New Testament scholar Don Carson tells of a teenage boy who was dying of cancer. Every day he had someone read John 11to him--the story of Lazarus who rose from the dead--and Paul’s detailed statement about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. His confident hope of victory over sin and death was based on Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life. Not everyone holds that view.
I enjoyed a TV program called The Mentalist. The main character was thoroughly secular. He considered death as final and the end of one’s existence in any form. He was a true believer in that view because his wife had been murdered and he held no hope of seeing her again. Patrick Jane, the main character, was drawn to a detective who was a woman of faith. You knew that because she openly wore a cross necklace. She too believed death was a reality because every week someone died. But for her it was not the end of existence. Sin and death would be defeated in the future because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Occasionally episodes would contrast these two worldviews. I don’t remember being satisfied with the way Hollywood handled our viewpoint.
This is not an insignificant topic. Every culture has some explanation for what happens to people after this life. It reveals our need for hope beyond the grave. We are aware that there are other views of life after death that have based hope on people’s own goodness rather than the grace of God. Islam teaches a future paradise for martyrs of their cause. Hinduism teaches the purifying of the soul through a million reincarnations and the hope for a future nirvana. As Christians our confident hope of victory over death is based on Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life.
John 11 includes perhaps the most significant claim Jesus made about Himself. John’s Gospel records seven “I Am” statements by Jesus. These are declarations of His deity. In John 11 Jesus declares that He is the Resurrection and the Life. He claims that you can have sure hope in the face of death because He conquers death and gives people eternal life. No other leader of any major religion makes such a claim.
Jesus receives news of Lazarus’s illness. He delays two days before proposing to go to Judea. The disciples are amazed that He would go back to Jerusalem because there are people back there that want to kill Him. We learn the reason Jesus delayed returning is so He could do a work that would clearly glorify God and strengthen the faith of His disciples.
First, we have a sure hope because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.
I. SURE HOPE (JOHN 11:17-24)
(17) When Jesus arrived, He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. (18) Bethany was near Jerusalem (about two miles away). (19) Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. (20) As soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet Him. But Mary remained seated in the house.
(21) Then Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. (22) Yet even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You."
(23) "Your brother will rise again," Jesus told her.
(24) Martha said, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
The fact that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days probably means he died the day the message was sent to Jesus. Since the Jews didn’t embalm the body, they just masked the smell of death with spices; they buried the body the day of death. There was the day to deliver the message to Jesus, the two days of delay, and the day of traveling to Bethany could have covered the four days.
Some propose the reason John included the detail was that it was discovered that some Jewish sources taught that the soul of the deceased hovered over the body for three days, hoping to reenter the body. After three days, the soul gave up and departed. We don’t know if that would have been the thought in Mary and Martha’s mind, but the fact that Jesus acted on the fourth day would have eliminated the possibility that Jesus had nothing to do with Lazarus’s restoration to life.
On the fourth day of death the body begins to show signs of decomposition. Gases begin to be emitted. This is why Martha resists Jesus’ suggestion of rolling back the stone. She says there will be a smell.
The Jews had 30 days of mourning for the death of a loved one. It is very intensive for people to come and comfort the family in the first week. This would ensure that a large crowd would be present. Bethany is only two miles from Jerusalem. This ensured a large crowd. There are going to be many, many witnesses that Lazarus was dead, and Jesus raised him back to life.
Martha, typical of her activist personality, runs to meet Jesus when she hears He has arrived. Someone has to play host for the many people that have come to visit the family. Mary does this. To be seated is the typical posture to receive guests who have come to express their condolences and mourn.
Some have taken Martha’s words as scolding Jesus, but if Lazarus died before Jesus could have received the message, she would not be blaming Him. It could be read as a reaffirmation of her faith in Jesus. “Even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give You."
Jesus tells her that her brother is going to live again. She understands this to mean in the future. We do the same thing. “One day,” we say to grieving family member, “you will see him again.” They may say, “Yes, I know that is true.”
The word “resurrection” means “to stand up.” Martha’s reference to “the last day” is the belief that on the final day God will act in judgment on the wicked and vindicate the righteous.
