This week is part two of this three-part sign. I have broken up this final sign into three parts; The Death of Lazarus (John 11:1-16 –- last week); Jesus is our Life (John 11:17-37 –- this week); and Jesus is our Power (John 11:38-44 –- next week). Each week I will have the entire seventh sign here so you can re-read this sign as a whole; John 11:1-44 or you can just read this week part.
11 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 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
11 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.”
16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two milesfrom Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
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.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
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.”
Their arrival in Bethany occurred at least four days later. In the cultural of Jewish funerals, the mourners, the spices, and the procession still lingered. This was a popular family in the small town of Bethany, so Lazarus’s funeral was a major event. But none of the Lord’s followers, not the disciples and not the sisters, yet understood how Jesus is our life, as he was to Martha.
The text of verse 20 literally tells us that Mary stayed seated in the house (kathezesthai). The custom was for the bereaved to remain seated in the house and for the guests to come and sit in silence and periodically support the grieving parties with sympathetic tears and moans. You should not forget that it was the brother (the obvious wage-earner of that home) who had died. The loss was an intense one. Reading Ruth 1:6-14 will provide some sense of the feelings that probably were present in that room.
Here we have one of the great conversations of the Bible. We already know the personalities of these women, so we are not surprised that Martha charged out to meet Jesus while Mary stayed at home. Her words to the Lord almost take the form of a mild rebuke: if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yet she hinted at resurrection by adding, God will give you whatever you ask. Knowing her faith, Jesus responded, Your brother will rise again (the word “again” is not in the Greek text).
Martha recited the standard Old Testament view of the resurrection, not practicing the promises Jesus had taught so often. She knew about the resurrection of the widow’s son and Jairus’s daughter, but somehow, she never made the connection that the Lord could do the same for her brother.
Martha, Mary, and all these Jewish mourners responded in human fashion to death and sorrow, defeat and abandonment. According to their words, Jesus should have been there to prevent Lazarus’s death. If he were really God, he would have prevented physical death because that is God’s job. They treated death as the end of life, as the final defeat, a sign that God had deserted them. The presence of death meant the absence of God.
Martha could never have accepted the view of the Sadducees that denied the resurrection; she sided with the more conservative Pharisaic view that prevailed among the common people. Martha had no more hope than she had before Jesus arrived on the scene. But that was about to change dramatically.
What follows is the wonderful promise almost every Christian has memorized, a passage used at Christian funerals for nearly two thousand years. It forms the key to the chapter, but what does it mean? Jesus said, He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. Does that mean spiritual life beyond the grave as many interpreters have suggested? The context seems to demand an emphasis on physical death and physical life; in other words, bodily resurrection. Verse 26 seems to indicate that whoever is still alive and believing at the time of the Lord’s return will never die.
Martha did not grasp the entirety of this theology, but nevertheless placed her foothold of faith directly in Jesus’ affirmation of his messiahship. She was not completely without faith. She still believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and that he might still be able to do something, although she did not really know what. She understood only two categories of life: physical life on earth and some future life at a resurrection. In her mind, Lazarus had neither of those at the moment. She did not think there was anything Jesus could do about his death.
The key to the chapter and a foundation stone of the doctrine of resurrection and the afterlife appears in these verses. Jesus said future resurrection was impossible without him. Martha (as well as Lazarus) had no hope without him in the picture. He also said that real life (life that extends beyond death) is possible only through him. A person attains it no other way. This life is both spiritual (will live, even though he dies) and eternal (will never die), and it comes only to those who believe in Jesus.
Martha’s affirmation of Jesus in verse 27 fits directly into the Johannine pattern. She affirmed that Jesus is the Messiah and therefore the Son of God, and also that he was sent into the world by the Father, a fact he had been arguing in public for more than three years.
It appears to the casual reader that Martha had climbed on board theologically and would no longer have any question about what Jesus could do. Yet a few minutes later she heard Jesus call for the removal of the stone and objected, “But, Lord . . . by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days” (verse 39). So again, Martha reminds us of ourselves, a willingness to verbally proclaim biblical truth without applying it in our lives.
This story serves as a significant warning even to evangelicals who may be able to mouth all the correct theological statements about Jesus but actually failed to bring words and life together. It is not enough to make statements about Jesus. If a person would make a statement similar to Martha’s in some churches, the tendency would be to baptize such a person and to accept him or her into membership. But we must all be warned that verbal confessions and life commitments are not always partners with each other.
Verse 28 contains an unrecorded invitation delivered personally at the request of Jesus, so Mary went outside the city with others following her, assuming she was headed for the tomb. How interesting that her opening line was identical to Martha’s, although she had not heard Martha speak and there seems to be no indication in the text that the women had discussed their reaction to the Lord. We have no idea where Mary met Jesus other than that he was at the same place and had not yet entered the village. We dare not miss John’s notation that the Jews who had been with her in the house followed her. Mary’s conversation with Jesus was not, like Martha’s, private. There are other differences. Martha engaged in theological debate; Mary fell at his feet. Martha expressed expectant faith (“God will give you whatever you ask”); Mary functioned at a more personal level.
Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. The Greek word for deeply moved in spirit is embrimaomai, used five times in the New Testament, always of Jesus (Matthew 9:30; Mark 1:43; 14:5; John 11:33,38). It probably suggests anger over sin and death which could cause such agony in Mary, Martha, and their friends in Bethany. The second word (troubled) translates etaraxen. It seems to emphasize agitation, again perhaps over the grief of the sisters.
Of the phrase deeply moved in spirit, it does not refer to the Holy Spirit, but it is roughly equivalent to ‘in himself’: his inward reaction was anger or outrage or indignation. And of the word troubled, the same strong verb used in 12:27; 13:21. It is lexically inexcusable to reduce this emotional upset to the effects of empathy, grief, pain, or the like. When Jesus approached the tomb, he could no longer control himself and wept. John used a different word than the word he chose to describe the weeping of Mary and the Jews. Perhaps the intent was to show that Jesus’ tears emerged for a different reason, not grief over Lazarus; he had that situation well in hand. Surely the same unbelief and theological ignorance that prompted his anger also produced his grief.
This response to the death of Lazarus on the part of Jesus is very contrary to the Greek idea of gods, but very much like the promised Messiah of the Old Testament (Isaiah 53:3). The question of the group in verse 37 seems fair enough, but it has an obvious answer. Jesus could have kept this man from dying, but he chose not to for reasons he had already explained to the disciples earlier in this chapter.