Lazarus, come out!

Thank you very much.

Come to faith is, I'm Pastor Rick Stevens and this is the place, it's the only place

probably where you will hear someone say that faith is absolute confidence in the trust

worthiness of God.

Now we know that's not the whole definition of faith or the whole concept of faith but

that is a very helpful, workable definition that when you think about it and when you substitute

that idea where you see the word faith, you will often realize that what we are challenged

by, challenged toward when we think about faith is absolute confidence in the trustworthiness

of God.

It doesn't mean that God will do whatever you want Him to do or I want Him to do.

God is God, you're not, I'm not, but I can trust Him because He is God who has revealed

Himself as one who desires good things, best things for His people.

And so as a follower, not a demander, as a follower of His, we then learn to trust

Him.

Yes, you and I wish things that turned out differently on many occasions.

I don't think that's too much of a surprise to anyone.

And we're going to look at a story in the Bible where they wanted it to turn out differently

and it did.

Well, that's good but it doesn't always work that way in life, it didn't always work

that way in the stories of the Bible for the people who followed God then.

It doesn't always turn out the way we who follow God now would prefer.

There's just a lot of difficulties in a world broken by sin.

And yet we want to tackle this idea in the story of Lazarus in a little bit because

it had a happy ending.

Well, yeah, mostly, but as you'll remember, as we get into it, it didn't have an entirely

happy ending.

Well, that's only one of the things we hope to get to.

There are two others.

I don't know if we'll have time to get to both the others, but I want to start off with

reminding us that here we are on the Sunday before the beginning of Holy Week.

This weekend is the weekend before Palm Sunday.

So if you have been practicing some kind of Lenten observance, then this is your last

time.

But on Sunday is Feast Day.

So if you've given up something, then you can celebrate with Feast Day.

But mostly I'm bringing all of this up to remind us to pray.

When you go to church on Sunday, would you pray, or I should say you might go to church

on Saturday, however your practice is, I'm good with that, just show up, okay?

When you go to church, remember, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

If you attend a Bible study of some kind on Sunday morning, ask the Bible study to take

a moment and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

These are troubling times, and we need to do what the Bible tells us to do and pray that

God's will would be done.

Remember, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

We can pray that for Jerusalem and the entire Middle East.

So pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Now the other thing I want to talk about is, how do we understand, unravel, unwind, untwist?

However you think about it, all of this conversation about Israel.

The Christian community is fairly inundated by some of these comments, and some of them

make no sense whatsoever as far as I can tell.

Some of them, to me, are just confusing, and it occurred to me this week that as much

as I think I can sort out what's going on and how words are used and what people mean,

I'm not sure everybody can do that as easily, and that's not a criticism, that's just

because we don't think about these things generally as much as people like me do.

And so I want to talk about how to better understand what's going on in the conversation

over Israel, and it kind of comes down to it, seems to me, is do we support Israel or

do we not?

Well, what do you mean by Israel?

Do we support Israel or do we not?

That's a good question, important question, but it's also important to make sure we understand

what we mean when we say that.

And I make no secret that I support the Jewish people, the people called Israelites,

historic, biblical, theological, claim to the land we call Israel.

God gave it to them, it's theirs.

So make sure you understand that's where I come from.

However, there's a whole lot of other things that get mixed up in here, and so let's

try to clarify what we mean by some of the words.

And maybe this will help you sort out all some of the really crazy stuff that is set

out there.

So let's talk about Israel.

All right, where did that whole idea come from?

Well, the whole idea of Israel came from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And from Abraham, because God spoke to Abraham, his name was Abraham at the time, you probably

remember that, and said, I want to be your covenant partner.

And that began the people of God, the tribe of Abraham.

Well, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the three we looked to.

Abraham had a son named Isaac, Isaac had Jacob.

And we get the name Israel from Jacob.

You may remember the story of Jacob had run away because he and his mother had connived

against Esau and Jacob got the birthright.

He ran away to escape because he was afraid his brother would kill him.

And he was away for a long time, picked up a couple of wives and a lot of wealth along

the way, and was returning home.

And he knew Esau would be there.

And he knew there would be a meeting of some kind.

