Jesus Awoke The Dead, So That The Living Could Find Rest In Him

What Did Jesus Do?

“Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad...
so that you may believe.”
John 11.14-15

Return to Judea, with all the attendant danger, just to awaken someone who is sleeping? Surely not, Jesus, let him wake up on his own. But the dead cannot rouse themselves, and Lazarus was dead. Yet the death of this beloved friend was, for Jesus, cause for rejoicing. Can any of us fault the disciples for having so much trouble understanding the Lord? Jesus was always doing or saying something unexpected, even inexplicable, and often downright irrational. It was not merely their enmity for Christ that prompted the priests and the Pharisees to declare that he was possessed or out of his mind. Jesus regularly confounded even his closest friends.

Yet, if Lazarus was dead, why disturb him? Surely Jesus would respect Martha and Mary enough not to make a spectacle of them in the midst of their mourning for their departed brother. But it was for the sake of the two sisters, and of all his disciples, that Jesus had waited until Lazarus was dead before starting out for Bethany. For it would be through awakening the dead Lazarus that Jesus would lead the others to find rest, eternal rest, by believing in him.

Jesus clearly knew that his disciples were simply not getting what he was saying with his repeated comments about his coming death, and being raised after three days (see Matthew 16.21-28, Mark 8.31-33; Matthew 17.22-23, Mark 9.31-32, Luke 9.44-45). Even Peter, who had, by the Father, been made to know Jesus as the Christ, vehemently opposed the Lord's predictions of suffering and death, and resurrection. Knowing Jesus was the Son of God, and believing in his power over death were two different things. But, with the death of Lazarus, there was an opportunity to increase the faith of the disciples by showing them the Lord's authority over death itself, that they might withstand the coming ordeal of the crucifixion and death of Jesus.

Still, the disciples could not imagine the trip to Bethany, and the return to Judea, as anything other than an appointment with death (John 11.16). The comment of Thomas says something about the incredible love and friendship of the twelve for the Lord, even as it reveals how much their faith still needed to grow. Willing to go with Jesus, even if it meant courting death, the disciples would soon see, with the awakening of the “sleeping” Lazarus, that Christ was the Lord of life. Apart from believing in Jesus there is no rest for the living, neither is there any peace for the dead. But all who die with Christ live in and through him forever! (see Romans 6.1-11)

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4