Jeanette and Donnie, we rejoice
with you all and the Lord's provisions this week for you. I mentioned
we prayed for Jeanette Sunday. She went in the hospital Sunday
morning and had some ups and downs for a few days and was
able to go home yesterday evening and be here with us tonight.
So very thankful. Let's open our Bibles to John
chapter 11. We've been looking at this chapter for several weeks
now. The raising of Lazarus from the
dead. I want us to begin tonight in
verse 11 and read down through verse 14. These things said he, And after
that, he saith unto them, our friend, Lazarus sleepeth. But I go that I may awake him
out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord,
if he sleep, he shall do well. How be it Jesus spake of his
death, but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest. sleep. Then said Jesus unto them
plainly, Lazarus is dead." I've titled this message, Our Friend
Sleepeth. Something very sweet, very special
about the Lord referring to Lazarus as his friend. Abraham, the father of all the
faithful, is called in the scriptures a friend of God. The Lord Jesus is criticized for being a friend
of publicans and sinners. What great comfort publicans
and sinners have in knowing that he's their friend. The scripture
says, greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his
life for his friends. The greatest demonstration of
our Lord's love and his friendship is what he did at Calvary's cross. The Bride of Christ in the Song
of Solomon chapter five says this, This is my beloved, and
this is my friend. The special relationship husband
and wife have when they're friends, best friends. And there's no
friendship like the friendship that Christ has with his bride,
and she has with him. Scripture tells us there is a
friend that sticketh closer than a brother. That, of course, is
the Lord Jesus, who is a friend of sinners and has promised never
to forsake his people. In Proverbs chapter 6, the Lord
says you've struck hands with the stranger as surety for your
friend in other words you've guaranteed alone on behalf of
a friend the scripture says in Proverbs chapter 6 the Lord says
you go and make that friend sure in other words if you've If you've
made a commitment to stand behind him, then you go pay off that
debt. What a beautiful picture of what the Lord Jesus did when
he, in the covenant of grace, became our surety, and then heard
the words of his father, go and make your friend sure. When he went to the cross, He
paid all the debt for our sin and made our salvation sure. Why? Because he's a friend. A friend loveth at all times,
the scripture says, and a brother is born for adversity. Nothing
can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
What a friend, what a friend we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Lord said to the
disciples, and he says to me and you, no longer do I call
you my servant, for a servant knoweth not what his master doeth,
but I call you my friend. For all that the Father has given
me, I have given unto you." What a friend that would take the
things of God and give them to his friends. Here the Lord Jesus
calls Lazarus, our friend, our friend. What a, what a warm,
Blessing, to think about what it is to be a friend of God,
and more importantly, to have Him to be our friend. He says our friend in verse 11,
our friend Lazarus sleepeth. He sleepeth. Oftentimes, in the
word of God, we're gonna look at several of them. where the
Lord likens the death of his children as a sleep. And we're gonna try to compare
the things that are true about sleeping physically and the things
that are true about resting in death in the Lord Jesus Christ. Before we do that, I want to spend just a moment
trying to discern the difference between what the Lord reveals
in time and what he reveals in eternity. Because when we think
about sleeping in Christ, some have tried to explain the the difference between when a
believer dies and when the day of the resurrection. Scripture
says that the trump of God shall sound and the dead in Christ
to be raised and those of us that are alive should be caught
up together with them in the air. So shall we ever be with
the Lord. And then the Bible says to be
absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. How do
we reconcile these two things? Some have said, well, there's
a soul sleep. And Scripture doesn't teach that. I believe the way to reconcile
it is the same way we reconcile many things in the Bible. The
Lord speaks on one level in reference to time and he speaks on another
level in reference to eternity because the Bible says that when
we leave this created world of time that God has us in The scripture
says that time will be no more. Now we can't comprehend what
that means but we know it's true. We know that God created this
three-dimensional world of time and space for us to live our
lives out in but that there is a whole nother dimension, if
you will, of real reality called eternity. And that time will
cease to be and so I believe when the Lord says to be absent
from the body is to be present with the Lord he's talking about
when we leave this body we enter into a timeless eternity and
we're present with him. But in reference to time here
on Earth there is still a resurrection to be had. I don't want to become philosophical
about this, I just want to try to explain what the scriptures
say. Christ is the Lamb that was slain before the foundation
of the world, that's something that happened in eternity. And
yet what happened in eternity was also fulfilled 2,000 years
ago in time. We are justified in Christ before
the foundation of the world. I believe in eternal justification.
