A Miracle to Die For
Tom Shrader examines the miracle of Lazarus' resurrection in John 11, focusing on Jesus' delay and His ultimate purpose to demonstrate His power over death. He emphasizes that Jesus performed this miracle specifically so people would believe He is the Son of God, yet remarkably not everyone who witnessed it came to faith. Shrader challenges listeners to examine their own belief and understanding that salvation comes through Christ alone, not through good works or religious activity.
“Everybody has eternal life - it may be in heaven or it may be in hell.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2003)
Recorded: 2003
Duration: 44 min
Themes: belief, death, miracles, faith, resurrection, salvation, doubt, purpose, questioning faith, doubting salvation, facing death, new believer, seeking truth, struggling with unbelief, witnessing miracles, examining beliefs
Scripture: John 11, John 20:30-31, John 2, John 4, John 5, John 6, John 9, John 14, 1 Peter 5
Theological Themes: christology, son of god, eternal life, saving faith, resurrection power, biblical miracles, signs and wonders, soteriology
Full Transcript
We today look at session 7, which means we have just passed the halfway point of this series looking at the Gospel of John. You know full well, because the introductions have essentially been the same every week, that we are doing a very fast flyover of this book. It's 21 chapters, and we're looking at a chapter a week and then only doing 12. So that tells you that we're moving very quickly.
John writes this Gospel, and his purpose is clearly stated. That purpose is, he said, I've selected these miracles. Chapter 20, verse 30, 31. I've selected these miracles. I've selected these signs for this reason, that you might believe. And by believing, you'd have eternal life. He says, I want you to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. And when you believe that, you will have eternal life. That's his whole point in writing.
He's very clear that he's selective. Sometimes we have to go back and make sure you understand that what we have, not just in John's Gospel, but in the four Gospels, is a snippet. It's a portion of the life of Christ. We don't for a second believe that everything He did or everything He said is there. In fact, John's very clear and says, listen, if we took all that He said and all that He did, we wouldn't have enough volumes to hold this. But John really hand-selects critically miracles in particular.
The Miracles Leading to Lazarus
This is the sixth one. Let me remind you. There's the miracle of turning the wine into water in chapter 2. The healing of the nobleman's son in chapter 4. The healing of the lame man in chapter 5. The miracles of the loaves and the fishes in chapter 6. Jesus walking on water in the last part of chapter 6. Chapter 9, and that's what we looked at last week, was the blind man. That blind man, we spent a great deal of time on what a magnificent story that was.
The same thing applies today. There are thousands of different ways to teach this lesson. There are many different points of emphasis. We can look at this story today in John chapter 11. It's the story of Lazarus. The minute I say that, many of you already have at least some sense or understanding of the story.
The Central Word: Believe
The point is the same as last week and the week before. There has been one singular word. Please, think this through. Don't just answer right away. In fact, give everybody a chance to think about it a second. Make sure we got this. If we were to say there's one word, one word that John wants to use to communicate to us, one single word that describes John's motives, John's teaching, one word. I remember Ken Venturi talking about golfers being under pressure. Ken Venturi said, listen, when you're under pressure, there's just one word. Trust it. Well, that's a problem. That's two words.
I've got one word here. One single word that describes John's writing and what he has in mind. That one word would be... Believe. Believe. That's what it's about. Believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's exactly the point today. It's the story of Lazarus that you find in John chapter 11.
The Family in Bethany
We're just going to work our way through this magnificent story. John chapter 11. "Now, a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. And it was Mary who anointed the Lord's feet with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair. Lazarus was her brother and Lazarus was sick."
A couple of things that we have there. Mary, Martha, Lazarus. They all lived together in a place called Bethany. It's a couple of miles from Jerusalem. As you read through the Gospels, you discover that Bethany was an important place where Jesus often went just to hang out and rest. When He went to Bethany, it was the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus that was the base of operation. These four people were very close. There's a relationship that winds its way all through the Scripture that shows us that these people spent a great deal of time together.
We also learn that it was Mary, this is the Mary who anointed Jesus' feet. Remember that instance? She took a vase of perfume and she broke the seal. Once she broke that seal, essentially, within a short period of time, that perfume would lose its effect, its aroma, its scent, and it would be useless. So it had to be used right away. It was expensive perfume worth probably about a year's wages.