He didn't know if it would be a confrontation, a showdown, a massacre, because Esau was

a warrior and a outdoorsman, and then Jacob had not typically been quite that, how should

I say, energetic in his approach to life.

He had been more down to earth, regular guy.

He wasn't quick to pick a fight.

Of course, he was the one that cheated Esau, so Esau could have held the grudge and

gone after him.

Well, anyway, they're coming back home from the north to the south, get close to the

place that Jacob expected to encounter Esau.

And so he took some measures carefully to protect his household himself.

And during the night before he was to meet with Esau, you can read about this in Genesis

chapter 32, he wrestled with God.

And there are some very specific interesting things that you will want to read there.

But he wrestled with God and held on for a blessing.

And God at that point gave him the name Israel, which means, you'll find different things

about this, but essentially it means he who wrestles with God.

And so he became Israel.

That's where we get the name Israel.

It was then his descendants that became the tribes of Israel and the people of God, the

Jewish people, Israelis.

So that's kind of where we get this whole idea of a people that belong to God.

The idea that they were given a land came from God's promise to Abram, Abram becoming

Abram as a result of the covenant.

And God said, I will give you this land, period.

That's kind of an interesting promise.

But Abram and God had this conversation and God says, oh no, I'm going to give you this

land and you're going to have a huge family line.

There are going to be so many people born from your household, from your descendants that

there'll be as many as the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky.

Remember that.

So that's how it all got started.

And that's where the promise came from that God said, I will give you the land.

That's why we call it the promised land.

So that's a rough idea of the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob situation.

Okay.

So Israel came from Jacob, the one who wrestled with God.

Now how do we use these words today?

Well, I just said that Israel and Israelites were the people that descended from Jacob because

God gave him the name Israel, but we also have a nation called Israel.

Now that's distinct from what we mean when we say Israelites or the people of God, well

I shouldn't say Israelites, Israelites could still be Israelis who are part of the nation

of Israel.

But often when we think about in the Bible and say Israelites, we're referring to the

descendants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had.

And so there are the Israelites, but we also have the nation of Israel.

So that's different from the people of Israel.

That's a distinct entity like the United States or Canada or France or Germany or any other

nation.

There's the nation of Israel.

Basically, when we say that the Jewish people, and I'll talk about that in a minute too,

that the Jewish people have a historic, legal, biblical right to the land, we are referring

to the people who were the descendants of Jacob.

But often that gets conflated to the nation of Israel because that's the only, how should

I say, entity that could possess the land at this point, all right?

So you kind of, you kind of hear those things used in different ways.

When I say that Israel, the people of God should own that land, I'm referring to those

descendants of God specifically, but I'm not necessarily excluding the nation of Israel

because it's the expression of that entity in the modern world today.

Now earlier, you also heard me, I think I used the phrase God's chosen people.

So that's another way people refer to God's people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac

and Jacob, Jewish people, Israelis, they are often referred to as God's chosen people.

Now you might say, well, what about us as Christians?

Are we not God's chosen people?

Well, it's the phrase that term is used in a specific way.

It's not meant to exclude Christians.

We, clearly from the Bible, it teaches us we are included now with God's people.

That's not meant to leave us out.

It's meant more to be a specific reference to the descendants of Abraham, God's covenant

partner.

It's specifically referring to those people who claim as their heritage, Abraham, Isaac

and Jacob.

So God's chosen people is generally referred to as Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham,

God's covenant partner.

Now also, sometimes people will say God's chosen people and mean Israel.

So this is, I think you can get the idea of what I'm trying to explain here.

This is why some of these things get confusing because of the overlap and the way we use

different words to mean different things or to point in different directions.

So we need to be alert to that.

But sometimes to refer to Israel as to refer to the nation, sometimes to refer to Israel

as to refer to God's chosen people, distinct from a nation but a people that God has chosen

for Himself.

And by the way, you can fuss about this if you want, but it doesn't do any good.

So you may as well not.

But God chose the people He chose because God chose the people He chose.

And you don't have to like it.

I don't know why you wouldn't and you can be irritated by it.

I don't know why you would want to be irritated by it.

Wherever you are on that, these are the people God chose and we're not going to change that.

