Good morning. It's a man named Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. He died in a Nazi war prison.
He was a pastor in World War 2 or during World War 2 that
turned rebel against the German army.
And he wrote a lot during his time in a prison camp.
Here's one of the things he wrote on his way to execution.
It said only the suffering God can help.
A God who is invulnerable cannot save us, for he cannot truly
understand us. But Christ suffered, Christ
wept, Christ died, and therefore Christ can meet us in our
darkest hour facing execution. Bonhoeffer didn't need a
distant, powerful God. He needed a God who understood
his suffering. In our story today, we're going
to be back in John 11. Jesus tears at the tomb of
Lazarus. Show us a God with both power
and compassion. Welcome to Resurrection Church,
whether you're a regular here or you just showed up and, and
you're not even sure if you believe any of this stuff that's
in the Bible. Today, today, today, we're going
to see some things about Jesus that I, I think will change how
we understand his heart and his power.
So if you're, if you're skeptical about Christianity or
welcome, I want to introduce you to a man named Jesus, the son of
the living God. We're in a week 3 of a series
that we called What If There's more?
And we're going to be back in John 11.
We're kind of tracking this story.
Jesus finds out that a really good friend of his is sick and
he actually delays going to see him and Lazarus dies.
And so it's, it's kind of a wild story because Jesus is actually,
you know, up until this point, been doing all these miracles,
healing people. He heals people of leprosy,
heals people of blindness. He's doing miracle after
miracle. And then all of a sudden he
finds out his really close friend is sick.
And he intentionally waits and doesn't go.
And he even tells his disciples that he's waiting so that his
friend Lazarus can die and that because of that, they will get
to see God's glory in that moment.
And if you think, man, that sounds kind of weird, it is.
But but there's a method here. There's a method to the madness.
You'll see it kind of just a minute as we walk through it, I
hope. Here's the big idea.
If you get nothing else from today, if you're going to take
one thing away, I just just think about this.
You got to risk a mess to expect a miracle.
We're going to pick this up last week when Shawn was preaching,
Jesus has met and talked to 1 of Lazarus, 2 Sisters.
Her name was Martha and we're going to see the other one Mary
today here starting in verse 28 of John 11.
If you're in the Bible, go ahead and open that up.
Otherwise we'll put on the screen.
Here's what it says. When she Martha had said this,
she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, the
teacher is here and 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.
So in the 1st century in this in this culture, grieving was a
communal affair. The whole community is grieving
over Lazarus death. And it's not just her or the
family, it's the neighbors, it's the community, it's a host of
people. They see her leave, they're
going with to grieve. Verse 32 Now when Mary came to
where Jesus was and saw him catch this, she fell at his feet
saying to him, Lord, if you'd been there, my brother would not
have died. Now Mary and Martha are sisters,
but they have vastly different personalities.
Anyone have kids where man they are not like at all.
That's him for kids. He got some very different
personalities. Mary and Martha very different.
We know this because we there's a whole story about them in Luke
10. Martha is the Super logical,
very rational, like taskmaster get stuff done and and Mary is
the feeler, the empath, very emotional.
But in this moment, what Mary says, Lord, if you'd been here,
my brother would not have died is exactly the same as her
sister. If you go back to verse 21 last
week when we covered that, the logical sister said the exact
same thing. She said, Lord, if you'd been
here, my brother wouldn't have died.
What they're actually saying in this is this moment is this
Jesus? You had the power to stop this
and you didn't do anything. It's a question inside that
statement. You didn't do anything.
Verse 33, When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had
come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved.
You can underline that in your Bible, deeply moved in His
spirit and greatly troubled. Now in the original language
this was written in that term, deeply moved was one word.
That word is Embry Maomi, and that word literally means snort
like a horse. It means righteous indignation.
He's angry. He's mad.
Who's he angry with? He's not angry with the sisters.
They're his friends and he understands the grieving that
they're going through and even the questions.
But who's he? Why is he angry?
You see, he's not angry at at the sisters at all.
He he's angry at death. You think that seems weird?
Well, death is the enemy that Jesus came to defeat.
Death is the ultimate consequence of sin.
The Bible says we live in a fallen world and the consequence
of our disobedience to God is that death entered the world and
that was the consequence. And we couldn't fix death.
We couldn't solve death. So he sent Jesus.
