Synoptic Gospels: Lazarus

Alright, we are in John chapter 11. John chapter 11, we actually got through,

I think, 37 verses last week, which is probably a record.

So we're somewhere around verse 38 of John chapter 11.

So Jesus, again, being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

Jesus said, Remove the stone. Martha, the sister of the sea, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.

Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you believe you will see the glory of God? So they removed the stone.

Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but because of the people standing around,

I said it so that they may believe that you sent me. When he said these things, he cried out with a loud voice,

Lazarus, come forth. The man who had died came forth bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth.

Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go. Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what he had done believed in him, but some of them went to the

Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done." So we recall from last week the situation here.

Jesus delaying coming, the disappointment on the part of the family, the fact that the

Jews, as we saw in verse 37, but some of them said, Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind have kept this man also from dying?

Even though in that statement you'll notice they don't say,

Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also raise him to life? Because again, the

Jewish expectation was resurrection at the Eschaton at the final day. So it would be more healing of sickness than it would be conquering of death and resurrection.

That's not what they are expecting. And as they go to the tomb, they are not going, Oh, we're going to see a resurrection.

That's not the kind of expectation that is theirs. So when they come to the tomb, and this does seem to fit with what we know historically about Jewish burial practices in the first century, you would have a sepulcher, a tomb, a cave, a stone lying against it, just as Jesus's would be in the not too distant future.

At this point. And generally the practice was to leave the dead there for about a year.

And then once the natural decaying process has taken place, those bones would be gathered and placed into a bone box.

And many, many, many of these have been found. You may recall the Talpietz tomb story a couple of years ago, where James Cameron and some others tried to make hay and money on that particular story.

But at least, you know, there are warehouses filled with these, these ossuary, this is the technical term that is used for them, bone boxes.

And so the body would be laid in the sepulcher for that process to take place.

And so when Jesus arrives at the, at the tomb, he says, remove the stone.

Yes, sir. There was a

Greece in 1959. Really? Wow. Well, the

Jews didn't do that. The Jews wouldn't. The Jews wouldn't do special things with the bones. That sounds more like in orthodoxy.

The kind of the idea of there are in Eastern Orthodox countries and in some

Roman Catholic countries, you know, entire rooms filled with bones of people who might turn out to be famous someday.

You know, the idea being that there is some kind of connection between the spiritual graces that they experienced in life and their physical bodies.

And this is especially true of, in religious orders, when monks and stuff like that would die, they would collect the bones and there's rooms where you can just go in and find the guy's skulls over here, his tibias over there, et cetera, et cetera.

So if something should turn out to where he ends up being particularly holy or you can get a good enough story going that he was, now you have relics.

And it's, we today just find it absolutely ghoulish. And in many ways it is.

But this isn't what the Jews were doing. They would not remove the bones from the grave.

They would collect the bones of the body. They would identify the person or persons.

Part of it might have simply been there's only so many places to really bury people without going a long, long ways.

Remember, we can get in a car and drive out to Veteran's Seminary. Yeah, Veteran's Seminary or Veteran's Cemetery, whichever one it is.

And they couldn't do that. So there's only so many caves you can use and that you can sort of, well, the

Talpiet tomb that was unearthed had numerous antechambers with numerous bone boxes stored in one.

So you could put a whole lot more people, basically, in one place than you can in the other way.

But I don't recall in my writing of that book any references to, like, missing bones with the idea of some kind of sacredness.

That's a much... I would say that's a pagan concept that came into early

Christianity and took deep root. So when

Jesus comes to the grave and says to remove the stone, there is the natural...

Martha is the practical one here, says, well,

Lord, by this time, there'll be a stench where he's been dead for four days. So people knew. I mean, things could happen.

Maybe you've opened the wrong tomb or forget which one you went to and you roll a stone away and blah.

So people knew what the natural process was. But you'll notice something that Jesus is, again, absolutely confident in this situation.

He doesn't just quietly, over in a corner, while everyone else is wailing, oh,

Lord, please raise Lazarus from the dead and help him open the tomb. Because then, if you tried that prayer and it didn't work, no one's going to know.

