Isaiah 53, who has believed what
he has heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been
revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like
a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that
we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire
him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hid
their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely
he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed
him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced
for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon
him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his
wounds we are healed. We, all like sheep, have gone
astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth,
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that
before its shearers is silenced, so he opened not his mouth. By
oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation
who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people, And they made his
grave with the wicked and with the rich man in his death, although
he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet
it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to
grief. When his soul makes an offering
for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The
will of the Lord shall prosper in his hands. I'm going to continue
out of the anguish of his soul. He shall see and be satisfied
by his knowledge. Shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore, I will divide with him a portion with the many.
He shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured
out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.
Yet he bore the sins of many and makes intercession for the
transgressors. This text is probably one of the most famous of the
prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 53. It is an exact Christological
prophecy. What that means is that what
Isaiah was speaking of here, or better yet, To be more correct,
the prophet was being used by God. So what God is saying here
is He's speaking of the one who is to come thousands of years
later, the person of Jesus Christ. And what Jesus has done is to
bear our suffering and to bear our sins and to bear our transgressions
from which we deserve death. and the cause of which we deserve
death. God must bring judgment upon humanity or He is not a
good God. So, in order to save and be merciful,
He must take what is perfect and holy and sacrifice it. to
satisfy His judgment against man. It had to be a man. So therefore,
Jesus, who is the Creator of all things, who by the word of
His mouth launched the universe and holds it up by the word of
His mouth, now He becomes like the creation and suffers and
lives and fulfills the law and pleases God as a man, pleases
the Father, and then willingly and passively lays down His life
that He might be the ransom for many. I don't know how to entitle today's
message. I want you to have Psalm 53 in
your head. I want you to understand what
was prophesied, and there are thousands of different places
we could look in the Scripture to show you the fullness of how
Christ has fulfilled even minute details. What He would say, what
He would wear, where He would come from, how He would travel
as a child, where His parents would be from. For thousands
of years now, it came fully in the person of Christ, as we see
in Luke's Gospel, the fullness of time God brought forth His
Son. That means the perfect moment. God is the author of all history.
He is the God over all decisions of man. Nothing thwarts His plan. His counsel will stand, and everything
that we experience in this world is in His hand and in His purpose
for our good as His children. Understand that. I want to compare two things
and it's not going to be a very good comparison because I want
to talk more about one than I do the other. But I want to talk
about the difference between the depths of the darkness of
our life and the light of Christ. Light does shine out of darkness
for the children of God, that's the ultimate one point that I
want you to hear today, but it takes me 20 minutes, 20 minutes
I've done with on fellowship and do what we want to do. I
don't know how this is going to turn out. But I could not
preach out of Ephesians today. In 1987, I was remembering this
a little bit in the last few days, that there's a tune that
I composed on the piano, not very well done at that time. But through the years, I have
actually begun to add to that as I have opportunity. And in
the last few months since we've been doing worship, I've had
the opportunity to sharpen my skills musically a little bit
to get them back to at least an intermediate level. And I
was thinking about the song and all the songs that I've written
have lyrics, but no one has ever heard them. So this will be a
new thing for you in the 1987. And my grandmother's house at
that old heavy piano, which was now where Lynette lives, I wrote
these lyrics. Well, many of them, but this
is one specific line. Sometimes I wonder why I am even
here. It's one of the lines. Why there
is pain and darkness and why there is fear. Poetic. Some more thoughts and things
about darkness, and what do you think was 1987, how old were
you? I don't even remember. How do you know you wrote it?
Because I wrote the date at the top of the paper. But in the course of that
song, oh, I cry. Please tell me why. There is
no reason for the pain and the sorrow that I feel inside. And
it resolves. It's not just a melancholy, macabre
death song. It's really about the joy that
is found in Christ. But in the understanding of death
and the understanding of the darkness that plagues our soul,
look at the present events in the last few days. And some of
you are affected by this very personally. Some of you are not
affected by the death of our brother personally. But I'll
tell you, you have been affected in some way. You've been affected
in some way by death, in some way by darkness. Maybe you have
lost someone close to you, young or old, maybe an infant, maybe
a child, maybe a brother, a spouse, maybe someone that you knew.
