“Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. 3 So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” 4 But when Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was. 7 Then after this He said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” 8 The disciples said to Him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone You, and are You going there again?” 9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 11 This He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” 12 The disciples then said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” 13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He was speaking of literal sleep. 14 So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.” 16 Therefore Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.”
Chapter 10 of John’s Gospel ends like this:
“And He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there. Many came to Him and were saying, “While John performed no sign, yet everything John said about this man was true.” Many believed in Him there.”
I begin by drawing those verses to your attention, because I think we should try to put ourselves in the place of Jesus for just a moment and imagine the emotions He must have been experiencing.
He has had His final confrontation with the Jews and left Jerusalem to avoid their grasp until the Father’s time comes to be fulfilled in His death on the cross.
So Jesus has gone back to the place where His earthly ministry began; back to the place the forerunner, John, was baptizing and telling people to repent and be made ready for the coming of God’s Promised One; and while there Jesus has had not only a time of rest and peace but a time of success insofar as many who saw Him and heard Him teach while there believed in Him.
Then comes this runner from His friends Mary and Martha to give Him news that He didn’t really need to hear because He knew it was coming. But even though the report of Lazarus’ illness didn’t take Jesus by surprize – and this is the part I wanted you to think about – there must have been just a fleeting moment when Jesus felt, and possibly even thought to Himself, ‘This is it. It’s time’.
Kind of a rude interruption of the peace and tranquility He had so briefly enjoyed in this region beyond the Jordan, but the beginning of the end, so to speak, in that He knew this miracle He was about to perform in Bethany – the raising of Lazarus – would be the final straw for the Phrisees in Jerusalem and they would be stirred like a nest of deadly hornets, redoubling their resolve to lay hands on Jesus and kill Him.
So let’s go into this chapter now, hopefully taking a couple more weeks to cover it, and begin the walk with Jesus through these final days of His earthly life as He glorifies the Father and is in turn glorified.
AN URGENT PLEA – vs 1-3
John takes special care in the opening lines of this chapter to establish for us that Jesus loves these friends of His. There is good reason for his efforts. Without this carefully inserted information it would be easy for us to be left with the impression that Jesus didn’t care much for them at all.
On the surface of it Jesus hears the news of the illness of Lazarus and seems to receive it with very little concern expressed, then delays going to him for two more days.
If any one of us was told that a friend had taken ill suddenly and was hospitalized, unless our own circumstances hindered us from it we would go at the first opportunity to our friend’s bedside. Even if we could not go there we would be making some sort of contact with someone we hoped would be able to give us more information about the sickness and an updated report of our friend’s condition; wouldn’t we?
But John avoids any misinterpretation of Jesus’ lack of immediate action by saying ‘this is the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair’. Now this hasn’t even happened yet at the time John now records for us.
John wrote this Gospel as an old man near the end of his life. So he’s writing to people he knows already know about this thing that Mary did for Jesus before His crucifixion. However, Mary doesn’t do that until chapter 12, yet John talks about it here in the past tense because his readers already know about it. Are you with me?
John reminds his readers of it here because that immediately establishes the Mary and Martha he is talking about as those people very close to Jesus and known to be His friends.
Then John says the sisters sent word to Jesus, and the report itself says it again. “Lord behold, he whom you love is sick”. And again in verse 5 we find, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus”.
And right about now we’re on the edge of saying, ‘Ok, John, ok! He loved them! We get it!” But as I said, we needed this information and John’s first readers needed to know at the outset that what Jesus was about to do and say was all rooted in His love for them as well as His determination to glorify the Father.
Now I like to get sort of a movie going in my mind when I read these various accounts in the Gospels. I’ve always had a tendency in my own reading to just absorb the words but not put any drama into them; but in recent years I have grown more and more cognizant of the fact that people don’t generally talk in a monotone, and if a situation calls for emotion then the emotion will certainly be there.
So I picture this servant or friend, or whoever it was Martha chose to take a message to Jesus.. I do not know for certain how far away Jesus was. One commentator did his homework and arrived at the conclusion that Jesus and His disciples were about 20 miles away from Bethany. That sounds far to me, but I’ll defer to that man’s research because I don’t see it as important enough to try to chart the exact distance.
