Raising Lazarus Part 1

Well, my name is Rob Sweet.

I haven't been here for a little while.

If you maybe you've started coming

in the last four or five weeks

and you're thinking every week there's a different guy

that's teaching what's going on here.

I do wanna say thanks to Carl Cartier,

our worship pastor, not just for this morning,

but Carl, they're already clapping for you

wherever you are, but Carl did such a great job

leading us through four weeks on the heart of worship.

What a blessing that was to our body.

And maybe this is my imagination,

but when I came back today, I was listening to y'all sing

and I was like, I think it worked.

I think they're worshiping with more oomph,

with more heart.

And obviously it's a lot more than just singing

as Carl taught us, but I'm so grateful.

Carl did a wonderful job.

And then last week, Lloyd was back and man, poor Lloyd,

he had to come into a hard message talking

about God's sovereignty and wrestling through these issues.

And as Lloyd does, he did a wonderful job

of navigating that.

But now I get to be with you

and I'm excited to be with you for lots of reasons.

I've had a few weeks off.

It wasn't a full sabbatical, so to speak,

but it did give me time just to be with my family

and catch up on some things.

I had three weeks where I wasn't working at all

and I had two lists.

One was a rest and rejuvenation list

and one was a honeydew list from Jody.

And I'm happy to say I got through about halfway on both,

on both, which I felt pretty good about.

But it was a nice time off.

And when you're off a little bit from your rhythm,

it usually causes you to reflect.

And some of the reflection that I did,

I was thinking about, how am I?

How are we collectively as a church?

Where are we?

What are we up to?

And nothing profound,

but I did just come back to this simple idea.

I genuinely believe that everything going on

in the world right now is a part of God

ultimately revealing himself and his glory on this earth

through Jesus Christ as the center of all things.

Amen.

I appreciate that, amen.

And I know many of us resonate with that,

but there's something about getting away

from your normal rhythms just to say,

what's it all about?

At the end of the day, it's about Jesus.

And this mission that we have together

of becoming a community of people who follow Jesus

with our whole heart and help others do the same.

And so then I get to be in John 11 with you this morning,

which happens to be my favorite interaction of Jesus

in the entire scripture.

And as Carl kind of already teed up,

we're not gonna get to the resurrection part today,

Lloyd will pick that up next week,

but there's an awful lot here.

And so here's how I wanna set this up.

You can go ahead and turn there

if you wanna be turning there,

but I wanna give a bit more of an intro

to what we're gonna find.

It's, as you know, it's the famous account

of Jesus raising Lazarus from the grave.

But when you read the whole text,

as Carl already indicated,

most of the story is before the resurrection.

The resurrection happens right there at the end,

and there's so much more to it

than just the raising of Lazarus.

When you read this chapter, mindful of who Jesus is,

that he's God himself walking on the earth,

then you see it grapples

with some of the most profound human issues,

like why is there death?

What does God feel about death?

What will he do about death?

It's almost like this one chapter

shrinks the entire human experience down

into this interaction that Jesus has

with this particular family.

There's love and suffering and grief and death and promise

and hope and resurrection and joy,

and it's all here in this chapter.

It's the deepest parts of the human experience.

It helps to think of it in this kind of big grand way,

because you'll see it's not just about this one family.

It's not just about Lazarus and Mary and Martha

and Jesus' love for them and his interaction with them.

It's about all of us.

This chapter reveals to us the very heart of God

toward human beings, toward you.

In other words, if you wanna know what God thinks of you,

what God feels toward you, how God interacts with you,

look at how Jesus interacts with the people

that he rubbed shoulders with, particularly this family

that he loved so much.

Study how Jesus interacted with them.

Study what he said to them,

because it will show you the heart of God for you.

So here's how I wanna encourage you

to come at this chapter over the next two weeks

as we walk through it together.

Transpose your own life into this narrative.

It's not just about Lazarus and Mary and Martha.

Think about what God is trying to tell you about you

and about him.

That's how you have to read it

if it's gonna penetrate your heart.

Now this morning we're gonna cover the first half,

really a little more than half of the chapter.

We're gonna go from verse one

all the way down through verse 37.

And in these verses we're gonna see the events

and conversations that led up to the resurrection of Lazarus.

