John chapter 11 and reading verses 38 through 44. At the tomb of Lazarus, then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. And I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. Now when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, loose him and let him go. Amen. Father, I thank you for your word, and as we look at John chapter 11 and 12, I pray that our hearts would be encouraged, edified, you would be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. In our Women of Faith series, I am normally only going to take one sermon per woman, but because last week when we were in Luke chapter 10, we were looking at both Martha and Mary, I want to look at both of them again, but this time using all of John chapter 11 and the first eight verses of John chapter 12. And I myself have been very, very encouraged by their testimony. These were occasions of huge challenge to their faith, and we're gonna start with some lessons from John chapter 11. And let's start by reading verses one through three. Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent to him saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick. We already discovered last week that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus dearly, and yet Lazarus got sick. And this confuses some people. They think that sickness can never come from the hand of God, and so if we get sick, it must be because we lack faith, or because we have sin in our lives, or Satan somehow has gotten the better of us, and the absence of God's favor is upon us. They think, if God loved me, he would not let me get sick, or if God loved me, he would not have let my relative die. What makes matters worse is that there are some hypercharismatics who take advantage of this misinformation, and they use it and sickness to make themselves wealthy and to manipulate people and to give them false guilt. Here's the logic that they use. They correctly state that healing is in the atonement. I don't agree with those evangelicals who overreact to the charismatics and they say, no, healing's not in the atonement. It is clearly in the atonement. But they incorrectly insist that if healing is in the atonement, then it is always God's will for you to be healed, just like it's always God's will for you to put off sin. For them, a failure to be healed shows automatically a lack of faith or sin in your life. Now there are some who won't go that far, but they will always say, sickness comes only from Satan's hand, and it's always God's will for you to have the opposite. But if you read in Isaiah and in Revelation, There's a time when all demons will be bound, and Satan and demons will not be on the earth, and yet people will still get sick and still die, and even the most holy people, the people with the most faith, are still going to die, right? It is appointed unto man once to die, Hebrews says. Second, scripture repeatedly says that God himself brings sicknesses into our lives for our good. For example, in Exodus 4, 11, God asks the rhetorical question, who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or dumb? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? He equally attributes sight and blindness, ability to hear and deafness to himself. He doesn't say, oh, that's Satan. You know, I didn't have anything to do with that. No, he attributes it to himself. In 2 Kings 5, we read the well-known story of the Lord striking King Azariah with a skin disease, which he suffered from until the day that he died. And in Luke, the angel of the Lord came directly from God's presence to strike righteous Zacharias with an affliction, an inability to speak, because he doubted God's word with regard to the birth of John the Baptist. That's Luke 1, 19 through 20. And of course, there are other examples, like the man born blind, that Jesus had had nothing to do with sin. It was only because of the glory of God that God had allowed him to be born blind. Now, it is true that God uses Satan as a tool And he can do that anytime, but he can bring sickness without using any other instrumental means like Satan to do that, and he's often done so. Third, though Romans 8.23 affirms that healing of our bodies is in the atonement, it says that the ultimate healing is going to be, and the redemption of our body is going to be at the resurrection. The redemption of our body, that's exactly what he says. And so any healings that we get in this life are foretastes. They are down payments of the ultimate healing and God is not absolutely obligated to heal us in this life. And we'll see shortly that lack of healing is no indication that God does not love us. Jesus loved Lazarus dearly, but he allowed him to get sick and eventually to die. And all of us, even those who have the greatest faith and the greatest holiness, will likewise eventually die. To fail to see this leaves people open to the unethical manipulations of these millionaire charismatics, these healers, who use this subject to torment souls with false guilt. I think this is such an important lesson for people to know. Bad things can indeed happen to those whom God loves, and it's no indication that they