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February 7/8, 2015
The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus Aaron Brockett | John 11:1-44
You know some things just never prepare you for real life. How many of you would agree that experience is the best teacher. You can read something, you can hear something, but sometimes it doesn’t really get into your soul until you actually experience it. I went to Bible College to prepare for ministry. I took a bunch of different courses. I took a class on how to preach. I took a class on how to read and interpret Scripture. I took of class called The Life of Christ, which basically took all four gospels and harmonized them together. And we studied the life of Jesus. I took a class second semester of my sophomore year called Practical Ministry. It was a class that taught you how to do hospital visitation. It taught you how to do pastoral counseling. It taught you how to officiate at a wedding, not referee but preach at a wedding. It taught you how to preach a funeral—all those things. It even taught you how to baptize. There was a group of us, I remember, when we got to that part of the course that we all got in a bus and we drove over to the church and we used the church’s baptistery to take turns baptizing each other so that way we would learn to do it properly. You would think that wouldn’t be such a big deal but it turned out that it was. I remember in the class there was one guy who really got confused as to what you should say in a wedding and what you should say in the baptistery. He ended up mixing the two. So he ended up saying, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God?” The guy said, “Yes.” And he said, “Great. I now pronounce you baptized.” It is like, “Dude you totally messed that up. You brought those two things together.” And so I thought after taking the Practical Ministry class I would be ready. I got an A in it. I thought, “Okay, now I am going to go out into the real world,” but oh man during my first five years of ministry I was exposed to some things I didn’t know how to deal with. I didn’t know how to deal with them. I didn’t know how to respond to them. I didn’t know how to deal with the criticism that would come my way. I remember in my very first ministry I was 23 years old. A church hired me to be the Senior Pastor. It was a church of about 180. This lady came up to me right after I got done preaching a sermon. She was in tears. I thought, “Wow, I really did a good job,” but she came up and she said, “I can’t believe you are my pastor.” I was like, “Is that a good thing?” She said, “No, that is not a good thing. You are so young. What in the world could you teach me?” She is like, “I’ve got deodorant older that you.” I was like, “Oh, thank you?” I am going back to my Practical Ministry notebook to try to figure it out. I remember when I had my first Elders meeting and all the things that were coming my way. There were a lot of things that were funny.
Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 I remember there was a family in our church and they had a baby. The baby was born with a birth defect and the doctor said the baby would probably not live past six to eight weeks. We had them over to our house and we got a chance to hold the baby, and pray with them, and minister to them. I’ll never forget getting a phone call really early on a Saturday morning. They said, “Pastor, we really need you to get over here. The baby passed away in the middle of the night.” I woke my wife up and I told her. She prayed with me on the way out the door. I got into my car and I am driving down the street (they lived in our neighborhood) and as I was praying I was like, “God I am not ready for this. I don’t remember studying this in Practical Ministry. What do I do and what do I say?” I remember walking into their living room on that Saturday morning and the mom was holding her lifeless baby. She looked up at me through tears and she said, “Pastor, will he grow up in heaven?” What do you do? How do you get ready for that moment? As we come to John 11, here is what I want you to see. Jesus is coming face to face with real life. Last week, if you were here, we looked at John 10 and we heard the voice of the Shepherd. What we are going to see from chapter 11 is the heart of the Shepherd. You see John 11 is sort of the pinnacle of our study in this gospel for a couple of different reasons. Number one, what we are going to read in this passage is the last of seven signs that John records that Jesus did. Now John never calls Jesus’ miracles “miracles”. He calls them signs because miracles were not magic tricks. Jesus was not trying to dazzle us. This was not sleight of hand. He was not even trying to impress us. In fact much of the time when Jesus would perform a miracle He would say, “Hey don’t talk about it. Let’s kind of keep this under wraps.” The reason why was, Jesus didn’t want you misinterpreting it. He didn’t want you to misunderstand what He was doing. It is a sign. A sign is fundamentally different. A sign shows you what you are looking at. In fact when Jesus