A Lesson from Judas
Do you remember that story? It was a magnificent story because I really associate with one of the characters in that story. Mary breaks the seal, pours it on Jesus' feet, wipes it. It's a sign of honor. It's a sign of service. But there's one guy there, one of the disciples, and he says, What are you thinking about? Why would you waste all this money? Remember that? Remember who it was? Judas.
Isn't it nice to know that when we look at stories, we think just like Judas? Isn't that encouraging? That's exactly what you think. I've got to tell you, and this is a sidebar. I don't know how you figure this stuff out. I really don't. I don't know because to me what Judas says makes some sense in there. I understand what Jesus is saying. He's here and now you take care of this and it's a short time. We have those things in our life all the time where we're making some judgment calls.
The Message of Sickness
Well, that's Mary. "The sisters, therefore, send word to Jesus saying, 'Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.'" The word comes to Jesus. Here's Lazarus. Jesus is about a day's journey away. The word comes that Lazarus is sick. The assumption, I guess, would be that you'd not only want to know this,
Jesus's Unexpected Response to Crisis
But I think their hope, and we're going to see it as the story unfolds, I think their hope would be that Jesus would get there and do something about it.
Jesus has a very odd response to this whole thing. Verse 4: "When Jesus heard it, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified." This is the same thought that we saw last week in John chapter 9 with the blind man. Remember the question? Who sinned? This guy? Or his parents? One of them must have sinned. That's the conventional wisdom of the day. Somebody had to sin in this process. Who sinned? Which one of these?
And Jesus said, "Neither one, but that this man might be a display case for the works of God." Jesus said, "Don't worry about this, because this isn't a sickness unto death. God's going to be glorified in the midst of this. I'll be glorified in the midst of this."
Love and an Unusual Delay
"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. When therefore He heard he was sick, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was." Now, that is an odd response, isn't it?
It was a week ago Monday. Susan was talking to her mom on the phone and didn't like the way she sounded. Her mom's eight, nine hundred miles away. Hard trip, because you've got to fly to Boise and then drive six hours. Didn't like the way she sounded. Could sense something was wrong. And I know Susan well enough to know Susan was unusually concerned about it. And I just got on the phone and got her a reservation to fly up to Boise on Tuesday. And then to have her sister drive her over. And I think most of you know the rest of the story. She arrives there about four in the afternoon, and her mom dies the next morning. Isn't that amazing?
But if you hear somebody sick—she didn't even get a word she's sick, she got the sense she was sick, got the sense something was wrong. If you hear somebody you love is sick, what are you going to do? If right now, your cell phone goes off, and you look at this, and it says, "Listen, there's somebody here and they're sick," and it's somebody you know and you love, you're going there, aren't you? Don't you take off? That's what I would do. I would think that would be the most natural instinct in the world.
John goes out of His way to say that's exactly what Jesus didn't do. Jesus loved them. He loved Mary. He loved Martha. He loved Lazarus. So what does He do? He stays two more days.
Dangerous Journey Ahead
"Then after this, He said to the disciples, 'Let's go to Judea again.' The disciples said to Him, 'Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and You're going to go there again?'" We know that there's some animosity that is building up between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, and things are worse now than they were then. And He says this, "Listen, they were bad before and they were going to stone You. It's going to be worse now."
And then Jesus talks about the light. He says, "Listen, I'm here. I'm the light. Now is the time to go. Now is the time for us to pursue this. Now is the time to teach the truth."
Missing the Point Again
And then He said to them, verse 11, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go that he may awaken." And the disciples, pretty true to form—true at least in what we've seen—missed the point. They said, "Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought He was speaking of literal sleep. You see how they missed it again?
It's so important. And we said this all the way through this. The woman at the well was an example. The blind man is an example. Here's another one. Jesus is using a physical picture here to teach us the spiritual truth. There's magnificent truth. When Jesus spoke about the blind man, and we saw the instance with the blind man, this blind man obviously physically was impaired and couldn't see. But the lesson that was taught was not just Jesus healed the blind man and the power of Jesus, but to the Pharisees, "You're blind and you don't get it." And that's a picture of mankind. Mankind is spiritually blind, spiritually dead in their sins and trespasses. They won't get it.
They're kind of saying, "Wait a minute. If he's sleeping, why do we have to travel a day to be his wake-up call? That doesn't make any sense. Let him wake up on his own."
The Shocking Declaration
Verse 14: "Jesus, therefore, said to them plainly, 'Lazarus is dead.'" Now these guys have got to be wondering, what is going on? This is bizarre. First he's sick, we don't go. Now he's dead. And listen to this: "Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad." It is a bizarre response. It runs contrary to every human instinct you'd have. Unless you know something.
