"Why Are You Crying?" - John 20:10-18

How many of you have had kids or grandkids? How many of you have read story books to your kids or grandkids? Of course you have. How many of you had to read the same story over and over again night after night? The kid has 400 books and every night, “No Grannie. Read “The Little Engine That Could” (or whatever) again for the millionth time.”

And so you read it again. And if you try to skip a part or a page they know it instantly and let you know, right? They never seem to get tired of that one story! Kids are so stupid. I can’t stand them. No, I’m kidding. I really am because I have to admit to being that same way sometimes. There are certain stories I love to read over and over again.

When I was a kid I had some dog books that I remember just wearing smooth out. I “read” them even before I could read, just looking at the pictures. Finally, a few years ago I was able to read them. JAnd then I remember reading about Jonathan and his armor bearer in 1 Samuel 14. I read that again just this week. I love that story.

Another favorite is David and Goliath. How can you not love that story? I could read that over and over again. It has everything; action, suspense, faith, humor, a headless guy! I wish I had time to read it right now just for grins.

And so it is with the Easter story. I have a favorite. Now, let me tell you that the resurrection of Jesus is prophesied way back in the Old Testament hundreds of years before it ever happened. And it is talked about by Paul and Peter and John and others all through the New Testament even years after it happened. But I like to read the story of how it all went down. I like the first-hand account of it.

But…I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The Easter story is a problem for preachers just like it is a problem around Christmas. How do you keep the story fresh and new if you read the same thing every time? I have seen dozens of different ways to approach this. I’ve gotten emails from other pastors saying they are using such and such Old Testament passage that references the resurrection or they are using some verse from Paul like 1 Thess. 4:14 that says, “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

That’s good stuff! That’ll preach! I can get excited about that. But for me there is no better way to fully understand what happened on that Easter Sunday 2000-something years ago than to read it from one of the Gospels. Like I say, there are innumerable other passages from Old Testament to New Testament that speak of the resurrection of the Messiah. And there should be. Let me put it this way. If it were not for the event that we are here celebrating today then all the rest of this book is a waste of paper. If Jesus didn’t die on the cross and rise again after 3 days then this book is kindling.

Of course there are many other passages that talk about this event because just as the biggest door swings on a small hinge, everything about our faith hinges on the fact that Jesus defeated death in that tomb and lives today! The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19 that, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If Jesus didn’t die and then rise in 3 days then we are wasting our time here this morning and every Sunday morning but because He did do that we have the hope of the world!

 

 

And there is no better passage to see this than in the Gospel of John, the 20^th chapter and verses 10-18. As you find John chapter 20 I want to say that we as a church just got through going through 5 weeks of grief. We weren’t really grieving but we were literally going through a 5 week video series on the “Journey Through Grief” so that we will be able to help others as they grieve and also help ourselves when the time inevitably comes.

And while I learned some invaluable information about the grief process, 5 weeks is enough. It was a great series but I’m tired of grief. It does, though, help me to understand what is going on in this passage. This passage in John focuses, obviously, on Jesus but also on Mary Magdalene. And it helps to understand the passage if you understand something about the kind of grief Mary is going through here.

This is rock bottom for Mary. Her dear Friend and Lord had died. I’m sure that she and the other Mary and some of the disciples have been together consoling themselves but at this point Mary Magdalene is by herself. She has come to the tomb of Jesus and the Gospel of Mark tells us that she and some of the other ladies had purchased spices and were headed to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus and they were talking on the way there about how they were going to roll the huge stone away from the grave.

They didn’t know. They weren’t thinking straight in their grief and that is common for someone who has suffered a recent loss. They get to the tomb, though, and the stone is already rolled away but the body is gone. They don’t realize what has happened and now this just makes it worse. They think someone has stolen the body. What else could it be? And so everybody else goes back to tell the disciples and Mary Magdalene is left alone at the tomb.

Can you imagine what must be going through her clouded mind? First, Jesus is tried and beaten and hung on the cross. Then she sees Him die the cruelest death ever invented. Her hopes are gone. Her dreams for herself and her nation have died on that cross. And now even His body is gone. This is the time that every emotion starts to come out. Insurmountable grief, anger, shame, coupled with the weariness from a lack of sleep and poor Mary is a mess standing there all alone. Let’s pick up the story in John 20:10-18.

Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. ¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ He asked her,“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).¹⁷ Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

In an effort to expedite this sermon, I won’t beat around the bush and I only want us to see 2 basic things in this passage. They are, in fact, the 2 things that Jesus says to Mary. The first thing He says I find curious. It’s the same thing that the angels say and it is curious as to why they would say it as well. What do the angels and Jesus both say? “Why are you crying?”

