FOUR DAYS LATE AND STILL ON TIME
John 11:39-40, "Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?"
What a terrible stink must have come from the grave of Lazarus who had been dead for four days before the days of modern embalming procedures! How many of you have ever passed near a dead animal on the highway? Can you remember that smell? It’s a smell that is unforgettable.
Lazarus, a good friend of Jesus, was dead. Jesus had been notified to come quickly by Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, but he didn’t seem to get in a hurry. The news of his sickness was no surprise to Jesus; neither was it troublesome to Jesus that Lazarus would eventually die and be buried. Jesus continued to do his teaching and working for two more days before he started for the home of Lazarus in Bethany.
Lazarus’ name meant “assistance of God”, pointing to the fact that, no matter where we live, we live only by the help of God. We have no power to do anything without God’s help.
He lived in the town of Bethany which means, “the house of song; the house of affliction”. I don’t know about you but I can certainly identify with needing God’s assistance and singing the blues, crying out to God and living in a place where there is affliction on every hand. Everywhere you turn in this life there is sickness, pain, death, depression, discouragement and constant trouble.
Job certainly knew what he was talking about when he spoke those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Job 14:1, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble."
How many of you are living in the place of affliction right now? Have you lived a day in your life without trouble on every hand? Do you find yourself “singing out to God because of those afflictions”? Has Satan caused a stink to arise in your life and made things seem so hopeless that there doesn’t seem to be any possibility of getting your prayer answered?
WE ALL HAVE OUR BETHANY! No one is immune to the attacks of Satan or the troubles and trials of life.
Have you noticed the attitude of Jesus as he heard the news of Lazarus’ sickness? He knew that Lazarus was dying but it didn’t seem to affect Jesus at all. He just kept doing what he needed to do. Jesus wasn’t upset in the least for he already knew what was going to happen when he reached Bethany. He already knew that there were no impossible situations and that his power to speak resurrection was not limited by any circumstances.
I think it would help us greatly to realize that our seemingly hard or impossible circumstances are nothing to God. His power transcends our trouble. His power is not limited by our faithlessness or our hopelessness. Jesus has resurrection power and he cannot only bring victory when we haven’t given up hope, but he is just as able to bring us the victory after we have long given up hope.
When it seems that our finances have already died and the stink is beginning to arise; when it seems that our health is completely gone and the doctors have given up on us; when it seems that God has waited too long and the stink of our unbelief, distrust, and hopelessness rises; that’s when Jesus is ready to show forth his power and glory in us.
Isaiah 55:8-9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
When Jesus finally arrived in Bethany, the family of Lazarus was long past having hope. Lazarus was already dead, buried and his grave was sealed.
Satan’s greatest lie that he always whispers in the spiritual ear of everyone in distress is that “it’s over and there is nothing that God can or will do about it now.” If he can get you to give up on God, then the he has accomplished his goal.
That should be our first indication that God isn’t finished with us yet because the devil can’t speak the truth, therefore we should realize that God’s answer is still coming in his own time and in His own way. Just keep on trusting and having faith in God.
Perhaps your prayer seems that it will never be answered. We find ourselves in distress over finances, relationships within the family, and any number of things and it seems that God has turned a deaf ear to your cry. Things have gone from very bad to much worse and now there is no visible way to make things right.
Satan has wrapped you up in doubt and fear. He has blinded your faith, bound up your hands and feet from working for the Lord, rolled a stone of unbelief across the door to your heart and has now convinced you that your attitude, your heart and your life stinks to God so it’s time to quit and walk away. He has shrouded you in a cloak of darkness and your spiritual grave is sealed and your life is over and hopeless.
You can always tell Satan has brought the sickness of sin into the life of a man or woman.
The first think that happens is that they get stinking thinking. They start the blame game, blaming everything and everyone else for the sin in their lives. Then they get “excusitis”, and find a multitude of reasons why they can’t or won’t serve the Lord. Then they get hard or impossible to talk to about the things of God. Finally they bury themselves in their own lives, working, kids, home, etc. and it’s as though the church no longer exists for them. The stink of sin is easy to see in their lives! The stench of hopelessness and doubt emanates from them and it’s very hard to stomach their attitudes when you get around them. They are “dead” and Satan has rolled the stone in front of their tomb and sealed it with their own fears.
Why does Jesus let us go so far before he comes? Why must we sometimes get so deep into our trouble and our attitudes begin to stink before he comes to our rescue?
