John chapter 11. John chapter 11. Verse 45 and verse 46. It says, Then many of the Jews
which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed
on him. But some of them went their ways
to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. Now, before our Lord spoke and
raised Lazarus from the dead, He did something amazing. He
said in verse 39, take ye away the stone. And after he raised
Lazarus, he did another amazing thing. He said in verse 44, loose
him and let him go. There is a stone upon the grave
of every unregenerate sinner, just like there was a stone on
Lazarus' grave. ignorance concerning all things
spiritual. There's the stone of religious
falsehood, of self-righteousness and legal religion, will works
religion. There's the stone of a love for
self and a love for the world and a love for the sins of the
flesh. There's the stone of prejudice
against Christ and his people and true religion. And then after
Christ converts his child, there are many grave clothes that we
come forth wearing that we'll be a lifetime losing. There's
the grave clothes of religious tradition. This is how I've always,
we always did it. This is how we always thought
it was done, and we always thought this is how it ought to be done. There's the grave clothes of
pride and legalism. We have a Pharisee that will
be forever attempting to crucify. There's the grave clothes of
the cares of this world, the sins of our flesh. They're constantly
going to plague us from here on. Now, our Lord could have
rolled that stone away, and he could have removed those grave
clothes by speaking the word. He raised Lazarus from the dead.
He spoke and raised Lazarus from the dead. He spoke and created
all things into existence. He could have rolled that stone
away. He could have removed those grave clothes just by His Word. But our Lord's given His people
who He's called, He's given us a privilege to be used of God,
to speak His Word, pray to him to be used as instruments in
his hand to take away the stone and remove the grave clothes
from our brethren. Somebody might say, but I can't
remove the gravestones. I can't take away the grave clothes. Sinners are dead. I can't do
this for a sinner. They're dead. Well, Martha heard
our Lord say, take ye away the stone, and she said something
very similar. Back in verse 39, she said, Lord, by this time
he stinketh. He's been dead four days. We
encounter spiritually dead sinners every day as we go through our
day. And so often we have opportunity
to speak to them, and we have this thought, like Martha had,
it's a dead sinner. It won't do any good. If I say
something and speak of Christ, it won't do any good. But the
Lord said to Martha, said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest
believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Now, without a
doubt, the stone will only be removed and the grave clothes
will only be removed by the Word of the Lord. By Christ the Word,
speaking the Word into the heart of His people. We have this treasure
in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God, not
of us. But it flees God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. And so He teaches you
and me, believe Him. Speak the Word. take away the
stone, remove the grave cloth, speak His gospel, and we'll see
the glory of God. It just might be God will work
grace in the heart of a dead sinner through the word we speak. Now in each heart where the Lord's
put His love, that's what His people shall do. Where He's put
His love in our heart, that's what His people will do. I like
how that when our Lord said, take away the stone, Martha objected.
But when he said, loose him and let him go, there's no objection. Why not? They loved their brother. Can't
you just see Martha and Mary running over there to try to
start getting those grave clothes off of him? They didn't care
if the stench of death was still on him. They didn't bind him
more. They loosed him. Why? They wanted
to see their brother get to Christ. That's the objective. That's
the goal, is to see His people brought to Christ. Now, what
is it we're to use to take away the stone and to remove the grave
clothes from off our brethren? What is it we're to use? Look
down at verse 45. It says, When they had seen the
things which Jesus did, they believed on Him. It's the gospel
of what Christ has done. That's our one weapon. We don't
have any other weapon. We walk in the flesh, but our
weapons are not fleshly. Paul said, the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down
of stronghold. I can't stand here and make you
believe. I can't force you into anything. But I can preach the
gospel and pray for you and wait on the Lord to work. That's our
message, the gospel of Christ. He casts down imaginations. He
casts down everything that exalts itself against God, and He brings
us to bow to Christ's obedience, trusting Him alone for our righteousness. The power that removes the stone
and the word that removes the grave clothes, that word that
will be blessed of our Lord, is the declaration of the things
which God our Savior has done. That's the word He'll bless,
the message of the things which God, our Savior, hath done. Listen
to this from Psalm 2230. A seed shall serve Him. It shall
be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come
and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born
that He hath done this. That's our gospel. That's our
message. Psalm 145.4 says this. It says, One generation shall praise thy
works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts. I will speak
of the glorious honor of thy majesty and of thy wondrous works,
and men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts, and I'll
declare thy greatness. They shall abundantly utter the
memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full
of compassion. That's what we preach. That's
what we declare to one another. The Lord is gracious and full
of compassion. Slow to anger and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all in his
tender mercies over all his works. All thy works shall praise thee,
O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. We have one weapon. We got one message. There's one
word to speak. It's the word that will take
away the stone for the spiritually dead sinner. It's the word that
will remove the grave clothes off of the believing sinner.
