Lazarus

Lazarus

Most of us know the story of Lazarus, how he dies and Jesus raises him from the dead.  I saw something in the account this morning I hadn’t seen before and wanted to share it.

John 11:4   Mary had sent word that Lazarus was very sick, but instead of running to help, Jesus said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it is for the glory of God. I, the Son of God, will receive glory from this.”

Jesus delayed, and let Lazarus, friends and family go through a painful and agonizing sickness resulting in his death… that couldn’t have been much fun!  One could say that was mean and insensitive on Jesus’s part. The Twitter mob would certainly cancel out Jesus for doing such a thing, even after the reason for waiting was given. “How arrogant!”

But let that sink in. Jesus, the Son of God and our savior, let someone He loved “so much” go through the natural progression of sickness and death when He certainly could have prevented it — for . . . to glorify Himself, the Son of God.

God has and always will have a very different perspective on sickness and death. Like it or understand it or not, He uses both for His good pleasure for the end result, to ultimately glory Himself.   That’s a hard one to swallow because it causes us pain and sorrow. But isn’t that the world we live in?  The only way to escape it is through death.

Sin is the culprit. Until Jesus deals with all sin and this age passes, we can’t escape the affects of sin while living on planet earth. But we can believe in the Lord Jesus and what the Word says about salvation and escaping the penalty of sin.

And as Christians, we can start seeing and believing Jesus loves us as much as He did Lazarus. But that doesn’t mean we may not go through tough times as Lazarus did. We have to look to and trust Jesus for everything this side of heaven.

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