Jesus gives a little more information: "I'm glad for your sake that I wasn't there, so that you may believe." We have such an advantage, obviously, sitting here 2,000 years after the fact, and looking back. Looking back at this, because we understand exactly what's going on. We know how this is going to end. We know where it's all going. And somehow, because of that knowledge, we can miss the drama of the story, the humanity of the story, and we can almost miss the magnificence of the story itself.
Jesus said, "I'm glad for your sake that you might believe. Let's go."
Thomas as Our Spokesman
And there's old Thomas, verse 16. Thomas plays a key role, it seems, as kind of our mouthpiece. Remember in John chapter 14, a couple chapters after this, when Jesus said, "I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Don't let your heart be troubled. I'm going to go prepare a place for you, and you'll know the way, and you'll come there." And Thomas says, "We haven't got a clue what You are talking about. We do not know the way. We haven't got the foggiest idea." And Jesus says to Thomas and to us, "I am the way and the truth and the life."
There was old Thomas, after Jesus rises from the dead and appears to the now ten apostles that are gathered together. Judas is gone.
Thomas is not there. Thomas comes back, and the ten say, "Jesus was here." He responds, "I'm not going to believe it unless I put my fingers in the hole, my hand in the side." Thomas said, "I'm not going to roll over and believe this. I need to see it." A week later, Jesus appears and says, "Here you go." Thomas says, "My Lord, my God."
Here's old Thomas again. He says to the guys, "Let's go also that we may die with Him." He's going to die. They're going to kill Him. To me, I don't think he's just speaking this as kind of a platitude. I think he genuinely means this. He's saying, listen, as an act of courage and loyalty, "Let's go too. We're going to die too. It's going to happen. Let's go. We're willing to lay down our life for Him." And off they go.
You do see some courage there. Some courage that's absent a few chapters from now at the crucifixion. Courage that says, "Let's go die for Him." And not too many chapters from now, Peter says, "I never knew Him. I never knew Him. I never knew Him."
Jesus Arrives in Bethany
So Jesus came. And He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off. And many of the Jews had come to Mary and Martha to console them concerning their brother. Martha, therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went out to meet Him. Mary still sat at the house.
A Jewish funeral. Some of the information I read is really interesting and has a correlation, I think, to the world we live in. They said these Jewish funerals had gotten very, very expensive. To kind of pay honor to the dead, the family thought that they had to spend a good deal of cash and have a fairly large time of mourning and weeping extravagant. It said they've gotten very expensive. Not even to pay honor to the dead, but to somehow be able to compete with one another.
They're not unlike our weddings and our funerals today. You wouldn't just get a casket like that. You wouldn't get that bottom-of-the-line casket. Well, I sure would. We're going to dump this thing in a hole and fill it with dirt. I absolutely would. Are you nuts? I don't need all that stuff. Get it out of here. We had weddings. We had one of those last year. They're whatever. You've just got to let that go. That's all you've got to do. You've got to let that go. Don't think about it. Let it go. But you've got to wonder why we're doing some of this stuff, don't you?
Jewish Burial Customs
Well, the funeral would go like this. They would take the body. They did not embalm it. They would have the body in the house for a brief period of time. And then they would take the body to the place of burial. It would be a long procession. It would be led by the women. And the thought process was this: The women led us into sin in the garden, and the women lead us into death. Hey, I'm just telling you the facts. Why are you upset with me? I'm telling you what they did. Don't shoot the messenger. That's factual. It is.
There would be this long procession. And there would be hundreds. In this case, you get the sense that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were pretty popular people. There would be hundreds of people. They would go to the tomb. The tomb would typically be a cave carved out of stone. It would be a place where you'd have not just one single body. There would be a place where it would often be a family tomb.
They would take the body. They would place it in there. There would be a time of intense mourning there. They would roll a stone in front of the cave. The purpose of the stone was primarily to keep the wild animals and the dogs and the scavengers out of there. There would be this procession going back where the family would walk between all the people that were there. It would be a huge wailing. They would go back to the house. There would be really a period of seven days that they would be at the house. There would be intense mourning, weeping. There would not be much food or drink for a period of about three days. It certainly didn't move to a time of celebration as we think of it.
