Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

We’re gonna look a large portion of John 11, but I just want to read verses 20 and following by way of introduction.  “So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.  Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’  Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’  Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’  Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?’  She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, who is coming into the world.’”

0:01:17.2

Philip Yancey is one of my favorite authors.  He’s written a number of books.  He’s one of these best-selling Christian authors.  I like him because he’s not afraid to ask really, really tough questions, hard questions, and then answer them honestly.  You kind of get that sense from the titles of his books, like Where Is God When It Hurts? or What’s So Amazing About Grace?  There is one that came out a couple of decades ago—I think it was even before I went to seminary—the title caught my attention.  It was simply title Disappointment With God.  And when I first saw the title of that book, I thought to myself, who could ever be disappointed with God?  And if they were, who would have the courage to express is?  But Yancey writes about a young seminary student who abandoned his faith due to a series of disappointing and sometimes confusing circumstances that all kind of happened at the same time, including the breaking of his engagement to the love of his life and the divorce of his parents.  And when all of that happened and came upon this young man, it was just too much for him.  And he was writing his Masters’ thesis on the book of Job.  And he got into a conversation with Yancey as one of his editors and a guy who would give him input on the thesis.  And he came to a point where he said to Yancey, “I just don’t believe it anymore.  I’m done with this.”  And Yancey began to have correspondence with this young man.  And after several months, Yancey said this.  He says, “Some people lose their faith because of a sharp sense of disappointment with God.  They expect God to act in a certain way and God lets them down.  Others may not lose their faith, but they, too, experience a form of disappointment.  They believe God will intervene.  They pray for a miracle, and their prayers come back unanswered.”  Can anybody identify with Yancey’s observations here?  Have you prayed, perhaps, for a miracle or for something to change in your life, and you've prayed and you’ve prayed?  And it seems like your prayers go no higher than the ceiling in the room.  And you experience what C.S. Lewis said where he prays and it seems like heaven’s doors are locked and double-locked.  Is anybody here kind of quietly disappointed with God?

0:03:47.5

Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.”  Isaiah 45:15 says, “Truly you are a God who hides himself.”  Deuteronomy 29:29 states, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God.”  You know, one of the most difficult things to learn in the Christian life is this lesson.  That is that God is not obligated to explain Himself.  Job figured that out, didn’t he?  Remember the book of Job in the Old Testament?  Some say it’s the oldest book in the Bible, dating thousands of years, even before Moses and Mt. Sinai and all of that.  And it’s the quintessential answer in the scripture to pain and suffering.  It’s 42 chapters in length, and we don’t hear from God until chapter 38.  You know the story of Job.  He loses everything.  I mean, his family, his ten sons and daughters in a tragic tornado, he loses his health, his business.  Some say he should have left his wife ‘cause his wife says, “You know, why don’t you curse God and die?”  How’s that for Mrs. Job?  I mean, Job is sitting in the ashes of life, and he’s scraping the sores on him.  And then his three friends show up.  What kind of friends are these?  They just wax eloquently about Job, questioning everything about his faith and this and that and sounding all knowledgeable about different things.  And all the while, through 37 chapters, God is silent.  And suddenly He breaks His silence.  And He does it with these words pointed at Job.  “Who is this who darkens counsel with words without knowledge?”  And then a couple of verses later, “Job, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  And it’s two or three more chapters, four chapters, of these kinds of questions.  And you kind of get the sense like God is saying to Job, “Guess what?  You don’t know what you don’t know.  So sit down and shut up.  I’m gonna tell you a few things.”  Ecclesiastes 11:5, “As you do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.”  Isaiah 55, these are the words of the Lord, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts.  Neither are your ways my ways.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  You don’t know what you don’t know.  Even the apostle Paul couldn’t unscramble the inscrutable, we might say.  Remember in Romans 9, 10, and 11, he’s waxing eloquently about the mystery of the sovereignty of God.  And finally at the end of that he throws up his hands and kind of wonders, “Oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.  How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways.”  Paul says, “There are some things about God even I don’t understand.”

