Let's turn to the Scriptures now for our study. John chapter 11, John chapter 11, as we have finished now our time in chapter 10, and we begin to move on towards chapter 11. As you're turning there, allow me to make a couple of notes concerning just the literature that we are looking at. Less devotion, but certainly important for us to understand the impact and the flow of Christ ministry. Chapter 11 marks a literary divide in the gospel of John. Jesus is transitioning from a public ministry where he has been using the festivals of Israel, the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Boos as it were, the Feast of Dedication, to proclaim his himself and his ministry. I am the bread of life, I am the living water and so on. It was in these environments very publicly that Jesus was proclaiming the gospel and the kingdom which has come. Now he is moving to what we would call in comparison of more of a private ministry. That is, he's not using the public forums in Jerusalem to proclaim the gospel, not that his ministry has done in secret, but it is done in the context of relationships with those whom he knows. Word does indeed spread, but he is not proclaiming in the courts of the temple, his ministry. Whereas his ministry began in public with John the Baptist testimony, you might recall last week, it ends in chapter 10 at the same place where we are told John the Baptist bore testimony. So the Baptist, the Baptist testimony prepares for us as it were almost bookends to a period of ministry for Christ. Chapter 11 to give you a preview will, in essence, give us two most significant events in chapter 11 by the time we are finished. First of all, the Sanhedrin here, finally and formally resolve to end the life of Christ. And secondly, here in chapter 11 we have perhaps the highest manifestation of Jesus as Lord over life and death. I am the bread of life. I am the living water and I am the resurrection and the life. Here Jesus shows perhaps the greatest of all signs of concerning his Messiah's ship. Lazarus was well known because he's mentioned in other places in the gospels, and here at this very place where he raises Lazarus from the tomb, he finds himself once again at the very gates of Jerusalem. A couple of other notes that I find to be very interesting. First of all, the name Lazarus is from a Latin form of the Hebrew Lazar which is an abbreviation of Eleazar which means he whom God helps. What a fitting name for Lazarus in this story. It takes place in Bethany which is just east of Jerusalem only about a mile and a half or two miles from Jerusalem over the Mount of Olives. And today in the news, if you hear the name of this city, El Azeria, you are hearing the name of the same place that we will be studying Jesus' ministry in the raising of Lazarus. In fact, the name El Azeria is named in honor of Lazarus. Let's take a look then together. It's just the very beginning. I'd like to read four verses and John chapter 11, listen for it as God who speaks to us. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him saying, Lord whom you love, he whom you love is ill, but when Jesus heard it, he said, this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified through it. Lord bless the reading of his word, to his glory for the education of his people. Chapter 10, we've already mentioned, ended with an attempt to arrest Jesus, closing out that time of ministry. Jesus doesn't flee but he moves across the Jordan. He moves away from Jerusalem. Now the pleas of Mary or the news which Mary brings to Jesus will summon him back south from pariah back towards Judea. As he moves back south there's a certain irony and Jesus going back to help a friend to raise to life Lazarus because it is in this moving back south again that his own fate will be sealed because it seals the commitment of the Sanhedrin to end his life. Word comes to Jesus while he's in pariah, a plea, a cry for help from those who believed in and followed him. Jesus, the one whom you love is sick. There is an urgency in Mary's plea, there is an urgency in it being sent and in fact because we know Lazarus is so near death it's not hard for us to surmise that there was a delay in them sending word perhaps they were sensitive not only to Jesus' ministry perhaps they were humble and they did not seek to call out to the Lord for every infirmity and every issue in life perhaps they were also concerned because they knew the hostility that existed in Jerusalem and their house as it were is so close to Jerusalem could they dare to call the Lord back for their own personal issue when he's announcing the kingdom of God to all people could they call him back and yet here as Lazarus is apparently at the threshold of death at the very last they urgently send word to Jesus Lord the one whom you love is near death they appeal to Jesus because they are in a crisis and there is nowhere else to turn but they don't presume to tell Jesus what to do do they did you notice in the appeal that she's not saying Lord you must hasten to return because the one whom you love is sick nor do they say to him Lord time is short if it fits for you would you return and heal the one they don't even say to Jesus Lord we know that you can heal from a great distance that just at your word he would be healed Lord say the word and Lazarus will be saved they don't do any of those things they simply come to the Lord and say the Lord Lord the one whom you love is sick unto death Lord the one whom you love is sick unto death they seem to know something about the love of Christ they seem to know something about the nature of his love that all they do is appeal to that love the disciples here is reply however well this sickness is not unto death Jesus said but for the glory of God in order that the Son of God may be glorified thereby and the apostles would naturally someize or infer from this that Lazarus wouldn't die Jesus said this sickness is not unto death and so the disciples would then watch as Jesus did not move to go down to Lazarus they heard what he said this sickness is not unto death what conclusion would you have drawn the same you would have said well Lazarus must not be going to die because we know