By Rev Charles Seet

Preached at / Published Life BPC 10:45am Service, 2009-07-05

Text: John 11:1-16

Within the past 2 weeks H1N1 influenza has been spreading rapidly and there are now more than a thousand confirmed cases in Singapore. With all the measures that are being taken to minimize the transmission of the virus, there are bound to be disruptions affecting the home life of some people. Imagine a scenario where a father returns from a long business trip in an affected country and develops some flu-like symptoms. And because he fears that he may bring the virus to his young children at home, he decides to stay away from them for a week at another place. 

But the children are much too young to understand why their father can't stay at home with them. So they keep calling him on his phone saying, 'Daddy, we want you. When will you come home?' And he says, 'I cannot come home because I am sick and I do not want you to get sick.' The children respond, 'Then we will ask Mummy to bring us to see you.' But he says, 'No, you must not come to see me. Please stay away from me.'

Saying this breaks Daddy's heart because he loves his children dearly and he longs to be with them, but that very same love makes him more determined to stay away from them. So he says, 'My precious darlings, I have to stay away from you because I love you, I really do.' Well, the children reluctantly accept it, but to them this is a strange way to love. 

And sometimes as God's children we find that God loves us in ways that appear to be quite strange to us. For instance, we cannot understand why God would allow us to go through the most difficult and painful trials. We faithfully do all that He wants us to do, but things do not go well at all. We cling to God's promises, we fast and pray earnestly, we search our hearts, guard our motives and we rely fully on Him, but things do not get any better. Instead, they get a lot worse. This makes us question God's love. We cry out to Him, 'Lord, what's happening? Why are you not there to help me at all? Am I not still Your child? Don't you love me?' 

This morning we will look at a passage which describes a family that faced a crisis like this. This was a family that Jesus loved, and yet His love for them was shown in a very strange way. It was shown through death! In this passage we are introduced to a family that Jesus and His disciples loved. This close-knit family consisted of 3 persons - a brother and 2 sisters. The brother's name was Lazarus, and his sisters were Mary and Martha. Their home was in a place called Bethany which was a few kilometers east of Jerusalem. Every time Jesus came to Jerusalem, He and His disciples would stay with them and enjoy the warm hospitality and blessed fellowship that Mary, Martha and Lazarus always provided.

From other passages of Scripture we learn that Martha loved to cook meals for Jesus. Mary loved to sit at His feet and just listen to Him, and in the next chapter she anoints the feet of Jesus with very costly perfume and wipes them with her hair. Lazarus was a close friend of Jesus and the disciples, and he spent much time in sweet fellowship at the table with them. All 3 members of this family knew who Jesus is. They were staunch believers who had nothing but sincere love, faith and devotion for their Master. 

But one day Lazarus became very sick, and his sisters probably tried every remedy that was available. But nothing worked, and they knew that only Jesus could heal him. And Jesus would have healed him if He had been there. Unfortunately Jesus and His disciples were not there or anywhere near Bethany. They had to leave Jerusalem earlier because Jewish hostilities had broken out against them, and they had gone to a place about 37 km away, on the eastern side of the river Jordan. So Mary and Martha sent a messenger to inform the Lord Jesus that His good friend, Lazarus is sick. But Jesus did not come immediately. In the end Lazarus died, much to the grief and sorrow of his sisters. By the time Jesus arrived at Bethany, Lazarus had already been dead and buried for 4 days. This then became the occasion for Christ's miracle of raising Lazarus back to life.

Apart from our Lord's own resurrection from the dead, this without doubt is His greatest miracle. The account of it takes up most of chapter 11, and what follows after that reveals the tremendous impact this miracle had on people in Jerusalem. There are many lessons to learn from John chapter 11 and we will be learning them over 3 separate sermons. In today's sermon we will focus on lessons about the love of Christ. There are at least 4 lessons for us to learn on this. The first is that:

I. Christ's Love Does Not Keep Us Free from Disease (vv.1-3)

The fact of Lazarus' sickness is mentioned 3 times in the first 3 verses. (v.1 'Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus'; 'whose brother Lazarus was sick.') But I want you to observe that in verse 3, the message which Mary and Martha sent to Jesus, was not 'Our brother Lazarus is sick' but 'He whom Thou lovest is sick.' This short and simple message conveys at least 2 precious truths. The first is that it is perfectly normal for believers whom God loves to get sick at times. And therefore when we fall sick we should not always conclude that God does not love us, or that God is angry with us. 