I only know from the text that it must have been at least a day’s walk because of the numbers given throughout the narrative of the chapter.
In any case, the guy has done some serious traveling in a short time, so I envision him finding the group wherever they happened to be at that moment, and beginning to talk but unable to catch his breath. So one of the disciples hands him a vessel of water from which he drinks greedily, then bends over with his hands on his knees taking in deep bursts of air. Finally he is able to speak comfortably, so he delivers his message. “Lord behold, he whom you love is sick”. Jesus knows who that one is, because He has been to Martha and Mary’s house often enough to recognize this man as a member of the household – not to mention He is God and created this man and knows how many hairs he has on his head – so no further report needs to be given.
Then Jesus says, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it”.
So the runner says, “not death – glory of God – Son of God glorified…ok, got it” and he turns and runs back in the direction of Bethany.
I didn’t want to try to chart it out for you here, but it is a pretty safe assumption that by the time the messenger actually delivered his message Lazarus had already died. I say that because Jesus delayed two more days, and when He finally arrived in Bethany Martha said her brother had been dead and buried for four days.
Therefore on the human side of the equation, as is so often true, the urgency of men, dire as it was, was impotent and useless at best. I think there’s a whole lot of times we are urgent for God to act in circumstances that are entirely outside of our power and authority to control or manipulate to any degree at all. Nevertheless, we’re all excited and anxious about them.
But on the Divine side of the equation, Jesus knew of the need in advance, He knew when and how He would meet that need, He was neither early nor late, and the fact of the case is, both as God and as sinless Man He loved Lazarus more than did the messenger, the sisters, or anyone else, and demonstrated that love at precisely the right time. Let’s talk about that…
A LOVING DELAY – vs 5-6
Continuing with the theme of love, more specifically, the love of Jesus for His friends, John has given us a thought provoking choice of wording here when he says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was.” (Italics mine for emphasis)
That strikes our ears as a little backwards doesn’t it? Granted, Jesus had said the sickness was not to end in death. So for the disciple’s part they probably just went back to what they were doing and hardly gave it another thought until two days later when Jesus said, “Let us go to Judea again”.
Even then they probably didn’t make the connection. He didn’t say Bethany; He said Judea. Then Jesus had to tell them more directly that it was about Lazarus.
But for the reader coming later and knowing the end of the story already, it still sounds wrong. He loved them, so He delayed.
Not, He loved them, but He delayed. Not, although He loved them He delayed.
‘Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus so He stayed…’.
What is John telling us? Here it is; are you ready?
Jesus knew, as He always knows for all of us, that the benefit – the eternal benefit – to not only Lazarus but Martha and Mary and all those that day who became believers in Him, AND to everyone in history who has read or heard this account and had their faith awakened or strengthened by it, was infinitely greater than the temporary and relatively unnoticed benefit that would have derived from His handling of the situation in any other way.
Do you ever wonder why God seems to delay in answering a prayer? This may be the best example in all of Scripture.
We know that Jesus could have healed Lazarus from any distance. He is God. Besides, we have other accounts in the Gospels to refer to for proof. He healed the Centurian’s servant from a distance. He just said, ‘Go home, your servant is well’, and the servant was.
Jesus could have gone straight to Bethany and probably could have arrived before they buried the freshly dead Lazarus, and beyond those standing close enough to see with their own eyes, anyone else hearing the account later would have said, “Oh, so Lazarus wasn’t dead, he just needed to be revived.” And they wouldn’t have given it another passing thought.
But Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So He stayed another two days in the place where He was. Jesus loved His disciples, so He stayed another two days in the place where He was. Jesus loved His elect who would read this story and rejoice and bless His name and believe in Him for their own resurrection, so He stayed two more days in the place where He was.
Jesus loved and glorified the Father always. So He stayed two more days in the place where He was.
Listen. Jesus’ love is not a pampering love; it is a perfecting love. It is not a love motivated by man’s will, but by the Father’s plan.
Why did Jesus delay going to Bethany? Why does He ever seem to delay in answering any prayer? Why does He seem to delay His coming on the clouds of glory to receive His own unto Himself? Because His love is perfect and it perfects and it glorifies.
