Today's the fifth Sunday in Advent.
Only one more Sunday, Passion Sunday next week before Easter Sunday in two weeks.
And Lent, as we've said throughout the season, it's a 40-day season, not counting Sundays, that leads from Ash Wednesday to Easter.
And the whole point of Lent is for the church to reflect on this one question.
Why did the Son of God have to become man, live among us, die on a cross, and rise on the third day?
And so Lent is a season of reflection.
It's a time of prayer.
It's a time of fasting from food or other potential things that draw our heart away from the Lord.
It's a time when we reflect on our sin, our lack, our need, the brokenness that's in us and around us, the brokenness of the world around us.
And it's not hard when you look around the world to see brokenness, right?
Whether it's in the news or on social media or just social media itself shows the brokenness of the world.
Now that may sound morbid.
Why?
Why would any rational person want to take time to think on such morbid things?
But here's the truth.
For those who have actually gone through true suffering, the distractions, the things in this world that distract us from the real pain and suffering in our lives just won't do any more.
We need to go to the only source, the only one who can nourish and sustain our souls in this fallen world.
Now the truth is that the Christian life is a life of joy and gratitude, but the shape of the Christian life is the shape of Jesus' life, which included his death and his resurrection.
And that's what our scripture passages about this morning.
So let's jump back in at the beginning.
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha.
It was Mary who anointed the Lord 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 and her sister and Lazarus.
Now, this is a long passage.
It's 45 verses long, so we're going to do some summarizing as we walk through it this morning.
In these few verses, we learn a lot.
Here's just a few things.
There's a man named Lazarus, and he's sick.
Lazarus has two sisters, Martha and Mary.
These are the famous Mary and Martha that we know from Luke's gospel, that when Jesus came to their house, Martha was busy serving while Mary sat at his feet, and Martha complained, and you know where that story went.
Lazarus is a dear friend of Jesus, as were his sisters.
Twice in these five verses we're told that Jesus loved them.
This illness must have been severe because they sent word to Jesus.
They know of his healing powers and they are worried for his life.
Also, note that they don't make any specific request of Jesus.
They trust him to know what to do.
Finally, Jesus tells us that this illness, Lazarus' suffering, will not end in death.
Rather, it has another purpose, and that is to bring glory to both the Father and the Son.
And so that brings us to our first point.
That Jesus' death and resurrection redefines our experience of suffering.
One of the things I love about this passage, and I did a little looking in my sermon archives, this is the fifth time I've preached this sermon in about 20 years of preaching.
And that's a lot, right?
There's a lot of passages in scripture, and I was sort of surprised.
And I think the reason is because I am myself drawn to this passage because how because of how starkly it presents to us a paradox.
Within just a few verses, we're told that Jesus loves these three siblings.
And yet, spoiler alert, Lazarus is going to die.
Martha and Mary will go through the anguish of losing their brother and seeing him die, all while knowing that their friend Jesus could have healed him.
How do we hold these two realities together in our own lives?
God's love for us and God's allowance of suffering in us and in those we love.
You see, my assumption is that if God loves me, I will not suffer, right?
God's favor means that I will experience good things.
And if I am suffering, it means that God is mad at me.
But this whole passage speaks against that way of thinking.
I love the way Henry Nowen kind of captures what we see in this passage.
He says, we are often tempted to explain the suffering in terms of the will of God.
Not only can this evoke anger and frustration, but it is also false.
God's will is not a label that we can put on unhappy situations.
He wants to bring joy, not pain, peace, not war, healing, not suffering.
Therefore, instead of declaring anything and everything to be the will of God, we must be willing to ask ourselves where in the midst of our pains and suffering we can discern the loving presence of God.
I think this is a that's a quote that I can meditate on for quite a while.
But what I love about it is where he puts his finger right here, that God's will, now I'm I'm a Calvinist.
I'm a card-carrying Calvinist, I'm reformed, Presbyterian, and I am I'm not ashamed.
And we can be accused at times of doing this, of saying, well, you know, God is sovereign over all things.
There's nothing that happens outside of his sovereign will, so your suffering is God's will.
And there's there is truth in that those statements.
And yet what John is telling us in this passage, and what now is putting his finger on, is this that God's will is never our suffering.
Rather, God's will is to bring his glory and joy into our lives, but it is often through our suffering.
Again, because our life, as disciples of Christ, who we were told to take up our cross and to follow him, our lives will often imitate Jesus' life.
Let's look at the next section of our passage.
Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha, Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples, Let us go to Judea again.
The disciples said to him, Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you.
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 any one walks in the 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 go to awaken him.
The disciples said, Well, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he will recover.
Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest and sleep.
Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died.
And for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there, so that you may believe.
But let us go to him.
So Thomas, called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, Let us also go that we may die with him.
Point two, to follow Jesus is to follow him into hard places.
The disciples know that to go south, to go towards Jerusalem, where Bethany was, was to put their lives and Jesus' life in danger.
