All right, if you would return
in your Bibles to John chapter 11. John chapter 11. Last night I was reading some
of the bulletins from our brethren that I received via email, and
one of them had referred to this phrase, And it is found in verse 44. And of course they quoted it
in the King James and it says, and he that was dead came forth. And that just struck me. What a ridiculous statement. I mean, if you're going to look
at this from the eyes of the flesh, He that is dead, he that was
dead came forth. That can't be. That doesn't happen. I've never seen it. Have you?
I've never seen anything even close to it. Even in this world,
there are states of sickness from which we have no expectation
that people will recover. They are so sick and so near
to death that we've given up any hope that they will stay
alive for very long. So even before death, we come
to the conclusion that life is impossible. But we have before us not a man
near unto death with an incurable disease, Not someone who has
just had maybe a heart attack or something and fallen to the
floor and is not breathing and has no pulse. Not someone even who fell through
the ice and it was quite a while before they can get them out.
Because now, you know, they claim, well, with falling in such cold
water, you last a little longer. It's not that. This is a guy
who's been dead for four days. This is a man who really, truly
died. And he had been dead for four
days. And I've never seen a human body. that had been dead for four days
without benefit of embalming. But I've seen other animals four
days after they died. When I moved here, they still
had your typical method of getting rid of dead pigs. You hauled
them out to the end of your driveway and sooner or later the rendering
truck would get there. And it might be a few days. And
it was tough to drive by those places. Martha was right. Four days dead. There was a good reason for having
that stone over the opening. Lazarus was literally graveyard
dead. There had been others who had
been raised from the dead before. But it had always happened soon
after they had died. Some of the prophets raised the
dead. I say the prophets, you know
what I mean. God raised the dead, but he did it through the prophet
to confirm the prophet's standing as a spokesman for God. But none
of them went into a graveyard and said, roll away a stone.
and then bring back to life someone whose body had already gone through
so much decomposition, there was no way to make it work again. What happened here was impossible. It was impossible for Lazarus
to come out of there walking. He could have been brought out, Somebody could have gone in there
and, you know, they wrapped them up in linen cloths. That's the way they buried them.
And they would, they laid them on a shelf inside a cave like
this. And their body would just decompose
that way. And as an illustration of much of religion, someone
could have rolled that door back could have gone in there and
painted a face on that linen that covered up the face of the
dead man. Could have tied the various limbs and stuff to boards
and such and taken him outside and stood him up and said, behold,
he lives. And there would have been some
people that looked at it and thought, well, it doesn't look too good,
but hey, hallelujah. But all he'd have done was stand there. You know, that's what a lot of
religion is, is trying to make the dead look alive. One of the reasons that we emphasize
the doctrine of sin is not to make people feel bad. We're not trying to make people
feel worse than us, because they're not worse than us. We're not
trying to get them to stop sinning because that's not going to happen.
We talk about sin the way we do and the totality of our sinfulness. We emphasize it so much so that
people will understand the absolute desperation of their case, that
they're beyond help. They're beyond helping themselves.
After all, Lazarus has had four days to bring himself back to
life and hadn't got it done yet. And not all the doctors gathered
together in that day or even in this day could have brought
Lazarus back to life. When we speak of men being dead
in trespasses and sins, it's not simply so that we can stomp
around and yell or pound with our fist on the pulpit doctrines
that are difficult for people to accept. We say it because
it's true, and men won't quit trying until
they realize they're dead. You hear the old phrase, well,
while there's life, there's hope. That's true. There's no life. Hope is gone. For Lazarus, If someone said, is it possible
for Lazarus to walk out of there? No, it's not. But while it's not possible for
Lazarus to walk out of there, it is entirely possible for God
to cause Lazarus to walk out of there. You see, the Bible
is a record of the impossible. You think on all the things that
are written there. I realize not every detail of it involves
something that we would count impossible. I mean, when it says
that somebody walked from one city to another, yeah, that's
possible. But when you take the story as a whole, the message of the scriptures
as a whole, and when you look at many of the things that happened
in that in the scriptures. Why? It's full of things impossible
to man. You know, I cannot blame the
unbeliever. I cannot judge him harshly that
he believes that all that we see around us, the creation as
we experience it, I can understand why he thinks it's taken 14 billion
years to get here and the processes that are still active today were
active back then to form everything we see and even turn the non-living
into living matter and it continually ascended until you get to us. I can understand in some regard
why they would believe that. Though I'll be honest with you,
I don't think that's any more possible than what the scriptures
say. But that God created the heavens
and the earth in six days. That he said, let there be light,
and there was light, but he never said, let there be sun for another
three days. That he talked about morning
and evening of the first day, and yet there was no sun nor
moon. That plants were started on the
third day, People try to say, you know,
well, you've got to realize those weren't days, those were long
ages. Really? So plants were created on the
third day, which was really millions and millions of years, but the
sun was not created until the next day. So somehow or another,
plants got by without the sun for all that time. It is absolutely impossible.