Okay, you or I or anybody else.

Now we also use the term Jews and that is again a reference to the descendants of Abraham,

Isaac and Jacob.

And maybe I should make this clarification.

You'll notice it in many of the stories.

I think it's in the story we're going to look at in a little bit that many times the

Bible uses the word Jews to refer to the religious leaders of Jesus' time.

So we need to be careful about how that word is used.

Yes, it refers to Jews who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And it refers to sometimes in the Bible that Jews meaning the Jewish religious leaders.

Well, we just have to pay attention and get that and I'm going to talk about how to

sort these things out in just a minute, but I want to introduce the ideas.

So the Jews are those people and they're include people that are not residents of Israel

or even citizens of Israel.

There are Jewish people scattered around the world.

They are still God's chosen people.

They are still Jewish people.

They may not call themselves Israelis because they don't live in Israel, but they are certainly

Jewish and they are certainly part of God's people.

All right.

So now let's talk about geographic specifics.

Now we refer to the Promised Land or Israel as that area of the world that God gave to Abraham

and his descendants.

Remember the story?

They left Egypt, led out of there by Moses and God out of slavery.

They really did not follow God like they should have.

When they left Sinai, they were afraid to go in and take possession of the land that

God promised them.

Took them 40 years to learn that lesson, but finally Joshua led them in and they took

possession of the Promised Land.

That's what we mean when we say the land area of Israel.

So there's another kind of different word usage of the word Israel.

I think you're getting the idea that these words are used with some variations of meaning

and we have to be careful about how we use them and to make sure we understand what people

mean when they use them.

Okay.

So they took possession of the Promised Land and they have lived there more or less since

then.

By more or less I mean there were two exiles.

The one we talk about the most is the Babylonian exile.

There was another exile that took people north out of Israel because they were unfaithful

to God and God was trying to get their attention and he did.

They never followed false gods again like they had before, the exile.

But they lived in the land and so there by they exhibit this historic claim to the land

because they were the people that have more or less always lived there because God promised

it to them.

Now did they have to take the land when God gave it to them?

Yes.

Now people want to fuss about that a little bit sometimes but we just got to get over

that and not fuss about that.

God told them this is your land and he said just go in and take it.

It's yours and part of the reason and maybe a bigger part of it than we know.

I think some of it's a little bit uncertain but part of the reason they took the land

at God's direction was because of the people living there were pagan and they were just

not doing right.

And so God wanted to go in and cleanse the land of that misbehavior and I say misbehavior

that's putting them mildly.

So okay so they take the land that we call Israel the Promised Land and they live there

for a long time.

Very long time.

Well fast forward all the way to the time of Jesus and they are living in the land.

No question about it, no doubt about it.

They are struggling under the oppression of the Romans, no question about it, absolutely

brutal times and the people just never, never were willing to knuckle under to the demands

of Rome.

There were just always these uprisings and rebellions because they wanted to be themselves.

They didn't want to follow the Roman gods.

They were the people of the one true God and so there was this continuous rebellion that

the Romans kept putting down and you probably remember hearing about the destruction of the

temple around 70 AD and all that's related to the horrors of those days.

That was part of the Roman response to the rebellion.

We understand why Rome was trying to conquer but we also understand why God's people

said no we don't want to be conquered.

Well the Romans pretty much prevailed at that point and at later points the rebellion

popped up and continued.

There are a lot of related stories.

You may have heard the story of Masada.

That's one of the most, I should have say, eerie, unsettling, courageous, there's just

a lot of descriptions you can give to the story related to Masada if you're not familiar

with it.

We won't get into it today but you should go look it up.

When you visit Israel and by the way I hope you will visit Israel, you may need to wait

till the things settle down right now but plan on going to Israel and I hope you will have

the opportunity on the tour you take to visit Masada.

It is absolutely chilling and how should you say?

You have to have some admiration for those people in a horrible situation and I don't think

that we're at all in a position to judge what they did.

They were trying to do right the best they knew but anyway people will often say of things

like Masada never again and the Jewish people will say that.

So anyway that's a story, a part of the rebellion that went on.

In an effort to deal with this, what the Romans thought of as the Jewish problem, the Jewish

people thought of it as a Roman problem, you understand what that means.

