Muchacho Polaco

Augustine: Tractates on the Gospel of John 49

We have, however, read in the Gospel of three dead persons who were raised to life by the Lord, and, let us hope, to some good purpose. For surely the Lord’s deeds are not merely deeds, but signs. And if they are signs, besides their wonderful character, they have some real significance: and to find out this in regard to such deeds is a somewhat harder task than to read or hear of them.

But he who has become habituated to sin, is buried, and has it properly said of him, he stinks; for his character, like some horrible smell, begins to be of the worst repute. Such are all who are habituated to crime, abandoned in morals.

But what was the message sent by his sisters? Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick. They did not say, Come; for the intimation was all that was needed for one who loved. They did not venture to say, Come and heal him: they ventured not to say, Command there, and it shall be done here. And why not so with them, if on these very grounds the centurion’s faith was commended? For he said, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. Matthew viii No such words said these women, but only, Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick. It is enough that You know; for You are not one that loves and forsakes.

* The sisters inevitably knew it would have been dangerous for Jesus to return to Judea because the Jews wished to arrest him. They also knew his history of healing the ill remotely. Perhaps they initially thought Jesus could do the same for Lazarus.

Then many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. All of the Jews who had come to Mary did not believe, but many of them did. But some of them, whether of the Jews who had come, or of those who had believed, went away to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done: whether in the way of conveying intelligence, in order that they also might believe, or rather in the spirit of treachery, to arouse their anger. But whoever were the parties, and whatever their motive, intelligence of these events was carried to the Pharisees.

Calvin’s Commentaries are spectacular. I have the set. They are best read in conjunction with studying the biblical text, as opposed to being read independently.

John Calvin: Commentary on John, Chapter 11

There were others whom Christ had raised from the dead, but he now displays his power on a rotting corpse.

We ought also to observe that, from Christ’s love, they are led to entertain a confident hope of obtaining assistance, he whom thou lovest; and this is the invariable rule of praying aright; for, where the love of God is, there deliverance is certain and at hand, because God cannot forsake him whom he loveth.

Let believers then implore the assistance of God, but let them also learn to suspend their desires, if he does not stretch out his hand for their assistance as soon as they may think that necessity requires; for, whatever may be his delay, he never sleeps, and never forgets his people.

For they who, through a dread of the cross, shrink from the performance of their duty, eagerly seek excuses to conceal their indolence, that they may not be thought to rob God of the obedience due to him, when they have no good cause to do so.

We are taught by these words, that whenever a man allows himself to be guided by his own suggestions, without the calling of God, his whole life is nothing else than a course of wandering and mistake; and that they who think themselves exceedingly wise, when they do not inquire at the mouth of God, and have not his Spirit to govern their actions, are blind men groping in the dark; that the only proper way is, to be fully assured of our divine calling, and to have always God before our eyes as our guide.

It is a proof of amazing ignorance, that they believe that Christ spoke about sleep; for, though it is a metaphorical form of expression, still it is so frequent and common in Scripture, that it ought to have been familiarly known to all the Jews.

But I go to awake him. Christ asserts his own power, when he says that he will come to awake Lazarus; for, though, as we have said, the word sleep does not express the facility of the resurrection, yet Christ shows that he is Lord of death, when he says, that he awakes those whom he restores to life.

Hitherto the disciples had endeavored to hinder Christ from going. Thomas is now prepared to follow, but it is without confidence; or, at least, he does not fortify himself by the promise of Christ, so as to follow hint with cheerfulness and composure.

For when she assures herself that her brother would not have died, if Christ had been present, what ground has she for this confidence? Certainly, it did not arise from any promise of Christ.

The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who hear shall live
(John 5:25.)

28.And called Mary, her sister. It was probably at the request of Martha, that Christ remained on the outside of the village, that he might not enter into so great an assembly of people; for she dreaded the danger, because Christ had but lately escaped with difficulty from instant death. Accordingly, that the rumor about his arrival might not spread farther, she makes it known privately to her sister.

But Martha, now satisfied with Christ’s second declaration, permits the stone to be removed. As yet she sees nothing, but, hearing the Son of God, not without a good reason, give this order, she willingly relies on his authority alone.

43.He cried with a loud voice. By not touching with the hand, but only crying with the voice, his Divine power is more fully demonstrated. At the same time, he holds out to our view the secret and astonishing efficacy of his word.

