Let's go back then to John chapter 11. Been here for a little while, continuing our way through John chapter 11. Our scripture lesson today will come from the 28th down through the 37th verse of John chapter 11. In these verses is the very famous, shortest verse in the Bible, at least in the English. Verse 35, two words, Jesus wept. I've always found it interesting since the time that I discovered that the shortest verse in the Greek language in the Greek New Testament is rejoice evermore. That's the shortest number of characters in the New Testament in the Greek, and it struck me that we can rejoice evermore because Jesus wept. And I want to take from these verses today a sobering thought, one I hope that encourages you and me to draw closer to God. This whole chapter is a sobering chapter, being that a chapter that records the death of one who was loved by Christ and loved by those that were near to him and the sorrow and the pain. And that's really where The focus is today in this 28th through the 37th verses of chapter 11 here in John. But we want to look at this together. And before I go, I want to just say a few words. If you find someone close to God, if you know someone who's close to God, If you yourself are or have been close to God, I think you'll find this to be true. You'll find someone who is something of a paradox. Something of a paradox. Someone who has experienced great pain and loss and yet lives with great hope and purpose and contentment. certainly even joy. The deeper their pain, seemingly, the more real God is to them. You might know someone like this. I pray that you do. I know that I know others who I can define this way. It seems that the deeper their heartache, the deeper their trial, the deeper the pain that something in life brings to them, the more they go to God and rely upon him and find in him comfort that is only found in him. And so when we find somebody in this life who is close to God, we find someone that seems to be something of a paradox. Enduring and going through great struggle in life like all of us, and yet trusting more and more to God. We find that closeness to God is forged in the fires of trial. Closeness to him just so very rarely comes through ease and comfort, and that's what we would want it to be. I know I would. I would perhaps design it some other way if it were up to me. And yet I wouldn't having known what it is to be close to God in the midst of some terrible times and difficult and trying times. Few fires burn more intensely than the trial and the fire of losing someone to death. It's right near the top of the deepest pain that we can feel and experience as human beings. The death of a friend can swallow up more than the life of the one who's died. It can swallow up those who loved them and somehow can't move on and get past that loss. And they don't really live again in the real sense of the word of living thereafter. And so death can just consume and swallow us up if we're not careful. And with the world, And we've studied this from first Thessalonians when Paul told them to not be sorrowful at death like the world as those who have no hope. But when there is no hope in God at death, there is the deepest, saddest reality I think that there could possibly be. Rather than drive us to a life of endless sorrow and pain, though, death ought to remind us of its reality and the ability to be close to God in the midst of it. And not only in the midst of this specific struggle of losing someone to death, but in any trial of our life. In closeness to God in the face of death, is dependent upon the response that one makes to death itself. And in this passage today, we see Mary's response to Lazarus death. We see the Jews response to Lazarus death, and we see Jesus own response. And in these three responses, we find a very important key or a number of keys, you might say, of how we ought to respond to this reality of the human life. In the beginning, it was not to be this way. We know God formed Adam and Eve. And we'll talk more about this perhaps later. God did not intend. It was not his will. It was not his hope for man to die. I know that we can get into some very deep theological waters very quickly. And some would say that God allowed death so that the world and all of us may see his love and his mercy. And I don't want to get into that deep water. I believe it misses the point. Jesus love and God's closeness to us is what can hold us steady in the very face of the thing that human beings perhaps fear the very most. So let us read in this these few verses, such wonderful truths and keys for us of of how we might be close to God. And I and I do ask you before we begin, Are you close to him? Are you? Am I? Is it something we just assume? Is it something you know? When you wake up in the morning and see the first thing on your hearts and you go to bed at night is the last thing upon your mind that passes through your standing with him and before him and And even in thinking of others, do we think of others in light of him? Is his word so precious to us that we wouldn't dare go a day without spending some time with him in its reading? There are some keys to being close to God that we find in this and responding to one of the chiefest trials of our lives. And that is the passing away of those that we love, because that's exactly what's happened here for Mary and Martha. When she, beginning of verse 28, when she, and that is Martha, and recall again the interaction between Martha and the Lord that has just taken place that we spoke of last week, when she had said this, which was, 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 he is calling for you. And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet 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 had been here, my brother would not have died. Does that sound familiar? It's exactly what Martha had said. When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? Of course, he knew the answer. 