All right, you can return in
your Bibles to John chapter 11. One of my favorite ways of preaching,
I call it snapshot preaching. to myself, I don't know that
I've ever referred to it out loud that way, but in my mind. And it's when you take these
stories involving our Lord Jesus, and it's just like somebody took
a snapshot at a particular moment. And I don't know about you, when
I look at pictures You know, even pictures of people I don't
know, don't know what they were doing for sure, but you look
at them and I wonder what they were doing, what brought them
to this point and where did they go from there? And while most of us are just
point and shoot type people, there are those who have an artistic
capacity and it is an artistic talent, they know when to push
that button. They see the moment coming and
they snap it at the right time. And in that moment, they capture
what actually involves a whole lot of time. And this story of our Lord, when
he learns that Lazarus has died, He first hears that he's sick,
but then he doesn't leave where he was for two or three days.
And then he heads toward Bethany. Now this Lazarus that died was,
it's interesting, he's in a sense a prominent person in the scriptures.
You hear about him, but you never hear from him. There's not a
word of Lazarus recorded in the scriptures. And you never hear about him,
apart from the fact that he is the brother of Mary and Martha. Now, I don't know who the younger
and older were. I know the younger and older
of the two sisters, Martha was older than Mary. And I kind of
suspect that Martha was the oldest of all. She seems to take charge
of the household. But you never hear the account
of Lazarus' doings, you never hear anything about what he said.
He was just there. And this little home in Bethany,
made up of two sisters and a brother, was a special place to our Lord
Jesus. Now, we say that Jesus Christ is God,
and he is. But we also lay claim to the
mystery that he was a human being, every bit as human as you and
I are. And he was possessed of all the
limitations, all the liabilities, all the weaknesses of humanity,
of sinless humanity anyway. He did miracles, but the scriptures
teach us He did those miracles, not by the power of His own divine
nature, but because the Spirit had been poured out on Him without
measure. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to do those things.
And if the Spirit of the Lord wanted to do them through us,
He could. He walked on the water. Spirit of God enabled Him to
do that. He healed the blind. Spirit of God enabled him to
do that. And here he's about to raise
the dead. Spirit of God enabled him to do that. He lived so far as his own natural strengths
and abilities. He lived in this world just like
you and me, with the exception he had no sin. Therefore, he had a kind of affection
for some that he might not have for others, even among, you might
say, those who were his followers. These three people seem to be
very special and very dear to the Lord Jesus Christ. I doubt
there was ever a time he went to Jerusalem that he did not
stop in Bethany. and visit Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.
Bethany was only about two miles away from Jerusalem. In fact,
we get the impression that when he was Jerusalem, he stayed at
the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. But he's gotten word
that Lazarus is sick. After waiting a couple of days,
he starts making his way toward Bethany. And he says, we need
to go wake our friend Lazarus. And the disciples, misunderstanding
him, said, well, if he's asleep, that'll be good for him. And
so the Lord made a plea and said, Lazarus is dead. And I'm glad
that I didn't go earlier. He could have gone earlier and
healed him. And that would have been remarkable. But he said, I waited, waited
till he died. Because by waiting, the glory of God will be revealed
even more remarkably than if I had rushed and gotten right
there to Bethany. Let me pause and just make a
little aside here. We get in trials. And you know, a lot of times
when the trial first comes on us, I can deal with this. Grace of God will see me through.
And it just keeps going. Grace of God will see me through.
Grace of God will say, when is this ever going to be over? When
will it end? Oh God, why don't you come now?