And if you haven't, then you will one day. We all will face
the darkness of death. And so when I consider the present
events of the death of our brother, I want to speak to an issue.
I want to speak to the issue specifically of God's sovereignty
in the midst of darkness and suffering. God is sovereign over
the darkness of the life of his children. God is sovereign over
the evil that plagues our hearts and minds. What do we do when
someone we love takes their own life? What do we do to cope? How do we deal with the pain
and the frustration? How do we deal with the questions?
That's one thing that I heard that day on Thursday or Friday
as I met with the family just moments before they arrived. The question is why? Why did
this happen? Why did he do this? Why did this
take place? Why God? Why you? Why now? Why? And I've even heard
a sermon about that this morning. Why? It is the ultimate question,
but more importantly than why then is how. How do we deal with
it? For why sometimes never comes,
I pray that I might answer that for you today through the Word
of God. But how do we as Christians, how do we as brothers and sisters
in Christ minister to ourselves and to others in such a dark
place? What encouragement is there really? The world has much
encouragement. There's much things to be said
and there's much counseling to be done through the years as
we deal and process and pick up the pieces. And as the dust
settles for some, it never really settles for others. So what are
we to do? How do we have the right words?
What are we supposed to say? What do we do when we know that
the right words produce all the wrong feelings, not only in those
who hear them, but in our own hearts? We might know this is
true, but why doesn't it have an effect on our lives with strength
and power? Well, friends, throughout life,
darkness looms over us all. It will not stop. As long as
we live in this world, darkness will be there. It will invade
our minds and our hearts. It covers our joy and steals
our hope from time to time. Depression ensues most of the
time, and sometimes it's just a small moment of time. It may
just be from here to the car, but sometimes it goes on for
days and weeks and months and years, and sometimes it never
leaves. And even when it does, we oftentimes hear it. We feel
it. We know that it taps us on our
shoulders. We understand sometimes that even though we may have
overcome it in the past, there's always that grip that we feel
ever so slightly touching us. And we worry and we wonder, will
it grasp me again? Will I ever be put into that
darkness? And then fear brings a whole new breed of depression. Depression brings with it a hopeless
lie, and this lie distracts us from our faith. It tells us that
there is no hope. It causes us to see what is not
there, and it causes us to miss or prevents us from seeing what
truly is there for us. We look so much in the temporal,
we forget about the eternal power of God. And the darkness of death,
friends, comes in many ways. Death comes when we least expect
it. It comes for those who live long
lives. It comes for those who have grown
old and they quietly slip away at their deathbed where their
family looks around. And although they're sad, they
knew that it was coming. And somewhat it's a blessing.
Death comes through murder, through calamity, through sickness and
disease. Cancer takes those away from us that we cannot consider
living without. Death is no respecter of persons.
It will come and it will take the old and it will take the
young. It will take the aged saint and the infant who does
not even know how to open its eyes. Death comes and it takes
the unregenerate. It takes those who are lost without
hope in the world and it takes the children of God. It is no
respecter of persons. It does not pick and choose.
But yet it takes us all. And when it comes, it is always
dark for a season. It is always dark in a moment.
And death comes through the ranks of wars, through the violent
outbreaks and the breath of winter, the breath of weather, the breath
of nature. Death comes quickly or sometimes
it can linger, causing anguish and near death for most of the
people who have to see it and understand it. Death causes distress. Death comes oftentimes and brings
a living death to those who remain after their loved ones have gone,
especially when death comes by one's own hand, the taking of
one's own life. I have a few thoughts, and then
I'm going to get into John's gospel. The first thing I want
you to see is that there is a personal note that I want to share, a
note of serenity, if you will. was I reflect on my own life,
and I've written three-fourths of a book on depression, and
it is mine. I don't know that I will ever
share it with anyone. But all throughout my life, I can recall
death. I can see it. Most children can remember the
first time they experienced death. And all throughout my life, not
just physical death, but mental death, spiritual death, emotional
death, financial death. And there were times when I wondered
why I was in the world. Why, God, did you place me here?