It's the gospel of what Christ hath done. That's what he used
the first hour. That's what he uses the rest
of the time. He doesn't use our might and our strength. He uses
the word of the Lord. You remember after the Lord saved
the man at Gadara. He wanted to go with the Lord,
and the Lord said, no. We can't go be with the Lord
right now. Not in glory, but He has us here on this earth,
and here's what He told him. Go home to thy friends and tell
them how great things the Lord has done for thee and has had
compassion on thee. Compassion. Don't you love that
word, compassion? I'm thankful for the Lord's compassion. Well, what has our Lord done?
What has our Lord done? What did these Jews here see
that day that made them believe on the Lord? What has our Lord
done? Well, we declare how our Lord is able to bring his elect
under the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Look here in verse
45. It says, many of the Jews which
came to Mary, They didn't come there to see the Lord. They came
there to comfort Mary and Martha. And there's a whole lot of people
that the Lord brings unto the sound of the gospel that come
there initially for some other reason. To please somebody else. Because they're forced to do
it or whatever. but all the while the Lord's
working, and I can hear them declaring this. You know, we
don't have to guess what they declared to others. We don't
have to wonder. You can go to Acts 2 and read
it. Peter stood up and declared the wonderful works of God, and
those men all that were preaching were declaring the wonderful
works of God. This was some of those he saved right here. I
can just hear them declaring to others, you know, we only
came there that day to comfort Mary and Martha. That's the only
reason we came there. We came there to show our respects
for Lazarus. That's the only reason we came
there. Little did we know God had worked all things together
for our good. We didn't have any idea that
God, He gave Lazarus that sickness and permitted Lazarus to die.
because He was drawing us to Him so we could hear Him preach
the Gospel and see Him and believe on Him. We heard Him declare
He has sheep chosen of God. We didn't know we were those
sheep. Didn't you just hear? We didn't know that. We thought
we were God's elect just because we were children, natural sons
of Abraham. But we learned that His sons
are spiritual children. He knows them. He knows His sheep. He knows where they are. He knows
everything about us. He must bring them, He said.
And He brings us to behold His glory and to hear His voice.
And He says, and they know Me and they follow Me and nobody
will pluck them out of My hand. They could say, we know that
now. We know that. We've experienced that. We know
it because He did it for us. God's absolutely sovereign. absolutely sovereign. There's
not a hair that falls off our head but by his will. He's absolutely sovereign. He's
able to bring his people under the gospel, he's able to keep
his people under the gospel, and he's able to keep his people
all our days. You think about where that eunuch
was. He had come up to Jerusalem, The Lord was working in him.
The Lord was drawing him. The Lord had brought him to Jerusalem,
but he didn't hear the gospel there because they weren't preaching
the gospel there. He left as empty as he went up,
and he's out there in the middle of the desert. How did he hear
the gospel? Scripture says, the angel of
the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, go toward the south, and
to the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is
desert. And he arose and went, and behold,
a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority, and a candid
queen of the Ethiopian. That place where he was wasn't
even the new road. It wasn't even the main road.
It was on a bypass road out in the middle of the desert. God
sent Philip right to him, right to him. Paul was going to go
to another place and the Spirit of God forbid him and sent him
down to Lydia to preach the gospel. God put Paul in prison so he
could preach the gospel to the Philippian jailer in his household.
God's sovereign. He could get his gospel to his
people. All the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in
the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth,
and none can stay his sin or say unto him, What doest thou? What has our Lord done? What
has He done? They saw the things the Lord
had done, and they believed on Him. What has our Lord done?
We declare how He saves by His distinguishing, quickening grace. Look here in verse 45. Then many
of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which
Jesus did, believed on Him, but some, but some of them went their
ways to the Pharisees and told them what things Jesus had done. All the Jews there that day saw
the Lord work that miracle naturally. They all saw it, but they only
saw it naturally with the carnal eye. No sinner was ever saved
by seeing Christ work a miracle. So what did they do? They went
back to their religious tradition, they went back to the work of
their hands, they went back to the Pharisees to tell the Pharisees
what Christ had done to infuriate the Pharisees even more. That's
what they went back to. But the many who believed on
him? They saw the miracles with the natural eye too, but they
saw supernaturally. They saw by divine revelation.