Why don't you relieve me now? I'm nearly broken. That's what
he's waiting for. Our Lord waits to deliver that
the deliverance might be more glorious and that we might learn
better his power to deliver us from whatever may come our way. And as he nears Bethany, The
two sisters, each taking their turn, go out and meet him out there. And both of them, just like the disciples,
were probably wondering, you know, why didn't you come? If you'd have been here, Lazarus
wouldn't have died. Well, that's why he didn't come,
because Lazarus had to die. And Mary said, if you'd been
here, my brother would not have died. And I don't think that
these were rebellious challenges. They were a mixture of faith and love confused. Because if you believe the Lord
Jesus Christ, and you love the Lord Jesus Christ and he loves
you, it's sometimes confusing, why did he let this happen? He
could have stopped it. And you're not doubting his right
to do as he pleases, you're not doubting that, necessarily doubting
his love, it's just not making sense to you. And you know, when
God's providence doesn't make sense to you, it's okay to say
so. Lord, I don't understand this. You're not saying, God,
I think you're unwise, you're just saying, I'm not seeing the
wisdom yet. James, in talking about trials,
he says, if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives
it freely. And so, Jesus makes his way on into Bethany
there, and he saw Mary weeping, the Jews who'd come along to
weep with her. And now, generally when we think
of the word weeping, you know, it's someone standing there silently,
you know, and a tear comes down their cheek or something like
that. These folks, when they wept, it was loud. They were not, most civilizations
are not like the American and I imagine it's the same in Britain
and some of these others where we keep our emotions stifled
inside. We don't make public displays.
And it can be a little unsettling when you go somewhere else where,
you know, when they weep, they wail. I mean, you know, if we
ever heard an American do that, we'd think the end of the world
was upon us. But that's the way they do it. And so these people
here, they're not just, you know, little sniffles and this and
that. They are weeping profusely. They're crying out. And he says, where have you laid
him? She says, come and see Lord. Now, Of course, they didn't have
the embalming practices we have today. When a person died, they
did their best to get them in the ground real quick within
a day because the process of decay would begin and it'd be
a pretty ugly sight. And so, you know, what we might
call family visitation, that's kind of what this is. The best
they could do is take you to where the tomb was. We do, as human beings, don't
we, we have a certain, there's a certain significance to place. Now I haven't been in the Huntington,
West Virginia area in nearly two years now. But generally
speaking, when I go there, I make a trip out to the cemetery and
go to where my parents are and just stand there. Read the, they're
in one of those, they're not in a grave, they're in one of
those, I guess you'd call it a mausoleum, except there's no
inside to it. It's just a big cubicle structure
with drawers in it. But being right there, and I
know their bodies are up in there, that has a significance to us
and allows us to do some emotional processing. People go out to
cemeteries and stand there at the grave of their loved one,
and being that close is meaningful. So when our Lord, he comes, where
have you laid him? Well, our Lord could have mourned
Lazarus, you might think, you know, as well, why he could have
stayed in Jerusalem and mourned Lazarus. But there's something
about being as near as you can be. And I look at all this, and
one thing that impresses me is the humanity of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, we often emphasize his deity,
his godness, because Maybe it's a reaction. I remember when I
was in my teen years and in early adulthood, you know, he had songs
like, put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee. And
that's, they treated Christ, you know, he's my buddy, he's
my pal, and that kind of thing. And they so, they were so familiar
with him, if that's the right word to use. It just didn't seem
appropriate. They didn't treat him as you
would treat a Lord. And so you tend to emphasize
the other direction. This is God Almighty. This is
the one who created the heavens and the earth. Our brother read
about it. This is someone you don't trifle
with. At the same time, he is fully a man. And even though
he knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead,
The scene of Lazarus' death brought him to tears, caused him to weep. The sorrow of his friend being
dead and the sorrow of all those around him who were sorrowed
over Lazarus' death affected him. The book of Hebrews says we do
not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings
of our infirmity. He was tried in every point,
just like you and me, yet without sin. Our Lord did not come into
this scene rising above it all. saying, you know, don't worry
everybody, I got this, I'll take care of it. He came in, he entered
into it, he was touched by it, he was moved by it, and he wept
and he wasn't acting. Now trying to hold both views
of our Lord in our mind at the same time is difficult, but both
are true. He's the mighty God, the everlasting
Father. and he's a man who weeps over
the loss of a friend. You who have lost loved ones,
know this, the Lord knows how you felt. Brother Bruce Crabtree preached
the message at Brother Don Fortner's funeral. It had been about a year ago.