And so in this moment, and Jesus is, is both fully man and fully
God, right? This is a, this is a, a
beautiful nature about Jesus, which means that he's come to
earth for this eternal supernatural purpose of
conquering death. But in this moment, he's also
faced with this this the human result of this cosmic struggle.
Death has has taken his friend, he hears the Son of God, but he
has human friends, human relationships.
He's dealing with the human consequences of this, this
eternal, this huge thing. And so here's what Jesus is
going to say, verse 34, he's going to look at this and he
says, where have you laid him? Where is it?
Take me there. They said to him, Lord, come and
see. And then verse 35, Jesus wept.
So the Jews said see how he loved him, but some of them said
could not he who opened the eyes of a blind man also have kept
this man from dying. Jesus wept.
It's the shortest verse in the Bible.
Now, not only do we know if you've read the story, but but,
but Jesus knows in this moment that he is about to raise
Lazarus from the dead. And so it's it's kind of here.
Here's I guess the question I have.
I think a lot of people ask this when they see this, if Jesus
knows that he's about to fix the problem and, and everyone's
about to be overjoyed because Lazarus is going to be alive,
then why in the world is Jesus crying?
Nothing weird, right? Why don't you just go raise
Lazarus and everyone can cheer and we can have a party.
Why is he going to why does he cry?
And so here's here's where I want you to stop.
I don't want you to gloss over or miss this and read this too
fast. Just press pause.
I don't care what you know about Jesus, what you think you've
heard about Jesus, your, your current understanding of Jesus.
You need to understand this. Jesus is not some puppet master
who's just off in some distant place controlling all of our
lives like some cold, irrational, logical person.
Jesus is not distant at all. Jesus is right here, today, in
this place. He has a heart.
It is gentle and lowly. It beckons us to come to Him and
seek comfort and rest and protection.
Jesus doesn't just love the Instagram you, the 1 you put out
there to make everything seem like it's OK.
Jesus loves us deeply in our grief, in our failure.
He's not cold and calculated in this moment.
He he, he. We see his empathy and his
compassion for this family. Now here's why.
Because Jesus loves them just like he loves us.
And love is a choice. It's not an emotion, it's not
feelings, it's a choice. And and when you choose to love,
there's always a cost involved. This is a couple weeks ago.
My wife and I had our opportunity, first opportunity
ever, to welcome a foster kid into our home.
And so we we drive down on Saturday night to the Jameson
Center where they're keeping these kids for emergency
placement. And before we walk in the room
to meet this 11 year old boy, we've already chosen to love
him. We haven't met him.
He hasn't earned it, hasn't done anything.
We're making a choice to love him.
That's why it's so silly when people talk about like, oh, I
fell in love. You can't fall in love.
Billions are emotions. They rise and fall like the
ocean waves. This isn't a Hallmark movie.
This is real life. We choose to love by doing so,
that means we can love in good moments and in bad moments, in
difficult ones. And it's going to cost us
something to make that choice. And because love is a choice, I,
I choose to wake up every day and love my wife.
Now she makes that relatively easy, but I'm still choosing.
When I choose to love someone, that means I, I, I, I laugh with
them, but I also cry with them. I go through the good and I go
through the bad and I'm opening myself up to the risk of
betrayal, to the risk of of failure to the to hurt the ups
and downs of their life, not just mine.
That's what Jesus has done with this family, but that's also how
Jesus chooses to love us. He opens his heart up to what
you and I are going through. That means that that you haven't
tasted failure and shame on your own that that horrible,
scandalous mistake that you made Jesus, Jesus saw that you didn't
hide that from anyone. He weeps, he comforts, he mourns
and while he does, he calls us into the light into repentance
while walking with us. So that that horrible secret
that I, I think I hid from everyone, that is, not only does
he know all about that, He's calling me to repentance to a
better way. You know why?
Because His grace is more scandalous than my sin.
Do you understand how scandalous this love is?
That he would know my every thought and my every deed and
love me anyway. So he weeps with them, even
though he's about to move in power and change everything
because he loves them. We sing this like, oh, every
Sunday we sing this and. Oh how he loves us.
Oh, oh, how he loves us, how he loves us.
All sing with me. He is jealous for me.
Love's like a hurricane. I am a.
Tree bending beneath. The weight of his.
Wind and mercy, when all. Of a sudden, I am unaware of
these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realize just how
beautiful you are and how great your affections are.