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 man also have kept this man from dying? Responding. To this death. and closeness to God, responding to our trials and responding in this specific context here when we are confronted with the death of a loved one or some great trial. How is it that we can respond in such a way that it draws us closer to God instead of driving us farther from him? because I will tell you that that is the only two options that you have in the face of these difficult trials. They will either serve to draw you closer to God, or they will serve to drive you from him. And God, of course, desires that you be drawn closer to him, that you become more trusting in him, that you love him more and that you see him for who he is and this life for what it is. And certainly there's nothing like the reality of death to remind us that we are all in this life for only a brief period of time. And then there is something that follows deep inside you. I believe you know that. Even those who might consider themselves atheists or agnostic or whatever that you might label someone who doesn't believe in God or believe in the God of the Bible. I believe that inwardly there's a witness inside of you that knows that there's something that follows this life. And the way these responses play out in these verses present to us an incredible opportunity to help us use these troubles and these trials to draw closer to God. It all depends on how you respond. The very first verse of our reading, verse 28, when Martha goes to get Mary, there's no recording. John does not tell us that Jesus told Martha to go get Mary, but clearly he did. Because Martha comes to Mary and says, the teacher is here, speaking, of course, of Jesus, and says, he's calling for you. And that's the first thing that I notice in this passage is in the midst of this trouble and trial and this facing of death, Jesus calls for Mary. There's a call that goes forth from Christ himself to people to come to him. He could have gone where she was, but the scriptures clearly and pointedly tell us he did not do that. But he makes this call and John again doesn't tell us specifically how it was given to Martha, but he must have because she goes and says, Mary, Jesus is here and he wants to speak to you. As Mary confronts the fact of her brother's death and she faces and experiences the pain and the loss and the heartache that goes with that, Jesus calls for her. She's surrounded by all kinds of other people. And by the way, there's a whole separate thing that we could look into perhaps some other time. And I've heard others speak on this. In this day, there were times when people had professional mourners come to mourn the death of a lost loved one. And it was a cultural thing that was done. To us, it seems quite odd. But it was done here. But in the midst of her pain, she's surrounded by all kinds of other people. And I'll tell you today that when you're in the midst of a struggle of your life and particularly when death is staring at you and you realize death is coming for you and maybe you're at a funeral and you're seeing that the service of one who's passed away there, this is coming for you. And Jesus makes an invitation for you to come to him. In fact, very often. That's about the only time you can get anyone's attention to death at all. To the reality of it. That it's real. But it's always something in the distance. Jesus makes this call to her. God wants her to feel the comfort of being in his presence. And God wants you to know the comfort of his presence as well. your own death, the death of those that you love. He wants you to know his comfort in those times. He also knows that it is during these moments of your greatest pain, your deepest heartache, that we can experience his greatest comfort and presence in our lives. But the enemy whispers something else in our ear. And he says, why are we experiencing this hurt and this pain? Some of you, some of us may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God because you've just not gone to Christ in your greatest moments of need and you've just not heeded his call. You've not answered it. Your greatest moment of trial And I remember when I was 11 years old and God convicted me of my sin, there was no one. And I knew this innately. I knew this because the words were used to explain to me. And yet somehow the practice was different. But I knew that no one but God could fix what was broken in my heart. I had become a person who understood my separation from God. Before that moment, I didn't understand it. But spiritually, I became aware that I was dead in my trespasses and sins. And that is the moment when one must truly look to Christ and heed his call because he has called you to