Good evening yet again. Please turn to John chapter 11. The 11th chapter of John's gospel. And we'll read just the 25th verse and the first part of verse 26. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Amen. Thus far the reading of Sacred Scripture for His name's sake. Let's all pray. Dear Lord, we are so blessed by the truths that have been sung even just tonight. The Lord is our Savior and we have been loved with an everlasting love. And it is our prayer for this coming hour, that second hymn, Lord, more love to Thee, O Christ, and more of Jesus we would know. We feel acutely our need of Him this evening. We need help, Lord, both in the preaching of the word and in the hearing of the word. And we must confess with that other hymn writer that all is vain. unless the Holy Spirit comes down. And so we ask, Lord, for help tonight. Many among our number are infirmed and sick with illnesses. We pray that the Lord would raise them up quickly, and we ask for special help and special grace for them, that they might know the Lord's presence in particular ways. Help us now, Lord, as we consider the things of the Scriptures, and give us help and understanding and enlightenment of mind. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. It is often the experience of Christian men and Christian women that certain chapters of their lives open, like John chapter 11 opens, Now, a certain man was sick. It may be early in life, it may be later in life. But chapters do open like that. And as bad as colds are, and as bad as respiratory season is, oftentimes these sicknesses are more severe in their clinical diagnosis at least. And the Lord's people do often struggle with severe sickness. In fact, as one pastor put it, the proverbial stroll through Griefsville is not an uncommon occurrence for the believer. And yet, God, in his mercy, provides us with passages like this so that we can have not mere sentimentalism or pep talk, but we can have, in the words of the Apostle Peter, a lively hope. by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I would like to preach to you this evening on the subject of Christ's love and life for believers. Christ's love and life for believers, and this chapter is full of those two things. It is full of Christ's love for his people, and it is full of the life that he himself is to his people. The first thing I want us to notice this evening is, number one, the loving foreshadows about believers, verses one through four. This is the setting of the passage. The first thing we see foreshadowed for us is Mary's devotion. Verse one, now a certain man was sick named Lazarus. In the Hebrew, that is the name Eleazar, and it means God assists. Perhaps somewhat of a foreshadow there. But we are told his name is Lazarus, and he is of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. And then in verse two, there is this parenthetical. It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment. and wiped his feet with their hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. That event does not happen until the next chapter. So John is doing what we call, he's being proleptic. He is recording something before it happens. And by doing that, he is kind of setting us up for a theological implication. It's kind of like the beginning of the book of Job. Book of Job starts, there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright and feared God and eschewed evil. Statements like this orient us to the fact that Job, and in this case Mary, were righteous people. You actually go forward and you read the account of Mary anointing Christ's feet in chapter 12, and Christ himself says that Mary had anointed him for his burial. Evidently, Mary believed Christ's predictions that He must die to save His people. And this is just the answering of her heart. She wants to anoint Him for the burial. This is the answering of her heart that stirred her expression of love in very costly devotion. We're told that the perfume that she used was very, very expensive. Here's a woman whose master had given her her brother back to life, at least for a time. And she loves him so much that she is literally on the ground wiping his feet with her hair. Matthew Henry comments on this section and says, extraordinary acts of piety and devotion that come from an honest principle of love to Christ will not only find acceptance with him, but gain reputation in the church. And then he says, this is she whose brother Lazarus was sick. And the sickness of love, the sickness of those we love is our affliction. And the more friends we have, The more frequently we are thus afflicted by sympathy. This message has been on our hearts for some time because there seem to be a lot of people in our close circles right now who are sick. And it just sometimes comes to be that way. And the dearer they are, the more grievous it is. J.C. Ryle puts it the most plainly. These verses teach us that true Christians may be sick and ill as well as others. So Mary's devotion is foreshadowed here. It's told before it actually happens to give us a theological primer on Christian suffering. But there may also be next a foreshadow of the Lord's own passion work. If you look there at verse two, the word Lord has an underlying Greek form that really is not used until the Lord's resurrection. And by putting it here, John may be giving us another theological nudge. This is a term for the Lord's resurrection, but a resurrection is about to happen in this very chapter. The next thing is foreshadowed is Christ's own love, verse three. Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. And Charles Spurgeon remarks, many a time has that message been sent to our Lord, for in full many a case he has chosen his people in the furnace of affliction. Certainly the Lord had a special relationship with this family of three siblings. It's assumed by many scholars that the house there that Mary and Martha and Lazarus had was a real oasis for the Lord during his earthly ministry. But the Lord expressed love to this family, and that is only picturesque of the love that He expresses to us as His beloved people and blood-bought people. And the last thing that is foreshadowed here is the actual outcome. Christ gives us the whole story right at the beginning. If you look there at verse 4, after they tell him that he whom thou lovest is sick, he says, verse 4, when Jesus heard that, he said, this sickness is not unto death. In other words, it's not going to be How shall I put it? It's not going to ultimately end in death, even though it might be fatal temporarily, which is kind of a strange way for us to think. But ultimately, it will not end in death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Here's a devoted woman and her sister and her brother in a severe trial. Christ's resurrection work is somehow going to be involved, and his redemption work is going to play a part in that, which in turn is the yielding of the highest expressions of God's love for these three siblings. And the result will be the glory of God. This will not end in death, but it will result in the glory of God. These foreshadows being what they are, and heavy with theological implication as they are, we now come to the next point, which is the actual outplaying of the event. Not only do we have the loving foreshadows for believers, but we have the loving perplexities around believers. If you look at verse five, Christ reassures these dear believers of his love and he says, now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. But what comes next is certainly not intuitive. Because verse six says, when he had heard therefore, and that is an inferential statement, when he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days in the same place. where he was. And that really doesn't make sense to us. And it really seems like John is being deliberate here. When I hear someone is sick, I pick up the phone right away and I say, how you doing? What's going on? When we hear someone goes to the hospital, we call the hospital and say, what room number? We'd like to help any way we can. The Lord waits two whole days. And this is right after the verse that said that He loved them. How do we explain this? Well, before we start philosophizing about how to reconcile this seeming inconsistency, we really have to deal with the text in that it says the reason he waited is because he loved them. Some of you have benefited from Dr. Leighton Talbert's book on Providence, Not By Chance. We may even have some back there on the shelf. Or his book on Job called Beyond Suffering. And in a chapel message that Dr. Talbert gave on John 11, he pointed out that we can't assume that the love that Jesus has for his people is like our love. And primarily in this sense, his love is in total control. And part of the reason why we pick up the phone or why we try to get more information is because we're not in control. But this is a love that is sovereign. This is a love that has entire control and understanding of the situation. And there's this. Can love still be love and yet be mysterious? Does the absence of understanding on our part equate to an absence of love on his part? And I think the obvious answer is even though we do not understand at times why the sickness may come, or why the Lord may wait to give us a plausible resolution, that His love still abides. When we take those steps in divine logic, we end up where Jonathan Edwards ended up, when he said, God's greatest glory and my greatest good are not opposed the one to the other, rather they are invested the one in the other. Verse four just finished telling us that this trial, though possibly fatal, would not end in death, but it would end in God's glory. That's the first part of Edwards' statement. And verse five now tells us that God loves his people. That's the second part of Edward's statement. And so, if this trial entails God's glory, and he loves me that much, and if those two facts are not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually necessary, then all is well. And Jesus waits. And we won't know until verse 44 why he waited. We may not know for a number of years why Jesus waits to resolve our problems, but there we have a sure word of promise that he does still love us. And he always will, right into glory. This is the explanation of love But notice next, verse seven. Then after that, he saith to his disciples, let us go again into Judea. His disciples say unto him, master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again? And the disciples here are referring to what happened in the previous chapter when the Jews tried to stone Jesus because he said, I and my father are one. Boy, they didn't like that. They picked up their stones and they were about to take him out. And the disciples say, Lord, we don't want to be stoned. Are you sure you want to go back to Judea? And the Lord responds by giving somewhat of a parable. And he says, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. There's a lot going on in that statement, but what it amounts to is that Christ, and by extension the disciples, must carry out the will of God. He says much the same thing back in chapter nine. He says, I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. But then he goes on and says, these things said he, and after that he saith unto them, our friend Lazarus sleepeth. But I go that I may awake him out of sleep. And said his disciples, Lord, if he's just asleep, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Albeit, Jesus spake of his death, but they thought that he had spoken of taking rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye may believe. Nevertheless, let us go unto him. And again, there's a lot going on here theologically that we don't have time to delve into tonight. But what becomes evident is that