And I was listening to it, and you all have heard Bruce preach
a few times, and he's got a way about him. I just love to hear
his preaching. But he says that there is not,
he said, for the believer, there is not a place of trial where
he can go that he will not find the footprints of the Savior
ahead of him. even into the tomb, he's been
there. Even at the tomb, broken with
the grief that surrounds us in our experience of this life,
and in particular, the experience of the end of it. Isn't that
a wonder? I don't know about you, I can't
really get my head wrapped around it. You know, some things you
just stand in awe of it. You don't try to explain it,
because there is no explanation. People have read this, verse
35, Jesus wept and tried to figure out You know, what he was weeping
about. I had one preacher say, well
he wept because he knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the
dead and that meant Lazarus was going to have to come back from
heaven to earth and he could hardly stand to do that to him. You
know? No. I don't think that there's
any secrets behind this. There's just a wonder. Jesus
wept. Paul says, I would not have you
to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you
sorrow not, even as others that have no hope." Now, he didn't
say, I don't want you to be ignorant about these things so that you
won't sorrow. He says, I don't want you to sorrow like those
that have no hope. But the loss of a loved one is
the loss of a loved one, believer or not. And when God sees fit to take
from us someone dear to us, it hurts us just like it does anybody
else. And there is no high spirituality
in being able to stand there stoically and acting like it
doesn't bother you. Our Lord wept at the tomb of
Lazarus. It's perfectly acceptable that we weep at the departure
of our loved ones, even our brothers and sisters in Christ. We don't
weep as those that have no hope, but we weep. But as the Lord
was there weeping, and he may have been weeping very loudly,
as was the custom. Everybody's got their picture
of Jesus, and they generally picture Jesus acting like whatever
their particular society says people ought to act like. I assume
the Lord wept just like those around him, what would have been
considered normal. for the day and age and the culture
in which he lived. He expressed his grief. And those
that saw him said this, see how he loved him. Now, the word translated see,
and that's okay. You can't do much better. But it's not a, It's not a command. In your King James Version, it's
translated behold. And it's not so much a command,
you know, to you to look at this or observe this. It's a one word
attention getter is what it is. Behold, how he loved him. Look at this, how he loved him. You could full well understand
the disciples weeping when our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified
and they didn't understand, you know, he's dead, they don't know
what to do. Mary Magdalene there at the tomb and she's gone to
do what love and faith require her to do for his body and she
can't find him and she's weeping and sorrow upon sorrow. and they noticed it. I love it that our Lord could
weep. I love it that our Lord is moved
by the feelings of my infirmities. I love it that when I face conflict, face
trial, and am broken down. He knows what that means. And
when I pray to him, I do not pray to one who stood above it
all and never experienced it and doesn't know really by experience
what I'm talking about. But let's spend a few minutes
on this one phrase that they said about our Lord Jesus. Behold
how he loved him. Maybe one of the reasons that
we don't know anything about Lazarus other than his name and
that the Lord loved him. Maybe that's on purpose. Because
if we learned other things about Lazarus, we'd be trying to figure
out whether we fit that pattern, and could therefore think the
Lord loves us. But we don't know anything about Lazarus, except
that he died, and that the Lord raised him from the dead, and
most of all, that the Lord loved him. You imagine that? Now, I don't know what kind of
household this was. I don't know if they were what
would be called successful in their day or if they were of
the so-called peasantry, maybe even to the point of being almost
impoverished. I don't know. I assume since
he told them to take away the stone, they were people of some
substance or they wouldn't have had that kind of grave, the tomb
cut into the side of a mountain. But then again, maybe they just
had some rich relatives that let them use it. Don't know.
Here's what we know. Lazarus, the Lord loved him. The love of our Lord Jesus Christ
toward his people is indescribable. I know we could give some doctrinal
explanations of them, and there's nothing wrong with doing that.
