Sermon Central
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Raising Lazarus Series
Contributed by Rick Stacy on Sep 24, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: 5 of 5 messages on the miracles of Jesus. This message is focused on the idea that God has a plan and we need to trust his divine strategy to reveal his glory through our lives.
We live in a world that is preoccupied with death
Lot’s of movies are all about death – chick flicks or shoot em up guy movies. It doesn’t matter. One of the main theme’s is death.
The more modern day movie that I really, really like, “Sixth Sense.” Anybody like Sixth Sense? Yeah, remember the twist, and there’s the little kid. What does he see? You remember what he said, “I see dead people.”
I’m like that little kid. So are you. Everywhere we go we see dead people – and they don’t know that they are dead! Everywhere I go, I see them. I go to the mall. I try not to, but sometimes I do have to go to the mall, and I see dead people there all over the place. I go to the gym, and I see dead people. I go into churches, and I see dead people.
Did you know that you can be dead while you live? Alive on the outside, but very, very dead on the inside.
You can be dead while you are alive. Paul writes to Timothy and says, 6 But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. - 1 Timothy 5:6
I see dead people, and so do you. We see dead people.
I see people who are just dead, because they are just existing, floating through life, hoping that one day it will get better, but it doesn’t seem to. I see dead people.
Alive on the outside, but dead on the inside.
As we talk about the story of Lazarus, he died. Maybe something on you, inside of you died, and God wants to bring it back to life.
Lazarus was sick
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
Let’s put you in this story for a moment.
What you can see going on is, there are some loved ones who, right now, are in that moment of panic, where someone that they love is about to die, and they are saying, “Jesus, we’ve seen you do miracles before. We know that You can. We need some help, and we need it quickly. Things are not good. They are not looking like they are going to get better. We need you here! We need you here – Right now!”
But look at what Jesus did.
This sickness will not end in death
4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
Jesus’ response is not what the sisters expected – not at all what they expected. They were looking for a hasty trip to the side of this sick young man and a healing. But that is not what happened.
It is almost as if Jesus was saying, “Okay, things don’t look good on your timetable, but what you need to understand is that I’ve got divine strategy. This is part of a bigger plan. It’s going to be ok – trust me. And then he didn’t make any preparations to leave. In fact, he stayed for two more days. There is something going on behind the scenes, and when I am through with this, everyone is going to say, ‘What happened couldn’t have happened except for the hand of God. We’ve got to give God glory for that.’”
There may be those of you, right now, where you are facing some things and you are going, “Things are going the wrong way. I don’t understand it. I don’t know what’s going on,” and God may say, “This sickness in your life, or whatever it is, will not end in death. I’ve got divine strategy.”
It’s like the “Rocky” Movie
Remember “Rocky Number 43”? There is Rocky 44 coming out, by the way. This is the one where Rocky was fighting the giant Russian, and the Russian was just beating the tar out him, and Rocky came back over to the trainer.
The trainer was like, “What are you doing?” And Rocky was like, “Yo! I gotta strategy!” And, what he was doing was, he was taking some blows, and then toward the end, when no one expected, he was going to take down the enemy.
Right now, you may feel like you are taking some blows from the enemy, and when you as God for help you are getting nothing but maybe, maybe God is saying, “Hold on, I’ve got a divine strategy. This sickness, this situation, this challenge, this struggle you are engaged in is not going to end in death. In fact, when I am through, it is going to be undeniable that the hand of God has been involved, and everyone’s going to have to worship. This sickness will not end in death.”