* this reminds me of the creation account: life through the spoken word

The resurrection of Lazarus ought undoubtedly to have softened even hearts of stone; but there is no work of God which impiety will not infect and corrupt by the bitterness of its poison.

Who was the high priest of that year. He does not call him the high priest of that year, as if he meant that the office was annual, and lasted only for a year; but because it had become a gift that could be purchased with money, and was conveyed to various persons contrary to the injunction of the Law. God did not intend that this dignity should be terminated but by the death of him who held it; (330) but, in consequence of trouble and confusion in public affairs, the Romans frequently changed the priests according to their fancy.

Sinclair Ferguson: Jesus, The Resurrection, John 11 (32:46)

The sisters and Lazarus seem to be from a family of economic and social significance. That is alluded to when Lazarus dies and a number of Jews from Jerusalem come to be with the family. Further, as mentioned in chapter 11, Mary pours a volume of ointment on the feet of Jesus equivalent to an annual salary. Not likely something a family of lowly means would have laying around the house.

DA Carson: A Miracle Full of Surprises, John 11 (1:18:40)

Jesus shows his love by delay. Two days later and Lazarus is dead. Now it’s time to go.

What’s the point in waiting two more days?

You can’t actually be dead in this country (the US) unless some doctor has said so. In other words, you need some medical advice to be declared dead. We have open caskets. For many places in the world, this is bizarre. This most certainly wasn’t the case in the first century. In the first century they tried to bury you within one day because decay progresses quickly. Sometimes they weren’t dead. As a result, the Jews had a certain way of talking about these sort of things. They claimed the soul hovers over the body for the first three days, intending to re-enter it, but as soon as it sees its appearance change, then it departs. Then death is judged is irreversible. This was the way of the first century. This is certainly not something Jesus believed, but it was the popular culture’s explanation these occurrences when people appeared to come back to life (who were in fact, never really dead).

So suppose Jesus got there within two days of his death. What would people have said? They would have said it had only been two days. His spirit hadn’t left yet. Interesting, but certainly not unique. By delaying two days, when he got there Lazarus was long dead.

This was different than Jesus’ encounter with the widow of Nain. Jesus raised her son as he was on his way to the grave. Similarly, Jairus’ daughter had not yet been put in the grave. Lazarus had been rotting in the grave four days.

* interestingly, Carson is the only expositor I’ve encountered to date (having listened to roughly 10-15 sermons on John 11 and an equal number of commentaries) that mentions the other resurrection accounts. Many simply dismiss the others or erroneously claim this is the only resurrection account. None mention the resurrections of Elijah or Elisha.

Jesus waited two days. Lazarus dies two days later. Presumably then it took Jesus two days to make the trip. However, even had Jesus left immediately when the messagers had arrived, Lazarus would have still been dead when he arrived at Bethany.

I could imagine what was going through their head. Are you so busy you can’t come back to the one you love? Jesus demonstrates his love…by delay.

Little children are like that. They live in the present. They struggle with delays. Often Christians are like that. They want God to work now, not later. Sometimes God, out of love,  treats us to a good dose of delay. Sometimes God has something more spectacular to show us. Part of walking by faith is persevering with God in self conscious choice that he really does know what best, even in our narrow focus it doesn’t feel like it.

Jesus controls grief by diverting attention to himself. Jesus takes attention away from the problem and puts the focus on himself.

Verse 21 (Lord if you had been here) should probably not been read in a nasty way. It is probably an anguished cry. Then she realizes what she says and that it sounds like blame. So she says, as a generality, that God can do anything.

Jesus makes two claims. I am the resurrection. I am the life. It is a strange expression. Without me, there is no resurrection and no life. Jesus has diverted the tragedy to himself. There is a pastoral lesson here.  If you’re going to talk about death, then you need to talk about Jesus.

All of our English translations say, “he was deeply moved and troubled” and all the German versions read, “he was outraged and troubled” and that is what the Greek verb here means. He was extremely angry and troubled.

And Jesus wept. What on earth is going on here. Why is he weeping? Jesus knows Lazarus is coming out in about three minutes. The only thing that seems to make sense is that is he is outraged and troubled for the same reason. He knows what he’s going to do. But he understands like no one else does, the sin, the curse, the brokenness, the decay, the death. It’s not the way it is supposed to be. There’s a sense in which we should all be outraged at death for this reason. We weren’t created to die. Death is the last enemy. But thank God it doesn’t have the last word.

