Resurrection for Real Life: Better Help

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0:00So I cheated a little bit on vacation. I started preparing for the next sermon series a little bit, doing some reading and some study. It's going to be on the Book of Acts, a longer series that we'll be in and out of on the Book of Acts starting in August. But I thought, first of all, I had a little bit more work to do, and I just also thought that it would be great to get a little bit closer to fall before we start that. So until then, we're going to look at the power that really propels everything in Acts, and that's the power of Jesus' resurrection.

0:38So to look at that topic, we're going to be in an event that is only recorded in John's Gospel. Now, John is a great storyteller. Read his Gospel sometime, and then read Mark after that, and you'll see a big difference. Mark is like, boom, boom, boom, event after event. John really takes his time when he tells a story. There's several accounts that take the whole chapter to tell what happened in the story. He doesn't just tell us what Jesus did. He tells us what led up to it.

1:13He kind of sets the scene, what's going on, the people that are there. He talks about how the event unfolded, very slowly, what Jesus said, what Jesus was feeling, thinking, who else was involved, how they responded to what was going on, and what it all meant. His aim is to be comprehensive. John would rather go deep with a few stories than just go shallow with a whole bunch of stories. And these details make the account really rich and impactful for us.

1:49So we're going to take our time, too, five weeks for this one chapter, a nice leisurely summer pace through John chapter 11. It's not arbitrary. I really think that there are five aspects to this single event that are important for us. And that event, in case you don't know or have forgotten, in John 11, is the raising of Lazarus.

2:15Perhaps Jesus' greatest miracle, apart from his own resurrection. And this is more than a report of a miracle that happened. It's an account of how the life-giving power of Jesus impacts us where we are in life. This is resurrection for real life. Resurrection for real life. Think about this. John could have written, Lazarus died, and then Jesus went and raised him. The end. Next story. Right? But he didn't. Luke, do you have that slide?

2:53He could have, if all we needed to know was that the bare fact that Jesus raised someone from the dead, he could have written that and then moved on. Right? But we need more than the bare facts. Give us the details, John. And thankfully, the Holy Spirit inspired him and directed him to give us those details. The who, the what, the when, the why. Everything that was happening. The things that happened along the way. How the whole thing unfolded. A whole chapter.

3:18A whole chapter with ordinary people like us. With very relatable problems and questions and hesitations and issues. And we see Jesus himself interacting with those ordinary people that are just like us.

3:40Challenging them. Crying with them. Serving them. Loving them. Speaking to them. Listening to them. These are not throwaway details. I implore you to see. These are all connected with the miracle. There is a reason why these things are included in John chapter 11. They are connected with Jesus' miracle. This story shows how the resurrection power of Christ intersects and changes how we live today. Our ordinary lives right now. So we're going to begin with this.

4:18Our needs. What help do you ask God for? What are you hoping for from him? What are you hoping that he does? When are you expecting him to do it? How open are you to a different kind of help? How open are you to God doing something other than what you ask for? At a different timing than when he asks for. Let's turn to John 11 and see how these things come into play. Here in this chapter. This is God's holy word for us.

5:05And it comes to us by the power of the spirit to change us. Not just to give us information, but to change our very identity. To give us new direction, new hope. So let's come to it eagerly with open hands. Because our father wants to feed us. This is John chapter 11, 1 through 16. 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.

5:45His brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent 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 for 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 us go to Judea again.

6:20The 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 the 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. The disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.

6:54Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died. And for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe. But let us go to him. So Thomas called the twin said to his fellow disciples, let us also go that we may die with them. Pray with me.

7:27Lord, thank you for. Thank you for the historical account that we're reading and studying today. Thank you for. The life giving. Power of the Holy Spirit. To make your word living and active. And we pray, Lord, that you would. Manifest your glory right now. Where we need to see your glory. We need to see you as better than the things that we chase. We need to see what you give us as being more suitable for our needs than even what we ask for. We need to see your love, Lord.

8:08We need to hear about your mercy. We need to be reminded of your promises and your power. We need these things, Lord, because we do not have the power to save ourselves. To bring life in ourselves, Lord. We need you. Would you please come and work in us, among us.

8:31Lord, come inhabit us and inhabit this room. And teach us what we need, Lord. And show us, Father, the all-sufficiency of Christ. We pray this in his name.

8:50John 11, 1-16 is telling us about better health. Go back and read it sometime. But in John 10, Jesus was in Jerusalem. And he said, I and the Father are one. And it almost got him killed. He was almost stoned on the spot. Arrested. So he leaves the area. He goes far away. He goes across the Jordan. Far away. Many days' journey. And there he gets a message. He gets an urgent plea. It's from this little town called Bethany. Bethany is a couple of miles outside Jerusalem.