0:06:39.7

And so sometimes our faith is confused.  Sometimes we come very close to the line of being disappointed with God.  And there's nothing new with that.  Even the early followers of Jesus found themselves wondering, even scratching their heads at what Jesus was doing.  And we have a story like that found in John 11.  The characters in the story are familiar ones, Mary and Martha—they’re sisters—and their brother Lazarus.  And Lazarus is sick.  He’s sick unto death.  In fact, he dies.  And as we look at the story beginning in verse 1 of chapter 11 and we read through the story through about verse 15 or 16, I find some circumstances of life that are common to all of us that have the potential of throwing our faith into a tailspin to where, like this young seminary student, we’re ready to just chuck it all and say, “I’m done with this.  I don’t know where God is.  I’m disappointed with Him.  I prayed.  I fasted.  I did all the things I was supposed to do.  And He didn't show up in the way that I thought He was supposed to show up.”  Here are some circumstances that have the potential of leading us in that direction if we deal with them incorrectly.

0:07:58.0

The first has to do with disease; when disease strikes.  Look at verse 1 of chapter 11.  “Now a certain man was ill.”  A certain man was sick.  “Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.  So the sisters sent to him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’”  A certain man was sick.  You could insert anybody’s name there.  You could insert yourself.  Because it’s a reminder that sickness, disease, even death, is no respecter of persons in this life.  We get some sense that maybe this family made up Mary and Martha and Lazarus, these three siblings, that they might have come from a fairly well-to-do family, maybe a wealthy family.  Because it Luke tells us it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair.  Remember the time she took an expensive jar of perfume and, Judas said, wasted it; cracked it open and anointed Jesus’ hair.  Well, only the wealthy in that culture and at that time could afford such expensive perfume.  Elsewhere in the New Testament in the Gospels, we’re told that these three siblings threw a dinner party for Jesus, maybe another indication that they had some money, they had some means.  They also had a family burial cave in which they put their brother Lazarus, again an indication of wealth.  My point is simply this.  Money will never protect you from the pain and suffering of life.  Oh, you may have enough money to buy a good insurance policy and take care of the disease when it comes upon you, but sickness and disease and ultimately death are no respecter of persons.  That’s why Jesus points them to a larger purpose in this time suffering.  He says in verse 4, “This illness does not lead to death.  It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  You see, we need to get God’s perspective on pain and suffering and sickness and disease.  He sees a way to bring glory to Himself, even in a fallen world, this nasty fallen world in which we live where we deal with disease all the time.  Jesus says there is a way that the Father gets glory through all of this, because this illness does not lead to death.  You see, sometimes we miss the glory because we’re too busy trying to rewrite the story, aren’t we?  We want to wiggle our way out of the difficult, painful times of life.  I understand that.  I do, too.  But Jesus sees a different purpose here.

0:10:40.5

Here’s another category of circumstances that might cause us to tailspin in our faith, and that’s when God delays, when He delays.  Read on verses 5 and 6.  “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  And when he heard that Lazarus was ill, Jesus stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”  Are you kidding me?  You mean He got news that His friend Lazarus was sick and in his final hours and that he was perhaps going to die, and He just kind of hangs out where He is two days longer?  He doesn’t send a message?  Doesn’t scribble something down on a scroll or a parchment and send a message to them by…?  He doesn’t drop everything He’s doing and rush back to Bethany to be with the family?  No, He delays.  He stays two days longer, the scripture says.  And there’s not a word from Jesus back to Bethany.  Other family have already gotten there.  They’re gathered.  They’re consoling the sisters.  They’re grieving over Lazarus.  But Jesus, He’s nowhere to be found.  I love what Oswald Chambers says about this scene in Bethany.  He asks a penetrating question.  “Has God trusted you with a silence, a silence that is big with meaning?  God’s silences are His answers.  Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany.  Is there anything analogous to those days in your life?  Can God trust you like that, or are you still seeking a visible sign?  God will give you the blessings you ask for if you will not go any further without them.  But His silence is the sign,” listen to this, “that He is bringing you into a marvelous understanding of Himself.”  Wow.  Stick that feather in your theological cap.  You mean, when I pray and I don't hear anything from heaven and heaven is silent and it’s bolted and double-bolted the doors and it just feels like, you know, where is God, that He might be bringing me into a marvelous understanding of Himself?  Yeah, yeah, that’s what Chambers says, and that’s what he experienced.  And perhaps that’s what Jesus is doing here as well.