does a miracle there is always something behind it, it was pointing to something as a sign. That is what we see here in the last of seven signs that John records in the gospel. Chapter 11 is a pivot point in John’s gospel because this is the point of no return for Jesus. Right after this John is going to dive in and spend most of his time in the final week of Jesus’ life. What Jesus does in this passage is He sort of writes His own death sentence. So here in this passage we see a perfect picture of Jesus’ divinity and His humanity. Here is what I want you to see. We get a chance to see God’s heart as it relates to our sickness, and hurt, and to death. So Jesus tells us, “Here is what I’ve come to do about it. Here is what I am doing about it. And here is what I will one day do about it.” So if you have a Bible, go ahead and follow along with me in chapter 11 starting in verse 1. If you don’t have a Bible, that is okay. The text will be on the screen up here. But I want to read the majority of this passage. I am going to try to explain some of it as we read. And then when I am done reading the passage I just want to point out four things I see in this text that we can apply to our lives. Starting in John 11:1, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.” What I want you to know here is Lazarus was a close friend of Jesus. Jesus didn’t just have disciples, but He had friends and Lazarus was one of them. Lazarus was a friend whom He loved. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Now we don’t really know a lot about him. This probably fits into the category of what John said a little while back when he said, “There are many things that are written in this gospel that are not recorded here.” This quite possibly could fit into this category. He didn’t tell us about Lazarus’ and Jesus’ friendship, but this is a guy that Jesus knows pretty well and he has two sisters, Mary and Martha. They are from the town of Bethany, which is a small village just outside of Jerusalem. Verse 2, “It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair,” we’ll read about her next week in chapter 12, “whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to Him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom You love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it He said, ‘this illness does not lead to death.’” of which I wrote to myself in my notes, “Jesus, yes it does.” So what does He mean by that? That is the whole point, He is going to raise Lazarus from the dead and yet He says, “This illness does not lead to death.” He is talking about spiritual death and not a physical one. So understand the difference here, “’…it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’” Now I want to stop right there. After last week I feel like sometime in the future I want to do a whole series on the Glory of God because the concept of God’s glory is confusing to us. It is something we haven’t grappled with a lot. I think some of it has to do with the fact of our own fallen understanding of glory. Here is what I want you to know about glory. Every single person in this room, including me, is seeking our own glory. Every time we post a picture on Instagram we are seeking our own glory, including me. Every time we try to manage our image to others, we are seeking our own glory. Our glory oftentimes manifests itself in a competitive spirit, “I am going to make others look bad so I look a little bit better. I am going to beat you so I win.” That is the way we seek glory. The way God gets glory is that other people get raised. The way God gets glory is that other people come to life and that is what we are going to see in this passage. Verse 5, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was.” What? Did you hear that? Once again, verse 6—He loved them so when He heard he was sick He stayed where He was. Does that sound like love to you? Love would be like, “I’ll be right there.” Love would say, “Let me see what I can do.” But Jesus stays where He was. I am reading out of the ESV which is quite possible the most literal English translation that we have. But even this doesn’t really fully capture it. You know in the original language verse 6 says when Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick He stayed where He was until Lazarus was dead. That is what it literally says and translators just don’t have the stomach for it. That just seems harsh. Jesus clearly has something in mind here that He is up to. Here is the thing. Already in this gospel, Jesus has healed a royal official’s son from a distance. What makes us think He can’t do that for Lazarus? But He doesn’t. He stayed where He was until Lazarus had died. There is a point to this. Verse 7, “Then after this He said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’” The disciples are going to try to talk Him out of it in the next few verses because of Bethany’s proximity to Jerusalem. They are afraid that if Jesus gets anywhere close to Jerusalem they are going to string Him up. Eventually they would. So they are trying to keep Him back and Jesus mentions, “Lazarus is asleep.” The disciples misunderstand and they think he is just taking a nap. No He is dead. