JESUS WEPT
"When He [Jesus] had heard therefore that he [Lazarus] was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was." (John 11:6).
It appears that as Christians, if we would be wise, then we must
become foolish; if we would have power, then we must become weak; and if we
would know true life, then we must experience death. This, of course, runs contrary to all that we
think should be true naturally. Concepts
such as these are alien to our natural reasoning, and to all of our human
inclinations. We always want to excel,
we always want to be blessed, and we always want to have all the answers; but
God often works the opposite of what we expect.
Chapter 11 of St. John tells the story of Lazarus being raised
from the dead. Jesus loved Lazarus and
his sisters, Mary and Martha, very much.
When He heard that His friend was sick, however, Jesus waited two more
days before going to him, knowing that Lazarus would die during that period. He told His disciples, in fact, before they
left to go to Bethany that Lazarus had already died. "Then
said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead." (John 11:14). Jesus knew, though, that God intended to
raise Lazarus. Therefore, He was more
concerned with getting there after
His friend had died, than before. This
was a difficult lesson that Jesus wanted to demonstrate. One so profound that even Martha, the doer,
and Mary, the worshipper, could not see it; and Jesus' disciples could not
grasp it.
There are things in our lives that we are very reluctant to let go
of - things that hinder our effectiveness for the Lord - and we protect, and
seek to preserve, these things at all costs.
These are the things that the Lord will allow to die (I'm speaking in a
spiritual sense right now). These are
usually innocent things that steal our time and our attention from the
Lord. It may be something that inflates
our pride, like our fortune, or our intellect, that hinders us from touching
lives. It can even be our “religion”
that destroys our true spirituality. Our
goal as Christians should be to say with Paul, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for
Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count
them but dung, that I may win
Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the
law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is
of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and
the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by
any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." (Philippians
3:7-11).
This, then, is the lesson that is so hard for us, as disciples, to
understand: that we must be willing to let go of anything in our lives that
would displace Christ, and count it as dung. We must all be made "conformable to His death" in order to know the "power of His resurrection." In short, we must die to self.
Jesus, when He finally reached
Bethany, told Martha, "I am the
resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 11:25,
26). Here, Jesus was referring to more
than just physical life and death - He was also meaning spiritual life and death. He was about to demonstrate that He could
overcome even the death of the body. If He
could do that, how much more is He able to empower us in this life to be delivered from the wages of sin?
In verses 33 to 38 of John 11 we read, "When Jesus therefore saw her [Mary] weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was
troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord,
come and see. Jesus wept. Then said
the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And
some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have
caused that even this man should not have died?
Jesus therefore again groaning
in Himself cometh to the grave."
Many over the years have made the same mistake that these Jews did. They suppose that Jesus was grieving and
mourning over His friend's death. But
this is not what caused Jesus to weep. He
knew He was going to raise His friend.
There was no reason for Him to cry for Lazarus. He had deliberately waited for His friend to
die to begin with. It was the lack of
understanding, and the unbelief of those that were near Him that moved the Lord
to tears! It was their belief that the
Son of God was sent to fix everything. Martha
said to Jesus at one point, "If Thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died." They believed that He would set up His
Kingdom then and there, and there would be no more suffering, no more tears, no
more persecution by the heathen, etc.
This is the same trap we often fall into today. We think that the Lord will fix everything,
and that we will never have to suffer as long as we are walking with Him; and
when things don't go as we would like them to, our faith is shaken. Peter said, "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm
yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh
hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of
men, but to the will of God." (1 Peter 4:1).
Isn't it amazing that, with all of the suffering and wickedness
that our Lord witnessed in the world, the one thing that would move Him to tears
would be our unbelief? This is because He
knows that our faith can overcome the world.
Jesus has provided for all our needs, but how heartbreaking when we
refuse to believe all that He has done! Paul
taught that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily and that we
are complete in Him (Colossians 2:9,
10). How many of us actually walk in the
confidence of that statement?
In the end, we know that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. As a result, Lazarus became so effective in
his ministry and witness that the Jews conspired to put him to death right
along with Jesus. This is the real proof
of ministry. Folks will abide much of
scripture to be spoken to them, but when it comes to resurrection power, walking
in new life, and dying to self, they become offended. This is the power that the Church needs to
possess today if it would change the world.
This is the hope of the gospel that we are to share with the lost. Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life! "He
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me
shall never die. Believest thou this?"
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