So turn back with me to John
chapter 11. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we do pray that you would open this word about our friend Lazarus
to us, that we might, like the Lord prayed, that we might
believe, and in believing we might see the glory of God. in
the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in his name and for his
glory. Amen. I've titled this message,
Lazarus Our Friend, and he's a friend of every believer. The
Lord Jesus Christ called him his friend, our friend Lazarus. Our friend Lazarus is still alive. Our friend Lazarus is rejoicing
in the glories of Perfect, sweet union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a glorious, glorious sight Lazarus have before him now.
But what a picture this is for us. What a picture of how God
saves sinners. And that's what the Bible, these
pictures in the Bible, whether it's Nicodemus or the Samaritan
woman or the nobleman or the cripple, All the blind man in
John chapter 9, the adulterous woman in John chapter 8, they're
all pictures of salvation. They're all just various aspects
of the one glorious, glorious message of the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. So Lazarus is not only our friend,
but Lazarus is a picture of every believer. And the story of Lazarus
is a picture of every believer. And we will see, I trust that
today. The Bible is a biography book,
isn't it? It gives us the biography. of believers. It gives us a biography
in such clear terms that we may see ourselves in the picture
and that we may see ourselves in relationship with the Lord
Jesus Christ and we may see ourselves today and in this world like
our friend Lazarus. So let's look at the description,
the description God the Holy Spirit gives of Lazarus. He's
a certain man. God always deals with certain
men. He always deals with people individually. He does have a church and he
speaks to his church, but when he's speaking to his church,
he's speaking individually to every single one of us, isn't
he? He's always in intimate, personal union with his people. This certain man was chosen in
Christ, this certain man was given to him, this certain man
is Lazarus. His name is the Greek word from
the Hebrew name, which is Eleazar. And Eleazar means, God is my
help. He's my friend. God is my help. Everyone God helps is my friend.
It also can be translated, the one whom God helps. What a great description of us.
What a great description. The one whom God helps. The next description of Lazarus
is the description the sisters send in their message to the
Lord Jesus Christ. The one whom thou lovest is sick. Literally, the one whom thou
lovest is dying. It's an emphatic word for a very,
very serious illness. The one whom thou lovest is sick. All of us are sick. All of us
have an appointment with death. All of us have a limited time
here. And in terms of eternity, the
difference between our limited amounts of time really irrelevant. The one whom
thou lovest. What a great description of our
friend Lazarus. What a great description of all of God's children.
God's children are loved. God loved. God loves. We love him because
He first loved us. God's love and God's attributes
are all mixed in together, aren't they? The activities of God and
the attributes of God are all as one. Is God everlasting? His
love is everlasting love. He loves certain ones. He loves personally. Is God powerful? His love is powerful. Is God
omniscient? His love is omniscient. He knows all things. He knows
everything about every aspect of your life. He knows it all,
all the time. Jacob have I loved. Jacob have
I loved. When did he love him? for the
children not yet born, neither having done any good or evil. that the purpose of God according
to an election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said unto her, The elder
shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have
I loved. Was there anything lovable about
Jacob? You read the story of Jacob's
love. His name means deceiver. Jacob have I loved. The love
of God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God has no beginning,
the love of God has no end, the love of God has no change to
it. It reflects the attributes of
God. That's why that verse in Jeremiah 31 is so wonderful,
isn't it? So encouraging. The Lord has
appeared of old unto me. The Lord appeared eternally.