Christ is using parable-like language at first, and then plain language, second, to bring his disciples to a further step in their own sanctification with regards to their view of him, If you look there in verse 15 at the word believe, the word literally translated is come to believe. We start out in sanctification believing certain things about God and about the scriptures, and then we come to believe the next thing in our next step of sanctification. That really is what the Lord is referring to here. What the Lord is really after is to demonstrate Himself to be sufficient, not just up to the point of death, but after that also. And He wants the disciples to see Himself in a whole new light. Some of you have heard of the old theologian and author B.B. Warfield. B.B. Warfield was part of the number of theologians that was part of what we called Old Princeton. It was a good seminary when it first began. It is not a good seminary today, but when it first began, men like Charles Hodge and Alexander, excuse me, Archibald Alexander and B.B. Warfield, they were all part of that good and godly seminary. And B.B. Warfield is famous for all of the things that he wrote on the inspiration of scripture, on theological discourse, on just a whole host. He wrote just voluminous amounts about theology, and he is known today that. If you mention B.B. Warfield in seminary circles, everybody knows, oh, this is the great pastor and preacher from Princeton. But what you may not know is that on his honeymoon, which was also his wife's honeymoon, on his honeymoon, they were hiking out in the mountains of Germany and got into a terrific storm. And it left his wife affected really for the rest of her life. She wasn't totally invalid, but they don't know whether it was what they call consumption or whether back then they called it consumption or whether it was just a nervous disposition, but she needed pretty close attention. And therefore he never hardly left her side except for his seminary duties for 39 years. He never left her for more than two hours. Puts B.B. Warfield in a whole new light. And this passage wants us to see Christ in a whole new light. Christ is not just the one who can heal you while you're alive. No, he can take care of the after death matters as well. Physically, of course, in this situation, he's going to raise a man from the dead, but for our purposes here, spiritually, he can take care of the matters after death, not just before death, or not just up into the point of death. And that really is what he wants us to see this evening. So we have the loving foreshadows, and we have the loving perplexities of life, but notice thirdly, we have the loving confessions for believers. Verse 18, now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about 15 furlongs off, and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, But Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Now this is not an accusation that Martha is making, but she, you can almost imagine the scene. She's probably coming with tears coming down her face and she just, spills it all in front of the Lord. Lord, if you had been here, I know that my brother had not died. She's grieving and trying to grasp at least something that she can hold onto for in the next verse, or excuse me, in her next statement, she says, but I know that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. She certainly is sincere, but she's grasping for at least something from her master to know that everything will be all right. Lord, please, just, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give it to you. You can see she's reeling in the moment of her grief. And Jesus tells her plainly in verse 23, Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha's response is pretty orthodox in verse 24. She saith unto him, I know that he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day. I believe in the resurrection. I believe like the Pharisees believe. I don't believe like the Sadducees believe. But then Christ responds with really the statement of the passage, and this is one of his I am statements. There are seven in the book of John, and I think this is the fifth, and he says, Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. What a statement. It is one statement in two parts. Christ says, I am two things, the resurrection and the life. And the two statements that follow that beginning statement modify the two parts respectively. So in other words, what you have is, I am the resurrection. He that believes in me, even though he were dead, yet shall he live. And number two, I am the life. Whoever is already living and continues believing in me shall never die. We could be here for a year's worth of Sundays and preach just on that. There is so much in that statement. We can see herely the doctrine of regeneration and the doctrine of perseverance. And I hope we don't come to this passage ever again and think, oh, isn't it nice that we can compare the raising of Lazarus to the regeneration of the spiritually dead unbeliever. I hope we don't ever think, oh, that's nice that we can do that. We actually have to do that. We have to compare them because the text itself is driving us to the conclusion. No less than D.A. Carson, who is a scholar, a very godly man, but deeply studied in the scriptures, he said that Christ is making a living parable out of Lazarus. He is drawing the conclusion. He is connecting the dots. What's going to happen to Lazarus is what happens to those who believe, by God's grace, who are effectually called to those who believe. Now Martha says something really amazing in the next verse, because she understands the implication. She says, yea, Lord, or well, he asks her, he says, believest thou this? And she says, yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. She gets the implication. Because there's no man that could say what Christ just said, I am the resurrection and