John 12:8-11 (The Aroma Of Christ)

The Aroma of Christ and the Fragrance of the Church

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. One of the themes that we'll see today is that what Christ has done for us, we end up now doing back to him. We saw earlier that that the pleasing aroma of the sacrifice goes up to heaven, and it pleases God.

Then we saw how Christ became a pleasing aroma for us. Now I want you to see how in 2 Corinthians 2, 14 through 15, how we become a pleasing aroma back to God. What Christ has done for us, we end up doing back to him.

It says, But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing.

Christ the pleasing aroma has made us a pleasing aroma. That means that as Christians, we have an odor. We smell. That's the people of God. We smell as a sweet-smelling aroma to God. We smell as a sweet-smelling aroma to those around us, to the church, and we have become a pungent stench in the nostrils of the world.

Noxious and odious is the smell of the Christian church to the perishing world. Now we've seen this play out in our passage here in John. We've seen that Mary uses this expensive bottle of nard perfume, and when she opens it, it says the fragrance fills the entire house.

In the gospel of Matthew, she anoints his head. In the gospel of Mark, she anoints his body. In the gospel of John, she anoints his feet. The point of the passage is that she lavishly pours out a fragrant offering to Christ, and it fills the entire house.

She becomes a type. For the church, a fragrant offering of our Lord. In the same way that her aroma, the aroma of this perfume, fills the house, how much more so now, 2 ,000 years later, does the aroma of Christ fill the earth because of Christians?

Christians who reflect God to the nations. Christians who have the aroma of Christ put on us by Jesus himself. How much more are we filling the world with the glory of God through the aromatic offering of our lives back to him?

The Offense of the Gospel to the World

Now we know that her act was not received well by everyone. It was repugnant to Judas, that devilish man. No sooner than he, no sooner than she sees him opening this bottle of perfume, he's howling in protestation.

He's squirming in agitations, almost like he's possessed of a demon. What Jesus saw in her that was beautiful, Judas saw was polluted. What Jesus saw was pure, Jesus saw as foolish. The same is true for us today.

What the Lord God and our Father, what Jesus Christ the Son, what the Holy Spirit has wrought in you is pleasing to the people of God. It's a blessing to the people of God, and yet it is foolishness to the world, to those who are perishing, as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 2.

The Christian is offensive to the world. That is a fact that we should not run from. By our very nature, we are repugnant to the carnal mind. That does not mean that we attempt to increase our repugnancy.

Just by being a Christian, we offend the world. There's two errors, right? There's the churches that try to be offensive, and then there's the churches that run from who they are and hide with their heads in the proverbial soil like ostriches, trying to mask the aroma of Christ.

Both are wrong. Both are wrong, and we're going to see today in the example of Lazarus how just living our lives as an authentic Christian will bless the church and infuriate the world. That's what we're going to see.

We're going to see that today in two different ways. We're going to look at the setting of this passage. There's a transitional passage in the verse. I wanted to go to the triumphal entry because that's triumphant, and yet verses 8 through 11, verses 9 through 11 especially, have to be dealt with.

What I noticed this week as I was deciding which way I was going to go, whether I was going to tack 9 through 11 onto the triumphal entry, I've noticed that most pastors don't even deal with this passage.

They either have it as a footnote on 1 through 8, or they have it as a beginning note on a sermon on the triumphal entry, but rarely are there any sermons about 9 through 11. In this passage, we see this beautiful example of Lazarus who is this aroma of Christ.

We see this playing out here in this passage as well. So what I want us to do is I want us to look at the setting of these passages, and then I want us to spend some time in application of these passages.

What do they mean for our lives? What do they mean for us, the people of God? How can they encourage you and I in the way that we live and the way that we walk? And I think that these things will be very encouraging once we see them.

So if you will, turn with me to John chapter 12, verses 8 through 11. If you want, there's Bibles in your pews. There's also the word on the screen, but we are going to read from 8 through 11 together.

Jesus responded, For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me. The large crowd of the Jews then learned that he was there, and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.

But the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, you have told us that there is a certain aroma that has been placed on our life.

That aroma will be a blessing to those who have been called according to your purposes, and that aroma will be offensive to the world at large. Lord, I pray that we would be men and women who live with the courage of Lazarus, with the courage of Mary, with the courage of Martha, with the courage of all those first century saints that turned the Roman world upside down, by devotion and by worship.

