Faith Unwavering - [John 11:17-27]

Bethlehem Bible Church

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July 24, 2016

00:00: I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 11, John chapter 11. We began here last week and we're looking at,
00:07: I don't know, what do we want to call it? The Lazarus saga, the great story of Lazarus.
00:18: There was part of me that just wanted to do the whole thing in one fell swoop and I thought that was a bad idea, but you know,
00:23: I have bad ideas. I don't know if you saw it. Anybody see the news?
00:29: You know, all the people going to see Noah's Ark. I thought what a strange place for it to show up.
00:34: What is it, Kentucky or Tennessee or someplace like that? I mean, I thought it was supposed to be in Turkey. Anyway, they built a replica of it down in the south and creationist or non -creationist, well creationist
00:49: Ken Ham and then atheist or agnostic, as he likes to say, Bill Nye the science guy was down there.
00:56: Did you see any of this? They were down there and I guess Ken Ham was showing
01:03: Bill Nye around. Ken Ham says, at one point I asked Bill Nye, Bill Nye the science guy, what would happen to you when you die?
01:16: And Bill Nye the science guy says, he says, when you die, you're done. That's it.
01:25: That's a lot of confidence. I mean, he's standing with a lot of confidence on something.
01:33: Now, let me back up here a little bit. He describes himself as an agnostic. How many of you know what agnosticism really is and its roots, what it means?
01:46: Means I don't know. In short, it would be like saying, I have a profession to make,
01:52: I am ignorant. That's what it really means. It's the same root word, agnostic.
01:58: So even so, even though he says he's an agnostic, he says, after you're dead, you're done.
02:04: That's it. There's nothing else. Isn't that what atheists say? Once you die, all that's left is decomposition.
02:15: The worms, you're just worm food. Now, I've kind of emphasized the fact that he's the science guy.
02:24: What's the underlying structure of science? You posit a theory, and then you test the theory.
02:33: How do you test that? Who has tested what happens after death?
02:41: Is Bill Nye the science guy? Does he have any science underlying that? The answer, obviously, is no.
02:49: So when he says he's agnostic, if we take it in the literal sense, I think that's probably true.
02:57: He's making claims that cannot be falsified, that cannot be tested. That's not science at all.
03:02: In fact, that's really anti -science. It's kind of unscience -y, if I'm going to get really technical.
03:13: I was thinking about Lazarus, and I was just, now we're not there yet this week, but I was thinking, what it was like for Lazarus while he was dead.
03:25: Why do you suppose we don't have a single word of that in scripture? Lazarus coming back and saying, let me tell you what it was like, because I don't think anybody's allowed to talk about it.
03:39: But anyway, that's just speculation. Let's go to the text. I just wanted to talk about the unscience -y guy this morning.
03:49: John chapter 11, and we're going to begin in verse 17. John chapter 11, beginning in verse 17.
04:03: Now, when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
04:11: Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.
04:21: So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house.
04:31: Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
04:40: But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.
04:46: Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha still said to him, or Martha said to him,
04:56: I'm sorry. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.
05:02: Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
05:13: And everyone who dies and believes in me, or I'm sorry, lives and believes in me shall never die.
05:20: Do you believe this? She said to him, yes,
05:26: Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, who is coming into the world.
05:35: Now, last week, as I said, we began looking at really the greatest miracle of Jesus' earthly ministry.
05:42: Of all the things that he did, walking on the water, healing sick people, healing blind people, healing lame people, all these things that he did,
05:55: I don't think any of them compares to bringing somebody back from the dead, particularly in the case of Lazarus.
06:05: But of course, before Lazarus could be raised from the dead, he had to be dead.
06:11: That was kind of a precondition, necessary precondition. And he did die last week, as we saw.
06:18: And we looked at it, and I broke it up into four Ps. Number one was the problem. The problem was
06:23: Lazarus is sick. This is before he died. And if you recall, Mary and Martha sent a message, or they sent word to Jesus.
06:31: And he was out in Bethany, across the Jordan. He had left Jerusalem under great duress.
