Turning your Bibles to John 11, our text will be beginning in verse 17, but I'd like, because of the context, to start with verse 1. It's a long reading of the Word. If you'd like to simply listen, you're welcome to. Or turning your Scripture to John 11, beginning with verse 1, reading the English Standard Version. Hear now the Word of the Lord. Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sister said to him, saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said, this illness does not lead to death. This will the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this, he said to the disciples, let's go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again? Jesus answered, are there not 12 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. After saying these things, he said to them, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him. Lazarus said to him, the disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant that he was taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I'm glad that I was not there, so that you may believe, but let's go to him. So Thomas, called the twins, said to his fellow disciples, Let's go also, that we may die with him. Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you. When she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. So the Jews said, See how he loved him. But some of them said, Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind men also have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus, deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. And Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead for four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of the Lord abides forever. Well, I've been looking forward to this sermon. I have been here before, I told you that. That was when Pastor Howard's eye was in the audience. It's been some time. But I wanted to renew my acquaintance with you and my time with many of you. I know many of you already. But I also have not been looking forward to this sermon. In fact, I've been dreading it. This is a very personal sermon. This is actually a sermon I'm partly preaching to myself. You see, when I was asked to preach this sermon, it was at the beginning of September, and I was going once again up to Oregon where my father lived, and he had suffered in August a second compression fracture of his spine. The first was in July, which was a very difficult and excruciatingly painful ordeal. He was wheelchair-bound. So I got the request to come here during all that time, and I picked this passage for that reason. It just is a passage that I had recently worked with in the Greek class, and it had just struck me again how important this passage is. In part, you see, this is a passage that displays wonderfully John's genius. The Gospel of John, the author, under the inspiration of the Spirit, is a master of portraiture. Now, I went to the Getty Museum up in the Los Angeles area about two years ago for the first time. I should have been there earlier. But I saw this Rembrandt, it was actually quite small, I mean, it's about that big, about the size of a piece of paper. And if you ever go there, to me, that was worth the whole trip, just to look at this thing. And you can get really close and look at this thing. It's a little tiny portrait of a man, but it is so wonderfully drawn, I mean, and painted, it's oil paint. I just couldn't believe it when I look at this, just how natural the person looks still after hundreds of years from the time of his painting. And he's a master. John, no less, is a master at drawing quick portraits. John 9, the man born blind in his healing, and all the interaction of this man born blind and the Pharisees, is a portrait of unbelief. The unbelief of people who would not believe, despite all the evidence, standing there before him. It's just this drawn-out picture of how these Pharisees would not believe in Jesus. They refused to believe, despite the repeated evidence brought before them. And John does the same thing here in chapter 11. John paints a portrait which is really gorgeous and beautiful and precious to us. So, if you'll forgive me my foolishness in preaching this sermon, And join me in looking at this passage. It's a passage which I hope you too will take comfort in and appreciate as I do now. This is a portrait drawn in a landscape which is well known to the audience, though John gives us some help. Jesus is in danger. As we've already read in our passage, the Jews had tried to stone him because he identified himself for who he is. He said, I and the Father are one, and they picked up stones to kill him. That's at the end of chapter 10. And so Jesus left Jerusalem, and he went across to Jordan. It's roughly 30 miles away, but it's not just 30 miles in level landscape. Jerusalem is quite elevated. It's roughly 3,000 feet above Jericho. Jericho is actually under sea level. So you have to go a pretty, you know, steep climb down to Jericho, and if you're going back from that region across to Jordan, you've got 30 miles that you, it's pretty level, but then you climb really hard and fast, about 3,000 feet, and it's a very rugged and dangerous terrain, dangerous in part because of all the robbers and murders