But when you walk up the tomb and say, remove the stone, and then notice in verse 43, he cried out with a loud voice.

He wasn't hiding in a corner because, of course, he says in verse 42, because the people standing around,

I said, they may believe that you sent me. So this is one of the signs that you have in the

Gospel of John. He's not hiding anything in a corner. Martha, clearly, despite all the conversation preceding this, no one is expecting a resurrection here.

It's one thing for Jesus to come to the tomb and we all weep together. Jesus will have some wonderful words about the coming resurrection.

He'll tell us some things about Lazarus and he'll console us and all will be well. Not looking for this to happen.

And so when she raises the natural objection to the removal of the stone that seals the sepulcher,

Jesus' response is, did I not say to you if you believe you will see the glory of God? And so we had sort of come to the conclusion from her words that she did not fully understand what

Jesus was saying about resurrection and the life and your brother will rise again. And she had interpreted that all within her sort of safe categories of, yes,

Lord, I know he will rise the last day and so on and so forth. So it must have been an awkward moment when

Jesus says remove the stone and Martha says there will be a stench or in the classic words of the

King James Version of the Bible, Lord, he thinketh. But after Jesus says this,

I would assume it would have to be Mary and Martha that would give the nod.

It's their tomb. It's their brother. And there had to be some obedience, some act of faith here on the part of Mary and Martha to sort of look over at the guys and go, okay, and do what he says.

And I can just imagine if it was Mary or Martha who had become some massively exalted semi -deity in Roman Catholicism, this would be the text where everybody would be looking.

See, Mary and Martha agreed to what God said and made the plan and life comes through this and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Everything that they do with the words of Mary to the angels, so let it be unto thy servants.

And, you know, that's how God saved the world was with Mary's cooperation and all the rest of the stuff.

So they removed the stone. And I can just, you know,

I try to put myself in these situations and try to understand how a

Jewish person would be responding to this. Remember, I mentioned to you last week that I think

I mentioned to you last week. In fact, I'm fairly certain I mentioned to you last week that I was listening to a debate between Marcus Borg and N .T.

Wright. And Marcus Borg is a Jesus Seminar, way out there, liberal.

Jim Renahan and I debated he and John Dominick Crosson on one of our cruises a number of years ago. And it was in this debate that N .T.

Wright had floated the idea that Lazarus actually hadn't died. Because from Wright's understanding of what resurrection is, this couldn't have been a resurrection because that's out of order.

And so this couldn't have been a real resurrection. This was just a resuscitation. He actually hadn't really died.

And it was Marcus Borg, the way out liberal, who, in rather shock, responded to Wright's statement by saying, but Lord, he stinketh.

And he was right. It was one of those places where N .T. Wright, again, following his own self -understanding, his own brilliance, missed the point of the text.

And so they're not expecting what's going to happen.

They don't understand this. And so Jesus raised his eyes in an attitude of prayer, which you might want to remember this every time a

Muslim comes along and tells you that Jesus prayed just like they do with his head bowed to the earth. Well, he might have done that in the garden once, but here he prays, praising his eyes to heaven, which no

Muslim's going to do. Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but because of the people standing around,

I said that they may believe that you sent me. So Jesus prays, and he affirms the perfect communion and communication that exists between himself and the

Father. And the fact that he is doing this so that the people standing around, those who are witnesses to this event, may believe that you sent me.

There is revelatory value in regards to who

Jesus is in this event. Now we might stop for just a moment and point out that while there is to an enlightened mind, to a mind that has been redeemed, what happens here is very straightforward, very clear as to his testament who

Jesus is. But notice, there is, as always, a division in the response to what takes place.

You will notice that many people believe. Others went off and told the

Pharisees what happened, and they started plotting the destruction of Jesus. So just because there is a revelation that is meant to bring salvation does not mean that every single person who sees it is going to respond in a salvifically appropriate way.

This we see many, many times both in the Old and the New Testaments. So when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice,

Lazarus, come forth. So he is committed here. Can you imagine any scenario other than the one that we have taking place here?