For me and. Oh how he loves us.
Oh, oh how he loves us. How he loves us all.
Jesus loves you, He loves you so much more than you think he
does. And in this moment he chooses to
walk through this with them and he weeps just like he does with
you and I, but he also moves. Verse 38 Then Jesus deeply moved
again, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone lay
against it. And Jesus said, take away the
stone, Martha, the logical one, the sister of the dead man said
to him, Lord, by this time they'll be an odor because it's
been 4 days. And Jesus said to her, did I not
tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?
Practical, Martha, think about it.
Jesus, the author and creator of all things.
It says that all things that were made were made and are held
together through him by the power of his word.
He's standing in front of death, eye to eye.
That tombstone moment, right? I'll be here.
Huckleberry. He's like, move away the stone
and Martha's like Jesus, I don't know if you know this or not,
but it's going to smell. Jesus.
I don't know if you know this or not.
It's too late. It's going to be a mess.
Jesus, he's far too gone. I can relate to Martha really
well. My life is a constant struggle
between wanting to be expectant that God is going to move in
power and and my my rational worldly intellect telling me
that God can't break the laws of the universe, the ones he
created. God can't do that.
God can't make me gentle. God can't save marriages.
God can't fix my finances. God can't change that person
that I love. God can't.
How often do you and I sit in a moment where God is about to
move in power and all he's doing is waiting for a simple act of
obedience from us and we stall and we drag our feet and we make
excuses. God can't.
The reality for Martha is the reality for us.
You got to risk a mess, to expect a miracle.
This is the formula of the gospel.
Jesus doesn't ask me to fix myself, to fix my situation, to
save my marriage, to resurrect something from death.
I can't. If I could, I'd have done it
already. It gives you and I the same
simple steps that he gave Martha.
Take it to Jesus. Choose to believe.
Move the rock, take it to Jesus. Choose to believe, move the
rock. And for the Lord's sake, can we
stop telling Jesus what he can't do?
He's Jesus. Can we start acting and living
like he's God? We sing it every Sunday.
What if we lived life like it were true?
If you're you're watching online or you're here today and you
called Jesus King and, and I realize not everyone here does,
but but listen, if you, if you do, that's you, then there was
at least one moment in your life where you emotionally and
intellectually just surrendered everything to God and you
dropped to your knees and you just cried out God, I that's it.
I'm not enough. I can't do it.
I need help. And at that moment, God was
like, yes, now I got something to work with.
You see, up until then you kept thinking you just needed a
little Jesus. And at some point you finally
went, actually, I think I need all Jesus.
And that was the moment. And in that moment you met the
God of the impossible. You realize that's the way the
Bible talks about him, that he is the God of the impossible,
right? Like it's what he does.
He is in the business of the impossible.
And friends, business is good. All of the Bible OK from the
beginning to the end is story after story of God architecting
the situation to be more impossible so that you would
understand that when he shows up, it wasn't you, it was him.
So from Abraham to Moses to David to the ragtag disciples
that are like all rejects, he does it on purpose.
If you turn to Judges chapter 6, there's a story about a guy
named Gideon. Now here's the thing, Gideon is
a complete coward in the moment. He's hiding in a wine press.
And if you ever think that God is not sarcastic, read Judges 6.
An Angel shows up to Gideon and goes hail mighty man of valor.
And Gideon's hiding and he's like what?
Who? What?
And he's like, yeah, I'm going to choose you to lead a
rebellion against this invading army of 135,000 soldiers.
I'm sorry. What?
And so Gideon spends like 2 chapters being like, running
away, coming up with excuses, all the reasons he can't do it.
I wasn't called. I'm not gifted.
I'll prey on it. All that stuff that you say.
I'm sorry. You meddling now, Pastor, And he
finally does it and and he, he calls people to war and he'd get
32,000 men to fight. 135,000 men.
You don't have to be a math major.
No, that's not very good. And God's like, yeah, too many.
He says, listen, if you're scared, go home.
Well brothers, I'm out. So there's only 10,000 people
left. That gets 135,000.
It's 14 to one odds. And God's like, yeah, you got
too many men. He leaves him with 300 men to
fight 135,000 and not the 300 from the movie.
They don't have the cool ABS or all the baby oil or anything.
No, these are guys that are such rejects they can't even drink
water properly. 300 why? Why?
