If you would please turn with me in your Bibles to John 11, beginning at verse 17. John writes, ‘Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 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. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, who is coming into the world.’
From the Gospel of John, we turn to Ezekiel chapter 37. The prophet writes, ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones. And he led me around among them. And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘Oh Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones and say to them, ‘Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinew upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you give us your word, and you speak to us in so many ways. We thank you for the gift of life and of regenerate life as you restore our souls and our hearts through faith in you. Help us to cling to our hopes. Help us to not feel like and not be especially dried up as these bones were. But help us to know and recognize that we belong to your people, that we belong to that whole host, that we are raised to new life in you. Fill us with hope. Strengthen us in confidence by faith in you. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
So after receiving word, notifying him about Lazarus’s illness, Jesus waited two days before leaving to go to his friends in Bethany. The evangelist has explained that Jesus waited this extended period because of how he agapeed Martha, Lazarus, and Mary. But before he left from where he was, it’s interesting that Jesus already knew that Lazarus had died, informing his disciples that Lazarus has died and for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe.
Now, these two details need to be remembered and kept at the forefront of our minds as we continue to examine the story of Lazarus’s death and resurrection. It’s important for us to remember that Jesus delayed going to his friends because he loved them; a delay which ensured Lazarus’s death. And Jesus was glad for the fact of Lazarus’s death for the sake of his disciples and us, to benefit our faith. But lest we confuse ourselves or we begin to doubt the love of Christ, we need to remember that while Jesus could have saved Lazarus’s life and he could have saved Martha and Mary the heartache and grief of the situation, Jesus knew that the more compassionate and most loving thing he could do for the three siblings was to permit Lazarus to die.
Jesus knew that this tragedy would be worked to their good and to the good of countless generations of future believers through the exemplary miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Furthermore, although Jesus was glad for the fact of Lazarus’s death because he knew what the long-term effect would be, he surely was not glad that Lazarus died.
Now, when Jesus came to Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. And while that length of time since Lazarus’s death and burial is a significant point of evidence for the debate over where exactly Jesus came from, the greater purpose of its inclusion by the evangelist was to make it abundantly clear and certain for his audience that Lazarus was truly dead. The point will be further supported by the inclusion of Martha’s objection that, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.’
Four days is significant because it dispels all doubt on whether or not Lazarus was actually dead. It disproves potential suggestions of him just being resuscitated rather than resurrected. Next, Bethany was near to Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. Bethany’s close proximity to Jerusalem was why the disciples feared Jesus returning to Judea.
Bethany was near the center of Jewish leadership’s social and political influence and their religious control. The very same leadership had recently tried to stone Jesus to death for blasphemy. Yet the girls’ consolation by the Jews was not done as an attempt to trap Jesus, hoping that he might return for this sad occasion, but rather it indicates that these three siblings shared in the same theological convictions as the Pharisees and that Lazarus was probably even an adherent of the Pharisee sect like Nicodemus.
Christians, we easily forget that despite the common gospel description of Pharisees as having a great deal of social and political influence, most of them as individuals were just ordinary common citizens who kept a strong emphasis on their own personal holiness out of an earnest desire to honor and please God. Even the lowliest, socially ranked Pharisee was still respected and admired by their community for their religious dedication and devotion. So if this assumption about Lazarus is correct, then it really is not surprising that the prominent members of society would come and grieve and mourn with the sisters.
Plus, their attendance at Jesus’s next miracle would either be a faith-building proof or an opportunity to refute and rebuke Jesus as being eyewitnesses to this miraculous sign. Because of the virtue of their social standing, these people could credibly affirm or deny Lazarus’s resurrection. Yet when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.
These responses would be odd if Luke’s story about the sisters was what John was meaning for us to hold at the front of our minds because the division of their hospitality efforts here makes perfect sense once you understand their social and relational context. I mean, hearing that Jesus was on his way, Martha left to go meet him while he was en route to stop him from walking into a socially awkward situation, a mess that would be potentially dangerous. I mean the sisters had first called Jesus to come, and they would not want him to walk into a room full of enemies and be surprised.
