Verse 28, And when she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary her sister, saying, “The Teacher has come and is calling for you.”  I love this!  Martha, as it says back in verse 20, “met Jesus.”  And then we see her relationship with Jesus go to an amazing level.  “Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me will live now and forever.  Do you believe this?”  “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, come into the world!”  A whole new level!

 

That changes everything!  The scriptures say that when the Messiah comes He will bring with Him comfort, an end to warfare, forgiveness of sins, just rule, sure rewards, mercy, peace, love…these all from Isaiah Chapter 40…the Jews would be so anxious for their Messiah…Psalm 23 tells us of the Messiah that when He comes He will restore, He will lead, He will protect, He will comfort and He will cover His people with satisfaction, goodness and mercy as He leads them straight into the Father’s house…forever!

 

Here Martha, so bent on toil…so naturally predisposed to worry and burden…is face to face with the only one that is able to carry hers…and she is illuminated!  Enlightened!  She is set absolutely free from herself…how do we know that?  Because John says here in verse 29 that “she went her way.”  Her old way was to work…to toil…to be busy about the things of her day, her house, her world…but what is her way now?  To call others to the Savior!  To water the thirsty souls of others with the overfilling she has now within her!  So awesome! 

 

And so she finds her sister, and the Bible says that she secretly…”lathra” in the Greek meaning yes secretly but also privately, personally…her heart full of truth takes her straight to whom she so desperately cares for…and her love, her devotion to Mary as her sister, grows wings!  Mary, be free!  Be alive!  The Teacher, “didaskalos” in the Greek, better translated “The Master”…another interesting translation of this word, “The Doctor”…Mary, I’m healed, I’m changed, I’m freed…I have found the cure…and now He calls for you!

 

What’s interesting here is that we have no indication from John that Jesus had asked for Mary, but what we do know is that Martha has experienced an understanding, a confession of truth, a revelation of divine proportion…that the Messiah has come…the Doctor is in as it were and all men, all women are sick…they are all sick with sin.  And so Martha, healed of her worry, freed of her frustration…goes to Mary, “Mary, God’s will is for all to be as I now am.  He calls for you.”  SO cool!  Such a great picture of being set free!

 

Verse 29, As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to Him.  Now that word “that” has been added for context by the translators and it does not appear in the Greek manuscript.  And so what John literally penned here is “as soon as she heard, she jumped up and hurried to Him.”  Another way you could correctly translate that is, “As soon as she perceived the sense of what was said,” and I like that because that gives us clue that Martha’s convo with Mary was a bit more than, “He calls.”  No doubt Martha was glowing and no doubt Martha told Mary all that she now knew.  And so we see Mary jump up get her jog on as she now goes to Jesus!

 

Martha must have been busting at the seams!  Have you ever pointed someone to Jesus and then watched them hurry to Him?  There is nothing better.  To see someone alone, down, sorrowful and sick with the many sins of their fallen lives…get up and get to the Healer…there is no greater joy Paul wrote then to know that my beloved friends and children are walking in the truth…and there really isn’t. 

 

Why?  We are predisposed, we are naturally wired with a need to help others…even from the Garden…Eve took the apple and saw that it was pleasant to the eyes and good to eat and she gave to her husband.  Adam saw his wife fallen and his heart broke and he took and ate of the apple so that she would not be alone…you see, wired to have a heart for each other…but so often what we or what the world defines as “help”…doesn’t help at all…that apple meal cost us our fellowship relationship with God…and it cost God His everything…His Son.

 

You want to help people? I know you do…send them to the Savior of their souls!  Send them to the only Person who is able not only to fix their financial problem but to free them from the reason that they are in financial trouble in the first place.  Send them to Jesus!  And here we see exactly how you yourself are prepared for God’s work…just as Martha was. 

 

You yourself go out to meet Him.  You yourself draw close to Him…be being filled (the Bible says) with the Holy Spirit and then you will become the light into the darkness of your friends life…you will become the salt into your bland and decaying marriage…but hear this…help outside of sending someone to Jesus…is not healing.  Jesus is the only way, the only truth and the only life.  Jesus is the door to the kingdom.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  Jesus is the bread of life come down from heaven…send them to Him!  And that is exactly what Martha has done.  She is awesome!

 

Verse 30, Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met Him.  Then the Jews who were with her in the house, and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out, followed her, saying, “She is going to the tomb to weep there.”

 

Now this is interesting because these people, these Jews that were there in Mary’s house, they were there for the sole purpose of comforting Mary and Martha.  Arthur Pink once wrote, “One secret of being miserable is to live for ourselves, and one secret of happiness is to try for the delight of others.”  Paul in Galatians 6:2 wrote that to bear one another’s burdens is to fulfill the law of Christ.  Even Jesus said “whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.”  And what we’ll see in a moment is that they indeed were greatly rewarded.  They are about to see a miracle.  They are about to encounter truth, and grace and life in the person of Jesus Christ! 

 

And I wonder if you often find yourself miserable…yet sincerely desiring to see Jesus, craving the miraculous…wanting to even grow in faith and fervency of your walk…but, in a way, miserable.  Well then my question…are you fulfilling the law of Christ?  Are you stepping out in faith to tell someone of the salvation to be truly found in only the gospel of Jesus…are you (as Paul wrote in Philippians 2:4) “looking out for the interests of others?”  Or are you not?  Is it your life, your problems, your agenda that wins out time and time again each day, directing your actions and dictating your thoughts?  And yet in misery you cry out, “Lord where is MY reward?  Where is MY help?  Where is MY miracle?”

