Jesus is calling us
out of our Tombs!
1. Good Morning. Let’s Pray – O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: Let me begin on a really happy note – “What’s the absolutely worst possible news you could receive today?” What news are you dreading to receive one of these days?
For Randi
and me it could be “Your son Lt. Adam Dalgleish has been killed or severely
injured in an insurgency attack on the military base.”
I know that in asking
this question most of us have immediately thought of something.
Well I was taking
a physical this last week and the nurse
who was checking my vital statistics i.e., height, weight, blood work etc., had
just had a rather nasty client in before me and was “smarting” from their
terrible encounter. I decided that I was going to be super nice – not to
mention the fact that she was about to jab a needle into my arm and I certainly
didn’t want to engender any residual disdain from this nurse in the form of
painful repeated jabs to find a good blood vessel – you get my drift?
Well as we spoke the
normal barriers of professionalism began to come down and soon it was as if we
were old friends catching up with each other after a prolonged absence.
And then she dropped the bomb shell – I can’t remember how we came to it but one minute we were swapping
photographs of our grandchildren and then the next minute she casually informed
me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer a year or so ago and it had gone into remission
after the usual battery of “chemo” and radiation treatments but just last week
the doctor had told her after a routine pap smear test that she had contracted
“uterine” cancer.
She was a self-proclaimed
“fighter” but she was still wondering why God would do this to her. She was
asking this of me – a man of the cloth (I was wearing my collar). She informed
me that she had religiously exercised 4 to 5 times a week for the last 20 plus
years and had always meticulously watched her diet but here she was facing
another bout with cancer and the prognosis of this one wasn’t looking “real
good.”
Now what do you – a man,
say to some like this facing what she was clearly facing?
“No worries – all will be
well.” That would go down like a lead balloon I’m sure.
This woman had just been
given what probably amounted to a “death warrant.” Now it seems to me that someone on “death row” who is facing death by “lethal injection” has it
better than this precious woman. But here she was looking great – well
tailored, well groomed and smiling even after a terrible encounter with as she
put it a “client with problems.”
What would Jesus Christ want to say to her? What does Jesus Christ want to say to her? What does Jesus Christ want you or me to say to her so that her trial will be redemptive rather than death-dealing?
Now let’s be up-front and very personal!
How would you respond to this sort of news? Let’s say that in the next few months you’re
informed that: “The tests didn’t
come back as well as we expected. In fact, you have cancer and It’s at level 4 and it’s clearly very aggressive. We need to
begin a very very aggressive regime of “chemo” and
“radiation” therapies?”
How would you respond to this news?
Would your response be
that much more different from a person who didn’t believe in any form of
personal god!
Does your conviction that
there really is a God who loves you and me and involves Himself in our daily
lives – does this conviction make any difference in the way you face life and
death situations?
You see, the bigger issue that God wants us to reflect upon this morning is this: Does being a Christian make any difference in the way you and I live out our lifes or not?
I’m
convinced that God wants to talk to all of us this morning about that – He
wants to empower us to Holy Living and Holy Dying.
Tell Pastor story: Pastor Ken Hutchinson
A well known football
player of the 1980’s by the name of “Hutch” – Ken Hutchinson, left his football
career and became a pastor and launched a Church in
Some of you will remember
Al. He came to talk to us about being good stewards of our financial resources.
Well Al told me that a few years ago Pastor Hutch received some bad news – He had cancer.
So how do you think he handled this? The next Sunday he stood before his large and enthusiastic congregation and told them that he had cancer and that they were going to discover very quickly just how much he really believed In what he’d been preaching about for the last decade.
Was his faith in Jesus Christ going to make any real difference in the way he faced his
mortality – suffering? And here he was inviting his entire congregation to
watch him walk through this.
The good news is that
he’s still alive and he faced this trial with faith and courage that came to
him from God Himself!
God sovereignly
drew very close to Pastor Hutch and enabled him to live courageously and
graciously through the ensuing terrible trial. My bet is that when it comes
time for Pastor Hutch to die he will do it very well – what do you think?
Do you think that this man was scared? Of course he was, but what over-ruled that – what
over ruled all other considerations?
What was it about his
Christian faith that enabled him to live so faithfully and courageously?
3. Next Level: Now let’s
take this to the next level shall we?
What are we really talking about here?
Aren’t we talking about
life in general and how all too often we go through it with a low-level sense
of God’s Presence and a high, but well hidden, sense of impending disaster? In
other words, most of us live out our lives as spiritual paupers completely
unaware of the spiritual treasure sitting there before us waiting for us to
reach out and take it.
How many of us dread
hearing the statement, “I’m sorry, you have cancer?” We fear our ultimate demise and spend our entire
lives running from it don’t we – don’t we?
Well our Lord wants to change this!
He wants to give us – all of us, a new way of living our lives that will free us from the fear of our many forms of death and give us a guarantee of everlasting life.
4. Focus on Scripture: And for our answer we’re going to turn to the Gospel of John chapter 11 verses 1 through 45:
Please open your Bibles and follow along – John 11:1-45:
In this reading a messenger came to tell Jesus that His good friend Lazarus was sink and near to death, but Jesus knew that God was in this and therefore if He followed His Father’s leading knowing that in the end it would bring glory to God.