We can't be loved with an everlasting love unless we're seen by God
without sin. And yet the scripture also makes
it clear that we're justified by faith. And how do we reconcile
these things? Well, we reconcile them because
God says at one level he's talking about that which is eternal and
on another he's talking about that which is carried out in
time. Faith is not our contribution
to salvation. It is the evidence of salvation
and yet there is no salvation apart from faith. So faith has
to happen at a particular time when God births us in time into
the kingdom of God. And yet, on another level in
eternity those who are brought to faith in Christ in time have
always been the children of God. Is it true that to be absent
from the body is to be present with the Lord? Absolutely. Is
it true that there is yet a resurrection to take place? Yes. Yes. And this is so important because we might be prone to think that
faith in time is unnecessary because God has sovereignly elected
a particular people according to his own will and purpose in
eternity and all that he chose are going to be saved. There
are those who have made that leap. That logical leap, well,
if God's already elected a people and he's sovereign in salvation,
then nothing really matters. And there are those who would
even take that to the extent of saying, you know, if where
sin abounds, grace does much more abound, then let's just
continue to sin, that we might enjoy more grace. And the scripture
says, God forbid. We don't become fatalistic about
time because everything is already settled in eternity. become complacent about our obedience
or about our responsibilities in time even though in eternity
we are without sin in Christ. Though the Bible speaks on both
these levels and it seems to me that a lot of confusion that
we see is when people take passages of scripture relating to time
and make them eternal and make those things related to eternity
and make them a reference to time. So, Lazarus, our friend, sleepeth. And I'm going to go and awake
him. And we know the end of the story. And there's nothing less
miraculous, nothing less miraculous about the new birth than there
was in the Lord Jesus going to that graveyard and saying to
a man who'd been dead four days and his body was decaying, Lazarus
come forth. This is the picture of the one
who has life himself able to speak life where there is no
life. So we're not going to try to
reconcile these two things by saying, well, the soul sleeps
or try to, you know, figure it out some other way. I think we have great hope and
comfort from the scriptures to believe that when our loved ones
pass from this world, when we pass from this world, we escape
time and we go to be with the Lord. And yet, as this world
remains, there will be a resurrection in time. Why does the Lord liken the death
of his children to going to sleep? The disciples thought he was
talking literally about sleeping. They said, if he's asleep, he'll
do well. Sleep will be good for him. No, Lazarus, he spoke then plainly
to them, Lazarus is dead. He's dead. What is there about,
we're all very familiar with what it means to sleep. And the first thing I see as
an analogy between sleeping and dying in Christ is that going
to sleep, there's nothing to fear. Sleep is harmless. Sleep is our friend, it's not
our enemy. We're not threatened by the idea
of going to sleep. David said, yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they do comfort
me. Oh, what comfort we have. Yes,
this world itself is the valley of the shadow of death, but one
day we will walk through the valley of that shadow. And we
can say with David, I fear no evil. Why? Because thy rod and
thy staff, they comfort me. Sunday we looked at Revelation
chapter 12 of that two-winged eagle that has been sent of God
to provide for his bride while she's in the wilderness. And
I believe that those two wings are a picture of the Spirit of
God and the Word of God. And those are the two things
that he's given us. We have his Spirit that speaks
peace to our hearts. And we have the precious promises
of his Word so that we need not fear death any more than we fear
going to sleep. These two revelation, there's
also a picture of the two witnesses who are dead in the streets of
Jerusalem. And I believe there again, we
have the word of God and the spirit of God. And Jerusalem
there is Babylon, it's the false church and there is no word of
God and there is no spirit of God in the false church. They're
dead on the streets of Jerusalem. God raises up those witnesses
and provides for us while we're in the wilderness. I believe
that's what David's referring to in Psalm 23 when he says,
thy rod and thy staff. Rod is a picture of authority
and we get the authority of our hope and comfort and faith from
God's Word. And the staff was that which
the shepherd used to bring the sheep to himself and to direct
them along the path. What a picture of the Holy Spirit
that staff is. And David said, when I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil for thy rod,
the authority of thy word and thy staff, the comfort of thy
spirit. They do guide me. They do guide
me. In Zechariah chapter four, there's
a picture of the candle, the candlestick, which is the church.
