[Morning Sermon] He Is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25-26)

He is risen! Join us for this Easter message about how Jesus is the resurrection and why we can only find life in Him.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

So, Christianity is a historical religion. And by that I don't mean that it's been around for a while, that it's got an important place in history or a pedigree. What I mean is that Christianity is rooted in the fact that God has acted in history. Now, it's worth mentioning because that's very different from how we're taught to think about religion in our modern American culture. Religions like Christianity are treated as a kind of ethical system or a way of life or a personal philosophy. That's just kind of like my flavor of understanding reality. And these religions, right, these things like Christianity, they might help us deal with the world, but ultimately the stories they tell aren't true. It's not about true. It's not about whether they happened historically. It's just kind of a fable. It's something you hang on to. And when it comes to supernatural stuff, like if this is your view, it comes to supernatural stuff, like, say, the resurrection of Christ, well, that's just a metaphor. It's a metaphor for how we can be transformed, how we can be renewed. And Easter is the day when we celebrate new beginnings, right? But but it's not true. It didn't actually happen. But that's okay. It didn't happen, but it didn't need to happen. We're still inspired by it. Yes, the Bible is filled with metaphors. No, the resurrection is not one of them. The resurrection of Christ was a moment. It was a historical happening in time and space when Romans 1 says that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness through his resurrection from the dead. The resurrection was a thing that happened in history. It is the historical hinge upon which everything, not just Christianity, everything turns. This is why 1 Corinthians 15 can say that if Christ is not raised, then our faith is in vain. If Jesus did not come up out of the tomb on the third day, then we are still dead in our sins. Christianity is a historical religion based upon a historical act in time. Now, my job this morning is not to convince you that the resurrection actually happened. If you're not convinced by the eyewitness testimony of more than 500 people and the independent historical attestation of Roman senators and elites and Jewish historians and all those people, then 20 minutes of me talking at you probably isn't going to move the needle very much. Like I'm happy to make the case if you're interested. Hit me up anytime. I will buy you coffee, I will buy you lunch, and we will talk about it. It happened, we can argue for it, we can defend it. But knowing that I'm not going to try to convince you this morning, I do want to ask you a question. When Jesus was arrested, the disciples, they scattered. They hid. They were afraid. Even Jesus' closest disciple, his friend Peter, denied him. Not because a centurion got in his face, but a little servant girl asked, Hey, didn't you know him? No, no, no, no, no, I didn't know him. Right? Scaredy cats scattered everywhere. But within just a few days and weeks of them scattering, what happened? They're willing to go out on every street corner and preach the gospel, regardless of if it got them thrown into prison and killed. Fearless. Why? What happened to them? What caused them to have such a 180-degree flip? I'll tell you what happened. Jesus got up out of the grave. The disciples did not risk their lives for a metaphor. They risked their lives because they saw a dead man come alive. And with Jesus' resurrection power coursing through their veins, they got to work. That's the power I want to talk about this morning. That's the power I want us to tap into today. A power we get not through a new philosophy or a picture painted with words, but through a person named Jesus who acted in history on our behalf. This morning we are going to look at John chapter 11, verses 25 through 26 to talk about that. If you haven't already, I invite you to turn there now. And if you don't have a Bible with you, feel free to use one of the ones in the pews in front of you. With these two verses, we are really dropping into the middle of a story that begins with death and despair, yet ends with new life and everlasting hope. The story will be familiar with for a lot of us, but I won't assume that's a familiar with anyone. Jesus had heard that his friend Lazarus was deathly ill. But instead of going to him, which is what you would expect him to do, Jesus actually chose to stay where he was for two days. And then ten seconds later it was too late for them to help you. That's what it felt like. Times a thousand. Because John tells us that Jesus actually intentionally waited to go until after Lazarus died. Now that sounds cruel, doesn't it? But verses five through six tell us that it wasn't his indifference. Jesus wasn't too busy with other stuff to go and help his friend Lazarus. It was his love that compelled him to wait. Jesus was up to something. Jesus was going to show his love, to demonstrate it in a spectacular way. And so when the news came to Jesus that Lazarus had died, that was the time. He and his disciples decided to go to Bethany. And on his way there, Lazarus' brother Martha comes out to meet Jesus in her grief. Lord, she said, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Martha was right. Martha was right to be confused because she knew that Jesus had the power to save her brother's life. But what she didn't know, that she didn't understand, what she couldn't understand, not yet, was that it was for life that Jesus allowed her brother to die. And that's what we're going to see as we look at today's passage. So I'll invite you to rise as you're able, as I read John 11, verses 25 through 26. Jesus said to Martha, 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? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Father, send your Holy Spirit now, we pray, to help me to speak and to help us all to listen and to hear what we need to hear, to believe what we need to believe, so that we can leave here and do what we need to do for your glory and by your grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seen. I heard an amen back there and I love it. So in verse 25, Jesus begins his sentence, what he says in reply to Martha, with two incredibly important words. I am. Now that may not seem like something worth mentioning, but in John's gospel, these two words are a very intentional callback to the Old Testament. They go all the way back to the story of Moses and his encounter with the burning bush in Exodus 3. In that place, God condescended to introduce himself to Moses. And do you know what he called himself? He called himself I am. So in John's gospel, Jesus takes that name upon his lips in several places in order to show people that he is claiming for himself the divine identity. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd, and so on and so forth. So in Jesus, just in these two words, what we see is that in Jesus we have God in the flesh. That is precisely what John's gospel has been telling us since the very beginning. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then in the person of Jesus, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Now, before we go any further into the story, we just have to acknowledge and wrestle with a little bit just how much this complicates things in our story. Because if Jesus was the great I am, then we know that he had the power to save Lazarus. Martha knew this, which is why the first thing she said when she went out to meet him in verse 21 was, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. See, that's a statement of faith. More precisely, that is a statement of faith that is actively wrestling with the problem of pain and suffering in our world. Because if Jesus is God, then Jesus is all-powerful. And if he's all-powerful, well, it doesn't really matter if he was in Bethany. We've seen plenty of other times in the Gospels where Jesus could heal people from a distance. That's no sweat for the one who literally hung the moon. So what Martha is wrestling with here at the bottom level of it, it isn't Jesus' inability to save her brother because he wasn't there. She's wrestling with the fact that he could have saved him no matter what, and he didn't. He could have saved him and he did it. If we're honest, that's a struggle that we all know in our bones. It's the struggle of unanswered prayer. And for many people, maybe for some of you, it's the pain of that unanswered prayer that makes Christianity or religion in general a tough sell. God, you could have healed my cancer, but you didn't. You could have saved my marriage, but you didn't. You could have filled my bank account, but you didn't. God, you could have shown up on the worst day of my life. You could have stepped in and spared me all kinds of pain. You could have changed everything for me, but you didn't. You ever say anything like that to God? Be honest. Be honest. Because that's essentially what Martha has said here in our story. She has come face to face with the great I am, and in her desperation, she's asked them, why? See, that's what faith, that's what faith looks like in the face of suffering. And if some well-meaning religious person along the way told you that questions like that aren't allowed, just look at all those songs of lament in the Bible that show us how to cry out to God when the world doesn't make sense. Lament. Lament is an act of faith. It's not an act of weakness, it is an act of faith because it takes our suffering to God instead of trying to stuff it somewhere back in the corner of our hearts. We can't live like that. And so God invites us to bring it to Him, not to hide it from Him. And we ignore that invitation at our peril. Living without lament is like driving with the Cze engine light on. You can ignore it for a while until you can't ignore it anymore. And you find yourself broken down on the side of the road. When we cry out to God in our suffering, when we lament, we actually bring our confusion into contact with the confidence of our faith. And that's what Martha does in verse 22 of this story. She says, But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. She knew. She knew that even though Jesus chose not to prevent the death of her brother, he could still do something to turn it around. But when he told her that Lazarus would rise again in verse 23, she misunderstood. She didn't quite get it. In verse 24, she expressed a common Jewish understanding and belief that on the last day, at the end of time, God's faithful ones would rise in the general resurrection. And which is true. But what does Jesus say in verse 25? I am the resurrection. Not I will be the resurrection, as true as that might be, but I am the resurrection. Present tense. See, for Martha, the only hope that she could find for her present grief was out there on the horizon. It was out there on the other side of her pain. It wasn't really in view. But in just a few words, Jesus radically transformed that general hope and focused it on something concrete, something specific, something personal, focused it on himself. In Christ, that future reality was here, was now. The resurrection wasn't just some vague hope out there on the horizon. It was a present reality through the power and presence of God Himself. That's what Jesus was saying to Martha. So if you're grieving right now, whatever that look might look like, and whatever the cause might be, if you're wondering where Jesus is and why he's allowed such pain to enter your life, then the answer is this: He is right beside you. He is with you. He's not sitting on the sidelines. He's not waiting for his turn to come back onto the field or for you to give him permission to work in your life. No, he is with you. He is for you. He loves you. And we don't have to read much further into the story for Jesus to demonstrate what he was talking about. In verse 41, he prays to God the Father. And verse 43, he cries out, Lazarus, come out. And immediately after that, Lazarus comes walking right up out of the grave. And that's good, right? That's impressive. But it's actually not the whole story. Because there are a handful of stories throughout the Bible where people raise the dead. Elijah did it, Elisha did it, Peter did it, Paul did it. These were all ordinary human beings who, through the power of God, raise others from death to life. So if all Jesus is doing here is what they did, then he may be impressive. He may have some kind of spiritual power at his disposal, but he's just another guy like all the other guys. And the resurrection of Lazarus is just one more interesting thing, but it doesn't have much to do with us. Now that brings us to the third important thing that Jesus says in our passage. He says, I am the life. I am the resurrection and the life. Life is a hot topic in John's gospel. In chapter 20, he tells us that his primary purpose for writing the book was so that his readers would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in his name. John 1 describes Jesus as the life of mankind. In John 5, we learn that Jesus has life in himself and he gives it to all that he pleases, just like his Father. In John 12, we see that the commandment Jesus brings on his father's authority is one of eternal life. We could go on and on, but the gist of it all is this: God the Father sent God the Son on a mission to bring eternal life to a people who are dead in their sin. That's what John 3.16 is all about. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life. So when Jesus says that he is the life, again, it's not a metaphor. It has metaphorical implications, to be sure, but what he's saying is something deeply and profoundly literally true. He is the origin and giver of life. And he doesn't just want to give Lazarus back the ordinary life that he'd lost when he went into the tomb. He wants to raise him and to raise all of his people to a new form of life, an everlasting life, an eternal life, an infinitely qualitatively different kind of life. See, that's what sets Jesus apart from Elijah, Elisha, Peter, Paul, and anyone else. That's what makes Jesus more than just another guru or teacher of enlightenment or spiritual leader or anything like that. Jesus is uniquely qualified to dispense new life and life to the fullest because he is the great I am. He is the life. And the heart of his mission was to share the life that he is and has with a people who, again, are dead in our sins and trespasses. See, that's that's the hard truth in the Bible. That's where you and I find ourselves apart from God's grace, dead in our sin and desperate for new life. What Jesus was doing in this story was showing people that that it was showing us that we will all ultimately go the way of Lazarus. We will all ultimately end up in the grave. And so if we want to get out of this life alive, then our only hope lies in the resurrection and everlasting life that only Jesus can give. That's why he could look Martha in the eye in verse 26 and say, Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. That is a heck of a thing to say, isn't it? I mean, could you imagine if someone, could you imagine if I came up to you and I looked you in the eye and said, Hey, you want to live forever? Believe in me. I mean, we've got a history of cult leaders who have made promises like that one. And they've all been absolutely bonkers, and none of it has ever gone well. By the way, you can get some Kool-Aid on the way out, it'd be great. This is not Kool-Aid. Not Jesus. Jesus is not like any other leader ever. He is no cult leader, he does not make promises he cannot keep. Why? Because he is. He is the great I am. He is the resurrection. He is the life. And the only way to a life that outlives death is through him. That's what makes Jesus' question for Martha so important. Do you believe this? Friends, that's the question that Jesus is asking us today, right here, right now. Do you believe this? See, we have a perspective that Martha did not have. We know that when Jesus raised Lazarus, that was only a foretaste. Jesus was only getting warmed up. When he said, I am the resurrection, he was looking forward to a day on the other side of his own death when by the power of the Holy Spirit he would come up out of the grave. And that is precisely what he did on that first Easter morning or 2,000 years ago. But Jesus didn't quit rising on that day. Forty days later, he rose again. He ascended up into heaven. He took his seat at the right hand of the Father. And right now, that's where he is. By the power of his word and spirit, from the right hand of the Father, he is confronting and addressing each one of us with the same question. Do you believe this? Do you believe that Jesus is the great I am who put on flesh? Do you believe that he is the resurrection, that God raised him from the dead on the third day, and he will come again on the last day to raise all of his people? Do you believe that he is the life, that he will raise you to everlasting salvation and righteousness on that day? Do you believe these things? Because if you do, then the promise is not just eternal life out there on the horizon. It's eternal life that begins right here, right now. It's Martha, the day after Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave. It's comfort in knowing that the God of the universe is with you and he loves you, even when it seems like he's not paying attention. It's confidence that bears up under trials. It's respite when you're dog tired from chasing children all day. It's validation when everyone at work keeps beating you down. It's calm when you're waiting for the test results. It's peace that surpasses all understanding. It's joy in the suffering. It's hope in despair. It's light in the dark. It's life after death. And you can have all of it. You can have all of that and more. Not through the power of positivity. Not by subscribing to some kind of new philosophy. Not from following a list of tips and tricks that you picked up from your favorite blog or some podcast or anything like that. None of it. You can have all of that and more through faith in the one who did not just claim to be the resurrection in the life, but proved it by walking up out of the grave on the third day. Do you believe these things? Do you believe Him? That's the question. Let's pray. Father, we believe. Help our unbelief. We confess these things with our lips. We believe them in our hearts. And yet sometimes, Lord, our hearts are miles from you. We know in our heads that we are alive in Christ, that we have eternal life, that resurrection power is coursing through our veins. We believe that notionally. And yet we continue to live like dead people. Forgive us, Father, in our unbelief. Speak tender words of life to us. Reinvigorate and remind us of who we are and what we have in you. Help us to live as people who are fully alive in Christ. People whose lives are marked by love, by joy, by peace, by patience, by kindness, by gentleness, by faithfulness, by goodness, by self-control. Help us to be a people who bear witness to the wonderful truth that Jesus is alive in our words and in our deeds and in our attitudes, in everything. Lord, we need your grace for this. And if there are those here, either in the room or listening online, who do not yet know that life, Lord, I pray that by your spirit you would convict them of the truth. That apart from life in Jesus, all they have is death. Lord, convict them in order to save them. Bring a knowledge of the truth. Bring life. The deep, never-ending, eternal life that can only be found in Christ. We know you can do that work because you have done it in so many of us. And we ask that you would do it even here today. Be glorified, Jesus, for you are our risen and ascended, Lord. We pray in your name. Amen.