Let me give you just a personal example of what His love did for me in His waiting, if you don’t mind… His staying two more days in the place where He was required that when He finally raised Lazarus from the dead He was giving vibrant life and health to a rotting, stinking corpse that from a human standpoint was not only beyond recovery but was repulsive and disgusting. It was in a hole in the ground for a reason, you know. It was only food for worms and insects. It had begun to break down. By the fourth day the blood was liquified and gases that had built up in the body due to bacterial decomposition were pushing the rotting blood out of every orafice.
. The skin was blackened and stiff, and let’s not even talk about what was going on by then in the abdominal cavity and the whole digestive tract.
So Jesus calling all of that back to life with a simple command gives me assurance that no matter what condition my body is in when He comes, He will just as easily call me up to vibrant healthy life; but more, in my case it will be the finished product and I will be glorified, because the One who holds all things together by the word of His power is the One who will give the command – and I will gladly…and irresistably…obey.
Have you thought about this? In the end, for the believer, Satan gets nothing. He can’t even have our bodies because Jesus is going to take it all back and glorify it. In the eons of eternity when the Devil and all who are his are in the Lake of Fire forever, with no further access to Heaven or God’s new Earth, there won’t be any vestige of evidence in Satan’s presence that we ever existed. He gets nothing; no part of us at all.
A PURPOSE REVEALED – vs 8-10 – with a look back at vs 4, and forward to vs 14-15
So after two days more Jesus says “Let us go to Judea again”. Judea is the name of the region. There’s Galilee in the north, Samaria in the middle, Judea in the south. In Judea is Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Bethany and other cities and villages. Now I would imagine that when someone generally said, “Let us go to Judea”, the implication was that they were headed for Jerusalem.
Therefore the immediate reaction of the disciples is that He will be putting Himself back in arm’s reach of the men who just very recently were picking up stones to stone Him. “…and are You going there again?”
They would have been fine with staying right where they were forever, wouldn’t they? Remember, they still thought Jesus was going to turn militant and destroy their oppressors and take David’s throne, and they were going to be His staff; His cabinet.
So why not set up HQ right here in this non-confrontational place beyond the Jordan until Jerusalem can be routed and Jesus can march in as the new King with His host of followers behind Him? Sounds sensible, right?
Besides, I’m sure the disciples were in no all-fired hurry to be stoned to death either.
But there was something they had not yet understood and I think it often escapes our notice also, and this is what Jesus was explaining to them in this seemingly cryptic illustration of the day and the night and light and darkness.
“Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. “But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”
I don’t know how much of this the disciples understood at the moment. The Jews traditionally divided the days into twelve hour increments and referred to them as the day and the night. So they certainly understood that part of what Jesus said.
But I doubt that they fully understood His implications until after the events of the coming Passover and His arrest, death and resurrection. They probably, like we, didn’t really fully grasp His words at all until after they had the Holy Spirit to fill in the blanks for them.
In brief, Jesus was reminding them that He was there to accomplish the Father’s will. That was walking in the light. Those opposed to Him would carry out their father’s work in the darkness; both literally and spiritually.
Remember, it was night when they came to the garden to arrest Jesus, at which time He declared that it was their hour and the power of darkness. Then, contrary to their own Mosaic law they held His trials at night neglecting to seek true witnesses or alert the public to the advent of a trial. They did what they did in darkness, and they most certainly stumbled, didn’t they?
Jesus was telling His disciples in essence that there was no danger that would thwart the Father’s plan and that as long as they were doing His work they were walking in the light.
At this point they may have been remembering His words to them back in chapter 9 verse 4 when He admonished them to work while it was still day because the night was coming in which no man could work.
My friends and family, for the person who is a true Christ-follower, redeemed by His blood and filled with His Holy Spirit, you need fear no enemy, you need fear no disease, you need fear no opposition in any form, because God has as specific a plan for you as He had for these disciples and has for every one of His chosen ones, and you do not stumble because you walk in the light.
Civil War General, Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, a committed follower of Christ, is quoted as saying in regards to his trust in God that he was as safe on the battlefield as he was in bed.