that hang out there. Bethany, on the other hand, is very near to Jerusalem, about two miles as we read. And Bethany is the home of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Now, today I want to focus primarily on Martha and Mary. It's interesting, you'll notice that Lazarus never says anything. He really is the object of the Lord's compassion by raising him from the dead. But the real focus here in the section we're looking at is on Martha and Mary. In verse 3, we read that the sisters had sent for Jesus. They obviously believed in him. They knew about the man born blind. The crowd mentions that. It's really well known for anybody in the Jerusalem area. Bethany's only a couple of miles away. And these sisters know that Jesus can heal people of these really serious disease. This man was born blind, and he healed him, just with a, basically with a word, although it was a little more involved than that for the sake of his faith. And then you have this very interesting verse six. If you glance at that again, it says, Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer. He loved them, so he stayed around and hung around until the guy died. He loved them so he didn't drop everything and come and help them. It really kind of strikes you, doesn't it? That Jesus knows what he's doing, and they don't. And he's got a plan here, but it's a hard plan. He doesn't drop everything to come and help them. Now, because of the circumstance of the danger to him, they could imagine that he's afraid for his own life. That he's simply avoiding coming around Jerusalem Mary because he's afraid that he's going to get stoned. A natural expectation for the sisters here who are looking at their brother and are in grave, doubt whether he will survive. They sent for him. But then you have Jesus interacting with them. I'm scooting ahead now to verse 17. Jesus interacting with these two sisters. And you see, he does come. You have this wonderful portrait of the disciples' unbelief, particularly Thomas. Well, let's go with him. We've got to die anyway, so let's die with him now. Because he's going to die, we're going to die. This is the end of the whole program. That's what Jesus is dealing with. This is why he acts the way he does. He acts in such a way that you have to live your faith through the hard things of life. He delays for their sake and for the sake of their faith. The crucible is for silver and the refining fire is for gold and the Lord tests the hearts. From Proverbs. Here, these two sisters are going through the crucible. Let's look now at Martha. You see Martha in Jesus' interaction with her in verses 17 through 27. Martha is, we're not told this, but the way that she is described, she's mentioned first. Martha, then her sister Mary. She's probably the older sister. That would be the convention, to name the older sibling first in that culture. But we're talking about a woman, and we don't really know how old she is, but she has no husband mentioned, and the parents are not mentioned. And for that reason, it's a pretty good speculation that she's, you know, not yet married, but older. Now, this doesn't mean she's that much older. she's probably between 16 and 18 years old. Life expectancy back then for women is around 36. We have a lot of evidence of women dying in their early and mid-20s, leaving behind five children. This is normal back then. Marriage age for Jewish girls is usually a little later than Roman and Greek girls, so they married around 15. Roman girls around 12 often, Greek girls around 14. So this means that in our terms, she's really not that old, but in her terms, she's the older sister, particularly as the parents are dead. She's basically, essentially, the head of the household. And you see her taking charge. For example, later on, when Jesus approaches the tomb and says, open up the tomb, roll away the stone, it's Martha who responds and says, there's an odor here. It's not Mary, it's only Martha who interacts and kind of takes charge when both Martha and Mary are there. So she's the older sibling. And you can see in just the way she talks and how she acts, she's in control. I mean, she is deeply grieving. She is hurt. She's frustrated. Her life is really upside down now with the death of this brother. We don't know. It could be a cherished baby brother. That would make sense, particularly, again, as the way that they're mentioned, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, would be kind of an age order. But if it's an older brother, it's really worse for her because he's basically the legal head of the home. And you'll recall your reading of the Old Testament book of Ruth. You can't just sell land if you're a woman, even your own land. You have to have a kinsman who will step in for you. Normally, that would be the older brother. So there's just a lot of things here we don't quite know, but we know that this is a really devastating time for Martha. But she is in control. She is deeply grieving for her brother who just died. But she can still control it. And I think you see that in verse 21. It says, Martha, actually it says in the previous verse, Martha heard that Jesus was coming, verse 20. She went and met him. So she goes out to meet him. And then in verse 21, she says something that you have to realize it's kind of a shocking thing to say. She says, Sir, that's one way you can render that word rendered here, Lord. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know, Lord God. It means, Sir, it's a polite acknowledgement of a superior here. Sir, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. She doesn't say that for information purpose. She's grieving for her brother. She's frustrated. She sent for Jesus. He delayed. Where was he? If you'd been here, my brother would not have died. She is frustrated, and she's taking it out on him. It's controlled because she's doing it in private. She went out there to meet him before he entered into the village and the home. She didn't want to embarrass him publicly with all these people in the home and Mary there, but all these strangers from Jerusalem coming to console them, she still had the presence of mind to do this privately. And so Martha is, in that sense, a remarkable and an admirable person, someone who you can appreciate that even in the midst of all this, she's trying to hold things together. If she's the older sister, she has to. Because we're going to see in a moment, Mary's a basket case. But also, you can see her faith here. It's a faith that is forming in Jesus. But Jesus had done all this in order to talk with Martha and Mary. That his disciples' faith would grow, but in particular, Martha and Mary. You see, Martha says that she believes in the resurrection. And then he says to her something that we take as a memory verse, and really is a spectacular verse, right? I am the resurrection and the life. I mean, you're going, oh boy, that's a big verse. That's quite a statement. We're not dealing with Isaiah anymore. If Isaiah came here today and said, I am the resurrection and the life, brothers and sisters we would not listen to him and the elders would escort him out because he's mad and not a true prophet. Jesus alone says that and can say that because he is the resurrection and the life and you see Jesus is calling for Martha to acknowledge that the center of her hope is Jesus that if you are going to have hope in the future resurrection from the dead and and life everlasting. It's through personal faith and allegiance to Jesus. Not God in general, but to the Son of God. And she confesses that. Even if she may not understand it very fully, because when you read her confession of faith that we have here, because here's what she says. He says, do you believe this? She says to him in verse 27, Yes, Lord, or Sir, I believe that you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. Now, when she says, I believe this, she actually says, I have believed this. In other words, my faith really hasn't changed. I have already put my trust in you as the Messiah, the Son of God. But you see, even that, as good as that is, because that is good, it's progress in the book of John for somebody to believe that. Nevertheless, there's something not quite there yet fully. When she says son of God, it's actually a title for the Messiah from 2 Samuel 7. I will be God to him and he will be son to me of David's son, the royal Messiah. It's adoption language. You see, the Messiah is the king derived from David, the son of David. And he's the king of Israel. But it's a human title. And a human title alone. To say son of God in that sense simply means you've been adopted by God. You are the king and he has adopted you. And he watches over you like a father does his son. it doesn't necessarily mean that he has come from God as a second person of the Trinity. She doesn't necessarily have that faith yet. It isn't fully formed. She is so overwhelmed by her circumstance that she doesn't exactly hear what he's saying to her. And I think it's confirmed when you read what Martha says to Mary in verse 28. The teacher is calling for you. She doesn't say the Lord. She doesn't say the Son of God. She says the teacher. He's the Messianic teacher. This actually is a faith that is sufficient for eternal life, but is still being formed in the demand that Jesus places on all of his disciples to acknowledge him as a center of our faith. We here are Christians. That means we trust in Christ, the incarnate Son of God. We know that now. We have confessions and catechisms which fully clarify from the Scripture what that means. Martha is just hearing about this for the first time. But she had to hear it. To hear about the resurrection from the dead, in general from God, The Jews believed in them. She needed to become one who depended upon Jesus alone for faith and hope and resurrection. So she has true and sufficient faith with potential. And it's good. And this is why Jesus came. He came with a personal touch to his disciple, Martha. And he came eliciting from her this confession of faith and he found that adequate for the time. She would have to grow in her faith. But he was willing to put her through the trial of a beloved brother dying to see if her faith would stand up so that he could instruct her in the depth of the faith that we must display in Jesus through tough times and good times. Because it's in the tough times that that crucible is really the pestle. You know, this pestle and the mortar is really