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The Great I AM

08/26/2007 - The Resurrection & the Life, John 11:25

Well we've finally made it to the Sunnyside property. It only took 3 ½ years to get here … 3 ½ years and an extra week for me! And along the way we learned a huge lesson about patience and about the fact that God's ways are not always our ways and God's timing is not always as our timing is it?

When we were given the property back in March of 2004 we thought we'd be over here in a month celebrating Easter. And we will be. Only it will be Easter 2008! We discovered we couldn't just throw gravel down and park cars on the grass!

And what's occurred to me again and again along the way is that when we choose to follow God and attempt to walk by faith often there's a lot of waiting involved. Things don't go the way we plan or at least not as fast as we hope. And I think that's all part of the learning curve of what it means to loosen our grip on our lives and put them in God's hands, in the hands of the good shepherd. I never thought we'd be meeting at the Audubon YMCA for eleven years. But God knew it.

Waiting isn't easy is it? I can remember watching my friends get married, many of them fresh out of college. And so I thought that would happen to me too. But it didn't. At least not when I thought marriage would happen. Then they started to have children, one child and then another child and meanwhile I was still single wondering if that would ever happen to me. And during that time I went through a few failed relationships and a broken engagement before I met the woman God had for me and was finally married at the age of 30. And she was worth the wait!

I can remember when Tim and I were talking about starting a church together. We were both on the staff of another church in the area and were planning to do a one year church planting internship at Willow Creek Community Church in the suburbs of Chicago. But Jennifer was pregnant with Jordan at the time and the internship would have started about a month before Jordan was due and it just wasn't the right time to pull up stakes and relocate from Pennsylvania to Chicago. So we waited for another whole year to begin this adventure and that was hard. We knew what the next step was, but our timing was a year off.

It's not easy to wait on God. And I know many of you could tell your own stories of things that you've waited for and are still waiting for … marriage, children, a job, a better job, a divorce to finalize, healing of some kind, physical, emotional, relational. This week we waited five days for the sun to come out on our vacation. But let's not even go there!

And on a global scale we're all waiting on the world to change like John Mayer sings. We pray for peace and justice, for wars to end, terrorism to cease, violence to stop, poverty to be eliminated, AIDS to be cured, but it still hasn't happened. We're still waiting.

And sometimes we wonder why? Why the wait? Doesn't God share our concern? Doesn't he hear our prayers? Of course he does. But he has his reasons. His ways are not our ways. His timing is not our timing. And in the passage that we're going to look at today we're going to discover one reason why God often takes his time. If you have a Bible turn with me to John 11.

This morning we continue our series called "The Great I AM" with a look at the sixth "I AM" statement of Jesus contained in the gospel of John. Remember Jesus makes eight "I AM" statements in all. So far he's said, "I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the I am. I am the door. I am the good shepherd." And today he'll say, "I am the resurrection and the life."

And each time Jesus makes these statements he divides the crowd between those who believe in him and those who don't, between those who are for him and those who want to see him dead. And this week is no different. In fact at the end of John 11 we read in verse 53, So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

So what caused the stir this time? What did Jesus do now to put himself on top of Judea's most wanted list? Well, let's look at the story starting with John 11:1, Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ²This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Jesus said in Luke 9:58, Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head. And that's true. Jesus didn't own a home or rent an apartment as far we know. Instead, he slept outdoors or in the homes of friends during the three years of his itinerant ministry. And one of his best friends was a man named Lazarus along with his two sisters, Martha and Mary.

Lazarus whose name means "God is my help" and his sisters lived in Bethany which was a suburb of Jerusalem. In fact, in verse 18 we're told that Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem. And that's significant because the Jewish Law didn't allow anyone to travel more than two miles on the Sabbath Day which meant that Jesus could make it to Bethany from Jerusalem even on the Sabbath.