Many today would claim that believers should never fall sick. They claim that it is never the will of God for a believer to be sick and that Jesus died on the cross not only for our sins but also for our sicknesses as well. Therefore they believe that there is physical healing in the atonement. Now it is true that sickness can sometimes be due to sin. For instance, some members of the Corinthian church fell sick because they had taken the Lord's Supper in a careless manner (1 Corinthians 11:29,30). But it is not true that all sickness in Christians is due to their own unbelief or lack of faith, or to some hidden sin or judgment from God. If anyone here has been troubled by such an unbiblical view of sickness, please mark these words from v.3 in your Bible 'He whom Thou lovest is sick.' Lazarus was a child of God, a close friend of Jesus Christ who loved him dearly, and yet he was sick. He was very sick! 

Dearly beloved, how do you respond to sickness when it comes to you? Do you see it as a curse or as a blessing? Do you say, 'Lord, what have I done to deserve this? Why have you not protected me from falling sick?' or do you say, 'Lord, thank you for loving me and thank you for this sickness.' May we all learn to accept any sickness that befalls us with calmness and with the quiet confidence that it comes from a God who loves us.

Accepting sickness does not mean that we should then do nothing to get well. If there is a remedy available we should not hesitate to use it. The apostle Paul advised Timothy to take some wine as medicine for his stomach's sake and for his frequent illnesses (1 Timothy 5:23). Taking medication is therefore biblical. 

But while taking medication to get well, please do not forget to use the more important remedy: Turn to the Lord in prayer concerning your sickness. This is the other precious truth that is conveyed to us in the words, 'He whom Thou lovest is sick.' When Lazarus was sick, Mary and Martha sought the help of the Lord Jesus. In their distress and grief they brought the matter to Him, and left it with Him, trusting Him to do all things well. 

Therefore whenever you feel unwell the first thing to do is to commit your sickness to God in prayer. Sickness should drive you to seek God. In fact, at times this may well be God's purpose for your sickness - it is your Heavenly Father's way of getting your full attention, or calling you to listen to Him. Perhaps you have been too busy or engrossed with your own life to hear what He wants to say to you. And so He lovingly sends you this little messenger called sickness to remind you that you need Him and should turn to Him. 

I hope we now understand that it is not strange at all for the Lord to love us by allowing us to fall sick, since He can design sickness to work for our own good. But now we come to another way that the Lord loves us that may seem to be quite strange to us - and that is, by delaying His response to our prayers.

II. Christ's Love May be Shown in Deliberate Delays (vv.5-6)

This is the second lesson about Christ's love in our sermon and it is found in verses 5-6 'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.' Do you find something interesting here? Perhaps you had expected it to read like this: 'Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He quickly rushed to the place where Lazarus was.' 

With our limited understanding we find it immensely difficult to reconcile the love that Jesus had for this family (as stated in v.5) with His deliberate delay in responding to their urgent need (as stated in v.6). If someone from home calls you while you are at work and informs you that your wife or mother has just suffered a stroke or a heart attack, what would you do? You would probably drop everything you are doing, call for an ambulance immediately and rush home to be with her. The more you love her, the less you would delay to get to her and help her.

But in our text, Jesus seemed to do the very opposite - He stayed away for 2 whole days. Why? This is the question we all ask. The answer is already stated in verse 5 - Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. He did this out of love! You will say: What a strange way this is to show one's love! 

Please understand that Jesus can love us in this very unique manner because He is God. As God said in Isaiah 55:8-9 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.' And to that we can only say with Paul, 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!' (Romans 11:33) 

Perhaps there will be times when you may go to God for help for a desperate need, but He does not help. Perhaps there will be moments when your heart is breaking over something and you needed God to intervene, but He does nothing. When these things happen please do not interpret God's delays as denials. Interpret them instead as indications of God's love for you. This is not easy to do, but you must persevere in believing that God knows precisely what is best for you, and therefore the delay will not hurt you but help you. He will use it in a most ingenious way to make you stronger and better. William Cowper has put it this way, 'God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.'

In the case of Lazarus and his 2 sisters we will see in the next part of this chapter, how the Lord's delay of 2 days finally resulted in the greatest blessings for them. But before things got better they got much worse. Lazarus' condition got worse and worse, till finally he breathed his last breath and died. What a let down this must have been! Can you imagine how Mary and Martha felt when Lazarus died? I think if we had been in their situation we would be absolutely distraught. 

When a loved one is sick there is at least some hope that he will recover and be well again. But when a loved one dies, we perceive that there really is no hope left. However this is only true when he dies without Christ. When a loved one who has Christ in his life dies, there is plenty of hope. This helps us now to understand how the Love of Christ was shown through the death of Lazarus:

III. Christ's Love Removes the Sting from Death (vv.4, 11-15)

And this is our third lesson on Christ's love in this sermon. Let us look at v.4 'When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.' Please be careful not to misunderstand what Jesus was saying here. 