Meanwhile, Martha is the one who went instead of Mary because Mary was the sister who was most well known to be attentive to Jesus. If she suddenly left the gathering of mourners, which was a social faux pas at best, then those Pharisees might have become suspicious about where she was going. But Martha, the perfect hostess, she would be more easily excused even in a time like this, blaming her absence on her responsibilities of hospitality. She’s the one who could more easily and reasonably and believably use an excuse like, ‘I need to go to the store,’ just to give herself the opportunity to intercept Jesus and divert him away from danger.
So we see here a small case of social intrigue. After leaving Mary to distract their other guests, Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, Lord, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’
See, this exchange supports that same interpretation that this Bethany family were either a part of the Pharisee sect or at least they shared the same view about the resurrection of the dead. Because the apostle Paul, he’s the one who identified the doctrine of the resurrection for us as being a key distinctive of the Pharisees. And similarly, Josephus included adherence to the idea of a resurrection of the just and judgment for the wicked in his descriptions of the Pharisees, writing that they say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men are moved into other bodies, while the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment. These doctrines he himself would personally have been familiar with because he was affiliated with them in his youth.
But as Paul noted, the resurrection was not a universally held idea among the Jews, because the Sadducees opposed it particularly. So while examining the Old Testament scriptures on their own without the mediation of the Gospels’ explanation about it, it is actually kind of hard to justify, support, or even understand where this doctrine of the resurrection is sourced from.
Meanwhile, the general resurrection is now an idea that we as Christians take completely for granted, despite it originally having been exceptionally controversial. When I was in seminary during class one evening, I asked my Old Testament professor this question: Where is the doctrine of the resurrection found in the Old Testament? But he was unable to give me a really satisfactory answer. Searching the scriptures for myself, I found that the idea of future judgment is most clearly expressed within the Psalms and Ecclesiastes. But a bodily resurrection did not appear to be promised as either reward or prerequisite. Nor does the Old Testament offer us much clarity about what is really expected after a person’s death, much less what happens after this judgment.
There’s nothing really obvious that suggests eternal life and a physical resurrection. Nevertheless, there is an ancient understanding that’s identifiable which does suggest a continuing individualistic and personal existence after death. It’s found in the prohibitions of the Torah against consorting with mediums, witches, and necromancers—persons who were supposed to commune with the spirits of the dead. There’s even the incident recorded in 1 Samuel when King Saul visited a witch who successfully summoned the spirit of Samuel, much to her surprise.
There are two narratives in Genesis that indicate a perceived lingering and at least personal importance that was attached to a person’s burial. Abraham’s purchase of a tomb for Sarah, along with the later burials of himself, Isaac, and Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah in that same family tomb. And then Joseph’s request to have his bones brought out of Egypt and returned to Canaan when the Israelites would finally leave, where Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.’
So, you see, the patriarchs believed that it was important to preserve their earthly remains, that there was some future purpose hoped for because otherwise they would not have expended the necessary expense or efforts if their burial site was just a simple memorial. Jesus explained and interpreted their hope when he said, ‘And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living.’
However, interpreting such a hopeful doctrine, divining a resurrection from the dead, whether of the righteous alone as the Pharisees believed or of everyone as Jesus taught in John 5:25-29, from these subjective inferences that are based on minor evidences is really improbable, except as an imagining of fantasy or of wishful thinking. But the prophet Ezekiel offers us strong scriptural evidence of a late prophetic promise for a bodily resurrection, which also explains why the Sadducees didn’t believe in it because they didn’t affirm the authority of the prophets as scripture, just Torah.
And so, the priest Ezekiel, he was taken by the spirit of the Lord and placed in a valley filled everywhere with dry bones during one of his visions. The Lord commanded him to prophesy several things until he was finally told, ‘Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves.
O my people, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.’ But while the vision itself was a holy spiritual event and its imagery obviously carried allegorical meaning, there are parts which should reasonably be accepted literally because every promise in scripture that the Lord makes to his people always carries literal fulfillment. God explained to Ezekiel, ‘Son of man, these bones, they are the whole house of Israel.’
Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up. Our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off.’ Showing the prophet how desperate and devoid of hope Israel truly was. And so when God said, ‘I will open your graves and raise you up from your graves, O my people,’ he meant that he would surely raise the righteous dead and bring them into an eternal promised land. Whereas despite God not mentioning a resurrection of the wicked alongside the righteous, that is not a refutation of the probability, but just a lack of revelation for such an expectation.
So when Martha responded to Jesus’s statement about Lazarus, saying, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,’ she affirmed her pharisaical hope in the resurrection of God’s people. She confidently asserted her own conviction that her brother was a righteous and just man, that he was a good person who deserved to have eternal life with God. She was affirming her trust in God’s promise given through Ezekiel for a resurrection unto eternal life for his chosen people. But she was also affirming her ignorance and spiritual error through her trust in the righteous effectiveness of Jewish works of religion and her confidence in the favored status of their Jewish ethnicity—two critical errors of the Pharisees that Paul often confronts in his letters.
Once we better recognize what it was that Martha believed about the resurrection and what she meant when she was responding to Jesus, we may also better understand the fuller meaning of Jesus’s fifth I am declaration when Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’
A key observation from Ezekiel’s Valley of Bones is the fact that although Ezekiel is commanded three times to prophesy while he slowly witnessed the analogical regeneration of God’s people, the observed restoration and resurrection was ordered and affected by the Lord God alone. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.’ Thus says the Lord God, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ And thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people,’ always with each of these for the singular purpose of, ‘and you shall know that I am the Lord.’
So when Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ he was applying himself to this prophecy. Through this declaration, he claimed the right and authority to command the breath of life to restore and raise his chosen people. He claimed to be the source of life as the Lord God who originally formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, such that the man became a living creature.
So like his grant of sight to the man born blind, Jesus’s claim to be the resurrection was a claim that went far beyond the ordinarily expected bounds of miraculous power and wonders because Jesus was claiming creative and generative power for himself—original powers that belong only to the non-created Creator God. By claiming to be the resurrection, Jesus claimed to be the Lord who commands the breath and the Lord who resurrects, who will open our graves and raise us from our graves.
An impossible prophetic claim, yet one which he will soon prove by the resurrection of Lazarus. But then Jesus offered Martha a strange and rather confusing if only accepted plainly explanation, saying that whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. If we take that plainly and literally, it sounds contradictory. If someone believes and dies, then they will still live. And if someone lives and believes, then they will never die.
But both expressions could not be objectively true if live and life, and die and die were not meant the same way and in the same sense. Unfortunately, the Greek grammar doesn’t help us very much in this case. So we have to rely entirely on the narrative context to help us understand.
Applying his statement to their immediate situation, we assume that Lazarus shared the same quality of belief in Jesus as Martha. Thus, since he had just so recently died, their expectation would be of a future resurrection. But if the first expression was true, then the second one could not be true or reconciled with the first because if Lazarus did have that same quality of belief in Jesus, same quality and quantity as Martha, then he should not have died.
Or if we consider that they did understand a continuing spiritual existence after a person’s physical death, then while the first expression would reaffirm that present expectation, the second one would still deny the quality of Lazarus’s faith since, because he died, he must not actually have believed in Jesus. You hear the problem?
But rather, the solution is to not consider them as two separate expressions but as one single unified and continuous whole. Jesus’s explanation was not conditional; it was straightforward and absolute. Jesus was saying, ‘Whoever believes in me,’ meaning whoever has been given the faith to believe in Jesus, ‘Whoever has been born again, anithan, who’s born of the spirit and regenerated,’ saying that though he die, yet shall he live, through—though their physical body, though our bodies will die, they will be caused to live again.
The unifying conjunction helps the second expression to build upon the first rather than separate them. Everyone who lives and believes in me, meaning that everyone who is caused to live again and who has faith in Jesus. Here’s the conditional clause which implies the presence of its opposite, that there will also be some who are raised to life that will not have faith in Jesus. That everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die, echoing Jesus’s earlier declaration about the authority of the Son of Man when he said, ‘Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment,” promising a resurrection to eternal life for the righteous and a resurrection followed by a judgment and the punishment of death for the wicked.