And when he was in town he'd often be invited into their home where he was treated like the king he was. It was a place where Jesus felt safe and could get refreshed. In Luke 10, we read that on one of his visits they served Jesus and his disciples a lavish meal. In fact, Martha was so stressed out by all the preparations that Jesus had to say, "Relax, Martha. Don't get so stressed out about making sure that everything's just right. Instead, take a minute and sit down. Join your sister, Mary, and enjoy my presence for awhile." That's good advice for us too. There's a time to work for Jesus and a time to slow down and worship him too.

Mary is the one, verse two says, that poured perfume on Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair. That's recorded in John 12. And Judas scolded her for that because the perfume she used was worth a year's wages. It was most likely her life savings. And in his self-righteousness Judas said, "What a waste! That perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor."

But Mary didn't want to do that. Instead, she anointed Jesus with it, recognizing that he was a king and kings deserve to be anointed. The nation may have rejected King Jesus, but not Mary. She loved Jesus and Jesus loved her and Martha and Lazarus too. He had a special bond with this family. And now Lazarus is sick and his prognosis is not good.

Look at verse 3, So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." ⁴When he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it." ⁵Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.

Martha and Mary send word to Jesus because they wanted him to know that his friend was sick. And maybe Jesus would heal him. They knew, of course, that Jesus had healed tons of people, even some from a distance. In John 4, Jesus healed the son of a stranger who had walked from Capernaum to Cana, a distance of about twenty miles, and begged Jesus to come home with him and heal his son. But Jesus didn't make the trip. Instead, he just said the word, You may go. Your son will live. And when the man returned home he discovered that his son's fever had broke the very moment that Jesus said those words.

But now Lazarus is sick. Lazarus isn't a stranger. He's Jesus' good friend. Certainly Jesus would heal him. He'd just say the word, right? But he doesn't, even though his sickness was causing this family a great deal of distress. And not only doesn't he say the word, but he doesn't even go to visit his friend for two more days. He doesn't do anything.

Why? He tells us why. "This sickness will not end in death, Jesus says. Instead, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it."

Jesus said the same thing about the blind man he healed in John 9. When his disciples asked him in verse 2, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" ^3"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

In both cases Jesus saw sickness and disease as opportunities for God to be glorified. To glorify God means to make God bigger. And that was how Jesus was going use this illness of Lazarus. He knew this would cause great grief to the family who was waiting for him to come and do something, but he was willing to put them through that grief so that God would be made bigger and he would be made bigger in their eyes. Often that's what waiting does. It makes God bigger when he does choose to act.

God's love doesn't exempt us from suffering. Instead, God allows difficulties to come into our lives to glorify himself. But the evil one wants us to believe that suffering comes into our lives for just the opposite reason. He wants us to believe that there is no God or if there is he certainly doesn't love us or he wouldn't let us suffer.

That was his strategy when Jesus was being tested for forty days in the desert immediately after his baptism. The evil one came to him and said, If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. In other words, "If God loves you you shouldn't have to go hungry." Satan was challenging God's love for Christ. And the evil one will challenge our love for Christ when we go through struggles as well. "If God really loves you he wouldn't put you through this." Ever heard that voice before? I have. But don't believe it. It's a lie.

God allowed this stress to come to Lazarus and his family so Jesus could be glorified and two thousand years later we're still benefiting from this event.

So after two days Jesus says to his disciples in verse 7, "Let us go back to Judea." ⁸"But Rabbi," they said, "a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?" ⁹Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world's light. ¹⁰It is when people walk at night that they stumble, for they have no light."

The disciples didn't want to go back to Judea. Judea was where Jerusalem was and that was a dangerous place. There was a warrant out for Jesus' arrest in that city. Two times angry mobs had picked up rocks to stone him. First, after he claimed to be the "I AM" and again after he claimed to be the good shepherd. But Jesus says, "Let's go." And using the analogy of day and night he's saying, "It's okay to return now. It's not my time to go yet."