He was not saying that Lazarus will not die (because Lazarus did die, and Jesus would certainly have known that). He was saying that the end result of the sickness of Lazarus is not death but the glory of God. Death is not its final product. Death is only a transition towards God's glory, and God's glory is the final product. This unique way of looking at a believer's death is also reflected in verse 11 where Jesus said, 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.'

When we stand beside the grave of a loved one who is a Christian, and our heart cries out, 'Why?' our Lord's answer is 'What? What is death?' It is only a sleep. Sleep is not terminal but transitional. Our loved one has passed right through that transition called death and has emerged on the other side in a glorious place - a place of permanent unsullied rest, safe in the arms of Jesus. That is why when a Christian dies we say that he has been promoted to glory.

Moreover, since death is only a sleep for believers, the separation we have to endure from our loved one is only temporary. A glad reunion is coming, and it will be a reunion from which there will be no more parting! And now we patiently wait, looking forward to be reunited with our loved ones in heaven. 

In the case of the family of Lazarus, reunion came much earlier, since Jesus raised him back to live on earth after he had been dead for 4 days. How glad Mary and Martha must have been to gain their brother back, alive and well! And besides gaining him, they probably gained other things as well like: a deeper understanding of who Jesus is, and a stronger and more abiding faith in Him. And this miracle also increased the faith of the disciples of Christ, as He mentioned in verses 14 and 15 'Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.'

All these wonderful gains became possible through the death of Lazarus. Can you see now how the Lord's love is shown through death? And can you see now how that love has also removed the sting from death? What a wonderful truth this is: Death has lost its sting! It no longer terrifies us as it did before, because the Lord of Life, Jesus Christ Himself, has defeated death for us! Dearly beloved, if you are in Christ you should not be fearful of death any more. When death approaches, you can confidently say, 'As I have experienced Christ's great love for me in life, so let me now experience His great love for me in death.' 

It is my hope that everyone here will be able to face death like this, experiencing the love of Christ. But perhaps there are some in our midst right now who are not certain that you will be able to experience Christ's love in your death. Why? Because you have not turned to Jesus Christ yet and made Him your personal Saviour and Lord. If you keep on postponing and delaying this, then when the end of your life comes, what you will experience is not the love of Christ but the awful sting of death! Your sins will bring you all the way down to Hell and eternal death. And there will be no relief from extreme torment and no way to escape from it. It will be a dead end for you in every sense. 

Dear friends, if you know all this, why do you still wait to come to the Lord Jesus? Come to Him right now and ask Him to save you. Jesus says, 'All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.' (John 6:37). These are the words of a Saviour who loves you.

In this sermon you have already seen how marvelous His love is - firstly, it is a love that is shown not only through health but also through disease. Secondly, it is a love that may at times be shown through delays. And thirdly, it is a love that may even be shown through death. There is one more way that Christ has shown His love, and this also has to do with death - but this time, it is His own death. Here then is our fourth and final lesson on Christ's love:

IV. Christ's Love Made Him Willing to Die (vv.7-10, 16) 

This truth begins to unfold in v.7 of our text where Jesus said disciples, 'Let us go into Judaea again.' And the disciples immediately reminded their Master how dangerous this move would be, because the Jews there had recently tried to stone Him to death. In v.16, Thomas who was one of His disciples said, 'Let us also go, that we may die with him.' Returning to Judea would put Jesus at an extremely great risk of being killed by His enemies. He had every reason to stay away from Judea and remain in the safe refuge He had found beyond Jordan.

But Jesus knew that His final hour was coming soon. He also knew that this last and greatest miracle of His public ministry - the raising of Lazarus from the dead - would trigger off a series of events which would eventually lead to His death on the cross. But despite knowing all this, our Lord Jesus was fully resolved to go back to Judea. What made Him do this? It was because He loved His friend, Lazarus. In v.11 He told His disciples, 'Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.' And in v.15 after revealing that Lazarus was already dead, Jesus said, 'Let us go unto him.'

We may think that it is rather strange that Jesus should risk His life and be willing to die all for the sake of a dead friend! But has He not done the very same thing for us? Didn't our Lord leave His safe refuge in heaven above to come into this hostile sinful world for the sake of His friends who were dead in sin? And wasn't He willing to die for us so that we may live a brand new life?

Thus we see that what Jesus did for Lazarus provides us with a beautiful picture of what He has done for us. Like Lazarus, we were all dead. Sin, like a terrible disease, had infected us, destroyed us and rendered us incapable of helping ourselves. But Jesus loved us so much that He was willing to die on the cross for our sins, so that we might live. This has become the supreme demonstration of His love - A love that is shown through death. 

How should we respond to such great love as this? Perhaps the words of Thomas in v.16 would be our most appropriate response 'Let us also go, that we may die with him.' May we be willing to follow Jesus faithfully and accept whatever it will cost us to follow Him - even if it means that we may have to die with Him.

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