06:37: They wanted to kill him because he had made himself out to be God. He had made truth claims that were true, but they utterly angered the
06:48: Jews to such a point they wanted to stone him immediately, and then they just wanted to arrest him, and he escaped that and went out into Bethany across the
06:57: Jordan. Now, the second P was the purpose. The purpose, and frankly, the purpose of much of, well, all of scripture is the glory of God, the glory of God.
07:08: And he said that, and it's difficult for us to see, you know, if we were there at the time, we wouldn't think, well, this is for the glory of God, if we were sitting there with the disciples.
07:19: But that's because we would be stuck in time. We wouldn't be seeing the whole thing as we are, as we study through this.
07:25: We already know that Lazarus is going to come back from the dead. Our third P was the puzzling delay.
07:31: He hears this message from Mary and Martha, and what does he do? He delays intentionally two days.
07:39: And it's interesting because the text says that there was a reason for this, and it was because he loved them.
07:46: Letting Lazarus die was for their good. Letting him stay in the tomb for a few extra days was for their good, because God loved them.
07:55: Again, difficult for us to really get our arms around if we're just stuck in the moment. And then finally, the fourth
08:03: P was the perilous proposal. Jesus says that they're going to go back to Judea, the area around Jerusalem, the area that would also contain
08:11: Bethany. And of course, this was really the home, the heart of the
08:19: Pharisees. It's where they had the most power, where they would have the most presence. And so they would be going right back into an area where the
08:27: Pharisees wanted to put him to death. Jesus wanted to encourage his disciples by reminding them that they had, or he had, a limited time on earth.
08:38: And in veiled language, he told them that nothing bad was going to happen as long as they were doing the
08:45: Father's will until Jesus had fulfilled his ministry here on earth. Jesus also told them that their faith would benefit, that they would be strengthened in their faith because he was not there at the time
08:58: Lazarus died. Now, I made the point last week that we too often judge our circumstances as being indicative of the love of God for us.
09:10: In other words, we just think, well, that God doesn't care that much about me because if he did, he wouldn't permit this to happen.
09:19: But nothing could be further from the truth, as was said last week in the text. These things happened for the good of the disciples because of the love
09:28: Jesus had for Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. And if you think that Jesus and the
09:34: Father loved Lazarus so much that they wanted him to die, it's hard to really come up with a circumstance that we would look at in our own lives and go, well, that's worse than death.
09:47: But God works all things together for our good and for his glory.
09:56: I mean, to put it in a nutshell, we're not the best judges of what is best for us.
10:01: God is. And then we concluded last week with Thomas's really mournful statement, his kind of woe is us sort of thing.
10:10: Well, let's go back to Jerusalem with Jesus and we're all going to die, which that was motivation.
10:16: I'm sure they left the camp just kind of like, yes, let's go. That's Thomas though. This morning, we have four
10:24: Ws, a familiar formula for those of us at Bethlehem Bible Church, four
10:29: Ws or four questions. They're four questions that all start with W. And really what
10:35: I want us to see is or what I want to develop in us is not just a deeper faith in Christ, but I also want us to think about this because, you know, when you see the title and you're like, faith unwavering, what does that mean?
10:49: You know, am I going to give you the four ways to have unwavering faith to never fail in your faith?
10:54: And if I did that, guess what? I'd be lying to you.
11:00: So we'll see this morning, there's only one person in history whose faith never wavered and it isn't any of us.
11:09: First W, our first question, what is happening as Jesus arrives?
11:15: What is happening as Jesus arrives? Well, as we might well expect, since Jesus told us last week, he told us this in verse 14,
11:24: Lazarus has died. We know that Lazarus is dead and that's a good sign. That's exactly what's going on when
11:30: Jesus arrives, but he's not just dead, he's buried and he's not just buried. The text tells us what?
11:36: Jesus came or now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days, four days, and that's significant for a few reasons.
11:47: First thing we need to understand is Jewish custom. When someone died, you know, sometimes here we might wait if the ground's frozen, we might wait months to bury somebody.
12:01: Well, they didn't have that problem and they would bury people the same day, the same day that they died. I don't know what happened,
12:07: I'm not, you know, technically if they died during the middle of the night, you know, like at 1150 or something, I don't know.
12:13: Here's what I know, they buried him on the same day. So he shows up and Lazarus has already been in the tomb four days.