The Romans in about 135 AD or usually referred to these days as CE, common era.

I like the AD but that's again that's not about what we're going to fight today.

Long about 135 AD, the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the area that we typically think of as Judea.

There's a whole separate part of Israel that's called Judea but he renamed the area Syria,

Palestine. Well as a result of that, the idea of naming the area even all of the Promised Land

as Palestine kind of sprang up over time. Now Hadrian did this because he wanted to put the Jews

in their place and get rid of them once and for all. But he didn't but he created a whole lot

of other related problems. So now we have this concept of Palestine which to be honest,

when I first heard it as a kid, I thought that was just another name for the Holy Land.

Well, guess what? It has taken on a whole different life but essentially what the Romans did was

they tried to rebrand the area by naming it Syria, Palestine. Well that has resulted in

claims by other people that they are Palestinian and they have a historic right to the land.

So that's where that name came from. But the area generally thought of as Palestine is the West

Bank area of Israel. That means it's the West Bank of the Jordan River, what we would rightfully

call Judea and Samaria. Are you confused enough yet? Well, I'm trying to keep this simple.

But anyway, that's where the Palestinian problem came from all the way back to Roman times

when they renamed the area and called it what we refer to as Palestine. Well, there's no

people that are Palestinian. There's no historic area of Palestine. It was a

manufactured idea from the Romans. So all of that, which really was a lot, isn't it? All of that

wrestling with words and trying to understand people and places comes down to how do we know

how someone is using these words? How do we know when they use the word Palestine? What are they

referring to? How do we know when they use the word Israel? What are they referring to? Well,

it's simple, but necessary, I would say, essential way to know is to always consider how the

person speaking or writing is using the word in the context of what they're trying to communicate

to you. Context determines meaning, context defines where there are subtleties, context clarifies

them. Now, sometimes you will discover, as you're trying to figure out, now, what do they actually

mean? You may discover that that is really quite confusing. And a lot of times it is because the people

who are using the words are confused or confusing their use of the words. They may not even realize

that they are because, as I hope you've picked up, talking about this can be quite confusing. I don't

want it to be, you don't want it to be, but it is. And we have to be very careful to listen to how

people are using the word and then understand what they mean because of the context of the way they

use the word. I hope that helps. I mean, I'm not at all convinced this is the beginning and end of

trying to understand some of the confusing things that are said because people say all kinds of

wacky and frankly dumb things. But we, we need to think our way through this and listen carefully

so we can make sense of things and that we can keep the sacred story straight. I'll be right back on

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Welcome back. I'm Pastor Rick Stevens and you're listening to Faith Is. This is the place that

Faith is, absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God, and we stretch in God's direction

because we want to have confidence in Him. Too many times people want to blame God,

accuse God. Well, we want to have confidence in God because we trust Him. He has demonstrated that

He is trustworthy, and so we want to have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.

Now, I call myself Pastor Rick because I am the pastor of Diplomat Wesleyan Church in Cape

Coral Florida, real church, real people, real faith. I guess we should make that our slogan,

shouldn't we? Well, we're not that big on slogans, but we are just people like you. We aren't super

spiritual. We don't over-spiritualize. We try to understand what God is saying to us,

and follow in the way He leads, just like you do. So we are trying to be people of faith,

just like you. Well, I want to talk about and look at a story. It's kind of a long story,

but I think we should read the whole story because after all the words of the Bible are far

more significant than my words, and then we'll have a few observations about this story.

Is the story of a man named Lazarus? You may be familiar with it. I'm not going to read quite

all of the story, most of it, but not quite all of it as it's recorded in John's Gospel,

beginning in chapter 11, verse 1. So let's get into it. Now a man was sick. Lazarus from Bethany,

the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and

wiped his feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick. So the sisters sent a

message to him. Lord, the one you love is sick. When Jesus heard it, he said,

this sickness will not end in death, but is for the glory of God so that the Son of God

may be glorified through him. Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. So when he heard that

he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. Then after that, he said to the

disciples, let's go to Judea again. Rabbi, the disciples told him, just now the Jews tried to

stone you and you're going there again. Aren't there 12 hours in a day? Jesus answered,

if anyone walks during the day, he doesn't stumble because he sees the light of this world.