Not with swords, not with weapons, not with tanks, not with guns, with worship. Lord, let us be a worshiping people who offer up sweet worship to you, and Lord, let us be a people who in our lifetime see a pagan world changed, revived, reformed, bowing the knee to Jesus Christ.

Lord, it's in your name that we pray. Amen. Now we're going to begin with the setting. And the first aspect of the setting that I want to talk about is that large crowds were coming to see Jesus. These are the very large crowds that we've heard about already in the gospel of John.

John has not painted a very nice picture so far of the large crowds. John 5 is the large crowds who missed the significance of his healing and they were confused by him. John 6 it's the large crowd who wanted him to do signs and wonders and healings and miracles and become their king and they were angry with him when he said, no.

John 7, this crowd now was angry at him and they started to grumble against him. They started to complain against him. The large crowd has not had a very nice story so far in the gospel of John. Even John 1 through 10, it's the crowd that's woefully ignorant of Jesus.

It's the crowd that egregiously abandons Jesus and it's the crowd that's totally against Jesus. So if we're not careful, we could fall victim to a mentality that the crowd is always the problem. The crowd is always the problem.

I've seen this actually, especially in churches like Shepherds Church. I don't see this in mega churches where it's all about the crowd. I see this in churches that are small and that are humble where they very easily shift their focus and say it's the crowd that's always the problem.

We start to glorify this idea of remnant theology where we're the remnant. If we get above 50 people, then there must be something wrong. We're compromisers. Christianity never advances. I've heard people talk like that or that we're not supposed to make any progress whatsoever on the Great Commission lest we become unfaithful.

Have you ever heard pastors say that biblical Christianity is never popular and popular Christianity is never biblical? Is that always true? Is it always true that we're supposed to be a marginalized minority in a small remnant on earth?

Is it always true that there's never an occasion where the gospel advances? Is it always true that revival doesn't happen to a nation? Because I can point to several examples in history where entire nations bow the knee to Jesus where they're saved.

I think that our focus should not be on the size of the crowd. Our focus should be on the magnitude of our mighty God. But sometimes God breathes life into nations and into cultures and thousands come to Jesus.

Crowds of people come to Jesus. We shouldn't scoff at that. We should actually hope for that. We should pray for that. We should pray that God would expand his kingdom in our generation. We should pray that we run out of chairs in this room and we have to figure out what to do next.

Jesus' own teaching disagrees with this. This idea of never grow. Zechariah 9 says that the glory of God will fill the earth as the water covers the sea. How do we believe that's going to happen? The glory of God fills the earth by the advancing church, by Christians blanketing the nations.

The aroma of Christ being spread to every square inch of this planet. Zechariah 9 says his glory will fill the earth as the water covers the sea. I've made this joke before but it's important. When you go to the sea, there's just water.

So if his glory covers the earth like water in the sea, then there is nothing left but his glory. Daniel 2 says that he will create a kingdom that will never end and that kingdom will begin like a small stone and it'll begin to grow into a mighty mountain that fills the entire earth.

Jesus said it'll be like a mustard seed and it begins very small. It's one of the smallest seeds but then it grows to be the largest plant in the garden. We see in Psalm 110 that Jesus is going to put all of his enemies under his feet.

Psalm 2, the nations are going to bow down before the King. It says kiss the Son or less he will become angry at you and you'll perish in the way. Philippians 2 says that every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

1 Corinthians 15 says that Jesus will present a completed kingdom to the Father. We don't believe that it's going to happen quickly. It's been 2 ,000 years so far. What we do believe is that in the end, Christ will have supremacy.

Christ will reign and when he's done, when he's finished, when he's ready to return, when he's ready to present this kingdom to God the Father, it will be expansive and it will cover all the nations of the earth.

That's what we believe. It's time that we begin to see the kingdom rightly. That it's not always a marginalized minority but it's a kingdom that we should expect will expand. It's a kingdom we should expect will grow.

It's a kingdom that grows on the knees of worn out saints who've been praying for decades. It's a kingdom that grows on the lips of saints who share the glorious gospel. It's a kingdom in some seasons of time, like the season that we're in, seems like it's losing.

