Introduction
Those who are reading through the Bible with Pastor Ben this year read chapters 11-15 in the Gospel of John this past week. This morning Pastor Ben is going to be preaching from some of that, and we’ll be reading from John 11:32-44.
The Lord Jesus’ dear friend Lazarus had become ill, but instead of immediately going to heal him the Lord Jesus delayed, waiting until Lazarus had died before going. Lazarus’ sister Martha has gone out to meet Jesus, wondering why He didn’t come earlier. And now Lazarus’ other sister, Mary, has gone out…
John 11:32-44 [NLTse]
32 When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at His feet and said, “Lord, if only You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within Him, and He was deeply troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” He asked them.
They told Him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Then Jesus wept. 36 The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much He loved him!” 37 But some said, “This Man healed a blind man. Couldn’t He have kept Lazarus from dying?”
38 Jesus was still angry as He arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. 39 “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them.
But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.”
40 Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” 41 So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to Heaven and said, “Father, thank You for hearing Me. 42 You always hear Me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe You sent Me.” 43 Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go!”
Sermon
When a person puts their trust in God through Jesus Christ, the Bible tells us that such a person is a new creation: Their old life has gone; a new life has begun. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17) But old ways of thinking, of living and responding, old priorities and enjoyments and the attraction of what everyone else is doing can distract and hinder believers from our new life, like graveclothes binding a man newly brought back from the dead…
The Lord Jesus loved Lazarus. And He loved Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, as well. We don’t know if such love was based on family ties or on friendship or even on business dealings the Lord Jesus may have been involved in before beginning His ministry. We don’t know anything about how Jesus came to know and love Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. We just know that He loved them. And when the sisters sent Him the news that His dear friend was sick and dying, in His love for them, the Lord Jesus didn’t drop what He was doing and go to them all to heal Lazarus right away. No. In His love for them the Lord Jesus waited until Lazarus had died, and then He came.
(There’s something for us in this as to how God can love us and yet not answer our prayers right away. If our lives are all about our own comfort and ease then God’s delays in coming to us can seem cruel and it can cause us to doubt His love. But if our lives are all about God getting glory and getting to show His love not just to us but to many, then although His delaying requires faith from us, even so, we can trust that He has plans and purposes to work all our troubles and trials together for good: For our good and for His glory. And He shows us here in Lazarus’ death and Martha and Mary’s mourning and grief that we might have to wait – to wait even beyond when it seems to be too late – for Him to arrive and work it all out, for our good and His glory!)
…
As our reading begins, Martha and Mary have talked with Jesus, wondering why He delayed. And they are crying, and the family and friends and professional mourners around them are crying. (Because in those days you could hire people to come to your home and weep and wail with you so you wouldn’t feel so self-conscious and alone.) And John records that when the Lord Jesus saw all their weeping that He got angry, but that then He began weeping, as well!
And He goes with them to the graveyard and asks for the stone to be rolled away from Lazarus’ tomb, and He cries out, “Lazarus! Come out!”
Calling someone back to their body from the land of the dead is not a difficult thing for God the Son, Jesus Christ. But Paul explains for us in his letter to the Philippians that God the Son had taken off His divinity when He was born Jesus of Nazareth to Mary of Nazareth. (See Philippians 2:6-11) So, it was not God the Son Who had called out, “Lazarus! Come out!” It was Jesus of Nazareth filled, as He was, with the Holy Spirit. And Lazarus came out!
(I think it is worth noting that the Holy Spirit has continued to work through Jesus’ people to bring the dead back to life. I attended a conference several years ago where a pastor and missionary to Mozambique in Africa shared her eyewitness account of seeing a parishioner who had died from a massive head wound be raised from the dead, with no longer any mark on him. So, as Jesus has said, filled with the Holy Spirit, anyone who believes in Him will do the same works He did, and even greater works, because He has gone to be with the Father. [See John 14:12]) But, back to Lazarus…
He’d been dead for four days. He was bound up with graveclothes – kind of like a mummy – and the headcloth was still over his face, but Lazarus came out. He was alive! And the Lord Jesus says, “Unwrap him and let him go!”
And I know the Lord spoke those words to those who were there that day as a part of welcoming Lazarus back to this life (because graveclothes are the trappings of the dead not the living), but I also believe that the Lord Jesus is speaking those words to each of us here today, as well.
In his book, “unChristian,” David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, writes that most of the lifestyle activities of born-again Christians are statistically equivalent to those of non-born-again people. When asked to identify their activities over the last 30 days, born-again believers were just as likely to have visited a pornographic website, to have taken something that did not belong to them, to have consulted a medium or psychic, to have physically fought or abused someone, to have consumed enough alcohol to be considered legally drunk, to have used an illegal nonprescription drug, to have said something to someone that was not true, to have gotten back at someone for something he or she did, and to have said mean things behind another person’s back.
But how can that be if Christian people have been made new – their old lives gone; new lives having come? How can that be unless we’re still to some degree wrapped up in the dead-trappings of our old lives? How can that be unless we are still to some degree bound by our “graveclothes” and kept from the fullness of new life Jesus’ has for us all?