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Look with me at verse 13, “Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus has died,’” Jesus I thought you said it wasn’t going to result in death. Well once again He is not talking about physical, He is talking about spiritual. Lazarus would physically die but not spiritually. Verse 15, “’And for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.’” And if you remember, all through this series those are words John keeps coming back to, he usually saves for the end of a paragraph. He says, “And many believed it,” or, “Many came to believe.” That is the whole point of John’s gospel. Jesus basically says, “I stayed back. I wasn’t there because I want you to come to believe something that if I was there and healed him from his sickness you wouldn’t have caught.” So go on in verse 17, “Now when Jesus came, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met Him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.’” How many of you are with Martha? “Yeah, give it to Him Martha like Jesus deserves that.” If you remember Martha was the one who was all busy in the kitchen and she is like, “Jesus, tell my sister to come in and help me.” That is kind of Martha’s personality. It is almost borderline disrespectful. Jesus walks up and she is like, “Jesus, where were you? If you would have been here this wouldn’t have happened.” Maybe some of you deeply resonate with Martha’s spirit. Here is what I want you to catch. Jesus does not shush her or shame her. He just lets her vent. He just lets her express what is on her heart. And then she says in verse 22, so it is not all disrespectful, she says, “’But even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You.’” In other words, “Even now I know you could do something miraculous.” Verse 23, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’” So He gives her truth here. I want you to understand the distinction for how He is going to respond to Mary here in a minute. Verse 24, “Martha said to Him, ‘I know,’” and I think that is how she would have said it. “‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” Jesus wants her to see something that is immediate and in the present. Verse 25, “Jesus said to her, ‘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.’” Interpretation here, if you are in Christ you will not taste death. You will experience physical death but not spiritual death. If you are outside of Christ you will experience two kinds of death, physical and spiritual. And Jesus says, “’Do you believe this?’ She said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, Who is coming into the world.’” Verse 28, “When she 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 heard it, she rose quickly and went to Him. Now Jesus had not yet 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 to Him, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.’” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Now notice she says the exact same thing to Jesus as her sister Martha said, but notice how different Jesus’ response is to her, “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. And He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to Him, ‘Lord, come and see.’” Verse 35 is the shortest verse in the Bible and it gives us such an accurate glimpse into the heart of our Shepherd. “Jesus wept.” “So the Jews said, ‘See how He loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying.’” That is a good question. Verse 38, “Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.” Oddly, this is sounding somewhat familiar as to what we are going to read about Jesus’ own death. Verse 39, “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ 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.’” Now she is not just explaining some sort of practical reality. You need to understand. According to Jewish burial customs, they thought that when a person died the spirit of the person hovered around the body for three days looking for re-‐entry. In other words, they thought that person could be resurrected within three days of his death. After three days the spirit was locked out and the spirit would go to the chambers of Sheol, which was the place of the dead. So basically Mary and Martha are saying, “Jesus, why would You move the stone away? There is just going to be an odor in there. It is just a corpse. He has been in there four days. There is no possible hope for resurrection at this point.” That is their perspective. Verse 40, “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 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.’ When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’ The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’” There are four things I want you to see in this passage. Here is the first thing: While the delays of God are inevitable, they are not final. We see here that Jesus delayed to the point where the human mind could no longer fathom how He could intervene and change the circumstance. Maybe some of you might be in the exact same position that Mary and Martha were in and you are saying, “God, where are you? Don’t you care? Why haven’t you shown up? God, I have done everything You told me to do. I’ve fallen on my knees in prayer, I’ve gone to church, and I’ve called out to You. I’ve asked You to intervene. It would be so simple for You to just let me know that You are in control of all of this. But God, it just seems like I am getting silence from You and it feels like I am in the waiting room and You are never calling my name.” This issue has no easy answers, no trite explanations. But we do need to understand the distinction between the words “cause” and “allow”. Does God cause all things in our lives that are painful? Or does God allow certain things in our lives that are painful? And, if He does, do we even know what He protects us from? Maybe, there are a lot of things that God has protected us from that we just never knew about it. So does God cause all things or does He allow them? Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Here is one of those things that I know to be true. As I was thinking about this last week it seems that every time I’ve grown in any area of my life, it has always come after a season of resistance of some kind. Now I would suppose that maybe the easiest example of this would be some sort of physical exercise. If you lift weights, that is resistance training. If you get on a treadmill and you run, your body is resisting that. But when you endure through that then you grow from it. You get into shape. You get stronger. The same thing is true emotionally. If you and I are ever going to grow up and mature in our emotions, in our personality, then we are going to face some resistance toward that maturity. We call that adolescence. That is what you go through from like age 11 or 12 to age 18 or 19. For some of us it goes even further than that. But it is the idea that my immaturity is going to face this resistance and I have to endure through that. It is painful but I’m going to actually be a more mature, well-‐rounded person if I endure through it. The same thing is true spiritually. Yet many of us think the day we gave our life to Christ was the day God became our Jeanie in a bottle or the vending machine in the sky. And the first time God doesn’t come through for us in the way that we would like for Him to, we either assume He doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or has better things to do. That’s just illogical because that principle doesn’t hold true in any other area of life. There may be some times when God allow us to go through something painful, not because He is punishing us, not because it is a consequence, not because He doesn’t exist, and not because He doesn’t care, but precisely because He does. And He says, “There are some things in your life, some fruit I want to produce in your life that will come about in no other way.” For many of us, we may never have come to know the truth of something if we had not faced the difficulty of it. What we do know is that God will never subject us to pain that is purely in vain, but God will allow us to go through something to produce a Christ-‐like maturity that is in you and me. Hudson Taylor, one of the great missionaries said it this way. He said, “Trials afford God a platform for His working in our lives. Without them I would never know how kind, how powerful, and how gracious He is.” If you know anything about Hudson Taylor, he has some credibility to say this. He basically says, “I would have never know how kind God was, how powerful God was, and how gracious God was, if I hadn’t gone through trial and difficulty.” I was thinking about this last week as well. There is a difference between meaningless pain and redemptive pain. You cannot throw all pain into one category. It is just not fair. There is such a thing as pain with a purpose and meaningless pain. An example of this—from what I understand, two of the most painful things the human body can experience is childbirth and passing a kidney stone, neither of which I’ve had any experience in. One of which I hope to never experience. But here is the thing. Those two things are the most painful things the human body can experience, yet I’ve spoken to many moms (my wife being one of them) who, after going through the excruciating pain of childbirth, come to me one day with a smile and say, “I think I’d like to have another one.” “Now you do realize how painful that was?” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 “Yes.” “You do realize you hit several base notes in the delivery room. Sounds came out of you that I didn’t know existed.” “Yes, I remember that. I’d like to have another one.” I’ve gone into people’s homes and seen pictures of the children who have caused these ladies such significant pain in the labor and delivery room. You want to know what I’ve never seen, nor heard? I’ve never heard somebody who’s passed a kidney stone say, “You know I’ve been praying about it and ah, I think I’d like to have another one.” I’ve never gone into anybody’s house and walked down the hallway and seen pictures of kidney stones, “There is my first one. That was a doozy. There is number three.” We just don’t do that. Childbirth is pain with a purpose whereas the other is just pain. Don’t misunderstand the two. In Romans 8:28 it says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” So it says there, “In all things.” In all things, God works for the good. “Even in the breakup?” “Yeah.” “Even in the addiction?” “Yes.” “Even in the heartache?” “Yes.” “Even in the depression?” “Yes.” All things means all things. I don’t know about you but I’ve heard that phrase and I’ve had people tell me that phrase in my moments of despair, in the dark moments of my soul. And I have to tell you it kind of hacked me off when somebody tried to comfort me with that verse. Here is the reason why. I misunderstood the word “good”. God works for the “good” and we are like, “Well this doesn’t feel good. I don’t see the good.” That is because we don’t keep reading. Verse 29 of chapter 8 defines “good”. Good, according to God, is that you would be conformed to the image (likeness) of His Son. That is the ultimate good. So for me, I think “good” is pain free living. I think “good” is more financial security. I think “good” is more praise, less criticism. God says, “No. Good is to be conformed into the likeness of My Son and My Son would go to a cross.” So this is why Scripture says to us, “If you are in Christ, take up your cross and follow me.” That doesn’t mean you build a literal wooden cross like the one we have up here and carry it around, although there Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 have been some people who have done that. They are misunderstanding what He is saying. He is saying, “If you are in Christ, you’ll have a cross to bear, generally and specifically.” Your cross might be different than somebody else’s cross. Here is the conviction in my heart this last week: Am I setting down a cross that God wants me to bear, short circuiting the work of being conformed into the likeness of His Son? God says, “Look, I’ll sustain you through this like a good Father. I’m not going to pull you out of everything that causes you pain so that, by the end of your life, you are still spiritually underdeveloped. But this life is preparation for life eternal.” I was thinking about it this week. I am approaching 40. I have 14 more months until I am going to turn 40. I was thinking about this. I said, “Would I rather die mature in Christ at 40 or would I rather live to 80 and be immature in Christ?” I thought, “What good is another 40 years if I am immature spiritually? Another 40 years is not even a drop in the bucket compared to eternity.” If God were to allow me to go through some seasons, and some trials, and some difficulties…I’ve met some 40 year olds who were way more mature in Christ than some 80 year olds. That is not any disrespect to anybody who has lived a long time. It just means this. Biological years do not automatically equate to spiritual maturity because some of us have hit the eject button every time it was painful. Some of us, instead of clinging to God, we stiff-‐armed Him. God says, “Take up my cross and follow Me. I may not remove you from the situation. I’ll sustain you in it,” and those two things are fundamentally different. 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “There is a difference between godly grief and worldly grief. Godly grief leads to repentance, which leads to life. Worldly grief leads to death. It terminates upon itself.” So here is what I want you to see about the heart of our Shepherd. Jesus offers truth to Martha, tears for Mary. Did you catch that in the passage? I sometimes wonder why Jesus didn’t just bring the two sisters in together and say, “Hey, let’s just save some time here because you both are going to ask me the same question. I am going to give you the same answer here. Why don’t you come in here and sit down, ladies, and let me have it? Then I’ll respond to you.” He doesn’t do that. He talks to Martha first, let’s her vent, and then He gives her truth. He says, “This man will rise again. Do you believe this?” He gives her truth. When Mary comes in and she says the same thing to Jesus, Jesus didn’t say anything to her. What did He do? He wept. I love that about the heart of our Shepherd. He offers truth through tears. Please understand this. This is important for our church family. Right now I can think of dozens of examples, prayer cards that come across my desk, emails that come into my inbox. I know that even though God is at work in the life of our church in remarkable ways, there is a heavy spirit over our church right now. I can think of numerous examples of marriages that are going through turbulence right now. I can think of numerous examples where people are battling cancer. I can think of numerous examples where there is strife and heartache in families all across our church. If we can look out across the room, if we can kind of pull back the physical and look at the spiritual and emotional condition in this room, there is pain in here. It does not help for you just to give truth without tears. That leads to a sort of dogmatic insensitivity. Like, “Here is the truth. Just get over it.” However, it does not help to shed tears without ever speaking truth because that leads to a sort of hopeless despair. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 You see Christianity is not just truth without tears. It is not just tears without truth. It is truth through tears. I did learn that in Practical Ministry. The course taught that if you go and you make a hospital call and you don’t know what to say to somebody on a death bed, you just be there and you just listen. You don’t have to say a whole lot. Truth through tears. Here is the second thing in this passage I want you to get: Death is our enemy. That is so clearly taught here in this passage. Death looms over all of us. It casts a shadow over our lives, especially if you have ever lost somebody close to you. I don’t know about you but, as a younger person, I didn’t think a whole lot about my mortality and my death—until my 30th birthday. My 30th birthday I started to think about it a little bit more. Now every time I look in the mirror I am reminded of it. Are any of you with me? You are like, “Where did that come from? I didn’t know that could grow out of your ear. Where did that wrinkle come from? What about that gray hair?” We are reminded constantly that we are under the curse of death. One of the very first things that sin did is it introduced death and decay. Death was not a natural part of God’s plan. God didn’t design death. Death is not something that is normal. It is a travesty. I am reminded of it all the time. On Tuesday night last week I started to get a cold sore. I haven’t had a cold sore in years. I was like, “Where is this coming from? This is so annoying.” So I googled it, where do cold sores come from? You know what the internet told me? “We don’t know.” “Thank you, that is awesome.” “We just don’t really know where they come from. Here are seven ways we think cold sores come from.” “I’ll tell you where cold sores come from—Genesis 3, the fall.” It is just like Adam and Eve sinned and boom. It is disgusting. It is painful. And every time I look in the mirror, and every time I hurt, and my back pulls again I am reminded that death is our enemy. Listen, it is a monstrosity. It is a tragic interruption. There is nothing normal about it. It is our full-‐blown enemy. About seven years ago, my oldest cousin and her husband had a three-‐year-‐old daughter named Sadie. She was a few months younger than my oldest daughter Campbell. Right around Memorial Day she sent an email to the whole family and she said, “Pray for Sadie. She’s got some pain. We took her to the hospital and we don’t really know what is going on.” She ended up staying in the hospital through the whole month of June. They live in St. Louis. When we were on vacation we drove through and we stopped in to see them. The doctors were running tests. They still didn’t know what was going on. And in July we got another email from here. She said, “Sadie is going home. We think she is okay. Doctors still didn’t catch what it was but she is feeling much better.” The first week of August we got another email that said, “Sadie has been vomiting uncontrollably. We are taking her back to the hospital.” That time the tests came back. Cancer was ravaged through her whole body. That little girl passed away by Labor Day. I remember going to the funeral as a family. Everybody left the room and the immediate family was around her little casket. I watched my cousin and her husband lean over her casket for the last time and whisper softly in her ear. They tucked her in and they prayed over her. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Let me tell you. I couldn’t stand it. I had to walk out. It felt like my guts were being ripped out. I just wanted to grab all of my kids and hug them and never let go. I walked out and I was like, “There is nothing natural about that.” That is a travesty. That is a monstrosity. Death is our enemy. Here is the third thing this passage teaches us: Death is a defeated enemy. Death is a defeated enemy. We feel the sting of death, even now, but it is defeated. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15. I’d encourage you to go read this passage later today because he talks a whole bunch about death in that passage. Paul says, “Here is what we know about death. Death is an enemy and death stings. But death, where is your victory and where is your sting?” Jesus defeated it. What is Paul doing? He is taunting death. He says, “You think you’ve got the upper hand but you don’t.” So death may feel final to us, but it is not final. For those of you who have ever lowered a loved one into the ground, at the funeral it feels so final, but it is not final. Jesus walked out of a grave so you and I could walk out of one too. So death came through Adam. Death came through Adam but Scripture says, “We are now made alive through Jesus Christ.” So Paul says, “Here is what death is to a Christian. To a Christian death is like a seed being sown into the ground. The dirt goes over it but