Why, God, did you put this? Why, God, did you have to allow
me to experience this? And the thinking times, as I
shared last week, the looking through the trees, the contemplation,
the meditation, though they were predominantly times where I would
consider the great, magnificent glory of God, it is also in those
times when we let our minds consider. that we would become intrinsically
turned and we would begin to worry and wonder and we would
contemplate the shallowness of our own existence. We would contemplate
the deep and negotiating things and the complex attitudes of
our mind, the complexity of the universe. And though these times,
as I said, were most efficiently, most of the time actually, brought
worship, When the heart is downtrodden and the flesh is weak, these
things, these disciplines, these practices bring despair. They
do not bring joy. They do not bring worship. And
as far as I can remember, there's never been a season of my life
that despair has left me alone. Never. Even the happiest days
when your children are born, there's always something to cause
you stress. You get a new car, something
to cause you stress. No matter what, there is opportunity
for despair at every turn. In despair, sometimes through
a series of what I have coined a divinely placed circumstance,
God has used despair and then given the gift of depression
in my life to bring me to the ultimate reality of his sufficiency.
What does that mean? That I count it a gift when despair
has broken me to nothingness. Because only in those times do
you see God at his fullest. Not that I would pray it for
myself, but I'm thankful that I have experienced it. I want you to understand that
death is often mistaken. The mistaken death. Death is
often mistaken as unnatural. I was taught this growing up
as a young boy. Death is unnatural. It is natural
to live forever. It is natural to want to live
forever, but death is a natural outcome of our world. It's the
natural response to sin in the world. It is what God has orchestrated
and purposed because sin entered the world. Therefore, death entered
the world. Death. is the consequence of
sin. Sin, at the very core of the
human being, exists well before any person commits an act of
rebellion against God. Sin brings death. It always has
and it always will, but oftentimes we mistake death for something
that we do not deserve. Church, death is deserved. Death
is deserved by every living thing, or excuse me, every living human
being. As Romans 8 teaches us, though,
that all the creation was subjected to the futility of sin unwillingly
and longs for the day to be restored, that it would not decay. But
even the world that we live in, the animals that coexist with
us, that we are to rule over for the glory of God, are subject
to death because of the sin of man. It is not only deserved,
but death is certainly guaranteed. It's often been said, and very
cliché, through generation, generation, you're born, you pay taxes, then
you die. It's also been coupled with the
very true fact is that two things are certain in life, death and
taxes. Well, death is coming. And to
to understand that it is deserved and that it is guaranteed, if
I stopped here, it would show a hopeless story. We have no
hope. We have no hope. Let's all go
home for what Solomon say. Where is our hope? Why do we
do what we do? The sun comes up, the sun goes
down. Let's just die now and get it over with. But friends,
this is not the end of the story, because Christ is the victor
over sin and death. For those who are in Christ Jesus,
when Jesus became a man, He created the womb from which He was born
and grew as a human being, and He lived a life pleasing to the
Father, holy, fulfilling the law of God as a human being,
then he died and satisfied God's judgment, for God was pleased
to crush him, Isaiah 53. It pleased the Father to crush
the Son, and so Christ then is the victor over death. And we have a promise from God,
and that promise is eternal life and resurrection in the flesh
from the dead for all those who are in Christ. Death is mistaken
as one that comes in different levels. It's sort of like we
think that death comes in different intensities. In other words,
there's good death and bad death. But friends, I'll tell you now,
there is no good death. I believe we ought to learn as
Christians to die well and to learn to deal with death in a
good way through the power of God. But there is no good death. Death is always dark. Death is
always a scary place. But death, of course, is not
judgment for the church, but a blessing. It is a blessing. It is a blessing because we who
are in Christ have the fulfillment of what we've been promised.
Eternal life with Him. No matter how or why someone
dies, this reality is that they are then in the hand of God.
When we as the saints die, when those as the unregenerate die,
they are in the hand of God. What does that mean? Everybody
gets saved? Everybody has eternal life? Absolutely
not. For Jesus says, wide is the path
that leads to destruction, and narrow is the gate that leads
to righteousness, and His own words are, few will find it.
So how are they in the hand of God? Is God not sovereign? Does
God not hold all that there is in His hands? Does God not orchestrate
the path of all mankind? So therefore, then, when someone
dies in sin, yes, they are to receive the judgment, but they're
still in the hand of God who will be their judge, and those
who are saved are in the hand of God who is their Savior. Either
way, we know. that those who die are in the
hand of God. We know that God is always right
and He's always just and He's always holy. And so all that
He does is always perfect and nothing will change that. So
no matter what happens in this life, it is in the hand of God
and the outcome of that is for His good and for His glory and
for our good, we who are His children. No matter how someone dies, they
are in God's hand, the just, loving, righteous hand of God.