0:13:01.0

It’s interesting that Luke tells us two times in verses 1-5 that Jesus loved them.  He loved Mary and Martha.  He loved Lazarus.  They were tight.  They were family friends.  They hung out together.  Why does he say, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,” but He stayed two days longer?  Because, when you experience the silence of God, when you experience one of His delays, you’re tempted to think, He’s forgotten me.  He doesn't love me.  He’s indifferent.  He doesn't care.  It’s all a myth, this idea that God loves us a cares for us, even in the small details and big, painful details of life.  But, no, Luke is quick to remind us Jesus loved them.  And the fact that He delayed, the fact that He was silent, is not inconsistent with His love.  Maybe He’s bringing them into a marvelous understanding of Himself.

0:13:57.8

Here’s a third category of circumstancing that might cause our faith to tailspin some, and that’s when God leads us in a particular direction that might cause us to scratch our heads a little bit.  Let’s read on verses 7 and 8.  “And then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’  ‘But, Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, yet you going back there?’”  See, here’s Jesus in a certain area.  Lazarus and the family are in Bethany.  He delays for two days.  And rather than going straight back to Bethany, He says to His disciples, “Hey, why don’t we hang out over here in Judea.”  Now, Judea was the epicenter, ground zero, of the antagonism that was rising up against Jesus.  And the disciples have figured this out.  They’re scratching their heads going, “Jesus, why do you want us to go that direction? That’s where they tried to stone You last time.  We need to be heading back to Bethany.”  Has God ever led you in a direction that you're scratching your head wondering, what in the world are You doing?  Or you prayed and prayed and prayed for some kind of direction, and you moved out in faith and you got there.  And life just fell apart.  It’s happened to all of us.  And if you're not careful, you'll misinterpret those circumstances and your faith will tailspin into something, perhaps, like disappointment with God.  “He didn’t do what I expected Him to do.”  Well, maybe He’s bringing you into a marvelous new and fresh understanding of Himself and stretching your faith and seeing that, in the midst of a delay or in the midst of a time of disease or by putting you over here, “Will you still trust me in these circumstances?”  Jesus tells the disciples in verses 9 and 10, “Are there not twelve hours in day?  Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, but they see by this world’s light.  It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”  Sounds kind of cryptic, doesn’t it?  He uses this metaphor of light and darkness to say, listen, following the Lord’s direction is equivalent to walking the light, even if it feels like you’re walking in darkness and you’re not quite sure what’s going on or what you’re doing.  In other words, obeying God when He says, “Go this direction,” is a whole lot safer than doing your own thing and ending up in even worse circumstances.

0:16:26.1

And then there’s a fourth and final category.  After disease and delay and misguided directions, there’s death. Nothing threatens our faith, perhaps, more than what we call an untimely death.  Let’s read on verses 11-16.  “After saying these things, he said to them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.’  The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.’  Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep.  Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.  But let us go to him.’”  Death is the final test of faith, is it not?  You know, the Bible says, “Blessed in the eyes of the Lord are the death of his saints.”  It doesn’t always feel that way, does it, when you’re sitting graveside?  And you're saying goodbye to a family member or a friend that you didn’t expect to be saying goodbye to.  It doesn't seem like a very blessed moment.  But we’ve got to get God’s perspective on it.  It’s a time when we’ve got to ask ourselves, can we trust God to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death, like that good shepherd that we talked about last week.  Now, Jesus refers to death here as sleep.  It’s a common euphemism found in the New Testament.  But the disciples misunderstood it.  They said, “Well, if all he’s doing in sleeping, Jesus, then let’s go wake him up.  And He had to speak to them more plainly.  He says, “No, Lazarus is dead.”  The finality of those words just gripped the disciples’ hearts.  He’s dead.  He’s gone.  Some people take this euphemism for death known as sleep in the New Testament, and they’ve developed this theology called “soul sleep”.  Be careful of that.  What they mean by that is that when a person dies, their spirit sleeps in an unconscious state in the afterlife.  I don’t have time to go there this morning, but I could take you to places in Jesus’s teachings where He very clearly states that 60 seconds after you move from this life into the next life, moments after the death, you are completely and fully conscious in the afterlife, (0:19:00.0) fully conscious.  No, sleep as a euphemism for death always refers to the body and what it looks like in the grave.  Yeah, it looks like we’re sleeping.  And so this is what the apostle Paul had in mind when he was writing his letter to the Thessalonians, and he was encouraging them at a time of grieving and loss by the graveside.  2 Thessalonians 4:13-14, “We do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep,” he says.  “We do not want you to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.  We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep.”  Those who have died in Christ and gone to be with the Lord will come again with Him at that time in Bible prophecy this passage of scripture is talking about known as the Rapture of the Church.  Those who have died and have fallen asleep in Him, Jesus will bring with (0:20:00.1) Him, he says.  So don’t grieve as those who have no hope.  And that’s the way the world grieves, isn’t it?  Because they don’t…they’ve never met the resurrection and the life, which Martha and Mary are gonna meet here in just a moment.