the life. No man could say that unless he were claiming deity. Unless he were claiming to be God. And Martha recognizes and owns Jesus' claim to deity and his claim to be the Messiah. And then she runs to get her sister. And she says, the Master's calling for you. And Mary gets up and runs back to Jesus. What a confession. And dearly beloved, we have no hope apart from Christ being the resurrection and the life for us. And now, fourthly and finally, I want you to notice, first we saw the loving foreshadows around believers. We saw the loving perplexities around believers, and then we saw the loving confessions for believers, and now, fourthly and finally, I want you to notice the loving Savior of believers. Verse 30, now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met him. The Jews then, which were with her in the house and comforted her, When they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, she goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, she basically says the same thing that her sister says. No doubt they talked about this. She says, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in spirit and was troubled. It was not too long ago that Pastor Kimbrough actually preached on this passage. I think it was in September, if I remember when I looked on Sermon Audio. And he made the comment that the underlying word here for Christ was troubled or he groaned in spirit, it actually has reference to a horse snorting with indignation. So, and we're told this was internal, the Lord has some sort of internal indignation going on when he sees all of this. And Pastor Kimbrough and the other scholars, they all go through this process, and Pastor Kimbrough put it so well. He said, what really is Christ indignant at here, indignant against here? Is he indignant against Mary and Martha for being so weak? And he said, to that we may say a solid no. The text doesn't bear that out. Is he indignant against the unbelieving Jews or some of the unbelieving Jews that may be present? To that we may give a solid maybe. Or is he, more likely, indignant against the ravages of sin and death and the fall that have affected the people that he loves? and to that we may give a solid yes. Christ here is indignant at what sin and the fall and the devil have done to the people that he has set his love on. How encouraging for us. We don't have a savior who just sits by and says, oh, well, like the deists believe. Well, let's just let the world unwind like a clock and I'll just watch it. I'm just the great watchmaker. I'll just watch it happen. No, we have a Savior who rises up and stands with righteous indignation at what has been afflicted on His people. And so he says, verse 34, where have ye laid him? In essence, he says, bring me to the problem. Bring me to the problem. And they say unto the Lord, come and see. And now comes one of the most astounding statements in all of scripture, verse 35, Jesus wept. Is it possible for righteous indignation and deep weeping sympathy to be together? I think we can't come to any other conclusion. I think we see this clearly in the life of David when Saul dies. When he receives news that Saul and Jonathan have been slain, he mourns and he weeps and he writes about it. Saul and Jonathan were swifter than eagles and he mourns and he weeps with great sympathy. But then someone comes to him and says, I was the one that killed Saul, or I affected his demise. And you remember David's response is righteous indignation. And he says, you really should never have said that. And how dare you lift your hand against the Lord's anointed? righteous indignation against what is wicked and what has affected wickedness, and deep weeping sympathy. And here, the greater David shows those same two emotions, and he shows them on our behalf. The human nature of Christ is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than here when he weeps with grief over the devastation that sin and death have caused for the very ones that he loves. He is the Savior who weeps with us and who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. but he is also the Savior who is outraged at sin, the causative agent of all our misery. What a Savior we have. We're hastening to the end. The Jews respond, verse 36, and they say, behold how he loved him. What a wonderful phrase. Behold how he loved him. And some of them said, could not this man which opened the eyes of the blind have caused that even this man should not have died? And there again is a little bit of confusion on their part. They're still thinking of Christ as a pre-death only type of savior. But then, verse 38, Jesus, therefore again, groaning in himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. What an amazing scene. Jesus, with a wet, tearful face, marches up to that grave, where a dead man has been there four whole days. And in his spirit, there is a burning of righteous anger that compels him to act on behalf of those he loves. And he says, verse 39, Jesus said, take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh. The decay process has happened, Lord, in case you didn't remember, basically she's saying, in case you didn't remember, he's been there four days and bacteria has already started its work. He's not gonna smell good. This has been going on for four days. For he hath been dead those four days. Jesus saith unto her, said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou should it see the glory of God, So, verse 41, they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, this is so amazing. We're coming to the climax of the story, and all of a sudden, there's this pause. And the Lord lifts his eyes to heaven, and he says, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. That can only mean that Christ was already praying for the situation. I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. I think that's a huge comfort to us to know that even