ENCOUNTERS WITH JESUS IN JOHN'S GOSPEL:
Interaction with a Sick Friend (John 11:1-44)
Interaction with a Sick Friend (John 11:1-44)
Dr. Paul Manuel—2016
This sermon series: Encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel:
Jesus’ healing ministry brought him in contact with countless needy people clamoring for his attention, something he did not deny them. At times the unrelenting demands of ministry would cause him to seek solitude “far from the madding crowd,” even apart from the disciples, his closest companions. On one occasion, “after he had dismissed them, he went…by himself to pray” (Matt 14:23a), which he may have done often. Still, whenever Jesus “saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were…like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36).3 Sometimes we think of Jesus as a solitary figure on the stage of history, the “voice of one calling in the desert” (Isa 40:3). But he was not alone; he had friends and family, people who cared about him and cared for him, such as Lazarus, a close friend, along with Mary and Martha, his two sisters.
I. Jesus receives the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:1-15).
clarifies the situation: “Lazarus is dead” (v. 14).
When someone close to you dies, there is often a desire to discover the cause, as if all death is avoidable. While some deaths are preventable, and it is natural to extend life, there is also the need to view death as more than just the end. While it is the point of no return, where a person’s options are no longer binary, when he will either be with God forever or apart from God forever, for the one who will be with God, death is actually a welcome transition from mortality to immortality, from living in this world, which is fallen, to being present with God, which is exalted. As Paul explains it, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable….for the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:50, 53). What awaits the believer is not something to eschew at all costs but something to embrace with great expectation
II. Jesus reviews the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:21-27, 32-37).
Jesus meets with the two sisters, who both assert that his presence sooner could have prevented this tragedy. They were confident of his healing power, but death was “a bridge too far.” At this point, there is no coming back. As the author of Hebrews will later write, “man is destined to die once” (9:27), so this was it for Lazarus.
This is not Jesus’ first encounter with the end of a person’s life.
People often attempt to comfort the bereaved by saying something like, “He’s in a better place.” While that is certainly true if the person knew God in this place, such an observation is not particularly helpful to one who is grieving. Often the best response to someone who is bereaved is not what you say, your stylish prose, but what you do, your simple presence. Job’s friends after the loss of his family illustrate the proper response: “They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” (Job 2:13)
III. Jesus reverses the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:38-44).
It is now possible to revive a person whose heart has stopped beating, but actually raising the dead, especially someone who has been gone for several days, is still out of reach for modern medicine (despite the imaginings of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein). You do not have the ability from God that enabled Jesus to perform miracles,26 but you do have an access to God that enables you to request miracles, and Paul encourages you to avail yourself of that direct line:27 “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind…always keep on praying for all the saints.” (Eph 6:18)
In another of the Encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel, a man whose next meeting with the savior would normally have taken place in another realm, reentered this realm quite unexpectedly.28 Following a remarkable display of power, Lazarus returned to this mortal coil. What began as a call to Interaction with a Sick Friend ended in his death and then in his resurrection through Jesus’ intercession.
- His interaction with a commercial enterprise ( John 2:13-16)
- His interaction with a royal official (John 4:46-53)
- His interaction with a sick friend (John 11:1-44)
- His interaction with a traitorous disciple (John 13:21-30)
Paddy, Sean, and Shamus, were stumbling home late one night and found themselves on a road that led past an old graveyard. “Come and look at this, says Paddy, “It’s Michael O’Grady’s grave, God rest his soul. He lived to the ripe old age of 87.” “That’s nothing,” says Sean. “Here’s one named Patrick O’Toole. It says that he was 95 when he died.” Just then, Shamus yells out, "I found a fella who died when he was 145!” “What was his name?” asks Paddy. Shamus lights a match to see what else is written on the stone marker and exclaims…“Miles, from Dublin.”There are many different kinds of literary forms in the Bible, including obituaries, which a man named Lazarus may not have had the first time he died. It happened during one of the Encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel,1 specifically his Interaction with a Sick Friend in chapter 11.2
Jesus’ healing ministry brought him in contact with countless needy people clamoring for his attention, something he did not deny them. At times the unrelenting demands of ministry would cause him to seek solitude “far from the madding crowd,” even apart from the disciples, his closest companions. On one occasion, “after he had dismissed them, he went…by himself to pray” (Matt 14:23a), which he may have done often. Still, whenever Jesus “saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were…like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt 9:36).3 Sometimes we think of Jesus as a solitary figure on the stage of history, the “voice of one calling in the desert” (Isa 40:3). But he was not alone; he had friends and family, people who cared about him and cared for him, such as Lazarus, a close friend, along with Mary and Martha, his two sisters.
