Jesus IS the Resurrection

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 11th chapter.

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Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister

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Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother

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Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, Lord, he who loves you is ill.

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But when Jesus heard it, he said, This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the

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Son of God may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

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So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

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Then after this, he said to the disciples, Let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him,

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Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again? Jesus answered,

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Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.

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But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him. After saying these things, he said to them,

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Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him. The disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.

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Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly,

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Lazarus has died. And for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.

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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.

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Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the

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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.

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But Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

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But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Jesus said to her,

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Your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

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Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

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And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

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She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.

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When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, The teacher is here and is calling for you.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see.

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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 men also have kept this man from dying?

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Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.

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Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha the sister of the dead man said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead for four days.

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Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said,

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Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.

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When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And the man who had died came out, his hands and his feet bound with linen strips, his face wrapped with a cloth.

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And Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go. Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.

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But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the

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Pharisees gathered the council and said, What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.

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

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But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.

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He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

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So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. This is the gospel of the

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Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Here again, the opening verse of our epistle text,

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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These are extremely comforting words and words that we need to take to heart, especially in these dark and ominous days that we find ourselves in.

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I'm going to note here that in all the time that I have served Kongsvinger and the different Aletheia congregations, we've never had this many people in one service.

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And why is that? Because we're all locked up! And so I'm going to warn you ahead of time, since I know you guys have nowhere else that you can go, and you're stuck, we're going to do a long sermon today, because it's an important text.

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And next week will be long as well, because the gospel text next week is quite critical as we go into Holy Week.

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But here again the words, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Now, I've noted before, and I'll repeat the concept, when I was in seminary, my seminary profs who taught me how to preach, and yeah, preaching is different than public speaking, that over and again it was drilled into my head in my seminary that when you preach a text, you must identify from the text what is the problem that is being addressed.

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What is the sin? What is the commandment that is being broken? And I'm going to say this right up front, as we work our way through our gospel text today, we're going to note that the thing that this text is going after is unbelief.

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Unbelief. And believe me when I tell you, I know for a fact that y 'all are just like me, because Scripture makes it really clear, we're kind of all in the same stew.

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Those of us who are Christians, we are truly raised and regenerate, we have the

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Holy Spirit, new life has come, we've been united with Christ and His death and His resurrection, and we also still have our sinful flesh.

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And old sinful Adam don't want to die. Let's just kind of put that out there. Now a little bit of a note here.

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We've all been watching the news. I don't know if you're like me, but every day I check different maps to see how far the coronavirus pandemic has spread, and for me it's a little bit more of a serious exercise due to the fact that back in the winter of 2003 -2004,

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I was one of the lucky few in the United States that got SARS. And I know for a fact what this coronavirus can do.

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Been there, done that, have the t -shirt and the lung damage to prove it. And so as a result of it,

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I fall into a category of people who is at greater risk. Because all the medical journals say that if you get

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SARS a second time, it's worse. And the best way I can describe it, if you want to know what the symptoms are like, it's like drowning in slow motion is the best way

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I can put it. If you've ever been in a situation where you were not able to breathe, imagine you've fallen on the cement, maybe you tripped over your dog, or something fell on the cement and had the wind knocked out of you, and then you can't bring in that next breath, that's what

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SARS is like. That's what the coronavirus is like, except for it's like that all the time. When you cough and you expel all the air from your lungs, you're not able to bring in your next breath.

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You find yourself in a panic as a result of it. And so I kind of was thinking, what would be worse, to get the coronavirus and die of that, or to have the mafia put a rock around my ankle and throw me into the

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Chicago River? Both of them would be dying kind of under similar circumstances, but I think having the mafia kill me would actually be more merciful, because it'd be quicker.

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Okay, so I've been watching all of this and just wondering, am I going to get it? Is my wife going to get it? Are my kids going to get it?

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How about my grandson? How about my neighbors? And what about any of the members of my congregation? And your mind just goes nuts with this.

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So our gospel text comes back to something really simple. Do you believe the words that Jesus says in this text?