that the heavens and the earth were created in six days. But it happened. You see, when
we say impossible, all that we're saying is, according to the laws
that we perceive now, the laws of physics, the laws of nature,
whatever, that can't happen. I can't fly. That's impossible. Why? I'm just too heavy, and my arms
don't have feathers, and I certainly don't have the
strength in my pecs to keep me up. It can't be done. You can
get out the paper, you can do the math, and all the people
that have jumped off buildings have proven we can't fly. That doesn't mean God can't make
us fly. And why is that? Why is it that
as the Lord Jesus Christ said to his disciples, that which
is impossible with man is possible with God. The reason that God
can do these things is because he's in charge of the laws. I mean, if you're in charge of
the laws, you can do anything. What we call physical law is
just whatever God says it is. And if he wants to change it
in order for something contrary to common law to happen, he can
do so. You can't take five loaves and
two fishes and feed 5,000 men and their families. You can't
do that. God can. You say, well, it's just impossible
because that just meant more and more food had to appear.
That's right. We can't make more and more food appear. God can. We talk about miracles. Do you
realize, from God's point of view, He's never done a miracle?
Why? Because it's just as easy for
Him to have things be one way as to be another. It is just
as easy for God to make a rock float as to make it fall. And I illustrate it once again
with that illustration of an author and his story. Now I can write a story and I
can set it on earth and make it subject to all the laws of
physics as we know it, but if I want to, I can write in there
that the sky turned green, and in my story it did. And it was
just as easy for me to write that as to not write it. Because I'm the author of the
story, and God's the author of this story we call reality. You know it's very liberating
when you understand that about God. And I suppose that's really
lying at the fundamental problem that people have in believing
in miracles, they just don't understand God. But once you
understand God, once you know how he relates to this creation,
you realize there really is absolutely nothing outside the abilities
of God. Because whatever happens, it
happened for this reason. God said so. Our reality is defined
by that. Consequently, all these things
we look at and we say that's impossible. Well, they are for
us. but they're not for God. Someone once defined faith this
way, and I thought it was a great definition of faith. Faith is
trusting God to do what only God can do. Think about that a minute. Faith
is trusting God to do what only God can do. You know, if you
have to say something like, well, I have faith that God can make
me well. So you got pneumonia. I got faith
that God can make me well, that's true. And I'll say, and I have
no problem saying this. If you get well, it's because
God made you well. But we also realize, even as
we say that we're going to go to the hospital and they're going
to put IV antibiotics in us or whatever it is they do. And we're gonna lay there and
eventually we'll probably get well. And so in some respects, we were
not dealing with the impossible, were we? Medicine's come along
far enough, they can manage most pneumonia and restore people
to health. But now, here's something nobody
but God can do. Raise a man who's been dead four
days. And to believe that is to have
remarkable, let's not use the word remarkable, to believe that
is to have a faith that came from somewhere else other than
here. That faith with which we just
a few weeks ago preached, without faith it's impossible to please
God, but understand that faith that is pleasing to God didn't
come from here. It didn't come from this world.