And what we're gonna see is really incredible.

We're gonna see a remarkable picture of God's love for us.

Jesus is going to put on display the heart of God.

And you'll see Jesus do this in three ways

that are a little surprising.

Here's how he does it.

He confounds, he confronts, and he comes near.

And this will be the outline for our text this morning.

Jesus does these three things.

He confounds, he confronts, he comes near.

And what he's doing is he's showing us

how the love of God works,

how God interacts with his people.

That's what Jesus is doing.

God's love confounds us sometimes.

Isn't that true?

God's love confronts us and God's love comes near.

Jesus is the love of God in the flesh.

And so we see him interacting

with these people in this way.

So let's look at the first part of this,

which is the first 16 verses.

And the theme of these verses is God's love confounds us.

I'll start in verse one.

I'll read all the way through 16.

And then we'll come back and I'll hit some highlights

on this.

I won't have time to comment on every verse.

Verse one, now a certain man was ill.

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 sister sent to him saying,

Lord, he whom you love is ill.

But when Jesus heard it,

he said 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.

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So when he heard that Lazarus was ill,

he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this, he said to his disciples,

let us go to Judea again.

The disciples said to him,

Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you

and you're going there again.

Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day?

If anyone walks in the day,

he does not stumble

because he sees the light of this world.

But if anyone walks in the night,

he stumbles because the light is not in him.

After saying these things, he said to them,

our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,

but I go to wake him.

The disciples said to him,

Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll recover.

Now Jesus had spoken of his death,

but they thought he meant taking a rest in sleep.

Then Jesus told them plainly,

Lazarus has died.

And for your sake, I'm glad I was not there

so that you may believe, but let us go to him.

So Thomas called the twins, said to his fellow disciples,

let us also go that we may die with him.

There is so much here.

I wanna go back to the first four verses

and show you a couple of things, some context.

It was clear that Jesus is very close to this family.

They lived right near Jerusalem.

Bethany is about two miles from Jerusalem.

And so think of it as a suburb of the city of Jerusalem

when Jesus would come to Jerusalem

for the feasts throughout the year,

including the Passover feast where he will die,

which is very shortly after this incident.

He would stay with Lazarus and Mary and Martha,

and then he would enter into the city in the morning

and come back in the evening.

He knew them well.

Lazarus was essentially one of his closest friends.

And so when the word comes to Jesus that he is sick,

I love the way the sisters put it.

They very simply say to Jesus,

Lord, he whom you love is ill.

That's it.

They don't mention his name.

He who you love is ill.

So right away, this challenged

some of our theological assumptions.

How could one of Jesus' closest friends who he loved be ill?

In other words, why do bad things happen to good people?

The age-old question, right?

The theological conundrum.

Maybe even more generally, it's said this way.

If God is good, why do bad things happen at all?

Why do people die?

Why is there evil?

Why is there abuse?

Why is there all the terror and horror and tears

and sorrow that we live in?

And the reason this question is so perplexing

is because of what the Bible says.

What do I mean by that?

Well, the Bible teaches us a lot of things about God,

but you could argue that two biggest things

the Bible teaches us about God is,

number one, God is in control.

God is sovereign over everything.

Lloyd did a great job last week of reminding us about that.

God is sovereign.

Number two, God is love.

The Bible teaches that the core of who God is

is mercy and grace and kindness and faithfulness

and gentleness and compassion.

Now you cut God open, so to speak, he bleeds love.

He is the very definition of love.

So if God's in control and God is love,

how can there be so much suffering?

And so the existence of the pain and the suffering

puts what the two greatest things

the Bible teaches us about God,

he pits them against each other, so to speak.

So here we are, we're barely into the story

of the Lazarus story, and we're already

in the deep end of the pool.

And it's something that we can all identify with.

We try so hard, don't we, to believe

that God is both in control and loving,

that he is both strong and compassionate.

And we try to believe that,

but when suffering and pain come into our lives,

where is he?

And that's where Carl directed us earlier in the prayer time.

And so this is where these sisters are at.

And they just say, if we just bring this to Jesus,

all we have to say is the one you love is ill.

The implication is surely Jesus does not want him to be ill.