12:21: Now that's significant because the Jewish teaching of that time was that the soul of the person would sort of linger around for three days, which
12:29: I find kind of interesting, you know, just kind of hanging around seeing if maybe the person would come back to life or something,
12:35: I don't know. But that was the teaching even though it's not biblical, that it would just sort of hover around for three days.
12:41: So when he shows up on the fourth day, even by popular Jewish teaching of the day, that soul was gone.
12:49: Something else happens on the fourth day. Decomposition begins in earnest.
12:58: The body starts decaying, it starts rotting. Nasty things begin happening to the human body.
13:09: Now if someone returned in three days or less, that would be a miracle.
13:14: If they returned from the dead in three days or less, that would be a miracle because even though, you know, it would be, it would be a miracle, it would seem like less of a miracle because of this
13:25: Jewish teaching, Jewish teaching, I'm having a hard time getting that out, Jewish teaching, that would say that the soul was around for three days, so it would be like a reunification rather than a great, it would still be a miracle, but it wouldn't be as great on the fourth day though.
13:43: On the fourth day that would be even more significant because of this teaching and because of the fact that it wouldn't just be bringing somebody back to life, it would also be a restoration of their rotting parts, whatever had rotted already, whatever had begun to bloat and decay and I don't want to get into all that, but anyway, all the nastiness that goes on after you die, all that stuff had to be reversed, so it would be a creative miracle as well as raising somebody from the dead.
14:11: So this would be a great, great miracle. Notice also that the mourning process, that's
14:21: M -O -U -R -N -I -N -G, not, you know, the rising of the sun, but everybody weeping and wailing, all that stuff would be in full motion.
14:28: Look at verse 18, Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, as we said last week, it's a little bit less than two miles actually, not that this will warm your soul, but it's fifteen stadia, which is a little bit less than two miles.
14:42: Anyway, you go up the mountain, down the mountain, you're in Bethany. Verse 19, and many of the
14:47: Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.
14:55: Now, it's a matter of proximity, in other words, they were close to Jerusalem, it wasn't that hard to get to, and a little bit of the prominence, many scholars think, and I think this is probably true, that this family was prominent.
15:09: They weren't just beloved of Jesus, but they were kind of well -known, they had some money. You say, well, how do we know that?
15:17: Well, first of all, we saw in verse 2, that Mary was known as the woman who anointed the oil with ointment.
15:30: Well, if we studied that for very long, excuse me, we see that what she anointed
15:36: Jesus with was very costly. We don't anoint somebody with something that's very costly if you have no money to buy that.
15:45: So there's this idea that they probably had some money, and they're also close to Jerusalem, so a lot of people would go, and it's very simple to get there,
15:53: I mean, to just tell you how close it is, obviously less than two miles, but I mean, even I could get there, you know, so it's pretty close.
16:03: And it's likely that some, maybe many, of the
16:09: Jews were at least, because we see that phrase there, and we see the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, so often that means
16:15: Jewish leadership. It means Pharisees, it means the Sanhedrin, it means the upper echelon of the
16:22: Jewish government. Well, in this case, it's not necessarily the case, but it's probably true that a number of them would be at least friendly to the
16:31: Pharisees. So when Jesus and his disciples come strolling in, and there are some people that are at least friendly to the
16:39: Pharisees, maybe some Pharisees, there's going to be a little bit of consternation, because this is Jesus, the guy that they want to kill.
16:46: So this is all going on at the same time. There are a lot of people there mourning, there are a lot of people there consoling, and then
16:52: Jesus walks in. Our second question, our second
16:58: W, what did Jesus miss? What did
17:04: Jesus miss? And you listen to that, and you just go, well, in the sense of what? Him not being observant, in the sense of him inadvertently not observing something?
17:16: Well, there's some there at the scene that think he might have missed something. Look, Martha thinks that Jesus missed an opportunity to save Lazarus.
17:26: Verse 20, so when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house.
17:34: Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
17:43: And we're not told how Martha hears that Jesus is approaching. We don't know if there was a messenger sent ahead, if one of the people who worked in the household maybe saw
17:54: Jesus coming and went and told Martha. By the way, she would have been in charge of the household at this point.