And whoever or whatever the outcome of their existence is God's problem. not ours. He is the God who rules. He is the God who governs. And
he is the God who secures the salvation of his children. So
the death of man, whether by suicide or murder or cancer or
old age, all results in the hope that all are in the big and powerful
and mighty hand of God and his divine perfectness. And nothing
as Christians listen to this. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Not even death, not even cancer,
not even suicide. See, suicide in itself is an
irrational thing. It makes no sense. The very nature
of the human mind has a will to live. And so hopelessness
and despair is not rational. It's irrational. So to try to
rationalize in our logical mind, sitting on this side of death
by suicide, is insane in itself. How do we put it together? We
don't put together what is irrational. It's not possible. But we do
know this. God is faithful. God is faithful
when we are faithless. He tells that to Timothy, that
when we are faithless, he is faithful for he cannot deny himself.
So God does not deny himself. God does things that are apart
from rational. that are apart from reasonable,
that are apart from logical. God takes me who deserves all
death and all judgment, and He saves me and He changes my will
to love Him, and He sanctifies me through the blood of Jesus
Christ, and then He holds me and He holds you as a believer
in Jesus until the day where He will make us whole, to where
we will not have to be held by His power apart from sin and
to falling away, we will be held. And God is faithful to do this.
It is irrational to think that God, who is holy and just, would
become a man to die to satisfy His own judgment against people
who rebelled and put their fist in His face. But that's what
He did. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. For God has not
destined us unto wrath, but unto eternal life, as Paul tells the
Thessalonians. God uses irrational circumstances
to show supernatural and irrational ways to display His glory and
to bring joy in the midst of an irrational obstacle, in the
midst of an irrational darkness. There is no sense in this world.
There is no sense in death. There is no sense in self-murder. It is irrational. So God uses
supernatural and irrational, illogical means to bring irrational
and supernatural hope that goes beyond understanding, that goes
beyond comprehension, that gives us joy, as Peter says, that is
inexpressible. So, an irrational death, most
people would say, should not have happened. It did not have
to happen, but I would say it did. If it did, then it did. And if it happened, then it had
to happen. Why? We don't know. But we do
know this. Think about the scriptures and
then I'm going to get to John, I promise. Think about the scriptures. Think
about all the things that you see in the Old Testament. Those
of you who have been in church for a long, long time as children,
you've learned about the creation of the world. You've learned
about God placing righteous people in the garden and creating them
and breathing into them the breath of life. And He put them there
and they were holy, they were righteous. And He said, do not
sin against Me. That's a paraphrase. Do not eat
this tree. Everything is yours. This universe
is yours for the taking. And you do everything, you can
have everything, you have dominion over everything, everything alive,
you have dominion over it. But that one tree, that tree
here, those trees, don't eat out of those trees, but Satan
lured them. And in their heart, they sinned
against God and it brought death to them. But the death of Adam
spiritually, the death of Eve brought glory to God, for God
killed an animal to point to the very one that he would kill,
his son. So the death of Adam, the sin
of Adam brought glory to God and God being the Redeemer of
his people. Then the first boy was born,
Cain. Cain. A gardener, a farmer, he
had to grow his own food, he had to work the ground because
of sin. Instead of just picking it and
eating it as God tended it, he then had to work like his father
and all the people of the world have to work to keep the world
from taking over and winding down. Our houses have to be maintained,
our cars have to be maintained because of sin. Because of sin. Everything is dying. Cain had
a brother named Abel and Cain hated his brother Abel. Peter
tells us in Ephesians, excuse me, 1st John. John tells us in
1st John that Cain hated his brother Abel because his works
were righteous. Cain hated his brother because
he was righteous. And what God does is God vindicates
Abel. But God also provides for Cain,
the murderer. So even through the death of
Abel, through the senseless murder of Abel, God is glorified. We
see the sons of Noah and his family saved and the entire world
is obliterated. Through the flood, God kills
every living thing, but just a few to repopulate the world
because the world had become increasingly wicked. But yet
God is the savior of humanity. God had purpose to save a people
for himself and through Noah, we now are saved and are worshiping
Christ today because of the death of all else. We know Moses as
a child was predicted that a savior would come from Egypt out of
the Hebrews, and we know that Ramses ordered the annihilation
of all Hebrew boys from a certain age and down to the infants. And we know the story of how
