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[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Well, I really appreciate Pastor Bill getting sick. I'm sure he doesn't appreciate that.

[0:13] But no, it's an awesome opportunity to be with you again and to fill in. And the Friday after our last visit, my wife came down with COVID.

[0:33] But she called in and, you know, the doctor said, oh, no, that's probably some other bug. It's not COVID. And we didn't think anything of it until Wednesday, right, something like that, when she couldn't taste anything or smell anything.

[0:48] So she got tested and came back positive. And, you know, 14 days hidden inside the house. That was probably more torture than being sick, especially with the little guy.

[1:07] But he didn't get sick. I didn't get sick. Our older daughter did not get sick. Maybe it's because we got sick earlier. Who knows? It's just the weirdest thing, isn't it?

[1:18] Anyway, so it's good to be here and pray for Pastor Bill. Today we're going to look at John chapter 11, from death to life.

[1:33] John chapter 11. My approach is going to be to do a running commentary, explain some of the things that are going on in this chapter.

[1:55] But as you see, if you have a Bible with titles and everything, this is about the death of Lazarus. Lazarus. And many of you probably already know what happened and what that's about.

[2:09] But we'd like to do a deep dive, a little deeper dive into what's going on, what happened then, and the reason why this happened. And we'll look at it in a moment.

[2:21] Years ago, right after my father retired, he got a job with Elizabeth Kubla Ross. I don't know if you're familiar with that name.

[2:32] But she became the expert on grief and wrote many, many books. She's not a Christian. In fact, she was, I don't even know if she was an agnostic, did not believe in any afterlife.

[2:46] And so my dad, working with her, she developed essentially the idea that there were stages of grief, which they have since now determined that's all bunk.

[2:57] And there are really no particular stages in a particular time of grief. Grief is grief. And everybody goes through grief differently. So he was convinced, and we never talked about spiritual things much, but he did mention a couple of times that he was convinced, you know, when you die, you die, and that's it.

[3:19] That's all. And, you know, we're in a time when there have been a lot of people who have died just in this nation. I think the count is near 500,000, you know, half a million, something like that.

[3:35] But my family and I have known people who died of COVID. And it's really inexplicable.

[3:47] You know, how do you explain somebody who's rather healthy and all of a sudden, you know, in a few days, a couple of weeks later, they're dead. And old and young and people who had no problems, health problems, and people who have lots of health problems.

[4:05] And so death is kind of right there. It's staring us in the face, perhaps more so than we've experienced as a nation in a long, long time. Even in wars, death happens over there, right?

[4:19] Except in the Civil War. But here, death is here with our friends and family and neighbors and people around us and on the news. And it's always staring us in the face.

[4:31] Well, death was a big deal back then, too, in the day of Jesus when he was here on earth. Because they were dealing with it all the time. They didn't have the, you know, the urgent care doctors.

[4:44] They didn't have emergency room. They didn't have any of that. At best, they had some, like Dr. Luke, who practiced some type of medicine, but it wasn't very effective.

[4:58] And most of it was based on superstition. The Jews, in particular, believed that if you got sick, it was because your parents had done something wrong and sinned.

[5:10] And they were passing it on to you. Or you had sinned, and therefore you're sick. Or you had come across a demon.

[5:21] You had to make sure, things like, you had to wash your hands. And the reason why they washed their hands, it wasn't so much because of the ceremonial aspect.

[5:35] They didn't understand that it was to wash away germs. You washed your hands to wash away demons, in case you happened to run across demons. If you walked between two palm trees that were about 12 feet apart, then you were probably encountering a demon.

[5:55] There were many, many different ways that you can catch a demon, and with a demon came sickness. Leprosy was caused by demons. So they banished lepers, not because they thought it was contagious, but because they didn't want to be around demonically influenced people.

[6:17] So most diseases that they encountered were just horrendous and awful. I have on Facebook now, I guess about 200 or 300 Facebook friends from Africa, different parts of Africa.

[6:32] And, you know, they live in third world countries. You know, they have first world mindsets, mentalities. You know, they're brilliant people, godly people. And yet, their conditions are really miserable.

[6:46] So when people get sick, they get scared. So this, if you can well imagine that, you know, take all the doctors and all the medicine and all the understanding of why we get sick and how it happens and take all that away and think that perhaps there's something else going on like demons.

[7:05] And you're finding people, usually if your child lasts longer than three or four years, then you kind of didn't have to hold your breath any longer.

[7:16] Because it was very common for children to die before their fourth and fifth, third, fourth, and fifth birthdays. Or if you were over 50, the average age was 50.