are not loved. You can just see the story of Job as one example. Now, at the same time, Martha and Mary did bring this sickness to Christ's attention. And I love the humble way that they did so. And I think this, too, is a rebuke to some of the modern TV evangelists. Just makes me shudder when I see them yelling at God and commanding God to heal a person. We do not command God to do anything. He is the Lord. We are the subjects. And in verse three, we see Martha and Mary humbly laying their need before the Lord. J.C. Ryle says they did not ask him to come at once. or to work a miracle and command the disease to depart, they only said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick and left the matter there in the full belief that he would do what was best. When you have the confidence that Jesus is a friend and he always has your best interests in mind, it changes the tone of your prayers. It washes away any petulance, any demandingness of the Lord. We recognize He's the loving Lord and that we are at His good pleasure. The next lesson that I see is that God can be glorified through our needs and losses. Now, we don't like to think about this sometimes, but He can be glorified through our pains and our losses. And here's what he says in verse 4, when Jesus heard that, he said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now, commentators point out that Christ's reply was to the messengers who had been sent for Martha and Mary. So he's not just saying this for the benefit of his disciples. He's saying it so that these words will be taken to Martha and Mary. So before Lazarus even dies, the messenger brings these words to them, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. And I believe that these words probably factored into Martha's words in verse 22, where she knows that if Jesus wants to, it's not too late for Lazarus to be resurrected. It really is remarkable words. Now, Jesus said enough to stir up hope and to give faith, but not enough for them to know how this would happen, and especially You know, when death did indeed grab hold of Lazarus for a time. And this is the way God often works in our lives. He gives us enough in scripture to stir up faith and hope, but not enough to answer all of our questions and not enough to remove all of the pain and the emotional turmoil that we might go through. So after hearing these words, I'm sure Martha and Mary were a little bit confused about the death of Lazarus. Wait a minute, didn't Jesus say that this sickness was not unto death? They might have thought, well, maybe we misunderstood Him. We maybe misunderstood Him. But Christ's reference to both He and His Father being glorified through this sickness is a truth I think we need to lay hold of. There is nothing in life that cannot glorify God when we look at those problems through a Christ-centered perspective. We should be looking for how to glorify God with our aches, our pains, and our sicknesses. Verse five is another mention of Christ's love. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Now, we talked last week about all of the different personality differences between Martha and Mary. And some books, unfortunately, present Mary as if she is Jesus' pet, you know, her favorite. There is no indication in any of the texts that Mary was her favorite, and I like the fact that right here, it's Martha alone who is singled out by name. They're all loved, but he mentions that he loves Martha. He doesn't just love the Marys in our midst, he loves the Marthas, and I take great comfort from that. So, the fact that they were loved is quite clear. What is not clear during the dark providences of our lives is how does that love relate to the very discouraging things that we are going through, the crushing sorrows? Verses 6 through 14 give us confidence that bad things that happen to us are definitely not an indication of God's lack of love. On the contrary, verses 5 through 6 affirmed that love was one of the first of several reasons why Jesus allowed them to go through this. I want you to notice the so that connects verses five and six. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. The so in verse 6 is the Greek word un, which means therefore. Therefore. The NIV completely translates this wrong. By the way, you really do need to have literal translations in your hands, and the NIV many times even just ignores words. But in this case, they completely translate it wrong. NIV translates it, yet, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, as if he stayed despite his love. No, no, no, no, it was not despite his love. It was because of his love that he stayed an extra two days. Fellow Christians, if you ever doubt God's love and concern when you go through difficulties, If you're ever tempted to think God is indifferent to your plight simply because He's delaying His answer to your prayers, I want you to take heed to this verse, and I want you to take heed to 1 Peter 5, verse 7, which says of God, He cares for you. And He said that in the midst of the severe persecutions that He was allowing His disciples to go through. You know, in 1 Peter, incredible