The Stench Behind the Stone

So I want to take you to a couple of passages of scripture.

Grab your Bibles, grab your phones, whatever it is you're going to go to.

Two verses I'm going to read to you, two passages I'm going to read to you.

One in the Old Testament in Joshua chapter 5, the other's in John chapter 11.

Joshua 5 · chapter mention John 11 · chapter mention

We're going to look at the story of Lazarus.

Joshua chapter 5, verse 9 says this.

Joshua 5:9

It says, Then the Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.

So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.

We're going to come back to that.

Let's jump over to John chapter 11, verse 38.

John 11:38

Now, this is the story of Lazarus.

Many of you have heard this story, so I don't have to elaborate too much here, but Lazarus is dead.

Jesus is coming, but he's late.

He's late.

In Mary and Martha's perspective, he is late.

And in verse 38, this is what it says.

This says Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb.

A cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.

And I'm going to emphasize the beginning in verse 39.

It says, Jesus said, Roll the stone aside.

But Martha said, But Martha, the dead man's sister, protested, Lord, he has been dead for four days, and the smell will be terrible.

Like a teenager coming home from soccer practice, terrible.

Like terrible.

Verse 40 says, Jesus responded, Didn't I tell you that you would see God's glory if you believe?

Verse 41.

He says that one more time.

So they rolled the stone aside.

Today I want to talk to you for just a few minutes on the subject of the stench behind the stone.

The stench behind the stone.

Let's pray and we'll jump into this.

Father, we thank you for your presence.

We thank you that you're here with us.

We open our hearts to you.

We receive word from you from the only place that can truly change us in the first place.

It's not a preacher, it's not a church, it's the word of God.

So we dive into your word today with an open heart, saying, God, encourage me.

Even challenge me, God.

We welcome that in this place.

Holy Spirit, you are welcome.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So jumping into this, I need to pour a foundation.

Now, coming to a church who is very adept in diving deep into the word of God, I love this, but but every good preacher, our preacher, our pastor included, comes in an approach of pouring a foundation.

Because every preacher's goal is to build a structure that everyone can look at and say, I get it.

But before I build the structure, I need to pour a foundation.

So for the next few minutes, it's going to look like wet cement.

But just trust me.

Okay?

Look at your neighbor and say, I think I can trust this guy.

So trust me, I'm going to take you somewhere.

So I want to go very, very quickly.

This is what I love about the Bible.

Is you can, it's like a movie, you know?

Like you can, you can rewind it to the beginning and watch the beginning.

And then you can fast forward all the way to the end and watch the end.

Or you can go back to the middle and see what's happening in the middle of this story.

And the verse that I read to you, the opening verse, where God tells the children of Israel, Today I have rolled the approach of Egypt from you.

I want to fast forward.

This is right when they were crossing the Jordan River.

We all know that their first battle was going to be Jericho.

Let's go, let's fast forward to Jericho.

This is the end.

Don't you wish sometimes you could watch the end of the movie so you're not so panicked in the middle of it?

This is the end of the movie, Joshua chapter 6, verse 20.

Joshua 6:20

When the trumpet sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed.

So everyone charged straight in and they took the city.

Glory to God.

If we were a hanky-waving church, this would be the part where you wave the hanky.

Jericho, the walls fell down.

But here's what I want to present to you.

We all have battles, and we all are in the process through our whole life of facing battle after battle after battle after battle.

But what I want to encourage you is and what I want to show you through this text is that we put too much emphasis on the battle.

But what I want to show you in this text is that every good, before every good battle, there's a bigger battle.

Before you face any battle in your life, you're going to find out that there is a battle that's way more harder to defeat than the circumstances that are before you.

It's what I call the battle within.

It's the battle inside myself.

And I've realized that before I face a battle on the outside, God takes me through a battle on the inside.

As he prepares me for the battle.

Now they were being prepared for Jericho long before Jericho.

And this is what I want to show you.

I want to go into this.

Now if we go all the way back to chapter three.

Chapter three, they're standing on the banks of the Jordan River.