[7:31] People didn't last longer than 50 years old back then. So if you were 60, 70, you were old, really old. If you were 80, man, you were ancient. But, you know, that's just the way it was then.

[7:45] So here we have Lazarus. Lazarus, as we know, has been a friend of Jesus. We don't know the circumstances, how they met, when they met, how often they got together, you know, where they partied.

[7:59] We don't know much about them. But we do know that Mary and Martha were sisters of Lazarus. And so far as we know, they weren't married. But they were good friends of Jesus.

[8:09] If you can imagine being a friend of Jesus and not necessarily a disciple of Jesus. What a privilege that is. So here we have Lazarus who gets sick.

[8:23] Now a certain man was sick. Lazarus of Bethany. The town of Mary and her sister Martha. Notice they're the ones who are more popular. They have the reputation.

[8:34] It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.

[8:51] Isn't that rather remarkable, the kind of relationship that they had? They recognized it and they said, Jesus, you love your friend. He's sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of Man may be glorified through it.

[9:13] Father, just give us now eyes to see and ears to hear and to really grasp hold of the awesome messages that you have in this passage.

[9:24] Speak to our hearts in a way that would encourage us and speak in such a way that we would not fear death, even as it stares us in the face. Thank you for it. Thank you for Jesus and what he did.

[9:36] And thank you for the testimony of Martha and Mary and Lazarus. Amen. It's interesting. He says, Jesus says he's talking to whomever he's talking to.

[9:48] This sickness that Lazarus has is not unto death. So they probably went, oh, good. He's not going to die. But what is it for?

[9:59] He said, this sickness is for the glory of God. Now, that's a rather odd thing for Jesus to say. If he knew anything about the culture and he knew what the Sadducees said and the Pharisees said and the culture said, sickness was never from God unless it was an absolute punishment.

[10:18] It was always from Satan or sin. Period. Period. So, you know, this is kind of a stark contrast. This is for the glory of God.

[10:30] How's this going to work out? I don't know. If I believed what they believed and I was with Jesus at the time and he said this about his friend, Lazarus says, well, that's kind of a weird thing to say about your friend.

[10:42] You know, maybe even judge Jesus. What? You don't care? But, you know, that's the mystery of it all. There are certainly disclosed and undisclosed issues in life and purposes of God in sin and suffering, right?

[10:58] We don't know what's going behind the backdrop. We don't know why people go through what they go through. It's God's business. It should be nice if he'd tell us sometimes, but he doesn't.

[11:12] Yet sin has brought misery and sickness and evil and death into the world. We do everything we can to get rid of sickness and death and evil and misery.

[11:22] So then he says, then it says in verse five, now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

[11:32] Well, what a rather assuring. He cared. I would dare say he empathized with them. He was not nonchalant.

[11:44] He was really concerned about their welfare and who they are and what they were going through. He loved them. And so when he heard that Lazarus was sick, here's a weird thing.

[12:00] He stayed two more days in the place where he was. I mean, you would expect he hears that Lazarus is sick and they've asked him to come and, you know, he packs his bags and goes, right?

[12:16] He doesn't do that. He stays. Well, here we are again. Sickness that's for the glory of God and yet Jesus is staying instead of going.

[12:28] You see how upside down this is? Backwards? You know, sometimes this is the way God works and, you know, it just doesn't make sense for us.

[12:41] And Jesus' failure to act, of course, isn't because of a lack of concern whatsoever. He was determined to do the will of God. He knew the will of God. After all, he was God who became man.

[12:54] He loved each one of them. And out of his love for Lazarus, he did not help him when he was sick. That's just so bizarre.

[13:06] But you see, for Jesus, this is no crisis for him. Yeah, he was concerned. But it wasn't a crisis. And Jesus never allowed people's crises to dictate how he ought to think and behave and follow.

[13:24] Just because somebody has a crisis doesn't mean that's your plan. And so it was with Jesus. But he was determined to do the will of God, not because he lacked concern, but he wanted to do God's will.

[13:42] So then after this, after two days, he said to the disciples, let's go to Judea again. Now, if you had read earlier, what had happened was, they made it very obvious that they were out to kill Jesus.

[14:04] They were trying to find any excuse in any way and develop any plan that they could to grab him and kill him. And so his disciples were probably relieved that Jesus didn't go right away and he was going to stay.

[14:18] In fact, they probably, the sense that we get is that they wanted him to stay put and not go to Judea because they didn't want him to die. So the disciples said to him, Rabbi, lately the Jews have sought to stone you.