Because of Jesus' teaching and his miracles, the Pharisees and the religious leaders had decided that it was best that Jesus be taken out of the picture.
And John wants us to know that there will be times when Jesus too leads us into hard places.
And when that happens, like Peter, we are to ask ourselves this question: where else will we go?
He also, he alone has the words of eternal life.
And like Thomas, we need to say to one another, let us go with him into this hard place, that we may die with him.
Notice too that Jesus says this initially off-putting comment to his disciples.
He says, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I'm glad that I wasn't there, so that you may believe.
Now, as we'll see, Jesus is not glad that Lazarus has died, quite the opposite, but he wants his disciples to learn that nothing can happen to Jesus, and therefore nothing can happen to them outside the will of their father.
That's the whole point of that walking in the light little parable that he shares with them.
The passage continues.
Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
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.
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 had been here, my brother would not have died.
Point three.
God will disappoint you.
I think this is a vital point for us to talk about.
Now, we as a church, we sing a song and its chorus says, He's never gonna let, he's never gonna let, he's never gonna let me down.
And that's a great song.
We should sing that song.
Our soul needs to be reminded that ultimately God will not let us down.
He will provide for all of our needs.
He is faithful and true.
He is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God.
And yet, in reality, God lets us down all the time.
We pray for things.
We pray for good things.
We pray for healing for loved ones.
We pray for jobs for people out of work.
We pray for reconciliation and broken relationships.
We pray to be freed from sin.
And sometimes God says yes.
And sometimes God says no.
And sometimes God says, not yet.
And we experience disappointment in those moments.
For Mary and Martha, this was a time of great disappointment.
And it's as if knowing Jesus made it worse.
Because as they watched their brother succumb to the enemy of death, they knew that if Jesus would just arrive, it could all be made well.
And in fact, maybe they even knew of his other miracles that he could heal from a distance.
He didn't need to even be there.
But he didn't.
He disappointed them.
And in fact, John tells us that this was intentional on Jesus' part.
Listen to verses 5 and 6 again.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
I find a great tension between two words in these verses: the word love and the word so.
Can we put the verse back up there?
The Lord loved these three siblings.
John inserts that.
So he delayed.
I can't help but feel my gut twist as I think about both of these sisters saying to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
How many of us have prayed this prayer in our own words, in our own circumstances at various times in our lives?
Why has this happened, Lord?
Why did you allow this to happen?
How is this good?
How does this bring you glory?
I don't understand.
I've prayed those prayers.
I venture to guess that you have prayed those prayers.
Our next two points begin to point us to some answers to these questions.
Point four Jesus reveals himself to us in our sufferings.
Now, I've been to a lot of funerals.
I've performed funerals and I've attended funerals, and one of the most often quoted verses of Scripture at a funeral comes from our passage.
Now, funerals are some of the most tender and difficult and painful experiences of our lives.
In fact, most of us today simply try to avoid them.
And yet, what Jesus reveals to Martha, when she runs out to meet him and confronts him right to his face, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
He said these words 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.
You see, this interaction never would have happened apart from Lazarus' death.
What does Jesus say to her in her moment of grief?
He tells her, not, hey, we're all looking forward to the resurrection one day.
We're all looking forward to new life one day.
No.
He reveals to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
We don't put our faith in those future events.
We put our life, our faith in a person that Jesus Himself is our resurrection, just as he went to the cross and died in our place and rose in defeat of death.
And through faith, God has placed us in Christ.
So that his resurrection is our future resurrection and his eternal life will be ours.
What would our Christian faith be without this revelation?
It took the church years and decades to fully understand Jesus' ministry.
What he was doing through his living ministry, through his death, and through his resurrection.
And through this, Jesus tells us that death is not the end.
That great enemy that has afflicted humanity since the very beginning.
Death is no longer something for us to fear.
For our Lord has conquered death.
Next, we get to see Jesus interact with Mary very differently.
Now, you know this, siblings can be very different.
We have, you know, two girls and a boy, and our two girls very close together, just polar opposite personalities.
And so it was with Mary and Martha.
True to form, Martha, when she hears that Jesus is coming, she springs to action and she runs to Jesus.
She actually gets to him before he reaches the village, and she just like in his face.
Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But Mary, also true to form, she's so overcome with grief, she remains seated in the house.
And it's not until Jesus bids her come that she gets up and goes to him.
And yet still she is overcome with grief, and she simply falls at his feet.
And all she can muster is to express the same sentiments of her sister Martha.
Lord, if if you had only been here, my brother would not have died.
And Jesus says, Nothing.
He stands with her and he simply receives her tears.
And he takes her grief.
And he does something amazing.
He enters into that grief with her.
John writes that Jesus was greatly moved in his spirit.
And he asks to be taken to the tomb.
And they lead him there, and that's where we get this famous verse, the shortest verse in all of scripture.
Jesus wept.
One commentator translates this verse, Jesus balled.