0:20:15.7

Well, let’s read on in verses 17 and following.  I love the scene as Jesus arrives finally in Bethany.  “Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.  Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.  So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.”  That’s what we know about Martha and Mary, don’t we?  Mary is the one who is always calm and humble and seated at the feet of Jesus.  Martha is the handwringer of the two.  She’s the one in the kitchen making all the preparations, worried that everything is just…she’s the one who hears that Jesus has come into the vicinity of Bethany, and she runs out to see Him.  And verse 21, “Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”  She lays a heavy on Jesus.  And we don’t exactly know the tone of Martha’s words here, but we can almost guess.  She’s not real happy with Him.  She’s not waiting for Him to come in the door, when everybody else gathers around Him and dominates the conversation.  No, she goes out to see Him and says, “If you had been here.”  If, if, if.  Woulda, shoulda, coulda.  “Things wouldn’t be like they are today.  We wouldn’t be burying my brother, who has been in the grave for four days.”  I love that Jesus doesn’t rebuke her here.  He doesn't chide her.  He doesn't say, “Now, Martha, just pipe down.”  No, He lets her vent.  And don’t you love that?  You know, when you’re in a state of confusion, maybe bordering on a little disappointment with God, it’s okay to express your heart to Jesus.  He can take it.  He knows what you’re thinking anyway, so it’s probably best to verbalize it to Him.  “Lord, where have You been?  If You had done this or if You had done that, I wouldn’t be in the circumstances that I’m in today.”  It’s okay, it’s okay.  Have that kind of open and transparent conversation with Jesus, because here is what Jesus said to Martha.  He assures her.  He encourages her.  And He says, “Martha, your brother, your brother will rise again.  And Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’”  If Martha were a seminary student, she’d get an A+ in theology.  She knew her theology well, well-formed in her mind.  But Jesus knew that the present reality of the resurrection had not been birthed in her heart.  Oh, she had all of her theological I’s and her doctrinal T’s dotted and crossed.  “I know,” she says, “I know he will rise again the resurrection on the last day.”  But this is when Jesus turns to her and makes this theological knowledge more of a present reality in her life.  He says to Martha, “Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.  I am the present reality, the manifestation of the doctrine and theology that you just checked the box on.”  And He goes on to say, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he lives, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.  Martha, do you believe this?”  Great question.  “And she said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’”