The Lord appeared eternally and said, Yea, I have loved thee
with an everlasting love. I've loved you with an everlasting
love. That means His love knew all
of what you would do. It knew the fall that you would
participate in in your father Adam. It knew that you would
come forth from your mother's womb. You knew that you would
live and relish in sin and yet the Lord loved you. I've loved
you with an everlasting love and here we have the power of
God. What a great promise. Therefore, because of this love,
with loving kindness have I drawn thee. See, God's love is not
inactive love. God's love is not just this thing
that's out there that has no meaning. When God loves, he draws. Jeremiah is told, he said, before
I formed thee in the belly, I knew you, I knew you. That word no
speaks of love. Before thou camest forth out
of the womb, I sanctified thee, Jeremiah 1.5. God's love. is like God. It's omniscient. He knows all things. It's omnipotent. It has all power. And it's omnipresent. Nothing ever happens outside
of His love and His grace and His mercy in the lives of His
people. That's why He can say He has saved us and called us
with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. It's so wonderful, isn't it? The love of God is so extraordinary,
isn't it? According as he has chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him, in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself. He calls this the good pleasure
of his will. Kay has reminded us to go to
Romans 8, but don't you love how the Lord puts all of the
glory of his grace in the past tense? For whom he did foreknow,
that means to love. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate,
them he also called, whom he called, them he also justified,
whom he justified, them he also glorified. Past tense. Finished. The works were finished
from the foundation of the world. The one whom thou lovest. Don't
you love that the appeal of Mary and Martha is not to anything
that they have done, not to anything that Lazarus has done. Their
appeal for mercy from God in this situation of darkness is
the one that you love. The one that you love is sick. Now verse 5, and Jesus loved
Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Jesus loved them. If you're in
John's Gospel, turn over. There's one of the most delightful
phrases, promises from God in all of the scriptures. If this
is not your favourite verse, it ought to be one of them. Jesus
knew, chapter 13 verse 1, Now before the feast of the Passover,
when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart
out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were
in the world, he loved them unto the end. There is a purpose in
the glorious love of God. Lazarus is one whom God helps. Yet Lazarus died. Not only did Lazarus die, but
the Lord Jesus Christ left Mary and Martha to suffer the grief
of his death and the absence, seeming absence, of the Lord
Jesus Christ for those four days. And yet he loved them. How often
we judge the Lord, as we just sang, by feeble sense. Lazarus died. Why did Lazarus
die? Don't forget this is the biography
of all the children of God. Lazarus is our friend and I'm
his friend and we're friends of the Lord Jesus Christ and
this is my story isn't it? I was loved eternally by the
Lord Jesus Christ and I died. Why do people die? There is just
one reason for death. There might be a multitude of
secondary causes. There is just one reason for
death. There is just one reason. When
the Lord said, he says, in the day you eat of that
fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. God didn't say if you eat. He
said when you eat. Nothing about the eating of Adam
that took God by surprise. But Adam still walked. And Adam still lived after he
ate the fruit. See, there are three sorts of
death, aren't there? Adam died spiritually. He was completely
dead. In Adam, all died. You has he made alive. You he
has quickened who were dead. You are dead. Dead. It seems like it isn't a word that
needs explaining. But in this religious age that
we live in now, it seems as if it needs explaining. What is
dead? Dead means that you cannot perform any of the normal functions
of life. If you're dead, you cannot see,
You cannot taste. You cannot walk. You cannot talk. You cannot eat. You can do nothing. You can do nothing. You are dead. Of all of these miracle stories
in John's Gospel and all of these pictures of salvation, you put
one word to cover them all. Nicodemus, what was his situation? He was dead, spiritually dead. The Samaritan woman was bound
in idolatry and she was Dead. The crippled man at the pool
was unable to walk, unable to perform the functions of life.
The blind man was unable to perform the functions of life. And finally,
in this last of these great healing miracles, we have someone who
is really dead. Dead. You cannot perform, as
a dead person, any of the functions of spiritual life. You have no
capacity to love, you have no capacity to obey, you have no
capacity to see the beauty of the glory of the Lord in the
face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why the Lord says,
you will not come to me. You cannot come to me. You have an inability because
you're dead and you're fully responsible for it. You knowingly
and willingly sinned in Adam and when you came forth into
this world you've done absolutely no better than he did. You spent
your life like Adam, stitching fig leaves of self-righteousness
together, that's what I did, and hiding from God. That's what
I did. I was running as far away from
him as I possibly could and as fast as I possibly could and
all the time thinking, thinking that I was right because I wasn't
as bad as all those other evil people around. It's the story of all of the
children of God in this world, isn't it? In Adam all died. Wherefore, as by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin, so that death passed
on all men, for all have sinned. Does that describe you? It describes
our friend Lazarus, and it describes me. That's what it is to be a
sinner. Some of the old preachers used
to say, how dead are they? They're graveyard dead. They're
graveyard dead. And what do graveyard dead people
do? Turn with me down to verse 43,
line 39, sorry. Chapter 11, verse 39. Lazarus is dead. What did he do in his death?
