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John 11:1-16
John 11:1-16 (NIV) Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
When 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.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
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.”
His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
So before we get into the part of the story that we always like to read, the part where Jesus calls Lazarus to come out of the grave, the part where Lazarus comes back to this world, let’s talk about the discourse Jesus and His Disciples have.
When Jesus hears about the news His first response wasn’t to stop what He was doing, jump up and go to Lazarus. And as you investigate further – do the math – by the time the news reaches Jesus, Lazarus is already dead. And Jesus stays where He was two more days.
I have always looked at that and thought, this is odd – Lazarus, Mary, Martha they are close to Jesus as we will discover. Jesus loved them all. So why didn’t Jesus dump everything, and jump up and go right away?
Think about just the grief of Mary and Martha alone, the pain they endured during those four days total that Lazarus was dead. And I’ve wondered what was so important that Jesus could not jump up and go to them, even if it were to shorten it down to just one day of death or grief.
There are a couple of things to consider here. In Jesus day when you died there were rules about burying the body just like today. Back then, someone in the family would prepare the body for burial. However, once inside the tomb they would anoint their body with ointment, wrap them up in grave cloths, and lay them on a shelf inside the cave.
Now in most tombs or crypts, whatever you want to call them, you might notice a small hole in the wall. Some have speculated that this was to let the smell or gasses escape as the body decomposed inside the tomb. If you think about it the rocks or doors that would have closed the tombs were not airtight. And we have other historical cultural information regarding first century Jewish beliefs.
The belief that many people held in Jesus’ time, was that the spirit dwelt around the body until it could no longer recognize itself. At that time the spirit of the deceased would then leave through the little hole.
And based on the circumstances surrounding the decomposition of a dead person, most people believed it to take three to four days for the deceased’s spirit to leave the body. So by the fourth day most would have given up hope that anything could have been done to save the person.
It’s here that I want to remind us Jesus had many things to do that was in preparation for His ultimate task of dying on the cross. It was not lack of love or complacency, malice, it wasn’t any of those things that delays Jesus to return to Lazarus. But there is a plan and Jesus talks about it in verse four.
John 11:4 (NIV) When 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.”
Often times we go through life not understanding – like the Disciples, or even like Mary and Martha we blame God for bad things that happen in our lives. But you know even in those times, Even when we don’t understand or we don’t have a clear answer, we can still place our hope and trust In Jesus as the Messiah, as our Savior.