Now you might find that to be a dumb question. Anybody could understand why she is crying and especially Jesus should know, so why did He ask that question? She is in the graveyard obviously looking for someone or something that she sees is not there. Why, it’s almost mean to ask her why, isn’t it?

We learned in this video series on grief that depending on how a person grieves (and everybody is different) that sometimes it is good to let the person grieving go through the process of finding things out on their own. And what Jesus and the angels are doing here by asking this question is not so much asking for their own knowledge but to let her know that there may well be a reason not to cry.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey goofball! It’s me, Jesus!” But instead His question is meant to gently reveal to Mary the possibility that there is a reason to stop crying. Proverbs 8:17 says, “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.” Doesn’t that fit Mary in this situation so well? Mary sought Jesus very early in the morning and even though she doesn’t yet realize that she has found Him, Jesus loves her so much that He gently reveals Himself to her and gently eases her sorrow.

Don’t raise your hand but how many of you have ever questioned God in the middle of your grief? I would dare say that everybody who has ever experienced grief has in some way questioned God about it. And we have talked before about the right and wrong ways of doing that. There is a respectful way of asking God questions and He has no problem with that.

He doesn’t always answer as we would hope He would and I’m afraid if He did we wouldn’t be able to handle His answer and so He slowly reveals His good and perfect plan as we are obedient to Him with our lives. Most of you who have been following Jesus for any length of time can vouch for the fact that it is so often in the depths of our greatest grief and sorrow that Jesus reveals Himself and His plan to us.

He reveals Himself to us when we have hit rock bottom. When we feel like we can’t take any more that is when Jesus comes to us as a friend and gives us hope by asking why we are crying; wanting us to look up and recognize it is Him. He knows that if we could see the big picture that it would overwhelm us but that as we learn we come to trust Him because He has proven Himself faithful. Again, you can vouch for that in your own life and we can in the life of this church. Isn’t that right?

The next thing Jesus says to her is just simply her name. “Mary.” In her grief and in her confusion and through the tears in her eyes as she stood there in low light, she couldn’t know it was Him. But when Jesus called her name she knew immediately who it was just like a sheep knows the voice of the shepherd.

Jesus had a way of speaking that immediately brought things into focus. Just a few days prior to this in the garden where Judas led the soldiers to arrest Jesus, the soldiers walked up to Jesus and Jesus asked them who they were looking for. They said, “Jesus of Nazareth ”and then Jesus simply said “I am He.” But when He said “I am he” the men all drew back and fell to the ground.

That’s the power of the word of the God-Man Jesus. A simple answer can knock a person down or in the case of Mary, it has the power to clear the fog of grief and misunderstanding and reveal Himself to her.

Mary was in a bad way here. She didn’t understand what was happening and she even tells Jesus who she thinks is the gardener, “Tell me where He is and I will go get Him.” How could she do that? She couldn’t lift Him. Where would she take Him? She didn’t know. She couldn’t understand. All she knew was she was in pain and that’s when Jesus just simply spoke her name.

Can’t you just hear how tenderly and lovingly and yet with power He spoke that name? When Jesus called Paul on the road to Damascus He didn’t scream his name. He simply said, “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” And Paul was blind and disabled for days. There was no running from it. When Jesus called Peter’s name, Peter had the power to walk on water. When Jesus called the name of Lazarus, Lazarus came out of his grave a well man. And when Jesus said Mary’s name…well, everything changed.

 

Everything looked different even through a veil of tears. She still didn’t understand everything but she saw Jesus and knew everything was going to be ok. Today could be the day that Jesus is calling your name. And you know it is. You can’t run from it. When Jesus chooses you to do something He doesn’t scream. He simply calls your name.

Maybe He is calling your name to lift you up out of your grief this morning. He knows that you don’t understand and you have been hurt and people have disappointed you. But Jesus isn’t calling you to follow a person. He is calling you to follow Him! He knows that you have grief and He grieves with you because He loves you so much. That’s amazing to me.

Maybe He is calling you because He wants you to do something or to stop doing something but you think you would never be able to do that. Let me tell you that the same voice that called Lazarus from the dead is calling you and the same power that was available to Lazarus is available to you today. That’s amazing to me.

Or maybe Jesus is calling your name today for the first time and He is calling you to have a relationship with Him. He is calling you to be friends with the Creator of the universe and the Redeemer of all creation and He redeemed you by rising up out of that grave on the 3^rd day, a satisfying sacrifice to the Father for all of your sins. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death and Jesus paid those wages so you wouldn’t have to. That’s amazing to me.

So, on this Easter Sunday, Jesus comes to you personally, calling your name and asking you why you are crying when everything you need is found in Him. He promises a full life here on earth (John 10:10) and the hope of eternal life with Him in Heaven if you just believe (John 3:16). And that ought to be amazing to you.