We do the best we can to understand things. But love, true love of
any kind, really, it can be experienced, but it cannot be transmitted
by words. You just, you can't describe
it. I love my wife, and if you have
a spouse that you love, you know what I'm talking about when I
say that. But if you don't, that is if you don't have a spouse
that you love, you probably don't know what I'm talking about.
You can't describe what love is. But every one of us wants
to be loved. A fellow that works with youth
claims to be a Christian. I don't know altogether what
he believes, but he's been working with youth ever since I was a
youth. written quite a few books, but
I was reading one of his books, oh, 25 or so years ago. And he
says that when he would do these high school assemblies, back
when they were allowed to do religious high school assemblies,
he said, I would start every lecture or whatever like this.
And you can imagine what it's like. You get a high school full
of kids all crammed into the conference room or the auditorium
or whatever, and they're all talking to each other. And this
was how he would get their attention. He'd say, every one of you is
afraid that you will be unable to love or unable to be loved. He said, every time. Complete
silence. It is at the very core of our
nature, the desire to love and to be loved. For something that lies so near
to the core of our nature, it's remarkable we practice so little
of it. It just shows you what a mess we are as human beings. But we want to be able to love,
and we want to know that we are loved. If we came to the conclusion
that nobody loved us, well, I'm sure there's a lot
of people that have committed suicide because they came to believe
that. Just couldn't live a life unloved. We spend a great deal
of our energy trying to present ourselves as someone worthy of
love, so there's a great bit, probably the majority of what
there is to know about us, we hide it. Because we figure if
anybody ever found out about it, they wouldn't love us. And then we want to love. There are very few people who
live an entirely selfish life, and they are the most miserable
people in the world. If a person's incapable of loving
others, what a miserable existence that must be. We are made in the image of God,
that is, Adam and Eve were. And those who've been born again,
I know they've been renewed in the image of God. I don't know
what to say about those who are yet dead in trespasses and sins. But if we bear the image of God,
then there's one thing certain about us. Love is a part of our
character because God is love. Now, I think it's interesting
that John put it that way. God is love. He didn't say God
is loving. He didn't say God is an adjective.
He said God is a noun. God is love. So much is love a part of his
existence that you cannot simply add it as an adjective, something
that simply describes him. It is, in some respects, the
very essence of what he is. So much so, says John, that he
that does not love does not know God. Now, we don't claim that he loves
everybody. His love is not universal. But we know this, wherever his
love is, everything's good. Love will always propel the person
who loves to do everything within their power and wisdom to do
good to the ones they love. Now, when we were growing up,
There's times we probably thought our parents hated us. We may
have even said so. You must hate me. You won't let
me such and such. They didn't let you such and
such because they loved you. But they weren't perfect, were they? Their power couldn't keep you
out of trouble completely. They didn't have the reach. Their
wisdom did not always know what was right. You who are parents, you know
exactly what I'm talking about. You want to do the best for your
children. But you don't always know what
the best is. And even if you did, you might
not have the power to carry it out. But you know our God, he
has no limit to his wisdom or his power. And his love therefore
takes that infinite wisdom and power and directs it towards
the objects of his love. These people who looked at our
Lord, and I'm sure they did not understand the full weight of
what they were saying, but when they looked at the Lord Jesus
and said, behold how he loves him, they were saying, everything's
gonna be all right with Lazarus. If that man loves him, everything's
good. If that man loves him, everything's
gonna turn out fine. Behold how he loved them. Let's
just look at a little bit about the love of the Lord. Jeremiah
31. If you turn back to Jeremiah
31. Several years ago, they came
out with a movie called, just called Luther. And it was a movie
of the, a biographical movie of Martin Luther. And my history
professor, his arrow of, arrow, area of narrow expertise was
Martin Luther. And so having watched that movie,
I wrote to him. I said, Dr. McGoldrick, I said,
have you seen this movie? And if you did, did they do a
good job? And he wrote back and he was just kind of over the
moon about it. He thought it was wonderful that they, you
know, had captured the essence of what the man was. And one
of the scenes in there, and I can identify with it so well, you
know, when he entered a monastery and became essentially a monk,
you know, he's the kind of guy, whatever he did, he did it whole
hog. He was completely devoted to
it. And he would, he would lay on a cold floor to pray. thinking,
you know, the more miserable you are, the more God will take
notice of what you're doing. He beat himself with thorn bushes,
that kind of stuff. He would pray way into the night,
study, gave himself no rest, made himself absolutely miserable.
