Lazarus

This is actually a sermon I preached in my second year at Bible College.

I have a wonderful family. Maybe we don’t always agree, but we love each other very much.  We have been through some tough times together.  There are only three of us, my sister and my brother and I, so we have to stick together.
Yet, only a few years ago, it seemed our lives were falling apart.  My brother, Lazarus, got very sick.  Mary and I were so afraid.  He had a fever and we could do nothing to bring it down.  Sometimes he did not recognize us.  We had little old ladies coming to give advice and we were even able to find a physician, but nothing seemed to help.  Mary and I were certain we were going to lose our brother.  Yet, we had one hope.  We had a powerful friend.  His name is Jesus.  Have you heard of him?  I guess everyone has these days.  We had him over for dinner sometimes, and Mary once poured a jar of perfume over his feet.  We had heard of Jesus miracles and we had heard his teaching and we thought perhaps he would come and heal our brother too.
We sent some messengers off with the instruction to bring Jesus back as quick as they possibly could.  Then we settled down to wait, watching our brother slowly slip away from us.  I will never forget the long days and nights where we sat with him, smelling the stench of sickness and listening to him breathe, fearing that at any moment his breathing would stop.  But Jesus loved us, we knew He would come.
The messengers returned without Him.  Jesus had not hurried, but we heard some hopeful news.  Jesus had said to His disciples, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  For a moment, we had hope, but only for a moment.  Lazarus died that very day.  Mary had fallen asleep at his bedside while I cooked the evening meal.  She woke up and he was gone.
We buried Lazarus that very day.  It was too hot to wait.  We wanted Jesus there, we needed His comfort, but He had not yet come.  I can hardly put into words the turmoil that Mary and I felt during that day and those that followed.  The grief for our beloved brother was great, but we also had to face the fact that we were two single women without a man to take care of us.  We knew decisions would have to be made, and we couldn’t think to make them.
Many grieved with us.  We were not alone.  Everyone in the town came to mourn for him.  They were still with us when Jesus showed up, four days too late for Lazarus.  Mary was sitting in the house when He arrived and I didn’t bother to go get her.  I just ran to meet Jesus. I needed to see Him, to speak with Him.
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I spoke as soon as I reached Him, my grief spilling over once again.  Yet, as I spoke to Jesus, I remembered who He was and how part of me still believed that He could make everything right.  “But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Jesus smiled down at me.  “Your brother will rise again.”
I didn’t want to hope too much.  I didn’t want to assume He meant now.  Even though part of me believed He could do anything, the other part of me was skeptical.  “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Again, Jesus spoke to me.  “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me, though he may die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?”
I wasn’t sure if I could believe, but then I looked up into His eyes and saw the truth shining clearly out of them.  I remembered who He was and I knew I could trust Him.  “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Then I remembered Mary.  She still did not know that Jesus was here and I know she would want to receive the same comfort I had.  Mary got up immediately and ran out to Jesus and threw herself at His feet.  She was crying as she lay on the dusty ground and I heard her say the same phrase that had been burning in me.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  I watched Jesus’ face as my sister wept at His feet and saw her grief reflected in His eyes.  I saw tears collect in his eyes and fall down his cheeks, leaving lines on his dusty, brown cheeks.  He wept for my brother and He grieved alongside us, feeling our pain.
We brought Jesus to the tomb and at the sight of it, He began grieving anew.  All he saw was a cave with a rock covering the mouth but it was a physical reminder that my brother was no longer with us.  Then He called for the stone to be removed.  I was glad He was here but enough was enough.  “Jesus, He died four days ago.  He will have already started to rot and it will smell awful.  Please don’t roll away the stone.”  The little faith I had was fast draining away.
But Jesus rebuked me.  “Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?”  Then He persisted and the stone was rolled away and Lazarus’ tomb was opened.   I was right, it did stink.  People all around were covering their noses and choking on their breath.  He was definitely dead, and I didn’t know what Jesus could do with a dead man.
Yet He ignored the curious looks of the people all around us and stepping to the mouth of the cave, He began to pray.  “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.  And I know that you always hear me, but because of the people standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent me.”  Then He shouted into the cave, calling for Lazarus to come out.  I could see the confused looks on the faces of many.  Others were laughing at what they considered an extraordinary show of insanity.  Others were indifferent and still others looked on in hope and belief.  I wasn’t sure what to think, until Lazarus came walking out.  He was wrapped in graveclothes which still bore the stench of death, but he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  Jesus told us to set him free and to clean him up and we did, incredulous and rejoicing.
I learned so much through this experience.  For one thing, I learned to love my brother and appreciate him a lot more than before.  But other than that, I learned so much about Jesus.  I knew He was the Son of God before this experience happened, but I had no idea the incredible power He had.  I didn’t know what that meant.  He held the power of life and death, but even though He is so much greater than I, He shared in my grief.  I won’t forget that Jesus cried with me as I wept for my brother.  It showed His love so clearly, His love for me and His love for Lazarus.
The resurrection of my brother had absolutely nothing to do with me or anyone else.  Jesus told me to believe, but at the moment when I needed to stand and believe that my brother would live, I chickened out and looked at the way the world works, seeing his words as impossible.  God was working, even though I couldn’t believe.
Jesus prayed that God would show the people at the grave that He had been sent by God.  We would know that God was with Him if Lazarus was raised.  It showed so clearly that, not only was Jesus the Son of God, He had God’s full blessing and backup.
The most important thing I learned was not apparent on the day my brother was raised.  It was easy to see that Jesus had the power over life and death.  But I had no idea why that mattered.  You see, we were expecting the wrong kind of Messiah.  His ability to feed large crowds with small amounts of food would help Him provision an army.  He could give great, inspiring speeches.  He could heal those who fell in battle and now it seemed that the army of Israel would not suffer a single casualty when we took our land back from the Romans. 
That was the Messiah we longed for, but instead we were given a Messiah who would suffer.  Not long after He raised Lazarus from the dead, He was executed.  He was dead on a cross and we all thought our hope was lost.  We would never be free from the oppression of the Romans.  We must continue to wait for someone else. 
We didn’t know that our oppressor was not the Romans and that the cross was not Jesus’ defeat.  Instead of human captors, we were held captive by our own sin, our own blindness.  The gruesome death on the cross that seemed to be the triumph of our enemies was actually the defeat of our ultimate enemy, the devil.
We had been stuck, constantly doing sacrifices in order to atone for our sin, but Jesus, in the act of dying as a perfect sacrifice in our place, broke the bondage of sin forever.  His death would have only been another temporary atonement if not for what happened next.  He rose from the dead, now being the sacrifice that paid for our sin once and for all.  Death could not hold Him.  It had lost its final battle.
By dying, Jesus gave us freedom from death and sin and by rising again, He gave us new life.  We can live now free from the chains of sin and we can look forward to the eternal life that Jesus bought for us with His blood.  Just as Jesus gave my brother, Lazarus, a second chance at life, He is now giving us life, pulling us out of the death of sin, and giving life to us eternally.

 

Reviews

[Voice11]

This is absolutely wonderful! It is a perfect story from the bible put into words so clear and inspiring! Great work!