[14:37] And you want to go there again? And Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he's not going to stumble because he sees the light of this world.

[14:52] But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. I don't know about you, but sometimes Jesus, his answers to things are just, don't make sense.

[15:05] So what are you talking about? Don't go to Judea because they're going to kill you. But he comes up with his reason here.

[15:16] You know, our response would be the immediacy of it. And our response is crisis mode. Years ago, I got a call. It was around 11, around 9, maybe 10 o'clock at night.

[15:31] And it was from a couple. And the wife had called and said, we're on the way to the hospital. My husband's nose is bleeding. And I thought, okay. I don't know that that's particularly dangerous, unless there's, you know, some kind of cancer in the brain.

[15:50] And so I said, well, I'll be praying. Now, she didn't tell me that she wanted me there. So she called one of the elders, and the elders showed up.

[16:03] And, you know, they did what they, they cauterized the bleed, and, you know, gave the medication, sent them promptly home. You know, in the military, I was in the dental field, and we did a lot of medical things.

[16:13] And my sister's a nurse, so I know a lot about medical things. I've had nosebleeds. It was not a concern to me. They were very, very upset.

[16:25] I didn't go that night. But it was a crisis, you know, and they wanted, with urgency, you've got to be there. And I didn't go.

[16:40] And things like that happened, you know, that Mary and Martha were very, very distraught, and they saw how sick Lazarus was, and he was going to die. You know, he said, you've got to come now, because they really believed that he would be, Lazarus, their brother, would be healed by Jesus.

[16:55] But he waited two more days. That's because divine love always acts according to divine will, even when it doesn't make sense to us.

[17:08] And sometimes God seems silent, and sometimes inactive, but no matter what, Jesus will always do for us the Father's will. So now he resolves to go to Judea, and to go most likely means he's going to die.

[17:28] His disciples don't want to do that. You know, he's escaped so many times, and they were convinced that the Sadducees and the Pharisees, who were so scared of Jesus, because of what the Romans may do to them, that they wanted to deal with it their way, and they were going to kill him.

[17:45] That was it. That was their plan. And by the way, the Sadducees, they were interrelated. Many of them were cousins, and, you know, it was like one big mafia family.

[17:56] If you read about them, they were a lot like the Godfather and the mafia. The high priest was Godfather. That's the way they conducted business and life there.

[18:07] But they were religious, so they were religious, you know, as mafia. But then we see Jesus answered what they said, and these things he said to them, and after that he said to them, our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.

[18:28] In verse 12, the disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he'll get well. Now we don't have to go. It's all right. You know, we just stay around. He'll wake up.

[18:41] They didn't really understand what he was talking about. You know, it's sleep, and it's really death. But for Jesus, sleep is hope, because you do wake up.

[18:54] Death, there's no hope, because in our hearts, people don't wake up. And these things he said, Lazarus sleeps, but I'm going to go and wake him up.

[19:09] But what Jesus was referring to really was of his death, verse 13, and they thought that he was speaking about taking a rest and sleep. In verse 14, then Jesus said, here's the point of Lazarus' death.

[19:22] He said very plainly, no, Lazarus is dead. Now, how did he know that? He doesn't have a cell phone.

[19:33] You know? He didn't have a carrier pigeon. Nobody had yet told him anything, but he knew. He says, no, he's not asleep. What I'm saying is, Lazarus is dead.

[19:45] And I'm glad for your sakes that I wasn't there, so that you would believe. Nevertheless, now let's go. And that's the point of his death.

[20:00] What a horrendous thing to go through some kind of sickness. Imagine if it were something like COVID. You know, the worst possible way to die in our day, virtually, next to cancer.

[20:13] And so he has this miserable sickness, and he's wilting and deteriorating and fading, and he's dying.

[20:25] And the picture that we get is that he really wasn't an older guy. He was probably the age of Jesus. You know, 28, 30, maybe 35. And then Thomas, also called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, all right, let's go, so that we can die with him.

[20:48] We're just gonna die with Jesus. We'll follow him, but you know, let's die. But here now, what we see is the reception by Martha in verses 17 through 27.

[21:01] So when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. For four days. What's the big deal about four days?

[21:18] The Jews believed that the soul kind of hung around the body for three days, and when it was ready to leave and depart, then they were really dead.

[21:30] So they didn't, you know, they didn't hook you up to a brain monitor to make sure that you were brain dead. They just kind of waited around to see if he was gonna pop back up. So the length of time was three days.

