Mary has doctrine, Martha does not, but neither apply so they are not comforted. John 11:16-24

John 11:15 and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him. " 

 

And it is here that we see the real reason for this miracle. It is the seventh credit card that will fully reveal His Messiahship but the main goal of this miracle is to increase the faith of the disciples.

 

Every miracle is designed to hit a target. That target is the soul of the observer. Sometimes certain observers are targeted, and although many unbelievers will see this miracle and a certain portion of them will come to a saving faith because of it and the message, the main target of this miracle is the doubting souls of the disciples.

 

Matt 16:4

"An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah." And He left them, and went away.

 

Next Thomas makes a declaration of faith. We give him the name doubting because he would accept the Lord’s resurrection, but here his skepticism is overcome.

 

John 11:16 Thomas therefore, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him."

 

Thomas thinks the Lord is going to die, so He says let’s go and die with Him. Now, as I said, that’s a nice showing of faith, but it is again misplaced.

 

The Lord has communicated to them already that He must go to Jerusalem to die and that He would be resurrected. But there was nothing said about them dying.

 

John 11:17 So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.

 

John 11:18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off;

 

John 11:19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their brother.

 

We have many mourners which have been hanging around to comfort Mary and Martha for four days.

 

This means that for four days everything had stopped for these people. They had come and had kept with Martha and Mary during this time.

 

“to Martha and Mary” is the preposition pros plus the accusative, which means ‘face to face with.’

 

In other words, they have come from Jerusalem since the time of the death of Lazarus and have remained these four days trying to be face to face with Mary and Martha.

 

We can imagine that some are legitimate mourners and others are simply going through the motions so that they can be recognized for doing their duty.

 

There is an accumulation of the crowd of mourners because this family was well known in Jerusalem and very popular.

 

Please notice that it was “many of the Jews” which indicates that Mary and Martha are receiving a great deal of company.

 

“to console” - means console by words, to comfort by what you say.

 

For four days they had been carrying on speeches of comfort.

 

However, the only words of comfort for the death of a loved one are actually those words which form the doctrines of death and dying grace as found in the scripture.

 

The majority of these people would be unfamiliar with the true impact of doctrine since the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because they are discerned by the Spirit.

 

Here we have a case of many unbelievers trying to provide comfort. The Jews, as was their custom, had a series of epigrams which were to be uttered in a time of disaster.

 

These were humanistic ways of expressing their comfort.

 

The great tragedy is not the death of Lazarus, it is unbelievers sincerely trying to help believers to be comforted when the believers should have been comforting and blessing the unbelievers with the gospel.

 

All of these unbelievers will witness the 7^th miracle and go back to Jerusalem as believers.

 

So the unbelievers who came to comfort went away with eternal life.

 

John 11:20 Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him; but Mary still sat in the house.

 

So both of them heard that Jesus was coming and Martha runs out to meet Him. You would expect Mary to run out as well in eagerness to meet the Lord, but she stays in her room, sulking mad at Jesus for not showing up earlier.

 

John 11:21 Martha therefore said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

 

Martha calls Him Lord, which is proper for a believer. She recognizes the deity of Christ, however, as we’ll see very soon, she is still a very busy woman with the details of life and she doesn’t quite get doctrine. She hasn’t seen doctrine for what it really is so she hasn’t seen Christ for who He really is.

 

We will see this clearly in a few verses, but here we see subtly that she doesn’t have a clue.

 

She says “Lord, if you had been here…” This is a rebuke of Jesus Christ.

 

She is saying, “God, your timing is off. I know your timing and you blew it, you’re late!”

 

Any time we say to God, “if You had,” we’re way out of line and in arrogant self-absorption.

 

Also, if she knows Him as God, and she does, she should have known that He didn’t need to physically be there to heal Lazarus.

 

She knew that He healed the noble-man’s son from far away, and that He healed the centurion’s servant from far away. Jesus could have been on the other side of the planet and healed Lazarus.

 

But, what can we say about Martha? You run into a lot of “Martha’s” in the church. Nice people, very nice people that serve dinners and help around the church, fulfill the details of life, but do not hold doctrine as their top priority.

 

They are more like program Christians instead of doctrinal Christians.

 

Often in time of tragedy it is amazing how nice people cause you to slip into human viewpoint unless you are garrisoned by those principles of doctrine that keep you out of that trap.