Surely that's not Jesus' plan.

And Jesus' response in verse four

is very interesting, isn't it?

He says, this illness does not lead to death.

It's for the glory of God,

so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

First of all, what does he mean,

this illness will not lead to death?

It seems that's exactly where it's gonna lead.

We know the story.

It seems like Jesus didn't understand.

No, it's not that Jesus didn't understand.

He's saying this.

He's saying this illness will not terminate in death.

He knows it will pass through death,

but death will not be the ending of the story.

The drama will not end in death.

That will not be the final act.

And so by application,

here's the first thing you and I can cling to.

If you've entrusted yourself to Christ,

in the long-term perspective,

nothing truly beautiful and good in your life

will ultimately end in death.

Now, let me unpack that a little bit more.

You will almost certainly pass through death,

and so will I.

Some of your deepest longings and desires

will no doubt be shattered and unfulfilled in your lifetime.

But when all the dust settles,

the end of the drama for you is life and fullness,

and you will lack nothing

if you have put your hope in Jesus Christ.

The terminating point of everything, Jesus says,

is God's glory.

Now, why should that be such good news to us?

Because God's glory is beauty and wholeness

and fullness and completion.

And that's the end of the story.

That's the terminating point of the story.

It's actually just the real beginning.

But you and I will be at the center of that with Jesus,

united with Jesus in this glory,

and you will lack nothing.

Now, that's just one application we get from this.

Now, let me put the next verses on the screen

because what you're gonna find is the fact

that Lazarus was ill is not the biggest conundrum.

The biggest conundrum that we have here,

the biggest tension is in verses five and six.

Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so.

When he heard Lazarus was ill,

he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Surely that's a mystery.

Surely that's a mis-translation, right?

Bible translators have struggled in how to translate this

because in the Greek, it says plain as day, so means so.

So here's how you need to understand this.

When Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,

therefore, because of his love,

he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

It's cause and effect.

Because he loved them, he delayed.

Knowing the seriousness of the situation,

knowing the great stress and anxiety

they must have been feeling,

you can put yourself in their shoes, can't you?

Because he cared so deeply for them,

he stayed where he was.

This is the confounding message

that Jesus had to share with his sister and Lazarus.

This is the confounding nature of the love of God.

God's love confounds us sometimes.

And this is why in the prayer time earlier,

we don't want you to jump too quickly to the resurrection

because the reality is this whole story

is like life in a microcosm,

and you and I aren't to the resurrection part yet, are we?

We're in the anxious waiting part.

We're in the worrying part.

We're in the place where these two sisters were,

and God's love for them, he delayed.

Oh my, wow.

How? Why?

God's love is confounding sometimes.

He often does the exact opposite

of what we think love should do.

Have you experienced that?

I've experienced that.

The scripture's clear.

Because he loved them, he delayed.

God's love for you will often confound your expectations

and your hopes as part of what faith looks like.

His love is perplexing.

His love is confusing.

It will make you angry sometimes.

But one thing we learned from this family's experience

with Jesus is that pain and grief are not antithetical

to God's love for you.

In fact, they very well may be an indication

of his love for you.

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister in Lazarus,

so when he heard he was ill, he stayed two days longer.

God's love confounds us.

So here's the question each of us has to wrestle with,

a great question for you and me today.

Will I judge God's love by my circumstances?

Or will I judge my circumstances

by God's love?

And that's not an easy thing, is it?

It takes a lot of faith, it takes a lot of humility,

it takes a lot of letting go.

God's love confounds us, but that's not the only thing

that Jesus teaches us about God's love in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Not only does God's love confound us,

it also confronts us.

Look at 17 through 22.

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.

Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died,

but even now I know that whatever you did

and now I know that whatever you ask from God,

God will give you.

What you'll see here in this section

and in the final section of our text this morning

is the same thing said by the two sisters.

Carl pointed that out and he's right,

but Jesus's response is very different to each of them.

He responds one way to Martha,

he responds a different way to Mary.

Isn't that interesting?

Two sisters going through the exact same thing,

Jesus offers them each something different

and they come to him with these words.

Let's see how he interacts with Martha,

look at the next set of verses.

Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

Martha said to him, I know that he'll 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 God who is coming into the world.