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And these words are so comforting, they really are. So we begin with the comforting words from our epistle again.

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Hear it again for a third time. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So let's work our way through John 11, shall we?

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If you have a Bible, you can follow along. And here's what it says.

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Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister

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Martha. These are important details, by the way. When details like this show up, this tells you this isn't legend.

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We know the village. We know how far away this village is from Jerusalem.

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We know the man's name who died. We know his sisters, Mary and Martha.

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This isn't some kind of legend being told here. This is eyewitness testimony.

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John was there. He saw it with his own eyes. And he notes that it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother

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Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to Jesus saying,

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Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said, this illness does not lead to death, for it is for the glory of God, so that the

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Son of God may be glorified through it. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

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This is an important little bit of details here, because what he does next doesn't make any sense as somebody who loves.

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I understand it as somebody who procrastinates and loves to dawdle, you know. But in this particular case, upon hearing the news that Lazarus is sick,

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Jesus decides to cool his heels for a couple of days. But it says he loved

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Martha. He loved Mary. He loved Lazarus. He truly does.

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This is not being called into question. This is emphasized. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed for two days longer in the place where he was.

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And then after this, he said to the disciples, let us go to Judea. Now, this seems a little bit odd, because, well, as the disciples point out,

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Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going to go there again? Yeah, the fact that the

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Jews wanted to stone Jesus means that they believe he's a blasphemer, that he has deserved the death penalty for claiming to be the

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Son of God. Their explanation, their false narrative regarding how Jesus was able to perform all these miracles, which none of them can deny that he was doing, was that he did it through witchcraft, through sorcery.

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Jesus apparently had attended Hogwarts, and now he was engaging in the powers of the devil or something to that effect.

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Clearly, Jesus was from Slytherin. Well, no, actually, no, he wasn't. He came to destroy

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Slytherin, if you know what I mean. But the disciples point out something practical here.

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You're kind of an outlaw, Jesus. They were going to stone you. And then Jesus answers, are there not 12 hours in the day?

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If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. In other words, his workday isn't done yet.

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But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him, talking about the Pharisees and those who wanted to kill him.

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They're stumbling in the darkness. So after saying these things, and important to note here, this is the first time that Jesus does this.

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And this is why the disciples are a little bit confused. After these things, he said to them, our friend

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Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him. Don't let these words wash over you too quick.

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Do one of those psalm things where you do a say law. Think about this for a minute. Jesus here is now doing something and he's teaching his disciples something about the death of those who believe and trust in him.

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Now, granted, death is an enemy. Death is not our friend. Death is an enemy. Death is a consequence of our sin and rebellion against God, going all the way back to the

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Garden of Eden. And we are born dead in trespasses and sins. And God is the one who makes us alive in Christ.

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And so I'm going to say it right here. If you have been baptized, Romans 6 makes it clear.

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You have been baptized into Christ's death and into his resurrection. As a result of that, you have your bucket list done backwards.

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Let me explain. Okay, when people talk about the bucket list, they'll say, I want to travel to Paris.

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I'd like to do that someday too. I'm not exactly fond of the French, but still, I'd like to see the Eiffel Tower. I'd like to go to Paris.

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I want to skydive. I want to do these different things. So you have this bucket list. And of course, at the bottom of the bucket list is the thing that we're all afraid of, dying.

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But see, because you have been baptized into Christ, into his death, into his resurrection, you've done your bucket list backwards.

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You're already dead. We've got the death thing already taken care of. So I guess

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Christians are like zombies. They're the walking dead. They're the living dead, because you've been raised already.

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You've already died in Christ. You have died in his death and his resurrection. As a result of that, for the

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Christian, death is as simple as, you know, falling asleep.

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And who's afraid of that? I'm not afraid of falling asleep. I kind of enjoy doing it. In fact, afternoon naps are the best, right?

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Again, then again, I'm getting older. So he says, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. Of course, the disciples, as usual, don't quite get what

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Jesus is saying. So he said, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he's going to recover. Now, Jesus had spoken of his death, and that's an important bit.