Invitation

The last thing Jesus says in this passage is meant for those who are His followers. “Don’t hold on to Me. Go tell my brothers.” As believers, our job is to show Jesus to the world and we don’t do that by arguing about gay rights or abortion. I’m not saying we ease up on our convictions one bit. We follow what the powerful word of God says about that but we will never convince anybody that we are right by arguing. We show the love of the risen Christ and let Him call their name and change their heart.

“Hosanna” – John 12:12-19

The date is 1889. The place is Dodge City , Kansas . It’s high noon. From out of nowhere, the man in the white hat appears and leans against the building. He pulls a homemade cigarette out of his pocket and lights it with a match struck from the side of his pants leg. His eyes have the gaze of a predator seeking its prey. Just then, from out of the shadows appears the one whom he seeks. The other wears a black hat and black vest. His eyes dart nervously to and fro.

As a tumbleweed blows down the dirty street, the 2 men size each other up. The bustling city grows silent. The only thing one can hear is the sound of the men’s spurs and one’s own heartbeat. The shopkeeper closes his blinds. The mother shields the eyes of her young son as the 2 men draw closer. The sun glints off of the gun and badge of the big man in the white hat. The other seems enveloped in shadow.

They get closer to each other as they walk down the middle of the dusty street. Closer and closer until finally the man in black stops and stares. But the man in the white keeps walking. Slowly he continues until he is uncomfortably close to the man in black until he finally is not more than a step away. Like a flash, the man in the white hate shoots his hand out from his side and says, “Hey! How ya doing? My name is Marshall Dillon. I just came over to ask you over to my house for dinner tonight. Miss Kitty fixed some stew and we would just like to welcome you to town!”

So…what did you think about my story? I made it up myself. Were you a little disappointed? Were you expecting something else to happen? Now, we all disavow violence, right? But you have to admit that you were expecting, even hoping for something with a little more action at the end, weren’t you? You were expecting the good guy to shoot the bad guy. That’s just good storytelling.

But see, your assumptions made you misunderstand how the story would end. What you wanted to happen is what you expected to happen and when it didn’t happen you have to admit you were disappointed. How many times in life has that happened to you? How many times have you wanted something to happen and then you just started expecting it to happen and when it didn’t, you were left with a bad taste in your mouth. It made you bitter and hateful and wanting bad things to happen to those who let you down.

You are, of course, not the first to feel that way. Life is full of disappointments. It always has been. Life is rarely fair. And for a lot of people it is made more difficult by their faulty beliefs in Who God is and how He works. They have a misunderstanding of God and a misunderstanding of the relationship between God and man. I heard someone say just the other day that they weren’t a Christian because God had never done anything for them. That is a serious misunderstanding of God.

In today’s passage of scripture in John, the Jewish people have a serious misunderstanding of Who Jesus is and what His plans are. There are some big words being thrown around in conversations about Jesus here lately; words like “King” and even “Messiah”. People have seen him do incredible miracles including the miracle we looked at last week where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. And so now they are thinking that surely if He has that kind of power then He could lead us out of bondage to the Romans. He could be our king. He could kill all the Romans and kill all the other enemies around us and He could finally bring peace to a nation that craved peace.

And not only would He be able to do those things, this would be a great time to do them. This was the time of Passover; a time of nationalistic celebration and pride and it would be the perfect time for Jesus to be crowned king and lead them to victory and salvation. Turn to John chapter 12 and let’s read verses 12-19.

The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem . ^They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!^[a]” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel !” ¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: ¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion ;see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” ¹⁶ At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. ¹⁷ Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. ¹⁸Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

Have you ever been misunderstood? Of course. We all have. Troy and Trey Pittman came over to my house the other day. Trey busted in first, of course, and headed straight to the kitchen to see if I had anything to eat. Troy came in a few seconds after and of course my dogs jumped all over him. He didn’t mind. He gets the same thing at his house. I thought he then pointed to the big dog, Bo, and Troy said,

“He needs a filipet.”

I said, “A what?”

“A filipet!”

I’m trying to figure out what a filipet is and why my dog needs one but you know how Troy is; I didn’t want to ask again but I had to.

“Troy, I don’t know what a filipet is.”

He looked at me like I was the crazy one. “A what?”, he asked.

“Whatever it is you said, I don’t know what it is!”

He sounded it out real plain this time. “A Phillips head! A Phillips head screwdriver!”

I finally understood what he said and I then turned around to go get it but stopped and asked, “But why does my dog need a Phillips head screwdriver?”

Again with the crazy person look. “I didn’t say your dog needed one. I need one. I’m going to tighten your door knob!”