jamming into us. And we are, then we prove, we go through the fire to refine our faith that it would be pure at the other end of the process. And Jesus is willing to put us through that for the sake of our hope in eternal life. Well, he's not done. There's one more yet that he needs to speak with, and that's Mary. Again, probably a younger sister, 16, 15 years old. Good guesses. I personally think it's pretty clear that Mary, the mother of Jesus, probably around 15 at most. So this Christmas time when you're reading about Mary and the fact that the angel comes to her and says, by the way, you're going to have a child? How can that be? I haven't known a man yet. She hasn't known a man because she's too young. Maybe she's 14 or 13. It's possible. This is life in my world. I'm a first century person in your midst. I feel like it sometimes. When the arthritis creeps in, I think, it's fine. First century people, this is what we are. But you see, now we're dealing with Mary, who also is, she really hasn't been through much of life yet. And her brother just died. And frankly, when you look at Mary, brothers and sisters, you're looking at somebody who's just lost him. This again is where John paints this portrait so beautifully and accurately. It comes out really clearly when you stop and read this text very closely and carefully. Notice that Mary doesn't go with Martha to encounter Jesus on the road as he's coming to their village and their home. She's at home, and it says she's sitting at home. She can't even get up. She's at home. She just can't go anywhere. And frankly, encountering Jesus right now is the last thing from her mind. because she is so heartbroken over the death of her brother. And she only goes out there, as we read in verses 28 and follow, when Jesus sends for her. It's interesting we're not told that until Martha comes to her and says, the teacher has called for you. Now, to her credit, Mary gets up right away, and she goes. And she doesn't tell all the people around where she's going. They think she's going to the tomb to weep there. This is probably a good indicator of how devastated Mary is. They think she just is going to continue mourning because here she is at home and she's lost it. And they think that she's going to just go continue her mourning at the tomb. And this is four days. I mean, this is day after day of just heartbroken experience. She's really despondent. But she does go. Now she says one thing in the record of the Bible. John had already told us that she's the one to wipe Jesus' feet with her hair and to anoint it with very expensive ointment. This is a pretty wealthy family, undoubtedly. And that's in chapter 12. Mary takes his ointment and she weeps, and she wipes his feet with the ointment and then wipes it with her hair. She is someone who has a lot of depth of emotion. But she only says one thing in all of the Scripture, and it is here in verse 38. No, it's not that verse. It's previous. Verse 32. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. Now, if you look at that in your translation, it's identical with what Martha says. Word for word. And it's true, all the words are there in the original, exactly, that Martha says, with one exception. There's one word that's put out of place. It's the word my, my brother. And the word my is expressed in a very odd place. When you read ancient people talking about how you express emotions, this is one of the ways you do it. You mix up your word order and make it look kind of chaotic. And that's what's happened here. Martha can't even talk straight. Oh, big pardon, Mary. Martha talks straight. She says what's normal. And Mary just can't even get it out right. And in a sense, she puts my forward where it says, Sir, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. My brother. She can't hold it together. And then she's fallen down at his feet. Martha didn't do that. And she's weeping when she says this. That's all she says. And she doesn't even get it out right. I mean, it's just all a mess. Because Mary's a mess. So what does Jesus do? Does he say to her, oh, I have a little track here I've prepared for you to read. I've got a memory verse. You see, when you're comforting grieving people, they have to have the memory verses already. This is why you're in this church. This is why you're learning your scripture, to prepare for times like this. Because frankly, it's hard to hear things. It's really hard to hear things when you're going through this. And she can't hear. He can't talk to her. This is where Jesus' response is, his initial response. He doesn't talk to her. His initial response, it says, When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who'd come with him, it says he was deeply moved in his spirit. This is a very strange thing to say. He was deeply moved. Our translators have made it a little more civilized. It's from a verb that means to bellow or roar like a lion or bellow like an oxen. He is just overcome. It says, however, in spirit. In his spirit, he's bellowing like an oxen. He is so overcome with emotion at Mary's despondency that he doesn't get to what he came to talk to her about. He can't. And it affects him deeply. Brothers and sisters, this is the only time we know of where Jesus is healing somebody he knows. All the other times, it's a stranger. Now, Peter's mother-in-law, but we don't really know if he knew her ahead of time. Peter knows her, obviously. We don't know about Jesus, but this is Lazarus, his friend, and here's Mary, his friend, and Martha, his friend. People he loves. And he sees them in grief so deep that he's affected by it. Our Lord Jesus is a man. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is incarnate. On Christmas, this is what we think about. The whole of December, think about this. God became man, and he didn't lose his divine nature. He added humanity to himself, real humanity, the humanity that you and I have that can experience grief like this, and he does. No, this is the place where it says Jesus wept. People say, why did he weep? He's going to raise Lazarus anyway. He wept because he empathizes with them. He wept because he loved these people, and he hates death. He hates it with a purple passion. It's why he came into the world, to take on death and to destroy it. And here he sees it, and he hates it. He hates the effect it has on his little lamb, like Mary and you. Jesus shows his character here. Mary's devastated, and so Jesus becomes devastated. But he doesn't lose it like she does. You know the outcome. I won't be actually working at that part. It's almost anticlimactic, but it's not. Oh, no, it's not. He raises Lazarus, and notice, he calls him by name. My sheep hear my voice, for I call them by name. Lazarus come out. One preacher has said he had to say, Lazarus, come out, because if he just said, come out, everybody would have come out. With his power, I think it's actually a good opinion. Lazarus, come out. He calls him by name. And actually, it's kind of a fun expression. It's actually not that many words. It's just three words. Lazarus, out, here. Lazarus, out, here. That's what he says. He commands Lazarus to come out. He is the power of life. And he says, I want you here. And Lazarus comes. Oh, that's not anticlimactic. But they're going to grieve again. This is not the permanent resurrection yet. Only Jesus has entered that state. But Jesus shows us who he is in that act. I am the resurrection and the life. He shows us who he is. He is the Lord of life who cares for us. Now, brothers and sisters, about a week after I received that invite, my dad died. And I can tell you, this is part of why I didn't want to get here, because I'm still heartbroken by it. He was the best man of my wedding. I love my dad. I respected him. He enlisted on his 17th birthday in 1943. Served in World War II in Korea. A dedicated guy. He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. You know what? He lived right by the tracks. My grandfather was a railroad worker. Picked up wood along the tracks and built a shed for my dad and his five brothers to live in. Uninsulated shed. They didn't have any money. My dad, you know, didn't get quite a start in life, but he was a good man and well-respected man in his community. He was an elementary school principal. Master's degree, worked hard, married my mom, married for 63 years before she died about five years ago. So, and I just love my dad. I love calling him, I love seeing him, and I miss him. I read this text, and I went to this text because this is the text that shows you who we're dealing with with Jesus. He's not that laughing, silly Buddha sitting there smirking at life because our life really is meaningless to Buddha. Our life is not meaningless to Jesus. Your grief and troubles mean something to him. Even at the right hand of the Father, he cares for you. He is a sympathetic high priest who's been through what you've gone through. And he wasn't pretending. The Messiah handles beautiful Messiahs, what I listened to through Christmas. And that one phrase kept coming back to me from Isaiah during all this chaos. Because you know, death is, when you're dealing with all this stuff, and I was right there when Dad died. And it's, you know, all this stress, it's chaotic and you don't know what's happening and it's terrible. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief kept coming back to me. It's from Isaiah 53. Let me read this for you. Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. As one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his stripes, we are healed. And we have hope and eternal life and the resurrection from the dead in our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty God, our Lord, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not only for ourselves, but for our loved ones, which indeed can often be worse. We pray, O Lord, that you would be close to us in our hour of grief and trial, that our faith would be purified and that you would hold our hands during this time when we, like Mary, might be really so overcome by it all that we can't even think straight. We pray, O Lord, that even in those times when you show us nothing but your favor and good things around us, We will remember our Lord Jesus Christ day by day who gives us life and hope. For we sing your praise, Lord, day in and day out because in his name we have hope and life everlasting. We bless you and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.