[21:44] And if you were dead longer than three days, you were very dead. There was no doubt about it. I mean, you were gone. You're not coming back. Nothing's going to help you.

[21:56] That was it. But they did what they did after he died, and, you know, they got him ready and they interned him and put him in the place like a little carved-out cave as they did, and they buried him.

[22:11] They probably had their ceremony. Now, the ceremony often lasted a week. And when they had that ceremony, those who were related to the deceased would mourn for a year.

[22:25] And it was expected for them to mourn for a year. So he's dead for four days. It says, Now Bethany was near Jerusalem.

[22:39] It was about two miles away. And many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, verse 20, As soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him.

[22:54] But Mary was sitting in the house. And Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you'd only been there, my brother would not have died.

[23:09] Can you tell she's upset? She's angry with him. She is angry with the Lord. She is angry with God.

[23:19] And very naturally so. It's not a pious thing to pretend not to be angry with God.

[23:31] You think God doesn't know that? That's what the lamentations, right? We talked about this before. Laments are all about crying out to God and virtually complaining about the circumstances in which you are in.

[23:47] And yet, still promising, nevertheless, I vow that I will praise you, God, regardless of the outcome. So she complains to Jesus.

[23:58] Where were you? In verse 22, But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.

[24:13] Wow. What faith she expresses. Jesus, there's no way that he could have done some magic trick or some incantation.

[24:23] Oftentimes, there were others who were false prophets and false messiahs who tried to raise the dead. And they had little incantations, but they would mumble under the...

[24:35] You know, they would do that and they would recite prayers or they would have beads. You know, they had a lot of different ways that they tried to make someone better or to raise them from the dead, none of which were very successful.

[24:52] There's no way now that he could do some magic trick or an incantation. And yet, Martha expresses faith in Jesus' ability. She has seen him at work. And so she's confident that if he wants to do something, he can do something.

[25:06] He can bring it back. She expresses right theology. She says here in verses 24 and 25, Martha said, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

[25:21] She believed that Sadducees didn't believe in resurrection. In fact, just prior to that, he had several conversations, arguments with the Sadducees because, you know, they were trying to trip him up theologically.

[25:35] Now, how do you do that with God? But he was right. And she's right. There's going to be a resurrection at the very last day.

[25:46] But Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Now, if somebody said that to you, what would you think?

[25:57] I am going to be raised? No, he doesn't say that. This is one of the times he says in the book of John, I am. I am the light of the world.

[26:11] I am the life of men. I am the bread of life. And as we know, we understand what he's alluding to. And he's trying to be very clear. He's saying, I am the I am that met with Moses.

[26:24] I am God. I am the resurrection. I am in me and myself. Because I am, I can raise myself from the dead and I can raise others from the dead.

[26:41] I am the resurrection and the life. And he who believes in me, even though he may die, he will live. And whoever lives and believes in me, they will never die.

[26:54] Do you believe this? Do we believe this? Sometimes that's hard to believe.

[27:08] I'll never die. No. As a believer in Jesus Christ, we will never die permanently. And she said, yes, Lord, I believe that you are, this is a confession of faith.

[27:27] You are, what? The Messiah, the Son of God who has come into the world. That's a confessional statement.

[27:38] That's a creed right there. What do you believe in Jesus? I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who has come into the world. She believed that much.

[27:49] She had it right. Which is rather amazing because if you read other Jewish writings at the time, they never quoted, they never stated anything about what a woman believed.

[28:01] It was irrelevant. They were second, third, fourth class. They were down on the total. You might as well ask a cow its opinion than to ask a woman.

[28:15] Especially the kind of view that they had of women. You read some of the writings that these rabbis had about women. Everything in life that was a problem was the fault of a woman.

[28:27] Everything. Pretty sad. And yet here it's recorded in the gospel that God designed by the Holy Spirit that this woman got her theology right.

[28:39] she got her theology right. Even the disciples didn't get it yet. She did. Oh my word. She has theology down.

[28:52] She confessed it in a very clear, clean, cogent, succinct way. Peter didn't even get it right. It's rather amazing.

[29:06] You see, Jesus taught the right view of the resurrection to the Pharisees. They didn't get it. He rebuked the Sadducees about the resurrection. They didn't get it. He explained it to the disciples and they really didn't get it.

[29:20] And he kept saying, I'm going to die but I'll rise again. That's, you know, he hinted at it. He expressed it very clearly and they were going, what are you talking about?