9:34The very place that he had just left. The message comes from a family that he's close with. Dear friends. Three siblings. Mary and Martha and Lazarus. It's nice to get a letter from friends. We don't get too many of those anymore with, I guess, electronic communications. But a letter from friends is nice. Except when the letter has bad news in it. Lord, he whom you love is ill. Now, take notice here. Who's ill?

10:13Lazarus, right? Who sent the message? The sisters. Lazarus is sick enough to make his sisters worried. But he doesn't write to Jesus, come heal me. Come do something about this. No matter the history or the culture, men resist going to the doctor.

10:39I'm fine. I'm fine. The only reason I've ever been to a dermatologist is because I'm married. And because my wife insisted that I go. And there are other doctors, other specialists that she's pushing me towards. And eventually she will have her way. Men, you know what I'm talking about. Those who are married, thank the Lord for your wives. Who are saying, you really do need to go get that checked out. The same resistance that men have about going to doctors for help is what keeps men from going to Jesus for help.

11:20You know, right, that there are disproportionately more women than men in Christian churches across the country. I say, to our shame. The shame of my gender.

11:39We don't want to acknowledge our incapacity, our weakness, our need. We'd rather hustle and muscle our way through. And it's not just true for men, though, is it? Women out there, you can know what I'm talking about. It's a human condition to say, no, no, my needs are really not that great. I'm fine. What needs do you have, church people of God? What needs do you have? And are you bringing them to God or are you trying to handle them on your own?

12:21It's the very first thing that we learn here. Don't be like Lazarus, men and women. Don't be like Lazarus. I plead with you. Think how silly this is. He had a powerful friend named Jesus, the son of God, illness and disease and death flee from the Lord Jesus at just his word. And he said, I don't want to bother him. I'm sure I'll be all right.

13:03Do you have a friend named Jesus? Right? You have the same friend. If you are in Christ by faith, you have the same friend that Lazarus does with the same power.

13:21Don't have other people just write to Jesus for you. Go to Jesus with your needs. Mary and Martha had the right instincts. They asked Jesus for help. Now, when Jesus gets the message, he says, this illness does not lead to death. Okay. That sounds like good news. If I saw a doctor, that would be a good thing to hear. But then he says something cryptic. It is for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified through it. Now, surely at this point, the disciples are confused.

13:54Master, how? How can your friend being sick bring glory to God? Mary and Martha are worried sick. Look at the letter that they wrote, Jesus. How can you be glorified in this crisis?

14:14So I ask you, how can the Lord be glorified in your crisis, in your illness, in your uncertainty, in your suffering? We might not know the answer to that question. We might not ever find out the answer to that question, but it's always good to ask. Lord, how could you be glorified in this? The very situation that I want you to change. How can you be glorified?

14:51So Lazarus doesn't act like he needs anything. The sisters, they need Jesus to come quickly. And the disciples, we're going to get to this in a few minutes, but they need Jesus just to stay put. Stay with us. Don't go and get yourself killed, Jesus. Stay here. I know you heard about a need over there, but don't you know the danger? Stay here. Everyone involved in this situation has a different understanding of what their needs are. But none of them have asked, Jesus, what do you say that we need?

15:28What do you say that we need? What about you? What does God say that you need? That's probably the most important question. That question is acknowledging, God, you probably see a need that I am not even aware of. Asking that question requires humility, and it makes, oftentimes, it makes it just a little bit easier to accept what he's doing. What do you say that I need?

16:03So whether or not we ask, though, God has his eye trained on this. What do we really need? And so does Jesus in this passage. And so he responds with this. He responds with an intentional delay. When he heard Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer.

16:34Is there anything more unpleasant and exasperating than being kept waiting? The answer is yes, and that is being kept waiting without knowing when it will end.

16:50Many years ago, my family went to Disney World, and they have this app. They still have it, I think. And you can open up the app, and it opens up the map of the park, and it shows you wait times for all the rides. There's no promise that it's going to be any quicker than the wait time you see, but at least you know.

17:09I'm in the line now for the, the mind, what's the dwarf ride? The dwarf through the mines ride, something like that. 126 minutes. Okay, kids. 126 minutes. At least you know, right? Because waiting and knowing how long the wait is. You ever been on hold, and they're like, your wait time is approximately seven more minutes. I mean, they could be making that number up, right? They're just doing that to make you feel better. Right? Have you been to the DMV?