But it's a kingdom that will prevail and will continue to prevail and the gates of hell will not stop it. This is not attractional evangelicalism. I know some of us, we could be triggered. This is not shallow, superficial, megachurch, watered down, light on sin, light show, big arena Christianity.

That's not what this is. This is just kingdom theology. That the kingdom will grow. And we believe that because the bible says that. Now, I find it interesting that John actually shows this in a microcosmic way in the gospel of John.

Chapters 1 through 10 is about how the crowd is the problem. The crowd is the one who's rejected him. The crowd is the one who's blasphemed him. The crowd's the one who called him a demon. And yet something crazy happens in John 11.

After all this time where the crowd is ignorant and foolish and rejecting him, something happens in John 11. Jesus prays at the tomb of Lazarus. And as he's praying, he says, I'm not praying this prayer for me.

Because I know what you're going to do. I'm praying this for them, for the crowd, so that they will believe. And then for the first time in the gospel of John, many come to Jesus. The crowd comes to Jesus.

Many of them believe. So much so that the Pharisees are frustrated. This is the thing that the nail in the coffin. Johanna and scholars universally believe that Jesus healing Lazarus was the final nail in the coffin.

It was the signature on his death certificate. Why? I think one big reason is because the Pharisees finally saw Jesus as a threat. Before this, he was a teacher who offended them. He was a teacher who they didn't like.

But he had a small following of people. After John 11, Jesus' following cannot be ignored. It was so big that they felt like they were losing power. It was so big that they felt like they were losing status.

And they even say that Rome is going to take notice of the size of this thing. And they're going to come in and they're going to destroy our nation and take away our kingdom and our place. That is why the Pharisees turned on Jesus to kill him.

Because the idolatry of status, because the idolatry of power, they cared nothing about what Jesus had to say. But when their follower count went down, they were ready to kill him. Pharisees are afraid.

Isn't it interesting? The Pharisees showcase that they actually have the heart of Old Testament Pharaoh when it's Old Testament Moses that they say that they love. You thought about that? The beginning of the book of Exodus says the people of God were fruitful and they multiplied.

And it says Pharaoh was trembling in this castle. They're going to take away our nation. They've grown so big we can't do anything with them. So he put them in slavery. He killed the Hebrew babies, throwing them into the Nile River.

It was that wicked, demonic spirit that the Jewish people who were supposed to be following Moses, leading people to freedom, became like Pharaoh. Jesus is growing bigger than us. Jesus's ministry is fruitful.

It's multiplying. He's doing all of these amazing things. So what do we do? We don't bow down and worship. We kill him. Lazarus was the smoking gun. Lazarus was the gun that had fingerprints on it that they had to wipe off so that no one else would leave.

Think about it. Lazarus being raised from the dead was evidence of who Christ said that he is. Why do they want to kill Lazarus? It's not because they deny the resurrection. It's because they don't want to lose their status.

They allow Lazarus to live, then Lazarus can tell everybody Jesus rose me from the dead. So they not only have to kill Jesus, they feel like they have to kill Lazarus as well. I find that a fascinating thing.

They didn't deny the resurrection. They didn't say, you know what, this is just a party trick. This is just like the wise men of Egypt who turned water into blood by some trick or some sorcery. They didn't say that.

They acknowledged that Lazarus was dead. They acknowledged that he was dead in the grave for four days and now he's been raised back to life. And they still said we have to kill him. The heart of idolatry poisons the mind to the point that you cannot turn to Jesus.

You will protect the God that you love more than anything. And the God that they love more than anything was their power, their wealth, and their status. Jesus even accused them that they were lovers of money.

Instead of repenting, instead of crashing the party and getting down on their faces with Mary and saying, my Lord and my God, like Thomas, instead of doing that, they clung to their idols. They clung to their murderous plot.

And they moved forward with their assassination attempt. Now, if the Pharisees were embarrassed, the Sadducees were doubly embarrassed. The chief priest was made up of both Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees actually believed in the resurrection.

They just hated Jesus. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. Think about why they would want to kill Lazarus. They argue publicly that there is no such thing as a resurrection. And here's Lazarus, raised from the dead.

So you would think they would say, huh, you know, my exegesis on that passage was not quite right. Here is a living example of why my theology is wrong. And instead they say, no, our theology is so important, we're going to kill you.