Do you hear the assurance of that? It is God who keeps and protects and preserves you. You may sometimes wonder if you are walking according to God’s will because you don’t understand fully the circumstances around you and you do not immediately see results of anything you are doing in His name; but He is the one who keeps you. It is His plan and His light in which you walk. You need fear absolutely nothing – because one day you’re going to stand glorified in His presence and then you will know that He directed your steps, but those who walked in darkness, who stumbled, won’t even be there.
So having given them these assuring words Jesus states His purpose in going to Judea, but in truth He has already made reference to His purpose and we need to look at that now.
Don’t be afraid guys. We’re walking in the light while it is still light and no harm will come to us in the light. In the meantime, our friend Lazarus waits and we must go to him so I can wake him up.
Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t Jesus wonderful? The One who has life in Himself…who is the Life, says His friend is sleeping. Y’know why? Because, my friend, you aren’t dead until God says you’re dead. Don’t let your body fool you, don’t let Satan’s lies deceive you...
…anyone who believes in Jesus shall live even if he dies, and anyone who lives and believes will never taste of death.
That is the immediate and physical purpose for going to Judea. Lazarus is dead and must be raised, but here is the actual, Divine and therefore eternal purpose in going at this time to Judea.
It is so that the Father may be glorified and the Son of God may be glorified by it.
There are three ways I see God being glorified in this; let’s take them one at a time.
1. God will be glorified by the miracle itself.
Jesus said in verse 4, “This sickness in not to end in death, but for the glory of God…” What has He said there? The final result will not be death. Now as I mentioned earlier, the disciples didn’t know yet that Lazarus was dead, they thought he was sick but that he was going to recover. But two days pass between verse 4 and verse 7, so in verse 14 when Jesus finally says, “Lazarus is dead” that must have made their heads spin just a little.
Was Jesus the Messiah or not? Isn’t the Messiah supposed to ‘know all things’? Sure! Even the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well knew that.
She declared that when Messiah came He would ‘tell us all things’. You have to know all things in order to tell all things, right?
So why did Jesus say the sickness was not to end in death, and then later say Lazarus is dead?
Here it is. I’m repeating myself. Ready? You aren’t dead until God says you’re dead!
To rephrase what Jesus said, “The final outcome of this sickness will not be death. The final outcome of this sickness will be the glory of God and that the Son of God might be glorified”.
God was glorified in the miracle itself, because only God can give life to the dead. Therefore, when a man who has been in the grave four days comes out of the grave alive, there can be no doubt that God has done this!
Let me repeat here that this is why Jesus choreographed this to happen in such a public, almost flamboyant way. His purpose was to demonstrate God’s power for God’s glory. That’s why at the tomb He said to Martha, “Did I not say to you, if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
2. God would be glorified by the resulting belief.
Not only in Martha, but in so many of those who were there to witness the miracle. That’s in verse 45. Many of the Jews who had come to Mary saw what He had done and believed in Him.
What does that mean, ‘the Jews who had come to Mary’? Those who were there to comfort her in her grief. Funerals then were sort of like weddings then. They lasted about a week.
These days we take an hour out of our very important lives to go to a church or a chapel and listen to a eulogy and sing a few songs and shake hands with the family then we hop in our car and go back to work or home or lunch or whatever.
In that culture they stayed around for a whole week. Lazarus had been in the grave for four days, but the people who had come to the funeral were all still hanging around; the professional mourners were probably still standing around wailing, relieving each other for orange juice and potty breaks…
We don’t have an exact number of funeral attendees, but verse 19 says that because of the close proximity to Jerusalem many Jews had come to console Martha and Mary in their grief.
We get the sense that this was a very prominent family not only in Bethany but in Jerusalem. They must have been wealthy, we can glean that from the cost of the ointment that Mary was to pour over Jesus in chapter 12 [we’ll get to that, Lord willing], and whether because of their business or their family history or whatever, Martha Mary and Lazarus were so well-known and well-esteemed in Jerusalem that many had come to console the sisters; so there were a lot of people there. OK?
And as a result of this miracle and the very public way in which it was done, God was glorified in the new-found faith in Jesus that resulted.