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So they thought that he meant that he was taking rest in sleep. So Jesus told them plainly,

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Lazarus has died. Now, remember what he said, that he has fallen asleep and I go to awaken him.

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This is how we as Christians then view death. So he says, Lazarus has died. And for your sake,

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I was glad that I was not there so that you may believe. But let us go to him.

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So Thomas called the twins, said to his fellow disciples, let us also go that we may die with him. Now, I always kind of like to point this out when

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I work through this text, that when Thomas says, let us also go and that we may die with him, he's kind of in the, he's in the ballpark.

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He's starting to kind of get it, but he's not quite in the right track. It's kind of like when you make muffins and you like overcooked them, and then like the tops get burnt or something.

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So he overdid his understanding here by about half, and so his muffins got a little bit burnt theologically.

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But that's okay. You got to give him props that we always call him doubting Thomas, but here he's like, he's starting to track with Jesus.

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And that's a good thing, because note then that we also go and we die with Lazarus. We die with Peter and Thomas and Matthew and Mark and Luke and Paul.

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We did this in our baptisms. We'll come back to that. So now Jesus gets close to Bethany, and it says when

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Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.

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Now, a little bit of a weird note here. The false teacher, false prophet, false signs and wonders guy,

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Todd Bentley, claims that he raised all kinds of people from the dead, but he even notes that it's more difficult to raise somebody from the dead if they've been dead for longer than three days.

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I just have to throw that in there because it's just absurd, the bizarre claims we get from people out there in the televangelist land.

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Anyway, so Lazarus has been dead for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off.

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Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

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So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, so Martha's first, she went and met

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Jesus. And if you remember the story of Mary and Martha, Martha was the one who was busy with much work when

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Jesus came over for dinner that one night. And she got corrected because she was saying, make my sister

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Mary help me, right? And so here Martha's the first out to go see Jesus. And clearly what is showing here is that Jesus' words to her regarding sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear the word sunk in.

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Because man, she is so well catechized. And it really comes out here.

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By the way, good catechesis, a proper understanding of scripture will give you the ability to weather even the most tragic of circumstances, including your own death.

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Keep that in mind, bad theology prepares you poorly for death. Whereas a proper understanding of what

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Jesus has done for us and our right standing before him, and a good understanding of what our hope is as Christians will get you through even the most difficult of circumstances, including the death of a close loved one.

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So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him. And Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

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This is true. This is most certainly true, but watch what comes next. But, but even now,

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I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Wow.

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Her faith in Jesus is such that she knows that Jesus could have healed her brother, but also that if Jesus asked

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God to raise him from the dead, God will. She totally believes that. So Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

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And Martha said to him, yes, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Perfect catechetical answer here.

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This is amazing. All right. Her faith and her understanding and her hope in the resurrection, when

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Jesus returns in glory is already well in place, even before Jesus has bled and died for her sins.

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Now Jesus is going to push and watch where he pushes her faith because Jesus doesn't want her to believe about the resurrection in the abstract.

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Because as Christians, we are in Christ. You have been baptized into Christ.

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And so Jesus now takes the resurrection as an abstract concept and takes that and pushes the abstract out and brings him into the equation in a way that is so helpful.

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Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

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And the sentence doesn't end there. We all agree with this. Now watch where he goes next.

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And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

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Now, remember, he just described Lazarus's death as falling asleep.

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If someone is asleep, are they dead or alive? They're alive. They're alive.

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They're not dead. They're just sleeping. Even the Beatles wrote a song about, I'm only sleeping.

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It's a great song, by the way. But anyway, I digress. So Jesus says, everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

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And here it comes. Do you believe this? And you're going to note that question that he asked

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Martha now is being asked of you. Do you believe that you, everyone who believes in Jesus shall never die?

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I don't care if there's a funeral or not. In fact, Jesus's point is, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

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Yeah, we believe that. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

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And if you're honest, you might say, I want to believe this. But what if you get the coronavirus?

