Sermon Tone Analysis

There has been a death.

In the Jewish culture, the emotions are allowed to flow freely.

There has been grieving.

There has been wailing.

There has been comforting and consoling.

Another individual has met the ultimate end of life that awaits everyone there who is mourning and grieving and wishing they could have one more day with their friend Lazarus, one more meal with their brother, Lazarus.

It's the fourth day since his illness brought his death.

His sisters most likely were the ones who wrapped him in cloths.

Men could wrap dead bodies of other men, but the women could also do that, and often were the ones responsible.

In this small family that we know of, it's quite possible that Martha and Mary had been involved in putting those tight bindings around him…not so much as mummification as the Egyptians were very good at doing, but rather linen cloths to enclose on his body aromatic spices to help hide the decay of the body.

No embalming as we do today, the body was just allowed to decompose.

In fact, the way the process worked, they would have a tomb (often a family tomb).

They would lay the body in that tomb on a shelf, on a platform inside a carved tomb.

In this case, in Bethany, likely a limestone cave that is something that can be worked and carved out.

They would then cover that up with a stone, often a rolling stone that would roll in front of the tomb.

It would be sealed, and the body would lay there for one year.

After one year, the flesh had essentially decomposed.

The tomb would be opened back up and the family, the loved ones, would go in and gather the bones…all that was remaining of the body and they would place it in a small, often again, a limestone box container no longer than the leg bone and just tall enough to write on there the name of the deceased, perhaps to carve some designs on there.

The elaborateness of this ossuary box depended on the wealth of the family.

They would place the bones into this ossuary and would leave it in the tomb in another area.

Often they would stack them one on top of another.

That allowed them simply to reuse the tomb, sort of a two-step process where generations could be buried in the same tomb in that way.

So Lazarus is laid in the tomb, and there he stays not just the first or second day, but to the fourth day.

Now historians tell us that four days is significant.

By the middle of the first century, the rabbis and one in particular is recorded as teaching that the spirit (now this isn't biblical, but this was just the rabbinical teaching) that the spirit hovered around the body for three days.

On the fourth day, it departed.

Once it saw that it wasn't going to return, it would depart.

That was something that had been a legend that had been taught in Jewish circles.

It may be that was even around during the days of Christ.

It would certainly present itself shortly thereafter in written form, so perhaps that was something they understood.

So by the fourth day then, the spirit (to all the locals) wasn't even there.

That, I think, plays a significant role in what Christ is going to do.

I've shared with you over the last few weeks that Mary and Martha, while Lazarus was still sick, had sent word to Jesus that the one whom You love is sick.

Jesus had sent word back to them that his sickness will not end in death, but that it is for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified through it.

Through all of this, the amazing thing is that he still dies.

This Teacher, this Messiah, this One whom they trusted, whom they loved, they had His words just going over and over again in their mind…what could He mean, this sickness will not end in death?

After the first day, the second day, the third, and surely by the fourth day when Jesus arrives at the edge of town, the grieving, the wailing, the consoling, the comforting, the darkness, the sadness, the despondency, the hopelessness…these are the colors that paint the scene when Jesus comes.

You know that Martha's first speech to Jesus, and I don't want to rehearse all of that again, but one question Jesus asked her, He tells her, He says, "I am the resurrection and the life."

He says to her that, "He who believes in Me even if he dies, yet he shall live."

And, "He who lives and believes in Me shall never die."

Then He asks Martha, "Do you believe this?"

She said, "Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."

She expressed a perfect response of who Jesus was and who she was trusting.

She was the one who said, "I believe even now that if You ask God, that He'll do something great…even now."

Mary comes and expresses her grief to the Lord as well, and then Jesus asked where they laid him.

In the process, they come to the tomb where Lazarus is, and outside that tomb the crowd gathers.

The other mourners, those from Jerusalem who were friends with this family, no doubt, had gathered to comfort and console them.

Mary is with Christ.

Apparently, Martha comes, and Jesus comes to this tomb.

He is moved again.

Just as we saw last week, that word for the snorting of the nose, He sees the tomb of Lazarus, and again that indignation, that righteous indignation grabs a hold of Him from the inside.

I believe certainly at this moment it's the indignation not just at the lack of faith, but just at death itself.

My friends, Jesus didn't come to the tomb of Lazarus to build a monument to Lazarus.

He didn't come to carve a tombstone.

He came to crush the tomb itself.

He came to crush death.

He came to show that He had power over the ultimate enemy, over death itself.

The scene is one of darkness and gloom and mourning just like it is in our day with our funerals, with our memorial services, the sadness, the missing, the despondency, the hopelessness, the loss.

But when Christ comes, there is something different.

There is something that takes place when Jesus is there, something you don't see, that you don't feel, that you don't sense in the normal expression over death.

What I want to just leave with you today, what I want you to understand today as we look at just a couple of the verses in our text today is that Jesus is the God of the living.

He is the God of the living, not of the dead.

There is a place where Jesus will tell the one who wanted to follow Him that he must first go home and take care of his father's passing.

Jesus tells him, "Let the dead bury the dead.

You come and follow Me.

I didn't come here to magnify or worry about death."

Now that sounds cruel to us because humanly and culturally, we see death as such an important part of life, but I want you to know that Jesus is not the God of death, He is the God of the living.

When He speaks, life breaks out.

When Jesus speaks, life breaks out.

His words that He has given to us are words of life, not death.

They're words of living.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 1, /"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets…"/ Notice in verse 2, /"has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…"/ That's Jesus, but notice this phrase, /"whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world."/

It was Jesus who made the world.

When Jesus speaks, life happens.

Jesus speaks to a formless, void planet, and life breaks out on that planet.

Jesus speaks to a dead, calloused heart, and life erupts in that heart.

The words of Christ are the words of life.

If I say that over and over and over again, it's because that is simply what I want you to begin to realize with these words, they are words that bring forth and usher life.

Jesus stands before the tomb, and He tells Martha, /"Take away the stone."/

Now that's Martha's family's tomb.

It's really going to be up to Martha to command that stone to be removed.

Martha, being of the character that she is, she shows us a lapse of faith in this moment, but it's no different than any of us.

We who have confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, we have those moments, do we not, where our faith wanes.

We're no different from Martha who turns to Jesus and says, "Lord, He has been in there four days.

There is odor.

If you turn that stone back, the odor of his decaying body will waft into this procession of people."

Now that shows us that not only is Lazarus dead, but his body is decomposing.

His body is coming apart.

If you've had the misfortune to be around a body that has been dead for several days, even an animal body, you know that smell.

You know what decomposition looks like.

You know that something that has been dead for four days is beyond repair.

It's beyond hope.

It's beyond any help.

Jesus says to Martha, "Martha, I know, but did I not tell you that if you believe you would see the glory of God? Remember when I told you that if you believed that even if you die you shall live, that if you live and believe that, you shall never die?

I asked you if you believe this.

Do you remember that?

Do you remember Me telling you that?"

We don't have Martha's response, but what we do know is that the stone is rolled away.

So she obviously must have said, "Yes, Lord, You are the Messiah.

You are my Lord.