You can see some semblance of this even now when you see it, for example, in Jerusalem. You see a car bombing. You'll see them doing the service. You've noticed that. They'll bury him the next day. You'll see that procession very similar even to this day.
Martha's Encounter with Jesus
Martha hears Jesus is coming. And she goes out to meet Him. Verse 21: Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if You would have been here, if You would have been here with us, my brother wouldn't have died." I don't think she's chastising Him. I think she's demonstrating some sense of just kind of understanding of this guilt, or understanding what's happening. I don't think she's heaping guilt on Him. "Even now, I know whatever You ask of God, He will give You."
And Jesus said, "Your brother will rise again." And Martha has an interesting response here. Martha said, "I know he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Now, we want to spend not much time on this, but I'm wondering if, don't know here, if when Mary and Martha and Lazarus and Jesus were together, and after they talked about those diamondbacks and all the stuff that goes with it, and all those ancillary things that we talk about, I wonder if perhaps Jesus didn't talk to them about some futuristic things. He didn't talk about their life, and what happens when you die, and how we rise again. I don't know. There'd be some idea of this within the Jewish culture, but this seems to perhaps go deeper than that. I don't want to read too much into it. But it might be that that's what's going on.
The Great "I Am" Declaration
Jesus responds in verse 25: "I am the resurrection." There's seven great "I am's" here in the Gospel of John. "I'm the resurrection and the life." And then what follows is kind of confusing on the surface: "He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and if everyone who lives believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" You can read this and go, wait a minute, what is it? He lives...
He dies, he lives. It sounds like some of that New Age weird stuff. What's going on? Well, Jesus is speaking spiritually here, and He said, if anyone believes in me, he will live, he will be alive, even though he'll die physically, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Now, the call that we have, in one sense, is to die. It's to die to ourselves and to die to who we are. That's what it means to come to Christ, I think, in repentance and faith and be a follower of His. But look at the Word. It's the third or fourth time already today. He's saying, do you believe? Do you understand this? Do you comprehend this? Do you agree with this? That's the message. That's the message that John's trying to convey to his reader 1,900 years ago and trying to convey to us today.
Do you believe this? Because if you do, even when you die physically, and we all know we're going to face that, you will live with Him forever. What a magnificent truth.
A Funeral Reality Check
We, Saturday, went up and did Susan's mom's funeral. The girls and I got in there just in time, really. We went right to the cemetery as Susan and her sisters and the body arrived. I had the privilege of doing the memorial service. I don't know these people at all. I know her sisters just a little bit, but don't really see them or haven't talked to them in years. So I had a lot of freedom there.
There's a lot of Mormon influence on that family, and it's very female-dominated. There aren't many dominant males. There aren't any passive males to speak of, really. It's a real dominant female culture. In fact, when we got there, one of the ladies was saying to the girls, I hope you understand your grandma's family lineage here. There's a lot of us buried here. Susan's mom had been converted about 20 years ago under Larry Wright's ministry. In fact, she used to have options on Sunday and I would say, I'm teaching today. Do you want to come? And she'd say, no, I want to go hear Larry. I'd say, well, that's interesting. So do I, but I have to go to this other thing and do this.
So I pointed out the obvious to the people there, and that was she died on Wednesday. When do you think you'll die? Next week? The week after? I mean, some of you are in your 80s. You're teeing off on 18. It sounds like you're going to play a lot more. You're going to play 36. What are we doing here? And are you going to live?
The "Better Place" Problem
Here's what we love to do. Every funeral I haven't been to that they don't go, Bill is in a better place. That was the point I made. I said, I'll bet you, look around. I said, look at all these tombstones. I'll bet everybody stood and said, Bill's in a better place. On what authority do you make that claim? On what claim can you make, with solid authority, that Bill's in a better place? Just because he lived?
Don't you hear that all the time? When you see a lot of the famous people who die and those funerals will be on C-SPAN or the athletes or whoever, and they'll say, I know he's looking down on us today. I can't wait for the time when they say, I know he's looking up at us. I know he's in hell. No one ever does that. I don't understand it. Because it seems to me, that's the moment.
I was talking to this guy the other day. This is a great story. His family had a couple of interesting things. At a wedding a few years ago, it was a pretty wild family, and they had been partaking of the juice a little at the reception, and the best man got up to give his toast and said, I wish the best for Judy and Bob and the baby. Well, no one knew that the lady was pregnant, so that was a problem.