What did you do in your spiritual death? Stinketh. We think we smell like roses,
don't we? But we stink. What did Job say of himself when
he met the Lord Jesus Christ and had the gospel preached to
him? And Job, under enormous pressure, was finally, that righteous
man, was finally challenged to defend his own righteousness.
And then he meets the Lord Jesus Christ, he has the gospel preached
to him, and then the Lord comes and questions Job, and Job's
response is, I am vile. Not I was vile, I am vile. We are, as Isaiah describes us,
in our unregeneracy, an unclean thing. Rob Lowe used to love quoting
this verse. Isaiah 64.6. Does this describe
you? It describes Lazarus. It describes
all the friends of Lazarus. But we are all as an unclean
thing and all our righteousnesses. This is the best things we do,
isn't it? All our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags. We all do fade as a leaf and
our iniquity like wind have taken us away. God says that the man across
the road from our place yesterday was ploughing his paddock, producing
food to produce, food for cows to produce, milk and butter and
all of those things. What was he doing according to
God? The ploughing of the wicked is sin. If we have touched it,
brothers and sisters, it's sin. it's sin. And what happens to someone whom
the Lord helps? He's made to see, isn't he? And
we're made to see that we are dead. We are made to see that
the only hope of one whom God helps is the Lord Jesus Christ
coming. Listen to what the Lord says,
isn't this glorious? Verse 43, the next word to that
Lazarus. Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus, come forth. How did he come forth? How did
he come forth? Did he take the first step? Did he exercise his free will? Did he accept an offer made to
him? The Lord does none of those things
at our friend Lazarus's tomb, does he? He the Word of God. Don't you love how the Lord's
words are just so powerful? I pray that he makes them powerful
to us. I pray that like Lazarus we come out of a tomb. In the
beginning, John begins his gospel, in the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and
without him. Not anything that was made was
made. In him was life, and the life
was the light of men. The light shineth in the darkness. If you want a commentary on what
the Lord had said in John chapter 10 about my sheep, he says, My
sheep hear my voice. My sheep hear my voice. My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, I love them, and they follow
me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." We have the
remarkable privilege of just presenting the Word of God, and
it's as powerful now as it was at the tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus,
come forth! Come forth! Lazarus, come forth. What do dead people do when God
speaks? He hears, doesn't he? It hears. It's written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God, and every man therefore
that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh to me. The
words that the Lord Jesus speaks are spirit and they are life. And listen to what the promise
was, isn't it? He says in John 5, 25, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, the hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that are dead shall
live, shall live. So this is an active parable,
isn't it? This is a story, a picture of how the Lord Jesus Christ
saves sinners. He calls his own. He calls them to come forth out
of darkness, out of death, out of a tomb, out of a place of
captivity, out of a place where there's a stone rolled across
in front of it. It is. It is a picture of resurrection,
brothers and sisters. It's a picture of the resurrection
of all of God's people, isn't it? There is coming a day when
the voice of God will speak and every grave will be opened and
all of the dead in Christ will rise and I'll be together with
him in the air. But what happens to the child
of God when they come to life? Listen to what verse 44 says
of Lazarus. That's exactly a picture of how
we walk in this world, isn't it? We've come forth We are raised in newness of life
but we're hindered aren't we? Jacob walked for the rest of
his days and he walked with a limp after he met the Lord Jesus Christ
and he'd heard that name and he had his name changed to Israel,
Prince with God. So we're bound by this sin, we're
bound by this flesh, we're bound by this mind that's so easily
distracted from the Lord Jesus Christ. We're so easily entangled
in things in this world. We're walking, but we're bound.