And his mentor, and I don't know what religious title the man
may have had, but his mentor, came into his cell one time,
seeing him abusing himself like that. And he says, Martin, what
are you doing? And, you know, he tried to explain
to Martin. In fact, I heard one time he
went in for confession. And he, you know, he would sit
there and just think all he could about all the wrong things he
might have done. And he'd get done confessing and his confessor
said, come back when you got something real to confess about.
Meaning, you know, the things he would confess were little,
what we would call just a little pittance. That's how he, but
anyway, that mentor of his said, Martin, what do you want? He
said, I just want to know that God loves me. Why? Because as anybody who understands
what love is, if you know that God loves you, you know that
all is well. Nothing bad can happen to you. Unpleasant things can happen,
but nothing bad. If God loves you, you know that everything
that comes your way comes from the hand of one who loves you.
and who's doing whatever it is he's doing out of the motivation
of his love. So here it's written, behold
how he loved him. Yeah, he loved him, he still
loved him at that point, and he still loves him. But it says
here in Jeremiah 31 verse three, the Lord appeared to us in the
past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Now that doesn't mean that there
was a point in time at which God's love for his people started,
and it's gone on ever since. God's love toward his people
never started, it's always been there. It's everlasting in both
directions, if you will. He's an eternal being. He exists
outside time and space. But he talks to us in terms of
time and space, because we can't understand anything else. So
he calls it an everlasting love. the fact that the love of God
to me is everlasting. Now, I didn't try to look this
up in original languages. I have very little training in
Hebrew anyway. But there is a difference between
eternal and everlasting. Eternal kind of touches on the
timelessness. kind of signifies things outside
any consideration of time. Everlasting means it endures
for all time. And if a thing lasts, everlasting
means it lasts forever. If a thing lasts, that's what
it means is it's enduring, as it were, wear and tear, but it's
never worn nor torn. It takes its beatings. It takes
its abuse. It's like if you had a set of
everlasting tires. Well, that doesn't mean you just
hung them up on a wall in the garage and they never lost their
tread. No, everlasting tires mean they
keep lasting. They're going over gravel roads,
they're going over paved roads, they're going off-road, and they
just last and last and last against all the abuse heaped upon them. And when I read there, I've loved
you with an everlasting love. What's elasting? Me, my sin. It's kind of like a big nail
in the middle of the road. He runs over it and the tire doesn't
deflate. It just keeps on going. It lasts and lasts. It had already lasted forever
before you even showed up in the world. And you showed up
in all your rebellion and he was still loving you. He revealed
that love to you and caused you to love him. And when he did
that, you thought you'd never do anything against him again.
And all you proved by that is you still didn't know yourself
very well. And since that time, you've heaped abuse upon that
love, and it lasts and lasts and lasts. When did our Lord
Jesus start loving Lazarus? Before the world began. And at a point in time, he and
Lazarus came face to face. And Lazarus started loving the
Lord Jesus Christ, but the Lord had already been loving him with
an everlasting love. And he stood there at that tomb,
filled with all the grief and emotion of a human being, having a friend lost to death,
and he weeps. And that everlasting love expresses
itself in those human terms. There's that song, and we haven't
sung it in years, I don't think. Depth of mercy, can there be?
Mercy still reserved for me. And the last line of one of those
stanzas, I never understood it, but it says, Jesus weeps and
loves me still. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to
understand how things are transpiring in heaven, but Jesus wept over Lazarus.
It wouldn't totally shock me to find out he's wept over me.