But he said he was at a funeral and it was a cousin of his. He said it was real interesting because his other cousin was there and they were standing there and the casket was open and the cousin came up and put a knife in his hand and said, listen, you're going to need this to defend yourself. He said it was a fascinating discussion because he started talking to the cousin and the cousin said, listen, we can't even make something up to say about this guy. He's going to be in hell and maybe the knife will help him. Maybe he can defend himself.
See, at least there's honesty there. That's what my friend said. My friend said at least this guy had a concept that there was life after death.
The Stakes Are Eternal
We say this to you all the time. Everybody has eternal life. It may be in heaven or it may be in hell. Jesus said, listen, if you believe, do you believe? Because if you believe, you'll be in heaven. If you believe on who I said He was. If you confess, for in our context as Paul writes, believe in your heart, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that God raised Him from the dead. If you believe, you have heaven.
If you don't, if you are assuming eternal life based on anything other than this, you are wrong. And you need to know that. The stakes are huge here. What Susan's mom experienced a week ago is something you're going to experience. There's no church that's going to save you. There's no prayers you can pray to save you. There's no candles to burn. There's no junior high to serve in. There's no singular act or accumulative action that you can take that will save you. Salvation is from God through Christ.
Martha's Response and What Follows
And she said to Him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God. Even He who has come into the world." And when she said this, she went away and called her sister, secretly, saying, "The Teacher is here and is calling you." And when she heard this, she arose quickly and she came to Him.
Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in a place where Martha met Him. And the Jews then went out with her from
The house where they were consoling her when they saw Mary get up quickly and they followed Him, supposing she was going to the tomb. So here's the setting. The family is there together. They've been ministered to by these other people. Mary gets up quickly. All the people are together. They think, well, she's going back to the tomb for some more mourning. I mean, that's a reasonable thought process that she's going through.
Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him. She fell at His feet and she said, "Lord, if you'd been there, my brother would not have died." You get the sense that perhaps the sisters had talked about this. It's exactly the same thing that Martha had said. The exact same words.
The Sisters' Shared Hope and Disappointment
I'm going to guess that in the midst of this, when the call went out that Lazarus was sick and they began to talk, I'm going to guess they speculated, "You know, if Jesus can get here quickly enough, He could heal him. We've seen Him do all these other things. We know all these other things He's done. And those, in many cases, were for total strangers. This is someone He loves and cares for, has a relationship with. I'll bet He could save him. Oh, if He would just get here."
When Jesus, therefore, saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her were also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled. One of the translation paraphrases writes this: "When Jesus saw her weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit so that an involuntary groan burst from Him. And He trembled with deep emotion."
The humanity of Christ comes pouring out at this moment. He said, "Where have you laid Him?" And they said to Him, "Lord, come and see." And Jesus wept.
Jesus Weeps Over the Brokenness of Sin
Jesus is weeping over the brokenness of sin, right? We know that He understands what He's going to do. He knows that He's going to go and He's going to raise them again and they're going to dine again and they're going to be together again. They're going to spend time. He understands all of those things. So what happens? He begins to weep over the brokenness of sin. And He associates with these people.
Some of you are in areas of ministry. Some of you are leaders in church. Some of you work in positions of maybe appointed leadership, assigned leadership, hired leadership in the church. Let me tell you what I find missing in most ministry. Most ministry that I see, here's the element that's missing: genuine care. Genuine care. Really caring.
I remember listening to Chuck Swindoll once and he was talking about four elements of effective preaching. Something like that. And I thought, well, I better write this down. I could use this someday. One of them was like, well, study. Understand your audience. Understand your audience. I don't remember. And the last one was, you've got to love the people you're teaching. That's the beauty of the shepherd metaphor. Jesus has moved here. His heart aches. He knows they're going to die again. He knows the sorrow. He sees the effect of sin.
The Crowd's Mixed Response
So the Jews were saying to Him, "Behold how He loved them." And some were saying, "Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" So you've got, remember, here's Mary, here's Jesus, here are the Jews. And some of them are saying, "Look at the love He has. Look how deeply He cares for Lazarus." And the others are saying, "Well, if He cared that much, why didn't He get over here? And He certainly could have done something about it. Couldn't He? Should have, but He didn't."
Jesus therefore again, being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. And it was a cave. And the stone was lying against it. And Jesus says, "Remove the stone."
