John 11

John 11:1

B. The Illness of Lazarus (11:1-4) 11:1 We now come to the last great miracle in the public ministry of the Lord Jesus. In some senses, it was the greatest of allthe raising of a dead man. Lazarus lived in the little village of Bethany, about two miles east of Jerusalem. Bethany was also known as the home of Mary and her sister Martha. Pink quotes Bishop Ryle: Let it be noticed that the presence of God’s elect children is the one thing which makes towns and countries famous in God’s sight. The village of Martha and Mary is noticed, while Memphis and Thebes are not named in the New Testament. 11:2 John explains that it was that Mary of Bethany who had anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair. This singular act of devotion was emphasized by the Holy Spirit. The Lord loves the willing affection of His people. 11:3 When Lazarus took sick, the Lord Jesus was apparently on the east side of the Jordan River. The sisters sent word to Him immediately that Lazarus, whom He loved, was sick. There was something very touching in the way these sisters presented their case to the Lord. They appealed to His love for their brother as a special argument why He should come and help. 11:4 When Jesus … said, This sickness is not unto death, He did mean that Lazarus would not die, but that death would not be the final outcome of this sickness. Lazarus would die, but he would be raised again from the dead. The real purpose of the sickness was the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. God allowed this to happen so that Jesus would come and raise Lazarus from the dead, and thus be manifested again as the true Messiah. Men would glorify God for this mighty miracle. There is absolutely no suggestion that Lazarus’ sickness was a result of some special sin in his life. Rather, he is presented as a devoted disciple and a special object of the Savior’s love.

John 11:5

C. Jesus’ Journey to Bethany (11:5-16) 11:5 When sickness enters our homes, we are not to conclude that God is displeased with us. Here sickness was directly linked with His love rather than His anger. Whom He loves He chastens.11:6, 7 We would be apt to reason that if the Lord really loved these three believers, then He would drop everything and hurry to their home. Instead, when He heard the news, He stayed two more days … where He was. God’s delays are not God’s denials. If our prayers are not answered immediately, perhaps He is teaching us to wait, and if we wait patiently, we will find that He will answer our prayers in a much more marvelous way than we ever anticipated.

Not even His love for Martha, Mary, and Lazarus could force Christ to act ahead of the proper time. Everything He did was in obedience to His Father’s will for Him, and in keeping with the divine timetable. After two days that might have seemed to be lost time, the Lord Jesus proposed to the disciples that they should all go to Judea again. 11:8 The disciples were still painfully aware of how the Jews sought to stone Christ after He had given sight to the blind man. They expressed surprise that He would even think of going into Judea in the face of such personal danger. 11:9 Jesus answered them as follows: In the ordinary course of events, there are twelve hours of light in the day, when men can work. As long as a man works during this allotted time, there is no danger of his stumbling or falling because he sees where he is going and what he is doing. The light of this world, or daylight, keeps him from accidental death through stumbling. The spiritual meaning of the Lord’s words is as follows: The Lord Jesus was walking in perfect obedience to the will of God. There was thus no danger of His being killed before the appointed time. He would be preserved until His work was done. In a sense this is true of every believer. If we are walking in fellowship with the Lord and doing His will, there is no power on earth that can kill us before God’s appointed time. 11:10 The person who walks in the night is one who is not faithful to God, but is living in self-will. This man stumbles easily because he does not have divine guidance to illuminate his pathway. 11:11 The Lord spoke of Lazarus’ death as sleep. However, it should be noticed that in the NT sleep is never applied to the soul but only to the body. There is no teaching in the Scripture that at the time of death, the soul is in a state of sleep. Rather, the believer’s soul goes to be with Christ, which is far better. The Lord Jesus revealed His omniscience in this statement. He knew Lazarus had already died, although the report He had heard was that Lazarus was sick. He knew because He is God. While anybody may awaken another out of physical sleep, only the Lord could awaken Lazarus out of death. Here Jesus expressed His intention of doing that very thing. 11:12 His disciples did not understand the Lord’s reference to sleep. They did not realize that He was speaking of death. Perhaps they believed that sleeping was a symptom of recovery, and they concluded that if Lazarus was able to sleep soundly, then he had passed the crisis and would get well. The verse might also mean that if physical sleep were the only thing wrong with Lazarus, then there was no need to go to Bethany to help him. It is possible that the disciples were fearful for their own safety and that they seized upon this excuse for not going to the home of Mary and Martha. 11:13, 14 Here it is clearly stated that when Jesus spoke of sleep, He was referring to death but that His disciples had not understood this. There can be no misunderstanding. Jesus notified His disciples plainly, Lazarus is dead. How calmly the disciples received the news! They did not ask the Lord, How do you know? He spoke with complete authority, and they did not question His knowledge. 11:15 The Lord Jesus was not glad that Lazarus had died, but He was glad He was not at Bethany at the time. If He had been there, Lazarus would not have died. Nowhere is it recorded in the NT that a person died in the presence of the Lord. The disciples would see a greater miracle than the prevention of death. They would see a man raised from the dead. In this way, their faith would be strengthened. Therefore, the Lord Jesus said that He was glad for their sakes that He had not been at Bethany. He added, that you may believe. The Lord was not implying that the disciples had not already believed on Him. Of course they had! But the miracle they were about to see at Bethany would greatly strengthen their faith in Him. Therefore, He urged them to go with Him. 11:16 Thomas reasoned that if the Lord Jesus went into that area, He would be killed by the Jews. If the disciples went with Jesus, he was sure that they too would be killed. And so in a spirit of pessimism and gloom, he urged them all to accompany Jesus. His words are not an example of great faith or courage, but rather of discouragement.