himself. Jesus has made it possible for you to find him in the midst of that greatest of struggles, perhaps, though Perhaps though you've not heeded or you've not responded to his call. Perhaps you've looked to others for comfort and perhaps you've looked for others to ease the pain. The pain that is there because of the separation between you and God that leads to death. Perhaps you've tried to close yourself off from the pain so that you don't feel its full weight. Try to set it aside. Think about anything else. Have your mind and your life so busy that there's not time to feel the crushing weight of the guilt of sin and the crushing weight of the reality that apart from God, I am a sinner and rightly condemned to an eternal destruction in hell. But we want to put it aside. And when we put that pain aside, The greatest tragedy, perhaps, can be said this way. We can't feel the great joy and wholeness and forgiveness and love of God when He forgives us when we repent and find Him our Savior. And He makes us one of His children. And that death is swallowed up in life. And that pain is swallowed up in joy. And all of these things turn around and change from night to day. But so many put it aside. Put that pain somewhere else instead of bringing it to Christ and laying it at his feet. We hold on to it just long enough to set it where we want to set it instead of giving it to him. Try to find some others to help us carry this weight and you'll find them. You'll find people who will promise all kinds of solutions and remedies for your brokenness, but you'll find out that they don't have the answers that they claim to have. Only God can do this kind of thing. This is at the point, right? Lazarus is in the tomb. There is nothing that anyone can do for him except Christ. But he can. Perhaps you try it again, just to close yourself off from it. Maybe this can be applicable to any of us saved or lost. Maybe. Maybe we're not heeding God's call in the midst of our struggle and our pain. Because when we just get real honest with ourselves, we're angry with him. And unwilling to confront him about it. Maybe we wouldn't even be able to say it. Perhaps as a result, though, you're giving God the silent treatment, shutting him out of your mind and your heart and your life. Trying to get past this pain, you don't want to face it, so you just move past it or try to and fill your life again with all the Facebook and Twitter messages that you could possibly have in your life and all of these things that just consume our attention. I want to encourage you. Open yourself up to the pain. But in the midst of the pain, remember that Jesus is calling for you to come to him, not to me, not to mom, not to dad, not to this friend, not to that friend, to him. That's who we go to. That's who we should respond. That's how we should respond. When this life becomes so burdensome to us, and the pain becomes so difficult for us to bear, and we don't think we can go one more step, it's when we need to go to Christ. We need to take that last step that we can possibly muster our strength to take, and it needs to be toward Christ. And I'll tell you this, the moment that you take that one step toward Him, He will come running to you. But if we don't turn and look to Him and go to Him and respond to His call, we continue to set it aside, continue to look to other things, we'll never feel, we'll never experience the joy of His presence and the powerful closeness of a life lived near to God. Look to these other things, and I'm telling you today, you may not believe me. One day, you'll realize the truth of this. If you don't believe me today, one day, that pain is as day by day goes on, and another day follows another and another, the longer that you try to fill and to try to to just handle that pain without submitting to the call of Christ. That pain is only going to grow deeper. It's only going to grow darker. It's only going to grow heavier. It's only going to grow more and more hopeless for you. Look to Christ and go to him and take that step and he'll be there. So what pain are you feeling today? What pain have you been carrying around for many years? Why? Jesus is called. The son of God. Is called to you. Take the pain to him. If it's a burden of sin because of conviction and guilt of sin, because there's not salvation, go to him and repent and. Have faith in him. He'll take that hurt and he'll turn it into a blessing that you cannot fully describe, but you can't get there without carrying that pain to him. Carry it somewhere else. There's a lot of people today who will do as what the scriptures talked about, the false prophets of the Old Testament that will heal your hurt lightly. They'll give you some temporary worldly balm to cover that pain and maybe it'll deaden it for a little while. It's not going to remove it. Jesus says in Matthew 11 verse 28, come to me. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus, the son of God, says to us, come to me. What a terrible, terrible thing it is to reject such an invitation. Jesus, as I said earlier, could have gone to where Mary was. He instead, though, chooses to have Martha go and say, Jesus is calling for you. And in that, again, we see the necessity of a move on our part to go to Christ. He'll not force you. He's not going to force you. He's going to tell you the truth. The Holy Spirit is going to convict you of sin. He's going to tell you the truth about what that means. He's going to say, come to me. He's not going to force you. Jesus, in describing the Holy Spirit, said that he will guide you into all truth. He did not say he will force you there. He did not say that the spirit was going to make it such that you had no choice in the matter and some hyper spiritual experience where you're going to be thrown into heaven by God, apart from your own willingness. That's not how Jesus talks about the spirit of God. He says, come to me. He tells you the truth and says, come to me. Now in Mary's response, we see a number of things. First of all, of course, verse 29 should jump out at us. When she heard this, when she heard Jesus's calling, she rose quickly and went to him. Delaying the response to God's calls in these times is never a good idea. Lost or saved too, by the way, certainly if you're lost and God is calling you to himself, delay is never a wise choice. Never. I don't care what's going on around you at the time. I don't care if you're in the middle of work. I don't care if you're driving down the road. I don't care if you're in the middle of a church service. I don't care if you're in the middle of a conversation with someone that you love. I don't care where you are. I don't care what's going on. If God is calling you, it is never a good idea to delay. Never. I can say that unequivocally and without hesitation or reservation and many, many things we ought not use words like never or always. But in this case, I can say it's delaying the response to God is never a wise thing to do. It's never helpful. It's never going to lead to good things. In fact, we can say it this way, and we taught our kids this, both at home and also in the school we were involved in, delayed obedience is, and we often would let them finish the sentence, disobedience. Because delayed obedience, ultimately, if it goes on long enough, becomes disobedience, and none of us know when we've stepped across that line. Don't delay. When God calls, respond. Mary's immediate response to this is a Christ call to her serves as a witness for us all. And by the way, once we are saved and God comes and knocks on our heart's door. And by the way, Revelation chapter three, when it's talking about that Laodicean church, God comes and he knocks. We so often relate that to lost people. And it's fine. I'm not going to split hairs. God does do that. But that verse of scripture was talking to the church. talking to saved people. God comes and knocks on your heart's door as his child and says, Do you have time for me today? Come to me now today. And we say, No, not now. I have this to take care of. I have a day at work. I've got to get through God. And then maybe at the end of the day, if I have some time, I'll sit down with you. Delayed obedience becomes disobedience. Delay often creates opportunity for us to look for other comforts, for the pain that we feel, other things outside of God. That's all Satan wants you to do. He just wants a foot in the door. And a foot in the door in your life is so often created by delay. Just a, just a, just a handhold. It's all he needs because he has the whole media in our society and so much of our government and public realm today that has dismissed him and taken him out of our everyday conversation. And Satan knows as long as he is able to keep one foothold in your life, one handhold in your life, he has an opportunity to stretch it wide open. and delayed obedience becomes an opportunity for you to find peace or some version of it elsewhere. Some of you may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God because you're delaying the response to his call. Her response to Christ brought others near to him as well. And we see that when the Jews saw her rise quickly, says that they, in verse 31, when they saw her do this and they were consoling her, they saw her rise quickly and go out. They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. The Jews, again, following Mary, ended up near Christ. And there's a beautiful picture here for us that know God in the midst of our terrible trials. the midst of your most difficult days. If you're a child of God and you hear his voice and he says, come to me and you go to him and that trouble and that trial that you're experiencing draws you closer to him. Do you know what happens? All the people in your life are brought closer to him as well. They may not heed. They may not listen. They may not know what you know. But when you are near to Christ, you will in some ways bring others near to him. In our moments of that deepest pain at the passing of a loved one or any other type of deep pain in our life, when others are near us, they should be drawn nearer to Christ as well. Some of you may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God. because you don't have people in your life that are drawing you near to Christ. Instead, they're drawing you near to the world. And they'll have all kinds of answers for you. But it is Christ that you must go to. It is him that is the only one that's going to give you true peace and lasting comfort. Mary went quickly Those near her, she was not concerned overly much about. She had her eyes on Christ. And it is amazing when our eyes are on Christ. It just so happens that people around us end up near him as well. And it