The resuscitation of Lazarus part 1: When God delays your desire it advances His plan.

The seven credit cards of Messiah

           

In the first twelve chapters of John the whole emphasis is Jesus presenting the credit cards [works, divine good]. In chapters 13-21 He presents His message and completes His work [the cross].

 

1.  The turning water into wine - John 2:1-11.

2.  The healing of the nobleman’s son - John 4:46-54.

3.  The healing of the lame man - John chapter 5.

4.  The feeding of the five thousand - John 6:1-14.

5.  Walking on the sea - John 6:16-21.

6.  The healing of congenital blindness - John 9:1-14.

7.  The resuscitation of Lazarus from the dead -- John chapter 11.

 

 

John 11:1 Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

 

In this passage we have four parts. Verses 1-16, the background for the seventh sign; verses 17-32, two sisters in a crisis; verses 33-46, the seventh sign is performed; verses 47-57, the opposition of religion.

           

Verse 1 - a family crisis.

 

The verse begins with the particle de, used in John for a change of circumstances and is translated, “now.”

 

The Lord has left Jerusalem and gone to the eastern side of the Jordan, which is 15 - 20 miles away in an area known as Perea.

 

Imperfect active periphrastic from astheneo means that the illness of Lazarus is permanent.

 

He “kept on being sick.”

 

There are basically five types of illness in the scripture: a light illness from which one recovers, a serious illness which forms a part of undeserved suffering and from which one recovers, a serious illness from which one does not recover, an illness designed to alert a person to some difficulty or reality of life, and an illness which is used as punitive measures, as in 1 Corinthians 11.

 

The illness here is a serious one which is not only going to take the life of one person but will have a very deep effect upon the life of all the people in the entire area.

 

The imperfect means that he is not going to get well, and that day by day over a period of time his strength is going to be drained, and that the illness is going to be critical, and that every day those who loved him the most, especially his two sisters, are going to watch him get weaker and weaker.

 

 

 

They will do a lot of things. They will pray for him, they will actually send for Jesus Christ, they will call in the doctor, they will do about everything necessary and yet he will go right on getting weaker and weaker.

 

This man was designed for dying, and die he will.

 

It is very interesting that all the way through we always forget about Lazarus. Lazarus means God is my help.

 

Lazarus never complained. So the real hero is the one who isn’t mentioned too much as to how great he really is, but it is Lazarus.

 

He knew he was going to die. He knew how to die - no dramatics, no weeping and wailing. He carried on a routine of doctrine and it’s definite that people witnessed his dying grace.  

 

He was born in Bethany and reared there. Bethany is one of the better suburbs of Jerusalem. It is 2 miles east of Jerusalem on the slope of the Mount of Olives.

 

“the town of Mary and her sister Martha.” Mary is the younger sister of Lazarus and she loves Bible doctrine. She has an older sister, Martha, who is an entirely different person. Cf. Luke 10:38.

 

Mary is a tremendous woman of God and she loves BD. She loves the Lord and the Lord loved her as well as her sister Martha and Lazarus.

 

But Lazarus he loved with personal phileo love from His humanity and for Him to do that he had to be a special man who was a lover of doctrine.

 

Mary becomes very important in this event in a different way. And for this reason, in verse 2, John is going to bring up something that she had not done yet, but would do soon.

 

John 11:2 And it was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

 

This Mary is a fantastic woman! She hasn’t done this yet.

 

This is a proleptic incident with a proleptic reference.

 

“It was” is an imperfect active indicative of eimi to indicate that this will stand historically forever.

 

This is put in by John 40 years after this happened.

 

The incident is described in John 12:1-8; Matthew 26:7; Mark 14:3.

 

 

 

While the events of John are chronological he wrote retrospectively many years after this had happened, and he puts in here that it was Mary that anointed the feet of the Lord - one of the greatest applications of doctrine.

 

It was something permanent. She stands forever as one of the greatest of all grace ladies.

 

The reason is because she listened to doctrine constantly, and when she finally did something it was worth all the doing that all the women in the world ever did, and then some.

 

“anointed” - aorist active participle of aleipho. This was an action about which at the end of the century John could look back on the entire scene where Mary, the youngest sister of Lazarus, displayed the ultimate triumph of application of doctrine.

