10/21/07 A Little More On Lazarus

It’s been more than a month since we were in our study of John’s Gospel,

and we are going to return to it this morning.

But we’re going to do more than that.

I spent some considerable time this past week

looking at where we’ve been in our study of John,

and where John goes in the rest of the book,

and I’ve decided that I will bring our study of John to close with what we do today.

Our study today will bring us through to the end of chapter 11,

and then, in chapter 12, John begins his detailed account of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

It is material that we have touched on repeatedly throughout the years,

especially with some of things we’ve done at Easter,

so I believe we’ll move out of this study, at least for now.

But I don’t want to leave it

without bringing us through to the end of chapter 11.

We’ve been away from John for several weeks

so a little background on where we are and how we got here will help.

John takes the first 10 chapters of his Gospel

to share with us a series of mostly private or semi-private conversations

that Jesus had with a number of people during the four years of His public ministry.

Most of the material we have included in these 10 chapters

is material that was not included in the first three Gospels,

probably because the other Gospel writers had no knowledge of it.

But it was material that John knew we would need

in order to have a complete picture of both the message and the life of Christ.

And just so that we keep things clear and simple,

let me remind you about that message.

What Jesus came to communicate to the human race was not complicated

and it certainly wasn’t obscure.

He came to reveal to us our God -

who He is,

what He’s like,

what He thinks about us,

how He feels about us,

what He wants from us,

and what He wants to offer us.

JOH 14:9 Jesus said, "...He who has seen Me has seen the Father...”.

JOH 10:30 "I and the Father are one."

COL 1:15 (Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

And what we saw in those first 10 chapters

gave us a clear, vivid view into both the mind and the heart of our Creator.

And what we saw wasn’t what most of us would expect,

even if we came with a long history of church involvement.

In fact sometimes our history in the world of religion

can be the greatest barrier we have

to the correct understanding of our God.

But what we saw and what we heard in John’s words to us

is our God reaching out to us

with compassion,

and kindness,

and the most amazing offer of redemption to all who will simply believe what He’s saying to us.

JOH 3:17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

I’ve heard these truths from the earliest days of my Christian life,

but something has been happening in me during the past few years

that has caused me to hear them as I’ve never heard them before.

I think a lot of what’s been happening

is that, rather than hearing what’s been said simply as verses or Bible words,

I’ve stepped back a pace and begun to realize both Who it is that’s saying these words

and what it is that He’s saying.

These are the words of God Himself,

the Being who brought into existence all that is.

This is the One who speaks and what He speaks always happens exactly as He has spoken,

the One ...who is holy, who is true, ... who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens...(REV 3:7).

This is GOD,

not a god,

not some created figment of the human imagination,

but the real, true Source of all things.

And here He is, speaking directly to us, His creation,

the ones who have rejected Him as our God

and rebelled against both Him and His words to us.

And yet...and yet what we hear from Him

are not the words of judgement or condemnation that we so justifiably deserve,

but rather they are words offering us hope, redemption, and restoration to Him.

How could that be?

I don’t know, and yet I know that it is.

Well, John wrote to complete this portrait of our God,

providing us with information we need,

information that would have been lost had he not written.

And in the first 10 chapters

John fills in the missing pieces

that, taken along with the first three Gospels,

provides us with the setting for the detailed account of the final days of our Lord

that John then gives us in the last eleven chapters of his Gospel.

But between those two sections

is chapter 11,

the chapter we are currently studying.

I suppose logically it belongs with the first ten chapters,

but it serves a special purpose

in John’s presentation of Jesus Christ.

For in this 11^th chapter

we find John’s account of the culminating event

of Jesus’ final intensive presentation of Himself to the Nation of Israel,

the presentation that took place

in the few months immediately preceding the Passover Feast at which He was crucified.

And as we saw the last two times we were in this study

it was a truly remarkable event - Jesus’ physical bodily resurrection of His friend, Lazarus,

four days following his death and burial.

John uses nearly the entire chapter for his presentation of what happened,

describing for us how Jesus intentionally stayed away from Lazarus until after he had died

because this man had been chosen by God

as a special means through which Jesus could demonstrate

the one truth everyone of us hungers for the most,

the one truth that has the power to free us in this life as nothing else can do.

We heard Him put it into words to Mary when He arrived on the scene,

and then we saw it demonstrated through His resurrection of Lazarus from death.

What He said to Mary was this:

JOH 11:25-26 "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die..."

And then, just so that there could be no misunderstanding,

no religious spiritualization of His words,

just so that He was absolutely clear about what He was saying,

and we were absolutely clear in what we were hearing,

He stood before the tomb of a man dead four days

and called him back to life.

Now obviously what He was doing was intended to be a vivid illustration,

not a final act.

By that I mean that the life he offered Lazarus at that point

was not the eternal life He was promising.

Lazarus did eventually die again,

presumably after living a full, natural life span of 70 or 80 years.