is the definition of a win-win. You're close to him and those around you become close to him, at least in some respect, closer to him than otherwise they would have been. And I want you to think about this. Sometimes And this is what happened here. It was through Martha that Mary was told Jesus was calling her. Sometimes Jesus calls us through other people. Many times he calls us through a preacher. Many times he calls us through a song, a friend, a parent. Someone calls us and says, Jesus is calling for you. And ultimately that call is from Christ to you, but it's delivered through someone else. Often God sends people a call through other people, and sometimes God calls us through other people. Have you ever had that happen? God comes to you in the form of a friend, a neighbor, an enemy. But he's got a message and he uses someone to call others through you or calls you through others. And then we flip that around. Sometimes God calls to others through you. Sometimes you're Martha. And sometimes you're Mary. But either way, Christ is calling. And the one being called should go. She goes with this incredibly obvious right attitude of mind and heart in verse 32. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet. In the midst of her pain, she still acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God, her creator. her master, her Lord. She does not allow the pain that she's experiencing at the loss of her brother Lazarus. She does not allow that to cloud her understanding of who Jesus is. And so often in our life, when we go through the difficult time of someone passing in our life, we can sometimes let that sorrow and that pain cloud our view of God. And this ought to be the time that it becomes most clear. It's not an easy thing to do in our pain, we can become accusers of God. In our pain, we can justify our lack of reverence for God, we can call upon our pain as an excuse to accuse him. It's not what Mary does, and I believe it's evidenced by the fact that she comes to him and she bows down and kneels at his feet. Some of you. Some of us may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God because your attitude is one of accusation toward God rather than submission to him and his will. It may be the reason that there's not a closeness with God like there ought to be. Jeremiah 18.6, we don't have this mindset that Jeremiah says about God and us, O house of Israel. God speaking, O House of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter has done? Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O House of Israel. This is probably one of the greatest disconnects between the way we as believers are to think and the way the world thinks. Repeat it. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. When we're hurt, we look for someone to blame. Someone's to blame here, because I am hurting. When we are hurt, this happens. We often end up then, when no one specific can be found, we blame God. We forget. And this justice, it just hits our modern minds in such a foreign way. It's so easy to just dismiss it. We forget that he has every right to do with us as he will. We've not been taught that. for many generations now. We have allowed the idea that our lives are about us. We have been taught that it is all about my happiness, my contentment at every moment of my life. And if something disrupts and interrupts that contentedness and that happiness, if something gets in the way of that, someone is to blame. And when we can't find someone to blame, very often we'll go to blaming God, forgetting that He is the potter, we are the clay. Who should God answer to? to the modern scientists of the day who denies his very existence? Should God answer to that one? Should he answer to the politician who says, in government you should trust, not God? Is that who God should answer to? Should he answer to you or to me? When we go to blame God for something, we need to be very careful that we understand what we're doing. If Mary had taken that attitude, she would have accused Jesus of wrongdoing and in an anger fueled by her pain, she might even have rejected him altogether. It's a very dangerous place to be. And yet she goes. She goes with this humility. She bows at his feet. She says to him exactly what Martha said. If you'd have been here, my brother would not have died. And so though she goes with this this attitude of worship and and submission to God, she also goes with great honesty. She doesn't deny that she has questions. She says the same thing that Martha said, and as with Martha, there's no way for us to make any certain judgments about what was in her heart, but by the words, we can make some likely conclusions. These words remind us of our own thoughts when we face death of those that we love. Mary might have wondered, Jesus, Lord, I thought you loved Lazarus. I thought you loved Mary, or me, and I thought you loved my sister Martha. I thought you loved us, and if that's true, then why are we experiencing this terrible pain? If you had been here, you would have kept this from happening. Where were you? Maybe that was in her heart. It's difficult for us just by the words that she said. But what I find in this is that she's being completely honest with God. I believe Mary's statement was a reflection of her honesty with God. She was trying, this is what we do, especially in the moments