In other words, I mentioned last week the woman I will never ever forget. We used to have a

Saturday radio program before we discovered that no one listens to radio on Saturday. And so we had this woman call in, and we were talking about the doctrines of grace and the sovereignty of God and salvation and all the rest of these things, and I brought up this incident.

I said, well, let me see if I understand what you are saying about your understanding of free will.

Is it your understanding that Jesus could have said, Lazarus, come forth, and Lazarus stayed in the tomb?

I jokingly said, a voice comes forth from the tomb. Thanks.

No thanks. You don't know what it's like to live with those sisters. Just stay there. Or just somehow have the ability to resist this divine power that is intended by God to be a demonstration of who

Jesus is. But you see, that's the problem. That's the whole difference between man -centered salvation and God -centered salvation.

If you think of it in a man -centered way, what God is intending to do in showing His own glory is irrelevant.

It's what I decide that matters. And if I decide not to get saved, then there's nothing

God can do about it. That is basically the idea that people have. And so, how long will we get to have...

will there be God -tube in heaven so we get to go back and watch any of this? Rewind it back in time.

I mean, when Jesus says, Lazarus, come forth, is it immediately... He's all of a sudden...

Here comes this guy. Can you imagine what it was like? I mean, we've seen movies with, you know, zombies or mummies or whatever it is, you know, coming out of the grave.

Did people scream? Was there... We're not told. We don't know how long it was.

But I can guarantee you, however long it was, because, I mean, Lazarus is not going to be sprinting here.

The man who had died came forth bound hand and foot with wrappings. He is not sprinting.

So I would imagine there had to have been some brief period of time where everyone is just standing with their mouths hanging open, staring at the opening of that cave, going, no, this could not...

He didn't just say, Lazarus, come forth, did he? I mean, were some people thinking, does he just not know he's dead?

I mean, the thoughts would have been manifold. Many different thoughts would have been going on.

So at some point, the man who died came forth bound hand and foot with wrappings and his face is wrapped around with a cloth.

That's another good reason for him not to be sprinting. I can just see Lazarus racing the dead, runs into the wall, knocks himself silly, and that's the end of that.

So that would have been roll the stone back and it would have been a whole different thing. Yes, sir. No earthly idea.

That's one of the things that Wright has a real problem with, is he can't understand how there could be a resurrection that did not result in eternal life in the person resurrected in the sense of from that point forward.

So from his perspective, if Lazarus was really raised from the dead, then he would still be living in Bethany and would have lots of property now, as would the widow's son.

So each one of these situations are resurrections where there is a return to life, but it is not a granting of continuity of life for the rest of eternity.

So there's a difference at that particular point. Now, Lazarus, we would assume, is a believer and will receive his body back at the resurrection just like all the rest of us will.

So Lazarus gets to go through that twice. Yee -haw. But obviously for him, that would have been a great honor to be the only one that we know.

I mean, the widow's son from Nain. How would you like to be stuck with that the rest of your life? We know one name and that's

Lazarus. Can you imagine what it would be like to be Lazarus from this point onward? Have you ever thought about that?

I mean, what is it like to walk down the road the next week, you know, and walk up to a...

You know, you bought your food in the market. So, you know, Lazarus walks up to buy his kosher fish, you know, and I'd like to have two of those.

You can just have them, sir. You know, and people walking by...

Or people going by going... Hey, Lazarus, great funeral, you know.

I mean, it really does make you sort of sit back and go, wow, what was it like? And when persecution breaks forth against the

Christians, I mean, his is not a name that allows you to hide real easy, you know.

You know, we don't know. We don't know. It would be fascinating to know.

Did he live a regular time period? I would assume so. That's true, yeah.

This didn't... There had to have been a time or two where you thought, wow, this has introduced some whole new complexities to my life.

Because, yeah, he was a walking, talking testimony to the fact that the Pharisees were wrong about Jesus.

Oh, yeah, that's just about, yeah.

So, Jesus says to them, unbind him and let him go. Now, who was the first one to volunteer to do that?

You know, the same guys that opened the tomb? You know, the guys with the strong noses? I don't know. Or was it finally

Mary and Martha who moved right over to him? And when they first...

His face was wrapped around the cloth. What was that meeting like?