They saw the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. He revealed himself
in their hearts. That's how we have to see. That's
how we have to see. I can hear them declaring how
Lazarus was not the only one dead that day. We came there
thinking we had life, but we didn't have life. We came there
thinking we were righteous by our works. We were lost and dead
in our sin, as Lazarus was in that tomb. Dead. And the Lord Jesus Christ spoke
and revealed Himself to us by His voice. He made us behold
His glory. We beheld His glory. This is
what we tell sinners. This is what we remind one another
of. Christ's power to speak His word and to heal. He declared,
if thou shalt believe, thou shalt see the glory of God. They could
say, we heard Him say this, we heard Him preach this, but we
heard it in our hearts, and as we heard it, we found ourselves
believing on Him, because He gave us the gift of faith. That's
how we believe. It was not anything in us that
made us to differ. If God had left us to ourselves,
we would have went right back to the Pharisees. It was not
anything in us that made us to differ. We saw only by God's
distinguishing grace. You see distinguishing grace
in that chapter? In that verse? What made these
that believed believe on Him? Distinguishing grace. Grace to
them. Grace that singled them out and
chose them in Christ before the world was made. Grace that came
to them and regenerated them and gave them a heart to believe
the gospel. That's the difference. There's nothing in them that
they could boast in. The Lord did this for them by
His grace. Who maketh thee to differ from
another? What hast thou that thou didst not receive? You think
about that. Who does make us to differ? It
wasn't anything in us. It wasn't anything by our hand.
Who did it? God did it by His grace. What
do we have that we didn't receive? Everything we have is grace,
grace, grace, all of God's grace freely given because God would. So then, how can we glory as
if we didn't receive it? How can we give that so-called
thankfulness that our Lord spoke about when He spoke about the
man saying, I thank Thee, Lord, I'm not like others. That wasn't
thanking Him at all, was it? We were sinners, wretched, undone,
lost, dead, not willing, hating God. And our Lord Jesus, by His
distinguishing grace, regenerating grace, sent His gospel and He
spoke into our heart and gave us faith to believe Him. He made
us to differ. by His grace. That's how the
stones are removed. That's the word He'll bless to
remove the stone. That's the word He'll bless to
remove the grave clothes. The Word that declares what He
has done. God chose His people in eternity.
God reveals Himself by His grace. He makes us see Christ high and
lifted up. He said, as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but
have everlasting life. How are you going to be brought
to look to Him? He's got to make us see we've been bitten by the
serpent. He's got to make us see Him.
He's got to make us look to Him. That's how we'll see our sin
and know our need. The many who believed it so only
by God's grace worked in their heart Christ revealing Himself
unto them. You know, they didn't just see the miracle.
They didn't just see the Lord raise Lazarus from the dead.
As amazing as that would be to see, that won't make a person
believe on Christ. We see it here. These others
did not believe on Christ. They saw a man who'd been in
a grave four days raised from the dead. There was no denying that Lazarus
was dead four days. Did that make them believe Christ?
Nope. They went right back to their
religion. That's how dead we are. That's
how insane we are by nature. That's what's pictured in that
Gadarene who was out of his mind. It takes God to put us in our
right mind and sit us down and clothe us and make us hear Christ
and see Him and believe Him. This is what He'll use to remove
the stone. This is what He'll use to remove
the grave clothes. The Word that declares what He
hath done. What has He done? He sent forth His Son who laid
down His life in place of His people that He might be our life
and He might be our righteousness. Here you have some Jews and they
had been hearing about the law all their life. And they've been
trying to work the deeds of the law. They've been trying to come
to God by the works of their hands. And all the while they
were worshiping their idol through works of their hands. And they could say, we heard
Him declare. We heard Him speak. And He said,
He's the resurrection and He's the life. We heard Him say it. We heard Him say, He's the resurrection
and He's the life. And we heard Him, this is what
He speaks to us. He's the resurrection. He's the
life. He said, I lay down my life for
the sheep. They could say, we heard Him
pray to the Father, declaring that the Father sent Him. No man has seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
He hath declared Him." And they could say, now we know. Now we
see. We see what we didn't see before.
We've been looking to these earthly high priests thinking they really
were our acceptance with God. Now we see those high priests
pictured Christ our high priest. We've been looking to these lambs
thinking these lambs actually washed away our sin and we were
righteous by the act of bringing the lamb. Now we see Christ is
the lamb who put away our sin by laying down his life. This
whole time we read the story of Noah's Ark and we just saw
a moral lesson in it. Now we look to that story and
we see how that Christ is the ark. How God put us in Christ
and He bore the reign of God's justice and the ark bore it so
that we walked away free, justified by His mercy. Now we know, now
we see, we've been looking to our works, now we see our sin
is put away because Christ put it away. Now we see that righteousness
is not something we do. Righteousness is a person. It's
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Messiah who God sent. Now we know it's not by works
of righteousness we've done, but by the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ that we're made the righteousness of God. He truly is the resurrection
and the life. Just think about this, brethren.