Because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, we have a sure hope that one day we are going to get our family back. Preachers are always drawn toward giving the arguments in favor of the resurrection. They are impressive. History is full of testimonies of those who sought to disprove the resurrection but were converted because of the sheer volume that leads a fair-minded person to accept that Jesus died and rose back to life. You don’t have to take a leap of faith to believe. A step is all that is necessary.
But deep down I want the resurrection to be true because we instinctively cry out against the power of death over our lives. Egypt’s pharaohs built pyramids and stashed them full of jewels and wealth and servants. Today, it takes the form of extreme makeover shows and keeping our bodies alive to the last nanosecond. Then we preserve them with embalming fluids and double-sealed caskets. We resist and resent death having the last word.
But above all we want the resurrection to be a sure hope because we want our friends and family back. I spent one day with my son. I spent thirty years with my grandparents. I want more time with both. I don’t want to be eternally separated from my wife, my daughters and son-in-law’s, and grandchildren. Our sure hope is based on the confidence that Jesus gained victory over death because He is the Resurrection and the Life.
I know we are accused of being morbid. We talk about death and dying to a culture that does everything to hide its reality. I wonder: do they not want us to talk about it? In that case, who is not dealing with reality? Of all the inevitabilities in life, one is sure. Rev. Craig Price told us at the Good Friday service that for 7,000 Americans today will be their last sunrise and sunset. But that day is coming for all of us.
In every case in the New Testament where Jesus raised a dead person, Jesus gave them back to their family. In Luke 7 Jesus stops a funeral procession and tells the dead boy to get up. The dead boy did what dead boys don’t do; he sat up and began to talk. His widowed mother got her son back because Jesus is victorious over death. Jairus, the religious leader, got his daughter back from the dead in Luke 8. Jesus is assuring Martha, though she doesn’t know it yet, that she is going to get her brother Lazarus back.
You can be sure that what Jesus did for Martha and Mary, He will do for you. He made sure of that on Easter morning.
Before his death Winston Churchill became a follower of Jesus Christ. He made his own funeral arrangements. When they said the benediction, he had arranged for a bugler high in the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral to play “Taps,” the universal signal of the day is over. After he finished there was a long pause, and then a bugler on the side of the dome played “Reveille,” the signal of a new day beginning. It was Churchill’s way of saying that while it was “Good night” here, it is “Good morning” there. Churchill believed his confident hope of victory over death was based on Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life.
What Jesus says in response to Martha’s belief in the general resurrection must have stunned her. She’s standing the physical death of her brother. Jesus says to her that she is standing in the presence of life, everlasting life. The confident hope we have of victory over death is because Jesus gives us new life.
II. NEW LIFE (JOHN 11:25-26A)
(25) Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. (26) Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever.
No one ever had spoken of resurrection in this manner. No one ever had said resurrection was a person. Resurrection traditionally was just an event to happen out in the future that God would accomplish. Resurrection tied to a person was a radical and revolutionary thought.
Jesus declares, “I, and I alone, through my personal power will cause the resurrection to happen. The one that believes in Me, even if he dies before the great resurrection event, will come to life and never die.” The translation attempts to help us English readers understand the strength in which Jesus said this. It is a double negative. We will never ever die.
Jesus is not saying that He will bring about the resurrection or that He will be the cause of the resurrection, both are true, but something much stronger. Your resurrection from the dead and your eternal life in fellowship with God is so closely tied to Jesus that they can only be found in a relationship with Jesus.
Repeatedly the Bible proclaims that those who believe in Jesus will immediately possess eternal life. John 8:51 says, “I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” This mortal life is going to decline and die, but the life Jesus gives will never die. Death brings an end to everything in this life, but the life Jesus gives us continues. Death blots out everything in this life, but the life Jesus gives is so great that death releases us to a life of reward and eternal joy.
One more thing, the stress is this eternal life can be experienced right now. You don’t have to wait until after death to enter into the eternal life Jesus is offering.
Frederick Buechner once wrote that every age has produced fairy tales. Something inside us believes, or wants to believe, that the world as we know it is not the whole story. We hope that death is not the end, that the universe is something more than an enclosed terrarium. So we keep spinning and repeating stories that hold the promise of another world.
