. Your glory is above all that was and is and is to come. You sent your Son, being found in humanity, who humbled himself even unto death, who lived perfectly and showed us how to be angry and not sin. Who showed us how to be in sorrow but not be overcome by it.

41:09He was a man of sorrows. We believe that you are able to speak and the dead are raised. We believe that you have defeated sin and its wages of death. So we are now alive in Jesus. We have an inheritance waiting for us. And we have an advocate for us when we stand before your throne in judgment. We pray for the Holy Spirit to help us walk in life and not death. We pray for the Holy Spirit to call the dead to life today.

41:51And we pray for the faith like Mary and Martha that was real and holy and ultimately saving. To you be all the glory. In the name of the defeater of death, our mediator and Savior, Jesus. And the church said, Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.