I mean, this would make incredible film. Imagine it's in the Jesus movie somewhere.

I've never seen it. Therefore, many of the Jews who came to Mary, many, many, not all, many of the

Jews who came to Mary and saw what he had done, believed in him. And so, they're like, yeah, all right.

Now, the problem is that's the same form that's used in John 8 about non -saving faith.

So, it's not really a commentary as to whether this is saving faith from what they saw. But it's contrasting that with verse 46.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the things that Jesus had done. Now, do we automatically assume these were, nah, nah, nah, type people?

Well, some obviously were. Were others just so confused they went to the only religious leaders they knew for an answer about what this was all about?

We've heard that our religious leaders say this man's a charlatan, he's a fraud. Wow, what we just saw has left us completely in the dark.

How do we understand this? Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, what are we doing for this man is performing many signs.

If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

Now, here are the words of the religious political or the political religious.

This is what happens when political power and religious power become intermingled in the same hands.

And we've seen the history of this in Western Christendom.

When you can have someone who is so perverted by their traditions and their false religion and their political power that the priest stands next to the person on the rack and cranks it a few more times and they're screaming and you're going, oh, well this is for your own good, you know, and that kind of perversion of thought.

And here you have the perversion of thought not that here is a man who can give life and raise the dead and only

Yahweh can give life and therefore this man must be from God. No, none of that.

If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. They're more concerned about the

Romans than they are God. They may be as religious as the day is long, but they're almost atheistic functionally.

They don't care about God's purposes or anything like that. They're concerned about our place and our nation and they're concerned about the most powerful force on earth from their perspective and that's the

Roman Empire. The religio -political corruption that is so very, very common.

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, and I need to just mention very briefly because you'll hear this all the time,

I know one Harvard grad who's become a Muslim who uses this as an example of how worthless

John is as a gospel. See, John was written so late that he doesn't even realize there was only one high priest a year.

Well, I think John knew that there was only one high priest, one high priest in a lifetime actually.

He thinks there's one high priest per year. But it says, one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, the problem is the

Romans have gotten involved. And the Romans recognized the high priesthood was a political situation, therefore they had violated the

Mosaic laws, had removed Caiaphas' father -in -law, Annas, as I recall, from the position and put

Caiaphas in. But hey, if Caiaphas didn't do what they wanted to do, they could undo that too.

And so, that's what John is reflecting. At that particular time,

Caiaphas is the high priest. He says to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people and that the whole nation not perish.

Now, he did not say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, not for the nation only, but in order that he might also gather together into one the scattered children of God who are scattered abroad.

So, from that day on, they planned together to kill Jesus. Therefore, Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the

Jews, but went away from there to the country near the wilderness in a city called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

Now, here you have a very, very interesting section where you have

Caiaphas, who in essence is saying, don't you realize that it is better for us to sacrifice one man for the people, the whole nation, not perish.

And that sounds so wonderfully patriotic and all the rest of this stuff, but this is a man who is promoting the idea of using, by hook or by crook, some means of bringing about the death of Jesus because of what he's done.

And the most perverse men can sound quite sane and quite accurate in what they're saying.

And here you have one who is speaking very perversely in light of what he wants to do, his own desires.

Yet, in the perversity of his speech, John tells us there is an activity of God.

The high priest is speaking here. And you may recall that even when

Paul's brought before the high priest and he rebukes him, and then he's struck, and then he said, well, you're not supposed to rebuke the high priest of your people.

There's supposed to be respect given to this person's office, despite the fact that he himself is grossly perverse.

But being high priest, he prophesied. He wasn't trying to.

And in fact, what he says is the exact opposite of what he would want the reality to be. But he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation and not for the nation only, but in order that he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So here you have a theological reflection on John's part on the words of the high priest, how

John came to know this. Obviously, supernatural revelation is a possibility, but it's also quite possible that given how many priests and Pharisees and scribes became

Christians in the early church, that there were many men at that meeting who eventually became believers and then later testified about what had taken place at that time.

And they remembered, you know, Caiaphas said, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people and that the whole nation not perish.

