I Am the Resurrection
Scripture: John 11:17-43
We are continuing our series on the “I Am” statements that Jesus makes in the gospel of John. If I were to retitle the message this morning, I would likely have called it, “What stinks?!!” Because we’re going to approach this “I Am” statement from a little different perspective than the others we’ve looked at so far.
Many years ago, I worked in the purchasing department of a pickle company - Bicks Pickles. And as you know pickles come from cucumbers, and during what was called “fresh pack” all of the cucumbers for the whole year would come into the factory. Now cucumbers are kept in brine in big vats. And the brine has a particular smell to it. It’s not really a very pleasant smell, but the thing is, if you work there long enough, you get used to it and you never even notice it. But other people, who DIDN’T work there, would come for a visit, and they would often say - politely of course - “what’s that smell?” They really wanted to know “What stinks around here?”!!
Before I worked at Bicks Pickles, I worked at another food processor, called Peak Frean/Langely Harris. Going to work at Peak Freans was a totally different experience - because at Peak Frean’s I was the receptionist and switchboard operator, and when people would come to visit Peak Frean’s, they’d say things like, “I love coming here - it smells so good.” See Peak Frean/Langley Harris, made cookies. You could actually see people slow down as the drove by the facility just to enjoy the sweet aroma of those cookies in the oven.
Now we have, on occasion, some smells around here, in our community. If the wind is blowing just right. Whatever smells we have around here though, pale in comparison to Broken Bow where they have 130,000 head of cattle - now THAT’s a smell you just NEVER get used to!
Did you know that the neurons that trigger smell, go directly to our brain? Smell is not like taste and sight which first go to a relay center in the middle of our brain and then get sent out from there, smell goes directly to our brain and it can trigger fight or flight responses or make you drool over the taste you're about to enjoy.
Now, here’s the thing, MOST of us, don’t care for bad smells. While it’s true that what smells really nice for some of us, might smell really bad to someone else, most of us would likely agree that when something is dead, it stinks.
A. Dead stuff stinks. (like pickles)
And that brings us to our scripture reading for today - AND the message.
Look with me at verse 39, of our passage of scripture.
Jesus says, “Roll the stone aside,” and MARTHA, the story tells us, protested, saying, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.”
Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory (what?) if you believe.”
Here’s where I’m going with this. All of us have tombs in our life. A tomb, - look at verse 38, - is a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.
Many people have stuff that they’ve got buried.
We have those places in our lives that are caves with a stone rolled across its entrance. And every now and again Jesus comes along speaking to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and says, roll the stone away, and we respond like Martha - BUT LORD, it stinks in there - don’t roll the stone away. Don’t open the tomb!
And what happens is,
We miss God’s glory.
There is a condition on seeing God’s glory. We have to believe. Too often, too many people want to see God’s glory SO they can believe. Jesus said, we will see God’s glory IF we believe. So we have to believe, then we see.
Later on in John’s gospel, chapter 20, verse 29, Jesus says, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” That moment, when Jesus said that, was after HIS resurrection. Now here, he is saying to Martha, “Didn’t I tell you, you will see God’s glory IF you believe.”
I can’t help but think there is a strong correlation here between Jesus resurrection, and the fact that Jesus is about to call forth Lazarus from the tomb.
We’ll talk about those two tombs in just a bit.
So one thing that happens to us when we have dead stuff buried in the tombs in our life, is we miss God’s glory. And the reason we MISS God’s glory, is because we don’t believe.
We remain in our unbelief.
There’s a story told by Ken Davis. It’s a lengthy story but says it all. Ken Davis says this:
“In college I was asked to prepare a lesson to teach my speech class. We were to be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of my talk was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum. The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.
I attached a 3-foot string to a child's toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack. I pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where I let it go. Each time it swung back I made a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top to complete its swinging and come to rest. When I finished the demonstration, the markings on the blackboard proved my thesis.
I then asked how many people in the room BELIEVED the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun. Hanging from the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands of 500-pound test parachute cord.). I invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Then I brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face, I once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger."
After that final restatement of this law, I looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is true?" There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes." I released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. I never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table. Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, I asked the class, "Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?" The students unanimously answered, "NO!"
Ken Davis, How To Speak To Youth, pp 104-106.
