Rev. David Holwick O
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
April 23, 1995
John 11:20-27
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I. Lazarus does one thing, but does it well.
A. Unique to gospel of John.
B. A close friend of Jesus.
C. No quotes, just one action - he dies.
1) All of us will also die.
2) Then what?
II. How different groups view life after death, and faith.
A. Science and materialist view.
1) No soul, just brain waves.
a) Death is return to natural state.
2) Our brain are belief factories, inventing scenarios that
help us cope with life.
a) We subconsciously link causes and effects, and see
continuity where there may be none.
b) Wishful thinking is normal - we can't help it.
c) Therefore life after death is an important theme in
human thought, since we cannot accept mortality.
B. Religious scholars:
1) Time magazine - many people believe, but religious
leaders are turning away from the miraculous.
2) "Jesus Seminar" majority concludes Jesus
didn't really rise from dead. Just a myth.
C. The average believer - I hope to go to heaven when I die.
1) Is this an adequate hope?
2) Does the Bible support it?
III. How Jesus viewed death.
A. Death is our enemy. 11:33,35,38
1) Jesus is troubled, and weeps.
a) "Moved" means stirred with anger.
b) Not at their lack of faith.
c) Not because they have lost control of emotions.
d) Jesus is angry because he is confronting enemy.
2) Death is bad, an evil. #1355
a) When God created the world, everything he created was good.
1> Death was not part of creation. Gen 3:19
b) Only after mankind's sin did death become "natural."
1> Death is a consequence of evil, a punishment of evil.
2> Death is never a good thing.
c) It is appropriate to hate death, fear it, be angry at it.
1> Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb. John 11:35
2> He wept at his own death. Matt 26:36-39 [cf Heb 5:7]
B. Two kinds of death.
1) Death of unbelievers.
a) Jesus is not encouraging.
1> He warns people about dying this way.
2> Without faith in Jesus, he says we enter hell.
3> Don't fear death, but hell. Matt 10:28
b) Death means separation from God, and this means darkness.
1> Death is the deprivation of God's good gifts.
2) Death of believers.
a) Jesus is very encouraging here.
b) They enter into Abraham's bosom, or Paradise. Lk 16:22
c) Many mansions. Jn 14:2
d) He calls death "sleep" and is happy Lazarus died. 11:11
3) Non-believers sometimes have same view. (Ingersoll)
It was a cold, gray day in January, and a persistent drizzle
added to the misery of the little group gathered about the
open grave.
A child was being buried.
A few feet away stood a man whose name was known throughout the
nation.
He was a brilliant lawyer, a famous writer and lecturer, one of
the most eloquent and dynamic orators of his day.
He had come to be known as "the Great Agnostic."
The undertaker asked Robert Ingersoll to say a few words,
and when told the family requested it he began to speak slowly:
Why should we fear that which will come to all that is?
We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing -
life or death.
We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the
door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere
else a dawn....
They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave need
have no fear.
The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be,
tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest.
[As for the grieving parents] we know their grief will lessen
day by day.
There is for them this consolation that the dead do not suffer.
If they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours.
#3127
At worst, death is a long sleep.
At best, there might be something good.
Maybe.
The key difference between Jesus and Ingersoll - Jesus says his
followers will wake up from their sleep.
Not a "maybe" but a definite "yes.
IV. Resurrection: now, later, or both?
A. As life after death.
1) A future event.
a) Taught by Old Testament, especially Daniel.
b) Martha reflects this belief - I know my brother will
rise at the Last Day.
c) This teaching is in John, with a twist.
2) Future, or just now? [Realized eschatology]
a) Liberal emphasis.
1> John said to reinterpret prophecy to deal with
just present belief. 5:25 vs. 5:28f
2> No future hope, but existential thrust.
3> Religious faith viewed as irrational.
b) Barclay and doubts about this passage.
1> Not mentioned in other gospels.
2> Lazarus vs. cursed fig tree as source of
contention.
3> Dead don't rise?
4> Thoroughly spiritualized application. It doesn't
matter what really happened, as long as we believe.
c) John is consistent - there will be a future physical
resurrection.
B. Life in life.
1) There is also more to resurrection.
2) Higher quality of life, right now.
a) Life is a present experience in the very life of God.
b) Are we truly alive right now?
From Henry David Thoreau's book WALDEN, written in 1845:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
confront only the essential facts of life.
I wanted to see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what was not a life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practice resignation.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to
live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all
that was not life....
#3121
3) Occurs during conversion, when we believe.
a) Not just "pie-in-the-sky."
b) Death seen differently - we don't die, ultimately.
4) Because we are forever alive, we can risk death.
a) Freedom, justice, peace and evangelism are worth
sacrificing our lives for. [Ron Sider, CT, 7/14/89,30)
[below not used in sermon, but appropriate here.]