But what Jesus wanted us to understand

was that He was claiming for Himself

real, true authority over life and death,

and what He was promising us

was that, if we choose to believe in Him,

choose to believe He is who He claims to be

and believe that He has done for us what He claims to have done,

He really will give us a literal eternal life.

Even if we die,

we will live again,

and then continue living forevermore.

We will live in His presence forever and ever and ever and ever.

Do you think that’s just a little bit of good news for really old people,

like those who are 60 or older?

If so, then you have not yet heard what He’s really saying to us.

Do you know what one thing

creates a greater sense of slavery,

what one thing exerts more power over every significant decision we make in life

than anything else, everything else put together?

It is the unspoken assumption

that all we get is 80 years, if we’re lucky,

and every choice we make

must be made on the basis of what will give us the most,

get us the most in these 80 years.

Once we accept that assumption

it becomes the most powerful force in each of our lives,

driving us to make our choices each day

on the basis of what will make this life here and now the best it can be.

And that, folks, is the ultimate in slavery.

What it means is that life becomes a frantic, driven pursuit

of whatever we think will make us feel good, look good here and now,

no matter what the cost to ourselves or to others.

Many years ago I had a boss who showed up at work one day

wearing a shirt that said, “He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins”.

It was simply a rather brutal statement

of the natural approach to life

that always results from an 80 year approach to life.

At the time he must have thought he was on the fast track to winning

because he had lots and lots of toys.

Just a few years later

he must have decided

that he had accumulated enough toys so that he could declare himself the winner

because he put a gun to his head and ended his life.

Now obviously most people don’t buy into the here-and-now philosophy of life at that level,

but the truth is that the day we enter this world,

with our spirits separated from our God,

the force of a finite life exerts itself on us,

driving us to priorities and values that enslave us to a frantic attempt

to try to make sense of life within an 80 year window.

What it means is that

anything that doesn’t feel good right now

or make our life seem better in the short term is rejected.

The problem, of course,

is that making life decisions on that basis is a recipe for disaster.

We live in a profoundly broken world,

a world in which nearly everything our spirits long for the most

can only be ours through some measure of pain,

through swimming against the current.

What is easy will rarely take us to what is truly good.

The only way life begins to make any sense,

and certainly the only way we can find adequate motivation

for making some of the hardest and best choices in life

is if we can kick the end out of this 80 year prison in which we live

and discover that not only is life here and now not all that is,

but it is, in fact, only the tiny beginning of a life that never ends.

That’s what Jesus was doing for us when He stood before the tomb of Lazarus.

That’s what He was doing

when He stepped out of His own tomb just a few days later.

He was kicking the wall out of our finite prison

and freeing us to begin making choices that work for us not just now but literally forever.

Jesus was giving us the ability to see beyond the grave

and what we see there

is Him, still with us, beside us, our reason and our hope.

And I know there is a danger with what I’m trying to say here,

the danger of giving the message that our calling is to make a whole bunch of hard choices now

simply because it will pay off for us big time after we die.

And that’s not what I’m trying to say.

The truth is that,

the same choices that work for us in the next life

are the ones that work for us here and now.

Or, to put it a little differently,

the best life we can ever know here and now

will be found by making the choices that work for us after we leave this planet.

The Sunday before Sandee and I left on vacation the first week of October

just before the break I started mouthing off about my “retirement program”

and said that as it now exists

it consists of me, twenty years from now,

clutching this podium, hoping I can hold myself up long enough to give one more talk.

During the break a very good friend of mine came up

and rather skillfully forced me into honesty.

Basically he asked me if I really wished I would have made different “career” choices.

He knew the answer, of course,

but it helped me to have him force me to put it into words.

From an 80 year perspective

the choices I’ve made may not appear to be all that great,

but the truth is that I wouldn’t exchange the life I have now,

or the one I’ve lived for the past 60 years for anything in the world.

Certainly I’m not suggesting that being a Bible teacher is the path to happiness.

For most people it would be utter misery,

both for themselves and for the people they taught.

The place and the path our Lord has for each of us is absolutely unique,

but as we follow it

we will find not just what works in eternity,

but what brings deep fulfillment and purpose here on this side of the grave as well.

And since I’ve waded into this whole thing this far

let me make one more comment before we move on.

Having said that the pathway to life fulfillment and satisfaction

is found in following the leadership of our Lord,

that obviously brings up the question of how to find and follow His leadership.

I will offer you what is perhaps an oversimplified answer to that question,

but to be honest, I don’t think it’s as oversimplified as we may think.

God’s purposes for our lives,

His real, true purposes

always center not on projects or programs but on people.

The projects and programs are of value

and they are part of His plan for us

only if they are useful tools with which to help the people He’s placed into our care.

And when we think about the people He’s given us

we must always begin with the ones He’s placed closest to us.

God’s plan for changing our world is remarkable both for it’s simplicity and for it’s potential effectiveness.