A punishment which John will later and elsewhere describe as the second death; an eternal existence in the lake which burns with fire and sulfur, which he calls the second death. But finally, Jesus asked Martha the most important question—not because he needed to know the answer but because he wanted her to know that she knew the answer. He asked her, ‘Do you believe this?’
And Martha confidently answered Jesus, ‘Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’ Martha gave him the answer which I hope and expect that we would all be willing and able to truthfully give. She gave Jesus an answer that cannot be given through words alone, but which must be completed through the consequential response to the truth that is expressed. Not only may we believe in who Jesus is—because even the devil believes that much—we must also live our lives responding to that truth and how that truth affects our lives.
If we earnestly believe that Jesus is the Christ, that he is God the Son, the Son of God, the Logos, who is Theos and Andros, then we will live according to and because of that truth. We will become obedient to his word and his commandments, loving what he loves and hating the sin that he hates.
We will proclaim the truth about who Jesus is and what he has done to all the world around us. We will live as disciples of Christ by making disciples of him, teaching them to do all that he has commanded us. And we will each live our lives trusting in Jesus’s promise that whoever believes in him, though they die, yet shall they live. And everyone who lives and believes in him shall never die because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
Now, as Christians, we have our hopes set on so many divine promises from God—more than we regularly pause to remember or consider, and some whose benefit we do begin to feel during this present life. We have the promise of adoption as the children of God. We have the promise of being justified as righteous before the holy God, clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We have the promise of sanctification, of our being made holy and perfect as we are washed and cleansed by the blood of Jesus by his death and resurrection.
While the present benefits we experience from these things are the assurance of God’s love, we enjoy peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, and an increase of grace and perseverance thereinto the end.
But we also have hope in the promise of a future bodily resurrection, believing that just as Christ was raised, so too we will be raised. And then, beyond our hope of resurrection, we have the hope of eternal life lived within Christ’s kingdom upon the new earth. And although we must continue to wait upon the Lord’s timing—his perfect kairós—before we receive the fullness of that benefit, having this hope remains beneficial, extremely beneficial for us right now.
This hope is a source of comfort and encouragement during our times of tragedy and sorrow. Sadly, as we each continue on in life, we find ourselves needing to rest upon this hope more and more often. Our older family members pass away and die. Our friends or other relations may become severely ill and die. Accidents that are beyond our control occur, causing other tragedies or reasons for us to be sorrowful.
Yet it is during such times of tragedy, misfortune, and sorrow that we Christian believers have a distinct advantage over the worldly and the godless people that surround us. Because while we mourn and grieve, we mourn in hope. It is in such times of tragedy—when Christians encounter untimely or tragic deaths, such as with the recent murders of Charlie Kirk and Irina Zaretka—it is in times like these that we are able to comfort ourselves and one another by remembering that our hope is in the resurrection promised by Jesus Christ of a future unending eternal life and not in this present world.
While we did not know either of those people personally, it is a matter of public record that Charlie Kirk at least was a professing Christian. We know that he proclaimed his hope for salvation and for life in Jesus Christ—a hope that he has now realized and begun to benefit from.
So, because we know that the end of this life is not our final end, because we believe that Christ has already raised us to life spiritually and will also raise us up physically one day, we may both mourn the tragedy of their death and celebrate because of a shared hope for life. Charlie Kirk hoped that one day he would be raised by Christ, hoping that he would hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
That same hope is shared by every believing Christian. We all share in our hope that we shall be raised. We share in the hope that we will be raised alongside our Christ-believing loved ones and that we will share in joy at our reunion with them—a joy which will only be overshadowed by the joy we feel when we finally see Jesus’s face as he welcomes us into his embrace.
Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Everyone who trusts in him will live. And all who live and trust in him shall never taste the final death that we deserve for our sins. So repent, turn away from your sin, trust in Jesus, love Jesus, and obey Jesus. Rest secure in the hope of his promises and believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and he is returning soon. Amen.