of death of a loved one, we're trying to reconcile the omnipotence and the omniscience of God and the omnipresence of God. We're trying to reconcile that with the passing of the one that we've loved. And sometimes in the human mind, those things are at odds. But when we understand what the Bible talks about, that this life is just a temporary land and for those who know the Lord, death is an entering in to eternal glory and eternal joy. There's a there's a lining of that pain that is joy for us, too. I believe, though, Mary's coming to this point and she's trying to reconcile all of this, put it together. So being right with God, then we can say this. It does not mean we don't have honest questions for him. That's OK. It is not a lack of faith to ignore our doubts and questions. Sometimes though, people want us to believe that that's what faith is. Set your questions aside and trust God. That's not faith at all. Not really. It's not a lack of faith to ignore those doubts and questions. It's not faith to dismiss what we sincerely and honestly feel in our hearts. In fact, to dismiss those questions makes it impossible to depend upon God's answers because we've removed the questions. When I remove my doubts and fears and just ignore them, I go to God and I just try to say, I'm going to be a good Christian. I'm going to believe God. I'm not going to worry about my questions, my fears and my concerns. It's not faith. It doesn't mean we're going to have the answers that we long for, the exact sequence of events. But didn't Jesus already say in verse four what this was all about? This sickness is not to death. It's for the glory of God. I don't understand how all that's going to come about. But God, she comes to him. If you'd have been here, Jesus, my brother, would not have died. She comes to him and she wrestles with those doubts and those fears and those uncertainties. And she wrestles with them, with Christ himself. And you ought to wrestle with them, with God in prayer and in the reading of his word. Don't ignore them. Take them to Christ. He's not going to give you every jot and tittle of an answer. He's not going to cross every T and dot every I. So it makes us to where we have every answer to all of our questions, but He's going to settle our hearts in Him. God's not interested, listen, in our times of struggle, times maybe someone has passed away, as in this case, God's not interested in having a fake conversation with you. He's not. He wants to know what's in your heart. The truth, of course, is he already knows. But he wants you to say it. He wants you to tell him. Why did he ask Adam, where are you? Did God not know? Of course he did. He created the bush behind which Adam was hiding. He created the sun that made that bush grow. He asked Adam that question so that Adam could reconcile and wrestle with the answer. I'm separated from you. God wants to know and he wants us to talk to him and call upon him in these times. He's not interested in having fake conversations. He wants to hear what is in our heart, not again so that he can find out what's there, but so that we can. Once we give voice to our doubts and our pain and our questions to God in prayer, we can better understand them and we can acknowledge to God in prayer that we sense and we feel these things. Some of you may be lacking a powerful closeness with God because you've not yet been honest with him about what's really in your heart. I need to move on. Perhaps the most trying of this whole scene is the Jews response. I want to skip down to that and then we'll circle back to Jesus. The Jews remarked and we'll run through this quickly. They remarked on the obvious love that Christ held for Lazarus in verse 36. The Jews saw Jesus weeping. They said, see how he loved him. Jesus was a man of obvious significance. Even Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus and said, You are clearly a man from God. For no one can do the things you do, Jesus, unless he is sent from God. Jesus was a man clearly of significance, a man who performs many miracles, a man with obvious power with God. And yet here he was walking down the road to Lazarus tomb, weeping. weeping over one man who had died, weeping in shared sorrow with Mary and Martha and those who loved Lazarus. Jesus' love for Lazarus was noteworthy. It was something the Jews saw and it stood out to them that Jesus loved Lazarus, that a man with such obvious power and authority would feel for Lazarus the way he obviously did, made an impact on the Jews, they noted it. You ever know someone who's really important? They're really important. Maybe you don't know them, but you know of them and you see when they are affected by something and they weep and they cry. It's noteworthy. And Jesus walking down the road, he's crying and he is weeping along with those around him. Sometimes. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to belief in Christ is to believe that he actually really does love you as much as the Bible says he does. You want to know why? Because you know you. You know you and you know that in you there's not a whole lot that you can recommend to Him. The enemy lodges the thought in our minds that there is no way that the Son of God could really love us as much as he says he does. We know deep down that there is nothing that we can offer to God to have him love us and that we don't deserve his love. And unfortunately, in the way we think of it today, so much of the time we see love sometimes as something that's merited. And then we're told that Jesus loves us despite our merit. And do you want to know one of the ugliest, most vile things that Satan has ever perpetrated against the gospel? It is the idea that you can just come and accept God's love and be unchanged as a result of it. He loves you no matter what you do. So just go do whatever you wanna do and God's gonna love you anyway. It's one of the most horrific resting of the gospel that's ever been done. When you understand this love, this does not lead you to a life of willful sinning. It leads you to a life of obedience and a desire to please the one who loved you for no reason other than he loved you. Some of you may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God because you do not really believe that Jesus loves you as much as he says he does. You refuse to acknowledge that he loved you enough to die on a cross for you. You see nothing in you that would merit such a love and you end up rejecting it instead of embracing it. I want to tell you today he does love you just like he said he did. He died for you. He died for you. It's only gonna be a matter of a few months from this moment that we're reading about. He's going to stretch out his arms on the cross at Calvary and die for you. And yet they question, they questioned why Jesus allowed Lazarus to die. Back to Mary's similar, and no doubt Martha's as well, this reconciling and they say, look, he restored sight to a blind man. And do you remember this happened not long ago in Jerusalem? He gave sight to that blind man, and it was said at the time, nobody's ever done this. There's been people who have done some pretty incredible things, but nobody has ever restored sight to the blind. And Jesus did. And so they say, couldn't he have kept this from happening? Look at him. He's weeping. He's crying. Clearly he loved God or loved Lazarus. Sometimes because. This is just a little extra. It's something that hit me, and at some point in the future, I'm going to try to dive deeper in my own study of it. Just because we know God can do something, does not mean we know He should. Yes. Answer to your questions? To the Jews? Yes, He could have. He absolutely could have kept Lazarus from dying. He could have kept Lazarus from dying without ever even showing up. Remember, he healed the centurion without ever going to his son. With our limited understanding, it is often difficult to hear that God has a purpose in view beyond what we can see and feel in the moment when someone passes away. As we shed our tears of sorrow, we often wonder the very same things as the Jews wondered here. We exercise faulty human logic that if God loves us, then He would not allow such pain in our lives. And many find justification for not following God in their pain when God's greater purpose is to bring them into an even more powerful connection with Him and a deeper awareness that God sometimes allows temporary pain to show us our need for eternal presence and eternal joy with Him. It's the same thing with medicine and with a doctor. Sometimes setting bones is painful, but it's necessary. Some of you may be falling short of a powerful closeness with God because you've not fully surrendered to him and his will and blessed his name in the midst of it. Finally, we'll run through this Jesus response versus 33. He sees the weeping and he shares in the pain. John's Gospel is of the four, the one who most boldly or most outwardly claims the divinity of Christ. This belief in Jesus of Nazareth, all God, Oh, man, at the same time, John is the gospel that makes it undoubted that Jesus was the Son of God. Islam rejects Jesus' position as the Son of God, and they put a particular case, and they point their critiques particularly at the gospel of John. Because in John, one cannot read it and walk away thinking Jesus was anything other than God, divine and His Son. And yet, he does not ignore the humanity of Christ either, here in particular. Here in particular, we see Jesus' humanity as he feels the pain that we feel at the death of someone we loved. Jesus knows how that feels. And then it says he was deeply moved and greatly troubled. Until I studied this a little deeper during preparation to come this week, I just almost completely thought that Jesus' emotional reaction was one of sorrow, and it was. We associate Jesus' emotional response to this situation as sadness and sorrow and weeping, and that is not untrue, but John also told us here in verse 33 that he says he was deeply moved And the Greek word translated deeply moved here is a word that only occurs five times in the New Testament. And each of those times, it's not a word that makes us think of sorrow. Just quickly, three of them, Matthew 9 30, their eyes were opened and Jesus sternly warned them. See that no one knows about it. The word sternly is the same word as deeply moved. Mark 1.43, Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once. Again, sternly used. And then Mark 14.5, for this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii. Remember when the woman came and poured the oil on Jesus' feet and Judas is upset about it, and he comes to this ointment could have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they scolded