Jesus wants us to know that it’s not in our power to overcome Satan and our own sinful hearts. That power must come through “His Resurrection Power”! It’s only when Jesus speaks the word of deliverance that the victory will come and not until then. It will come in his time and in his manner.
Jesus told those who stood nearby mourning at the tomb of Lazarus to roll away the stone! Could not he have just commanded the stone and it would have moved away by itself? Why then did he instruct those who stood by to move the heavy stone instead? I think it was to let us know that the heavy stone of unbelief, doubt and fear that seals us in our tomb of troubles must be removed by lifting our eyes toward Jesus and forcing ourselves to believe and trust in his power to lift us up out of our circumstances.
God cannot bless a heart of unbelief. Fear is doubt, the opposite of belief. We must believe God, trust in God and look to God before he will speak resurrection power into our circumstances of life.
Hebrews 3:12, "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God." That unbelieving, doubting, fearful, distrusting, disloyal heart has left the place of living in God’s blessing and has entered into the place of death unto God and into the place of death in sin.
I believe that God wanted everyone who stood near to experience the “smell of death” that came from that tomb. Jesus wanted everyone there to know that it was not by the power of human flesh that resurrection and deliverance would come, but by the power of Almighty God. There would never be a doubt that God’s resurrection power was what brought Lazarus back from death and nothing else. God will share his glory with no one!
Yes, Lazarus had been dead for four days. How can you tell how long a brother or sister in the Lord has been dead in their unbelief?
He had been wrapped and prepared for the grave because it was, and still is, the custom of the Jews to bury their dead on the same day that they die to avoid breaking the Law concerning the handling of a corpse.
I want you to know that when a Christian loses faith in God and starts leaning on their own understanding, the process of backsliding begins immediately. Satan begins right then to wrap them up and bury their faith permanently. He believes in striking while the iron is hot. The quicker that he can limit your faith or ability to turn to God, the better his chances are at keeping you in your spiritual grave.
It doesn’t take long at all for rigor mortis, the stiffening of the attitudes, to set in.
It gets harder and harder to reach those who have given in to the wiles of the devil. Their resistance to the move of the Spirit of God gets harder and nothing seems to move them any longer. They often blame their own lack of spirituality on the church saying that they can’t feel anything anymore or that the Spirit isn’t moving in the church. My friend, when you can’t feel anything anymore and you don’t get anything out of the church or the messages from the Word of God remember this – God hasn’t changed; His Word is still alive; the church is still filled with the presence and power of God; and the anointing of the Holy Spirit is still here. The reason that you can’t feel anything is that you are the one who is dead to all that is happening. You had better start unwrapping your burial cloths and get down to the altar to seek for God’s Resurrection Power before it’s too late.
If you go too far down the path of spiritual rigor mortis, the next step is swelling, and decaying of the body.
Have you ever seen a fellow Christian “swell up with pride, anger, frustration, or a bad spirit”? More than likely they have already began to draw back from everyone in the church and to walk away from the place where they are supposed to be in the work of the Lord. Their spiritual life is decaying rapidly.
If they don’t get wrapped and buried soon, their attitude will literally explode all over the rest of the congregation and then you will have church fights and splits and isms and schisms in the body. You can’t live next to death without being infected by it and becoming ill yourself. I can’t stand to be around those people who develop these kinds of attitudes because it begins to affect my own spirituality, putting me in danger of joining them in their dying condition.
The bad news is that any of us, at any time, can find ourselves headed down this path to the grave, spiritually speaking.
The good news is that, even when you have gone so far down that you are sealed in your sin, that God can still speak resurrection power to your life.
David said in Psalms 139:7-12, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
Thank God for his power of resurrection. He may not answer your cry or bring your deliverance in your time. He may even allow you to be dead, buried and sealed away and live in your stinking thinking for a time. But, he will come when the time is right.
Jesus was four days late in answering the prayer of Mary and Martha. He was four days late in healing Lazarus so that he would not die. He was four days later than the hope of all those who stood around could last.
Jesus was four days late yet he was right on time. God’s will is sovereign. Don’t give up hope. Even when it seems hopeless God is in control. He has the power to resurrect your life once again and bring deliverance and victory. He may not answer until all hope is gone and there seems to be no way out but he will answer.
God may not answer, may not deliver you when you expect him to. He may not give you the answer you need until you think it’s far too late but remember, God’s answer has resurrection power with it and he is always on time.
Remember the story of Job, a man who lost everything and almost died himself, yet God spoke resurrection power into Job’s circumstances and his end was far greater than his beginning. God knows how to lift you up and bring great deliverance to your life. He knows how to speak resurrection to your circumstances of death.