Well, it’s one thing to be misunderstood because the other person speaks a different dialect of “Hillbilly” than I do. It’s another thing for the people of Israel to misunderstand Jesus and why He came to earth. They had the scriptures telling them what was going to happen. So they could have known and should have known. In fact, the author, the apostle John even admits in verse 16 that they did not even understand what was really happening and why and they didn’t understand it until after Jesus had been killed, buried and resurrected.

But what’s interesting here is that in their misunderstanding they played their own part in fulfilling the very scripture they should have known. As I said, this was the time of the Passover celebration, a time when the city of Jerusalem would be packed with people. Most of them would have heard about Jesus from His miracles and I’m sure many of them were there just to see if He would show up and do something again. They wanted Him to provide them with some healing or even just some entertainment.

Others were there because they saw Lazarus resurrected and wanted to see him. Still others were ready to crown Jesus as their king in anticipation of Him leading them to insurrection over the Romans. When they shouted “Hosanna”(which means “save now”) they weren’t wanting to be saved spiritually. They were wanting Jesus to do something for them here and now. They were excited because they thought Jesus would be the military king they had waited for. They misunderstood.

Some of us here this morning have a hard time believing that they couldn’t understand with everything they had been taught and told through the years and even by Jesus Himself. When they shouted to Him they were quoting Psalm 118:26-27. It says, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.From the house of the Lord we bless you. ²⁷ The Lord is God,and he has made his light shine on us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar.” So they knew the scriptures.

And then Jesus, again fulfilling scripture, makes it even plainer as he rides in on a donkey instead of a horse. A returning warrior king who was successful in battle would ride into town on a horse to show his might but a king who was coming for peace would ride a donkey. Jesus might as well have had a neon sign on his head telling His intentions but the people didn’t want to see it and so they didn’t. And we have a hard time believing that anybody would be that foolish. How could they have missed the signs?

I remember when I was in high school there was a kid who got mad at something as he was driving his car and in anger he swung his fist and hit the windshield of his car and shattered it. I rode home from school with a friend of mine the next day and we were laughing about it and saying how stupid he was to do such a thing. My friend, who was driving, said he couldn’t believe it because all the guy did was swing his fist like this and…and that’s when my friend shattered his own windshield. (True story, Mom.) J

We sit here this morning and too many of us are just here because we are waiting for God to do something for us. We want Him to come out like a gunslinger and shoot down all of our problems. We cry out to Him, “Save us, save us now!” We call Him King and we call Him Lord and we sing His praises and quote our favorite comforting scripture about how God has good things planned for us. And He does! Don’t hear me say that God doesn’t want good things for you. He loves you more than you can imagine.

But it is because of that unending, immeasurable love that he does not solve all of your problems and cure all of your ills and pay all your bills. Rick Warren said, “Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well-adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: He wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven. This is our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility and our ultimate destiny.”

The reason that I know that the Jewish people misunderstood Jesus was because in this passage they are wanting to crown Him king and yet in just a few days it is this same crowd who cries out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And isn’t that just like us? We sing the song 10,000 Reasons this morning about wanting to sing His praises for 10,000 years and then tomorrow when things go bad, yes, sometimes really bad, we have the nerve to say, “God, this isn’t fair! Who do You think You are?” We approach the Creator of the universe with a clenched fist. We go to the Redeemer and Sustainer with anger. We dare go before the throne of the great I AM with a puffed out chest and smart-alec phrases.

You’re not the first to go to God in the middle of a storm and be a smart-alec. Most of us would agree that Job in the Old Testament had some things to be upset about. And you might think Job would be glad to hear directly from God about why these things were happening. But after reading just a couple of verses in the 38^th chapter, I don’t think so. “Who is this that darkens my counsel without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man!” And it goes downhill from there for old Job.

Job misunderstood the role of God in His life. It wasn’t that Job didn’t love God. He just didn’t have the knowledge he needed, as God pointed out. How much better for him it would have been had he simply answered as the 3 boys did in the book of Daniel. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were about to be burned to death in the furnace they said to the king, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. ¹⁸ But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

We know He can…but even if He doesn’t! Let that sink in because those are some of the most profound words ever spoken by man. Those 3 young boys understood that God was not there to serve them. God wasn’t there to make them comfortable. God was glorifying Himself through them and in the process was making them more like Him.

I’m so tired of people not being comfortable with this or that. Where do we get the idea that we are supposed to be comfortable or that we have the right to comfort? I was looking at the website of another church in the area this week and on their page is a 2 minute video about their church. There were lots of people being interviewed about why they like that church and the things I heard over and over again were that “all my friends are here” and “I feel comfortable here.”

