If you or a loved one is suffering right now, I urge you to read the passage below on Lazarus and the resurrection. God is not dead. God loves you deeply. And God is not done with you!
Questions To Ask Yourself As You Read On
Every wonder why Jesus delayed in healing Lazarus? After all, He knew the pain it was causing both to Lazarus and Mary and Martha. Didn’t Jesus care? And if Jesus did care, why would a good, loving God allow His creatures to suffer, even for a moment!
The Resurrection Of Lazarus (Excerpts from John 2:1-45)
1 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days… 7 .…After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” …32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. 35 Jesus wept… 38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” 45 Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.
Takeaways
- God Wants All The Glory. (see v. 4) God is writing HIStory. God doesn’t want all the glory because He’s an insecure megalomaniac. Far from it! God wants the glory because hands down, He is the most worthy. God is total perfection. So by glorifying Himself He illuminates the sum total of all that is good. There’s simply no one who is better, or can do it better! God’s delay was to exalt Jesus first and foremost. Our comfort must always take a back seat to God’s glorious plan.
- Jesus Feels Your Pain. Jesus was deeply moved by the death of Lazarus. He even wept as He saw the suffering from all those who loved him. Jesus feels exactly the same when it’s you and you loved ones. He grieves and He wants to remove your pain.
- When God Gets The Glory He Yearns To Take You With Him. In this case the “you” was Mary, Martha, His disciples, numerous witnesses at the grave, and even Lazarus himself! When God writes His story, all for His glory, He never leaves His audience out in the cold. All the pain, all the suffering, all the seemingly needless delays…these have a grander, super divine, eternal purpose far bigger than we can imagine. And this purpose is to draw people closer to Him for their eternal benefit.
- God’s Delays Are Better Than Instant Healing. We all want to be relieved of pain, strife, sickness and addictions (whether mental, physical or spiritual). We all yearn for our hurts to be healed in an instant. Sometimes God will do just that! But with Lazarus, God waited. And yet God loved him so! Now imagine the impact of this story if it were rewritten without the extra suffering. What if instead of waiting 2 more days, God decided to be nice rather than good, and He immediately stopped all the sadness? And so Jesus quickly came to Lazarus who was sick but alive, and before his family, he placed his hands on him, and Lazarus was healed on the spot…But now what? Yes, a good deed was done. But no one saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, did they? No one saw that Jesus has power over death, did they? (Both physical death and eternal death.) No one got to witness that our God weeps with us….even when we’re going through tremendous suffering. But thanks to Jesus’ loving kindness, this is not what happened. To God’s glory and for our Salvation, God chose to let Lazarus die so that He would resurrect him! The pain caused by His delay was trivial because it was erased by millions of eternal blessings!
So What About Your Pain?
I don’t know your story. But I will tell you one of mine. For 20 years I was addicted to online pornography. I couldn’t’ stop. I couldn’t escape. And I knew it would destroy any chance of a Godly marriage. No amount of praying seemed to have any long term effects. So for 2 decades I was stuck.
But then one day in 2017, my laptop broke and suddenly I was free! Over the years I had many laptops. So I knew it was not an issue of just my last laptop being infused with demonic forces, etc. This was just Jesus!
I could not claim it was because I was good or smart or had the right program or technique. I knew to the core that this delay was ALL ABOUT JESUS AND NOT ABOUT ME.
But I would never have learned that if Jesus healed me 20 years earlier. He used these trials to demonstrate my helplessness. And to instill in me an inner core of compassion for others similarly trapped as I was.
God lovingly allowed my sufferings to convince me that my walk with God is not about my good works. It’s all about His grace. And so I can praise Him for His character when the times are good and when the times are lousy. Yes, while I was in the thralls of addiction, God seemed to be slow to act. But looking back, I can see now that God was right on time!
Good Songs
- Faithfully (Toby Mac)
- Running Back To You (Seph Schlueter)
- You Are Worthy (Sean Curran)
- The Earth Sings Worthy (Upperoom)
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