Because of the language that's hard to convey that Jesus was so grieved and so moved in his spirit that his weeping was so full that the people who were there, those mourners from Jerusalem, they looked on him and they just said, look how much he loved him.
Just all the all the players kind of esteemed him, and we found out that his dad had died.
And because he was our coach and we loved him, we went to the funeral.
And this, you know, I was what, I don't know, 16, 17 years old.
This like probably this old man in his 40s, um, who was like big and gruff and hairy and like big beard.
He like walked in, you know, probably with his family late and he was just sobbing.
I will never forget that moment because this this guy who would like yell and scream and cuss at us on the football field was just reduced.
He was a child who had lost his daddy.
I just thought, look how much he loves him.
That's what these people saw in Jesus.
Beloved, when we look at Jesus, we see the heart of the Father.
What would our Christian faith be without this moment?
Without this passage, without Mary.
With Mary and Martha in the midst of this suffering, incredible divine revelation has been given to us as a gift.
To the one he answers with incredible life-altering revelation.
I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet will he live.
To Mary, he reveals that the God who created all things and he knows the end from the beginning, yet when we are suffering and when we are mourning, he does not stand far off and kind of pity us, saying, Oh, they're there.
It's all gonna be okay.
No, he enters in and he mourns with us.
And he weeps with us.
Beloved, when we follow Jesus into suffering, we come to know him in ways that we would never know him otherwise.
And this is the mystery of what Paul calls entering into a fellowship of Christ's own sufferings.
When we suffer and when we let Jesus come to us, we know him in a mysterious, even deeper way.
That leads us to our fifth and final point.
Look for resurrection.
Now, of course, this is the final thing that Mary and Martha would never have experienced, and we would not have experienced apart from allowing Lazarus' death, and that is Lazarus' resurrection.
Jesus tells the workers to take the stone covering the mouth of the tomb, and Mary objects, of course, being the practical one, but Jesus reminds her of what he has already said about the resurrection.
Once the stone is removed, Jesus speaks in the simplest and yet loud and authoritative command.
Lazarus, come out.
As the rightful king of the universe, Jesus speaks an authoritative command, and death itself cannot defy him.
His incredible power on display, and even Lazarus cannot disobey.
Life is restored to this dead body, and he gets up and he's you know, he's wrapped in these linen garments, his head and his he needs help.
He's kind of probably like hopping, you know, probably looked very funny.
And the passage closes with these words that bear multiple meanings.
Jesus commanded, unbind him and let him go.
Beloved, this is what Jesus brings to all who put faith in him.
He brings freedom.
Freedom from the fear of death.
Freedom from the need to save ourselves, to have all the answers, to be in control, control of our own lives, control of the world around us, freedom from the fear of ever being alone.
Paul Miller says that when we become Jesus' disciples, our lives begin to follow the pattern of his life.
And conveniently, it is the shape of the letter J.
J for Jesus.
When we follow Jesus, we follow him down into death.
And there in death we await the Father's resurrection.
And just as surely as Jesus Himself was resurrected from the dead, so we are resurrected.
Yes, ultimately, in the last day, we we all look forward to the resurrection.
And yet, day to day, season to season in our lives, Jesus leads us into many deaths, small deaths.
We follow him there, we follow him into the hard places because that's where he is leading us.
But we're told with the eyes of faith, because of what we know about Jesus, when he leads us into a death, we are looking for resurrection.
Because though the sufferings in our lives and in the lives of the people around us, they don't always make sense.
It's often fruitless to try to figure out what is God doing or why did he allow this.
That's not the point.
The point is that we worship a God who is able to bring life out of death, beauty from ashes, justice out of injustice.
Do you believe this?
That's what Jesus asked, Martha.
What Jesus wants desperately throughout the Gospel of John, but it comes up in this passage many times, he wants us to believe him.
He wants us to hear his promises, see what he has done, and believe him.
Beloved, when we see Jesus, when we hear him, and when we follow him, we will meet him in ways we never dreamed.
And we know that when this story ends, it will be a happy ending.
We need to take these words of Mary and Martha seriously.
It's easy for us who know the story and know how it's gonna end to be like, well, you know, it's all gonna work out.
Do you know that's true for you too?
Your story has a happy ending.
And yet, like Mary and Martha, day to day we cry out, Lord, why?
Lord, if you had been here.
But Jesus wants us to trust, he wants us to believe, and he wants us to walk by faith because Easter is coming.
So let's not distract ourselves from the pain and suffering in our lives.
Let's not distract ourselves from the pain and suffering happening in this world, but let us walk with Jesus into those painful places and see the resurrection life He brings.
If you have any questions about the sermon or if you have prayer requests, I'll be down front afterward.
Please come see me.
Let's pray.
Our Father and our God, what a profound message of good news you have given us in the gospel.
Lord, often our cry is, Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.
As this Lenten season comes to a close, Lord, we pray that we would see Jesus and that we would celebrate Easter as we have not celebrated it before.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.