There's nothing in this world, nothing natural to this world
that could cause God to find pleasure in it. The faith with which God's people
trust Him is a miraculous thing in and of itself. It comes from
Him. It comes from outside the world
and therefore it has the capacity to believe those things which
are impossible in this world. For example, the Lord talked
about how difficult it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of God. And the disciples answered, who then can be saved? And that's
really what he, that was the question his whole little talk
was getting them to ask. You know, the better part of
teaching is often getting people to ask the right question. They
said, who then can be saved? And our Lord said, with man,
it's impossible. I can't bring you to life. You've
been dead too long. There is no CPR for the spirit. With man it's impossible, but
with God all things are possible. Now this impossible act done
by Lazarus, because it says the dead man came out, we realize
that he did not come out because of anything he did. That is,
he did not come out Because as his rotting corpse laid there,
somehow or another, a few synapses still worked and the idea came
into his mind, I should get up and walk out of here. And somehow
or another, there was still enough muscle tissue and all that still
working. And he got his heart to start
beating. No, that just can't be. Lazarus cannot walk out unless
and until God does something to Lazarus that only God can
do, and he does it without asking Lazarus's permission. You know, in all the scriptures,
I cannot think of a better natural, shall we call it, natural world,
real world illustration of the saving of a sinner than the raising
of Lazarus. There's so much that can be taught
about salvation by way of this story. But you'll notice here
that Lazarus, in order to come out of that tomb, it is necessary that God do something
without getting Lazarus's permission to do it first. Why? Dead men can't give permission. Can you imagine if the Lord said,
roll away the stone? And then with a loud voice, Jesus said, Lazarus, is it okay
if I give you life? Everybody would have been looking
in the tomb as soon as the Lord said that. What? Why are you asking Lazarus permission? He can't answer you. But that's what people tell folks,
or that's what many preachers tell folks. God won't save you
unless you let him. Well, if he's waiting on you
to give permission, it isn't going to ever happen. If He's waiting on you to give
Him permission to give you spiritual life, it's never going to happen. I can stand up here and plead
with you. I could preach about hell and make you scared. I could
preach to you about heaven and make you look forward to it and
want it. And I could preach about doctrines and you could lay hold
of those. And I could preach all kinds of things. The one
thing I can never make you do is believe God because faith
is the act of a living spirit and I cannot give life to your
dead spirit. Now, I'll keep right on calling
on people to believe the gospel and be saved. Why? Well, that's one thing I've
been sent to do. We don't just train people in
doctrine. We call on them to act upon the
doctrine that we've taught them. However, we do understand this,
our call is never going to make it happen. We call with the hope
and the prayer that God will join his call to that call. And if he does, the dead will
come out. The Lord Jesus Christ, we know
why this particular event was done. It happened not very long
before he was crucified. But all through our Lord's ministry,
He was giving stronger and stronger proofs of just who he is. And this was the next to strongest
proof he ever gave. He said, well, what was the strongest
proof when he walked out of his own tomb? And as near as we can tell, he
didn't wait for the angel to roll the door out of the rock
out of the way. The angel rolled the stone away
from our Lord's tomb, not so that the Lord could get out,
but so that the disciples could get in and see that he was no
longer there. The greatest proof that our Lord
ever gave that he is the Son of God, even God himself, when
he raised himself from the dead. But this is right up there next
to it. And this was the most remarkable
proof of who he is that was given before the crucifixion. By the word of his mouth and
the power that went with that word, a dead man. A dead man came out of his tomb. Now it was done. This was done
that the glory of God might be revealed. It says in verse 40,
did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory
of God? People say, well, when I see
it, I'll believe it. Well, if you wait till you see it before
you believe it, it'll be too late to believe it. Faith does
not come by sight. Faith comes by hearing. Hearing
by the word of Christ. Everyone is going to see the
risen Christ. Everyone is going to know the
truth. But not everyone is going to
be saved through that knowledge. Only those who have been born
again by the sovereign work of the Spirit of God and made to
believe that God has raised Christ from the dead and that he is
Lord. They will call upon his name and the Lord will answer
and will save them. To see the glory of God and not
die. to be able to see him who even Moses was told no
man can see my face and live. But it would reveal the glory
of God and if you look back here at verse 14 now we didn't have
time to read the whole story but part of the story is this
news got to the Lord Jesus that his friend Lazarus was sick and
near to death. And rather than rush there and
heal him, as we probably would have thought was the right thing
to do, our Lord didn't do anything for two days, two or three days.
He just stayed where they were. And it seems kind of heartless. Why would the Lord wait? Why
would He prolong the grief Martha and Mary. Why would he allow
Lazarus to continue suffering and then to die? He said we need to go back to Judea,
that's verse 7. In other words, he waited the
appropriate time and he said, now let's go. And he did. And they went back, and as they're
going back, he's trying to explain to them, without giving the whole
story away, he's trying to explain to them why he's doing things
the way he did them. And he says, In verse 11, our friend Lazarus
has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up. And the
disciples didn't understand what he meant, and we wouldn't have.