persecution. And they might have been tempted to think, how could God love us and allow us to go through these persecutions? But by faith, they could believe it because God's word said it. You know, a child may not always understand why the parents allow them to have a painful operation, you know, when they're sick. And yet they can trust that the parents do indeed love him. And in the same way, it was God's great love that dictated the delay. And the same is true of the delayed answers to our prayers. Now a second reason for God's delays is that they're always for our spiritual benefit. Look at verses 14 through 15. Then Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I'm glad for your sakes that I was not there that you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go to him. Verse 15 says, he was glad for their sakes. It was for their benefit. And again, wouldn't we want to wait if we knew it would be for our benefit that we got an answer to our prayers a year from now rather than right now? Wouldn't you rather have, if you had a choice of $1,000 in your pocket right now, or waiting for a year for $100,000, you'd say, oh yeah, in a heartbeat, I would wait for a year. Now, if you're immature, if you're present-oriented, believe it or not, a lot of people would take the $1,000 now and forget about the $100,000. Who really knows if God's gonna follow through? But I think you would be willing to wait if you knew it was for your spiritual benefit that you are waiting. We call that deferred gratification. But verse 15 gives another reason for this delay, to increase their faith. Jesus said, I'm glad for your sakes that I was not there that you may believe. This whole event was designed to strengthen their faith in Jesus and to glorify Jesus throughout history. We would not have this glorious chapter that teaches about Jesus being the resurrection and the life if they had not had this delay. And when God delays answers to our prayers, our faith is stretched, it's exercised, it's made strong. And who among us does not want to grow in faith? I do, but a lot of times it's painful things that make our faith to grow. So Jesus is much more pleased by a life of faith than he is by a life of comfort. In Lamentations it says, the Lord is good to those who wait for him. So those are three very obvious reasons right on the surface of the text of why God allowed them to go through this. But I wanna back up to verses nine through 10 and look at one that's not quite so obvious. Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. Now, this may seem utterly unrelated to the subject matter that Jesus is talking about, but it is directly related. So he starts with an illustration of limited sunlight. You only have 12 hours of sunlight in a day. And then he applies it to what the Spirit is doing internally. He's making this a spiritual metaphor. So what he is saying is no one has all the light that they could wish that they have. The fact that we only have 12 hours of light during the day does not make us say, oh man, if I don't get 24 hours of light, I don't know how I can function. We realize, yeah, there's times where we can't see, where we stumble, but we make the most of the 12 hours of day, right? That's what he's talking about. Now in the spiritual realm, it should be the same. Our responsibility is to walk within the light that God has given us rather than freezing up because there's some things about the future, about the darkness that we don't know. There are some Christians who refuse to step out in obedience to the Lord because there are some things in the future that they're in the dark about, they don't have a clue about, and they're scared about those future periods that they're in the dark on. These disciples didn't know whether they would end up being killed. They're in the dark about that. Martha and Mary didn't know what the next two days would hold. No one fully knows the future, and yet despite that, God calls us to obey his call, the light that we have in the present. We must submit to him in faith. Verse 11 gives another reason for his delay, and that is to help us to realize that our critical events that we are just overwhelmed with are not so critical when you look at them from an eternal perspective. We might think, What could be more critical than issues of life and death? But in verse 11, Jesus said, our friend Lazarus sleeps. But I go that I may wake him up, which is yet another promise that he was going to reverse Lazarus's condition. But he's not here denying that he is dead. If you take a look at verses 12 through 14, then his disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well. That's an excuse that springs from fear of the Pharisees. Okay, great, we don't have to go, right, Lord? Verses 13 through 14, however, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought that he was speaking about taking a rest and sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus is dead. So why didn't he say he was dead in the first place? Why use this metaphor of sleep? Well, I believe it's because he's trying to give them a realistic perspective about death. Death for