Brian Amerman came in not long after I saw that and I was telling him about it and he wisely said, “Isn’t that why people go to bars? So they can be with their friends and be comfortable?” If you are going to church because your friends are there and you feel comfortable there, well that’s good but it shouldn’t be the reason you go. Somebody that goes to church for those reasons has a misunderstanding of church and an even deeper misunderstanding of God. In fact, it’s my experience that it is when I start feeling comfortable in some situation that God usually chooses to take me out of that situation. Anybody else know that?

The reason that the people called Jesus “king” on one day and “blasphemer” the next was because they realized that following Jesus was going to be uncomfortable. He was not the gunslinger they wanted. They wanted a warrior who was going to make their lives more like they wanted but instead they realized that Jesus wasn’t there to make their lives better for them. He was there to make them better for life.

In fact, He wasn’t even going to make bad people good. He wanted to make dead people alive! He wanted then and He wants now for us to call Him King because servants serve a king. And a king is sovereign and can do anything He chooses without asking for permission or explaining why.

God wants every part of our lives. He wants every part of us to be like every part of Him. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey He was making a statement. Previously He had shunned the big crowds and the limelight saying that His time had not yet come but now it has come. Now is the time for people to take a side and say, “I choose Jesus. I may not understand His ways but I will not hold back any part of me. He can have my hopes and dreams, my thoughts, my habits, my language, my hobbies, my time and my money. And because He loves me so passionately I know He will provide everything I really need. But even if He doesn’t…I know He will but even if He doesn’t, still I will serve Him!”

"Good Grief" - Part III - John 11:1-44

It’s no secret that I have lots of questions.  It’s not uncommon for me to start with a question and I usually have more as we go along.  Then Sunday nights I have lots of questions usually about the morning message.  I like to ask questions on Wednesday nights and when I see you through the week it’s usually more questions, right?  Well, I would like to ask some more questions this morning.  Most of these you may want to think about before answering.  I’ve said before that all of us are kind of weird and these are some of the questions that pop into my mind.  Questions like:

If our knees bent the other way, what would chairs look like?  What's the difference between normal ketchup and fancy ketchup?  When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?  Why does the Easter bunny carry eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs.  Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?  What do people in China call their good plates?

Like I say you may want to think about some of those before you answer and that’s fine.  It’s just some of the questions I have so be glad I don’t keep going.  Some people have other kinds of questions.  Some people are deep thinkers and while I ponder fancy ketchup, they are asking questions like “How can we have free will and yet God be sovereign?”  Or “What do we have to do to find a cure for cancer?”

Other people ask questions out of regret.  These questions often accompany grief or loss of some sort.  They ask questions such as, “What if I had done better, could I have kept my job?”  It may be a question that is not necessarily a desperate question like, “Now what did I do with my keys?” or “Which of you 3 dogs chewed up the remote?”  But feelings of desperate regret often lead to questions such as, “What if he had not died?”  or even, “If I had done something else, would she still be alive?”

Experts would tell us that questions like that need to be asked, answered as well as you can and then moved on from.  You don’t want to act like those questions aren’t there and yet you also don’t want to dwell on them for months on end.  They are normal and natural and even a good part of grief to go through but can be destructive if left to focus on endlessly.

Then some people have questions of regret for God that they assume will never be answered.  They ask things like, “What if God had just healed them?” or “Why did God do this to me?” or “Where was God when all this happened?”

As we conclude our sermon series on grief, I would like to help you try to answer some of those questions.  We will never be able to explain every bad thing that happens to us but the Bible does help us to know some of the reasons.  We have the same exact outline for today as we have the other 2 Sundays but I again hope to see something completely different in this message as we look at the book of John.

The book of John is a powerful resource for a lot of issues we have today.  John is a little bit different than the other Gospels.  It talks a lot about faith and trust and has some of the most memorable stories and verses in the Bible.  Today I would like to look at a fascinating story in which we will again see our response to grief and also God’s response to our grief but with the twist being that God shows His grief in the body of the man Jesus and I want to focus more on that this time as well.

Turn to John 11 and we will read verses 1-44.  It’s quite a few verses but you need to get the context of what is going on to better understand it.

 

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) ³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”⁴ When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, ⁷ and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”⁸ “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. ¹⁰ It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”¹¹ After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” ¹² His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. ¹⁴ So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶ Then Thomas (also known as Didymus^[a]) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was less than two miles^[b] from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” ²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴ Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” ²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” ²⁸ After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” ²⁹ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. ³² When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. ³⁵ Jesus wept. ³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” ³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” ⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

When Martin Luther’s daughter Magdalena was 14 years old she got sick and died.  As they laid her to rest Luther said, “Oh my dear Magdalena, I know you will rise and shine like the stars in the sky.  How strange to be so sorrowful and yet to know that all is at peace, that all is well.”

