33 ¶ When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the
Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was
troubled, 34 And said, Where have ye
laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!
37 And some of them said, Could not this
man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should
not have died? 38 Jesus therefore again
groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon
it. 39 Jesus said, Take ye away the
stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this
time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. 40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee,
that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? 41 Then they took away the stone from the place
where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank
thee that thou hast heard me. 42
And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which
stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. 43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a
loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. 44 And
he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his
face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let
him go.
Our sorrow over death, our fear of it, and the grief it
brings have always been a burden on the mind of man and woman. Some people have
come up with philosophies that deny a just and compassionate God, or a God at
all, could exist with such facts presented to us. A famous evolutionary
scientist and militant atheist, Richard Dawkins, understood what we see around
us but applied this false conclusion that the universe is an undirected thing
with no God present. He said;
The total amount of suffering per year in the
natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes
me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others
are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being
devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of
starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of
plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population
until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored….In a universe of blind
physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt,
other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in
it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties
we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no
good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. (16)
Another atheist scientist does not go so far in his
explanation but confirms an important fact of biology;
Humans on rare occasions may
survive to 120 years, some turtles to 200. But all animals eventually die. Many
single-cell organisms may die, as the
result of accident or starvation; in fact the vast majority do. But there is
nothing programmed into them that says they must
die. Death did not appear simultaneously with life. This is one of the most
important and profound statements in all of biology. At the very least it
deserves repetition: Death is not
inextricably intertwined with the definition of life. (17)
The Bible, however, tells us that death, not present in
God’s original creation, was caused by man’s sin, his disobedience;
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned:
For arrogant humans who object to being compared to the
beasts, with whom we have death in common;
Ecclesiastes 3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a
beast: for all is vanity. 20 All go unto
one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
The Bible tells us that
the whole creation is in agony with pain and trouble abounding;
Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now.
Before the Flood, the great physical disaster in human
history compared to Adam’s Fall, the great spiritual disaster, neither beast
nor man ate flesh by the evidence we have in the Bible.
Genesis 1:29 ¶ And God said, Behold, I have given you every
herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in
the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every
fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there
is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
It is difficult for us to understand how different that world
was. But, it was after it that beasts became afraid of man and man was given
the authority to eat them.
Genesis 9:1 ¶ And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said
unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 2 And the fear of you and the dread of you
shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon
all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your
hand are they delivered. 3 Every moving
thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given
you all things.
Christ is the only answer for our grief and suffering, for
our anticipation and fear of death. Let anyone who says they are not afraid to
die ask themselves what measures they take each day to ensure that they will
live. Do we not consider someone who wants to commit suicide as mentally ill
or, in some cases, possessed by a devil? We, as humans, like the beasts, wish
to avoid death as long as we can. Death is a specter that hangs over us all.
Christ is the only answer to the question of death.
Revelation 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
And here, in this passage, the Creator of the universe, in
the form of a human being, looks on the misery and grief caused by sin and
mourns with us, being one of us.
“Jesus wept.”
Have you ever wept for sin and its consequences in the
history of the earth? Have you ever wept for the sorrow of death, just in
general, not necessarily for a loss you’ve suffered but for the despair all
mankind and, indeed, all creation faces as a result of man’s sin?
Although I cannot be sure if this is exact or not one source
(http://www.ecology.com/birth-death-rates/)
reports that 55 million people die every year, over 105,000 per day, or two
people every second. This statistic does not take into account the untold
millions suffering from starvation and disease. Nor does it take into account
the million and hundreds of millions suffering mentally and emotionally,
grieving, distraught, anxious, and afraid. There are millions of children and
women who have been sexually and physically abused and elderly people with no
way to care for their own needs. Adam’s sin, which we have inherited, has a devastation
that is its consequence that is unimaginable.
In many of the houses you drive by on your way to work or
the store there are dramas in play that revolve around heartbreak, betrayal,
manipulation, exploitation, and disillusionment. Many of you suffer from things
you have done or things others have done to you, in your life. Many even suffer
from seemingly random acts, chance acts, that deprived you of someone you
dearly loved. And, in the end, there is, on top of all the pain and suffering,
a grave.
It is not a “glorious” death most of us face but a
whimpering, gasping, drug-clouded death in a hospital, nursing home, or at
home, perhaps alone with strangers who see death every day and many times
without a familiar face nearby to look for compassion and sorrow in at our
passing. I want to impress upon you, who in this age have been so removed from
death in a way our ancestors were not, the despair and the grief that Jesus
stood facing.
Some commentators have insisted that the following phrase,
spoken by Jesus in the popularly called, “Sermon on the Mount,” is about
mourning for the existence of sin and its consequences.
Matthew 5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be
comforted.
God sees the anguish and sorrow of heart that death, the
primary result of our sin, causes. He, too, wept. Have you? Thank God, Jesus
Christ has overcome death.
Hebrews 2:14 ¶ Forasmuch then as the children are partakers
of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that
through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the
devil; 15 And deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
When Lazarus’ name was called he arose to meet the Lord.
1Thessalonians
4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump
of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
But, like many of us adults who were saved in our prime of
life he needed help directed by the Lord to be unbound from the vestiges of his
former condition. Unlike the little 12 year old child who arose immediately and
was commanded to be fed by the Lord in Mark 5:42 or the son of the widow of
Nain in Luke 7 who was perhaps older and needed help even to get up to be
delivered to his mother Lazarus represents that middle age between childhood
and the older adult who believes.
God can save us, call us forth, to leave the tomb of our sin
and wickedness, but we are often still bound in our graveclothes and need help.
It is the duty of the body of Christ on earth to edify and instruct the
Christian newly delivered from the grave, not to bind them in different
graveclothes, keeping the living person bound nonetheless. The call to every
preacher and teacher, indeed, to every mature Christian is to take the new believer
and, as Jesus commanded, “Loose him, and let him go.”
(16) Richard Dawkins, River
out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995),
154-155.
(17) William R. Clark, Sex
and the Origins of Death (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 54.
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