the seed comes up. Fundamentally it is a different thing.” And he says, “If you are in Christ your flesh and blood, this broken fallen body that gets cold sores from time to time, is going to die. And it is just like a seed going into the ground but in Christ you’ll come back up fundamentally as a new creation.” One author put it this way. He said, “Death for a Christian is just a dark tunnel into the ballroom.” So John, who writes this gospel, also gives us the book of Revelation. And in it he is describing Heaven. And he doesn’t just describe Heaven by what will be there. He describes Heaven by what won’t be there. And he says, “There will be no more crying, no more mourning, no more sickness, no more pain,” no more death of little three year old girls “because Jesus has come to defeat our enemy death.” Some of us aren’t ticked at death enough. I don’t understand how we can rage against God and not rage against death. You’re raging at the wrong enemy. God didn’t come to strip you of life. He came to give it to you. I’ve met with numerous people over the last couple of weeks who have been like, “I don’t want you to trick me into believing anything. I don’t want you to try to convince me that there is a God because I am afraid God is going to take something from me. He is going to take my finances, take my joy.” Man you are railing against the wrong enemy. You don’t understand as Ephesians 2 says, “You are already dead in your sins.” What is your 60, 70, 80 years of physical life on this planet anyway in comparison to human history and in comparison to eternity? It is nothing. It is just a mist. This leads me to the last point I want to point out in our passage: Jesus’ love is raging. I want to draw your attention to verse 33 and verse 38. Look with me in your Bibles. If I were you I would circle this or underline it. In verse 33 it says Jesus was “deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled,” when He saw Mary weeping. That is what caused Him to weep. In verse 38 it says, “As He was approaching Lazarus’ tomb Jesus was deeply moved once again.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 I think there are probably a couple of reasons for this. I’ll be honest with you. Growing up I never understood John 11. Every time I would hear it preached, every time I would get a Sunday school lesson on it and talk about Jesus raising Lazarus, I didn’t understand it. I had all these questions. Here is one of the questions, “Why did Jesus wait until Lazarus died before He went there?” It seems kind of unnecessary. Why did Jesus say different things to Mary and Martha? Why did Jesus weep when He knew He was going to bring Lazarus back from the dead? Is He being disingenuous? Here is how I would have been. If I was Jesus and I would have walked up, and I knew I was going to resurrect Lazarus from the dead, and Mary and Martha were crying, I would have been, “I am so sorry. Watch this. Step back I don’t want anybody to get hurt. I am about to bring back a dead man.” But Jesus wept. I didn’t understand why Jesus brought him back from the dead to begin with. I mean you do understand Lazarus died again. He is not still wandering the earth right now. That would be kind of creepy if he was. So why did Jesus? This is where we come to the difference between a miracle and a sign. This is not just a miracle. This is a sign. Jesus is communicating a deep, spiritual reality through these actions here. I think part of the reason why Jesus was deeply troubled in His spirit is because He knew that this would be the final straw for the religious and the political leaders. If He brings Lazarus back from the dead, then He is a dead man. It is one thing to change water into wine. It is one thing to heal a royal official’s sick son. It is one thing to restore sight to a blind man. It is a completely different category to bring a dead man back. And He knows that if He brings Lazarus back from the dead that He is burying Himself. He sees a friend who is in the grips of our enemy death and He says, “The only way to free him from death and the only way to free every one of us in this room from death is I have to subject Myself to the grips of death.” I’m sure there was this little voice in Jesus’ mind that said, “Jesus if you interrupt this funeral it will be your funeral.” Jesus knew He was going to bring Lazarus back at the cost of His own life. I think that is one of the reasons why Jesus was deeply troubled. But it goes deeper than that. This is where studying the original languages will help you greatly. Because when you read the words “deeply troubled,” I don’t know what comes to your mind. I just automatically think, “Oh, Jesus was upset. Jesus was deeply troubled, moved in spirit. As He was walking toward the tomb He was breaking down.” That is not what it means. The words “deeply moved” in the original languages mean “to snort or to bellow in anger.” It was a term that oftentimes referred to the noise an animal makes. It was sort of like a primordial rage. I was trying to figure out how best to explain this. How many of you have ever been angry or stressed or