0:23:54.9

Now, in that little exchange right there, verses 17 through about 27, Jesus gives us some…I’ll call them afterlife insights this morning.  You have any curiosity about the afterlife, about what happens 60 seconds after you die?  Most people do.  In fact, if Hollywood is any indication, all of the movies about, you know, these near-death experience, best-sellers.  The books, the movies, all of that.  But I want to caution you.  Don’t let Hollywood define the afterlife.  And be careful of these books that are out there, you know, about somebody who had some fanciful experience, like the one a couple years ago titled The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.  Did you hear about that one?  It’s about some little boy who died and supposedly went to heaven, sat on Jesus’s lap, saw the Holy Spirit over there.  He looked a little blue.  Was sized up for his angel’s wings, he said.  Came back and told this huge story.  A major Christian publisher published the book, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.  I won’t mention the name of the publisher.  It was a major Christian publisher.  Problem is, about eight or nine months ago a big story came out.  It got about 48 hours in the news cycle.  The boy who came back from heaven, didn’t.  Because the father and son who authored the book, whose names—and I don’t make this up—their name is Malarkey…the boy recanted the story.  He said it never happened.  “I told the story to get some attention.”  And so what I say is when it comes to matters of the afterlife, friends, it’s the revelation of God, not human speculation, that gives us any understanding of the afterlife.  And God hasn’t told us everything we want to know about the afterlife, but He has told us everything we need to know.  And in this section of scripture in this story, we’re not told everything we even need to know about the afterlife, but we are told some things.  Jesus pulls back the veil a little bit by declaring, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  He introduces the whole subject of the afterlife to us.  And there are two or three things that are some insights that He shares with us here.

0:26:22.2

The first is it’s all about resurrection, not reincarnation.  He didn’t say, “I am the reincarnation and the life.”  He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  And herein lies a huge difference between Christianity and other Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, where you have this idea of reincarnation.  The Eastern religions view life and the afterlife in a cyclical kind of way.  You die, you’re reincarnated, you die again, you’re reincarnated, you die again, and you just cycle through various lives like this.  The Bible knows nothing of that.  In fact, the Bible tells us in Hebrews 9:27, “It’s appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment.”  The bad news is there ain’t any of us getting out of this world alive.  There is an appointment, an appointment in heaven, on heaven’s Outlook calendar, the appointed time of your death and mine.  Aren’t you glad you don’t know that day?  I’m kind of glad I don’t.  But it’s not, you know, die, reincarnate, die…it’s appointed unto man once to die, and after that…so what is our hope as believers in Jesus Christ?  It’s resurrection.  Jesus said to Martha, “Your brother,” not, “will be reincarnated, hopefully better than a cockroach.”  No, “Your brother will rise again.”  The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, he saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the lynchpin of Christianity.  He says, “If Christ is not risen from the dead, we’re all fools and our faith is in vain.”  That’s why Easter is so important, friends, and every Sunday is a resurrection Sunday.  Because that’s the only reason we’re here is because we believe the grave, Jesus Christ’s grave, is empty.  He rose again from the dead.  The Bible refers to Him as the first fruits of the resurrection, meaning He’s the first of many to come.  I don’t have time to go into it all this morning, but did you know there are seven different resurrections mentioned from the Gospels forward to the end of the age.  And every person, every person who has ever been born on this earth will experience a resurrection.  Some will rise to eternal life, and, yes, some will rise to eternal death, the Bible says.  I think about that every time I walk through Arlington National Cemetery.  We lived in the Washington, D.C., area for about a decade.  And I walk up and down those, you know, beautifully ordered gravestones.  Hundreds, thousands of people buries there.  And I think about the day when every one of those graves will open up.  “Your brother will rise again.”

0:29:27.4

And, again, some to eternal life, the Bible teaches, some to eternal death.  Which brings me to the second afterlife insight.  And that is that there are two deaths.  Did you know that?  Now, follow this very carefully.  Death in the Bible is separation from something.  When we die physically, the body goes in the grave, but the spirit departs from the body.  It separates from the body and goes on into the afterlife.  And, again, I could make a case for you that just moments later, fully conscious in the afterlife, fully conscious.  Conscious in a place of either unimaginable bliss—absent from the body, present with the Lord—or a place of unimaginable torment and torture.  One of two places.  But there are two deaths.  Revelation 20.  You fast forward to the end of the age and you come upon this scene known as the Great White Throne Judgment, where all the nations of the earth, the unbelievers of all the nations of the earth are standing before the great throne of God.  And the Bible says the second death is when the Lord takes Hades and Death and casts them into the Lake of Fire with all those people.  The second death is when individuals are separated from God for all of eternity.  Now, keep those two deaths in mind when you hear the words of Jesus here. “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die,”—that’s the first death—“yet shall he live.”  Yet shall he live.  Somebody once was talking about matters of the afterlife to D.L. Moody, the great evangelist.  And, you know, Moody said, “One day somebody is going to announce that D.L. Moody is dead.”  And he says, “Don’t believe them for a minute, ‘cause I’ll be more alive than I’ve ever been five seconds after I die.”  This is what Jesus is talking about.  “Whoever believes in me, though he die,” first death, “yet shall he live.”  Now, listen to this, “And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”  That’s the second death.  The believer in Jesus Christ will never experience the second death, which is eternal separation from God in the Lake of Fire or Hell.  That won’t be experienced by the believer in Christ.  Just one death, a physical death.  Unless, of course, the Lord comes before we die.  And that’s the only group of people who will never actually experience physical death are those that are on this earth at the time of the rapture.  And Paul speaks about that in other places in the New Testament.