John 11:17

D. Jesus: The Resurrection and The Life (11:17-27) 11:17, 18 The fact of Lazarus’ being in the grave for four days was added as proof that he was dead. Notice how the Holy Spirit takes every precaution to show that the resurrection of Lazarus was really a miracle. Lazarus must have died shortly after the messengers left to find Jesus. It was a day’s journey from Bethany to Bethabara, where Jesus was. After hearing of Lazarus’ illness, Jesus stayed two days. Then it was a day’s journey to Bethany. This explains the four days Lazarus was in the grave. As noted previously, Bethany was about two miles (fifteen stadia) east of Jerusalem. 11:19 The nearness of Bethany to Jerusalem made it possible for many of the Jews to join the women around Martha and Mary, to comfort them. Little did they realize that in a short time their comfort would be entirely unnecessary and that this house of mourning would be turned into a house of great joy. 11:20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went out to meet Him. The meeting took place just outside the village. We are not told why Mary remained in the house. Perhaps she had not received the report of Jesus’ arrival. Maybe she was paralyzed with grief, or was simply waiting in a spirit of prayer and trust. Did she sense what was about to happen because of her closeness to the Lord? We do not know. 11:21 It was real faith that enabled Martha to believe that Jesus could have prevented Lazarus from dying. Still, her faith was imperfect. She thought He could only do this if He were bodily present. She did not realize that He could heal a man from a distance, still less that He could raise the dead. Often in times of sorrow, we talk like Martha. We think that if such and such a drug or medicine had been discovered, then this loved one would not have died. But all these things are in the hands of the Lord, and nothing happens to one of His own without His permission. 11:22 Again the faith of this devoted sister shone out. She did not know how the Lord Jesus would help, but she believed that He would. She had confidence that God would grant Him His request and that He would bring good out of this seeming tragedy. However, even now, she did not dare to believe that her brother would be raised from the dead. The word which Martha used for ask is the word normally used to describe a creature supplicating or praying to the Creator. It seems clear from this that Martha did not yet recognize the deity of the Lord Jesus. She realized that He was a great and unusual Man, but probably no greater than the prophets of old. 11:23 In order to draw out her faith to greater heights, the Lord Jesus made the startling announcement that Lazarus would rise again. It is wonderful to see how the Lord deals with this sorrowing woman and seeks to lead her step by step to faith in Himself as the Son of God. 11:24 Martha realized that Lazarus would rise from the dead some day, but she had no thought that it could happen that very day. She believed in the resurrection of the dead and understood that it would happen in what she called the last day.11:25 It is as if the Lord had said, You do not understand Me, Martha. I do not mean that Lazarus will rise again at the last day. I am God, and I have the power of resurrection and of life in My hand. I can raise Lazarus from the dead right now, and will do it.Then the Lord looked forward to the time when all true believers would be raised. This will take place when the Lord Jesus comes back again to take His people home to heaven. At that time there will be two classes of believers. There will be those who have died in faith, and there will be those who are living at His Return. He comes to the first class as the Resurrection and to the second as the Life. The first class is described in the latter part of verse 25He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. This means that those believers who have died before Christ’s coming will be raised from the dead. Burkitt remarks: O love, stronger than death! The grave cannot separate Christ and His friends. Other friends accompany us to the brink of the grave, and then they leave us. Neither life nor death can separate from the love of Christ. Bengel comments, It is beautifully consonant with divine propriety, that no one is ever read of as having died while the Prince of Life was present.11:26 The second class is described in verse 26. Those who are alive at the time of the Savior’s coming and who believe on Him shall never die. They will be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, and taken home to heaven with those who have been raised from the dead. What precious truths have come to us as a result of Lazarus’ death! God brings sweetness out of bitterness and gives beauty for ashes. Then the Lord pointedly asked Martha, to test her faith, Do you believe this?11:27 Martha’s faith blazed out in noontime splendor.

She confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, whom the prophets had predicted was to come into the world. And we should notice that she made this confession before Jesus had raised her brother from the dead and not afterwards!

John 11:28

E. Jesus Weeps at Lazarus’ Tomb (11:28-37) 11:28, 29 Immediately after this confession, Martha rushed back into the village and greeted Mary with the breathless announcement, The Teacher has come, and is calling for you. The Creator of the universe and the Savior of the world had come to Bethany and was calling for her. And it is still the same today. This same wonderful Person stands and calls people in the words of the gospel. Each one is invited to open the door of his heart and let the Savior in. Mary’s response was immediate. She wasted no time, but rose quickly and went to Jesus. 11:30, 31 Now Jesus met Martha and Mary outside the village of Bethany. The Jews did not know He was near, since Martha’s announcement of the fact to Mary had been a secret one. It was not unnatural that they should conclude that Mary had gone out to the tomb to weep there. 11:32 Mary … fell down at the Savior’s feet. It may have been an act of worship, or it may have been that she was simply overcome with grief. Like Martha, she uttered the regret that Jesus had not been present in Bethany, for in that case, their brother would not have died. 11:33 To see Mary and her friends in sorrow caused Jesus to groan and to be troubled. Doubtless He thought of all the sadness, suffering, and death which had come into the world as a result of man’s sin. This caused Him inward grief. 11:34 The Lord of course knew where Lazarus was buried, but He asked the question in order to awaken expectation, to encourage faith, and to call forth man’s cooperation. Doubtless it was with deep earnestness and sincere desire that the mourners led the Lord to the grave. 11:35 Verse 35 is the shortest in the English Bible. It is one of the three instances in the NT where the Lord is said to have wept. (He wept in sorrow over the city of Jerusalem and also in the garden of Gethsemane.) The fact that Jesus wept was an evidence of His true humanity. He shed real tears of grief when He witnessed the terrible effects of sin on the human race. The fact that Jesus wept in the presence of death shows it is not improper for Christians to weep when their loved ones are taken. However, Christians do not sorrow as others who have no hope. 11:36 The Jews saw in the tears of the Son of Man an evidence of His love for Lazarus. Of course, they were correct in this. But He also loved them with a deep and undying love, and many of them failed to understand this. 11:37 Again the presence of the Lord Jesus caused questionings among the people. Some of them recognized Him as the same One who had given sight to the blind man. They wondered why He could not also have kept Lazarus from dying. Of course, He could have done so, but instead He was going to perform a mightier miracle, which brought greater hope to believing souls.