Look at verse 11, After he had said this, he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up." ¹²His disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." ¹³Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. ¹⁴So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead ,¹⁵and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." ¹⁶Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

Throughout the New Testament death is referred to as "sleep" for the believer in Jesus. It's referred to that way because in death our body appears to be asleep and because sleep is only a temporary experience. Every morning we wake up. And one day our dead bodies will wake up and come back to life to live in God's kingdom and Jesus is about to demonstrate that in a dramatic way.

But before he does, Thomas speaks up and says, "Let's go. I'm ready to die with him, are you?" Thomas is often referred to as "Doubting Thomas" because he was the last disciple to believe in Jesus after his resurrection. He needed to see Jesus for himself and put his hands in Christ's wounds. And I'm glad he did. There are a lot of us who would have needed the same body of evidence. But here he's not "Doubting Thomas," he's "Courageous Thomas" who's ready to go to Jerusalem and die with Jesus.

Look at verse 17, On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.¹⁸Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁹and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ²¹"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²²But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." ²³Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." ²⁴Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." ²⁵Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; ²⁶and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" ²⁷"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."

It took Jesus and his disciples two days to get to Bethany and when they arrived Lazarus was already dead. In that culture, people often died and were buried on the very same day. So Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Martha went out to meet Jesus and you can sense the stress in her voice when she says, "Where were you? If you had been here my brother wouldn't have died!" To which Jesus says, "Your brother will rise again."

Martha then tells Jesus that she knows the Scriptures teach the bodily resurrection of the righteous on the last day. That truth is taught in places like Daniel 12 and Job 19, Psalm 16 and Isaiah 26. She knew her Bible and she believed in the resurrection of the righteous at the end of time. She was anticipating Lazarus' resurrection one day, but she didn't know he'd be restored to life on this day.

But Jesus wanted her to see something else. He wanted her to see that resurrection life was standing right in front of her. I am the resurrection and the life, he says. Notice he doesn't say, "I am the one who resurrects." He says, "I am the resurrection." Resurrection is not just an event that will happen someday in the future. Resurrection is a person and his name is Jesus. And when we believe in him we enter into his resurrected life in some mysterious way. We receive the same kind of life Jesus has, a life that will triumph over death. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die,he says.

The apostle Paul put it like this in The Message version of Colossians 3:1-4, So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ - that's where the action is. See things from his perspective. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life - even though invisible to spectators - is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too - the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

Resurrection is not just a future event. Resurrection is a person named Jesus who gives us his life and changes the way we live.

Look at verse 28, And after she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. "The Teacher is here," she said, "and is asking for you."²⁹When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. ³²When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Mary says the same thing that Martha did. "Jesus you blew it. If you were here Lazarus would not have died." And then she breaks down weeping.

Verse 33, When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴"Where have you laid him?" he asked. "Come and see, Lord," they replied. ³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶Then the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" ³⁷But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" ³⁸Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹"Take away the stone," he said. "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days." ⁴⁰Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" ⁴¹So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me." ⁴³When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Jesus wept because he loved Lazarus. Jesus wept because he felt the sting of death. And then he shouts with a loud voice over the weeping and wailing of the crowd, "Lazarus, come out." And Lazarus, wrapped up like a mummy, shuffles out of the cave. It's a miracle. The man had been dead for four days, already decomposing, and now he's restored to life. Someone has said if Jesus had not called Lazarus by name, all the tombs would have been opened that day! Technically, this is a restoration, not a resurrection because Lazarus will die again. He didn't receive a resurrected, immortal body. Jesus will be the first one to receive that at his resurrection.

But it's a miracle none the less. And Lazarus becomes living proof of the power of God and the credentials of Jesus. Jesus is made bigger in the eyes of the disciples and all those who witnessed the miracle. Look at verse 45, Therefore, many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. ⁴⁶But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

Drop down to verse 57, But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, he should report it so that they might arrest him.

Look down at John 12:9-11, Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well ¹¹for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.

Again the crowd is divided. Some believe and some don't. How about you? Have you gone over to Jesus and put your faith in him? If you have then you have this resurrection life living in you.

I love how Paul applies it even further to us in Colossians 3. Listen to what he says, So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.