0:32:07.1

So there are two deaths.  There’s resurrection, not reincarnation.  And then the third afterlife insight is that death is not final.  I’ve kind of already said that.  But I just want to come back to that point, that death is not final.  You’re standing there next to a grave.  You’re saying goodbye to a loved one or a friend or maybe even a stranger.  That’s not the stopping point.  That’s just a passageway from this life into the next life.  And what gives us hope as believers in Jesus Christ, what gave Martha and Mary and all the Jews who came to console her hope on the day when Lazarus died and was put in the grave, what gave her hope was that Jesus said, “Your brother will rise again.  But, Martha, I want you to understand more than the just the theology you got in the classroom that you checked off, ‘Yeah, I believe all that.’  I want you to have a relationship with the present reality who is the resurrection and the life, and that’s Me.”  And death is not final.  Back up a little bit from the empty grave to the cross.  Your sins are not fatal.  And those are two reasons to shout “Hallelujah!” this morning.  Our sins are not fatal because of the cross of Jesus Christ.  “He who had no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of Christ.”  He took our sins and became sin and took all our punishment on the cross.  Otherwise, our sins are fatal.  And we experience not only the first death, the physical death, but a spiritual death in the afterlife where we’re separated from God forever.  You come to the cross of Jesus Christ, your sins are not fatal anymore.  He took care of that.  And, furthermore, death is not final because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

0:34:02.9

And so I like to say that, you know, there are a lot of mysteries in life and a lot of circumstances in life that cause us to maybe scratch our heads a little bit and wonder.  And that all the mysteries of life are truly solved in Jesus Christ.  I’m not saying you won’t scratch your head from time to time and wonder, you know, why the delay or why this direction or why the disease or why even the…what, from our perspective, seems like an untimely death.  We see through a glass darkly, Paul says.  You know, fuzzy, puzzling reflections of the afterlife.  God hasn’t told us everything we want to know.  He’s told us everything we need to know, enough to take a step of faith and to trust Him even through the valley of the shadow of death.  All of life’s mysteries are solved in Jesus Christ, including mysteries of the afterlife.  Because He’s the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  And I’ll just leave you with the same question Jesus posed to Martha.  Do you believe this?  I’m not saying with your head.  The devils are at that level.  But do you believe it such that Jesus is a present reality in your life?  You may not know what you don’t know, but you know that you know Jesus is alive.  Jesus is alive, and He is the resurrection and the life.  It’s interesting that three times in these “I AM” statements He mentions life.  “I am the bread of life.”  “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  We have yet to look at that one.  And today’s, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  And, friends, you never really start living this life until you solve some of the riddles and the mysteries of the afterlife.  It’s begins at the cross of Christ and that empty tomb and having a personal receive with this One who says, “I am the answer to the riddle.  I am the resurrection, and I am the life.”  Let’s pray together.

0:36:17.2

Father, thank You so much for Your Word today.  And thank You that You have given to us the words of life, that Jesus speaks life to us.  That the grave could not hold Him.  That our sins would not put us in a place of a fatal relationship with You.  But that through the cross of Christ and His empty tomb we have life and life more abundantly.  And I thank You and praise You for that.  In the name of Jesus and for His sake, amen.

0:37:14.4