Welcome. Happy Easter.
There's a little tradition that
we do in churches on Easter Sunday.
It's a little saying that helps us affirm together what we
believe in, that this good news is real.
It's not just a myth or a legend.
So when I say he is risen, you respond, he is risen indeed.
So can we try that He is risen? Amen.
So I want to draw our minds to the saying this morning because
I think we believe in the resurrection, but we treat it
gets to a point where we can start to treat this belief in
our hearts kind of like a myth. We believe that Jesus was raised
and that because he was raised, we can have that hope that I
will one day be raised as well. But there are days where have I,
I've had to question, man, do I, do I really believe in this?
Maybe I don't believe in the resurrection as strongly as I
should. If I believe in the
resurrection, shouldn't I be more desperate for my friends
and family to find that same life?
If I believe in the resurrection, should I feel this
devastated by tragedy and death? If I believe in the
resurrection, should I feel this hopeless when I'm face to face
with chronic illness? Have you ever witnessed
something so difficult it made you question your hope?
Something so dark in our world that it causes the hope in God
to dim the slow but painful death of cancer?
The funding of human trafficking that is still somehow thriving
across our world? Wars and genocides.
Spot on. Egos, miscarriages and
infertility, racism and corruption.
You might still be trying to hope in God, but there is a
darkness that we witness where this hope can start to shape and
change. To be jaded, guarded, unengaged.
God's Word no longer holds emotional weight, any hope of
our life, because what you're witnessing around you is so
horrible, it's so devastating. And yet we have to say, Church,
he is risen. He is risen indeed, isn't he?
Isn't he? So I want to talk about this
today. I'm, I'm worried that it's it
becomes so easy for us to start to dismiss the hope of the
resurrection, this concept that we go over every year, this hope
that we have that doesn't just mean eternal life for us, but it
means the redemption and restoration of all life in our
world. But I worry that instead of
being filled with hope, we can start to go down this path of,
yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.
I believe in the resurrection, but our hearts can be blind to
its real implications. Our hearts can become guarded to
that hope because of what we're seeing.
So that's my question today. What can blind us to real hope
in the resurrection? This Easter, I want to look at
Jesus's final miraculous sign in the book of John in the book of
John, because I think there's someone in this story that we
can relate to. So I'm going to read John verses
11 to 7 or sorry, Chapter 11 verses one to seven and then and
then skip on I think media team. I think I, I mentioned right on
the messages. So John 11 Now a man was sick,
Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister
Martha. Mary was the one who anointed
the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair, and it
was her brother Lazarus who was sick.
So the sister sent a message to him.
Lord, the one you love is sick. When Jesus heard it, he said the
sickness will not end in death, but it is for the glory of God
so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in
the place where he was. Then after that he said to his
disciples, let us go to let's go to Judea again.
Rabbi, the disciples told them just now the Jews tried to stone
you, and you're going there again, and let's skip ahead.
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in
the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, less
than two miles away. Many of the Jews had come to
Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
As soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to
meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house, going nice.
Then Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother
wouldn't have died yet. Even now I know that whatever
you asked from God, God will give you.
Your brother will rise again. Jesus told her.
Martha said to him, I know, I know that he will rise again in
the resurrection. At the last day.
Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection in the life.
The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this? Yes, Lord, she told them.
I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into
the world. Martha is so overwhelmed with
sorrow. She is struggling to find hope.
She is fighting to have faith. You can see it in her words.
Jesus, where were you? This was this was preventable.
If you were just here, my brother wouldn't have died.
So my first point that I want us to go over is what can blind us
to the real hope of the resurrection.
And it's when God's timing feels wrong to us.
Let's go back to verses one to seven.
In verse one to three, Mary and Martha tell Jesus that their
brother Lazarus is sick. And Jesus is very close with
this family. So you would think that this
news would make him spring up and immediately go.
But no. Verse 6 instead of going
immediately, Jesus does something unthinkable.
He waits two days. He essentially waits for Lazarus
to die. And what's the reason?
John 11/5 He says now Jesus loved Martha her sister and
Lazarus. But also verse 4 when Jesus
heard it the sickness will not end in death but it is for the
glory of God. So for his glory and out of love
for them he waits for Lazarus to die.
Now those verses in front of verse 6 seem to make very little
sense. You can almost rephrase this as
because Jesus loved his this family very much, he waited for
his death. It's almost like John had to put
verse four and five in front of verse 6 because anyone would
read what Jesus did and just go that that's terrible.
That is horrible. This is a loaded concept.
This means the most loving thing Jesus can do in your life.
More than providing immediate relief, more than healing your
immediate wounds, more than lifting you out of every bad
situation or trial or hardship, more than preventing every
heartbreaking tragedy. The most loving thing that God
can do for you is delay is wait. There is something beyond the
tragedy that God waits for, and He sees it as important enough
to delay your relief. Is there hope that God wants to
give you that you're not able to see because this pain and
suffering in your life is so in your face?