And God tells the children of Israel, He says, Consecrate yourselves today, for tomorrow I will do amazing things among you.

Consecrate yourselves.

So they wake up the next day, the Jordan parts, they walk across to the side.

Now, this this is where it gets fun.

Okay, watch this.

You're gonna think a different definition of fun after this.

Joshua chapter 5, verse 2.

Joshua 5:2

At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.

So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites.

You feel the awkwardness in the room right now?

You feel that?

Now, this is the good news.

In the New Testament, I want to show you something in the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, they take them through this symbolic act, really, of circumcision.

What we have to be reminded of is that circumcision was a sign of the covenant.

Remember, all the way back to Abraham.

Circumcision was a sign, kind of like a sign of the rainbow for Noah, was a remember this.

Abraham's like, hey, Noah got a rainbow.

Why do I have to?

But but but they were about to go back into battle, right?

So God's like, I want you to be, before you go to battle, I want you to be to be reminded of who you're in covenant with.

Now let's go over to the New Testament because thank Jesus, circumcision is a different kind of circumcision.

In the New Testament, it becomes a circumcision of the heart.

Let me show you this in Romans chapter 2, verse 29.

Romans 2:29

It says, No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a circumcision of the heart by the Spirit and by the written code.

So it becomes a circumcision of the heart, which implies and which tells us it's a heart issue.

Do you know what God is after more than anything else in your life?

He's not after your money.

He's not after your time.

He's not after your marriage.

You'd be like, wait a minute, God wants my marriage.

Hold on.

He's not after your marriage.

He's not after everything.

You know what God really wants more than anything else?

Your heart.

Because guess what?

If he gets your heart, he gets your treasure, he gets your time, he gets your marriage, he gets your influence, he gets everything.

So he is in a constant pursuit of our heart.

And thus, there is a constant renewal of our heart.

There is a constant circumcision of our heart.

There is a constant process of cutting away and revealing things to us.

And this was one of the reasons Jesus came.

I want to show you this.

In Luke 2, verse 34, it says, And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, now this is a prophetic word that's being given to Mary, the mother of Jesus, said, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed.

Luke 2:34

Watch verse 35.

And a sword will pierce even your own soul.

Watch these words.

To the end that means for the purposes of, or so that, now watch this, so that the hearts, so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

Now, now let me show you a couple of the meanings of these words.

This word heart.

This word heart in the Greek is the Greek word kardei or kardea, and it means the most inward part of a person.

The part that no one knows about inside yourself but yourself.

But then this word revealed, that Jesus came to reveal your heart, the most inward part of your being, Jesus came to reveal it, to circumcise it, and to reveal in the Greek is this Greek word apoktalupto.

And it means this: it means to take the cover off of it.

He came to take your heart, to take the cover off of it, and to begin to cut away things.

Like the great physician would with the steady hand of his scalpel.

Why?

To prepare you for battle.

To prepare you for what's to come.

You know why we're we're all going through a battle.

Even in church, when we get all dressed up in our cute little jackets and stuff, we're going through battles.

Why?

Because we got issues, y'all.

See the awkwardness in the room there?

Come on, look at your neighbor and say, You got issues.

Come on, tell them like you mean it.

Say, man, you got issues.

Some of y'all have been waiting for months to tell that person that, and church gave you permission.

Like I just started a conversation that's gonna go on the rest of the day there, right?

But but we all got issues.

But God is there to help us process through these issues.

This is this is this is what he does, okay?

So step back.

Foundation poured.

Foundation.

Let me build something on top of this foundation.

You guys with me?

Come on, y'all with me?

North Fort Worth, y'all with me?

Okay.

Let's go back to this text, the opening text.

Let's go back to it.

Joshua chapter 5, verse 9.

Joshua 5:9

Then the Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.

Now, we need to know what reproach means, because that sounds like a biblical word that didn't know everyone nods their heads like, yeah, amen.

What does that mean?

I don't know.

Reproach, let's look at this word reproach in the Greek, is the Greek word harpah.

You have to spit, you have to go, charpah, right?

This is what it means.

Watch this.