God in Providence saved Moses. So the death of all those children
was not in vain. It was not wasted. It was to
show God's absolute supernatural ability to save his people in
spite of the edicts of a sovereign king. We see David, Joshua, Saul,
Solomon, we see the death of the prophets, we see the death
of the firstborn in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, when Herod
did not want to be deposed by another king. And so he had all
the children killed, and Jesus, then, to fulfill prophecy, leaves
Bethlehem and runs to Egypt, then grows
up in Nazareth, just as the prophets predicted. We see John the Baptist
in his latter days wondering had he pointed to the wrong man
when he said, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins
of the world. When he pointed at Christ, and then as Herod
was about to take his head, Almost on a bet. The Scripture tells
us that John the Baptist doubted that he had even had the right
man. So was John a unbeliever at that
moment? He was, but he was a believer
in Christ for God and His mercy saved John in the womb. As we
see in Luke. So we see the death of John the
Baptist. We see the life and the death of Jesus. And we know
that the death of Jesus had to happen so that we could be saved,
so that we would be certain for our salvation, for God would
be wicked had He just let us get away with sin without some
type of satisfaction of His wrath. We see the death of the disciples.
We see the martyrs. We see Stephen in Acts chapter
6 and 7. And we see that Stephen's death,
how horrible it was, is what God used to bring the gospel
to me and to you and to the four corners of the world. And we
see throughout Scripture, I could spend all day here just giving
examples, just starting Genesis, we could just keep going, where
the death and the useless and the fruitless or the wasted life
is what we would say in our American mind, that should not have happened,
it did not have to happen. What did Peter tell Jesus? You
surely do not have to die. And Jesus rebukes him and says,
Get behind me, Satan. Death is always purposeful. Through the death of all men,
as I've said, through Adam, the death of all mankind. And through
that, God revealed redemption through Jesus Christ. Through
the death of Cain, God showed mercy and gave us the reality
that most people will hate Him. When God shows mercy, people
will hate us. People will hate us. But He also
taught us that as His children, we ought to love each other.
We ought to love the brethren. not murder them. We ought not
murder each other physically, verbally, emotionally, with our
hearts. Through the death of many children,
God made certain that one would survive to be the Redeemer of
Israel. Through the death of Moses, God made provision for
him, showing that God still kept his word. Moses saw a day of
rest that the Israelites never saw. To the death of Lazarus,
God revealed his glory to the death of Jesus Christ. God made
a whole people for himself through the death of Stephen. God spread
the gospel. So in other words, as I repeat
myself over and over again, no matter the means or the way someone
dies, God uses it for his purpose and his glory. Turn to John 11. John 11 and 12. Out of this gospel,
I don't know, but John 11. It's probably one of the most
powerful pieces of this gospel. It's powerful in many respects,
I cannot preach the whole thing, it would take months. So this
is a topical exposition of this text. Let us read. Starting in verse one. Now, a
certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary
and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the
Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose
brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying,
Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said,
This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of
God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now,
Jesus loved Martha. Listen carefully, church, to
the next three verses. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her
sister and Lazarus. So, if your Bible doesn't have
so there, or therefore, it's wrong. It's translated incorrectly
in the Greek. The word there is so, or therefore,
or because of that. If it's that big of a paraphrase.
If it says but, that's a contraction or it's a contradiction, it's
a contrast. Jesus loved Martha and Mary and
Lazarus, but because He loved them, verse 6, so when He heard
that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place
where He was. Now listen. If this isn't translated
correctly, you can't preach this correctly. The Scripture teaches
that because of Jesus' great love for Lazarus, when He heard
that He was ill, He decided to stay where He was for two extra
days because He loved them. Does that make sense? That's
irrational. You know why? Because Lazarus
had to die so that Christ could raise him from the dead. Oh,
would God have been getting glory if he had just walked in there
and said, boom! And Lazarus would have been healed and never died? Absolutely. But
look, I'm not going to tell you yet. Let's keep reading. Then
after this, he said to his disciples, let us go to Judea again. Now,
keep in mind when you write this, it's not one conversation. And
then he said, well, no, we're not going now. Let's go. He stayed
two days. Then after these two days were over, they decided.