Notice how Jesus interacts with Martha, he confronts her.

Now what do I mean he confronts her?

He confronts her with truth.

She comes out in her grief, the first thing he says to her

is your brother will rise again.

He doesn't say hi Martha, I'm so sad about your loss,

he doesn't get that path with her.

He just simply says, your brother will rise again.

Now her first instinct is to kind of say, okay, yeah, yeah,

I know you're talking about the long-term,

sort of pie in the sky is sort of,

I think where she's feeling.

I know he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

This is where Jesus doubles down with her.

This is where he stands in her path and he says,

look at me in the eye and he confronts her

with one of the greatest and most explosive statements

ever uttered.

He says, I am the resurrection and the life.

Now, throughout John's gospel,

if you've been walking through this with us,

you know there are seven I am statements

and this is the fifth of seven that we've come to.

Let me just put the list on the screen and remind you,

I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world,

I am the door for the sheep, I am the good shepherd,

the resurrection and the life,

the way, the truth and the life, the true vine.

The significance of these statements

is Jesus is proclaiming his deity.

The word I am is just a reminder,

it's the proper name of God in the Hebrew.

It's Yahweh Elohim, it's I am who I am,

it's the name that the Jews would not speak

and Jesus is saying, I am, he's claiming that identity

and then each one of these statements

says a different thing that that means for us

that Jesus is God.

He says, I am, that means I'm your sustenance,

I'm your bread of life, I am,

that means I'm the light of the world,

I am, I'm the door for the sheep,

I'm the good shepherd and he comes to this one,

I am the resurrection and the life

and it's no less than this.

Jesus is saying, in me everything is reborn,

in my presence nothing can stay dead.

Through me everything that is sad and broken in the world

is undone and remade, not just will be,

but in the presence of Jesus he's saying,

is, present tense, I am and so here's the truth

Jesus is confronting Martha with.

She's run out to him with her grief and disappointment

and he confronts her with a wonderful

but unbelievably difficult thing to believe.

You and I have heard this before,

maybe it's become religious jargon,

but do you know how hard it is to believe that?

Really?

You know how difficult it would have been

for her to believe this and so he confronts her

with this truth and then he confronts her

with this question.

Do you believe this?

The love of God is confronting this woman

in her grief with truth.

Do you believe this?

Do you believe this?

Do you believe this?

Do you believe this woman in her grief with truth?

Not an angry confrontation, a loving confrontation.

This is the same way the love of God confronts you and me.

Jesus is God's self-revelation of love

and the question is, do you believe this?

Do you believe in Jesus?

Do you really believe in him as resurrection and life?

If you have ears to hear you'll understand

the confrontation is a great act of love.

God confronts you.

He gets in your way sometimes.

Why must he confront us?

Because we're all born traveling headlong toward death.

And if we're not confronted with life himself

along the way, we're lost.

How loving of God to confront us with himself,

who is life and love, to do otherwise would be

to fail to love us well, to give us up

to hopelessness and darkness.

And he won't do that.

He confronts us like he confronts Martha.

Now how does he confront us?

Well, in all kinds of ways, but mostly with the truth

of his word and the person of Jesus,

just like he's doing here with Martha.

The truth of his word, he confronts us that way.

The person of Jesus, he confronts us that way.

You're here this morning.

You're hearing about Jesus.

You're hearing God's word explained to you, taught to you.

Jesus is speaking this to you this morning.

He's standing in your path,

and do you know what he's proclaiming?

He's saying, behold my love for you through Jesus Christ.

Do you believe this?

Are you willing to let God confront you?

You must be willing if you ever hope to live.

God's love confounds us.

It's perplexing sometimes.

It also confronts us.

One more thing God's love does in this text comes near us.

Let me read to you 28 through 37.

When Jesus had said this, when she had said this,

she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private,

the teacher is here and he's calling for you.

And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the village,

but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house

consoling her saw Mary rise quickly and go out,

they followed her, supposing that she was going

to the tomb to weep there.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,

she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord,

if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

When Jesus saw her weeping,

and the Jews who had come with her also weeping,

he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

And he said, where have you laid him?

They said to him, Lord, come and see.

Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, see how he loved him.