I. Jesus receives the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:1-15).
A. He waits to visit Lazarus before he died.
John 11:1 Now a man named Lazarus4 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.5 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love6 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.”7 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.8 7 Then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.When the report of his friend’s grave illness reached Jesus, the response is curious because he does not to go immediately to Lazarus’ aid, even though Jesus, better than anyone else, could have helped. Jesus has treated scores of people and a myriad of maladies, never encountering one he could not cure, leprosy to lameness, blindness to deafness. Still, Jesus delays until it is too late, yet he says, “This sickness will not end in death” (v. 4). The ultimate goal of all Jesus did was to promote “God’s glory” (vv. 4, 40).9 Surely healing Lazarus would have advanced that cause.
B. He goes to visit Lazarus after he died.
John 11:11 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.”10 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.”Jesus’ explanation of Lazarus’ state is puzzling to the disciples, for he likens Lazarus’ passing to sleep, which is often the way death appears to the living, as if the deceased is asleep. That notion gave rise to the concept of “soul sleep,” an idea that John Milton may have introduced in his Paradise Lost (“Such a peal shall rouse their sleep”) and that religious movements of the 19th century promoted, like Seventh Day Adventism. Although the Bible does depict death as sleep (as Jesus does here), it does so only from the perspective of the living.11 From the perspective of the dead themselves, the deceased are awake and aware.12 At first, the disciples think Jesus is speaking figuratively, until he
clarifies the situation: “Lazarus is dead” (v. 14).
When someone close to you dies, there is often a desire to discover the cause, as if all death is avoidable. While some deaths are preventable, and it is natural to extend life, there is also the need to view death as more than just the end. While it is the point of no return, where a person’s options are no longer binary, when he will either be with God forever or apart from God forever, for the one who will be with God, death is actually a welcome transition from mortality to immortality, from living in this world, which is fallen, to being present with God, which is exalted. As Paul explains it, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable….for the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:50, 53). What awaits the believer is not something to eschew at all costs but something to embrace with great expectation
II. Jesus reviews the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:21-27, 32-37).
Jesus meets with the two sisters, who both assert that his presence sooner could have prevented this tragedy. They were confident of his healing power, but death was “a bridge too far.” At this point, there is no coming back. As the author of Hebrews will later write, “man is destined to die once” (9:27), so this was it for Lazarus.
A. He hears Martha’s disappointment.
John 11:21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, 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.”13 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”After expressing her disappointment in Jesus’ late arrival, Martha tries to find something positive to say about this heartbreaking situation. She responds to Jesus’ mention of the resurrection with confidence in that far future event, not realizing that Jesus is referring to the near future.
B. He hears Mary’s disappointment.
John 11:32 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 Jews14 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?”15Mary shows Jesus their late brother’s final resting place. The scene is more than he can bear, even knowing what the future holds, and he too is overcome with grief. Others note the irony of this tragedy: The famous healer has met his match with the incurable problem of death.
This is not Jesus’ first encounter with the end of a person’s life.
- He restores the son of a widow in Luke 7.
- He restores the daughter of a synagogue official in Luke 8.
People often attempt to comfort the bereaved by saying something like, “He’s in a better place.” While that is certainly true if the person knew God in this place, such an observation is not particularly helpful to one who is grieving. Often the best response to someone who is bereaved is not what you say, your stylish prose, but what you do, your simple presence. Job’s friends after the loss of his family illustrate the proper response: “They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” (Job 2:13)
III. Jesus reverses the news of Lazarus’ death (John 11:38-44).
A. He removes the impediment to his friend’s mobility.
John 11:38 Jesus, once more deeply moved,17 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.”18 40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41a So they took away the stone.Martha’s hesitation is understandable. Jews did not practice embalming, and refrigeration was not yet available to slow decomposition. Absent those methods of preservation, a dead body will begin to breakdown soon after death.19 By this time, “four days” after the passing of Lazarus, the putrefaction of his body has advanced to the point where “it stinketh” (John 11:39 KJV).
B. He removes the impediment to his friend’s identity.
John 11:41b Then Jesus looked up20 and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me,21 but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”22 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.”There is no doubt that this is the recently deceased Lazarus. Jesus’ prayer makes his expectation clear, and the formerly dead man’s appearance eliminates any uncertainty. It is rare that Jesus prays aloud, and never does he pray before performing other miracles.23 In this case, his prayer underscores the authority Jesus has to conduct such an unusual act24 and it emphasizes that the source of power is God.25
It is now possible to revive a person whose heart has stopped beating, but actually raising the dead, especially someone who has been gone for several days, is still out of reach for modern medicine (despite the imaginings of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein). You do not have the ability from God that enabled Jesus to perform miracles,26 but you do have an access to God that enables you to request miracles, and Paul encourages you to avail yourself of that direct line:27 “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind…always keep on praying for all the saints.” (Eph 6:18)
In another of the Encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel, a man whose next meeting with the savior would normally have taken place in another realm, reentered this realm quite unexpectedly.28 Following a remarkable display of power, Lazarus returned to this mortal coil. What began as a call to Interaction with a Sick Friend ended in his death and then in his resurrection through Jesus’ intercession.
For a pdf including Bibliography and Endnotes see here.
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Jim Skaggs