But if anyone walks during the night, he does stumble because the light is not in him.

He said this, and then he told them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm on my way to

wake him up. Then the disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well.

Jesus, however, was speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking about natural sleep.

So Jesus then told them plainly, Lazarus has died. I'm glad for you that I wasn't there so that you

may believe, but let's go to him. Then Thomas, called twin, said to his fellow disciples,

let's go to so that we may die with him. When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already

been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem less than two miles away. Many of the Jews had

come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. As soon as Martha heard that Jesus

was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Then Martha said to Jesus,

Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Yet even now I know that whatever you ask

from God, God will give you. Your brother will rise again, Jesus told her. Martha said to him,

well, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. In Jesus said to her,

I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.

Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Yes, Lord,

she told him, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.

Having said this, she went back and called her sister Mary saying in private, the teacher is here

and is calling for you. As soon as Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Jesus had not

yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were

with her and the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out. They followed her,

supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there. As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was

and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have

died. When Jesus saw her crying in the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in

a spirit and troubled. Where have you put him, he asked? Lord, they told him come and see. Jesus

wept. So the Jews said, see how he loved him, but some of them said, couldn't he who opened the

blind man's eyes also have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb.

It was a cave and a stone was lying against it. Remove the stone, Jesus said.

Martha, the dead man's sister told him, Lord, there is already a stench because he has been dead

for four days. Jesus said to her, didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of

God? So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you

heard me. I know that you always hear me because of the crowd standing here. I said this so that they

may believe you sent me. After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

The dead man came out, bowed hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth.

Jesus said to them, unwrap him and let him go. Therefore, many of the Jews who came to marry and

saw what he did believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus

had done. Well, we're going to stop the reading right there. That's at chapter 11, verse 46 of John.

You can read the rest of it. It's a significant part of it, but we're just going to stop right

there and consider a couple of things for our understanding and to stretch in God's direction so

that we can develop more and more toward that ideal of absolute confidence in the trustworthiness

of God. So one of the things we certainly have to wrestle with in this story is the idea of death.

Now that's not a popular topic. I don't think Jesus liked it much. In fact, if you look at the

scriptures, you will discover that God really did not want people, you, me, others to experience

death in any way. But at the same time, we kind of get a glimpse here that death is not such a big

deal to God. Now, I say that not to minimize it or not to say that Jesus was anyway cold-hearted

here. That's not it at all. What I'm saying is that God, the Creator, is the source of life.

And as the source of life, he is the one who gives life. And so to God, death need only be temporary.

Death, as we know it, need only be temporary because he's the one who gives life. And the Bible teaches

us, as you heard from the testimonies of the people in the story, that there will be a resurrection

one day. And that's going to be really something else altogether. So I think that's the first thing we

should wrestle with is that really when it comes down to it, death is not a big deal to God. It's a

big deal to us. We don't like it. It's our enemy. I get that. I don't want anyone to die. It's just

awful. No easy way to say it. But we also have to recognize that it's not such a big deal to God.

He doesn't like it. Death results because we've separated ourselves from the source of life.

That's what we can see in Genesis. And real life is connection to the source of life. That's why

he came so that we could have connection to the source of life in Jesus.

So as you think about death, as you consider it, remember that from God's point of view,

death is not a difficulty. Death is something he can easily overcome. As you think about this story,

you discover that as well. That with a word, Jesus overcame Lazarus death. Lazarus came out of the

tomb. So we should not at all be dismayed by all of that. And by the way, when you visit Israel,

you may get to visit the place that is the historic place of Lazarus tomb. Nobody knows for sure,

but it's the place that that tourist visit, we visited there. And you can have the opportunity to

step down into the tomb there and to see what it was like and to get an idea of what it would

have meant for Lazarus to walk up the steps and out of that tomb. If that's exactly the tomb that

was the correct one. So death. We have to wrestle with it. It is what it is. Now related to this,

we should at least wrestle with the idea because some of them were going to be a little shook up

by this. Why did Jesus wait two days? Well, and later it says four days by the time he got back to

Bethany. Well, four days probably were the result of one day, the messengers traveling to find Jesus

and one day of Jesus traveling back to Bethany. So that would be two days. And then it said he waited

two days before he set out for Bethany. Now, why did Jesus take that kind of time? Because you heard

Mary and Martha, as I read the story, say, if you've been here, it would have been different.