Scorn, shame, disgrace.

Now, what makes that the most impactful is that when the Lord is speaking this over the over the Israelites, it is 40 years after they have been freed from Egypt.

40 years, y'all.

40 years ago they were freed.

But God says today I'm going to remove the shame of Egypt from you.

Now, why is this relevant to us?

It's relevant to us because many times we've been freed years past.

It was 20 years ago you got divorced.

But the divorce still remains.

Can I get real heavy?

It was 25 years ago that you were molested.

And you're no longer in that atmosphere of having to go through that scorn and shame.

But 30 years later, it's still there.

It's still there.

And God says, I have a great battle for you to fight, and you're going to go on to defeat the enemy, but today we got to deal with something.

This is what God was telling them, and this is what God tells them.

So God removed them out of Egypt 40 years prior, but it was this day that God was going to remove Egypt out of them.

And there comes a time in every one of our lives that before we go to face the battles that God has challenged us and called us to fight, that no matter what our past says about us, even if we're removed from that circumstance or that situation, that we go through the process of God saying, Now I've removed you from that situation.

Now I want to remove that situation from outside of you.

We all go through these things.

We all go through this.

We've been removed from the pain of our past, but the pain still remains.

We've been removed from the abusive situation, but the abuse resides inside of ourselves.

And God said, I love this, it says that today I have rolled it out of the way.

I've rolled it to the side.

Now, when I when I was reading this text and I saw that it said, today I've removed the shame, I've rolled it away.

I thought two things in the scripture, I was like, okay, two things come to mind real quick when it comes to about talking about rolling things away.

One, we talked about last week, Jesus rolled the stone out of the way.

Remember this?

I can't preach that.

Pastor Robert did it last week, and I'm not going to try to beat that because I'll fail, I'll lose.

So, so another one came to mind.

It was the story of Lazarus.

So now let me try to take this and shape it in a way to help you.

Let's take this idea of this Old Testament, amazing story that's happening in the Israelite life, and fast forward to the New Testament and learn some things from it.

So let me ask you this: Jesus gets to Lazarus, and what does he walk to?

He walks to a tomb.

Now, where do dead things go?

They go in a tomb.

Dead things are placed in a grave, in a tomb, in a dark place, in a lonely place, in a despicable place, and in a downright stanky place.

Because we don't want to leave dead bodies around.

They carry disease.

There's a stench to it.

So what do we do with dead things?

We put them, we put them in the ground.

We bury them deep.

And let me ask you this what do we do with the dead things in us?

We bury them down deep, is what we do.

Why?

Because they stink.

And it hurts.

And Mary and Martha had experienced this.

For Mary and Martha, the pain of the loss of their brother and the stench of what remained was too great.

So they put it in a dark place and they rolled a stone in front of it.

Is this not what we do?

Is this not what we do with our pain?

And this is the good news.

God wants to visit your place of pain.

Everyone's like, man, this tall guy is heavy.

Can we get Pastor Robert back?

Like, man, guest speakers are supposed to be encouraging.

I know, I know.

I didn't want to preach this sermon, trust me.

Like I had two other sermons.

I was like, God, these are the ones.

They're gonna like me if I preach this sermon.

This will be awesome.

They'll all be encouraged.

And like God just kept taking me back to this word.

Why?

Because there's somebody here, there's somebody at Frisco, there's somebody at Dallas, there's somebody at Grand Prairie, there's somebody at Coalfield that has been carrying something for far too long.

And God says, Today, today is the day that I'm going to remove it.

I'm gonna take it away, I'm gonna free you.

So let's look, let's look very quickly at how Jesus approached the pain.

Because here's the fact of the matter Jesus wants to go to the very thing that you have buried in darkness.

Now watch Jesus.

He comes on the scene in this moment.

Jesus comes on the scene with Mary and Martha.

We all know the sassy parts.

You know, Martha comes out to meet him, and I guarantee you her hand was on her hip.

She was like, Jesus, you should have been here.

You know, so we so we know we know all those parts, but I want to watch what Jesus said to them.

And Jesus is saying to you today.