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What if you start becoming symptomatic and you find yourself in that small percentage of people who end up in the

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ICU and then you end up dying from this? And believe me, the experience of it is like drowning.

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Do you believe that you will never die? Let me ask you a different question. Has Jesus ever lied?

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He hasn't. So do you believe this? Here's Martha's answer.

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Yes. Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who's coming into the world.

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I believe. Well, now it's time for Mary and her, and she's in the throes of mourning.

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And with this many people here, it's really easy to say that most, if not all of us, know exactly what it's like to lose somebody close to us.

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A spouse, a father, an uncle, a mother, a grandmother.

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And when you've gone through mourning, there's nothing worse than mourning. It's one of these things that when somebody super close to you dies, it's weird because you are in the depths of despair and the whole world just seems to be going on its merry way.

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Nobody seems to care regarding how difficult this is for you. And so you have to struggle with it.

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So Mary is in the thick of it as far as mourning goes. And when she had said this, she went and called her sister

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Mary in private and said, the teacher's here and he's calling you. So when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

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Now, Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. And when the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw

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Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

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Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying to him,

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Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yes, that seems to be the consensus for those who are following and believing in Jesus.

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And so 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.

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Kind of put the picture here. Mary comes and she's at Jesus's feet.

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She is weeping terribly. This is the same

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Mary, by the way, who we learned earlier in the text. She was the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother was

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Lazarus. And so we know about that account that Mary has some experience weeping at the feet of Jesus.

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First, weeping over her own sin, weeping over her own unworthiness, weeping over, well, you get the idea.

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But now she's weeping over the loss of her dear brother, Lazarus, and she is now again at the feet of Jesus and she is in despair, weeping.

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And it's not her alone. The scene is so intense. It's not her alone who's weeping.

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It's everybody who is with her who is also weeping.

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And so the text says, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping. This is where the text gets a little bit weird in the

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Greek. I'll show it to you during our Sunday school class. It says,

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Jesus was deeply moved in spirit. The Greek word for moved in spirit really implies that he is angered.

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He is angered, but he's not angry at the Jews, nor is he angry at Mary.

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It's clear that he's angry at the whole situation, the entire consequences of sin.

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It's as if Jesus is looking back to the garden when he had finished the creation and God said that everything that he had made, that it is tov ma 'od, that it is very good.

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You see, the tree of life was in the midst of the garden of Eden. The earth itself was centered around life, not death.

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But as Jesus points out earlier in the Gospel of John, that the devil, Satan, he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

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And as a result of that, being a murderer from the beginning, he brought death into the world by deceiving our first parents and he wanted

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God to be the murder weapon when it came to the murder of humanity. And so all of this is going on and Jesus is upset.

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The best way I could describe it is if you've seen the movie Tombstone. You know, at some point

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Wyatt Earp, who's been trying to avoid getting involved in putting down the lawless ones in Tombstone, at some point he's been forced into the situation where he's going to get up and he's going to do something about the evil that is among him and he yells out to those bandits, you know,

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I'm coming for you and hell's following me. Something to that effect. It's really that kind of anger, that deeply moved that the

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Greek word is talking about there. So Jesus deeply moved, deeply moved and in spirit and he's greatly troubled.

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He said to them, where have you laid him? Where have you laid him? You guys remember when

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King David, when he talks about when he was a shepherd, how if a lion would come and snatch one of his sheep, he would go after that lion and tear that lion apart and rescue his sheep.

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That's kind of the idea here. Same concept. So where have you laid him?

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So they said to him, Lord, come and see. And then Jesus overcome with mourning.

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It says 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?

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Third time we hear this concept stated. But again, this is all about belief.

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Do you believe what Jesus said? So then

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Jesus deeply moved again, same Greek word regarding, again, this is a deeply moved and there's anger involved in this.

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He came to the tomb. It was a cave. A stone lay against it. Now, if you've ever been to the

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Holy Land, I've never been there. I always travel there using other people's vacation photos because it's a lot cheaper. Plus with being in quarantine,

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I can't travel there anyway. So but if you were to look this up on the internet, you could find it. You'd look for tomb of Lazarus, Bethany, Israel, just Google it and you can find photos of it.