In Revelation, the Lord threatens to take the churches that are
unfaithful off of their candlestick and put out the light. And that
candlestick in Zechariah has two olive trees and the olive
trees have two golden pipes that feed the candlestick with oil.
And those two golden pipes are the same as the two winged eagle.
There's the same as the rod and the staff. It's the Spirit of
God and it's the Word of God. Brethren, we have. We have the
authority of God's Word and we have the comfort of His Spirit
that leads us to Christ to take from death all fear. In the book of Acts, when there
were needs in the church just temporal needs that had to be
taken care of, the feeding of the members of the church. The
apostles got together and they said, we need to choose out seven
men who are filled with the Holy Ghost who can do this, for God
has called us to prayer and the preparation of his word. What
do we have there? We have another picture of the
Word of God and the Spirit of God, just like when Ezekiel preached
to the Valley of Dry Bones. Son of man, prophesy. Prophesy
to these bones. Can these bones live? Lord, you're
going to have to make them live. And in the prophecy of the Word
of God, the bones started to come together, yet there was
no life in them. And the Lord said, Son of man,
prophesy to the wind. Pray. call upon the Spirit of
God to come and blow life into these dry bones, into these,
into these. For this is, the Scripture says,
the whole house of Israel. So over and over again, all throughout
Scripture, here's what we have. God has given us the authority
of His Word and He's given us the gift of His Spirit. enables us to cry out, Abba,
Father, even in the hour of our death. Death, like sleep, is not our
enemy. It's not our enemy. It's our
friend. It's our friend because it's
Harmless. Death is harmless. The sting
of death has been removed. You've heard the story about
the father driving the car and the children are in the backseat
and they're young and there's a bee in the car and the children
are, you know, freaking out over this bee. They're afraid they're
going to get stung. The father catches the bee. And then he
lets the bee go. And the children are crying. And the father shows him his
hand. The stinger of the bee is still
pulsating in the hand. And he says, the bee's harmless. He can't hurt you. The Lord Jesus
took the sting out of death. That's what the scripture says.
O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus. We've been set free. The law has nothing to say. The law can't condemn us. The
law can't judge us. When the Lord Jesus bore our
sins in his body on the tree, the law of God exercise its justice
against our substitute, our sin bearer. And now the law is silenced. It has nothing to say against
us. The only reason we would have
to fear death is if the law was able to condemn us. The sting
of death has been taken out. Death is harmless. There's only one time And Doc,
you can help me out on this later on. But I've noticed, over the
years, if someone has a severe head injury, a blow to the head,
a concussion or something, you don't want that person to go
to sleep. I don't know all the reasons for that, but I know
it's true. The scripture says the whole
head of the natural man. In the book of Isaiah, speaking
of the natural man, The unbeliever says the whole head is sick. Now, when the Lord went to the
gatherings and that man who was cutting himself and chained and
naked, after the Lord cast those demons from him, the scripture
says that he was clothed and he was seated and he was in his
right mind. When the Lord saves one whose
head is sick, he puts them in their right mind. That's what
repentance is. Repentance is a changed mind. And he enables them to believe
the scriptures. So... We come into this world with
a serious head injury. I know we're
dead in our trespasses and sins, but I'm using this illustration
to say that we can't go to sleep as long as we have this head
that's sick. We have to be put in our right
mind before we can go to sleep. And when that happens, we're
able to rest. We're able to rest and we can face the grave in
the same way that we face sleep at night. It's not our enemy,
it's our friend. Sleep is not only harmless, But
sleep also is a welcome relief after a hard day's work. Oh,
you've experienced it. You're just exhausted. You just
wanna go to bed. Just wanna get some sleep. Ecclesiastes chapter five, verse
12 says, the sleep of the laboring man is sweet and is a sweet thing. Be able to go to bed and put
your head on the pillow when you're exhausted and get some
sleep. Hebrews chapter 4 says that we
do labor in this life. It's a spiritual labor. What
are we laboring? We're laboring to enter into
His rest. That's our labor. We're working against our nature
and the world and everything that would say that we've got
to do something in order to be able to face death. But death
is for those who are finished with their labors. Paul said, I've fought the good
fight of faith. I'm ready. I'm ready. Someone said, well, I don't know
if I'm ready. Well, you're a child of God. He'll
give you dying faith, dying grace in the hour that you need it.