that the Lord is very affectionate towards his family Bethany I should have also noted was a place of retreat retreat for Christ it was a place where he retired to and so he spent a great deal of time there in Bethany the same place which is probably where these relationships were built and as they were appealing to him they were calling upon those relationships that he had spent there in his time of spiritual rest spiritual retreat so the disciples would have heard him say he's not going to die and just like we would have done they would have generally accepted and this will be for the glory of God this will be for the glory of God the weight of what Jesus is saying is not on he shall not die but this works for the glory of God and yet where would you have placed the weight the same place because in our humanity we would have placed our hope we would have more emphasis on will there be death or will there not be death then we would have placed on will this work to the glory of God but as we look at all of the scriptures and I will survey only a little we'll see that it is exactly here that this works for the glory of God that we can understand the love of Christ that she's appealing to how we understand the love of Christ will direct how we pray to Christ how much more full our Christ words very often than we understand or that they appear to be to us when he says this will not end in his death and this works to the glory of God the disciples couldn't have understood all the weight of what Jesus was saying likewise when Jesus says to us take up your cross and follow me how many of us presume that means tolerating the person in the cubicle next to us or dealing with these high gas prices or maybe the long pastoral prayer or maybe dealing with a flu or dealing with children they're a little rebellious these are the cross that we have to bear or maybe not missing this Sunday because I don't feel particularly good what a cross we have to bear do we forget that there are so many thousands who have been martyred for the faith showing what it means when Jesus says take up your cross and follow me to remain faithful to the very end to remain focused only on the honor and the glory of God and our service to him whether in worship or whether in action in life which is also a worship of God ironically when the messenger heard Jesus's words Lazarus was in all likelihood already dead he was in all likelihood already passed like when Jesus slept in the boat during the storm and the disciples were all around worried and concerned ringing their hands and despair Jesus just like them is always sure Mary and Martha have a problem Lazarus their brother whom they love who Jesus loves is dying perhaps they delayed thinking that maybe this would be cured maybe Jesus would come on his own but they summon him in the end to bring him back to a place where the Jews were looking for him we have also experienced crisis haven't we who who here has not experienced a crisis with someone that they love which one of us if we have more than 10 or 15 years of life behind us has not been in the hospital in the waiting room or at the bedside of a father or a mother or brother sister perhaps a child some of us have seen more I know in this room than we could even profess to a grandparent perhaps and in a time of crisis even we have to understand that even those that God loves can be sick and can suffer when a life is hanging in the balance and the doctors have done all that they can do and they leave the room and we're waiting we're waiting and we also pray I have watched family circle up for prayer what I call the prayer of last resort unfortunately they wait until the very end and when all of the doctors are finished and when everything else has been done they gather for the prayer of last resort as the pastor comes to visit and there they genuinely pour out their hearts before God there at the end they genuinely pour out their hearts before God would that they have done that so much sooner perhaps it would not have preserved or length in the life of the one they love but what peace might they have experienced through the suffering and through the trial and through the difficult season I've heard people say why why does God allow the one I love to suffer because this person has loved God and I know that God loves this person I don't understand how God can love and allow the suffering what do we know of love and the love of God though because it is true God will not act inconsistent with his nature but if we say because God loves he shouldn't allow this to happen then perhaps the fault lies not with God's inconsistency of action with his own character but in our lack of understanding of the true nature of the love of God if we can't understand how a God loves and people suffer sometimes even unto death then perhaps the problem lies not with God's inconsistency but with ours the script's rep pattern of our calling out to God is not a prayer of last resort at Psalm 461 God is our very present help in trouble a very present help in trouble all times even today in Ezekiel 1525 when the people were beginning to murmur against Moses he didn't first call a meeting and decide on a course of action and ask God's blessings on it he first went and cried out to the Lord the people were murmuring against him and so he cried out to the Lord wouldn't it all leaders when the people murmur against them and Korah's rebellion has begun call out to the Lord Matthew 1412 when John the Baptist was beheaded and the disciples gathered there and they buried his body what did they do they went and told Jesus they went to Christ our Lord the scriptures tell us as well acquainted with grief and well acquainted with suffering and he invites us he invites us to pour out our desperation before him their intercessory prayer which is what Mary and Martha are offering isn't it they're appealing to Christ on behalf of one they love their intercessory prayer and the way they render it demonstrates and it shows their surrender and their trust their plea was based on the love of Christ not their own it wasn't conditioned upon Jesus was obligated because they loved him it was based upon his love and his