17:41The DMV is like the opposite of Disney World, right? They have this inscrutable numbering system, like now serving D28, and you just look at your thing and say, this says A27, and it's like the numbers are getting called randomly. It's almost like they are intentionally confronting you. Like, we're not even going to tell you how long you're going to have to wait. There is nothing you can do to decipher how long your wait is going to be. Just look at your number and wait.

18:11See, Disney World tries to please their customers. The DMV, not so much. Waiting has always been a hard experience, and that's why we've designed so many things and ways to eliminate waiting. But it only makes waiting more intolerable. Netflix has lots of shows on demand, right? No more waiting for a certain day or time for your show to come on. Remember those days?

18:41But if you start the app and it doesn't load, how do you feel? What is happening? Could my day get any worse? So certainly we're not inclined to be any different waiting on God, right?

19:03Why won't He answer my prayers? Why won't He relieve my burdens? Why won't He end these wars that I see on the news? What is taking Him so long? For that matter, why did God wait so long to send Jesus?

19:25Why does Jesus wait so long to return? We heard in the Scripture reading earlier, but you, O Lord, how long? If only He would tell us our wait time. Like Disney World. We might wait a little easier, right? For you, O Lord, our souls in stillness wait. You know, Stella and I picked that song for this week before I even had a hard look at this passage.

20:01Surely our hope is in you. But how long? How long must we wait? In elementary school, I was at a Christian school in another state, and once a week the teacher would kind of lead a prayer in the class, and she would ask for prayer requests around the room. If you had something going on that you didn't want to talk about, you could say, I have an unspoken prayer request. And then she would pray for the unspoken prayer request. Well, in fifth grade, my parents were separated.

20:38And so, whenever I was asked, I would say, I didn't want to talk about this in front of the class, so I would say, I have an unspoken prayer request, and she would pray for it. This went on day after day, week after week, month after month. I wasn't the only one who noticed this unspoken prayer request over and over. One day, a classmate leaned over during the prayer request time, said kind of sarcastically, geez, Joel, you've had that unspoken prayer request for a long time.

21:21Even he noticed how long God was taking. God's people have got to interact with and ultimately submit to God's timing. Can't be God's people and rebel against God's timing.

21:43He will not be rushed. He's not on your timetable, on your schedule, or on mine. Jesus hears the urgent request from his friends, and he stayed two days longer. But not because he had some work to catch up on. He didn't have a pile of laundry to do. Let me just check off a few more chores, and then I'll get to you, Lazarus. He wasn't waiting for Amazon to deliver an important package that he had to sign for. Why did he wait? Why did he stay for two days when his friends asked for help?

22:17Church, it's because he loved them. And we know this because John tells us. There's a small Greek conjunction in verse 6. In the ESV, it's translated so.

22:35Another translation is therefore. Therefore, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, therefore, when he heard Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer. He hears Lazarus is sick, and because he loves them, he stays two days longer. How could this be love?

23:07That's not the way I want someone to love me. I would have wanted him to show up breathless. I ran all the way here. Through the night. There's a marriage book that came out in the 90s called The Five Love Languages. Anybody here read that book? Hear that book?

23:33It describes five different ways to express love. And the big lesson, the big theme of the book, is that you ought to try to speak the other person's love language instead of your own. Learn their language and then speak it, and then they will hear love better. That's the big takeaway of the book. Here's what we say to God. Look, God, I don't know if you read that book. Maybe you should check it out.

24:03But my love language is not allowing hardship in my life. That is not loving to me. And therefore, it's not loving at all. You need to get on my wavelength, God, and learn how I want to be loved. Stop it with your love language. Learn my love language.

24:26And that is the crux of the matter, really. We expect God to love us on our terms. Love me the way I say, God. Then I will call you loving. The hardness of the human heart.

24:47We define what is good for us. We say what help we need. And then we say, God, that's what you need to give us. But listen, if God is really God, and we really aren't, and if He's the one who made us, if He has wisdom about the past, the present, the future, about your past, present, and future, then it must be true that He knows the greatest good for each one of us, right? It must be true. He knows our deepest need.

25:24And He has a real plan with real power to meet that need if we have ears to hear it. So we must look to God and listen to God to learn what help we need and what it means for Him to love us. It turns out that the power ballad from the 80s was on to something. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me. Did you know that Foreigner was singing about God in that song? He wasn't, actually. We should say to God, I want to know what love is, and I want you to show me.

26:02I don't want to tell you. The truth is that God loves us better than we love ourselves. And what will His love accomplish? What is this better help going to do? Well, we see it in verse 15. Jesus says to the disciples, for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe. The crisis with Lazarus is going to reveal more of Jesus to everyone who is involved in this story. Jesus Himself is going to be revealed in a fuller way. More of His power.