her. The word scolded is the same Greek word that was translated deeply moved. There is a sense here. Jesus is not only sorrowful. He's angry. And isn't that a human experience? Doesn't sorrow often lead to anger? And doesn't anger often lead to sorrow? But they're two distinct things. Jesus is not only weeping in sorrow. I believe there is something a bit in Him that is angry and upset at this. Well, if that's true, then what's He angry and upset about? Some commentators have said he was angry and upset at the people weeping, saying, they don't trust me. They don't believe in me. They're weeping. If they believed in me, they wouldn't be weeping. I don't buy that one. What was he upset about? I believe, though, along with others, that Jesus' anger was at death and the author of death. When Jesus and his father created the world, they created a world of life. Without death, it was us that introduced that. I remember so many years ago, Hurricane Katrina. Some of you are far too young to remember this, but it's just an image that's burned in my head for some strange reason. I remember reading an article in some magazine about it, and there was a cartoon picture of an old man and woman sitting up in bed watching TV, and on the TV was a clear depiction of the hurricane bearing down on Louisiana, and a thought bubble out of the man's head is, this is intelligent design? And when I read that, I thought, no, that's the results of sin on intelligent design. And I'm not talking about specific sin that Louisiana paid for sins. We live in a fallen world. But when Jesus with his father and the Holy Spirit created the world, it's not how they created it. And looking around this day at the people and the results of sin, Jesus was angered. by the pain. He was angry at the pain that it brought to those that he loved, to his creation and to his father's creation. These people were never supposed to experience this pain. And like no one else, Jesus would have known that more clearly than anyone else. This was not the design. This is not what we desired. Of course, we have seen to it that this is going to be overcome. But they were never meant to go through this much sorrow. It was not God's plan for this to be. It was the result of man's looking to something other than God for what they needed. And that's exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden. And he weeps. Verse 35, the anger is accompanied by sorrow. And this is such a common, again, human experience. Sorrow that leads to anger. He hurt for Martha and Mary. He hurt for the pain of the others that loved Lazarus as well. And it's only Christianity, by the way, that depicts God in this light. A weeping God. One who's broken hearted for the creation that spurned him. Broken so much that Jesus, before the foundation of the world, said, I will go. And I will pay the price. He's sorrowful, He is angry, but He is not defeated. Verse 34, where have you laid Him? Jesus took action when there was nothing anyone else could do. And I'm just a few moments from finishing, so I ask you to bear with me because there's some very deep things and beautiful things that God, I think, wants us to see in these last few points about Christ and how He responded to this death of Lazarus. Jesus took action when no one else could. No matter how rich Lazarus might have been. And it appears that he probably was just based upon the tomb that he was in. It appears that he was a man of means. And no matter how rich any of his friends might have been, no one could do anything for him at this point. No one. All were powerless in the face of death. And so, too, are you. And me. We have no power over it. But Jesus responds as no one else could, and prepares the way for death to be swallowed up in victory. Again, it's a matter of just a few months, and Jesus is going to overcome this thing that today is making Him weep, and upsetting Him, and angering Him, and thinking this ought not to have been, but He came to the world to overcome that. The water of life died thirsty so that you and I would not. The light of the world died in darkness so that you and I would not. The good shepherd died alone so that you and I would not. The king died so that the people might go free. Jesus shed tears with us in this world so that he could wipe them away when we go into eternity with him forever. That's why he came. That's why he was sorrowful and that's why he was angry. And that's why we can rejoice evermore, because Christ has overcome death and the grave. Some of you may be falling short of a closeness with God because you've never really understood these things in the first place. Some of you may be falling short because you're not keeping them near to your heart in the second place. What is your response to the call of Christ in the face of death? Go to him, go to him quickly. Don't look to anything else. Do not delay. Trust Him. Speak honestly with Him. Bow at His feet and acknowledge His Lordship over all, including you. Call upon Him and ask Him to forgive your sin and trust Him and find Him to be the Savior that He longs to be for you. He died on the cross for you. Respond as Mary did. and find Him and find the comfort and the peace. And in the days ahead, in the moments ahead for her, she'll see the wonderful, glorious results of trusting Christ. I pray that you'll do that today. Let's have some.