alone to say that God is love does not mean that God is the same thing as love or love sums up totally all that God is if we were to do that if we were to say that love exhaustively describes God then we make love and God equivalent don't we and that would then deify love and make it some absolute concept to which God himself would be subject and by which he could be judged and that's what we hear isn't it when people say if God loved then he wouldn't we are rendering judgment against God saying he's inconsistent with the pattern and the character of love love cannot define God but God can define love so rather than taking a concept of love and pressing it as a definition of God we take God and we define love from him as a child I learned the song Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so but nowhere does it tell me what love is love cannot define God but God can define love and when we love like God then we love in a in God likeness which is what we're commanded to do in Ephesians 5 1 and 2 therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God when we read that Jesus loved Lazarus we need to understand the nature of that love older theologians were very careful to parse out the qualitative differences in the characteristics and attributes of God in the biblical expressions of God's love in particular for example they describe a love within the Trinity a love within the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that's different than his love for the angels that's different than his love for his creation in general that is different for his love for all men as they are created in his image which is different than his love for his elect but we have blurred these distinctions and we blurred these attributes of God and we have trouble understanding how he can love all men created in his image but then love uniquely those who were called in Christ and we struggle to understand the distinctions in his love because for us love seems to be one seamless fabric which we're able to apply to so many perhaps if we are able to understand and see the love of God better than the love of a husband and a wife can be improved by our understanding the true expression in nature of love how is it that we have lost these distinctions that the generations before were so careful to set out before us Martin Luther said music is the handmaiden of theology here's where we can see the real impact of the melodic melodic that sounds close it's not close the music people are telling me the the very sweet sounding yet theologically anemic lyrics of our modern music if you want to take a hymn book we're not going to survey at that would be a Sunday night work we might plan to do in the fall and you were to begin flipping through the pages and comparing hymns which talk about I and me and those which proclaim God perhaps there you might see the beginning of where we have begun to have error or perhaps the contemporary tune which I used to sing with my children as I would drive them to school each morning and I was making them memorize it I love you Lord and I lift my voice to worship you oh my soul rejoice it's a very nice tune and I love the song but what is love it never defines it and never quantifies it it never tells me what love is it presumes that I would know what love is but it never teaches me what love is and so love becomes an abstract principle that I just proclaim but it's empty of meaning it's empty of it's empty of any concrete expression how do I love God how does God love me and how does he show his love we understand that God has a number of other attributes his wrath his omnipotence his eternality but if love becomes the one overarching concept of what God is then his wrath is defined as his ability to protect or bring justice on behalf of the people he loves his omnipotence means he has the power to do loving acts on my behalf his eternality means that God is able to exist eternally to love me forever modern theology seems to be determined to make love the one head of all theology and then organize everything else underneath it gearedhouse boss a theologian not too far removed from us said the result of this type of understanding will be that while there's no positive error taught what he means by this is that and proclaiming that God is love and that God has expressed his love through the cross and that God loves his people there's nothing being taught that is wrong but yet the equilibrium both in consciousness and life is disturbed in a condition created in which the power of resistance to the inroads of spiritual disease is greatly reduced he simply is saying by our neglect of all of God focusing only on that which we receive the greatest benefit from or edification from based on our own understanding of love by our neglect of the complete picture of God as he presents himself in the scriptures where you're opening ourself up to spiritual disease that is error teaching error presumption wrong imaginations concerning God and confusion and just what God is doing in our lives the one sidedness boss continues and the exclusiveness with which the love of God has been preached to the present generation is largely responsible for that universal weakening of the sense of sin
you understand what he is saying here our misunderstanding or misapprehension let's put it that way of the love of God has reduced it has reduced our resistance to sin because God loves so much that he's turned permissive towards us as we understand love it's usually reciprocal isn't it it's an emotion that is reciprocal that is the one who is loved has some quality that the one who is loving sees or admires and then attaches love to that quality because the person who is loved is loveable but we know that in the scriptures man being dead and sin and unable to keep from sinning against God we know that there is nothing really to love appeals to living a good life so we shouldn't suffer because God loves us it's simply an attempt to say that there's something to love when in fact there is nothing it's an attempt to put something on the bargaining table with God to say because we have lived such a way or said that we loved you or sung that we loved