18:05: So we don't really know how that happened. We also don't know why Mary didn't respond. Says that she remained seated.
18:11: Well, you know, you might just think, well, she's just ignoring Jesus. But when you're in mourning, when you're mourning someone who's dead, the correct posture actually to greet guests was seated.
18:25: So Mary is in all likelihood just remaining seated and continuing to greet mourners as they come.
18:32: Martha, being the woman of action that she is, she goes out to see Jesus. Only Martha goes to see
18:43: Jesus. And again, if you look at verse 21, when you first see it, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
18:53: It's easy to see that and think Martha's complaining. You know, you should have been here.
18:59: What took you so long? If you had just hurried when you got the message, you could have saved my brother.
19:08: But that's not the case. And that's not what she's saying. Jesus or Lazarus had been dead for four days and Jesus delayed for how many to.
19:21: So even if he'd come immediately, in all likelihood, he would have. Not made it in time.
19:28: Lazarus still would have died. That's not what she's saying. It's very likely that this is simply a lament, a statement of sorrow.
19:38: I mean, just imagine Martha, Mary sitting there, sisters.
19:44: They've just lost Lazarus. And what are they thinking? That if their good friend
19:51: Jesus had been there, if he'd been in Jerusalem, if they could have contacted him more quickly, guess what?
19:58: Lazarus wouldn't have died. So they've probably been saying to themselves for a few days, if only Jesus was here, if only
20:05: Jesus was here. And so when Jesus comes, Martha says, if only you were here, not complaining, but just a statement that she believes that if he was there, he would have healed
20:21: Lazarus. But Martha doesn't know that Jesus said,
20:29: I'm delaying two days and it's for their good, because he loves her, because he loves
20:38: Mary, and because he loves Lazarus. She's just consumed with sorrow as any sister would be.
20:47: If your brother dies, you are sorrowful. So number one, question number one, what is happening as Jesus arrives?
20:55: Question number two, what did Jesus miss? The truth is, he didn't miss anything. It's just our reflex.
21:02: We read it and we think he did miss something he didn't. Question number three, what could Jesus yet do?
21:08: Even at this stage, what could he do? What could Jesus yet do?
21:14: Was there even a glimmer of raising him from the dead, a hope for that in Martha?
21:21: Even on the fourth day of her brother's death, look at verse 22. Was she hoping for that? But even now,
21:28: I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. You weren't here in time.
21:35: But I know that even now, if you pray, Lazarus will come forth. I mean, we want to make her like a prophetess, right?
21:44: She's got a word. She knows that Jesus can raise Lazarus from the dead, and he's going to.
21:55: That's not exactly right. How do we know that?
22:02: How do we know that she's not confident that Jesus is going to raise Lazarus from the dead?
22:08: Well, in verse 39, we're skipping ahead a little bit, but in verse 39, it reads,
22:15: Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him,
22:21: Lord, by this time, there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days. She doesn't even want it to happen.
22:30: She's not proclaiming that there's going to be a resurrection. She doesn't, she thinks it's too late.
22:39: It's probably better to understand her statement there in conjunction with her earlier statement that if Jesus had been there,
22:47: Lazarus would not have died. It's as if she's saying, even though you have great access to the
22:53: Father, superior access to the Father, he grants you all your desires.
23:02: You can still intervene, but not for Lazarus. He's dead.
23:08: But I believe that when you pray for things, they happen. So if you had been here before Lazarus died, he would have granted you
23:17: Lazarus' life. Lazarus would have lived. But the good news is,
23:22: Lazarus will be resurrected. We have Jesus' word for it. Look at verse 23, Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.
23:30: Now this seems to be a clear statement. Again, Jesus very forcefully saying, your brother will rise again.
23:39: It's almost as if he says, I'm going to go over to that cave, and I'm going to tell Lazarus to come out, and he's going to come out. But that's not how
23:45: Martha hears it. Look at verse 24. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.
23:56: She doesn't get it. She certainly doesn't receive it the way we see it.
24:02: But again, we know the end. We're cheating. So how is it that she misunderstands what he's saying?
24:14: Because this was a common means of comfort in the Jewish world. What do we say to people when someone they love dies?
24:24: We say, I'm sorry for your loss, right? And we are sorry for their loss.
