00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
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.
Martha & Mary, Part 2
Series Women of Faith
Second biographical sermon on Martha and Mary
| Sermon ID | 65214121354 |
| Duration | 50:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | John 11:1 |
| Language | English |
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2025 SermonAudio.