And it's hard to believe. And yet you and I would be in the same place, believing even worse, more ignorant lies, if it were not for the Spirit of God that awakened us to the reality of Christ. They were using God for their power and for their status, almost like Kenneth Copeland or Benny Hinn.

I don't know if you've heard of these names. If you haven't, don't look them up. Using God to get their wealth, their money, their status. That's why Jesus is bringing judgment on this wicked and adulterous generation here in John.

There's a growing evil that's happening. John has actually been very clear to tell us that this evil is growing. It's getting worse, in fact. The darkness is getting darker. We see in Romans chapter one, it says when God gives a people over, they get worse.

Well, God has given this generation over to destruction and they're getting worse. John 2, they're merely anointed him. John 5, they're hoping that he dies. John 7, they're calling him Satan. It's getting worse.

John 10, they're picking up stones. John 11, they put together an execution squad. John 12, they move from wanting to kill one person to wanting to kill two. You remember Caiaphas' prophecy that we talked about a few weeks ago.

It's expedient for one man to die for the sins of the nation. He was prophesying ignorantly that Jesus was going to die for the sins of the people. Now, this same group wants to kill two people. Very soon after Jesus' resurrection, they're going to kill many people because evil is growing in the nation of Israel.

Two men are not going to be enough. They're going to want to kill women and children. They're going to want to kill and torture people. Did you know that by the year 325 AD, the church of Jesus Christ went from 70 people in an upper room to 7 million people in 300 years?

Less than 300 years. Did you know it would have been 9 million, but 2 million of them were murdered? I don't know how many that the Jews were responsible for killing, but the Jews were the worst persecutors of the church in the earliest days of the church.

They hated Christianity. You remember, you see Paul, right? Casting his lot for the death of Stephen. Paul, the one who chases people down town by town by town to murder them. Paul's not the only one who was involved in this wide-scale extermination, this genocide of Christianity.

Again, there's no record of how many Jews had killed Christians, but there were Jews in every major city of the Roman Empire. It's not just Israel. When Paul would go to synagogues like in Ephesus or Corinth or in Galatia, he would experience persecution there.

He would experience people wanting to murder him there. This was for Christians all over the Roman Empire. In fact, Roman historians even record that it was Jews in the city of Rome that convinced Nero to turn on them.

There's record by Roman historians that it was Jewish influence over Nero that caused him to set them on fire as lamps in his garden, that caused them to throw them to the lions in the Colosseum, that caused them to behead Christians like Paul, crucify Christians upside down like Peter.

It was Nero who was the great persecutor of the early church in Rome, and there's record that it was because of the hatred that the Jews had for Christians. According to some records, there was 15 percent of the population of the entire Roman Empire was Jewish, so Nero, possibly for political expediency, tried to appease a large faction of the empire to kill and murder a very small but growing people called Christians.

Caiaphas said one man really could die for the sins of the people, and yet it wasn't enough to satisfy the bloodlust of the Jews. They were going to kill Jesus. They were going to kill his followers. They were going to kill women, children, pastors, deacons, elders, congregants, anyone who pledged allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Their depravity was growing, festering like gangrene. The stink of it was rising. Christians are not the only ones who have an aroma. The aroma of the world is a repugnant smell to the nostrils of our God, and it was growing more and more odious.

Lazarus as a Witness and the Aroma of Christ

Now let's get back to the introduction we talked about. Christians have an aroma about them. Mary, her act of righteousness offended Judas, right? Lazarus, his act of righteousness, his act of worshiping Jesus, his sitting there at the meal, reclining at the table was offensive to the Jews.

Lazarus' mere existence became something that was utterly opposed by the crowd. Simply allowing him to live could not happen according to the Jews. And in the same way, in the same way, if Lazarus' life was that offensive to the Jews, how much more is the growing church offensive to a world that hates God?

We must remember that this is not about us. We must remember that this is not about Lazarus. This is not about Mary. They don't hate us because we err. We're worshiping the true one and living God. They hate us because they feel guilt when they see us.

They hate us because they are living a life in opposition to God. They hate us because in the presence of a Christian, they are confronted by their sin. They hate us, not because we're being hateful, even though you'll be accused of that plenty.

They hate us because where we're going reminds them where they're not. We remind them just by being a Christian of their destiny. That's where we get to the fragrance of Christ. I love how Kent Hughes says this.