I’m sure we can rightly speculate that not all of them believed with a saving faith. There are always those in the crowd who are carried away by the thrill of the moment but never really commit themselves; but that’s for God to sort out. John tells us many believed, and when people come to God in the obedience of saving faith, God is glorified.
3. God would be glorified in the eventual death of His Son which was tied strongly to this particular event. And, the Son would be glorified also.
Again, go to the later verses of this chapter and look at verses 46-50.
“But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done. Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man is performing many signs. “If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.”
So on the human side of the equation, the leading Jews determined as a direct result of this miracle to seize Jesus and kill Him.
So how is God glorified in this, you may ask?
Listen to John 13:31, as Jesus talks to His disciples in the Upper Room, just after Judas goes out to betray Him.
“Therefore when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.”
And chapter 17 verse 1
“Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You,”
This is exactly what Jesus meant in verse 4 of our text, when He said that the sickness of Lazarus was to result in Glory to God, and also that the Son of God may be glorified by it.
God received glory in the fact of the miracle, and in the faith of those who saw and believed because of the miracle, but also in the death of His Son which evil men determined to accomplish because of the report of the miracle and the numbers of people who were believing in Jesus because of it.
They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And because Jesus walked in the light and perfectly fulfilled the Father’s will, fellow believers, because He delayed two days, because He made a deliberately showy public demonstration of the final miracle of His earthly ministry, the Father is given the Glory due Him, the Son was glorified in His death and resurrection, and you and I are saved.
What? Only because of the raising of Lazarus we are saved? No, because Jesus always did the Father’s will, because Jesus always walked in the light of day, because Jesus in His humility perfectly fulfilled redemption’s plan, and because He even uses the sickness of His friends for God’s glory and for our eternal good.
A LOYALTY DEMONSTRATED – vs 16
In closing I just want to pause and briefly consider this last verse of today’s text and get Thomas off the hook a little bit.
“Therefore Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.”
Say what you will about Thomas’ later expressions of confusion and doubt in the Upper Room, and his refusal after the crucifixion to believe his Lord was risen unless he could physically see and touch Him, right here we have a glimpse at the courage and nobility and faithfulness that lay barely in seed in the heart of this disciple, whom tradition tells us later went to India in His Lord’s service and was tortured, run through with spears and tossed in an oven.
Keep in mind that there is a very real and potential danger here. It is not imagined, and Thomas isn’t speaking out of panic. They were recently in Jerusalem and the Jews there had surrounded Jesus in Solomon’s portico and they really had picked up rocks intending to bash His brains out.
If the disciples were there, and they most surely were, they had to have also felt that they narrowly escaped the same fate that day; because if the Jews had stoned Jesus the disciples would have been next.
So when Thomas says to his friends, “Let us also go so that we may die with Him”, there is a very legitimate tone of resignation there indicating that at least for that moment Thomas’ love for Jesus made him willing for this to be the end of his life.
How many preachers would stay in the ministry if they truly felt that their next sermon was going to be result in their murder? I wonder how many Christians would continue to go to church if they really thought that one of the times they go an angry mob of pagans was going to lock them in and burn the church down?
This is something you have to wrestle with in your own heart and between you and God, believer – and it goes for me also of course – we can’t answer for one another and we can’t require it of one another, but I have to put this challenge out for you and me today.
Are you ready to believe and accept that if you are diagnosed with inoperable cancer it will be in God’s plan and for His glory? Can you trust that if your car goes over a rocky cliff on a snowy day it will be in God’s plan for you for His glory and your good?
Would you be willing to walk with Jesus into the rock shower because you know that He is the one in control and your eternity is secure in Him?
You’d better be, Christian. Because short of His pending return in the air to call His chosen ones to Him, you’re going to leave this world some way, and no matter what that way ends up being – no matter the method He has planned for you – it is not to end in death, but for the glory of God.
And you and I need to know and be assured in our heart of hearts now and always that our very existence, now and for eternity is in and to and through Him, and for His everlasting glory.
We all do a lot of talking about Jesus coming to get us. Are we willing also to follow Him, as it were, back across the river into Judea first?
“I can hear my Savior calling,
I can hear my Savior calling;
I can hear my Savior calling,
‘Take thy cross and follow, follow Me’.”
- E.W. Blandy