the Christians should not be a fearful thing. It's really just like falling asleep to this world, where you're unconscious to the things of this world, and now you're awake to a different realm, the realm of eternity. Martha wanted Jesus to come, lest Lazarus die. The disciples don't want to come, lest they die. And so Jesus is telling them, look, just lay hold of responsibilities before death comes. And you don't need to fear anything. You don't even need to fear death. It's like sleep. what was it that Ron Doetzler said, you know, in Abide Ministries, when people told him, you can't go to the inner city, that's such a dangerous place to be. His response was, oh, the safest place to be is in the center of God's will, even if it's in North Omaha. And the most dangerous place to be is out of God's will if you're in West Omaha, right? So anyway, we've dealt plenty with the personality differences between Martha and Mary, and here you see those differences coming out during a time of sorrow, verses 17 through 21. So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Just as a side note, I want you to notice it wasn't just Jesus and the disciples who loved Martha and Mary. There were many Jews who came to comfort them. And during times of loss, I think this is such an important ministry, to come alongside of people who are going through sorrow. And some people feel awkward. I don't know what to say. Just be there. Be there as a comfort to them. Verse 20, now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him. Mary was sitting in the house. Now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Martha is ever the initiator and the take charge person who jumps into action. So she goes immediately to meet with Jesus while Mary stays behind in the house mourning. And Martha is rather blunt here, in effect saying, hey Jesus, if you'd come when I told you to come, he would not be dead. None of this would have happened, it's a veiled rebuke. If you had been here, I think all of us have our, if only, feelings. Regrets about our decisions of the past, or regrets about what other people have done. If you had been here, but now it's too late. And it's easy to think that God has met His match with our particular problem. In the book of Genesis, Sarah thought, in effect, that God was no match for her infertility. We may have given up on promoting righteousness in our culture because the problem seems too big, but we need to be convinced no problem is too big for God to handle. He continues to be a God of miracles. Now, it's easy for us even to give up on prayer. If we've been praying for years, I think one example is in 2 Kings 6, verse 33, where the king of Samaria is praying to God in sackcloth and ashes because they were besieged and the food had run out. He'd been praying and praying. And finally, in disgust, the king takes his anger out on Elijah and says, surely this calamity is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? Okay, he thinks there's no point in praying anymore, and Elijah said, no, there's gonna be plenty of food tomorrow. And there was, it was an impossible thing, but there was food in abundance. So don't limit God's power, willingness, or in any way look to a deficiency in God when our prayers are delayed. I think those are all inappropriate responses. Anyway, blunt as Martha was, she shows remarkable faith in verses 22 through 27. She says, but even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. She's in effect saying, I mean, if you want to, you could raise Lazarus from the dead. She had seen him do this in the past. So far, Jesus had raised the widow of Nain's son, Luke 7, Jairus' daughter, Luke 8. And he had even given commands to his disciples to raise the dead in Matthew 10 verse 8, and presumably they had done so. So she believes Jesus is able to raise Lazarus if he wants to. Will he? That she's not so sure on, even though Christ's message through the messengers could have given her a little bit more confidence. And she may have thought that he would indeed do so. I'm not sure, but it's true. that his promises were somewhat cryptic, and so people have said there could have been a basis for doubt there. Anyway, Jesus tries to draw out her faith in these verses. Verse 23, Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world. So here's a woman who has incredible faith. Ryle says, our English word, I believe, hardly gives the full sense of the Greek. It would be literally, I have believed and do believe. This is my faith and has been for a long time. I think in these words, she is giving a clearer testimony about the person and work of Christ than even Peter had given before, which was a pretty remarkable testimony. She is saying, I not only believe you could have healed Lazarus, I believe you can heal him now, raise him from the dead now. I believe in a future resurrection. I believe the promises of Scripture about the Messiah, that you are both man and God. She believes in his divinity. And yet she believes perhaps she should not be presumptuous in claiming his promises. And I can relate to Martha here because I remember years ago, wondering, do I