He didn't change his mind. Some people read that too quickly.
Let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, Rabbi,
the Jews were just now seeking to stone you. And are you going
there again? Jesus answered, Are there not
twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he
does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But
if anyone walks in night, he stumbles because the light is
not in him. After saying these things, he said to them, Our
friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go to awaken him.
The disciples said, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll recover.
Now, Jesus has spoken of his death, but they thought that
he meant taking a rest and sleep. And Jesus then plainly told them
Lazarus has died. And look what he says, for your
sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe. But let us go to him. So Thomas
also called the twins, said to his fellow disciples, let us
also go that we may die with him. See, they didn't even have
the faith. They knew that Jesus was going to be there and that
the Sanhedrin were going to kill him. That's what they thought. Let's
just go die with him. So blind, we're blind without
God's grace. Now, Jesus for 17, when he came,
he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
This is a note. Traditionally, historically,
Jews felt like the soul lingered in the body until at the end
of day three. And day four, the soul left.
That's a significant issue in understanding why he waited. Why not just three days? Well,
he wanted everybody to surely be sure he was dead. So Bethany
was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews
had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their
brother. They were a very prestigious family, very well loved by the
community and the ruling class. So when Martha heard that Jesus
was coming, she went and met Him. But Mary remained seated
in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if
you'd been here, my brother would not have died. Now she's blaming
Jesus. But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God
will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.
And Martha went. I know that He will rise on the
day of resurrection on the last day. The Jews believed in that.
And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though
he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes
in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? See, there's
a question that we all must answer. She had a belief in the facts,
but she didn't see Him for who He was. It's not believing the
facts that saves us, it's believing with the heart. It's being reborn. You believe this? And she said
to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the
Son of God who is coming into the world. And when she had said
this, she went and called her sister Mary in private, saying
the teacher's here and he's calling for you. And when she heard it,
she rose quickly and went to him. Now, Jesus had not yet come
into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had
met him. When the Jews were with her in the house, consoling her,
saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing
that she was going to the tomb to weep. Now, when Mary came
to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying
to Him, Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have
died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with
her also weeping, He was deeply moved, and His spirit in greatly
troubled. And He said, Where have You laid
Him? And they said to Him, Lord, come and see. And so Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, See how He loved Him? But some of them said,
could not He have opened the eyes of the blind? Could He also
have kept this man from dying? See, everybody is blaming Jesus.
Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. Do you know
why Jesus wept? Jesus wept for two reasons. He loved these people. And to see them weep moved Him. He felt compassion on those He
felt remorse, he wept, he rejoiced, and he's the model. I'm not saying
that's what Jesus can't do. Jesus models church life. We ought to love and weep and
rejoice when our brothers and sisters are loving and weeping
and rejoicing. We ought to endure the burdens.
But then Jesus deeply moved again and came to the tomb, verse 38.
It was a cave and the stone lay against it. And Jesus says, take
away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead
man, said to him, Lord, by this time there'll be an odor for
he's been dead four days. And Jesus said to her, did I not tell you
that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they
took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes
and he prayed, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I
knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of
the people standing around that they may believe that you sent
me. When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come out. And the man who had died. came
out, his hands and his feet bound with linen strips and his face
wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, unbind
him and let him go. Oh, I wish we could just be in
John right now for a couple of days. Quickly. What does this have
to do with suicide and murder and cancers? Everything. Because
Lazarus died of sickness. It doesn't matter how one dies.
We die, we're dead. No matter what. God doesn't judge
people according to what they do in this life. He judges people
according to what Christ has done and their faith in Him and
what He's done. Not sinning doesn't save you.