But these are the truths of scripture. This is where we go to find our
hope and our comfort from the rod and the staff of God. Why? Because we really don't
have any place in this world to lay our head. We really don't. The scripture
says of the Lord Jesus, this is what the Lord Jesus said,
he said, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. When Jacob was in Bethel, the
house of God, he laid his head on a rock. That's the only place
we can lay our head is on the rock. But otherwise in this world
there's no, you know, we find comforts and enjoyments in the
flesh but the need of our soul to have rest in hopes of life
after death because death is coming. We have no place to lay
our head except on that rock. It's the only place we can go.
What a comfort it is when the Lord enables us to lay down in
Bethel and put our head on that rock and know that sleep will
be welcome relief after our work is finished. Turn with me to Revelation chapter
14. Revelation 14. Look at verse 13. And I heard a voice
from heaven saying unto me, write, Blessed are the dead which die
in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, sayeth the spirit that they
may rest from their labors and their works do follow them. Now the scripture says that the
Lord Jesus' works went before him. His work went before him
to recommend him to God and God saw the travail of his soul and
God said, I'm satisfied. And the Lord Jesus was entered
into heaven because he sent his work ahead of him. You and I enter in because of
his work. But here the Lord tells us that
when we enter into our rest, that our works will follow us.
What are those works? The works of faith. They're just those things that,
for by grace you're saved through faith and that not of yourself,
it's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast, but
we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works that he has ordained for us.
See, if we're created in Christ Jesus and he's ordained good
works for us, then we walk by faith, not by sight. And that's the work. We have the hope, brethren, of
knowing just as the Lord said of Lazarus, our friend sleepeth. Our friend sleepeth. Sleep is
harmless. It can't hurt us. The sting of
death has been taken out. Sleep is a sweet relief. It is
a sweet relief for those who have labored. Thirdly, when you have labored
and you're able to go to bed and close your eyes, you close
your eyes in anticipation of being refreshed by that sleep
and waking up renewed. The next day, you're not gonna
wake up exhausted like you are when you go to sleep. You're
gonna wake up refreshed, renewed, invigorated, if you will, with
new strength. The scripture says that when
we sleep in death, this corruptible body will take on incorruption. The body is sown in weakness,
but it is raised in strength. Here's our hope in death. Our
hope in death is that it will go to sleep. We go to sleep with
this great hope that when we open our eyes in glory, we're
not going to be tired, we're not going to be exhausted, we're
not going to be fighting the fight of faith anymore. Faith
won't exist in heaven. There's no faith in heaven. Faith is the hopeful expectation
of that which is not seen. Once you see it, you don't have
to have faith for it. Oh, what a glorious day that'll be. No
faith in heaven, no hope in heaven. Hope is our experience. Faith is our sight. Flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of heaven. We must receive a sinless, resurrected
body. And that's what the Lord will
do for us. David put it like this in Psalm
17. He said, as for me, I will behold
thy face in righteousness and I shall be satisfied when I awake
in thy likeness. When we go to sleep in death,
here's our hope that we're gonna open our eyes in his likeness.