A common feature of fairy tales is that the enchanted world is not far away. You step into a wardrobe and you are in Narnia. You walk through a forest and stumble on a cottage with seven dwarfs. This other world turns out to be far closer than you thought.
Furthermore, fairy tales are not just stories about the transformation of the world around us. They are usually about the transformation of the central characters: frogs becoming princes, ugly ducklings become swans, wooden marionettes becoming real boys.
Buechner says these are features that the gospel has in common with fairy tales, with this one great difference: The gospel is true!
Jesus stands before Martha and says this is not all there is to this life. The lid has been taken off the terrarium. The eternal life that Jesus offers is closer than you think. You can live it now!
This is the promise of transformation. It doesn’t wait until heaven. Your guilt and your inadequacies are no longer the greatest power or testimony about your life.
When my girls were children, the dominant interest of grade schoolers were Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. These ordinary children had access to a power that transformed them into super heroes. Then I thought about my parent’s generation. They had a sailor with funny laugh and a speech impediment, but when he ate a can of spinach; he could clear the deck of bad guys. He was transformed.
I think that is what Jesus means when He speaks of new life. This new life gives us new desires. We want to love God. We want to learn about Jesus and live for Jesus. We don’t just try to be the right kind of person, we become a godly person.
I was sitting in the dining room at the rehab center with Scotty. Across the room was a woman who looked familiar. I was not sure I knew her because it had been some time and her declining health had marked her appearance. But she smiled knowingly at me. It was Pat. Pat use to bring her beautiful, little blonde daughter to VBS and Awana. She would help. She and Jim belonged to another church, but lived nearby.
Pat broke both hips at the same time. She’s been two months in rehab and will be another two to three weeks before she can possibly go home. I said I’m sure she is anxious to get home. Yes, she said, but her two months in the rehab center has been a blessing because of the opportunity to witness for Christ. She’d become close to several of the workers. She’d prayed for them and seen prayers answered. Pat was as pleasant and positive as I remembered her.
Maybe that doesn’t seem such a big deal. I’d guess you haven’t spent three months with someone in a painful hospital bed. I’d guess you don’t know the disorientation and exhaustion that comes with hospital rooms and rehab centers. To talk to Pat in her wheelchair, I knelt beside her. I thought that was the right posture for someone who was exhibiting the new life of Christ.
Where do people get this kind of confident hope of victory? They find it in the person of Jesus Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Finally, believe. He asks Martha if she believes Him.
III. BELIEVE (JOHN 11:26B-27)
(26) Do you believe this?" (27) "Yes, Lord," she told Him, "I believe You are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."
Jesus is not asking Martha if she believes in the doctrine of the resurrection. She’s already said she believed that the resurrection would occur at the end of time.
He is asking does she believe that He is the resurrection and that this truth can be appropriated now.
Martha confesses that she believes Jesus is the One the Old Testament predicted to be the Savior of Israel. “You are the Messiah,” she said. Martha said Jesus was the “Son of God.” The term could mean a mere man or someone in a special relationship with God like the angels but Martha no doubt means that Jesus has a relationship with God in a way that no one else has. The last phrase supports this interpretation. Jesus has come from outside of this world into this world.
“Yes, Lord” is stated in a verb tense that indicates a firm and continuing commitment. It describes something that happened in the past and it continues into the present. Sometime in the past, Martha put her faith in Jesus and that is where it remained.
Biblical belief has three parts: knowledge, assent or agreement, and action. To have saving belief you must know some things. Martha knows Jesus is the Messiah, Son of God. She agrees or assents that this is true. She has yielded her life to this reality by being an obedient follower of Jesus.
For you to have a confident hope of victory over death, you must believe that Jesus is the God-man…
CONCLUSION
I grew up at 1825 18th street. I work at 905 E. Rock Creek Road. If God delays the Second Coming I will one day have an address that includes a row and a number for a grave, but don’t think for a second that I am dead. I will be more alive than I have ever been in my whole existence. My confident hope is of victory over death is not based on the life I have lived. It is totally dependent on Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life.