Well, likely if Jesus had left immediately Lazarus was already dead because of the way the time

works out and you can do the math and figure that out pretty easily. There's another reason why

Jesus may have delayed and it's going to be a little striking to us. All right. But I think we

need to understand if we're going to understand the Bible, we have to understand the thinking of the

people during Bible times. There had been, there's a little bit of question about this with certainty,

but there had been this idea and we don't know if it was present in the minds of the people there

or maybe just some of them, but the idea that the soul lingered near the body for three days after death.

And so Jesus waiting four days would have convinced anybody who thought maybe Lazarus wasn't really dead,

that he was really dead because after the three days the soul departs or so they thought.

And so the person is really with certainty dead. Well, that would explain one of the reasons for the

delay. Is that the total reason? I don't know, you heard the story, it doesn't say that in here,

but that's the idea that we think contributed to Jesus' decision to delay. Even if he had left

immediately Lazarus was already dead and then it would have been a challenge to convince people

that Lazarus was really dead when Jesus had him come forth. So anyway, that's the explanation

for that. Second thing that we ought to wrestle with today is the idea that Jesus wept

or Jesus' response to the situation in general, I maybe should say. Short as verse in the

Bible is found in this story, you probably picked that up. Verse 35, Jesus wept. Well, what was Jesus

response to this whole situation? Well, his delay in coming is not reflective of his,

how should I say appreciation for love for the people involved? That wasn't it at all. There's no

sense of that anywhere. He speaks of Lazarus as their friend. He's totally understanding, but

he also says that there's going to be a reason for God to get glory. So there is that mixed in there,

but Jesus' response to this situation is sometimes wrestled with, and I don't think it's really that

hard to get a sense of. Now, to be sure, the text indicates at one point that Jesus likely shed tears,

and that's well and good. It's not the same expressive, emotional response that typically

accompanied mourning in those days. In those days, the people were very, very outgoing, we might say,

or demonstrative with their mourning. You heard the story talked about how they thought that Mary

was going out to go to the tomb to weep there. They were very expressive in their approach to

expressing the sadness that they felt. The other thing that we pick up on, and I don't know if you

noticed this specifically, but it says that in verse 33, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and

troubled. Well, that's a curious thing, because you might say, oh, Jesus, you're about to raise

Lazarus from the dead, and you know you could have come sooner and avoided all of this. So now,

what's going on with the deeply moved and troubled? Well, we're not totally sure what that means, but

when you think about this, Jesus understood the impact of sin, and that ultimate impact

being death. And so for him to be deeply moved and troubled, they have been

his altogether appropriate response to the impact of sin on these people he cared about,

tend to realize, and now for the writer John to be able to tell us the story, so we will realize

that there are real consequences to sin, and Jesus grieved those consequences.

Now, some suggests that maybe Jesus was angry,

angry even out of the people, but at the impact of sin, maybe, maybe he was distraught.

The text doesn't tell us with certainty how Jesus felt, but we do know that he didn't like

the consequences, the results of sin, and that bothered him greatly, and that's likely what

God has attention at this point. All right, so you know the story also includes Jesus' conversation

back and forth with his disciples, and before they even leave to go to Bethany, that they have

this conversation, and it's interesting how often the idea of faith pops up in this story.

Now again, we've talked about faith as absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God, and so

so we could kind of see how that plays out when Jesus says to his disciples in verse 15 that

that this stuff happened for a reason. What did he say? I'm glad for you, speaking to the disciples,

I'm glad for you that I wasn't there so that you may believe. Well, interesting.

Jesus is using this opportunity as a way to help them strengthen their faith so that you may believe,

so that you may have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God. So there's that aspect

of faith. There's also when Jesus meets Martha, or maybe I should say Martha meets Jesus,

she goes out to meet him, and they have this conversation, and it goes on for several verses,

and Jesus reminds her that her brother will rise again, and she throughout this expresses her

confidence that Jesus can handle this situation, and it's really in a sense the way they have this

conversation. Jesus is inviting Martha to faith, to have confidence in God. And what does Martha say?