We're living, but we're bound. We come to his voice, but we're
bound. Jacob described his days, he
says, my days have been few and full of evil. They've been the
days of my life. So we're bound hand and foot,
we're bound in our doing, and we're bound in our work. And the gospel comes again and
again. That's why the gospel is so precious,
isn't it? Gospel preaching says, loose
him and let him go. Loose him and let him go. It's exactly what the Lord Jesus
Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane just a few months after this. He said to Satan and all of his
servants, he says, you can have me, but you let these go. You let these go. You can have
me, you can let these go. John 18 verse eight. He says
to the law of God, you can have me, but you let these go free. He says to the justice of God,
you can have me, but you let these go free. He says to Satan, loose them and let them go. You
can have me, but you let these go free. It's a glorious picture,
isn't it? The Gospel comes to those who
have newness of life. The Gospel comes to those who
are bound. The Gospel comes to those who are dead. The Gospel
comes and gives life. And we are bound. But that is
not quite the end of the story of my friend Lazarus, of our
friend Lazarus. Verse 2 of chapter 12, just turn
there with me and we'll just look at these verses. And they made a supper. They made him a supper and Martha
served, but Lazarus was one of them. And our word is sat, but
at those tables in those days, you reclined, you reclined. Lazarus reclined with the Lord
Jesus Christ. What a glorious picture. To sit
at this table and to recline with him. And that's still not
quite the end of Lazarus' story. He hasn't said a word but there
are things that are said about him and there are things that
Lazarus' salvation says about the Lord Jesus Christ which caused
great opposition. And if you are a friend of Lazarus's,
if you're a friend of the Lord Jesus Christ, this will be part
of your journey always. Verse 9, much of the Jews, John
12, 9, therefore when they knew he was there and they came not
for Jesus' sake only, but they might see Lazarus whom he had
raised from the dead, but the chief priests consulted that
they might put Lazarus also to death. because that by reason
of him many of the Jews went away from them and their religion
and believed, believed on Jesus. What does your salvation say? to this world about who God is,
about how he saves, about how he brings life from the dead,
about how he says, come out of that darkness and come out of
that binding. What does your salvation say
about the Lord Jesus Christ? If it's a salvation like Lazarus'
salvation, it's a salvation that will cause the children of God
to believe on him and cause those who are religious but in their
hearts are enemies of God to want to kill him. What a ridiculous
thing. He's just been dead for four
days and been raised from the dead. They want to now kill the
Lord Jesus Christ and kill Lazarus. Lazarus, your friend, Lazarus,
my friend. Lazarus is my friend. When I need again to know the
love of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, I need a friend who's
the friend of Lazarus. When so much seems so dark and
so often we want to say, where is the Lord? Does he care? Can he help me? I need a friend
like Lazarus and I need Lazarus' friend. I need his promises to
be gay and I'm in. I need a friend like Lazarus
and Lazarus' friend. When I'm caused by my sin to
look at what I've done, to look at what I'm doing, to look at
what I will do, look at my activities, look at me in any way to earn
my salvation or to keep my salvation or to enhance my salvation, I
need a Lazarus. I need my friend Lazarus to speak
yet again through his life. When those I love need to hear
again that one sweet reassuring voice that is able to succour,
is able to sympathise. When the world and the religious
world find the grace of God so offensive, and their hearts are
revealed to be far from him even though they honour him with their
lips. I need to remember my friend Lazarus and what his life was. And when we face life's greatest
trial, we need Lazarus' friend to say, it is finished, And all that God requires for
you to be in my presence forever, he finds in me. I've loved you
everlastingly. When this world is finished in
our time here, I need a friend like Lazarus because the saints
in heaven are with Lazarus now. with him, with the Lord Jesus
Christ, reclining at his table. I also need my friend Lazarus
and be reminded of him when I am faint. I become faint in the
hope of salvation of those I love when they seem so cold and they
seem so dead. To the Lord and his church, I
need to remain reminded of my friend Lazarus. And I need to
be reminded yet again and again, loosen and let him go. Set him free, the glorious liberty
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let him go, let him go to be
with me, let him go to be reclining with me. Let him go to know that
he is now loved forever in a way which he had never realized.
With me, someone else went into a tomb. Just a few months later,
someone went with him. After he'd been to a cross, someone
went with him on that cross. All of his children were with
him on that cross. All of his children were with
him in that tomb. All of his children were with
him when he was raised from the dead. All of his children were
with him when he took his seat in heaven. You cannot separate
the head from the body. Both will die without that union. Such is the glory. For some of
the lessons I've learned from my friend Lazarus, he's our friend. May he be your friend. Let's
have a break. Amen.