[29:34] But he taught Martha theology which is very counter-cultural. He talked to a woman which was very counter-cultural and he revealed a theological truth in real life to her.

[29:52] He taught the resurrection to the theologians, to the professionals, to his disciples that he will rise, that there is a resurrection but Jesus shows the most profound truth and tells the most profound truth to a woman of all people.

[30:14] It's one of the many reasons why the Sadducees and the Pharisees hated him. He was so topsy-turvy. He got it wrong. There's no way that he could be a true prophet and yet talk to a woman and teach them anything about God and give them theological truths.

[30:31] But he goes one step further. He makes that declaration, teaches her some theology in a very brief way and just like in the Old Testament he does a remarkable, miraculous work.

[30:44] His work, his word becomes his work and his work becomes his word and he raises the brother from the dead. I'm going to tell you and then I'm going to show you.

[31:00] And then he does it again when he comes back to life. You know, think about this. The very first people that saw Jesus alive were women.

[31:15] And they were so astonished and so excited when they ran back to tell the disciples the disciples didn't believe him. Why? Because you could not accept the testimony of a woman as true even if there were two or more.

[31:29] It had to be a man. And that's what the culture kind of informed their understanding and belief that when these women came and said Jesus is back from the dead, you know, they couldn't believe it because that just wasn't acceptable.

[31:46] What do they know? They can't testify. And yet, and yet, Jesus shows his love and kindness for Mary and Martha and love and kindness to the women that he comes to them first with profound theology and proof of what he said is right.

[32:09] Wow. Such a radical guy. Then we have the reception of Mary, verses 28 through 32.

[32:19] Mary receives Jesus. And then fourthly, we come to the resurrection of Lazarus himself, verse 33.

[32:32] Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came along with her weeping. And by the way, if you had a funeral, you most likely were required to hire a group of mourners.

[32:50] There were professional mourners. Think of that as your job. Hello, professional mourner here. Can I help you? Yeah, my brother just died. Can you come and mourn for us on Thursday?

[33:04] Sure, I'll be there. What's your fee? And they paid these professional mourners. If you wanted to make a big deal out of it, then you hired a lot of them.

[33:16] Otherwise, two or three mourners you would pay. That was sufficient. And they wore the black and they did everything. They wailed and cried and shed tears.

[33:27] They did everything that was appropriate for mourners to do. And when it was over, they collected their bill and went home. And so some of these were, I mean, they really did mourn with her.

[33:41] And they did cry, but there were professional mourners there too. And Jesus saw this. Even the Jews who came. And it says he groaned in his spirit and he was troubled.

[33:56] It doesn't mean he's just like, oh. The word is he let out a real, oh. Oh. Like he's pained. That doesn't express exactly why he was pained and he lets out this, oh.

[34:13] But he was. And I suspect, as many commentaries bring, is that the reason why he mourned is because he is face to face with death, which is the stronghold of Satan.

[34:27] And he grieves over the fact that so many, millions have died. died because of sin and Satan. So he groans.

[34:41] And then in verse 35, Jesus wept. He asked her, you know, where have you laid him? And they said, come, come and see. And Jesus wept.

[34:53] And the word here means to cry somewhat quietly. Yeah, you all know this is the shortest verse in the Bible, right?

[35:04] But that's not the point. The significance is here is the God man. Here is a man who weeps, who grieves, who has sympathy and empathy about what has happened.

[35:23] and he weeps. He quietly weeps. He's deeply grieved and it shows the gracious tenderness of the mannest man in the world.

[35:40] It had nothing to do with his inner feminine side. He was a real man who really grieved for his friend and for Mary and Martha and for others.

[35:55] And grieved that death has had its impact. And probably was considering his own death. And so he goes to the burial place.

[36:06] And verse 38, and the crowd would only see a miracle. Jesus again groaned within himself. He came to the tomb. It was a cave. The stone had lay against it.

[36:19] And Jesus said, take away the stone. And Martha, the sister, she's a very pragmatic one, isn't she? Don't you love it? She's got it all figured out. I can just hear, Jesus, are you serious?

[36:34] What? Lord, by this time there's going to be great stench. He's been dead four days. Have you ever smelled a dead body?

[36:46] Oh, it's one of the most despicable, gross things ever. horrible. There was a guy at one of the other churches that I pastored, and a little younger than myself.

[37:03] He had not been married. He had the greatest sense of humor. He was a wonderful guy. But he developed this brain thing where he could not sleep.