But some of them said, could not he who opened the eyes

of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?

Let me start with that very last question.

The answer is yes, of course.

Jesus absolutely could have kept Lazarus from dying.

He didn't.

What's the implication?

The implication is, at least in this instance,

resurrection is better than not dying at all.

This is a great lesson for us.

You can apply this in so many different ways,

but just briefly, have you ever considered

that dying and then being resurrected

is far better than avoiding death altogether?

Think about it this way.

Death and resurrection was God's loving plan for Lazarus.

Death and resurrection was the Father's loving plan

for Jesus.

And death and resurrection is Jesus' loving plan

for every single Christian, except those relative few

who will be alive when he returns.

It's his loving plan.

Because he loves you, he delays.

And more than likely, you will die.

And more than likely, I will die.

But the drama does not end there.

So you and I need not fear death.

Jesus has made it into a bridge, not a dead end.

And we will follow him through it,

through it, to resurrection.

With the time left, I wanna talk about

Jesus' emotional response at the tomb.

Remember, we noted that both Mary and Martha

say the exact same thing to Jesus,

and he responds to them in a completely different way.

So here in verse 32, Mary says the same thing.

Remember, he responded to Martha

with a loving confrontation.

He confronted her with his truth, with truth.

But to Mary, he responds completely differently.

How does he respond to Mary?

He moves toward her broken heart.

He comes near her.

How does he come near her?

With tears.

He comes with tears.

He comes with tears.

I love this little interaction in verse 34.

Jesus says, where have you laid him?

What a beautiful question to someone in grief.

Jesus is saying, will you show me?

Will you bring me to the heart of your pain?

Will you allow me, Jesus is saying,

to be with you up close and personal with your loss.

Jesus is not content to stay 40 feet back

where it's easier and more sanitized.

He moves right up to the tomb.

He says, where have you laid them?

And look at their response.

They open themselves up to him.

They open their pain up to him.

They say, Lord, come and see.

And then it's right there after they say,

come and see that we find the shortest,

but perhaps most profound verse in the Bible,

two words, Jesus wept.

And in the Greek, the word wept

doesn't mean he shed a tear or two.

It's an expression of an overflow

of a deeply grieving heart.

It's as if the bottle of Jesus' emotions

had been shaken up and then the cork pops off

and he overflows in tears.

One translator put it this way, Jesus burst into tears.

And here's what I want you to see here.

Don't miss the timing of Jesus' tears.

It wasn't the moment he heard Lazarus was sick,

even though Jesus knew he was gonna have to pass through

death, it wasn't that moment.

It wasn't the moment he heard Lazarus had actually died.

It was when people Jesus loved

invited him to come and see.

They invited him to come and see their loved one

whose life had been stolen away.

They invited God himself to come and see

the source of their broken hearts

and God himself's response to that invitation

is to burst into tears, flowing with empathy and love.

Now consider this.

Jesus knew exactly what he was about to do.

Isn't it interesting, Jesus lost it,

even though he knew within a matter of minutes

he'd be embracing Lazarus and in a matter of minutes

everybody's tears would be turned upside down.

In spite of that, he wept.

And he didn't force a tear out,

he overflowed the damn burst.

What does this teach us?

Tim Keller had a wonderful insight on this idea.

And by the way, he passed away recently six weeks ago

and as I was studying this text

and reading some of his thoughts on this text,

I was thinking about Tim's resurrection.

How beautiful, what a loss for the church,

what a gain for Tim Keller.

Here's his insight on this.

When Jesus Christ chose to leave the glory of heaven

and come to earth as a man,

God himself was choosing to lash his heart to ours.

He purposefully bound his heart up

with the circumstances of his people

and he is more bound up and in deeper sympathy with us

than any parent or any spouse or any person

has ever been with anyone else.

What Jesus shows us in this moment of weeping by the tomb

is that the heart of God is so closely knit together

with a human heart that he feels our pain.

And I would add he has to feel our pain

because he is one of us.

This is the beauty of the incarnation.

He took on flesh, by taking on flesh,

it was more than just our meat and our bones that he took on,

he took on the emotions.

He lashed his heart to our heart.

So these are the tears of God

shed by a human being

and shared with human beings.