You cannot, if you are born and you never sin, you're still judged
and you're still going to die and you're still going to be
under the judgment of Holy God. You cannot be saved by failing
to sin. You can only be saved by the
sinless perfection of Jesus, who satisfies the wrath of the
Father and who is God, who gives eternal life at His will to all
who believe on the Son. And so what we see in John 11
very quickly is that Jesus loves people. Jesus mourns when His
people mourn. The writer of Hebrews says that
we have not come to a high priest who does not relate to us, I'm
paraphrasing right now, but in every way has suffered and been
tempted, but beyond what we have, unto death. And so we know that Christ loves,
and we know that the love of Christ does things that is difficult
for us to grasp, to deal with, and to understand. God purposed
Lazarus to die, and Jesus knew He could save him, but He stayed
two days because of His great love for Lazarus. Jesus' love
for Lazarus was not more important than His love for the glory of
the Father. And Jesus' love for those people who would suffer
did not outweigh His love for the Father's glory. And Jesus
loves His children. And His love mends all suffering. But what's terrible is that we
think that the suffering ended when Lazarus was raised. And
if you go to chapter 12, oh my gosh, and the aroma of the oil
filled the house. I love that text. If you don't
know what I'm talking about, she spent $35,000 pouring it
over Jesus' body in celebration of that. and oil, and it went
all over the floor and all over the house, and it irritated the
dog mess out of the other disciples and out of her family, that she
would waste such a thing. They typically just put a little
bit of that on the tip of a finger, and you anoint someone with it,
and it should last you a lifetime. You give that to people. When
you die, you leave that oil, because it's valuable. It's an
inheritance, and she dumped it out. And I used to, when I preach
that text, I often talk about how I believe that Judas Iscariot
was down there with towels, sopping that stuff up so he could drip
it into some stuff. Either way, you couldn't get
away from her worship of the Savior because she dumped it
out and it filled the house. The love of Christ repairs all
suffering, and they thought that God had repaired their suffering
by raising Lazarus from the dead. But guess what? They had to endure
that again one day. It's bad enough to endure death
once, but then have to have your loved one given back to you and
then watch them die all over again? That's terrible. God's love for us is shown when
we lose someone. God's power is given to us. But most importantly, Jesus says
there, I am the resurrection and the life. And all who are
in Me, though they die, they live. So Lazarus was alive before
he came out of the tomb. When his body was decaying, he
was alive in Christ. The only justification that we
give for what God has done is that it was for a divine purpose
that was far greater than the life Lazarus ever could live.
How do we know that? Because nothing's ever written
about Lazarus again. When people come back to life
from the dead and they make much of themselves in their testimony
and they sell books and they make millions of dollars, they
did not come back for the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who are in Christ are alive.
Though Lazarus was raised to life, this was not best for Lazarus.
How irritating would it be if you were with the presence of
Jesus and then God took you away and put you back in this earth?
Oh, have mercy on my soul. But the only saving grace for
Lazarus is that Jesus was there. So he stayed with Jesus, he came
back to see Christ. Paul understood this and in Philippians
one, Paul says these words, he says, for to me, To live is Christ
and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh,
that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose,
I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the
two. My desire, what I really want, is to depart and be with
Christ, for that is far better for me, Paul says. But to remain
in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Lazarus resurrection was for
the account of others. What did Jesus say? Lazarus says, God, and for your
sake, I'm glad that I was not there so that you may believe. And he prays to the Father, Lord,
I thank you that you've heard me and I knew that you always
hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around
that they may believe that you sent me. What God has done, what Christ
has done was to prove, listen to this, to prove without a shadow
of a doubt that He was God. And not only that He was God,
but He was the victor over death. You see that? Jesus is the eternal life. This
eternal life, the eternal life that we proclaim to you, that
your fellowship may be with us. And indeed, our fellowship is
with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we write these
things that our joy may be complete. That's in First John, chapter
one. See, Jesus is the eternal life,
eternal life is the gift, who is Jesus Christ. He is the full
reward, Ephesians one. Blessed be the God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us. What? With all spiritual
blessings in the heavenly realm. So God sets free. I love this. No commentator really believes
this, but I believe this. I believe that when Jesus says
this, in verse 44 of chapter 11, and when it says, Lazarus,
the man who died, came out, his hands and feet bound with linen
strips. I mean, imagine they wrapped them up. They wrapped
their head up. All he could do was jump, hop. And Jesus says to them, unbind
him and let him go. I think that's highly prophetic. What's that mean? That means
Jesus was talking about the literal bandages of Lazarus. But Jesus says also in John's
gospel that when the Son sets you free, you're free indeed.
And what do we need to be set free of today? The fear of death. The fear of sin, it's no longer
in power over us. So we need to be encouraged.