The responses of the crowd are both good and bad simultaneously. See how he loved them. They base this on his tears, but his tears don’t prove that he loves Lazarus. He knows he’s going to raise him from the dead in about three minutes. Others say could he not have prevented this man from dying? That is to say, Jesus really isn’t that great. When you need him he’s not there. Yet the delay was for their benefit.

Jesus comes to the tomb. Take away the stone. Martha objects due to the odor.

Have you ever thought about the conversations Lazarus had with Mary and Martha later? We don’t know. Did he keep quiet or is John just being discreet? The only thing we can infer is that God didn’t want us to know. The focus is intended to be on Christ.

Jesus comes up against moral and spiritual death by dying himself. Jesus becomes the resurrection and the life by dying.

RC Sproul: Expediency and Extravagance, John 11.45-12.8 (31:04)

Sproul here deals with the after events of Lazarus’ resurrection. John 11.2 makes an interesting reference (to the future) when it identifies Mary with something she does in chapter 12.

It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.

Mary’s response to Jesus’ love was in kind. She pours a costly ointment on his feet and washes them with her hair. The cost of the ointment was roughly a year’s worth of wages. In any economic bracket, that’s an enormous sum of money. It was a reflection of her gratitude and love for Jesus in response to his love for her.

RC Sproul: The Raising of Lazarus (31:36)

Mary says the same thing as Martha, “Lord if you had been here”. This could have been an accusation or a confession. But if an accusation, she is not rebuked (nor was Martha).

We want God to do want we want NOW, not later. Christ is never too late. Not for Mary, not for Martha, not for Lazarus, and not for you.

Jesus is troubled. It’s a poor translation. It should be translated Jesus was irrate. Some commentators conclude that Jesus is fed up with the lack of faith on the part of the people and with the sisters. Didn’t he just tell Martha he was the resurrection? So why is she crying? What do I have to do convince you people?

I think that which would cause the anger of the Son of God to boil up and overflow in his spirit was that he was in the presence of the ravaging destruction of the greatest enemy to mankind: death. This was his enemy. This was the enemy that only in a few days forward he was going to confront head on in the throws he would experience on the cross. Dying that death to conquer death. Jesus entered into the affliction of his people so deeply that he was moved in himself at the travesty of death.

Believing in God is easy, it’s believing God that is the test of the Christian life.

And here we see a friend of Jesus forgetting in an instance the promise of Christ and he has to remind her. Didn’t I say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God.

RC Sproul: The Death of Lazarus, John 11.1-27 (28:04)

We glorify God when we praise him, honor him, and all of that, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about here. He’s talking about the revelation of the majesty of God the father. The weightiness of his glory is made manifest to the world when the world sees the glory of his son. In the glorification of Christ comes the glorification of the Father.

Jesus would go (to Judea) at the cost of his own life to give Lazarus life.

If you had been here, my brother would not have died. how do we interpret this? Is she complaining, is she rebuking him, or is it a confession of faith? this is one of those times where we don’t have the tones, the inflections of the voices, it may have been a triumphant statement of confidence in Christ.

Or it could have been an accusation. Some friend you are. Why do you think we sent a message to you? Because I know if you would have been here this wouldn’t have happened.

Your brother will rise again. Martha doesn’t get it. She says I know that he’ll rise again in the resurrection of the last day. Now remember that the Pharisees believed in a resurrection at the end of history, though the Sadducees did not. Martha believed in the future resurrection of the people of God.

That wasn’t what Jesus was speaking about. He didn’t say the last day. I am the resurrection and the life. In ME there is power over death. I hold the keys of life and death. I am the foundation, the power, of life itself. And I have the power to raise dead people from the grave. I am the resurrection. I don’t just teach about the resurrection. I am the very power of it. So if the one who is the resurrection and who is the life shows up at a funeral nobody has to wait for the last day. because the one who is resurrection and life has arrived.

If you believe and me, and die, then you’ll live. Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this he says. Do you believe this?

The biological death doesn’t disturb in the slightest the continuity of personal existence. This is what Jesus is saying.