26:42More of His love. More of His saving intent. More of the redemption plan of God. He's going to bring them face to face with their helplessness and with His power. Why? So that they will believe.

27:00Like He said, the purpose of this illness is to glorify the Son of God. He's going to be glorified as His power over death is displayed. And the people will believe. Mary and Martha and Lazarus and the disciples and many people in the community and by their belief, they will be helped and healed in a way far greater than if Lazarus had been healed and never died.

27:35There is a better help than temporary relief from our sufferings. The better help that He gives is Himself. That's the better help. The better help that God gives is His Son, Jesus Christ, applied into our lives.

27:56Him at the center of our life. Him as our Savior and our Lord. Him as our treasure and our refuge instead of our health, our resources, our family, our reputation, our capability.

28:11And this only comes through belief. And there is no belief without glory. In order for us to believe, Jesus must be glorified. And so God is committed to loving ordinary sinners like you and me by making His Son more glorious than anything else.

28:34He reveals Jesus to you so that you joyfully give more of yourself to Him. This love of God, it runs counter to what we ask for, what we say we need, what our hearts cry out for. But listen, God is not afraid to disappoint us temporarily so that we'll be satisfied eternally. God is not afraid to disappoint us temporarily so that we'll be satisfied eternally. My unspoken prayer request in the fifth grade, it was not answered the way that I had prayed for over and over and over and over.

29:19My parents' separation did not end in reconciliation. But God was still loving me. And He is still loving me. He revealed Himself to me as all-sufficient, as completely trustworthy, and completely kind. No matter what I was going through, He was kind and good and powerful and worthy of all of my devotion. Can you say the same? I hope so.

30:03That you would say, though you slay me, Lord, yet I will praise you. Because God is loving you. He is always loving you. Even in the hardship of your life. In your crisis, it is okay to pray for God to end it. Go ahead, pray that. I pray it for you. I pray it for me. But just remember that even if things don't change, His love for you is constant. Be open, along with the prayer for Him to relieve your suffering, to get you out of the situation you're in.

30:49Be open to say, God, what are you doing? What glory are you trying to show about yourself? What need are you trying to point out that I have? He's going to give you better help than you asked for. And what Jesus does next proves it. Because He comes to a faithful decision. Jesus doesn't linger indefinitely. After two days, He says, let's go to Judea again. That's where Bethany is. The disciples are not interested in leaving. Jesus, we just got here.

31:26This is a nice place. Did a lot of research to find this place. There's a pool. Why do you want to go? Besides, Rabbi, the Jews were just now looking to stone you and you want to go back?

31:42As usual, Jesus is being pulled in two different directions, right? The sisters say, come quickly. The disciples say, no, no, no, stay here. But what does Jesus follow? He's not swayed by peer pressure. The voice that's the loudest. The cry that's the most urgent. He follows the will of His Father. His time of ministry is strategic. It's a window of time that's been opened up for Him. And He says, it's like daylight when work can get done and you won't stumble.

32:14As long as He obeys His Father, nothing is going to happen to Him outside the will of His Father. And the Father has given Him some new information to prompt Him that it's time to go. Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep.

32:34His sick friend has died and yet bringing Him back to life is as easy as you and I waking somebody up. The disciples don't understand the metaphor. Lord, if He's just recuperating in bed, then we don't have to go.

32:51They're still resistant. They don't want anything to happen to Jesus. They don't want Him to die. So Jesus gets crystal clear. Lazarus has died and we have to go. There's work to be done. It's daylight. It's go time. I've got to do this so that you can see more of me, Jesus says. So that you'll be led into deeper belief. He has a purpose for them and He won't let them stand in the way of it. Even though they're right, there are people there who want to kill Him.

33:35His delay was not to protect Himself. He was not waiting for things to cool off. Jesus goes towards danger, towards death for our sake. And only Thomas seems to understand this.

33:51Out of devotion, courage, and probably some naivete, Thomas says, let us also go that we may die with Him. Without fully understanding, Thomas has given this insightful summary of discipleship. Denying ourselves and following Him even when it feels dangerous because He loves us.

34:15But what Thomas doesn't know is that Jesus' death will be unique for us in our place. Church, we're called to trust Him, to wait on Him, to accept the better love that He has for us. This is how the glory of God shows up in our real lives. When we look to Him and we say, okay, Lord, I can see You've got me waiting on this. What are You doing? Show Yourself more to me. Lead me into greater belief, into greater devotion. Magnify Yourself before me because all of this, God, is Your love towards me.

35:05Even in this difficult situation, You are loving me still.