Sometimes - when it comes right down to it - we really don’t believe because we really don’t trust.
C.S. Lewis says, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?
Too often, I’m afraid, we miss God’s glory because we remain in our unbelief.
Then, when we have dead, stinky stuff in our lives, we tend to:
We blame others for our dead spots.
Generally when we have something in our tomb and we know it’s stinking, we blame someone else for it.
Look at verses 21 and 32. Both Martha and Mary told Jesus if he had only been there, Lazarus wouldn’t have died. See they believed Jesus for a healing but they didn’t believe him - not yet anyway - for a resurrection.
When something inside of us gets sick and dies, and we bury it deep inside ourselves, we more often than not blame other people for that dead spot in our lives. Don’t we?
Have you ever heard it said that the one who accuses the most is usually the one who struggles the most with the very thing he accuses of.
When we have dead spots in our lives, we can usually picks those out pretty quickly in other people. Mostly because we’re afraid if they are exposed in someone else, they MIGHT get exposed in us. And it’s that fear of being exposed that leads to . . .
4. We protest the unusual (radical).
It certainly wasn’t the practice in those days to go around removing the grave stones. The grave stones were not removed until much later when the body had deteriorated to the point that bones were left and then the bones were put into ossuaries in family vaults or graves, which were quite often part of the tomb where the body had been laid.
So when Jesus asks to have the stone rolled away - he’s asking for something that goes against the norm - against the culture. Most importantly Jesus is asking them to trust Him because HE is asking them to do something out of the ordinary.
But more often than not, when we have dead stuff in our tombs, we have to protect that dead stuff - we don't want it stinking up the place, so we abandon reckless obedience for fear of getting smelly. Our obedience starts to stagnate - it’s not quite a vibrant as it once was.
Martha protested. She wasn’t ready to give Jesus immediate obedience. And Jesus said, “Didn’t I tell you?”
‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.”
See, here’s the good news.
B. Living stuff smells sweet. (like cookies)
Why? Because,
Jesus has authority over the stuff in our tombs.
Jesus has authority over the stinky stuff!
Whether it’s my life, or your life, or ANYBODY else’s life, JESUS has authority over ALL the stinky stuff!
Look at verse 43. “Lazarus - Come out!” It says Jesus shouted!
How many people who were there that day, do you think ACTUALLY believed they would see Lazarus until they actually saw him? See Jesus understands, even now, that the people still do not believe. They still do not trust Him.
C.S. Lewis says:
“Believing things 'on authority' only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine percent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there is such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary person believes in the solar system, atoms, and the circulation of the blood on authority--because the scientists say so. Every historical statement is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Spanish Armada. But we believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them; in fact, on authority. A person who balked at authority in other things, as some people do in religion, would have to be content to know nothing all his life. “
Jesus has authority over the stuff in our tombs. he’s trustworthy.
2. Jesus exposes the dead stuff in order to give us freedom.
Verse 44, Jesus says, “Unwrap him and let him go.”
You have to unwrap the dead things that are suffocating you if you want to be free.
“Unwrap him.” - Take off what’s associated with the dead stuff. Take the bandages off - get rid of the bondage. Bring him out in the open. Expose the lies!
And then what. Let him go. Let him go!
What freedom - let him go! It’s catch and release at it’s very best!
You’re free little one. You’re free. Go! What did our passage last week tell us. “They will come and go FREELY and will find good pastures.”!
So here’s the question:
Does the dead stuff in your life need to hear Jesus’ words, “Come out!”?
Jesus said he IS the resurrection and the life. Remember I mentioned Jesus’ own resurrection just a few minutes ago - when Jesus said, ‘blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe?”
I heard yesterday an interesting story. I don’t know if it’s all true or not, but it’s a good story. Lazarus was in the tomb 4 days. So when his tomb was opened, there was the smell of death. It was as Martha said it would be - a stink.
But when Jesus tomb was opened, there was the smell of life. There was no decaying flesh, or smell of death. There was just the sweet aroma of anointing oils and new life!
What about you this morning. Do you have dead stuff in your life? Do you need to hear Jesus say, “roll away the stone” - no protest, just trust, just life and the sweet sweet aroma of the Holy Spirit setting you free.
We’re going to sing, “Jesus I Come.”