Because the purpose is that when God moves, there would be no way
you could miss the fact that it was Him.
He's showing you His glory. There's no way Gideon gets to
take credit for that. If you're sitting here, look
around for just a second. Go ahead and look around.
Look around, over the past 18 months, over 100 people have
come to Christ here. We didn't do that.
Are you kidding me, man? I can't change someone's heart.
I can't even get my kids to wash the dishes.
God started moving and we saw it and went, let's move the rock.
That's what happens. This is the formula.
Just like Gideon, obedient coward, really good God,
miracles. Look what happens.
Verse 41. They obey.
So they took away the stone. You know what they did?
They moved the stone. They didn't fix Lazarus, they
didn't go like do CPR on him still dead.
They just obeyed in the little thing God asked them to do and
they risked a mess. They risked a smell, they risked
that it wasn't going to go well. They chose to believe.
And God responds by revealing His glory.
Listen, in how many ways of my life, of your life are we
fighting and delaying and slowing God down to move in a
supernatural way? Because I choose not to believe,
I choose to doubt. I choose worldly thinking.
I choose not I, I choose to place my faith in, in the
thinking of this world rather than the next World.
What if I chose to believe? And Jesus lifted his eyes up and
said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
I knew that you always hear me. But I said this on account of
the people standing around that they may believe that you sent
me. I love that he's captioning his
own moment. When he had said these things.
He cried out with a loud voice. Lazarus, come out.
The man who had died came out. OK, hold on.
I want you to see two things here.
First, he didn't have to touch him.
He didn't need a magic wand. This was no like Wingardia,
Leviosa, Harry Potter moment. He's the Lord of Lords and the
King of Kings. His voice has power that holds
all things together. He said.
Lazarus come out and a dead man came alive.
OK? Number two, it was a family
tomb, so he doesn't say Lazarus. It's possible we got, like, the
zombie apocalypse going on. Could have been like a family
reunion right there. So he's very specific.
Lazarus, come out now. Here's what it says.
The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with
linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth.
OK. Can you, I mean what?
And not, you're thinking probably like white stuff.
No, no, no. This cloth would have been the
throwaway stuff. It'd been the worst of the
worst. The stained, gross garments.
That's all they had leftover. Most, most of these folks were
poor. It's the leftover nasty garments
that are all wrapped all around this body.
And I don't care if he was dead or not, or he stunk or not.
But those kind of garments in Palestine, Jerusalem, in the in
for four days are nasty, OK? And here he comes.
Here what Jesus says, unbind him and let him go.
Now I want you to see that picture right here, OK?
And here's why. Because when God called my name
and he woke me up from death to life, I still stunk.
I was clothed in death. I was walking the path of this
world. I had old habits and old hurts
and old hang ups. And I might have been saved, but
I sure didn't look like it or act like it, or probably smell
like it. So even though God had freed me
from the bondage of sin, I needed other people to teach me
how to live life in the freedom of Christ, how to pursue
holiness, how to walk in the light, how to live surrendered
to Jesus, not the flesh. See, not only did Lazarus not
have the power of raising himself from the dead, even
after he's been raised, he's stuck and bound and needs help
getting loose. He needed help becoming unbound.
He needed others. And you know what?
You and I do too. I had someone ask me the other
day who holds you accountable? And I was like, oh, and I have a
list of people. People ask me hard questions in
my life to help me walk in freedom, to help me pursue
holiness, to encourage me when I'm struggling, to poke at me
when my life is getting a little too close to the guardrails.
They know I struggle with gentleness, so they ask me about
those things. They know I struggle with
control issues and wanting to. I have to get out of my way
sometimes. I want to control everything.
When I quit drinking, they asked me about it every single week
because I needed it. So they're watching, they're
checking on me, they're listening, they're keeping a
close eye on areas that I struggle.
I got 2 calls this week just checking on me.
Probing questions. Hey, what's your schedule like?
Are you pursuing your wife? Why?
Because they love me. And here's the facts.
I need Christ and I need his church.
And you do too. Maybe Lazarus could have freed
himself eventually all by himself, but man, what a
frustrating and dumb way to go about it.
Like, no, no, I got it. I got it.
Like people are here to help. Can you imagine, guys?
The Christian life is not a solo event, it's a team sport.