 

It is to be found in serving, child!  It is to be found in drawing near to Jesus not just in word and in tongue but in deed and in truth.  “Well I did that on Tuesday!  Why am I miserable today?”  Because you have picked the flower of life and yet have not planted it’s very seed in the soil of your heart!  Picked flowers, however beautiful and fragrant for a time, whither and die and become not the fragrance of life but rather the stench of death!

 

Well I ate a big, nutritious breakfast on Tuesday morning…WHY oh WHY and I hungry today?  You see how ridiculous that sounds?  God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (it says in Hebrews 11:6), not those that seek Him when it is convenient, or seek Him when everything feels right!  You want to experience the rewards of God?  The miracles of heaven in your life?  Be diligent about your relationship with Him!  Be a person of integrity, consistency and constant repentance and rebuke!  Welcome those things!  Call upon the power of the Holy Spirit to enable you…He will!  And give yourself for the service and delight of God and His children!  You’ll see the miracles!  You’ll encounter truth and grace and love and life and GROWTH!  Just like these Jews even.  Because you know what, even if one does not follow God, His ways and His promises are still true!

 

The Bible is so practical!  That is why so many self help commentaries and corporate success conferences are based many times on biblical truth!  Serve others, servant leadership, transparency, honesty, integrity…God’s word is true, always.

 

And so these Jews, here they go…after Mary to comfort her, to bear her load and weep with her…and they are about to be amazed.

 

Verse 32, Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet (Mary, man she always got it right.  Every time we see her…at His feet)  saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”  (word-for-word exactly what Martha had said…we become who we hang around don’t we?)

 

Now this is going to strike Jesus right at His heart of hearts and we are going to see Him get very distraught…overcome with sadness…why?  Because what Mary just said has eternal implications.  Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and all of the sudden they begin to get teary eyed?  And you’re like, “what did I say?”  And they say, “my father used to sing that to me, or my mother used to say that to me, or what you said just made me think of so and so, made me remember…” and there they are, emotional…and yet there’s something sweet, something real about that. 

 

Well that is what this statement does to Jesus.  “Lord, if You come, he will live.”  And surely, Jesus knew that His very purpose for even being standing there with her that day, that moment wrapped in flesh, humbled to the form of His own creation, was for the very purpose of giving us life.  So that we would not die but have everlasting life! 

 

Verse 33, Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.  And He said, “Where have you laid him?”  They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”

 

Come and see Lord what sin is doing to your children.  Death was not introduced by God…understand…it was given to mankind from Satan himself.  God gave us His whole creation.  He gave us love, He gave us life, He gave us capacity and worth…and He gave us free will.  And with that free will we accepted Satan’s offer…I’ll trade you the knowledge of good and evil…I’ll open your eyes up to evil…but it will cost you…and no doubt even as Adam closed his eyes for the last time and ceased living and that same breath that God breathed into him escaped his lungs…no doubt God was grieved.  Death, corruption, decay…never God’s will for man but here Jesus, God Himself, to show forth the grace and love and glory of God…Jesus…walks to the tomb of mankind…and notice…weeping.

 

Verse 35, Jesus wept.  Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”  And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”  Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb.  It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.  Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”  Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.”  (Notice, she doesn’t make a demand of Jesus, just an FYI.  She simply raises her concern to Him.  And watch as Jesus comforts and calms her concern.)

 

Verse 40, Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”  Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.  And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.  And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

 

Jesus, ALWAYS giving glory to the Father…consistently.  Flip over to John Chapter 5 and look with me at verses 19 – 21.  And so He, being equal with the Father, gives glory and honor to the Father and in that, He Himself is glorified.

 

And get this scene.  Here He is.  The resurrection and the life, standing in front of the open grave…the stone being rolled away.  You must have been able to hear a pin drop.  How odd this must have looked.  Here we have a crowd of people, an open tomb, a dead guy in there…and here is Jesus > facing death head on. One last public display.  One last outreach to the Jews…and so Jesus lifts up His voice and says “Again, I do nothing of Myself but as the Father has sent Me, and I am the Christ…I’ll prove it.”

 

Verse 43, Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”  (Its been said that it is a good thing that He called Lazarus by name or all of the graves on the earth would have given up their dead…which by the way will happen one day…Revelation Chapter 4 Verses 1- 2)

 

Verse 44, And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes and his face was wrapped with a cloth.  Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”

 

You know as I read through this it occurs to me that this is exactly how it went down in my life.  Locked down dead in my grave, lost in my sin, living for me and in that not living at all…and Jesus comes.  I love Him because He first loved me…He came to me…and He called “come forth”…”come away from all of this death”…”come and live.”  And as I emerged from the tomb, for a great while I was still wrapped in the markings of death…grave clothes…habits and cravings of my flesh…desires and tendencies to that would remind me of the tomb from which I came…

 

But as I’ve walked with Jesus…followed Him with urgency and desperation..clinging to His word for truth and believing Him at His word, obeying Him…you know what I’ve found…grave clothes falling off…cloths that speak of death…peeling off of my eyes and I find that I am loosed!  It is the perfect law of liberty, the law of Christ.  If you will…if you choose…if you resolve to hear Him and to obey…Lazarus obeyed!  Then you WILL BE LOOSED and if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed!

 

And because of what He does here, He really seals the deal.  Finish up as we read Verses 45 – 57 together which is quite narrative about how now they Jews had to kill Him…no further delay, the threat He posed to them…was too radical.