The Command to Remove the Stone
So you've got the scene now? You've got to get this. We missed this. We've got issues. He comes to the gravesite. Here's the stone. Here's Mary. Here's Martha. Here are the Jews. All standing around. Literally, probably a hundred or more people watching this. And Jesus says, "Take away the stone."
Now they just got done saying, "Boy, He could have done something. He could have kept Him from dying." I wonder if now they're going, "I wonder what He's going to do." There has to be that, doesn't it? "What's going to happen? What's He going to do? What's going to happen next?"
And Martha, who is there, she's the sister of Lazarus, said, "Lord, by this time, there will be a stench. He's been dead four days." King James says, "Lord, surely He stinketh." It would have been four days. The time that the message came to Jesus, He probably died in that time. Jesus waits two days, and now a day back, four days have passed. She said, "Listen, we don't want to bomb this guy. He's going to smell. This is going to stink. This is going to be an ugly process. Why do we need to go through this? We've got four days of mourning here. We can't hurt anymore. Why do we have to go through this?"
The Prayer and the Miracle
And Jesus said to her, "Did I not say to you, I believe you would see the glory of God?" So they removed the stone, and Jesus raised His eyes and said, "Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me, and I know Thou hearest Me always, but because of the people standing around, I said this, that they might believe that Thou didst send Me."
Jesus is going through all this for those people. "I'm going to pray this prayer. I know you hear Me. I know you've always heard Me, but I'm going to pray so they see it. I'm going to let them see the glory of God. I'm going to let them see something that's undeniable. They can't miss it."
And when He said these things, He cried in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." Some of the commentators suggest that had He not said Lazarus, there would have been people popping out of graves all over the place. But there's a very clear thing. Lazarus, He hears Him, and "Lazarus, come forth."
And He who died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and His face was wrapped with a cloth, and Jesus said, "Untie Him and bind Him and let Him go." That is an extraordinary story, isn't it? I mean, if you're there watching this, you've got to be saying, "This is something."
The Unprecedented Nature of This Miracle
We don't see this every day. I mean, the water and the wine, that's one thing. You've got a guy and he's got a bum leg and he walks, that's another thing. The blind guy, that was a big deal. But everybody knew exactly what had taken place.
They all understood that Lazarus was dead. He wasn't in a coma. Jesus didn't say, "Give Me the paddles, everybody stand back." He didn't resuscitate him. They knew the body was already probably beginning to rot. Why? Because it had been dead.
It wasn't Doug Henning doing some sort of a magic trick here. It wasn't a conspiracy to manipulate facts. They knew what had taken place. They knew he was dead. And they saw he was alive. It's astounding, isn't it?
Why Aren't We More Amazed?
Most of you look like you're not that astounded. And the reason is, we're so familiar with this, it's lost the impact. Can you imagine seeing this for the first time? You're there, you watch it, you see it.
What do you do? Run? Run where? Run to Christ, I would think. All of a sudden, you're saying, this guy's got to be who He said He was, right?
The Shocking Response: Only "Many" Believed
The most amazing thing in the story is the first word in verse 45. Many. Many believed. It doesn't even say most. It doesn't say the vast majority. It says many.
So you're telling me now that there's 100 people there. Out of 100, I don't know what many is. A couple dozen? 30? A third, maybe? Maybe a third of them? It's certainly not over 50%.
Your Assignment: Why Not All?
Here's your assignment. We're going to spend zero time on this. I want you to figure out why that doesn't say all. I want you to figure out why that says many. I want you to try to figure out what these other 60 people needed to see.
They're standing there and they're watching this. And they don't believe this. Why would they not believe this? At that point in time, why would they not believe that? You figure it out.
When you figure it out, you have unlocked the key to your Christian growth. Because all of a sudden, what's going to happen is you're going to understand who God is. You're going to understand who man is. You're going to understand how man relates in terms of sin. And you're going to begin to see the effects of sin on the humanity in its total.
Our Inadequate View of Sin
If there's something that plagues us as Christians, it's an inadequate view of sin and the consequence of sin in our life. We think sin is just... I made a mistake. I just blew it. I just screwed up.
We're dealing with a guy at church right now who's in the process of divorcing his wife. We've gone to him. We've told him it's wrong. He acknowledges it's wrong. His only concern is this: "Doesn't God have to forgive sin?" I would say that's too casual a view of sin.
The True Condition of Man
Once we get beyond that, we start to look at the effects of sin. What's the condition of man? Is man just sick? Or is man dead? What did sin do to man?