John 11, 34, he says this.

Where have you put him?

Where have you put him?

This is what Jesus was in essence saying.

Show me where your faith ended.

Show me where the end of your rope was.

Show me.

Now this is interesting because Jesus, think about it, Jesus knows the number of hairs on your head, whether they be few or many.

Okay?

Jesus didn't need to ask where Lazarus was.

He knew where Lazarus was.

He knew where they had buried the pain.

And Jesus knows exactly where your pain is, too.

But he's a gentleman.

He's a gentleman.

And Jesus came and he would come to us today, and he would say the same thing.

He would say, Take me to the place of your pain.

Would you escort me and show me the painful places in your life?

Would you, would you show me where that pain is?

But our response has to be the same as Martha and Mary's, because their response was this.

They told him, Lord, come and see.

Come see.

I wish you would have stopped this from happening, Jesus.

That's the truth.

Jesus, why couldn't you have saved this divorce?

Jesus, why did you let my uncle molest me?

Jesus, why weren't you there to help avoid the pain from ever happening in the first place?

But you know what, Jesus?

You know what?

Come see.

I'm gonna show it to you.

I'm gonna show you this stinky, nasty, stench-filled, disgusting place of darkness in my life that has now become the stench behind the stone.

I want to show it to you.

And this is this has to be, and this is why, this is why.

In verse 21, it shows us the heart of Martha.

Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been there, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

But verse 22 is her overcoming her doubt, and she says, But even now, but even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask.

And this has to be our approach.

God, I wished, I prayed, I don't understand why it happened, but even now, 30 years later, 10 years later.

And maybe I'm going too harsh and too deep, maybe I'm talking about too deep of things, but let me tell you something, rejection is a real thing.

And it can be the rejection of anything, it can be the pain of anything.

You may have worked for your employer for 20 years, and then all of a sudden you get laid off.

That's real pain.

That's real rejection, and this is what they're experiencing.

And I want to show you what Jesus' response was.

Verse 35.

Not a word was said.

Verse 35 said, and Jesus wept.

Wept.

Jesus didn't rub their face in it and say, Why didn't you have faith?

Your faith is too weak.

He didn't, he just wept with him.

And when Jesus looks at the pain that you've walked through, and when you take Jesus to the place of your pain, you know what Jesus is going to do?

He's going to sit right down next to you and weep with you.

And weep with you.

This is this is the heart of Jesus we're seeing come to life.

In verse 38.

Verse 38 says this Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb.

Now, why was Jesus angry?

Think about it.

The giver of life at a place of death.

He's seen the enemy at work, and he has this righteous anger that comes up inside of himself, and it says that he arrived at the tomb, and then it describes the tomb.

It was a cave with a stone rolled across it.

He walked to the very place of pain.

He walked to the very place of darkness.

He walked to the stinky place, a place where the pain was too great and the stench was too strong.

It was the stench behind the stone.

And to anybody in those days, if you walked up to a tomb where a stone had been rolled in plant, do you know what that stone screamed to every person that walked by?

Don't you dare try to get past me.

Behind me is something really rotten and something really stinky.

And it's so stinky that we've rolled a really heavy stone in front of it and we've sealed it.

And what it says to everybody that passes by is, don't you dare try to get behind this.

And this is what we do with our pain.

Some of you are like, man, if I'd have known church was gonna deal with this today, I'd have stayed home, I'd have gone to bedside assembly, I didn't want to mess.

Why?

Because I am poking at something that's very sensitive.

It's very sensitive.

You know, when you get an infection in your body, you get a cut that gets infected.

It's sensitive to the touch.

Why?

Because it hurts, it's infected.

It's but the infection is playing a purpose.

The pain is actually playing a purpose, right?

It's saying that I need attention.

I need medication.

I need something to help overcome the pain of what I'm going through.

And what I want to challenge everyone of you with that are carrying any sort of pain is you can't hold it down forever.

The deeper down that you push it, the more infected it will become.

I love what C.S.

Lewis said.

C.S.

Lewis said that God whispers to us in our pleasures and he speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Let me show you what God wants to do in your heart.