Verse 27, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.

That is an expression of faith, confidence in God. And so Martha accepted the invitation,

and through the conversation expressed her repeated confidence in Jesus. She had absolute

confidence in the trustworthiness of God. She had confidence that Jesus could unwind what sin

had brought to pass. So Martha's invitation to faith. Now,

now Mary has a little different response when it comes to faith, and it's maybe helpful

for us to think through her eyes for a minute. In verse 32, Mary has gone out to meet Jesus,

same as Martha had gone out earlier, but now Mary goes out. And verse 32 says,

as soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him,

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Now, what does Mary express here? She

expresses confidence in Jesus. Jesus, you could have handled this if you were here. I guess we could

say she expresses faith, absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God. I don't think that's

too hard to conclude, but it's also true. You can tell this, as you read the story,

that Mary was disappointed that Jesus hadn't come to avoid all of this pain, heartache that she

was feeling. She has faith, but she's disappointed. What about us? Could we have faith even in our

disappointment? Yeah, we surely can. Disappointment and lack of faith are two different things.

I could express disappointment that God didn't do, and I could fill in the blank or

several blanks in some situations that I was involved in. Well, that doesn't mean that I don't

have confidence in God. That just means I was disappointed that he didn't do what I would have

liked him to do. But I know that I can trust him. Is that always easy? No. What I like to be able to

say every time that I ask him to do something, he does what I want. Well, that sounds pretty good,

but you know he's God, but I'm not. And I don't know. I don't know the future. I don't know how

fits together. I just have to trust him, even if we're disappointed. And a lot of people,

they get hung up here. They say, well, God didn't do what I thought he should do, or how could a

good God let this happen? Well, you aren't God. You don't know everything God knows. And our

responsibility is to trust him. Well, the story ends quite well because Lazarus

comes out of the tomb. He's reunited with his sisters and everybody is amazed. And that's a

happy ending, you would say. Death has been conquered. Jesus said, come on out,

who's clear he was dead. Death has been conquered. Sin's curse has been reversed. Sin results in

separation from God and death. Sin's curse has been reversed with Lazarus coming out. And the

faith that the people had was vindicated. The disciples faith is strengthened. Mary and Martha

expressing faith, even if disappointed, is vindicated because Jesus really showed what he could do

and he did it. So you'd think it's a happy ending. And it was, except if you read on and I didn't

read all of it, not because I didn't want us to know the rest of the story. It's just you have to

make decisions about this sometimes, but we talked about it. We read this part. Many of the Jews

came to Mary and saw what they did, what he did, believed in Jesus, referring to Lazarus coming

forth. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. And so that

resulted in quite a conversation that is well worth your reading in John chapter 11.

So the results of the story is that Lazarus was given new lease on life and restored to his

sisters, to his family. Many people believed in Jesus because their faith was certainly strengthened

or maybe they had faith for the first time. But it also resulted in go ahead to verse 53.

So from that day on, they plotted to kill him. From that day on, the religious leaders plotted

to kill Jesus. And so now we find ourselves at the conclusion of story in the same

situation. We get to decide, will we believe or will we plot to kill Jesus?

Will we recognize that he is the one who overcame death and reversed the curse of sin and

vindicates our faith? Or as some people do, will we double down on our disappointment,

our demands that God be created in our image and be exactly what we want him to be?

My most pressing or recent or vivid expression of that is in these days when

God people will say, how could God allow that to happen? And I understand their anguish, I

often feel it too because I don't want bad things to happen to people. But at the same time,

we have to recognize that God is God. And who do we think we are telling God that we know as

well as he does? Well, we just don't. And here we see a good example of how people were

distraught because Lazarus died. But they realized that in the big picture sense,

we all live and that Jesus in the end makes all the wrong things right. Now the other

serious result of this was that they plotted to kill Jesus. And he would not too many days

in the future from this incident give his life to save the world. He gave his life to save you,

your turn. Will you believe? Will you have absolute confidence that he's trustworthy? I'm back for it.