John 11:25-27, 39-44

John 11:25-27, 39-44
Theme: The Resurrection


Last week Pierre preached from Ezekiel’s prophecy regarding resurrecting dry bones and (we never planned this) I believe that this morning’s text has been providentially chosen to follow up on last Sunday.
As a young man, D. L. Moody was called upon suddenly to preach a funeral sermon. He hunted all through the Four Gospels trying to find one of Christ’s funeral sermons, but searched in vain. [Instead] He found that Christ broke up every funeral He ever attended. Death could not exist where He was. When the dead heard His voice they sprang to life [because] Jesus… [is] …the resurrection, and the life (John 11:25).

Someone might question the necessity or value of preaching the resurrection so soon after Easter….

The truth, is, we have not spent nearly enough time on the topic of the resurrection. In fact, I believe that the topic of the resurrection is conspicuous among modern evangelicals by its absence from our conversation and gospel presentations. We talk more about the gospel as a means of going to heaven as though a ghostly out of body eternal existence were the final destiny of our souls.

I believe that the absence of the doctrine of the resurrection and the misunderstandings concerning utter importance of Jesus’ resurrection betrays the modern church’s continued attachment to the religious and philosophical sentiments of our culture. After all, everyone believes in heaven. (In fact I believe more Christians understand reincarnation better than they do resurrection and would prefer reincarnation over resurrection simply due to a lack of understanding).

Without the doctrine of the Resurrection- there is no Christianity!

Christianity rises and falls on this doctrine. Before I explain why, let me relate this mornings’ text to the text Pierre preached last Sunday by contrasting Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus to that of Ezekiel’s resurrection of the dry bones (two things):

1. First notice that Ezekiel is referred to by God as the “Son of Man” (Ezekiel 37:3); the implication is of his fallen inferior and subordinate status to God.

In John’s gospel however, Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” (11 times) to signify (pointing to the fact) that Jesus is the epitome, and the quintessence, and the perfect embodiment of humanity. He had to be, or he could never be able to atone for the sins of humanity as our substitute (only a man could die in place of another man). Jesus said in John 8:28,
…“When you lift up the Son of Man [emphasis on his humanity], then you will know that I am He [that is the promised messiah], and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me [because in his human state he is completely dependant upon the will of his Father]….”

Therefore, not only was Jesus a man, he was a perfect man and the resurrection is a promise that one day we will also be perfect men and women, like Jesus- doing nothing of ourselves, but as we are taught by our Father.

This applies to the Christian life (to us in the here and now) because every day, as we walk closer and closer with God and strive more and more to do as he teaches us we are made more and more like his son into perfect expressions of humanity- from glory to glory- being made into the image of Jesus Christ which will be fully accomplished at the resurrection of our bodies.

Unfortunately, for some Christians (who take an apathetic approach to their relationship with Christ and live no better than the world) -if they are truly Christians at all- that transformation into Christ-likeness will require a lot more effort on the part of God than it will for those who strive for obedience in this life.

2. Another difference between Ezekiel and Jesus comes in the way that each man spoke: In Ezekiel’s case, he was a man commanding the dead to hear the voice of God; but in Jesus’ case, it was the voice of God!

Jews associated life with God who is the source of life. John 1:4 says that Jesus is life and in him is the life that gives light to men; Jesus gives life to whom he wills (5:21); the life that Jesus gives is eternal life and those who receive will never perish (10:28); and apart from Jesus there is no other hope of life because he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).
And this is eternal life, that [you] may know [the Father of Jesus], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom [He] sent. (John 17:3).

The difference between Ezekiel’s command that raised the dead and Jesus’ command is like the difference between a grain of sand and all the sand in the ocean… it’s like the difference between the number 1 and infinity…. It’s like the difference between a man and God.

Jesus’ prayer was not a prayer for God to raise Lazarus from the dead; it was a prayer of thanks giving glory to God!

Jesus is God (one with the Father) and he gives life to whomever he pleases and it pleased God/Jesus to give life to Lazarus just as it pleases him to give life to those of you who believe in his name this morning. Before you come to Jesus, your spirit is like Laszarus’s dead Body, unable to raise itself, much less remove your own burial shrouds. God must first intervene to unveil your eyes and command your soul through the preaching of the gospel to be born again! –That’s Good News!

Jesus is God. That is implied in his command to Lazarus: “Lazarus, Come forth!” It has been speculated that if Jesus had not said Lazarus’s name, all of the graves in Bethany (perhaps the world) would have been emptied that day. And likewise, when Jesus calls you, he calls you by name!

But Jesus’ divinity is not just implied in this passage, it is very explicitly sated in verse 25: “I AM the resurrection and the Life…”!

There’s one thing that these two resurrections have in common though- in both cases the people who were raised eventually died again and their bodies were returned a second time to the grave. Their resurrection was resuscitation not a resurrection like the one promised to us because one day, we will be resurrected and then our bodies will never ever get cancer, never have a stroke, never age and decay, never become riddled with disease, never ever die again.

That’s not just some vague religious hope- or some myth like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders- it’s a promised and established fact.

It’s promised by Jesus- God himself. And if you doubt Jesus’ promise you got bigger problems than the certainty of the resurrection.

But Jesus is not some myth. No one doubts that he really lived- what they doubt is the claim of his divinity and his ability to forgive sins.

Nor does anyone doubt that Jesus died. The Bible says that he not only died, but he died for our sins.

And no skeptic has ever been able to disprove that Jesus rose from the grave- that’s why they invent idiotic and easily disproven conspiracy theories like the Davinci Code.

Conclusion:
Let me conclude by saying what Jesus’ resurrection means to us (4 things). Let’s meditate on them as we prepare to come to the Lord’s table.
1. Jesus’ resurrection means that Jesus is a man because men die and in order for Jesus to be raised from the dead, he must first have died.
2. Jesus’ resurrection means that Jesus was also God (not 50/50- he was fully man and full God) because only God could have the sins of the world nailed to him and suffer their consequence (death) and still be able to rise from the dead.
3. Jesus’ resurrection is the most tangible, indisputable, irrefutable, beyond doubt, legally established evidence that he has won the victory over death and sin so that your sins are truly forgiven if you place you faith in Jesus Christ.
4. Finally, Jesus’ resurrection means that one day you too will be raised from the dead- Jesus is the first born from the grave. One day, you too will put on immortality- incontaminability, incorruptibility and then there will be no more pain, no more tears, no more loneliness- just joy!

After Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded in the tower they found in his Bible these true and striking lines, written the night before his death:
Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
All the things of this world he had lost, but he had kept his faith; and faith spoke to him of a hope and life beyond the grave. —C. E. Macartney