Do you see the beauty of Jesus?

Do you see the glory of Christ?

Transpose your life experience onto this.

God has deeply rekindled the human heart

and he has given us the strength to live in the same place.

God is deeply responsive to your pain.

He grieves with you.

He says, if you're willing,

take me to the place of your deepest hurt.

Let me in there.

Show me.

Where have you laid him?

And then when you open your heart up to him in that place,

he bursts into tears alongside you.

He says, I'm going to leave.

Most of our experience, God seems just out there somewhere,

up there somewhere, standoffish somewhere.

Why can't he be closer?

Why can't we see him with skin on?

Do you hear the heart of God though,

speaking to you this morning through this text?

Is there anything in you that resonates

with these words Jesus wept?

If you struggle to believe in the heart of God for you,

you will find the words of the Bible.

By the way, why did Jesus respond so differently

to the two sisters?

He gave them each what they needed.

He demonstrated God's love to them

in exactly the manner they needed to experience it

in that moment.

He confronted Martha with truth.

He consoled Mary with tears.

He'll do the same for you.

I want to put this all together.

In the person of Jesus, God's love came to earth.

And he showed us how God feels about us,

how God interacts with us.

And here's what that looks like.

He confounds us at times.

He confronts us at times.

And he's always coming near us in love.

Hasn't he interacted with you in these very ways

during different seasons of your life?

Transpose your life circumstances

in these three categories.

Think of times he delayed.

Think of times he confronted you with truth.

Think of times he ministered to you gently

and empathetically, even weeping with you.

There's no other God like this.

Of course there's no other God like this.

There's no other God, but listen.

The human mind is incapable of inventing a God

that is this high and this low.

This confrontational and mysterious and this gentle

and empathetic.

God has revealed himself to us.

Do you believe this?

I want to invite you to take out your communion elements.

If you missed them when you came in, it's not too late.

I want to encourage you.

I'll give you just a minute as I connect the text

to the Lord's Supper that you can go back

in the main atrium and you can pick up the bread

in the cup and while you're getting ready to take this,

let me just say this.

This is not for everyone in the room.

This is for anyone who's put their trust in Jesus Christ

and you might coming today and say, listen,

I have my trust in Jesus Christ,

but my trust is about this big right now.

Come to the table.

Come to the table.

This is for you, oh, you of small faith,

but perhaps for you this morning, you'd say,

I have not put my trust in Jesus, not actually.

I want you to know God loves you

just as much as he loves anyone in this room this morning.

And so this table is not yet for you,

but it can be for you.

It will be for you when you cross that line of faith

and the invitation of Jesus to you this morning is,

I am the resurrection and the life.

Do you believe this?

There's a tension in the story where we left off

because Jesus isn't finished working yet.

We know how the story is going to end,

but we're just gonna sit in the tension right now

until next week.

Jesus has yet to call Lazarus out of the grave.

And in a sense, this tension represents the moment in time

that we are all living in right now

in between the first coming of Jesus

and the second coming of Jesus.

We've heard the promise of Jesus in John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

He says, I am the resurrection and the life,

but we're still waiting.

We're waiting for that to be true fully, really.

We're waiting for his return to call us all out of the grave.

Can you wait in faith this morning?

These elements are a good reminder to you.

Here is something you can feel and touch and taste

to remind you that the most important work

has already been completed,

Jesus' own death and resurrection.

He has passed through death for us,

and he promises, he promises,

he will not leave us in our tombs.

By faith, if you believe this morning, take the bread.

And remember, this is the body of Jesus broken for you.

It's broken for you.

And eat the bread in remembrance of him.

And in the same way, the same supper with his disciples,

he took the cup and he blessed it.

And he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

As often as you drink it,

drink it in remembrance of Jesus.

Let's drink it this morning.

Amen, I wanna invite you to stand with me as I pray

and we're going to sing together.

Our Father, as we rise to our feet,

let it remind us that our resurrection is on its way.

Let us hold in this sacred space of the waiting,

faith in your son, Jesus Christ, the God man.

May he continue to exceed our expectations

and fill our minds and hearts with the truth about his love.

And may we believe that he is the resurrection and the life.

In the name of Christ, we pray, amen.