24:29: Because we understand we have compassion for other people. We understand what it's like to lose a loved one.
24:35: So what the Jews would say is, your loved one will be raised on the last day.
24:43: He will be resurrected, or she will be resurrected on the last day. Most Jews believed in some form of resurrection.
24:53: In fact, the only ones who really didn't were the Sadducees. And I'm not going to make the joke about being Sadducee, even though I just did it.
25:02: They specifically rejected it. But everybody had their own kind of view of what it was, the resurrection. But Martha was not just a
25:11: Jew. She was Jewish, but she wasn't just a Jew. She was a disciple, a believer of the
25:16: Lord Jesus. And the depth of that faith was about to be challenged.
25:23: We've seen so far, first question, what is happening as Jesus arrives? Second, what did Jesus miss?
25:28: Third, what could Jesus yet do? And the fourth, we're going to spend, you know, Mike likes to say, if you try to figure it out by going by the first point, you know, you'll figure, you'll extrapolate, and you'll think we're going to be here for four hours.
25:40: Well, I've developed this technique where the last point is the longest one. So what do you think about that? You're in trouble.
25:46: Our fourth question, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? There are seven
25:52: I am statements in the Gospel of John, and this is number five. And each of the
25:58: I am statements really is a reference back to Exodus 3 .14, where Moses says, who shall
26:04: I say is sending me? You know, what's the name of the God I represent, and what does
26:10: God say? I am that I am. And so when Jesus says, I am, he is referencing that, he is stating his deity.
26:21: And verse 25, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
26:31: Now, Jesus doesn't merely say that all will be raised. You know, your brother will be raised, everybody's going to be raised in the last day.
26:40: That's true. Not that everybody will have some form of eternal life, you know, or life that goes on.
26:49: But he says that he is the very source of the resurrection, and he is the very source of eternal life.
26:58: To put it another way, without Jesus, there would be no resurrection.
27:06: And resurrection always, the resurrection he's speaking of, the resurrection through Christ, always results in eternal life.
27:13: That is to say, heaven. There is no hope apart from him, no hope over the grave.
27:23: He alone conquered death, and he alone grants the power to conquer death to us.
27:32: He reversed the curse of death. He is the first fruits of the resurrection. And it is only by being in Christ that we will experience a resurrection leading to eternal life.
27:44: I want you to hold your fingers in John 11 and just turn over to Romans 6 for a moment. Romans 6,
27:51: I'm going to start reading in verse 3. And by the way, when you see this rhetorical question in the beginning of verse 3, it's implied that you should know this.
28:12: So the answer is yes. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
28:26: We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
28:36: Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
28:53: Now, what does that mean? Does that mean we have to be nailed to a cross? I read one Roman Catholic scholar who said, yeah, you have to, this only applies to those who are crucified.
29:03: No, that is wrong. The implication here is not about crucifixion.
29:09: It's about dying to self. It's about being identified with him. It's about being fully committed to Christ.
29:15: And our resurrection will result in what his did, a perfect and glorified body.
29:22: We shall be as he is, right? When we see him, we shall be as he is, fit to spend eternity in our
29:34: Lord's presence with him forever and ever. And just as there is no resurrection apart from Christ, you can turn back to John 11,
29:45: I just wanted you to see that. We will have a resurrection like his, we'll be like him. Just as there is no resurrection apart from Jesus, there is no eternal life apart from him.
30:00: He puts the resurrection before the life. I am the resurrection and the life.
30:06: He's referring to eternal life. He's referring to eternity in heaven. He's referring to eternity without sin, without the presence of sin, without the power of sin.
30:17: In the new heavens, the new earth, where there are no such things as sin. Because he lives, we shall live also.
30:28: And as he lives, in the same way as he lives, those who are in Christ will live also.
30:34: In other words, with him in glory all the time. And our
30:40: Lord further explains the scope of his I am statement. And again, the second half of verse 25, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
30:54: Well, who are the ones that are going to be raised from the dead? Who are those that even though they die physically, they will live and have eternal life?
31:02: Who are they? Well, it's not, our text doesn't say whoever of their own free will will choose to believe, that's not what it says.