The challenge for Jesus was to wait and trust God! So Jesus stayed where He was for another two days. Now think about that – what would you do? Go immediately, but had Jesus done that He would have short-circuited His Father’s plans – so He waited and waited!
His disciples weren’t terribly
excited to go to any place close to
Jesus told them that He knew that Lazarus was dead but that He was going to him to bring him back to life.
Now let’s think about that – Jesus knows that He has the power of life and death and that He can actually bring someone who is dead back to life.
Do you think that Jesus loves you like Lazarus?
Do you think that He could or even would bring you back to life if He wanted to? Yes?? No?? – your answer will actually tell me more about you than it will about Jesus. I know Him and I know that He could bring me back to life were I to die right here right now!
But if you don’t think that He would do that for you – could you be telling me more about how you feel unworthy of His love perhaps.
If you or someone you loved deeply were sick unto death – could you imagine yourself praying for Jesus’ intervention? Equally importantly, could you imagine yourself actually believing that Jesus could hear you and may just be willing to hear your prayer and respond to it?
This is precisely what Jesus is seeking to stir up in us – belief in Him and His love for us.
Belief that He is the “Everything ” in our lives – His love for us and our faith in Him are “the” pivotal elements that make all of the difference in the world for us!
He’s our “ace in the hole!” He’s our guarantee that at the end of it all some cosmic storyteller will be able to write with absolute certainly the end of our story with these words, “And they lived happily ever after. Amen!”
My fate, my peace is in no other hands than His. Knowing this – really believing this – bring me an infinite inner rest.
Ah!
That’s it Randi – that’s what I want on my grave
stone! “Yes, Robert lives on happily for ever and ever after. Amen!”
OK
now let’s move on: Jesus travels to
She gives Him the bad news that Lazarus, His good friend and her brother, had died 4 days ago!
And then she quietly hinted that Jesus should have come earlier. Had He come earlier Lazarus may still be alive. This was a direct shot at Jesus true intentions. The clear inference was “Jesus you can’t have really loved Lazarus. If you had you would have been here by now.” Your friendship isn’t worth much!
Wow! That’s a hard shot to take
isn’t it? But Jesus knew the end of this
story – just as He knows the end of
your story and mine and it’s His to tell and nobody else’s. Satan can’t rob
Jesus of His friends!
Are you a friend of Jesus? I am – thank
God!
Jesus tells Martha that her brother will live again but Martha misunderstood Him thinking that Jesus was talking about his resurrection at the end of all time. But, in fact, Jesus was telling her if she would only listen that He was about to bring her dead brother back to life.
In
this interchange between Jesus and Martha he made this statement:
John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who
believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and
believes in me will never die. Do you
believe this?”
Do “YOU AND I”
believe this?
This really is
the question isn’t it. He was going to raise Lazarus to life whether she believed
it or not but He wanted to stir up faith in Martha just as He wants to stir up
faith in you and me this morning to believe in Him that He can do whatever He
wants to do in our lives! Do you believe this?”
In this majestic promise He’s telling us that our ultimate
futures are in His sovereign hands – He can even bring us back to life –
there’s nothing big enough to stop His reaching out to us in love – not even
death!
How much can Jesus love? Infinitely.
OK – how much does Jesus love me? A lot. How about
you? Yes, a lot!
Do you think that Jesus is capable of not expressing His
love for me in whatever way He chooses? No. He is there for you and me – always!
Now, let’s return to our story.
Mary comes into the picture now and she, like Martha, gives
expression to her disappointment in Jesus.
Oh! How many of us have been living with our disappointment
in Jesus?
This disappointment has robed us of our joy and of ever
asking Jesus for anything again!
Could Jesus simply be waiting for our faith before He
responds?
You see this whole event occurred so that Jesus could teach
Martha and Mary and those around them and now us – that He’s in charge and His
timing is perfect! He wants to stir up our faith in Him!
Can you hear Him whispering to you right now “Do you believe this?” Oh Robert – Oh
Hannah – Oh Cynthia – please believe this – it will bring you such peace and
such relief!”
“Do you believe
this?”
Now back to our
reading. I really love verse 35 – the shortest verse in all of Scripture –
“Jesus wept.”
And the response v
36: Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
Listen now to the
skepticism of the world – verse 37:John 11:37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes
of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
But now turn with me to the verses that tell us about His
bringing Lazarus back to life: Verse 38:
John 11:38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a
cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he
said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there
is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” 40 Then Jesus said, “Did
I not tell you that if you believed, you
would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. Then
Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, - Oh how much
Jesus wants to give you and me that certainty that knows that He hears us!
Reading on, 42 I knew that you always hear me,
but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may
believe that you sent me.” Ah! Jesus is always seeking to stir up our faith! Reading
on verse 43 When he had said
this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man
came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around
his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” 45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.
Now I want to go back
to verse 40:
“if you believed, you
would see the glory of God?”
Ah! Belief allows us to see the glory of God!
This is what our Lord wants to say to us but even more than that He
wants us to actually do it so that we won’t endlessly be talking about His
glory but will actually experiencing it.
What is He saying to us this morning – Believe in Me – trust Me – all power is with
Let us Pray . . .