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And you're going to find something interesting about this particular tomb. It was subterranean. So the way it worked is, is that you would go into the tomb itself.

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You'd roll away the stone. You know, if you went into the tomb itself, what you would do with the dead body is take them down into the basement, okay?

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Because there's no real place to lay them up on the upper floor. So you've got to take them down in the basement.

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So Lazarus is in the basement of this tomb. So keep that little detail in mind as we work this out.

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So Jesus said, take away the stone. And you can hear him kind of with Wyatt Earp fashion, take away the stone.

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That's the idea here. So Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor for he's been dead for four days.

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Or as the King James Version says, he stinketh.

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All right. Yeah. We've got some practical things to worry about. But Jesus doesn't care how long he's been dead.

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And by the way, Jesus doesn't care how long you've been dead either. Or how long anybody who's had faith in him has been dead.

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Because remember, for the Christian, death is falling asleep.

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That's what it is. So that being the case, Jesus said, did I not tell you that if you believed believe you would see the glory of God.

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So they took away the stone. Jesus lifted up his eyes and he said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me.

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I knew that you always hear me. But I say this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me.

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And so when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. We know from what follows in just a few verses,

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Lazarus, he looks like a mummy. His body has been wrapped in linen cloths.

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And so let's just say that his mobility is a little bit limited. And he's in a subterranean tomb.

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So knowing that then, put yourself there at the scene. Jesus says, roll away the stone.

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They go, okay. They roll away the stone and everyone's kind of sitting there like this because they don't want to smell it.

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Right. And Jesus says, Lazarus, you come out. And then there's got to be a pause.

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Okay, because there's poor Lazarus. And I'm thinking, how did he get up to the top level from that subterranean?

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Did he hop? Did he inchworm his way up? Because he's not exactly mobile. Right. And so you can just see everybody on the outside going, is this really happening?

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Will he really come out? Come on. Does Jesus really have the ability to raise the dead?

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This is crazy. And so there's this long expectant kind of pregnant pause.

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Is this really going to happen? And wouldn't you know it? He came out and his hands and feet were still bound with linen strips.

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I would have been talking to Jesus afterwards going, could you have at least gotten rid of the linen strips so I can get up there with some dignity, you know?

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Poor Lazarus. But he comes out and his feet, listen to how the verbs work.

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His hands and his feet were still bound, bound. You see, the picture here is this.

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Death itself is an enemy. And when you read in the book of Revelation regarding the lake of fire, first into the lake of fire on the day of judgment is death itself.

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Death is going to be thrown into the lake of fire. So if you were to just kind of picture this in your mind, the open tomb is like the mouth of death.

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And Lazarus was somebody that death had drug into its mouth and consumed him and in the process had bound him up in linen strips.

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They may as well have been chains. And Jesus said to him, unbind him and let him go.

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Wow. Again, hear the words of Jesus.

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Everyone who believes in me will never die.

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Lazarus was just asleep and Jesus, like he said, had just woken him from the sleep of death.

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And this is what he promises for all who believe in him for you.

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Well, now the story gets interesting because here's what happens next. All right. There were some

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Jews there who were skeptics, Jews there who bought into the whole false narrative that Jesus performed miracles.

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He did through the power of the devil, through witchcraft and sorcery and things like that. And so there are only two miles from headquarters.

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Headquarters is in Jerusalem. And so we know if you've ever been on a two mile walk, you can get this done in about 25, 30 minutes.

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If you're jogging, you can get it done in a good 15, 20 tops. And so these guys hightail it to headquarters.

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They got to go report to their authority what they just saw. And so it says in this text that many who were there believed in Jesus because of the sign, this miracle.

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But some of them, they went to the Pharisees and they told them what Jesus had done. So this chief priest and the

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Pharisees, they gathered the council. Time for a meeting. Okay.

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Now, if I sound a little bitter, I don't work in the corporate world anymore.