31:12: As with John 3 .16, it's a participle here. I won't try to pronounce the
31:19: Greek, but it's the believing ones. It's talking about a state of constant belief.
31:25: It's talking about something that is part of their inherent being, that they're just, they believe.
31:33: And this is a matter of description, not prescription.
31:38: The text doesn't say, if you believe, such and such will happen. It says, because you believe.
31:46: Because you believe, you have eternal life. It's a sovereign work of grace.
31:52: God gives us the faith to believe, they believe, they never stop believing, even though their faith isn't perfect.
31:59: And because they are believers, they have eternal life. Because they are believers, they will be raised from the dead.
32:12: Again, your faith, it may wax and wane, it may seem stronger at some points than others.
32:18: But this is not a one -time decision. It's not like, if you now believe, or if you confess now, if you make a profession now.
32:30: It does say here in our text that all believers will die physically, right? Though he die, but they won't remain in death.
32:39: In Christ, they have conquered death, as he has risen. So every believer in Christ will rise from the dead.
32:46: And also, being in Christ means eternal life. Look at verse 26. And everyone who lives, that is to say, is raised from the dead and believes in me shall never die.
32:56: Well, this is, again, the idea of eternal life. Everyone who lives, participle, living ones, and believing ones, will never taste of the final death.
33:09: They won't go to hell, in other words. It is impossible to be given life by the
33:16: Lord Jesus Christ and spend eternity apart from him. If you are raised like him, if you live like him in eternity, you will never see hell, you will never taste hell.
33:30: Now, it's absolutely vital that I address what's not said here, and that's this.
33:37: If anyone does not believe in Christ, if you are not granted that resurrection, if you are not granted eternal life, you will assuredly spend eternity apart from Jesus in hell.
33:56: Because he is the source of resurrection and eternal life. And if you are outside of him, in other words, if he is not your hope, if he is not the one you've set your faith upon, if he's not the one you've entirely invested yourself in, then your future is one of hopelessness and despair.
34:18: And on that great and terrible day of judgment, Jesus will say what?
34:25: Depart from me, I never knew you. Prince, don't let that be you.
34:32: Whatever your thoughts about Jesus are, I urge you to repent of them. Heed the words of our text and believe on him.
34:43: Trust him for who he is. And this is exactly the challenge that Jesus brings to Martha. Look at verse 26, again, the second half of it.
34:52: Do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe what I just said? When we think, not just Bill Nye the science guy, but all unbelievers, what do they do?
35:02: They scoff at the idea of Jesus. They mock the idea that there is such thing as sin, that there is a heaven or a hell or a
35:13: God who cares about such things. If there is a God, why doesn't he just love everybody enough to take them as they are?
35:25: The cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. And that's how they treat it, as foolishness.
35:32: The Bible, they say, is what? It's the opinion of men, is written by men. There's no inspiration because there's no such thing as God.
35:41: And of course, I always think, boy, those 40 men who wrote over hundreds of years in disparate places, they sure were smart to make it all work together.
35:52: Or there was one divine author. These scoffers say that there's no resurrection.
36:00: They say that once you're dead, you're done, just like Bill Nye the science guy. Well, that's not the truth, and that's not what
36:08: Jesus says. In fact, Jesus looks Martha basically right in the eyes and asks her if she, present tense, ongoing, has faith in him.
36:19: Does she believe everything that he said about himself? And that's the threshold. That's what you must believe all that the
36:28: Bible says about Jesus. There's no picking or choosing. There's no negotiating. There's no kind of like, nine out of ten is good enough.
36:37: Best two out of three, everything. Jesus sets the bar and says, do you believe this?
36:44: Do you believe all that I've just said? So how does Martha respond? Exactly as a believer should.
36:53: Look at verse 27, she said to him, yes, Lord. I believe that you are the
36:58: Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. Three things here, quickly.
37:10: She responds affirmatively. She doesn't hesitate. Her heart firmly and entirely accepts the truths
37:19: Jesus has presented to her. We could say it this way, she is one of his sheep.
37:27: She hears his voice and she follows. She believes.
37:35: She believes perfectly. It's interesting here because when I say perfectly,
37:41: I don't mean that she has a perfect faith because she doesn't. But the way she says it,
37:48: I believe, is a perfect tense verb. Perfect tense.