Grief has a way of bringing out all of your emotions, sometimes all at once.  In the course of just minutes you may feel sorrow and happiness, anxiety and relief or even anger and joy.  In looking at our response to our grief I want you to see first the response of Martha and Mary.  In verse 21 Martha tells Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  With the written word we miss out on the inflection and we don’t know exactly how Martha said this but can’t you just hear the mixed emotions in her voice?

There is faith in her voice.  She knows Jesus could have saved him.  And yet at the same time there is a hint of blame in there as well.  There is some part of her that puts some of the blame for the death on Him.  And I guarantee you she didn’t want to feel that way.  She loved Jesus.  Jesus spent lots of time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus and had eaten lots of meals and spent lots of time with them and was a good friend.  I’m sure there had been lots of laughs and good times spent sitting around a table or walking down the road together.  They had a relationship much like we can have a relationship with Jesus even today.

But because she knows He could have healed Lazarus, there is a part of her, as she goes through the grief process that is put out with Jesus because He didn’t show up in time and heal him.

Then look at verse 32.  What does Mary say?  She uses the exact same words.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  In fact, the same sentiment is expressed by the Jews in verse 37.  “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

You know what that tells me?  That tells me they were talking.  Mary and Martha and the others were sitting around consoling themselves and they had all been talking about how, if Jesus had just been here He could have saved Lazarus.  Now some of these people referred to just as “Jews” may have been professional mourners but I’m sure some of them were friends of the family as well.  They were there to help.  They truly wanted to help Martha and Mary through their journey through grief and so they sat with them and talked and as they talked they all came to the conclusion that Jesus could have saved him.

There was probably even some anger mixed with the regret as they talked about it.  And I would like to assure this morning that to feel some anger toward God is natural.  It’s one thing for an elderly person to die who has been sick for a long time.  You can understand that is the natural order of things and everybody is going to die unless Jesus returns for us beforehand.  It is another thing to lose a loved one in their prime or to lose a child or what about a divorce or the loss of a job or the loss of some relationship?

When you go to God in fervent prayer as David did in last week’s message and you fast and pray and cry and beg and plead and yet the relationship still ends or the child dies it is natural to feel some bit of anger to God.  I didn’t say it was right, I said it was natural because He tells us to have faith and He tells us to bring it to Him and that is how Martha and Mary felt right now.  They knew He could…but He didn’t.

My aunt and uncle had 2 kids and named the youngest one Graham.  When Graham was 6 years old he died from Leukemia.  I called my aunt this week and asked her about it.  I was wondering if she had gone through any anger issues with God.  That was 36 years ago but I know she thinks about Graham often and so I was anxious to hear how she got through it and how she got over being mad at God.  Her response surprised me some.

She said that she had not had any anger issues because she knew that whatever reason God had in allowing Graham to die so soon that she knew it was for the glory of God.  She said that it was, of course, extremely painful; just knowing that God had a reason didn’t make it any less real; but she was able to get through it without anger because she knew God had a way of bringing glory to Himself through it.

That, my friends, does not come from a baby Christian.  The ability to accept that peace and comfort comes from someone who has more than just some head-knowledge of Jesus.  That comes from someone who has given their life and their thoughts and their wishes over to God.  This is someone who is not leaning on their own understanding but is in all her ways acknowledging Him and having her paths directed by Him.

She said she didn’t know what the reason was but she did know that through this situation my cousin Bill accepted Jesus into his life and she knows it has been used as an illustration in several sermons.  She didn’t know when I talked to her that it was going to be used in one more but I have an idea that while she said she didn’t know why God allowed it that she had just told me at least part of the reason right there.  It was for God’s glory.

And that leads me to the second part of the outline as we look at how God responds to our grief.  Look back at verse 4.  Jesus has just gotten the word that Lazarus is sick and He tells his disciples that this sickness will not end in death but it will be so that Jesus gets glory from it.  I propose to you this morning that every instance of grief is an opportunity for God to get glory.

 

 Just knowing that God has a reason doesn’t mean that you should pretend like it doesn’t hurt.  Just because God is getting glory from it doesn’t mean that you are going to have to make some major adjustments as you learn to live with whatever loss you may now have. You are still going to have to say goodbye to that relationship.  But it does mean that you can have peace to help you through the grief.

I want you to see in verses 33 and 35 that Jesus Himself was filled with grief and that fascinates me.  He knows that He is about to call the name of Lazarus and Lazarus is about to walk out of that grave feeling better than he has in years and everything will be ok.  And yet Jesus still weeps.  He still is deeply moved and troubled.  That fascinates me.  It fascinates me even more to see that that phrase in the original has the connotation of anger with it.  It means that Jesus Himself was grieving and sad and may even have had some indignation in Him.