dare give one more prayer to the Lord? I don't want to pester the Lord. How long can I persevere in asking him about these things? Until somebody pointed out to me, if God has given a promise in his word, you are honoring him when you claim that promise, and you dishonor him when you stop claiming those promises. He delights in our laying claim to his will. By the way, that's what it means to pray according to the will of God. He is not asking us to somehow figure out, guess what His decreed of will is. His decreed of will is gonna be done whether you pray or not. It's always gonna be done, right? What He's asking you to do is to pray according to His revealed will, which is in the Word of God. And if you can claim a promise or a command or an attribute in the Scripture, that's what God elicits faith through. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. So that's what it means. to pray according to the will of God. And Martha could have done that with his previous promises. Now before we look more at her faith, let's look at the fact that Martha can be sensitive and caring. I think this is often missed in biographies of Martha. She's just treated as being You know, because she's such an activity-oriented person as not being very caring. No, she can be very caring. Verse 28, when she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary, her sister, saying, the teacher has come and is calling for you. Now, Mary was a deeply emotional person. It appears she was so overwhelmed, she just wanted to be by herself in the house. And though Martha has given Mary some space to mourn, she knows it's time for Mary to come out and to talk. Mary could sympathize with people who just want to be left alone. I want to mourn alone. But she would not agree with bailing on responsibilities, nor would Martha. And though still grieving, Mary goes out to meet Jesus. What I learned from this is there are times where we've got to push people out of their retreat. We've got to push people out of their puddle of tears and say, you know, you really do need to meet with some other people. They care about you. They love you. And draw them out. And I get the idea of sensitivity, especially from the phrase, she went her way and secretly called Mary her sister. She didn't say what she's needing to say to Mary in front of a crowd. She didn't know how Mary would react. So she's being sensitive in the way that she pushed Mary. Context. Mary promptly responds, praise God, verse 29. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to him. She does not allow her grief to keep her from Jesus. And I have seen Christians do this. In fact, I have seen pastors do this, where they're so angry at God that they don't want to come to God in worship because they've lost a loved one, right? and they mope around for years and years. They just can't get over their grief. If your sorrows alienate you from Jesus rather than drawing you to Jesus, okay, you probably, in addition to having an attitude problem, you probably have a misconception of Christ's heart or a faulty view of where your solace should come from. He should be the first one that you come to to cast your cares upon. And then the next point, she does exactly that. Now I'm going to skip ahead to verses 33 through 35. Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, see how he loved him. I'm always amazed at how touched Jesus was by the pain of other people. A very, very sensitive heart. Hebrews 4.15 says that Jesus continues to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. And so that's one lesson. But here are three further lessons we learn from this interchange. First, it is not sinful to sorrow. And you might say, well, obviously. But I have, over the last 20 years of ministry, run across quite a few people who think, must think, that it is sinful to sorrow. Jesus was deeply moved with his emotions. His splunk nidzo is the Greek word. And many people have a hard time doing this. They have a hard time grieving. They just feel if I grieve in some way, I'm insulting God. No, their stoicism does not imitate Jesus. He was a man of deep sorrow. Second, it is not manliness to stuff your tears, at least not the kind of manliness that the scripture talks about. That idea that men must stuff their tears flows out of the rugged individualism of the Wild West. But Jesus was a manly man. A man who could weep with those who weep, something by the way that all of us are commanded to do in Romans 12 verse 15. Third, Jesus shows us how to enter into the pain of others without being overwhelmed by those pains. How to have a tender heart without allowing emotions to dictate our actions. And his immediate action in this case was to seek to be a good witness in this situation. We should ask ourselves, is that my first response when I'm in a painful situation? I wanna be a good witness to the Lord in this situation. He used the funeral to testify to the gospel. By the way, funerals are one of the best places to testify to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not just pastors, but all of us who go to those. Pagans who attend the funeral can see your grief, that