37:54: And what that means is there's a one time decision with ongoing results. Ongoing, never changing results.
38:06: She also responds appropriately. What does she say? She says, I believe that you are the
38:13: Christ. He is the long promised Messiah, the chosen one. The one who will rule over his people.
38:21: The one who will fulfill the Davidic covenants. She also says that he is the son of God.
38:27: She believes that he is in him, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
38:34: She understands his claims and she believes. She believes that he is not less than the father.
38:40: That's what son of God means. It means he's the equal of the father. She also says that he is the son coming into the world.
38:53: Scripture speaks of his becoming poor for our sake. By that, it means he leaves the riches that he had with his father and coming into earth.
39:02: It tells us, the Bible does, that he humbled himself coming to earth in a frail little tiny human body.
39:12: Limiting himself to the frustrations and conditions of human existence.
39:20: Also tells us that he obeyed the father in all things, even to the point of death on a cross.
39:27: Now Martha might not have understood all the implications of all these titles. But she did know this, that everything
39:38: Jesus had taught her about himself was true. She believed it with every fiber of her being.
39:46: But there was only one person present who had an unwavering faith and it wasn't Martha. It wasn't
39:53: Martha. Now, I think it's pretty obvious who that person is. It's only
39:58: Jesus. Only Jesus believes perfectly. Only Jesus has perfect faith that never doubts, that never wavers, that never waxes or wanes.
40:08: Well, how do I know that? What is the root? Let me just ask the question this way.
40:15: What is the root of sin? Why do you sin? Why does anyone sin? Why did
40:20: Adam and Eve sin in the garden? Because they doubted
40:28: God. They didn't believe him enough. When you sin, it's because the faith that you have is not enough to sustain you through that period of temptation.
40:39: You push it aside, you push aside your faith, you push aside what you believe so that you can go off and do what you want.
40:48: But Jesus never sinned. He alone never sinned. Why? Because he never doubted. He never wavered.
40:56: He never had a lack of trust in God. That's the root of all sin, doubting
41:03: God and his word. Jesus never failed to believe enough.
41:15: One day, every single believer will share that perfect faith. Will be blessed to have the absence of sin.
41:26: They'll be in heaven and they'll have that perfect faith. They won't have perfect knowledge, but they will have perfect faith in that they'll never sin again.
41:37: But in the meantime, every single believer knows more about death, heaven, and hell than Bill Nye the science guy.
41:46: They know that sin's missing the mark. They know that we all fall short in sin.
41:56: And they know that we have a savior, one savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is sinless, eternal, obedience, raised from the dead.
42:06: And they know that there's one means of salvation, and that is belief, complete faith in the
42:12: Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, if you don't know the
42:19: Lord Jesus Christ, your soul is in peril. Don't leave here today, because you don't know.
42:28: No one knows when the moment of death will occur. You don't wanna spend eternity apart from Jesus Christ, because apart from Jesus Christ is eternal torment, facing the wrath of God forever and ever.
42:47: Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we know that we are not and can never be perfect.
42:58: Father, we know that we fall short in many different ways. That even our best efforts are often not, well, are often filled with doubt, with wrong motives.
43:22: Father, left to ourselves, we could never earn heaven. We could never be righteous enough.
43:31: We could never be holy enough, because your standard is perfection. And because of that, you sent the
43:37: Lord Jesus Christ to live a perfect life, to die a sacrificial death in our place.
43:45: You raised him on the third day that we might have that eternal life.
43:52: By faith in him who is the resurrection and the life, the source of victory over death, in whom we have completely trusted.
44:08: Because we know that he is able to do exactly what he has said, that he is able to prevent us from suffering, that he's able to save us from the wrath of God.
44:27: Father, we praise you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We praise you for the good news. We praise you that you have made us recipients of that by your grace.
44:37: And Lord, for any that don't know you here today, maybe even for some who think that they do,
44:48: Lord, I pray that today would be the day of conviction, the day of being born again, of being granted new hearts, new affections, new desires.
45:04: Lord, the confidence in Christ Jesus, the one who has overcome death and the grave, who makes intercession for us and will one day, on that last day, raise all that you have given him to glory.