Is there hope that you're not able to experience because sin
and death feels too real right now?
You're wondering, God, why are you waiting?
What are you waiting for? Why are you not dealing with
this devastation and this pain and this sin and the death?
Don't you see what's happening down here?
When my nephew was nearing the age of four, my brother and
sister-in-law were really worried about his speech.
He was just not talking. He could say simple words like
ball cup water, but he just didn't want to say anything.
And it got to the point where they had to hire a speech
therapist because they're so worried, right?
They're so worried that something was wrong and so they
they talked to the therapist. She spoke with him for a little
bit, sat the parents down and said something very insightful.
She said, mom, dad, you are too good at predicting what your
kids wants. So the next time he wants
something, be dumb. Be really, really like, don't
like you act like you don't understand what he's asking for.
So if he's pointing to the water, just point to something
next to it. Pickles, pick Pickles food,
food, don't like, don't like. He's looking for water, food.
Like just play dumb, right? And do not give it to him until
he tries to speak. Now, I don't know if you've
tried this with kids, but they, Oh my gosh, they hate it.
They hate it so much. They get so frustrated.
Like I had to do this with with my kid when he was little
because he was doing the same thing.
He was trying not to talk. And, and they just, they just do
whatever they can with the tools they have.
They just point harder. They point harder.
They, they, they, you know, because the binkies in their
mouth and, or eventually they might start just yelling and
then they cry. So he's thirsty, right?
My son is thirsty. He's so focused on water.
He's so focused on getting immediate relief.
All he can see is I'm thirsty and dad will not give me water.
I'm going through something uncomfortable, painful, and I
see an immediate solution on the counter.
I'm just not tall enough. Dad just get it for me.
He can't see that I want him to speak.
He can't understand that what I want for him is something
better, but it requires me to withhold water from Him.
There is nothing that God withholds from you without
purpose. God wants to give you
everything. You're His beloved son.
You're His precious daughter. What loving parent wants to keep
things from their child? But there are times in our life
where God must delay. He must withhold.
He must allow you to wait. And it's not because He doesn't
care. It's not because he wants to be
silent. It's because there's something
better he needs to give you. But it requires him to wait, as
painful as that is. And we can get so fixated on
this one thing, we can become blind to what God is really
trying to do. Like Martha, we might start
saying, God, where were you if you had just been here?
We get stuck on this hardship or tragedy.
We can't look past God's timing and see why he'd do that.
So we stop hoping. We stop hoping in prayer.
We stop hoping in God and we blind ourselves to real hope.
So if we blind ourselves to this hope, we start looking for it
somewhere else. We look for replacements instead
of true hope in God. What are those things?
One of those things is my second point.
What can blind us to real hope in the the resurrection?
Excuse me two, When we look for hope in cheap counterfeits
instead of God's glory. When we look for hope in cheap
counterfeits instead of God's glory, if you remember from
verse 4, right, he says he's this, this sickness will not end
in death. It will.
It's for the glory of God. That's the reason for the delay.
So let's look at Martha in verse 23 and 24, this exchange between
Jesus and Martha, where Martha says to Jesus, Lord, if you had
been here, my brother wouldn't have died yet, even now, yet
even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give
you, your brother will rise again.
And Martha says, I, I know that he's going to rise again in the
in the resurrection on the last day.
So Jesus is talking to Martha. I was talking to Jesus and she's
talking about the day of God's judgment.
She knows that there's hope there in God, but her heart, you
could tell her heart's not really engaging with it.
So I I yeah, I know, I know She is so devastated by what's just
happened. She's so grief stricken.
She's blind to the hope. So she tries to deal with her
pain by coping. She says this horrible thing
that happened. I know there's still hope if I
look at it differently, if I try to spin my story differently.
So here's here's what we do. This is this is our, our, our
method. Instead of hoping we cope, we
start to cope. Death is genuinely terrible.
Sin is terrible, the broken of brokenness of our world is
terrible. And most of the time our coping
mechanism is let's try to spin this differently.
Let's find hope by changing our perspective.
But in reality, terrible things are still happening.
You can try to look at your childhood differently.
It doesn't change the fact that you might have been abused.
You can try to change your perspective on your loved ones
passing away. It doesn't change the fact that
death is horrendous. You can try to look at your
moral failure differently. It doesn't change the fact that
it still haunts you today. You can try to paint a different
picture for the injustice you faced.
It's still injustice. See, we can't actually solve our
problems. We can't actually make sin and
suffering and death and tragedy go away.
So we try to pretend that sin and death and brokenness doesn't
exist, because who can go on living in that kind of reality?