And evidently they saw in those words this idea of the whole nation, all the children of God, not just the

Jewish people, but as they saw the gospel go forth to the Gentiles, here is a prophecy that Jesus' death brings about the means by which he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

And so this same theme, I think, is what we pick up in Revelation 5 when you have the song that is sung there.

It says, Lamb, how he by his death has redeemed men from every tribe, tongue, people and nation and made them a kingdom of priests unto

God by his death. The very same concept that is found here that by his self -sacrifice he might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

That is the means by which the unity of that body comes together. So from that day on, they plan together to kill him.

And that plot will eventually lead them to Judas.

Therefore, Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews, but went away from there to the country near the wilderness.

This really is pretty much the primary ending of Jesus' public ministry.

In chapter 12, there will still be some things. The Greeks come. But chapter 12 really wraps it up. Chapter 13 then begins the private ministry to the disciples.

It goes through chapter 17. Now the

Passover of the Jews is near and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover to purify themselves. They were speaking

Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, What do you think? That he will come to the feast at all? The chief priests and the

Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he was to report it so that they might seize him.

And so you have the plot is put forth. Clearly there are people amongst the

Jews that are aware of what the plot is. And this is going to lead eventually in God's providence to the arrest of Jesus and the crucifixion and everything that takes place at that particular point in time.

Now just briefly, because I don't want to go back to the synoptics, we'll go back there not next week but the week thereafter and pick up where they just sort of inserted

John chapter 11 out of thin air. We can tell by this that we are getting very close to the crucifixion week.

And that's going to be... I never intended seven some odd years ago.

That's how long ago. Is that how long ago it was? Eight years, two months.

So in 2002. 2002. Wow. August of 2002.

One of the problems in having a study last that long is that much of the foundational material that we laid back then is now ancient history for all of us.

And some of you weren't here in 2002 or 2003 and so on and so forth.

And those who were might not just have everything right at the tip of your tongue from every

Bible study lesson that you have ever heard at that point in time. So we're coming to the material that is actually contains most of the most difficult and challenging synoptic parallel issues.

And so I have a feeling that at some point as we really start delving into those things we may have to do a little remedial 101 review of some of the fundamental issues that we face when we're comparing texts with other texts.

I know that one of the next sections we're going to hit at least as I was looking at the numbers in my computer that seemed to be the case.

Yes. 264 The Healing of the Blind Man Bartimaeus in section 264 in the synopsis.

That's coming up real quickly. That'll immediately force us back into reviewing some of the fundamentals of how to deal with synoptic issues.

And that is telescoping, looking at the audience that each is intending.

The Bartimaeus one introduces us to issues of going into Jericho, coming out of Jericho.

One gospel only mentions one person gives his name, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, as I recall.

And another gospel just says two blind men. And it's very, very common for people to say, well, was it one or was it two?

The Bible doesn't even know. And these are simplistic arguments that are inconsistent.

I mean, if every gospel just read the exact same way, the immediate response would be, ah, see, they're just copying each other.

There's no independent witnesses here. You wouldn't have independent people coming up with this sort of thing. But then when they do have a difference, one focuses upon only one person who was known to them,

Bartimaeus, they give a name. Somebody else says, well, there's actually two of them there. The other guy didn't say anything, but there's two of them there.

Ah, see, they don't know what they're talking about. The inconsistencies are great in that kind of stuff.

But again, it will remind us of those issues. We're going to have to sort of go back over them. And especially when we get into post -resurrection appearances and stuff like that, there have been many

Christian theologians that have put their hands up in the air and said, there is no way to harmonize any of this.

We just don't know. And so it'll be challenging. And the only way to do that is to really have a good foundation going in.

So that's what we'll be doing when we get to that material. Okay? All right, let's close the time with a word of prayer.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for the reminder that our Lord Jesus Christ is

Lord over all things. He is the giver of life. And indeed, that that relationship that He had with you was perfect, one of perfect harmony, that you always heard

Him, because He always did what was pleasing to you. We have life because of that. Help us to rejoice in that this day.

Be with us as we go on to worship now. Lift up our hearts and our minds that we might understand your truth and bring honor and glory to you.