I know I've given him plenty of reasons to, but he weeps and
he loves me still. And when I'm done with his life,
he'll still be loving me. And if you're in him, he'll still
be loving you. Look over at John chapter 13
now. It was just before, this is verse
one, it was just before the Passover feast, Jesus knew that the time
had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having
loved His own who were in the world, He showed them the full
extent of His love. He loved them to the end. And
not meaning just till the end of time or the end of His work. The idea was He loved them perfectly. It's the same word that's used
when our Lord said it is finished. He showed them the fullness of
it, and what did he do? Rather than read it, I'm sure
most of you are familiar with the story. They're sitting around
the table having a Passover feast. He took off his robe, put on
the garb of a servant, and he went around and washed their
feet. And when he was done washing
their feet, He put back on his robe and it says, he went back
to his place. And that was a symbol to them
of what his love, how he expressed his love toward them. Because
he was God over all, blessed forever, living in heaven, robed
in all the glory of the divine nature and yet it says, He did
not consider that something to be grasped or held on to, but
rather he let that go, just like when he took off his outer robe,
and therefore just had on the clothes of a servant. He took
that off, he left his place. And he came down here and washing
the feet is a picture of our sins being washed away. And our
Lord Jesus, King of glory, think of this now, King of glory, who
tells this angel, go here and do that. And the angel goes there
and does that and tells them this way. He's got absolute authority. And what did he do? He took on
the nature of a servant, the form of a servant. And he washed
our feet. How did he do that in reality? Well, they stripped him of his
robe and they nailed him to a cross,
the most despised of all men in the world. And by the shedding
of his blood, he washed all the filth of our existence away. And when he was done, He put
back on his robe, his glory, and he went back to his place. Hearing as the love of our Lord
revealed. What are we just saying? He left
his father's throne above, so free, so infinite, his grace
emptied himself of all but love. and died for his own helpless
race. Imagine that. The wealthy people of this world,
and I'm glad they do it, but they'll give to the poor, but
they don't ever make themselves poor to do it. You don't see the wealthy who
generally live in their fine clothes and drive in their fine
cars, even if they're going to go out among the poor. They'll
put on their fine clothes and drive in their fine car to where
the poor are, and then they'll, you know, get out whatever it
is they're going to give to them and make sure there's some photographers
there to take pictures of it while they pass it out. Our Lord
came here in the lowliness of a servant. He took upon himself
our nature, being found in fashion as a man. And he submitted himself,
the Lord of glory submitting, submitted himself to death, even
the death of the cross. In 1 John chapter 3, it says,
Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us. Now you say, well, Jesus isn't
the Father. Well, he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the
Father. I'm not gonna try to unravel all those things. There's
no difference in the love of the Father and the love of the
Son and the love of the Holy Spirit towards God's people. But behold what manner of love
the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the
children of God. Everybody likes to look up their
ancestry. I like what Tim James said, he said, I'm not gonna
look up mine because I'm afraid I'll find horse thieves and robbers.
That's all that'll be back there. Oh, children of God. Paul normally referred to as
his sons of God, but that's because he was talking within a legal
framework, and sons have particular rights. But John says children, a word
that communicates not only a familial relationship, a biological relationship
or whatever you want, but the tenderness and care. Our Father, our Lord, oh how
He cares for His own. How He loves them. He loves them
when they're trying to do right. He loves them when they're, for
lack of a better way to put it, putting their thumbs in their
ears, waving their fingers, and sticking out their tongue at
him. He still loves them. He disciplines them. There's
never any wrath in him towards them. If he brings unpleasant
things into their lives, it's for their discipline, their chastening,
whatever. He never punishes them. Punishment
is about exacting a penalty, making them pay. He doesn't make
us pay. His firstborn son, an only begotten
son, he made the payment. Us, he just disciplines. And there's never a time, child
of God, when you have stepped outside the love of God. You
may not be able to sense it, You may think you've out-sinned
it. You may wonder if you ever had
it. But behold, how he loved him. And one of these days, when we
can see everything face-to-face, with the absolute clarity of
being right there, we'll say, behold, how he loved us. Eric.