A fairly well-known pastor and author once wrote, “Joy in Christ requires a commitment to working at the Christian lifestyle. Salvation comes as a gift, but the joy of salvation demands disciplined action.” He goes on, “Most Christians I know have just enough of the gospel to make them miserable, but not enough to make them joyful. They know enough about the biblical message to keep them from doing the things which the world tempts them to do; but they do not have enough of a commitment to God to do those things through which they might experience the fullness of His joy.” (Tony Campolo. “Seven Deadly Sins.” p. 21)
Taking off our graveclothes is the commitment each and every Christian exhibits towards working at the Christian lifestyle; living out our faith, obedience, and commitment to God in order to do the things He calls us to, those things through which we might experience the fullness of His joy.
I think that graveclothes – the things that hold us back – can take may different forms. Maybe your graveclothes take the form of your heart having hardened to the life and power of God, so that, like Abraham and Sarah, who were promised a son in their old age, arranged for Abraham to sleep with another woman, a younger woman who was still able to bear children, because Abraham and Sarah didn’t believe in the life and power of God and thought they would have to bring about God’s promise to them themselves. (See Genesis 16) Likewise, perhaps your graveclothes are keeping you from expect the miraculous in your life but keep you bound up, only looking for His promises to be fulfilled if you make them happen for yourself?
Or maybe your graveclothes take the form of fearing the unknown and your not being in control or not knowing what to expect? Like the high priest and all the Pharisees and Sadducees’ of the Sanhedrin – the Jewish High Council – who were afraid Jesus was messing up the status quo, who’d come to believe that making a truce with Rome and living under their rule was the best option they had for getting to keep their Temple and at least a modicum of their way of life? (See John 11:45-53)
Maybe we just don’t know what it means to live as His disciple: What to do next or how to trust Him that are our graveclothes? Do you remember, after Jesus’ resurrection, when Peter, Andrew, James, and John went back to fishing for fish? The Lord had to meet them, and cook them breakfast, and set them back out fishing for people again. (John 21:1-25)
Maybe our graveclothes are made up of unforgiveness? Dr. David Seamands in his book “Healing For Damaged Emotions” says, “The two primary causes of emotional stress are the failure to receive forgiveness and the failure to forgive.” [Wheaton, ILL: Victor Books, 1989, pp.29-30] Or, as the great philosopher Lucy explained to Charlie Brown at the end of the game explaining why she had lost sight of the baseball and had failed to make the catch, “Sorry I missed that easy fly ball, manager, I thought I had it, but suddenly I remembered all the others I’ve missed, and the past got in my eyes.”
What graveclothes are you still wearing? What aspects of your old, dead life are you still living out and hanging onto? Do you realize they are keeping you bound up and away from the new life Jesus’ has for you?
Since the Greatest Commandment is to love the Lord God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, as with all things I think our trouble with these graveclothes comes down to a love-issue: That is, what do we love more than Jesus?
When Peter, Andrew, James, and John went back to fishing for fish after the Lord Jesus’ resurrection, the Lord asked Simon Peter, “Do you love Me more than these?” the Lord wasn’t asking Peter if Peter thought he loved Jesus more than the other disciples. He was asking Peter if Peter loved Him more than he loved fishing and fish?
In proclaiming, “Unwrap him and let him go!” in our midst today I believe the Lord Jesus is asking us, “What do you love more than Me? What’s keeping you bound up? What’s keeping you away from My life? What do you love more than Me?”
In John 12:25-26 Jesus says that if we love our souls – our lives – in this world that we will have destroyed them. But, He says, if we hate our souls – that is, hate our lives – that that is how we will safeguard them to eternal life. We must keep dying to our selves. Do we think we know the Scriptures well enough that we can stop studying them? We need to die to that and start feasting on the Word or start feasting more than we are. Do we think our prayer life is good? We need to die to that complacency and push the ways we’re praying to new expressions and depths. Do we think we know what true Worship is like? We need to die to that contentment and open ourselves to different manners and expressions of showing the Lord how much He is worth. Do we think we are serving enough, or that it’s someone else’s turn to do this or that service, or that we’re too mature to serve in these or those “lesser” ways? We need to die to such thoughts and humble ourselves to obediently be about whatever the Lord is placing before us.
Whatever you love more than Jesus, those are your graveclothes…
And as you sincerely ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your soul’s competing loves to you, let me tell you one more story:
“An old American Indian tale recounts the story of a chief who was telling a gathering of young braves about the struggle within. “It is like two dogs fighting inside of us,” the chief told them. “There is one good dog who wants to do the right and the other dog always wants to do the wrong. Sometimes the good dog seems stronger and is winning the fight. But sometimes the bad dog is stronger and wrong is winning the fight.”
“Who is going to win in the end?” a young brave asks.
The chief answered, “The one you feed.”
?
Love Jesus first. Feed your relationship with Him the very best of your time, money, and energy. And find a Christian partner, or a small group of Christian partners, who you can be absolutely honest with and who will pray with you and for you. Unwrap each other and help let each other go!