 

She anointed the Lord’s feet with a very precious ointment. She spent a large sum of money to do it.

 

John 11:3 The sisters therefore sent to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick."

 

Verse 3 - “Lord” is kurios in the vocative, recognising His deity.

“behold, he whom thou lovest is sick” - the message.

 

 

The word for love here is phileo.

 

Lazarus was also a great man of doctrine with great category #1 love response. This same phileo is used for Abraham - James 2:23, friend [philos] of God.

 

They recognised that Jesus Christ kept on loving Lazarus. This indicates that Lazarus, like his sister Mary, was great in the field of doctrine.

 

“is sick” - present active indicative of astheneo, ‘keeps on being sick.’

 

John 11:4 But when Jesus heard it, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it." 

 

When Jesus heard about this it is almost as if He is being callous, but the real purpose of the crisis is now made clear and Christ knows all about it.

 

“This sickness is not unto death,” means that death is not the final issue of this particular sickness.

 

It is a Greek idiom. He will die but it won’t be the final issue.

 

Death is just a temporary part of his feebleness to bring about the seventh sign and to glorify God.

And this brings out a very important point that will always be true for all believers and especially for believers like Lazarus who love BD.

 

Every crisis in life of the believer is designed to glorify God and to focus attention on the grace of God, on the person of God.

 

Jesus Christ will deliver Lazarus from death. Jesus Christ will deliver you from every disaster in His time.

 

This deliverance of Lazarus will be done for a special reason, to present His own credit card.

 

Both of the sisters want death to be avoided. Who would blame them? Lazarus is a beloved friend of Jesus. They know Jesus has healed so many, many of whom were complete strangers to Him.

 

He healed the nobleman’s son and the Centurion’s slave without even meeting them. Naturally they are confident that Jesus will come right away and heal their brother.

 

But Jesus is going to wait until death is certain and then He will come.

 

Principle: We don’t always know what the Lord is going to accomplish in our personal disasters and we don’t know how He is going to deliver us from our disasters.

 

Martha is a detailed oriented woman and though she desires Lazarus to be healed she actually goes about her business after Lazarus is dead.

 

Mary is different. She is so sure that Jesus is going to come and heal him that when He doesn’t she gets very angry at the Lord and won’t even come to see Him when He finally arrives. She pouts in anger against her Lord.

 

This will bring out for all of us some wonderful comforts for those times when we’re sure the Lord is ready to do something, only to find out that He does not and something we feared occurs.

 

Mary loves the Lord. We are most disappointed by those we love. We have expectations of those we truly love. He has never let her down before, and certainly He will not here, but she thinks He has let her down and she’s filled with anger towards Him.

 

What we will also see is that her recovery from this will bring her closer to the Lord than she ever could have imagined.

 

John 11:4 But when Jesus heard it, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified by it."

 

This sickness does not have as its final issue death. Why?

“for the glory of God” - huper, ‘on behalf of the glory of God.’

Lazarus was doing something that very few people would be able to do, glorify the Lord during the death process.

 

Obviously Lazarus was selected because he was the man with the doctrine.

 

He is the one who has so much doctrine that he can get weaker and weaker and sicker and sicker and at the same time remain relaxed, enjoying dying grace, depart from this life, and in doing so will have many friends who will come from all over Jerusalem and the area, many of whom are going to be saved because of his resuscitation.

 

It will glorify God in several ways.

 

“that” introduces a purpose clause, hina plus the subjunctive; “the Son of God might be glorified” - aorist passive subjunctive of doxazo.

 

The culminative aorist tense means at the point of resuscitation.

 

The passive voice means that Jesus Christ, the person of the God-Man, the Messiah, will receive the glory. The subjunctive mood goes with the purpose clause; it is not a potential subjunctive.

 

“might be glorified thereby” - dia plus the genitive, “through it [the death of Lazarus].”

 

 

John 11:5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

 

Verses 5 & 6, the perfect timing of the Son of God.

           

This verse expresses the perfect love of Jesus Christ for this family.

 

You would assume that this crisis would cause Jesus Christ to leave immediately from Perea. He delays.

 

Remember this principle: Any delay in the plan of God advances the glory of God. Delay does not hinder the plan of God, it advances the plan of God. God’s delays are advances.