[37:17] Could not sleep. It was horrible. He had medications. He did everything, you know, everything possible to try to sleep. He couldn't do it. It was driving him crazy. Well, somebody called me and said, it was one of the other guys who owned the apartment complex, said, we haven't heard from Gary in a week.

[37:42] Would you go and check on him? I've been to his place, knocked on the door, but I'm too afraid to go in. So I got in the car and he had called a couple of others, women, and I arrived and knocked on the door and then the woman came and she had the key from Sam who owned the building and we walked in and it nearly knocked me over.

[38:11] The stench, the smell. Gary was clearly dead. He had died sitting in his chair. So I called 911 and told him what happened.

[38:27] The lady said, would you like to start CPR? I said, no, I've been around death. I know death. This is death. Gary is dead.

[38:39] Well, I can give you the steps. No. she insisted. I said, send an ambulance. They can do it. Because I knew that he was gone. Probably had been dead for four days.

[38:55] And so the kind of stench that happened, you know, as a mayor and Martha, you know, they're telling them, warning Jesus as if he didn't know. They didn't want to smell that stuff. They didn't want to be, it was awful.

[39:08] And the stench is just a reminder of how pitiful death really is. Tragic. And yet, here, what does he do? Jesus said, I didn't say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God.

[39:23] Didn't I say that? Then he took away the stone from the place. They took away where the dead man was lying and Jesus lifted up his eyes and he said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

[39:36] He was always consulting with the Father, always. And I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you have sent me.

[39:50] Now, when he had said these things, he cried out in a very loud voice, as if speaking right through the barrier of death, into the life of Lazarus.

[40:02] Come forth! Come out! Come out! and he who died came out bound handed, he looked like a mummy.

[40:14] He was bound, shuffled out. I don't know what I would have done. I probably would have dropped over, keeled over, you know, just shaken by this.

[40:28] And he who died came out bound handed foot with grave clothes. His face was still wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said, loose him and let him go.

[40:44] Wow. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Jesus speaks forth life. And the point is Jesus giving physical life as a sign and the promise of the power that he has to give eternal life and a future physical life.

[41:04] And it's something to which we can look forward to. I don't know about you, but I probably, if I were Lazarus, I might have been really disturbed by this having to come back and, you know, go through all this again.

[41:17] I might have been depressed, but he had no fear. And yet, it's interesting what the Sadducees and Pharisees did. They heard what happened to Lazarus. They didn't care that he was raised from the dead.

[41:29] They sought to kill him too. That was their plot. We're going to kill him again. Can you imagine?

[41:40] Jesus, the potential that he could raise an army, you know, and they would, they'd get killed and Jesus would bring them back to life again. You know, what are you going to do? You can't kill the army. You can't kill Lazarus.

[41:51] But the point is, he's the one who has the power to raise our spirits, our souls, and he has the power to raise our bodies, which he promises to do.

[42:04] So even though we might miss this world on death, we have nothing to fear, because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

[42:17] And we know they sought to kill him, they did kill him, and he came back on his own accord, by his own power, he came back to life. So the main point and the gist of this is not only is Jesus the resurrection and the life, the point for us that ought to help us as we stare death in the face on a rather regular basis, we need not fear, really.

[42:51] We can mourn over the fact that we're going to leave this world, and we'll miss our friends and family and others, but there's a much, much better life ahead of us, and we get to have a body like Jesus did when he came back to life.

[43:15] I wonder if we get to pass through walls like he did. a real life body for the new heavens and the new earth. Beloved, Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

[43:28] There is no other like him, but Jesus offers and promises to you the resurrection and life. You have no need to fear. Thank you, God, for this word, and thank you what you speak to us, and thank you for the fact that we have a hope unlike any others, and we can overcome this great fear of death because we have the promise that in you we have life, in you we have resurrection, in you we will never die again once we die physically.

[44:04] We praise you for that. Amen. Amen. Well, ain't here, It's all good news.

[44:38] There's more good news. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us. Amen? Amen. We're going to sing, Pass me not, O gentle Savior.

[45:06] Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry.

[45:25] While on others thou art calling, Do not pass me by.

[45:41] Savior, Savior, Hear my humble cry.

[45:55] While on others thou art calling, Do not pass me by.

[46:13] Let the air from a mercy Find us we release.

[46:29] Breathe in heavenly compression. Help my unbelief.

[46:44] Savior, Savior, Hear my humble cry.

[47:01] While on others thou art calling, Do not pass me by.

[47:14] Trust in all in thy merit. Will I seek thy face.

[47:32] Heal my wounded, broken spirit. Save me by thy grace.

[47:45]  Savior, Savior,