In Jeremiah 17, 9, it says, the heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out.

But I, God, search the heart, I examine the mind, watch this.

I get to the heart of the human.

I get to the root things.

I treat them as they really are.

Watch this, not as they pretend to be.

So then Jesus gives them this invitation.

He says, Okay, I'm here.

I'm at the place of pain.

And then Jesus looks at them and says, Roll the stone out of the way.

Can you imagine Martha and Mary?

They're like, Jesus, for real?

Like, this is this is death.

This is what hurt.

The result of this is because you weren't here in the first place.

Why would you have us roll the stone out of the way?

I find it interesting that Jesus asked them to do it.

Because just a short time later, Jesus Roll his own stone out of the way.

Jesus could have like shot lightning bolts like Thor out of his fingertips and just exploded the stone.

If I'm Jesus, it's a good thing I'm not, because I'd have put the whole world in slow motion just so everybody could see the stones like going in slow motion and the rocks going in pieces.

But for some reason, Jesus always involves us in our own healings.

He involves us in our own battles.

And so he invites them, roll the stone to the side.

Basically, what he's saying is this if you'll do what you can do, I'll come in and do what you can't do.

If you'll just be brave enough and have enough faith to take me to your place of pain and roll the stone to the side, I will resurrect something in you that you thought was dead.

This is what Jesus is telling them in this moment.

Verse 39.

But Martha, the dead man's sister, protested, Lord, he has been dead for four days, and the smell will be terrible.

Yeah, it will.

It's gonna hurt.

It's gonna hurt.

And you can make a decision today.

You can ignore this sermon.

For some reason, when God put this word on my heart, for some reason he allowed me to feel your pain.

I don't know why, and I couldn't wait for this day to be over so that I could just get this burden off my chest and stop feeling what you're feeling because I don't like it.

I don't like feeling the pain that you're feeling.

But I want you to have healing.

I want you to get through this.

I want you to get past this.

I want this word to be for you where God would come down to each and every one of you today and say, Today I will roll away the reproach from your past.

I will get it out of the way.

Today's the day, but you have to bring me to the stone and you have to move it out of the way.

You have to humble yourself.

You have to have enough faith to believe that I can and will resurrect that thing that you have placed in the grave.

This is what we all have to decide.

Many times the pain that we feel is always out of a place of feeling rejected.

And it can be massive and it can be small.

It's the spirit of rejection.

Maybe your spouse is rejecting you emotionally or physically that will cause a root of bitterness.

Somebody that was supposed to nurture you, negated you.

A father that was supposed to protect you, abused you.

A boss that was supposed to make sure that you were provided for rejected you after you had given your all to the to the career and to the job and to the workplace.

And this this rejection has taken root and it's painful and it hurts, and we don't want to deal with it, so we just shove it down and we put it in a dark place.

But Jesus would say to you, Take me to where you have laid the pain.

Roll the stone to the side because I want to bring healing to it.

And this is what Jesus said.

This was just this was Jesus's after they did, so they did.

They rolled the stone to the side.

I want to show you what Jesus did in verse 43.

It says, Then Jesus shouted, Lazarus, come out.

And the dead man came out.

Now, this is the part I want you to catch.

His hands and feet were bound in gravecloth.

Now, what does gravecloth represent?

Dead stuff.

So he was resurrected, he was alive, his heart was beating, blood was pumping, lungs were pumping, but he was still symbolically dead.

How many Christ followers does this represent?

How many Christ followers have given their lives to Jesus and they're gonna spend eternity in heaven?

But while they're on earth, we walk around bound.

No power, no purpose, no design.

And so Jesus' words, I love, I like the translation that says Jesus looked at them and said, loose him and let him go.

Because it's not good enough for Lazarus to just be alive.

It's not good enough for you to just be saved.

You have to be freed.

You have to be freed, and you have to get this thing out of your heart that's there.

You can't shove it down any deeper.

You have to take Jesus to the place of pain, roll the stone out of the side, step to the side and say, Jesus, I've tried for years to fix this, but I trust that you can.