you you therefore obligated because you are a God who loves to grant us some sort of need love interestingly enough is not even mentioned in the Bible until Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch first five books of the Bible love is not a concept introduced by word until Deuteronomy immediately after the fall however God sought out man why to commune with him an action of care and concern based on God's character and expression of love the promise of a redeemer right after the fall came not as a reward because of man's regret or man's confession of his sin or man's request based on anything he's done but on God's nature it was an act of love and God's election of Israel the scriptures deny had anything to do with him being a great nation or so numerous or so powerful or influential he knew them to be a rebellious and stiff-necked people God's motive for love towards Israel had only to do with him and his character and his purpose throughout the scriptures God continually remembers his covenant and the nation is never utterly destroyed in every age the people of God as they are so called through the scriptures have faithfully or rather failed the opposite of faithfully failed to live up to their name of the people of God Jeremiah 11 7 and 8 declares that Moses's generation were disobedient from the beginning Isaiah 48 8 calls Israel a transgressor from the womb all the prophets can find absolutely no reason for God to show any favor to Israel except on account of his sovereign love well Vedic is 26 44 to 45 helps us now to begin to have a definition yet for all of that meaning all of that waywardness all of that rebellion all of that straying and stiff neckness yet for all of that when they are in the land of their enemies I will not spurn them I will neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them for I am the Lord their God but I will for their for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations that I might be their God I am the Lord God's love of his people is based on his own faithfulness never on ours it's based on his unconditional covenant of redemption not on anything we offer to him and not anything we can bring there is one exception however in the prophets that helps us because its language seems to reflect and mirror what we read in these first verses of John chapter 11 the lone exception is Ezekiel who gives another explanation for God's saving love Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 22 through 25 therefore say to the house of Israel thus says the Lord God it is not for your sake oh house of Israel that I am about to act but for the sake of my holy name which you have profane among the nations to which you came and I will vindicate the holiness of my great name which has been profane among the nations and which you have profane among them and the nations will know that I am the Lord declares the Lord God who in through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land I will sprinkle clean water on you and you you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness and from all your idols I will cleanse you God is going to take a people who do not deserve a people who are rebellious and he will vindicate them why for his own name to vindicate his own holiness not on account of them but on account of him so when we are in crisis what we are learning is that our appeal to God is not because we deserve it because we've been faithful for so many years not because we deserve it because of all of our wonderful devotional thoughts about God or because of our service and track record or because we were elected decan elder or served as pastor an appeal to God is not because we have loved him but because he has loved us we would then have to ask if it was because we've loved him have we loved him enough have we loved him purely has our love been holy has our love been so perfect as to obligate God to serve us in some way we do love God we do but our help comes from his love of us our love is conflicted we pray to God when we have great need we pray to God when our lives are in trouble or in turmoil God's love however is perfect it's not arbitrary and it's always for our good and for his name when we submit to his love we're also submitting to his will aren't we and that is how we pray as Mary sent word Lord the one you love is ill so we also would pray Lord those whom you love suffer and then we would pray if we wanted to be specific if it be according to your will Lord we would ask that you would heal those who struggle heal those who are weak not for their own comfort Lord but for your name say that we would proclaim your glory and your majesty and your compassionate care for your people in the congregation when someone you love is sick does your prayer sound like the plea of Mary Lord the one you love is sick can you submit all matters and trust to Christ's love for you and Philippians four six we read the anxious for nothing but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus we do have some hymns that have helped us haven't we don't we rather and can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood died he for me who caused his pain for me for him who him to death pursued amazing love how can it be that thou my Lord should die for me I'll perhaps you remember the wonderful hymn penned when a man was in the anguish of his soul having lost a daughter in children when peace like a river attended my way when sorrows like sea below's roll whatever my lot that has taught me to say it as well it as well with my soul though Satan should buff it though trials should come let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my hopeless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul the prayer of salvation which is uttered from a heart that believes the gospel the truth about Christ that prayer is heard and answered one last great hymn which echoes the scriptures and helps us orient ourselves to prayer amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me how bad is too bad to pray nothing is beyond the reach of Christ nothing call out to the Lord the scriptures tell us call out to the Lord while he is near and while there is still time