you're real, You have pain, but along with that grief, they can see your faith and your joy and your confidence, a confidence and joy that unbelievers cannot really have at their funerals. Verse 36, then Jews said, see how he loved him. And some of them said, could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? So here was a huge crowd of witnesses that needed to be challenged that Jesus was the Lord over even death. Now, even if he hadn't raised Lazarus from the dead, this was a great opportunity of witness. And out in Ethiopia, funerals were often the greatest opportunities for evangelistic outreach. I think more people came to Christ through funerals in Ethiopia than just about any other method of evangelism, because what happened is people would come to these funerals, and yes, they would see sorrow and they would see weeping, but they would see such confidence in the resurrection, such hope, such faith, even joy undergirding their sorrow. It just blew them away. It was not something they had ever seen, because in their pagan funerals, They wailed with absolute hopelessness. They didn't know what was out there in the darkness. In fact, they would gash themselves with knives. And the weeping, it was a horrible event to go to. What a contrast. You go to a Christian funeral and you saw the hope and the joy that undergirded their grief, and many people came to faith as a result. In verse 39, Martha's take-charge personality comes in again. Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there's a stench, for he's been dead four days. She is not the type of person to let him find out for himself. This is not a good idea. And those of you who are take-charge Marthas, probably need to temper your desires to always fix people or, you know, rescue people from what you think are their bad decisions. But in verse 40, we have Christ's gracious response, and really the whole purpose of this exercise, which was to strengthen Martha's faith. Jesus said to her, did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? So he's indicating that Martha has some unbelief mixed in with her phenomenal faith. And I think this is true of all of us. All of us have these times where areas of our lives we can trust God implicitly, and there's other areas of our lives we just totally blow. Ryle comments on this, he says, how apt our faith is to break down in time of trial. How easy it is to talk of faith in the days of health and prosperity, and how hard to practice it in the days of darkness when neither sun, moon, nor stars appear. Let us lay to heart what our Lord says in this place. Let us pray for such stores of inward faith that when our turn comes to suffer, we may suffer patiently and believe all is well. The Christian who has ceased to say, I must see and then I will believe, and has learned to say, I believe and by and by I shall see, has reached a high degree in the school of Christ. Now, since this is a biographical sermon on the women, I won't spend a lot of time on the resurrection, but I think you can imagine the incredible joy that these two women had when they saw Lazarus coming out of the tomb. But let's read verses 41 through 44. Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. And I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who were standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who had died came out, bound hand and foot with graveclaws, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, loose him and let him go. Now, this was an astounding miracle that deserves a sermon all of its own, which we're not going to give, but I just want to comment on the two reactions. The first reaction to this miracle is what we might expect. People said, wow, and they believed. Verse 45 says, then many of the Jews who had come to Mary and had seen the things Jesus did believed in him. What a gratifying, glorious response. This is what we wish would happen every time we witness to people But given total depravity, the second reaction should not be surprising. The second reaction is that many of Christ's enemies stayed enemies. They saw the same miracle, but it didn't change their hearts. They continued to oppose Christ. They tried to discredit Him. And they even talked about how do we get rid of this problem? How do we kill Jesus? They know he's done a miracle, but they hate him for it. And if you look at verse 10, chapter 12, verse 10, they felt it necessary to kill Lazarus because the living Lazarus continued to be such a powerful testimony to the truthfulness of Jesus being the Messiah. And to me, this shows total depravity. It illustrates that unbelief is portrayed in the scripture, not as a result of lack of evidence. There's plenty of evidence. All you do is look a world around you and you see evidence shouting all the time that there is a God and it portrays his attributes. The scripture says they know there is a God. It's not lack of evidence. Scripture says unbelief is a willful problem. It's a problem of the heart. And that is really a tribute to Martha and Mary's faith being a result of God's grace. That's the only reason they would be different. But I'm going to end with a remarkable testimony of Mary in John 12, 1 through 8. Let me go ahead and read that. Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus, who had been dead, where Lazarus was, who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper, and Martha served, but Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box, and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, let her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial. For the poor you have with you always, but me you do not have always. Now, it's easy to get so focused on the bad attitude that the disciples have that we miss the significance of Mary's actions. And it's so easy to try to reconcile verse 1. which says six days before the Passover, with Matthew 26, which says two days before the Passover, that again, we miss the brilliance of Mary's faith. But I do want to spend one or two minutes just showing how to reconcile these two passages. There are actually some people who think that because this says six days and Matthew 26 says two days, There must have been two anointings, one that happened six days before and another anointing that just seemed as identical that happened six days and two days before. But I'm one of those who believes it's exactly the same anointing that happens in Matthew 26. Mark 14 and in John chapter 12, and it's so easy to reconcile. Verse one here says, six days before they came to Bethany, doesn't say that this thing happened there, and there are four days of activities that happened between verses one and two. Now if you take that, that there are four days gap in between there, then Matthew 26 and John 12 completely reconcile. Okay, now let me spend some time highlighting the fact that Mary had a laser-like faith in Christ's words. Chapter 11 has hugely strengthened her faith. And at this point, her faith is stronger than that of the apostles. Christ had repeatedly told his apostles he was going to be scourged, crucified, die, be buried, and be raised on the third day. And the other apostles have a hard time believing that. Peter even rebukes him. Don't even talk about dying. He rebukes him, and Jesus rebukes him right back. Well, Mary had a simple faith that Jesus would do exactly as he said. In verse 7, Jesus made this statement about the fragrant and expensive oil. let her alone, she has kept this for the day of my burial." Now, the word for kept is terreo, and means to keep watch over, guard, reserve, or preserve. It indicates a very deliberate holding onto this perfume for one purpose and one purpose only, Christ's burial. She had self-consciously reserved it for the day of his burial. I'll comment in a bit why she poured it on him before his burial. But right now, I want to focus on Christ's words. She has kept this for the day of my burial. And that statement implies three things. First, Mary had been saving this for some time for Jesus. Though her brother had died earlier, and though it was normal to use such costly oils for the dead, she had not poured this on Lazarus. She had kept this for Jesus. Nothing, not even her brother, would deviate her from using it for Jesus. This was her love offering for Jesus. And it was indeed costly. The margin says it cost about a year's salary for an ordinary working man. That was a huge sum of money. Second, she kept it for Christ's burial. Now that implies she believes that he would be buried just as he said he would. This is a remarkable statement of faith that the apostles had a hard time believing. Third, she poured it on Jesus before the day of his burial. If she had been keeping it for the day of his burial, why did she not wait until he was dead? I believe John Phillips in his commentary is absolutely correct when he says this is an act of faith that Jesus would rise from the dead just as he promised, just as surely as he would be buried. He had repeatedly promised the two together, and after the theology statement that Jesus had made with the resurrection of Lazarus, she had no doubt. In fact, it was probably the burial of Lazarus made her realize, you know what? Jesus doesn't need this on the day of his burial. I'm going to give it right now. And I love what this commentator says so much, I'm just going to read him at length. He says, Jesus would not need the spikenard when he was buried after all. So she said to herself, I'll give it to him the next time he's here. It was a marvelous demonstration of her faith. She had kept that ointment for his burial, but she gave it to him a week before. It was actually two days before. because she now believed in his resurrection. No wonder the house was filled with fragrance. Mary of Bethany seems to have been the only one who believed the truth of resurrection. You won't find her at the cross or at the tomb, nor was it cowardice or despair that kept her away. You'll find Mary, the Lord's mother at the cross. You'll find Mary Magdalene at the tomb. You'll find Mary, the mother of James and Joseph at the cross and at the tomb, but not Mary of Bethany. She had not the slightest need to be at either place. She was already standing on resurrection ground. He goes on, he says, every local church needs Martha's to get things done. Every church needs Mary's to help others enter into the deep things of God. Every local church needs men like Lazarus, a witness in a special sense. So for me, this makes Mary's statement one of the most remarkable statements of faith in the entire Gospels. Better, I mean, before her statement, Martha's and Peter's were the clearest testimonies. This is amazing. In fact, it's so amazing that if Matthew 26 and Mark 14 are parallels to John 12, which I am 100% convinced that they are, if they are parallels and it's telling the same story, Jesus said, this is so remarkable. Here's what he said about it. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel And he's referring to this act being a testimony of the gospel in visible form. Surely I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. This is why there was no weeping of the woman of Matthew 26, Mark 14, or John 12. It's the same woman, Mary. There was no weeping, okay? There was weeping of the woman who was the prostitute in Luke chapter seven. Totally different incidents. So for Mary, there was nothing to weep about. She had faith that Christ would mount the cross as a conquering warrior, that he would arise from the dead as a conquering warrior, and she had put her faith and trust in him. And I happen to think that by this time, Martha had a similar faith, a faith that enabled them to carry on with duty despite the grief of knowing Jesus would have to suffer, and that would be something that would give them grief as well. But it says in verse 2, they, which I take to be both Martha and Mary, they made him a supper. And after the supper was prepared by both of them, Mary let Martha have the honors of serving something near and dear to Martha's heart. She loved serving. But in verse 3, we have Mary's language of love once again coming to the fore, extravagant devotion to the Lord. And that's the next application that I want to make. The cost of her extravagant gift of love was so great that it made everyone in the room stop what they were doing, look with disapproval at her, and start commenting self-righteously about how this was so inappropriate. We must guard our hearts that we do not have similar disapproval of the extravagant worship and love from the Marys in our midst. Now, I am a Martha. I'm more reserved in my worship. I have a hard time not being reserved in my worship, but I value the Marys in our midst who bubble over with devotion to the Lord. I do not want Jesus rebuking me and saying, cut it out, Phil. You know, let her alone. After you've seen a brother raised to newness of life like Lazarus was, it was hard to keep her enthusiasm down. My next application is to the Marys in our midst who may feel cut to the heart by people who misunderstand you and who criticize your love and your extravagant worship. And I say to you, keep your eyes on Jesus. You're not doing it for those other people who are criticizing you anyway. You're doing it for the Lord. They're the ones. who you're not doing it for. Focus on Jesus, the one who loves to receive Martha's service and loves to receive Mary's extravagant devotion. You know, Mary was criticized in Luke 10 for being lazy, a misunderstanding. and was criticized in John 12 for being wasteful, another misunderstanding. And both times, Jesus defended her. What is it about human nature that makes us criticize so easily? I don't know. But my advice to every Mary is to serve Christ, not the approval of men. Now, my last application comes from John 11, verse 1, where Bethany is described as the town of Mary and her sister, Martha, which some commentators take as an indication that they were notable figures in this town. Now, when you couple that with the great wealth that they had, we saw that they had in the previous sermon, it shows that Martha and Mary could have commanded respect. They could have commanded respect. And yet Martha is not too proud to wipe Christ's feet with her hair in verse 3, no doubt imitating the woman of disrepute from Luke chapter 7 who did likewise. I can imagine Mary heard of that prostitute doing this and said to herself, I feel the same way. I am totally, utterly unworthy of Christ's love and it makes me want to love him all the more. It humbles me and yet exalts me. It was a very visible gesture of both her love for Christ, but also his lordship over her and her willingness to submit to his lordship. And as such, I think they stand, both Martha and Mary, a willingness to put others ahead of themselves, not think of themselves too important to serve others. I think they're remarkable examples that all of us can imitate. May we do so with joy. Amen. Father, thank you for your Word. It is our desire to imitate, by your grace, the work the attitudes and the love that Martha and Mary both had. And I pray that as we do so, you would give us the joy, the confidence, the hope, the faith that they had as well. As we serve one another through the lenses of these various women in the Bible, would you stir up our faith, our actions in such a way that this congregation would be the stronger for it? In Jesus' name.