And they said in very practical terms, well, Lord, if he sleeps,
maybe he'll get better. I mean, you know, that's about
the best medicine they had back there, rest. So then he told
him plainly, Lazarus is dead. Now people came and told him
that Lazarus was sick. The Lord knew it before they
got there. And he had not yet received word that Lazarus was
dead, but he already knew it. He said, Lazarus is dead. And then notice this next line.
And for your sake, I am glad. Now when brother Mahan passed
away here a month ago, for his sake I was glad. And I was also
glad somewhat for his family. He'd become a very old man and
it was very difficult for him to, well, he couldn't hardly
hear and just very difficult for him to enjoy life at all.
And he longed to go. And while they would miss him,
they longed for him to be able to go and behold the face of
the one who saved him and whose name he had preached all these
many years. But normally, Well, you don't hear someone
say, well, so-and-so's dead, and I'm glad, unless you really
don't like that person. And then you probably wouldn't
say it out loud, even if you thought it. Our Lord said, Lazarus is dead,
and I'm glad. Why could the Lord say that?
Because he saw things differently than we would see things. Our
Lord could see the end. Our Lord knew what was going
to happen and what would be the result of what happened. And
it was all going to be for good. And therefore, He could give
thanks and even be glad that that which would normally be
considered tragic had happened. Boy, is there a lesson in that?
Can we learn to look at the events of our lives as difficult as
they may be? all the setbacks, all the frustrations,
all the sorrows, even death? Can we look at all of this and
say, so-and-so is dead and I'm glad, or so-and-so is dying and
I'm glad? Now, it does not mean that we're
glad about the death in and of itself, or the sickness in and
of itself, or whatever trouble it may be, but we can say, I
am glad. Why? I'm glad I was not there
so that you may believe. But let us go to him. The Lord
brings things to our lives which seem insurmountable. Problems we can't solve. Mountains
we can't climb. You know, people say God will
never give you more than you can handle. That's not true. It is the privilege. I'm almost afraid to say this,
lest the Lord say, okay, Joe, this week I'm going to see if
you really believe what you said. I believe it because I read it
in the scriptures and I'm going to tell it to you. But I realized
this, I wouldn't, if this happened to me, I wouldn't do very well
at it, but we have the privilege. as the children of God of being
confronted with things that only our Father can fix. And then
watch him fix them. And watch him bring something
beautiful out of what looked very ugly. And only God-given faith can
look right into the face of the most horrible things and say,
this is good. And though it brings me sorrow,
I am glad of this. The Lord has brought it. He has
brought it so that I might believe. Our Lord tests us. He tries us. He stretches us beyond our limits. Until we cry, it's impossible.
And then he says, watch. And we watch. And he acts. And we believe. It was written, this thing was
done, that the glory of God might be revealed, that His disciples
might believe, that they might start to believe that He is who
He's been saying He is all along. And this story happened in order
that it might demonstrate the hardness of the human heart. It says, read here in verse 47,
news of this resurrection from the dead got to the chief priests
and Pharisees, so they called a meeting to the Sanhedrin. That's
the ruling council of the Jews. What are we accomplishing? They
asked. Here is a man performing many miraculous signs. If we
let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And then
the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. Talk about going over somebody's
head. They did not deny that he raised from the dead someone
who'd been dead for four days. They didn't deny it. They believed
that it was true. And they're worried about a Roman
army? What they should have said is,
I guess we were wrong about him all along. I mean it was getting
harder and harder not to believe what he said because he kept
doing greater and greater things. But this I cannot ignore. He
just raised a man that's been dead for four days. Nobody but
God can do that. This is our Messiah. This is
the one we've been waiting for. This is God come among us in
the form of a man. Let us worship him. Why didn't
they do that? There is no amount of visible
proof that will ever make a man believe. It will help the faith
of those who already have faith. But sight does not create faith. And so these people showed the
hardness of their hearts. They showed that indeed, as we
preach and as the scriptures testify, man is spiritually dead
because here they have before them an impossibility that came
to pass. And rather than it working repentance
and faith in them, it hardened them and confirmed in them their decision
to put him to death. You don't need any further proof
of total depravity than this right here. All right. The dead man came out. Now, if we will go forth looking
and seeing people as dead in trespasses and sins, then we
will content ourselves in using the only means that God has ever
ordained for raising the spiritually dead. And that's the preaching
of the gospel, which is the voice of Christ. Certainly it's the
word of Christ. All the things that religion
does, and I'm using the Christian religion, and I'm using it in
the broad sense of the word, all the stuff that's going on,
the entertainment, the various issues they get involved in.
