The raising of Lazarus.
This event, a third good work, hastened the final crisis.
I. THE BETHANY FAMILY. "Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha."
1. Their home. It was a small village on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, two miles from Jerusalem. It is familiar to us in the earlier Gospels as the place to which our Lord resorted from time to time for happy retirement. It remains the sweetest spot in the memory of the Christian Church.
2. The members of the home.
(a) It is a suggestive circumstance that the parable of Dives and Lazarus was spoken about the time of the Bethany miracle. Yet there is no ground for believing that this Lazarus was the beggar of the parable.
(b) He was stricken with a mortal disease, perhaps the fever so common in the country. Though specially dear to our Lord, as well as his sisters, he enjoyed no exemption from the ordinary afflictions of life.
(a) The incident here recorded was "to be told for a memorial of her wheresoever this gospel had been preached" (Matthew 26:13). The other evangelists do not give her name. Her act marked at once her true faith and her abiding affection.
(b) Mary was distinguished from her sister by her contemplative religious spirit. She sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to his words, while Martha was busied with practical duties (Luke 10:40).
(a) She had evidently the chief care of-the house.
(b) She was of a practical turn, full of resource, and less given to emotion than Mary.
II. THEIR MESSAGE TO JESUS. "Lord, he whom thou loves is sick."
1. It was a message full of delicacy; for it did not urge him to come. The sisters knew that, even from Peraea, it was possible for Jesus to put forth his power of healing; while they could not but know of the perils of an immediate return to Judaea.
2. It emphasized the tender affection with which Jesus regarded Lazarus, and which made it right that he should be informed at once of his friend's danger.
III. OUR LORD'S REMARK UPON THE MESSAGE OF SORROW. "This sickness is not unto death, but it is for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."
1. Our Lord did not signify that Lazarus would not die, but that death would not be the ultimate result of this sickness.
2. The sickness had a double aspect.
(a) Our Lord reiterates the oneness of the work of the Father and the Son.
(b) The raising of Lazarus would bring to a head that hostility of the Jews which would involve his death, and, through death, his glorification.
IV. THE MYSTERIOUS DELAY OF JESUS IN PERAEA. "When then he had heard that he was sick, he remained yet two days in the place where he was."
1. This delay, in so urgent a crisis, is all the more mysterious, because "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." Yet Lazarus had already died when the messenger arrived from Bethany. Our Lord's instant departure could not, therefore, have averted death.
2. His delay might be caused
3. His departure for Judaea was the proof at once of his affection, his courage, and his knowledge. "Then after that he saith to his disciples, Let us go again into Judaea." The word recalls at once the region of hostility and unbelief from which he had just escaped.
V. THE REMONSTRANCE OF THE DISCIPLES AT HIS RESOLUTION. "Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?"
1. They think of the danger to him, and are not regardless of the danger to themselves. (John 11:16.)
2. Men often allow their fears to stand in the way of duty.
VI. OUR LORD'S ANSWER TO THEIR REMONSTRANCE.
1. Every man has his twelve working hours of life. "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" The work must be
They were believers already.
4. The loving resolve of Thomas. "Then said Thomas, who is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him."