It's too depressing. But our Bible's solutions to our
problems is not spin the story differently.
It's not cope with what happened by pretending your reality is
different. Our Bible say evil is evil, the
world is broken, sin is sin, and those are terrible things that
happened in your life. But our Bibles don't offer us a
coping mechanism. It doesn't say pretend like
everything's OK. Instead, our Bibles offer hope,
real hope, something can actually change.
Let's go to verses 38 to 44. Verses 38 to 44, I believe it's
the last slide. Then Jesus deeply moved again,
came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lying
against it. Remove the stone, Jesus said.
Martha, the dead man's sister, told him, Lord, there is already
a stench because he has been dead for four days.
Jesus said to her, Didn't I tell you that if you believed, you
would see the glory of God? There it is again.
So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes and
said, Father, I thank you that you heard me.
I know that you always hear me, but because of the crowd
standing here, I said this so that they may believe you sent
me. After he said this, he shouted
with a loud voice. Lazarus, come out.
The dead man came outbound, hand and foot, with linen straps,
with linen strips, and with his face wrapped in a cloth.
Jesus said to them, Unwrap him and let him go.
Lazarus rises from the dead. This is not conceptual, OK?
This is, this is not a, a, a metaphor, OK?
This is not like Lazarus is risen in my heart.
No, like, not even Martha's, like I know he's going to be
risen on the last day. It's no, it's he came.
He came, he walked out. He took off the strips.
Jesus stands in front of the tomb, in front of Lazarus, this
four day old rotting corpse, and says I am the resurrection.
I am the God of life. I am the God who says let there
be light and it happens before me.
It's not just demons that will flee.
Not even death will hold its ground.
This is not a distant hope. This is not a fairy tale or
wishful thinking. Our hope actually makes a
difference. Our hope has a name, and his
name is Jesus, and he offers solutions that no one else has
the power to do. Where the rest of our world
tries to cope by spinning the story differently, Jesus changes
the story. And gives a real concrete life
altering solution. Our passage today is Jesus's 7th
and final sign in the book of John.
But Jesus has done a lot through this book where he just says you
were born blind. It's like, oh you were born
blind. Well at least God has given you
sight through in faith. No, he says.
See. Open your eyes.
You're afraid of drowning. I'm going to walk on the waves
to get to you. You have nothing to eat.
I'll feed all 5000 of you right now.
You've been paralyzed from the waist down.
Pick up your mat and walk. Your son is sick.
Go home. He's good.
I didn't even. I didn't even have to be there
to do it. You're out of wine.
Show me where your water's AT. And the 7th and final sign.
Lazarus is dying. I need to wait here because I
love him and there's a better hope that I want to give him.
And the whole world, I think so many of us are jaded by a world
that feels so hopelessly broken. We're cynical after living lives
full of tragedy and death. We forget who we're dealing
with. We allow the darkness of our
world to dim the glory of Jesus. But this Jesus makes the blind
see. He makes the lame walk.
He makes the sick well. This Jesus heals the broken,
feeds the hungry, gives dignity to the poor and the oppressed,
gives forgiveness to the adulteress, gives new life to
tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.
This Jesus heals broken marriages, redeem stories of
abuse for good, repurposes people canceled by society to
change lives. Your hope in this resurrection
is not a concept, it's not a coping method.
It's real, it's reality, it's unshakable truth that and it's a
promise that God has made to you.
Jesus stares at the tragedy of our world and says I can and I
will write everything that is wrong.
Don't believe me, I'll make a dead man rise over a world
covered in death. Jesus says I am the
resurrection, believe in me and you will never die.
I will redeem you and I will right every wrong.
That is the glory of Jesus, and it's a hope we needed to know
more than Jesus can make a sick man.
Well, again, it's a hope we needed more than pretending that
our reality needs to be different.
It's a hope that's better than let's just try to change my
perspective because I can't actually bring change.
SBMC. He is risen.
He is risen indeed. This Easter, when we talk about
the resurrection, don't just say I know, I know.
This Easter, when you pray, don't just gloss over this hope
you have. This Easter, when you don't,
just don't. Just cope with the brokenness of
our world. Don't pretend everything's OK
when it's not. It's OK to call evil for what it
is. It's OK to call sin for what it
is. It's OK to call tragedy for what
it is. But don't stop there.
This Easter, when you pray, remember you speak to the God of
life. When you hope, you hope in the
glorious name of Jesus Christ. When you suffer, when you feel
like darkness is winning, do not forget the glory of your
wonderful Savior. He is not a coping method, He is
the genuine life altering, soul saving, eternity, winning hope
for your life and our entire world.
Amen. He is risen, He is risen indeed.
Amen. What can blind us to real hope
in the resurrection when death causes us to lose hope?
The resurrection reminds us Jesus's life that not even death
can stop. Let's pray.