 

Martha is not garrisoned with this kind of doctrinal information in her soul. Therefore she has no inner resources. In a sense Martha represents a program believer instead of a doctrine believer.

 

Principle: If you are minus doctrine it is too easy to be impressed with the wrong things. Martha had no doctrine to apply; she is bogged down with the details of life.  

 

John 11:21 Martha therefore said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.

 

People under pressure who don’t have the resources to handle that pressure look for a safety valve and usually that valve is someone to blame.

 

Martha doesn’t know what to do with her grief and the pressure she’s been under the last several days so she blames Jesus for not showing up on time.

 

Because of a lack of doctrine to apply she harbors bitterness in her soul.

 

Bitterness will always block the application of grace orientation to any situation and will only result in application of human viewpoint, which in this case is blame.

 

Then she goes on to say:

 

John 11:22 "Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You."

 

It’s a difficult thing to evaluate the mental attitude of someone who is speaking thousands of years ago. We often try to read between the lines, but we can not always be sure.

 

I am sure that Martha has no doctrine to apply, but this proclamation could mean a few things. She could be wanted to show Christ what she knows, she may feel a bit embarrassed for blaming Him and wants to say something nice about Him, or she may be legitimately looking for prayer as an answer.

 

But none of these are appropriate. You first off don’t pray for the dead. You pray for the living. Secondly, she doesn’t know much so if she’s trying to impress she only shows self-righteousness, and tempering a blame with saying something nice about someone is acting like a weasel.

 

And you get that last one a lot from people. They’ll blame you or gossip, slander, and malign you and then say something nice about you. They want to seem nice while deep inside they’re full of bitterness.

 

Whichever is the case for Martha, she is minus doctrine, has nothing to apply, is bitter, blames Jesus, and should at this point just shut up.

 

But in verse 24, she’s going to use this phrase again, “I know,” when she doesn’t know much.

 

The one who knows a lot is sitting in her room pouting, and also bitter, but for a different reason. Martha has no doctrine and no application and Mary has a ton of doctrine and no application, so both look the same - bitter.

 

John 11:23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother shall rise again."

 

John 11:24 Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

 

On the last day refers to the Second Advent. This is true, but not quite what Jesus is getting at. There is no way she could know that Jesus is going to resuscitate Lazarus.

 

Often we think we know what the word of the Lord is saying to us, but it takes more time for us to truly understand the implications of what He says to us through His word.

 

Often the word comes, we receive it, and then later, after some experience, we come to understand what the message really is. Then the word becomes a true revelation to us.

 

You never know when the “aha” moment is coming. All of our lives can change in a moment when the timing of God comes to fruition.

 

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies,

 

The only ones who will not die are those who go up in the Rapture. But the Lord has brought resurrection and eternal life to the human race as a gift. Anyone who believes in Him become recipients of a resurrection body and eternal life.

 

This verse is special to me because it is the one that saved me.

 

John 11:26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? "

 

We have a double negative here in the Greek, ou’ me, which means “shall not never die for all eternity.”

 

“Do you believe this?” Jesus is taking Martha back to simple principles of who He is and what He is here to do. If she had fully recognized these facts before she saw Him she would have never said what she did in verse 22.

 

John 11:27 She said to Him, "Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world."

 

She believes this, but she hasn’t applied this truth up to this point.

 

So that’s detail oriented sister number one. Now we have Mary with Jesus. Jesus is going to call for her and Mary is going to come out to Him in this same place.

 

John 11:28 And when she had said this, she went away, and called Mary her sister, saying secretly, "The Teacher [now she calls Him teacher because He has reminded her of doctrinal principles] is here, and is calling for you."

 

Up until this time Mary has been sitting in her room. Martha always worked in the kitchen, so when Lazarus died she kept right on working in the kitchen. There are hundreds of people to feed who have come to mourn. In a sense Martha did what she always did, she went and cooked bigger and better meals. But what does Mary do? Normally Mary listens to doctrine, but when Lazarus dies she doesn’t listen to doctrine. She sits alone in her room.

When a person who customarily listens to doctrine—and who is positive—hits some kind of a disaster and in that disaster cannot cope, that person sits alone and the function is called ‘operation over-think.’

 

We have already seen that Mary had chosen the better part when she sat at the feet of the Lord to hear doctrine, but there are occupational hazards for those who are positive toward doctrine and one of them is operation over-think.

 

She has been sitting alone. She has not been out; she is in her room alone over thinking the whole situation of the last several days.