It's funny how the Lord works. I just told a friend of mine that I never read Kent Hughes. And then this week, I read Kent Hughes. And it's a wonderful quote. I'm going to share it with you. Lazarus has become Jesus' star witness.

And then he goes on to say, I find that amazing because as I read the gospels, I cannot find anything outstanding about the man. It seems that he never said anything worth recording. I don't think he's got a recorded word in the Bible.

And perhaps he never did anything worth recording, yet he ended up being one of the greatest witnesses for Christ. Why? The answer is not in what Lazarus did for Jesus. The answer is in what Jesus did for Lazarus.

Lazarus is noteworthy. Lazarus is worth talking about because of what Jesus did to him. How much more so is that true for us who don't have the faintest trace of genius about us? Maybe you're really smart.

In comparison to God, you're not. We don't have even the smallest diminutive morsel of morality. We don't have a modicum of faith. We don't have a centella of righteousness. Thesaurus .com is helpful sometimes.

We didn't have anything to offer Christ. Nothing. Just like Lazarus lying dead in the tomb had nothing to offer Jesus. Lazarus couldn't will himself back to life. Lazarus couldn't say, you know what, I decided to follow Jesus now.

Let me shake off my grave clothes and do a little dance. Jesus called forth to the dead man and he came alive. He came out of the tomb. That's the same thing that's happened to you and I. Same way that Mary's perfumed filled that house with the aroma of not her righteousness, but the righteousness given to her by Christ.

It's the same way that Christ has fragranced you and I. So that the good things that we do are not our good works, they're his good works. The things that we do for the glory of God's not our glory, it's his glory.

We are passive in this relationship. We smell of the glory of God because he gave us the glory of God. It's not us. It's not our righteousness. Christ has set us free. Christ has set us free from all kinds of disasters that would have befallen us.

You think about religion. How many of you did Christ save you from religion? That disgusting morbidity where we try to justify ourself with our own good behavior. I spent a lot of my childhood thinking that there's no way God could love me because I've done this and I've done this and I've done that.

And instead of bowing the knee to Jesus and accepting the free gift of grace, my heart was in the place, well, I just need to try harder. I just need to work a little bit harder. I just need to clean myself up and then Jesus will love me.

That's a low view of sin and a low view of God. He freed us from that. He freed us from performance. He freed us from religion. And now we are the fragrance of Christ because of what Christ did for us, not what we did for him.

Hughes goes to end his quote like this, we have become unanswerable arguments for Christ. You and I. Every believer's life has been so changed that the only way that it can be accounted for is the power of Christ.

If we have new life and are fellowshipping with Jesus as was Lazarus, then we are the greatest apologetic on earth for the efficacy of the gospel. Isn't that a beautiful statement? We are the greatest apologetic on earth for the efficacy of the gospel.

We are unanswerable proofs to the reality and the lordship of Jesus. It's not about us. When people come and they look at us and they see you were this, and now you're that, the only person who can get glory for that is Jesus Christ.

We have become an apologetic to the power of God. And now the world, now the crowds slowly over the last 2 ,000 years have come to see it. And they will continue to come to see it until Christ has completed his kingdom.

So in this passage, we see a few things that are happening. Large crowds are coming to Jesus. They're coming to see Lazarus. They're coming to see the reports. They're coming to see what is happening in this man so they can see him, touch him, hug him, listen to his stories.

Just like we've talked about, people will come to you when they see the life change that has happened to you. We see Jewish anger over this. We see growing evil over this. We see a volcanic fury where they now want to kill multiple people because of this.

That's what's happening in this passage. It's a short passage, but we can't stop there. We have to also apply this passage because I think there's some beautiful application that we can find from this passage.

Courage, Imitation, and One Life to Live for Christ

And the first application that I want to share with you is that Jesus risked his life for Lazarus so that Lazarus would begin risking his life for Christ. Jesus risked his life for Lazarus so that Lazarus would be the kind of person who would risk his life for Christ.

Jesus did not play it safe in the gospel. He could have stayed in Galilee. He had a very successful ministry there. It was away from the pressures of the Jewish overlords. He could have stayed there. He didn't.

He runs to Bethany after two days when he hears about it. He goes to Bethany. He heals Lazarus. He retreats momentarily. He goes back for a dinner, the worst possible decision you could make if you want to keep yourself alive.