Did sin just render man a little bit handicapped? Or is the Scripture right when it says natural man can't see spiritual things? I'm telling you, there's only one explanation and it's a biblical explanation of why that doesn't say all.
That's why when you're talking to people, I've had people say to me, "You know what, unless I really see a miracle or if I really saw a miracle, then I'd believe." They didn't. They didn't believe. They wouldn't get it. It's the whole point really of this lesson. The whole idea behind all that we're looking at.
The Purpose of the Miracle
Verses 41 and 42. He said, "Listen, I want you to believe. I want you to see this. I want you to understand what's taking place." Jesus does this for the benefit of the sisters, for the benefit of the disciples, for the benefit of the Jews. In a sense, for your benefit today that you can sit here today and you can see this truth.
Where Do We Find Comfort?
Let me come back and we'll tie it up. What do you do in the face of real difficult challenges when you're trying to find some level of comfort? We talked about that on our outline.
It was real interesting, again, at Susan's mom's funeral because you had the girls were there. Susan was there. I was there. We're running out of believers at that point. And it was real interesting to watch them. And it was really interesting because I like to let anybody talk who wants to talk.
They said, "You know, her mom was so much fun. And her mom was always there." They talked about all those things. But I'll tell you what, those are so empty.
I went to a funeral once where I just opened it up and said anybody can talk. And they said, "I know right now. I know he's up there in his lazy boy chair with a beer watching a ball game." Where do you get that? Do you see that?
The Authority Question
This is the second week in a row we've come back to this. Where's the authority to speak to this issue? That's what we've got to find out. What difference does it make what you think or what you feel or whether that makes you good or not? What's the authority? And our only authority is the Scripture.
Everybody that I've ever met has some view of what happens when man dies. Everybody. If you go over to Fashion Square today and you interview 100 people and you ask them what happens when you die, most people are going to say, "Well, you know, I think I'd go to heaven." Why? "Because I'm a good person." There's just idle speculation.
The Culture of Uninformed Opinion
We've reached this goofy point, especially in our culture. There was a poll that was in the paper a few years ago. And the question was this: "Is the state doing an adequate job of disposing of hazardous waste?" And 47% of the people said no.
How in the world would you know that? I don't have the foggiest idea. Do you? And I can't believe anybody else did. How would you know? But we're elevating it. Every website I go on, they want to take a poll. "You think Anna Sorensen, you think she should be playing in this tournament?"
Do you think the president's doing a good job here? Is the Peterson guy guilty? How would we know? You don't have a lick of the fact. You don't know from nothing. Sure he is. But you don't know. I don't know. Do you? You don't know. You haven't even heard one-way evidence. You're not in the courtroom.
We've elevated this. Your opinion makes a lick of difference. Your opinion doesn't matter as it relates to facts. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you feel. It matters what you know and that knowledge has to be based on an absolute source. It has to come from here. It has to come from this Scripture. Doesn't it?
That's what we saw in the last Larry King discussion when you had Deepak Chopra and you had the guy from the Methodist church and you had all these things. When MacArthur asked one good, important question, what's your authority for that? When that rabbi said, I just heard the other day, and he said, I just heard the other day, and he said, I like saying it this way, that God created this hell, but His love prevents anybody from ever being sent there. Well, that's goofy. Where do you get that? What's the point of that? A guy you met on the street told you that?
The Authority of Scripture
See, here's what this book that cannot lie, does not contradict itself, here's what it says. That Jesus goes to the tomb, says get the stone out of the way, says Lazarus come forth, and Lazarus comes forth. And He said I'm doing all this for one singular reason that you will believe that I'm the Son of God. And that when you believe that, you'll have eternal life.
So do you believe it? If you do, heaven is your future, your destination. But way more important than that, your life on this earth changes radically.
The Abundant Life
You will have life and you will have it abundantly. And you will have a joy and a peace and a purpose and an understanding. All those things you'll want. You're trying to find all these things that give meaning to your life. The only place you're going to find meaning in your life is in a relationship with Christ as God begins to work in your life.
And now He opens your eyes and now there's purpose and meaning, because now for the very first time, you can do good in God's eyes and you can glorify Him.
Let's pray. Father, thank You for this truth. Thank You for Jesus. Thank You for His life and His death. All that He gives us. All that He's done. We look at these stories, God, and we ask Your Spirit to send them from just stories and words on a page to transform our heart. Father, we ask You to do that work in our life. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.
Have a great week and we'll see you next week.