He takes His people,

spreads them literally throughout the entire world,

and then entrusts each of us with a small cluster of individuals.

The truth is that most of us can only handle one or two or maybe three at a time and do it well.

God Himself could only handle 12,

and He’s the only one who has ever done all things well.

Then, what He asks from us

is that we allow Him to teach us one day at a time

what it means to love those He has entrusted into our care.

And if we’re doing it right

I can guarantee two things.

First, if we’re doing it right,

there will be times when it will involve pain,

or tremendous sacrifice of our own self-centered desires.

And second,

there will at times be someone whom God has entrusted into our care

that we are just certain has been miss-assigned.

It never ceases to amaze me

to see the lengths to which we will go sometimes

to try to negotiate a reassignment from our Lord.

More than once I have seen people

literally go to the mission field

to avoid dealing with a difficult relationship in their life.

But my point here is simply that,

if we want to find God’s pathway to fulfillment in our lives,

begin by looking at the people He has entrusted into our care,

and begin first with those closest to us,

and then ask Him what it means for us to truly love them.

Well, when Jesus stood before that tomb

and called Lazarus back to his life on this side of the grave

He didn’t do it for Lazarus, He did it for us.

In fact, He did Lazarus no favors.

Lazarus was far better off before he came out of that tomb than after.

But He did what He did

because He wanted to make a clear, absolute statement to the world

first of all that life is not 80 years, it is eternal,

and second, that He has absolute power over the grave,

both on this side of it and on the other.

And then, before we leave this account of Lazarus,

I want to make two more observations

about the fallout that took place as a result of this amazing miracle.

The first concerns the response of the religious leaders to this event.

Following Lazarus’ exit from the tomb

John goes on to say,

JOH 11:45 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.

Now that, at least, we would have expected.

I mean, a person would have to wonder how anyone could have seen this

without flinging themselves down before Jesus, crying out, “My Lord and my God!!”

And yet, that’s the nature of the human spirit.

There is no external influence in life

that has the power to drive the human spirit into submission to God.

It’s always, only by choice.

Certainly God uses external events

to communicate Himself to us

and to confront us with our need for submission to Him,

but if our hearts are not open to Him,

no amount of external evidence

can ever bring about a person’s heart submission to God.

In the end

we will always find a way around it.

Or, if we cannot rationalize it,

we will simply blind ourselves to the obvious.

And I could offer no better example of what I mean

than the words we read next in John’s account.

There were those who saw and responded to the Lord because of it.

But then there were others...

JOH 11:46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done.

They were there as spies, of course.

They’d been given the assignment of reporting what they saw,

and what they saw scared them to death.

And not just them,

but the ones they reported to.

And John says,

JOH 11:47-48 Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."

Isn’t that remarkable?

Here they are, having just learned that this Man,

this Jesus brought back to life

a man who had been dead four days.

And their response to this news is fear.

“If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

This man simply cannot be allowed to interfere with our lives.

We have far too much invested.

On the surface it seems ridiculous to us,

but the same response is all too common today.

When Jesus Christ starts messing about in our lives,

we know instinctively

that, if we let Him in, He will disrupt our lives profoundly.

And countless young people and men and women throughout history

have done the same thing those Pharisees did -

rather than allowing Him to disrupt their lives,

they cut Him out of it.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the evidence.

It has everything to do with them simply not being willing to risk the consequences of His presence in their lives.

And then, the last thing I want to point out before we leave this chapter

is something we’ve touched on repeatedly during the past few months,

something that is woven throughout God’s communication of Himself to us.

It’s found in the words that come next.

JOH 11:49-50 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish."

Now look at this!

This man, this Caiaphas

is the man who was most willing to risk anything to bring about Jesus’ death.

He was the driving force behind most of the events

that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.

And He was driven to his actions by utterly evil motives -

hatred, fear, jealousy, anger, pride,

and of course extreme abuse of power.

He is the living example of the worst we could ever see in human authority.

And his words right here

were, from his own perspective,

an open commitment to his colleagues

that he would make certain that this Jesus was killed.

And yet, listen to what John says about these words.

JOH 11:51-52 Now he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

Do you see what’s happening here?

This is a man whose words are driven by rage and bitterness and hatred,

speaking what he believes is the ultimate threat against Jesus.

And yet, because he holds the position of High Priest,

because he holds this critical position of authority,

God works through the man who holds that position

to accomplish His exact purpose,

even down to the clear, remarkable proclamation

of the most glorious prophetic description of the work of Christ that we could ever have.

PRO 21:1 The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.

When God calls us to submission to human authorities,

He does so knowing that frequently those who hold those positions

will exercise that authority from deeply corrupted motivations.

And yet He wants us to know

that their corruption can never prevent Him

from accomplishing His purposes in our lives through those authorities.

And with that I believe we will end our study both of this amazing event

and of this remarkable account of the life of our Lord.