For we who die in Christ are immediately raised to life, no
matter how faithless we were, no matter if we take our own
lives. We are in Christ and we are raised to life. We are with
him. But make no mistake, it is a
sin to take your life. And the suffering that it leaves
behind for those who live is immeasurable. It does not help. It does not
heal. It only hinders. But God, being
rich in mercy, heals. Be encouraged. Because God knows
your sorrows, He knows your grief, and He shines in the darkness.
My favorite scripture of all the New Testament, I believe
to this point in time, 2 Corinthians 4, 6. For God, who has said,
let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Paul goes on the right there.
We have this treasure, the gospel of Christ in jars of clay so
that it may be clearly seen that the unsurpassing power belongs
to God and not to us. And then he gives this rant.
This incredible rant, we've turned into some fun songs that we jump
and spin around on, but it's an incredible rant. And he starts
to say we are afflicted in every way. We are crushed down, perplexed,
but not driven to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken.
We're struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the
death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in
our bodies also. For we who live are always being
given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus
also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at
work in us, but life in you. Since we are of the same spirit
of faith according to what has been written, I believe, and
so I spoke. We also believe, and so we also
speak, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us
also with Jesus. Listen. And bring us with you
into His presence, for it is all for your sake, so that as
grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving
to the glory of God, so we do not lose heart. Though our outer
self is westerned away, Our inner self is being renewed day by
day for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for
an eternal weight of glory beyond all comprehension and comparison
as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things
that are unseen. For the things that are seen
are transient. For the things that are unseen
are eternal. See, death is defeated. It no
longer holds the believer in its grasp and no longer has power. It is temporal and it is of this
world. It is no longer a lasting, eternal
thing for the child of God. And so we should not grieve to
despair, but we should grieve unto thanksgiving and rejoice
in knowing that God has surely saved. We who are his, no matter how
we die, We are His. Nothing will change
that. nothing can take us out of the
hands of Jesus Christ, who lived a holy life, who resisted temptation,
who died a perfect death as a ransom for sins, and who by His pleasure
gifted us with His grace that we might see and believe and
treasure and worship and desire Him above all that the world
has. And this Person, this Jesus,
this God is saving us and keeping us and holding us for all of
eternity. No child of God dies in vain,
no matter the manner of his death. Because God will bring glory
to his name as he knew the day that each of us will die before
the world began. God will bring glory to His name
by presenting the reality of grace and not of works as the
means of salvation, even in death. God will bring glory to His name
by convicting many of sin and bringing many to faith as we
contemplate death. God will bring glory to his name
by establishing his power in the lives of the church, as we've
been looking in Ephesians. God will bring glory to his name
by the service of the bride of Christ to herself, through the
power of God toward each other. God will bring glory to his name
by the testimony of suffering with joy and thanksgiving in
the darkness. God will bring glory to his name
as he comforts, as he gives hope, and as he prepares us for an
eternal weight of glory that is beyond comparison. Friends,
only suffering brings glory. So why do we have to suffer this
way, God? Because it is for your glory. So do not lose heart. As we come to the close of our
time today, my prayer for you is that you would see what I
have said, that you would understand it, not just academically, but
most importantly, intimately and supernaturally, that you
would see that Jesus Christ is the eternal God who provides
joy and hope and glory for his name's sake, for the good of
his children in the darkest of places. Let's pray. Lord. It is good to reflect on these
things today. It is so good. May you just continue
to fill us with a joy that we can understand we can't we can't
really express it. How can you think be thankful? Somebody might ask. I don't know
how, but I know why. And I know that God has enabled
me to be. Lord, may your will be done in
the darkness of our souls. Have you have you have spread
us out of the domain of darkness into the light of your son? Into
the domain of your son, into the light of life. Would help us to shine that light. Help the world to look in and
see such irrational responses to devastating circumstances.
God, be with the Jernigan family. Be with the communities of Chatham
and Chatham and Evans, as those men and women knew him for years.
Be with the church families. Be with all of us as we go into
our own communities and into our own homes. Help our children
to see that you are the God who is victorious over death. And you prepared them for your
purpose. Lord, give us joy when it makes no sense to be joyful. We thank you for Jesus Christ,
who is our sufficient hope. In His name we pray, Amen.