I went to the website of one of the local churches and just
want to find out what they believe, what they're about. It was remarkable
how much you could read and never find the word Christ. Never. I mean, it was there eventually,
but it's like, this is the small part. Their church was founded
according to how they think you ought to have church and what
the church ought to be doing. And therefore, it attracts people
because people are interested in doing. And they like to have
challenges set before them because once they achieve or perform
the challenge, they can pat themselves on the back, I'm doing well.
But we're not, our message And what we're about is not what
the church is supposed to be doing. It's not a message of
how the church is supposed to act. It is a message of what
God has done through Jesus Christ. He has done the impossible. He has caused the dead to live.
He's caused those of us spiritually blind to see. Lazarus, come out,
he said. I looked these things up in the
original languages, because sometimes you can catch some meaning that
you might not get in a translation. And the words where the Lord
said, come out, are different from the words when it says,
the dead man came out. And so I looked up this word
to see wherever else it appears. in the Scriptures, and it only
appears nine times. Three of them are Matthew, Mark, and Luke talking
about the same event. But in all occasions, but one
or two of them, they have reference to coming to Christ. being beckoned in a friendly
way. For instance, twice in the book
of Revelation the angel says, come and see, come and see, and
what he's calling on John to come and see is the glorious
works of God. It's not, come here, that's the
way he sounded to Southern, come here, Like you might say to your
child when they're in trouble, you come here. That's not what's
here. Come here. Come to me. And Lazarus, and here the words
are just the normal words to come out of someplace. He came out. He came out, and the only reason was because
the Lord Jesus Christ called him and said, come here, come
to me. And you, who have come out of
your spiritual tomb, here's why. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
you, come here. Come here, I want to show you
something. Come here, close to me. Come here. We who preach, all who testify,
we are to do the best we can to speak as the Lord speaks. Certainly we speak what the Lord
speaks. It is in his power, or let's
say according to his will, whether he's going to add his power to
it, and make it cause somebody to come, but we keep saying it.
But notice this about Lazarus when he came out. Said his hands
and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his
face. He came out and he still looked
like a dead man. And we who have heard the voice
of the Savior and have been given life and have walked out of our
tombs still look like dead men. We're still wrapped up in the
clothes of death. But our Lord said to them, and
I suppose it was those standing around or maybe directly to his
disciples, I don't know, but I like this. He did what only
he could do, raise Lazarus from the dead. But now here's something
the others could do, take off the grave clothes and let him
go. What are the grave clothes? The grave clothes are those legalistic
forms of religion by which everyone is bound until the Lord Jesus
Christ gives them life. and they begin listening to and
learning the grace of God. And little by little, those linen
wrappings start to unravel, and they get freer and freer and
freer. My job, at least part of it,
as the pastor of this congregation, is to remove your grave clothes. to take off from you that which
bound you to death before. Now, I didn't make you alive,
but I know you are alive, you who are alive. I can tell why.
You're walking. It may be a funny walk, because
after all, how can you walk when your legs have been bound up
in little tiny steps like that? But you're walking. And here's
an interesting thing I noticed. It says the cloth was on his
face. How did he know how to get out? How did he know what
direction to go? He heard the voice of the Savior
and he followed what he heard. There wasn't anything else to
direct him. But as time goes by and we hear
his voice and follow him according to whatever grace has given us,
These bindings begin to fall off, and that cloth across our face
begins to get thinner and thinner, and we begin to see him more
and more, until finally, finally, he says to us, come forth the last time. When we're lying there, with the death of this life right
upon us. And by death, he brings us into
everlasting life. That's impossible, I know. That's
why the Lord, it is the Lord that does it. We think we're alive right now,
and spiritually speaking, every believer is. But this experience
we have now is nothing but a walking death. And one of these days,
the Lord is going to call our name, say, come here, I'm going
to show you something. And we will come forth and we
will see as we've never seen before. And we will walk as we
never walked before. And we will have experienced
the impossible. Well, may the Lord add his blessing
to this word.