He hated to see His friends sad.  He hated that they had gone through all that they had gone through.  He hated that because He loved them; because He was friends with them.  He hated it because He knew that while He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead that one day Lazarus would die again and there would be more grief.  He hated the thought that it was sin that was the ultimate cause of death; that it was not the Father’s original plan and that it was the cause of so much grief and pain.

It is the same way as we grieve today.  God loves you so much that He grieves with you as you grieve.  As your friend, Jesus takes no joy in your loved one not being there for you but He knows that it is an opportunity for you to fall off the deep end and go crazy or to accept His peace with the knowledge that somehow, some way God will get the glory.

 

"Good Grief" - Part III - John 11:1-44

It’s no secret that I have lots of questions.  It’s not uncommon for me to start with a question and I usually have more as we go along.  Then Sunday nights I have lots of questions usually about the morning message.  I like to ask questions on Wednesday nights and when I see you through the week it’s usually more questions, right?  Well, I would like to ask some more questions this morning.  Most of these you may want to think about before answering.  I’ve said before that all of us are kind of weird and these are some of the questions that pop into my mind.  Questions like:

If our knees bent the other way, what would chairs look like?  What's the difference between normal ketchup and fancy ketchup?  When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?  Why does the Easter bunny carry eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs.  Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?  What do people in China call their good plates?

Like I say you may want to think about some of those before you answer and that’s fine.  It’s just some of the questions I have so be glad I don’t keep going.  Some people have other kinds of questions.  Some people are deep thinkers and while I ponder fancy ketchup, they are asking questions like “How can we have free will and yet God be sovereign?”  Or “What do we have to do to find a cure for cancer?”

Other people ask questions out of regret.  These questions often accompany grief or loss of some sort.  They ask questions such as, “What if I had done better, could I have kept my job?”  It may be a question that is not necessarily a desperate question like, “Now what did I do with my keys?” or “Which of you 3 dogs chewed up the remote?”  But feelings of desperate regret often lead to questions such as, “What if he had not died?”  or even, “If I had done something else, would she still be alive?”

Experts would tell us that questions like that need to be asked, answered as well as you can and then moved on from.  You don’t want to act like those questions aren’t there and yet you also don’t want to dwell on them for months on end.  They are normal and natural and even a good part of grief to go through but can be destructive if left to focus on endlessly.

Then some people have questions of regret for God that they assume will never be answered.  They ask things like, “What if God had just healed them?” or “Why did God do this to me?” or “Where was God when all this happened?”

As we conclude our sermon series on grief, I would like to help you try to answer some of those questions.  We will never be able to explain every bad thing that happens to us but the Bible does help us to know some of the reasons.  We have the same exact outline for today as we have the other 2 Sundays but I again hope to see something completely different in this message as we look at the book of John.

The book of John is a powerful resource for a lot of issues we have today.  John is a little bit different than the other Gospels.  It talks a lot about faith and trust and has some of the most memorable stories and verses in the Bible.  Today I would like to look at a fascinating story in which we will again see our response to grief and also God’s response to our grief but with the twist being that God shows His grief in the body of the man Jesus and I want to focus more on that this time as well.

Turn to John 11 and we will read verses 1-44.  It’s quite a few verses but you need to get the context of what is going on to better understand it.

 

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) ³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”⁴ When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, ⁷ and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”⁸ “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. ¹⁰ It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”¹¹ After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” ¹² His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. ¹⁴ So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶ Then Thomas (also known as Didymus^[a]) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was less than two miles^[b] from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. ²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” ²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴ Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” ²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” ²⁸ After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” ²⁹ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. ³² When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. ³⁵ Jesus wept. ³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” ³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” ⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

When Martin Luther’s daughter Magdalena was 14 years old she got sick and died.  As they laid her to rest Luther said, “Oh my dear Magdalena, I know you will rise and shine like the stars in the sky.  How strange to be so sorrowful and yet to know that all is at peace, that all is well.”

Grief has a way of bringing out all of your emotions, sometimes all at once.  In the course of just minutes you may feel sorrow and happiness, anxiety and relief or even anger and joy.  In looking at our response to our grief I want you to see first the response of Martha and Mary.  In verse 21 Martha tells Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  With the written word we miss out on the inflection and we don’t know exactly how Martha said this but can’t you just hear the mixed emotions in her voice?

There is faith in her voice.  She knows Jesus could have saved him.  And yet at the same time there is a hint of blame in there as well.  There is some part of her that puts some of the blame for the death on Him.  And I guarantee you she didn’t want to feel that way.  She loved Jesus.  Jesus spent lots of time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus and had eaten lots of meals and spent lots of time with them and was a good friend.  I’m sure there had been lots of laughs and good times spent sitting around a table or walking down the road together.  They had a relationship much like we can have a relationship with Jesus even today.