before we're knee deep into our trials, the Lord is already interceding for us. Lord, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always, but because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. The Gospel of John begins with the issue of belief when it says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. He was that light and there was a man that was sent from God named John to bear witness of the light so that you might believe. And that theme is continued right through the book of John and at the very end, you know what John says? He says, these things are written that you may believe. That is John's emphasis right through the entire gospel, and it is here. Christ says, Lord, I thank you that thou hast heard me, and because of those which are standing by, I said it, that they may believe. And then he turns and says, Lazarus, come forth! One scholar translated it, Lazarus, out here! Taking the literal Greek. And he that was dead stood up and shuffled out of that tomb. One of the commentators I was reading said that there was an older commentator that said because Lazarus was bound at his feet, he must have floated out of the grave. And then he said, I don't think we need to interpret a miracle within a miracle here. I think he just shuffled out. So anyway, this dead man stood up and came out of that grave. And Jesus said, loose him and let him go. So there's the story. In conclusion, there are many points of application that we could comment on. There's so much theology through all of that, and we don't have time to do all the application, but I just want to end with one point tonight. And that is that we depend on the miraculous a lot more than we realize. Now let me clarify. This is not a charismatic statement. The church rightly has guarded against the errors of charismaticism and of new age. Extreme, extreme errors that run people into really a lot of problems. And we have rightly guarded against that over the years. The Scriptures warn us against these things and godly people have steered us towards the truth and towards the Scriptures. But, every time we pray for the salvation of our children, we're praying for a miracle. We're praying for this to happen for our children. Every time we pray for our neighbors to come to Christ, we're praying for a miracle. Every time we ask the Lord would work in the hearts of our coworkers and that they would repent, we are praying for this exact type of miracle. When we ask the Lord to rend the heavens and come down and revive America, or when we ask him to work in Africa, or when we ask him to move in the denomination in Nepal, we are praying that the Lord would work in miraculous ways because it takes a miracle to raise someone from spiritual death to spiritual life. And I also think that we have scriptural warrant at times not to be ashamed to pray for someone's healing. I think the book of James makes that very, very clear. If a man is sick, let him pray. Sometimes we ask for healing with the idea that, well, we know the Lord can heal, but he probably won't. I think we need to put feet to that word in James a little bit more. The Lord can heal, and the Lord can help our sicknesses, and the Lord does not always see fit to heal everyone. Otherwise, no Christians would die. But sometimes he does. And we can trust the Lord with that. And then there's this. Even in the daily walk with the Lord, we often depend on what technically is miraculous. Again, not in any charismatic or mystic sense that would ever enter into the vibes of the new age. Sitting on a mountaintop, That's not at all what the scripture presents. But just in the ordinary means of grace, the ordinary process of sanctification, in the regular mundane Christian experience, we partake of that which is technically miraculous. The author of Hebrews sums it up well. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. The same Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead and made him a living parable of regeneration is the Christ that you and I own tonight. And he is sufficient up to the point of death and past the point of death. And one day, every grave will hear his voice. Several of the commentators noted that had Christ not specified, Lazarus, come forth, if he had just said, come forth, the whole cemetery would have been resurrected. But one day, every ear will hear his voice, and they will all come forth. And resurrection unto life will be the portion of all those whom He loves, and it will be our portion. Amen. May the Lord bless these thoughts to our hearts this evening. Let's all pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for a good day in the Lord's house. We're thankful that we have been privileged to be hearers of the word this evening and this morning, and really not just in the preaching times, but in the singing of the hymns and in the prayer times. We're thankful that we've been privileged to take part in all these things. We pray now that as we enter a work week with its cares and distresses, we pray that thy word would continue to encourage us that we would find strength on a daily basis to serve the Lord, to look to the Lord, to continually behold Him as we think of Him and as we read of Him in the pages of Scripture. Lord, bless those here who are cast down, especially bless those who are sick. We pray that they would find special grace and uplifting for themselves. And Lord, we would even be so bold as to pray for healing, especially for those who have clinically severe problems. We ask, Lord, that thy presence would go with us from Monday right through Saturday until we are brought again to gather and worship the Lord. Give us grace that we may serve Thee as we ought, and keep our eyes entirely fixed upon the Lord Jesus. We pray all of these things, giving thanks unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Spirit. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.