John 11.21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
John 11.32 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.”
John 11.37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”
It is amazing to me how sovereign Jesus is. I mean sovereign as in unaffected by outside forces. At the same time, he is weeping and sobbing over Lazarus. Three times here His identity and ability is insulted, but he never rebukes, speaks defensively, gets his feelings hurt, nothing.
Usually when I try to toughen up and not be affected by others, I just get mean. That makes me appreciate Jesus all the more. He rests in His Father’s power and love, and knows who He is and what He can do. He is so obeying the Father that He doesn’t even stick up for Himself or try to justify Himself before them.
My question is this… okay he didn’t get mad, but with all the unbelief that’s going on in this situation. It would seem to me that he would be frustrated by what he saw around him. Granted, his eyes were on the father and the father told him what to say. But his human nature. Must’ve been crying out you people of unbelief.
How do we deal with situations. When were wanting to stand in faith, and all those around us stand in unbelief?
Jesus knew what really convinced people. He could have said till He was blue in the face that He could forgive sins and they all would have been mad at Him or not believed Him. Instead He told a paralyzed man to get up and walk and said, “You thought that was impossible for me, but it was as easy to forgive his sins as it was to tell him to get up and walk.”
I find a lot of times, people are not convinced by my words or my emotions (ok, NEVER convinced by my emotions) but by an act of God. Jesus knew that anger wouldn’t bring about anything in them. Lazarus’ resurrection would only bring about belief in SOME of them.
God’s reaction to original sin was to come seeking us asking, “Adam, where are you?” The whole Bible is the story of God continually reaching out to us, running to meet the prodigals, and in Jesus, stretching out His loving arms to die as one of us, for us, and all to the glory of the Father. He already knew their unbelief, the culture of dramatic shared grief, the true pain of loss deep in his friend’s hearts, and it gives a clear statement of the response of God. He wept. I do not believe it was just for Lazarus, or those present, but for us as well. As true Man, he was fully there and reacting to the immediate situation, but as fully God he would also have been able to see all of us, our pain, doubt, falsehoods, (and pride as well when we think we are so very different from our brothers and sisters), and He wept. We should look around and weep as well many times, but then we should dance along with the very angels of heaven when a soul responds to that love and walks from the grave into the light.
This hits home because it has been a very difficult, too close to impossible, month and today as I read it — I feel more like Lazarus than any other character in the story. Oh to clearly hear the voice of Love even with dead ears, get up and walk into the presence of the loving eyes that have been seeking us since time began. peace