But because she knows He could have healed Lazarus, there is a part of her, as she goes through the grief process that is put out with Jesus because He didn’t show up in time and heal him.

Then look at verse 32.  What does Mary say?  She uses the exact same words.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  In fact, the same sentiment is expressed by the Jews in verse 37.  “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

You know what that tells me?  That tells me they were talking.  Mary and Martha and the others were sitting around consoling themselves and they had all been talking about how, if Jesus had just been here He could have saved Lazarus.  Now some of these people referred to just as “Jews” may have been professional mourners but I’m sure some of them were friends of the family as well.  They were there to help.  They truly wanted to help Martha and Mary through their journey through grief and so they sat with them and talked and as they talked they all came to the conclusion that Jesus could have saved him.

There was probably even some anger mixed with the regret as they talked about it.  And I would like to assure this morning that to feel some anger toward God is natural.  It’s one thing for an elderly person to die who has been sick for a long time.  You can understand that is the natural order of things and everybody is going to die unless Jesus returns for us beforehand.  It is another thing to lose a loved one in their prime or to lose a child or what about a divorce or the loss of a job or the loss of some relationship?

When you go to God in fervent prayer as David did in last week’s message and you fast and pray and cry and beg and plead and yet the relationship still ends or the child dies it is natural to feel some bit of anger to God.  I didn’t say it was right, I said it was natural because He tells us to have faith and He tells us to bring it to Him and that is how Martha and Mary felt right now.  They knew He could…but He didn’t.

My aunt and uncle had 2 kids and named the youngest one Graham.  When Graham was 6 years old he died from Leukemia.  I called my aunt this week and asked her about it.  I was wondering if she had gone through any anger issues with God.  That was 36 years ago but I know she thinks about Graham often and so I was anxious to hear how she got through it and how she got over being mad at God.  Her response surprised me some.

She said that she had not had any anger issues because she knew that whatever reason God had in allowing Graham to die so soon that she knew it was for the glory of God.  She said that it was, of course, extremely painful; just knowing that God had a reason didn’t make it any less real; but she was able to get through it without anger because she knew God had a way of bringing glory to Himself through it.

That, my friends, does not come from a baby Christian.  The ability to accept that peace and comfort comes from someone who has more than just some head-knowledge of Jesus.  That comes from someone who has given their life and their thoughts and their wishes over to God.  This is someone who is not leaning on their own understanding but is in all her ways acknowledging Him and having her paths directed by Him.

She said she didn’t know what the reason was but she did know that through this situation my cousin Bill accepted Jesus into his life and she knows it has been used as an illustration in several sermons.  She didn’t know when I talked to her that it was going to be used in one more but I have an idea that while she said she didn’t know why God allowed it that she had just told me at least part of the reason right there.  It was for God’s glory.

And that leads me to the second part of the outline as we look at how God responds to our grief.  Look back at verse 4.  Jesus has just gotten the word that Lazarus is sick and He tells his disciples that this sickness will not end in death but it will be so that Jesus gets glory from it.  I propose to you this morning that every instance of grief is an opportunity for God to get glory.

 

 Just knowing that God has a reason doesn’t mean that you should pretend like it doesn’t hurt.  Just because God is getting glory from it doesn’t mean that you are going to have to make some major adjustments as you learn to live with whatever loss you may now have. You are still going to have to say goodbye to that relationship.  But it does mean that you can have peace to help you through the grief.

I want you to see in verses 33 and 35 that Jesus Himself was filled with grief and that fascinates me.  He knows that He is about to call the name of Lazarus and Lazarus is about to walk out of that grave feeling better than he has in years and everything will be ok.  And yet Jesus still weeps.  He still is deeply moved and troubled.  That fascinates me.  It fascinates me even more to see that that phrase in the original has the connotation of anger with it.  It means that Jesus Himself was grieving and sad and may even have had some indignation in Him.

He hated to see His friends sad.  He hated that they had gone through all that they had gone through.  He hated that because He loved them; because He was friends with them.  He hated it because He knew that while He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead that one day Lazarus would die again and there would be more grief.  He hated the thought that it was sin that was the ultimate cause of death; that it was not the Father’s original plan and that it was the cause of so much grief and pain.

It is the same way as we grieve today.  God loves you so much that He grieves with you as you grieve.  As your friend, Jesus takes no joy in your loved one not being there for you but He knows that it is an opportunity for you to fall off the deep end and go crazy or to accept His peace with the knowledge that somehow, some way God will get the glory.