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Thankfully, I don't work in the corporate world anymore. And one of my favorite websites when I was in the corporate world is a website called

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Despair .com. Despair .com. They put together like parody motivational posters.

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Because if you've ever been in like a corporate office, motivational posters seem to be the thing that everybody wants to hang up in their office or their cubby or their cubicle.

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Well, Despair .com has these wonderful parody motivational posters, and one of them features a bunch of hands all together in the center like everyone's going to do like some kind of a group huzzah kind of thing.

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And the top of the poster says, meetings. And then below the photograph it says, because none of us is as stupid as all of us.

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Okay, so the Pharisees decide that it's time to have a meeting.

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All right. And this, what a meeting this is. So they gathered the council and they said, what are we going to do?

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For this man performs many signs. Indeed, he does. What does John say?

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If all of the signs that Jesus had performed had been written, he says, I don't even think all the books in the world could contain them.

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But these things, these signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ. And that by believing you might have life in his name. So what are we going to do?

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He performs all of these signs. He performs all of these signs. And listen to the next words.

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If we let him go on like this, what?

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Let that sink in. If we let him, does

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Jesus need permission from you to raise somebody from the dead?

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Does Jesus need your sign off? You know, we need to discuss whether or not we're going to give you the authority,

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Jesus. In fact, we've come up with a new group. We call it the Ministry of Miracle Licensing.

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And we don't know if we're going to approve your application to receive from us a miracle license. What is this?

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Jesus is the God that they claim to worship. He just raised somebody from the dead.

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Not even Moses did that. And they're sitting here thinking, we've got to figure out how to put the kibosh on this one.

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Put an end to this. Why? Because, well, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.

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And this is a bad thing. How is this a bad thing? Okay. Oh, then it explains this.

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Everyone will believe in him. And then the Romans, they're going to come and take away our place. And they're going to take away our nation.

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We're going to lose our, this is going to disrupt our power structure. Oh, I see what's going on here.

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This is all about you. So one of them,

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Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, said to them, you don't know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it's better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.

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Now, hearing his words here, he's thinking, hey, he's talking sense. By the way, that sounds a lot like what

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Spock said in one of those Star Trek movies, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. Yeah, but you got to note the way

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Caiaphas is taking this phrase, he's basically using this for justification for murdering

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Jesus. But what he's saying is true. For he did not say this of his own accord, but being at the high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation.

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So you know that even an unbelieving murderer like Caiaphas can prophesy, didn't have to go to prophecy school, nor did he receive a prophetic activation for this.

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But you'll note that what he said is true. So he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

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And I would note something here quite fascinating. Today, here in this service, we have people scattered abroad.

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We have people from Georgia, from Illinois, from Ohio, down in Fargo, down in Mayville, North Dakota.

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We have people in Radium. We have people from Oslo, Warren, other places around.

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And we're going to note that this was true. That Jesus, by dying for us, has gathered into one children of God who are scattered abroad.

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And here we are, one body, separated by time, well, space at the moment, joining together via the internet because we cannot meet otherwise.

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And yet Christ has gathered us together as one body. We are his children. We are bled for.

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We are died for. And so the text goes on to say, from that day on, they made plans to put him to death.

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And what they intended for evil, God has worked for our salvation. Because Jesus went to the cross, the sinless, spotless

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Lamb of God, he is bled and died for all of your sins, including your unbelief, even all of the different ways in which you have let anxiety wash over you and you have not trusted

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God, whether in your life or even with things pertaining to your death.

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Jesus has died for those. And so this text calls us, from across the pages of time, from across the sands of time, to believe you are forgiven, you are bled for, you are died for, you are united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, you will never die.

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And it's all given to you as a gift. You don't have to strive for it. You don't have to earn it.

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It has all been given to you because as a gift, God has adopted you as his children, forgiven you of your sins, and he has promised you life everlasting.

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And also Jesus promises that even if the coronavirus had wrapped its ugly claws around your legs and dragged you into the mouth of death, you will never die.

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Do you believe this? Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. 470th