Number: 1775 Hard copy: y
SOURCE: Pulpit Helps
TITLE: "What A Waste," People Said
AUTHOR: Dick Bohrer (Moody Monthly)
PAGE: 1 DATE: 2/1/92 ENTERED: 1/22/92
Story of Bill Borden, a young man from a wealthy family who left everything to go into missions to the Moslems in China, only to die in Egypt of cerebral meningitis. He was 25 and by today's values worth $40 million. But in 1912 he gave his fortune away. Five months later in Cairo he died. "What a waste," people said.
Borden's parents raised him in a mansion on Chicago's "Gold Coast" within walking distance of Moody Church. His father, an attorney, was active in real estate after the Chicago fire. It was from this, not milk, that the family fortune grew. Borden went to Yale, was president of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society his senior year, was voted third out of 800 for being the hardest worker, fourth for the most energetic, ninth as the most to be admired, and seventh as the one who had done the most for Yale.
Bill's mother was devout and taught him the Bible. Before entering college, at age 17, his parents sent him on a 10-month global tour. He left San Francisco in September 1904, and when they reached London they went to hear Bill's preacher from Chicago preaching at a series of meetings. He wrote back to his mother, "His sermon was meant to straighten things out. I know that my own ideas were somewhat hazy, and I wasn't at all sure about it. But I am now. In another meeting Torrey gave an invitation to those who had never publicly indicated that they had surrendered all to Christ. Bill stood up with several others and later wrote home, "We sang the chorus: 'I surrender all, I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all." Torrey gave five points for daily living, with the last being "Go to work." Borden resolved to do so.
During his freshman year at Yale, at the Student Volunteer Movement Convention, he heard Samuel Zwemer describe the sweep of Moslem influence throughout the Near and Far East. He said those 70 million people were not lost because they had proved too fanatical or because they refused to listen, but because "none of us has ever had the courage to go to those lands and win them to Jesus Christ."
Back in New Haven, Conn., he founded and privately financed a mission for down-and-out men. One man later said he talked to everyone. At Bible conferences he volunteered to wait on tables. He had a devoted but simple prayer life, and was tempted to buy a car but decided it was an unjustifiable luxury.
Upon graduation he applied to the China Inland Mission for service to Moslems in China. But they decided he needed more Bible training and recommended he go to Princeton Seminary. Unknown to anyone - even his mother - he cut his business ties to give his life totally to Christ. One-fourth of his inheritance was given for use in Chicago, another fourth for other parts of America, one third for work in China, and the remainder for other countries. The New York Bible Society and Moody each got $100,000, equivalent to $4 mil today. $100,000 of the quarter million he gave to China Inland Mission he asked to be invested for retired missionaries.
Bill had no doubts. But his mother, she admitted later, wondered on the eve of his departure for Egypt if he had done the right thing in giving up everything he owned: "In the quiet of my room that night, worn and weary and sad, I fell asleep asking myself again and again, "Is it, after all, worthwhile?' And in the morning, as I awoke to consciousness, a still small voice was speaking in my heart, answering the question with these words: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son....'"
Before he departed they prayed for God's will to be done. It turned out not to be mission to the Moslems. Borden contracted cerebral meningitis in Cairo and died. The news shocked the world. Accounts of his life and death were written in many languages. A version for Chinese Moslems reached the very people he himself had longed to see.
An editorial in a Richmond, Va., paper said, "His investment has borne rich returns already and will continue to yield its peculiar fruit. There are thousands of talented and favored young men who will, in the light of Borden's conception of investment values, come to a new view of Christian service." Another editor wrote, "It was not the million dollars that came to this young American which made his life a victory and his death a world-wide call to young men and women to learn the secret of that victory. It was in things that every man can share that William Borden found the way to the life which is Christ and the death which is gain. And China and the Moslem world shall yet share that gain, as his burning torch is used to kindle in other lives the first of a like passion for Jesus Christ."
Among Bill's papers was a poem his mother had given him on his 17th
birthday.
It summed up what he did and what he was:
Just as I am, young, strong and free,
To be the best that I can be
For truth and righteousness and Thee -
Lord of my life, I come.
Waste? Was it? #1775
b) Death is only a temporary transition to life even more
abundant.
V. Lazarus, come out! 11:43
A. Jesus' prayer is in form of thanksgiving rather than a petition.
1) He prays aloud so onlookers won't think he is acting
on his own.
2) Each of Jesus' miracles is really an answered prayer.
B. Resurrection vs. resuscitation.
1) Lazarus was raised, but not resurrected.
a) Note almost comical detail of body standing there
wrapped in burial cloths.
b) Physical existence alone renewed. Same kind of life.
c) He would die in the future.
2) Jesus was resurrected, not resuscitated.
a) Jesus, in contrast to Lazarus, left no body.
b) Physical and spiritual, and eternal.
c) Emphasis on tangible future existence on a real earth.
VI. Belief is the key.
A. Do you believe this?
11:26
1) We give benefit of the doubt to others, but Jesus is clear
that few truly believe.
2) True belief leads to changed lives.
3) No change, no faith.
B. What do you believe?
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