They had plenty of time to post wanted posters on every single telephone pole in Bethany. Jesus is going back into the bee's nest. Why? Because of his love for Lazarus. He doesn't go back, but to fellowship with Lazarus.

He's already been healed. The great miracles already happened. Jesus considered fellowshipping with Lazarus of such great importance that he risked his life to spend time with his disciple. Jesus chose courage.

Jesus chose to come for the benefit of the ones that he loves. He risked his life for Lazarus so that Lazarus would see an example. So for the rest of Lazarus's life, he would not live like a coward. This Jesus risked it for me.

He came to me. When I prepared this meal for him, he sat there as the snipers were up on top of the hill, putting their crosshairs on my Lord's back. And he did it for me. If Jesus can live with that kind of courage, how could I ever be a coward?

That's the lesson that Lazarus learned. He knew the risks. Lazarus could have ran from Bethany after that meal to Galilee. He could have ran to Greece. He could have ran to Persia. He could have ran anywhere that he wanted to hide.

He did not. He stayed. He stayed and he lived to the glory of God, even though he knew that a target was on his back. John records that the Pharisees wanted to kill Lazarus, so it's pretty clear that the community knew that Lazarus was wanting to be killed or that they wanted to kill Lazarus.

It's not like Lazarus was unaware of this fact. He sat through the meal as people were laughing and he didn't say, they're going to hear us. He sat through the meal as people were praising God from the miracle and he sat there and he worshiped along with them.

You think about the danger that he's facing in that moment. He knows the Pharisees are going to want to kill him and yet he worships anyway. You think about Psalm 23, you prepare a table for me in the presence of mine enemies.

I worship you. I praise you. I fellowship with you even in the threat. He knew a bullseye was on his back and he did not retreat. What a beautiful example of the gospel at work, the transformative power of the gospel at work in the lives of Jesus's saints.

In the same way, he came for us. He didn't run away. It says for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. He allowed himself to be arrested. That was not a mistake. He allowed himself to be beaten.

He allowed himself to be punished. He allowed himself to be bruised. He allowed himself to carry the cross up the hill called Calvary. He allowed his creatures to crucify him with joy in his heart for you in the same way that Lazarus would have looked at Jesus and say, if this man can risk everything for me, I shall never be a coward again.

How much more so us? This Jesus who risked everything for us, how could we live like cowards? How could we hide? How could we be nervous? How could we be afraid? God provided you and I with a life transplant.

He took our dead rotten life and he gave us his. He didn't die so that he would leave us in our sins, did he? He didn't die so that we would go on sleeping in the grave, did he? He died so that you and I would live.

He was courageous so that you and I would have courage. Now, trust me, I get that you and I still struggle. You're already quoting Romans seven in your head. I get it. If you're not, read it. Then you'll be quoting it later.

We still battle with sin. We still are tempted towards cowardice. The question is not, do we still struggle? The question is, in which direction are you struggling? I've had people tell me for many years, I'm really struggling with that sin.

And what they mean by that is that they've decided to give themselves over to it and still complain about it. They're not fighting. They're not warring. They're sitting in it. Yeah, we still have a sin nature, but are we fighting against it?

When we see cowardice in our heart, do we remind ourselves of Jesus who had all the courage? When we see fear pop up in our heart, do we remind ourselves that Jesus had no fear as he walked towards the cross?

When we see ourselves being ugly and unloving, do we remind ourselves of the gospel that because he first loved us, now we can love others? Are we reminding ourselves of the truth of the gospel or are we sitting down in our sin?

Lazarus did not tuck his tail and run. He invited all of the powers at be to see him openly and to do whatever they wanted because he was going to be worshiping. He didn't go underground. He didn't run away.

He didn't hide. The same is true for us, right? I find it very fascinating that Lazarus' boldness outpaced the boldness of the Pharisees. It's a bold move when you say you're going to kill a man who was dead and now he's alive.

That's a bold move. He was dead once and Jesus rose him from the dead. Now I'm going to be the one that's going to really kill him. It's a bold move. Lazarus was bolder than that. He stood there and let them breathe those murderous threats over him while he worshiped.

My question to each and every single one of us is what place does running have when you know the king? What place does running have? What place does hiding have when you know the king? Shouldn't we outpace the boldness of this wicked generation that we live in as well?