Once a person believes in Christ, the life of Christ is poured into the soul of that person. That life is eternal. Everyone in Christ has already begun their eternal life. We’re never going to die. We may go through the transition, but not the death that can destroy the life that Christ has given to us.

She said to him, yes Lord I believe that. And I believe that you are the Christ, you are the Son of God, who is to come into the world. Martha makes a confession of faith. There is no greater confession of faith in Scripture.

Listening to some more sermons today.

RC Sproul: The Son of God, John 10.22-42 (27:57)

Probably the best series on the book of John that I’ve listened to thus far is Sproul’s. I’ve listened to his 3 sermons on John 11 twice now. They’re all very good.

The end of John 10 sets the stage for John 11. Jesus is in Jerusalem for the feast of dedication (Maccabeean in origin) which is called Hanukkah today. This is a winter celebration and John 10.22 even mentions as such.

The Jews in Jerusalem are demanding that Jesus tell them if he is the Christ or not. Their conception of the Christ is distorted, having been separated from the suffering servant language of later Isaiah. They wanted a warrior king to defeat Rome.

Jesus responds that he has told them (but not in the way they want) and they don’t believe because they are not his sheep. Only his sheep hear his voice. Jesus says he gives his sheep eternal life. This is the beginning of the controversy. Only God can give eternal life. But he goes on in 10.30.

I and the Father are one.

As Sproul states, there were no Arians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Mormons in the crowd. They rightly interpreted these things as a claim of divinity and clearly express that in 10.33.

you, being a man, make yourself God.

Jesus responds by pointing out their hypocrisy. Even judges (or perhaps angels) were called gods in the Scriptures. Apparently that’s ok, but when the Son of God (who is God) reveals himself as God, then that’s not ok! Such irony.

They don’t like his response, so we’re told they sought to arrest him. So he went across the Jordan to where John the Baptist had been baptizing (see John 1) and there he remained.

There is some interesting foreshadowing here. Jesus talks of his sheep and giving them life eternal. In John 11, he is going to demonstrate that visually.

Listening to some sermons today on John 11.

A Sympathetic Savior, John Reisinger, Trinity Baptist Church, 59:20

Mr. Reisinger (a reformed baptist), as expected, interprets Martha’s interaction with Jesus as accusatory. Without the prosodic features of language (body language, stress, intonation, basically how Martha was speaking), we really have no way of knowing if Martha was in fact accusatory. That’s certainly one possible explanation, but for Baptists, it seems to be the default interpretation. Sproul is much more gracious in how he sees Martha’s response. He recognizes that she could have been in fact accusatory, but sees the equal possibility that Martha, although justifiably sad, was calmly responding with a confident statement of faith in whom Jesus was and what he is capable of doing.

One observation of Mr. Reisinger’s I thought helpful was the tendency to emphasize God’s sovereignty over his love. That could very well be applicable to this passage, but it is most certainly applicable to every day life. Mary and Martha do seem committed to the belief that Jesus could have saved their brother. They testify to his sovereignty. But it is certainly possible that they questioned his love for their brother (and for them). The text doesn’t demand that conclusion, but it’s entirely possible. What leads me to believe that this was possibly the case is verse three, where Martha and Mary describe their dying brother to Jesus as, “he whom you love”. Jesus obviously knows whom he loves.

The disciples response could have been said to be similar. They certainly could have been questioning Jesus’ intentions when he advised them they would be returning to Judea to Bethany to ‘wake’ Lazarus when such action would inevitably entail their death. In their life experience, they may have believed the maxim: people that love you do not send you to die.

Riesinger states that Martha pointing out the stench of her brother’s dead body (since it had been four days) in verse 39 contradicts her statement in verse 22 which reads:

“But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”

I suppose that’s a legitimate possibility. It may very well be reading far too much into the text though. There were a lot of things going on at the moment. Does Martha’s pointing out the stench (which normally happens when people are rotting in the grave) mean that she doesn’t believe that whatever Jesus asks he’ll be given? Or perhaps that Jesus isn’t asking for her dead brother to be brought to life? I’d think it would be rather difficult to be dogmatic on the intentions of her statement, especially in light of the lack of all of the details as well as access into her mind. Also, it’s very possible that Lazarus did stink, even when brought back to life. Or maybe he came out smelling like roses. The text doesn’t say.