There going to be days in our lives when we stop being
expectant that God's going to move and we get all tied up in
our old nature depending on the flesh, not being expected that
God's going to move. And in these moments, we need
others to speak truth into our life.
What about you, believer in Christ?
What's that thing that you've given up for dead and gone and
stopped expecting God to move? You see, the formula of the
Bible is actually really consistent.
We're going to take it to Jesus, choose to believe and then obey
in the little things. Just move the rock and this
formula, it is the gospel. It's how the gospel works.
If you're not familiar with this term, the gospel, give me two
minutes as we wrap this up to explain what that means.
The Bible says that every one of us lives in a fallen world, dead
in our sin. Dead is Lazarus in the grave,
enslaved to sin, worse than he was wrapped up in those
garments. But God, in mercy and grace,
sent his Son Jesus to do what we could not do.
To live a perfect life, blameless, and then to go to the
cross and die as an innocent man in order to pay the debt that we
had accrued through rebellion. So that we could be forgiven, So
that we could be made clean, so that we could have a
relationship with God that had been broken.
And that's what happens when we surrender our will and life to
Jesus. The Bible tells us how to do
this in Romans 10/9 and 10. It says this because if you
confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. For with the heart 1 believes in
is justified, and with the mouth 1 confesses and is saved.
So if you would like to surrender your life to God
today, I want to give you an opportunity to take a next step.
Would you all please bow your heads and close your eyes for
just a brief moment? If you're willing to ask God for
forgiveness and salvation with every eye closed and every head
bowed, I just want you to to quietly or even just silently
repeat this prayer after me. Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner and I
can't save myself. I want you to save me and adopt
me into your family, so I surrender everything to you.
Be my Lord. Please Jesus, if you prayed to
surrender your life to Jesus for the very first time right now,
would you be brave and raise your hand for me to see?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Put your hands down in Jesus
name, Amen. Real quick right up here.
If you have given your life to Christ in the service or in this
last week, I just want you to hear something.
Welcome to the family in a moment.
When we respond to this service, we're going to sing a song.
Our prayer team is going to be up here doing some prayer work
with you guys. And, and if you've given your
life to Christ and not told anyone about it or it just
happened, there's going to be some tables in the back that say
I raised my hand. We'd love for you to run back
there during our song and say hi and tell somebody the decision
you made. We have a gift for you.
We want to walk with you and celebrate with you.
But for those of us that have followed Christ maybe for a
while, I have a challenge for us and I have an encouragement.
It's a challenge and encouragement.
Here it is. Once you ask these questions, I
think they're at the bottom of your hand out.
What is something you're treating with logic instead of
expectation? You're being Martha instead.
We need to look to Christ. What is something you're
treating with logic instead of expectation?
You should think about that. Here's the second thing.
What is something you've written off as dead and gone that you
need to give to Jesus, the God of the impossible?
I challenge you to choose to believe, to give it to Jesus.
Then move the rock, obey him in the small promptings, and expect
the Creator of all creation to come do the miraculous.
It's worth it. Taking it to Jesus might mean
stop trying to figure it out and actually pray, write it down,
confess it out loud, get on your knees and say I can't fix this
but you can. I've been so many areas of my
life that this is true. When the financial struggles of
the church did a couple months ago, like I don't wanted to jump
in and just fix everything all by myself.
And I had to come to this realization that I didn't have
the power to control at all. What I needed to actually do is
pray to the God of the harvest and obey God in the small things
that He's asking me to do. And I expect that God will
continue to do great things through this church, not because
we've earned it, but because we believe and we expect that He
will do that. And so we're going to show up,
expect that God's going to do something impossible, and we're
going to move the rock. Maybe for you, you've been a
believer for some time, but you realize that your pursuit of
Christ has not been what you want it to be.
And today might be a day that you want to rededicate your,
your life, your your journey, your pursuit of Christ.
And so that's you as as our prayer team comes up, we're
going to pray for people we love praying for you.
Whether you're hurting, whether you need healing for any reason,
we want to pray for you. But if you feel like today's the
day you need to rededicate your life, we'd love if you come down
and we'll pray for you for that as well.
Our prayer team is going to be up here.
You move as the Lord leads you. Would you stand?
We're going to sing a song and then we're going to participate
in the Lord's Supper. If you made a decision for
Christ, once you go to those back tables, if you need prayer,
love to pray for you, you move as the Lord leads you.