We're not gonna be fighting that fight anymore. At thy right hand there are pleasures
evermore. Brethren, I think this is what
the Lord is telling us when he tells us to set our affections
on things above and to comfort one another with these words.
When the Lord gives you faith in Christ, when he shows you
the vanity of your flesh and the vanity of this world, I don't
think a believer can go a day without thinking about dying. It's just our life. That's our
life of faith. And yet, I can say this from
experience as well. The older we get and the closer
we get to that day, the more we think about it and the more
hopeful we become And this is our comfort. And this is what
it means to overcome. And I've been so burdened of
late, of people that I've watched over
the years, who have gone years making a profession, gone years
saying that they believe, gone years attending services. And
then all of a sudden they just decide they're not interested
anymore. They're gone. They're just gone. You talk to them and they don't
want to talk about it. Try to encourage them. I'm gonna
move on to something else. Perseverance is the only real
final evidence of salvation. Overcoming, believing to the
end. Lord, keep me. Keep me. Lord, enable me to long for thy
coming and to look for thee and to thee all the way to the end. Sleep shuts out the stress and
the troubles of this world, does it not? I use the analogy of being tired
from a long day's labor but what about when you're just overwhelmed
with trials and troubles and stress and worries and fears
and you just think, I just need to go to sleep, I just need to
close my eyes and forget about this for a little while. And that's what death for the
believer is going to be, only it won't be for a little while.
It'll shut this world out for all eternity. There'll be no
memory of any of the troubles that we've been through in this
world. Our sleep in Christ will shut
this world and all of its trials and all of its troubles completely
from our memory and completely from our lives for all eternity. There will be nothing but the
perpetual sound of singing, singing of his praises and of his glory
for all eternity in heaven. We're not going to be relating
to one another in heaven based on our experiences here in this
world. Or you remember when we did this? Or you remember husbands
looking for their wives and children looking for their parents? No.
No. That would require memory of
this life. That would require some memory
of this world in order to have that experience in heaven. No,
our love for Christ and our love for one another is going to be
perfect. Perfect. and there'll be no memory of
this world, it's gonna shut it out completely. Now in contrast to that, we do
know from what the Lord said about the rich man and Lazarus
that there will be memory in hell of those who end up in a
Christless eternity. He remembered that he had five
brothers He wanted somebody to go warn him of that place. Well, finally, the death of a
believer is likened to sleep in that a person who's asleep can easily
be woken up. Be no trouble. Be no trouble
on the part of the Lord to say, Tom, come forth. Delphus, come
forth. Joy, come forth. Be no trouble. No trouble. He's going to, you
know, sometimes at 4.30, 5 o'clock in the morning, I'll hear Tricia,
honey, you asleep? Are you awake yet? Yeah, I'm
awake. You ready to get up? Yeah, might
as well. You know, you just, you hear that voice. The hour is coming when all that
are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth. The Lord wakes us up, brings
us to glory. It'll be like waking up one from
the sleep. Let's turn in closing to 1 Thessalonians
4. Verse 13. But I would not have you to be
ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you
sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. Oh, we sorrow in
the loss of a loved one, but not as those who have no hope. We sorrow for ourselves, not
for them. For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus
will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the
word of the Lord, here's the rod. By the word of the Lord
inspired by the Spirit of God that we which are alive and remain
until the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which
are asleep. You see the Lord's, this is talking about time. It's talking about our experience
here in this created world. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel,
and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise
first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort
ye one another with these words. What is the Holy Spirit called?
Is he not the comforter? Our friend sleepeth. He just sleep. But I'm gonna wake him. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for these precious words of truth. Words of life, words of spirit. Lord, we pray that you would
apply them to our hearts. Remove from us any thoughts of
death that are not true to what you've revealed in your word. And might we anticipate it as
we do sleeping in our beds at night, resting. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. 354, let's stand together.