He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath the Son hath life.
We heard him say that he that believes on him shall never die
because he's the life. That's what they heard that day.
He paid the wages of sin which is death. That's how he can give
us life freely. He said, I'm the good shepherd.
I lay down my life for the sheep. How do you know this is all so?
You've heard this. How do you know this is so? As
they bore witness of Christ to others, people say, well, how
do you know this is so? Because God who commanded the
light to shine out of the darkness has shined in our heart to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Christ Jesus. I couldn't make myself believe
Him. I couldn't make myself seek Him. God did the work. And now by
His grace, we can't stop believing Him. They saw God's salvation when
they were given faith to behold Christ Himself. That's who they beheld, Christ
Himself. The Lord Jesus, God in human
flesh. He's the power and wisdom of
God. He's God in our nature without sin. There He is. That's who
they saw. And the glory belongs to Him. If there's any sinner and you've
got all this great stone that is blocking you and hedging you
in death, look to Christ. Well, you can't tell a sinner,
look to Christ. He said, tell them to look to
Me and live. Tell them to believe on Me and
live. And pray to Me and I'll send
the Spirit and I'll cause them to look and I'll cause them to
live. Look to Him. Look to Christ. That law that He gave to Moses,
He wrote it on tables of stone, didn't He? That's a stone that's
got to be taken out of the way. The curse and condemnation of
the law's got to be taken away. Who took it away? Christ did.
We're coming to this world with a stony heart. Hard as an adamant
stone, that stone's got to be taken away. We've got to be given
a heart of flesh. Who does it? The Spirit of God
does it. We go forth with a lot of stones
in our path. Who's going to take up those
stones out of the way? We declare what He tells us to
declare. Put away the sin that so easily besets us. Lay off
every weight. and look to Christ, run the race
looking to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. And
we ask God to bless the Word. And you know what God does? For
His people, He blesses the Word. He blesses the Word. Believer,
call out to Him. Confess your sin to Him. Come
to Him and lay it all out before Him. He's faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
How can He receive me? Because Christ is our advocate
with the Father. He made propitiation between
God and His people. That's how He's just. That's
how He's faithful to receive His people. We have an advocate. Salvations of the Lord. It's
entirely of the Lord. We got up this morning, of the
Lord. We drove here safely, of the
Lord. We had a heart to come here,
of the Lord. If we hear His gospel, it's of
the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. His
electing grace, His redeeming grace, His regenerating grace,
His preserving grace, His glorifying grace, it's all of grace A to
Z. Grace, grace, grace, grace. He'll
bring the headstone crying, grace, grace unto it. It's all of grace. Whatever sorrow you suffer, remember,
this is what Mary and Martha found, everything our Lord's
working in providence. Everything He's working in Providence,
it's not unto death. It's for the glory, not for His
people. It's for the glory of God that
the Son of God might be glorified thereby. That's what Christ worked. That's what He's done. That's
what He continues to do for His people. You believe on Christ,
you shall see the glory of God. That's what he told them. Believe
on me and you shall see the glory of God. And with that word came
the faith. And they believed on him and
they saw his glory. They saw his glory. And continue
to the end believing on him, trusting him, looking to none
but him, following after him, and we shall behold his glory
face to face in that day. In resurrection glory we'll behold
him. This is His salvation. It's His glory. It's His work. What has He done? That's what
we're to declare. The wonderful works of our Redeemer.
Let's go to Him in prayer. Father, thank You for this Word. Our great God and our Savior,
we thank You that You've sent Your Gospel to us and called
us and given us hearts to believe You. Lord, we ask you to bless
the Word. We ask you to make the Word effectual
in the heart of your people. Lord, by your power, by your
Word and your wisdom, we ask you to roll away the stone. We
ask you to remove the grave clothes and cause your people, Lord,
to believe on you, to flee to you, to walk after you. to hold
close on you and look to you and trust you and never turn
away. Lord, we thank you for this day.
We thank you for this gospel. Thank you, Lord, that you sent
your Son and redeemed your people. Lord, wherever it's preached
today, we pray you would make your presence known in the heart
of your people, cause us to see you and know you, and know just
how real and true and living Christ our salvation is. Thank
you, Lord. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.