frustrated, or maybe you hit your thumb with the hammer and you let out this noise, “AHHHH.” That is what the words “deeply troubled” mean. It means as Jesus was walking toward the tomb He wasn’t just weepy. It means He was clenching His fists and He set His jaw as He was walking up to Lazarus’ tomb, He is literally going, “AHHHH.” What He is doing is He is saying, “This is not natural.” Jesus saw what sin and death did to the people He loved and the Creation that He made and it ticked Him off. He is walking up and He is saying, “I can’t believe they have to go through this pain. I can’t believe they have to experience this.” So Jesus is approaching this tomb with rage. I know we oftentimes see in our society that Jesus gets depicted as sort of an effeminate Mr. Rogers, but He is not. He walks up to Lazarus’ tomb like a UFC fighter walking into a cage getting ready to take on our common enemy and opponent—death. He is getting ready to Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 throw the smack down on it. Jesus comes up and He says, “I can’t believe what you have done to my Creation. I have defeated you.” So when Jesus walks up to the tomb He isn’t just deeply troubled by what His friend Lazarus had experienced, although He was. He wasn’t just deeply moved over what Mary and Martha were experiencing, although He was. He wasn’t just deeply troubled about what was about to happen with the religious and political leaders because they weren’t going to let Him get away with. If He raises Lazarus from the dead they either have to submit to Him as Lord or kill Him. Guess which one they do? Jesus was deeply moved because as He is walking up to that tomb He was thinking of you and me. We are all Lazarus. I don’t care if you have 20, 30, 40, or 50 more years of life you are still dead and so am I. All of us are mortal. Jesus says, “The curse of sin is on you and I have defeated death.” And Paul says, “Where oh death is your victory? Where oh death is your sting?” In this passage we see that the reasoning of Jesus with Martha tells us who He is, the weeping of Jesus with Mary shows us His heart, and the raging of Jesus shows us what He came to do. So could you just hear me in this? Jesus’ love is raging for you. Sometimes I think we get this image of God as if He is sitting up in the universe somewhere in His La-‐Z-‐ Boy with His arms crossed and He is like, “Go ahead and try to get My attention. Maybe I’ll listen.” No, He is leaning in. He has already gone to a cross for you. Why in the world would He be sitting back letting you struggle when He has already defeated death, our common enemy. Here is what I want you to do. I want to ask that you just close your eyes and bow your heads. I want to just give you four statements that I want you to think about this morning. And maybe you can talk about this in your Life Group, talk about this at your dinner table, maybe later tonight. Here are the four statements: Number 1: I will not judge Jesus’ love by my immediate circumstances. Are any of you doing that right now? You are judging the love of Christ, the love that He has for you by your immediate circumstances. So you conclude that if somebody has cancer, that if you are going through a difficult relationship, that if you are unemployed, that God must not love you. Don’t judge Jesus’ love by your circumstances. Number 2: I will trust God to be sovereign over my disappointments and my joys. It is easy to see God as sovereign over your joys but do you see Him as sovereign over your disappointments? Number 3: Death is a defeated enemy that continues to sting but does not destroy. It is impossible because Jesus already defeated it. Number 4: The last thing I want you to be thinking about is that Jesus’ love is raging. He has rescued us from the grips of death and despair. Here is the question I want to ask you. Do you have the right enemy? Because some of you have made God your enemy and God is not your enemy. Death is your enemy and He has defeated death. Do not let that confuse you. Today you can have freedom and life in Jesus Christ. That is what 13 people are experiencing this weekend [through baptism] and I pray that you would too. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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The Gospel of John: The Raging Love of Jesus February 7/8, 2015 Lord God we come to You right now and I pray that in these moments that we would respond to the teaching of Your Spirit. God I pray that You would weep with those in the room right now who are heavy hearted and going through deep waters. God I pray You would provide truth to those who need to hear Your truth so that they would come to understand what You have done for them and that You have defeated death on their behalf. So God, in these next few moments I pray that we would sing as dead people who have been raised by the power of Your Spirit as we celebrate with those who are identifying publically with Jesus Christ. We ask this in Your Son’s name. Amen.
Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
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