John 11:38

F. The Seventh Sign: The Raising of Lazarus (11:38-44) 11:38 It would seem that Lazarus’ tomb was a cave under the earth, into which one would have to descend by means of a ladder or a flight of stairs. A stone was placed on top of the mouth of the cave. It was unlike the tomb of the Lord Jesus in that the latter was carved out of rock and a person could doubtless walk into it, as into the side of a hill, without climbing or descending. 11:39 Jesus commanded the onlookers to take away the stone from the mouth of the grave. He could have done this Himself by merely speaking the word. However, God does not ordinarily do for men what they can do for themselves. Martha expressed horror at the thought of opening the grave. She realized that her brother’s body had been there for four days and feared that it had begun to decompose. Apparently, no attempt had been made to embalm the body of Lazarus. He would have been buried the same day on which he died, as was the custom then. The fact that Lazarus was in the grave for four days was important. There was no possibility of his being asleep or in a swoon. All the Jews knew that he was dead. His resurrection can only be explained as a miracle. 11:40 It is not clear when Jesus had spoken the words of verse 40. In verse 23, He had told her that her brother would rise again. But doubtless what He here said was the substance of what He had previously told her. Notice the order in this verse, Believe … see. It is as if the Lord Jesus had said, If you will just believe, you will see Me perform a miracle that only God could perform. You will see the glory of God revealed in Me.

But first you must believe, and then you will see.11:41 The stone was then removed from the grave. Before performing the miracle, Jesus thanked His Father for having heard His prayer. No previous prayer of the Lord Jesus is recorded in this chapter. But doubtless He had been speaking to His Father continually during this entire period and had prayed that God’s Name might be glorified in the resurrection of Lazarus. Here He thanked the Father in anticipation of the event. 11:42 Jesus prayed audibly so that the people might believe that the Father had sent Him, that the Father told Him what to do and what to say, and that He always acted in perfect dependence on God the Father. Here again we have the essential union of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ emphasized. 11:43 This is one of the few instances in the NT where the Lord Jesus is said to have cried with a loud voice. Some have suggested that if He had not mentioned Lazarus by name, then all the dead in the graves would have come forth! 11:44 How did Lazarus come out? Some think he hobbled out of the grave; others think that he crawled out on hands and knees; still others point out that his body would have been wrapped tightly in graveclothes and that it would have been impossible for him to have come out by his own power. They suggest that his body came out of the tomb through the air until his feet touched the ground in front of the Lord Jesus. The fact that his face was wrapped with a cloth is added as a further proof that he had been dead. No one could have lived for four days with his face bound by such a cloth. Again the Lord enlisted the participation of the people by commanding them to loose Lazarus and let him go. Only Christ can raise the dead, but He gives us the task of removing stones of stumbling, and of unwinding the graveclothes of prejudice and superstition.

John 11:45

G. Believing and Unbelieving Jews (11:45-57) 11:45, 46 To many of the onlookers, this miracle unmistakably proclaimed the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they believed in Him. Who else but God could call forth a body from the grave after it had been dead for four days? But the effect of a miracle on a person’s life depends on his moral condition. If one’s heart is evil, rebellious, and unbelieving, he will not believe even though he were to see one raised from the dead. That was the case here. Some of the Jews who witnessed the miracle were unwilling to accept the Lord Jesus as their Messiah in spite of such undeniable proof. And so they went away to the Pharisees to report what had happened in Bethany. Was it that they might come and believe on Jesus? Rather, it was probably in order that the Pharisees might be further stirred up against the Lord and seek to put Him to death. 11:47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered their official council to discuss what action should be taken. The question What shall we do? means What are we going to do about this? Why are we so slow in acting? This Man is performing many miracles, and we are doing nothing to stop Him. The Jewish leaders spoke these words to their own condemnation. They admitted that the Lord Jesus was performing many signs. Why then did they not believe on Him? They did not want to believe because they preferred their sins to the Savior. Ryle well says: This is a marvellous admission. Even our Lord’s worst enemies confess that our Lord did miracles, and many miracles. Can we doubt that they would have denied the truth of His miracles, if they could? But they do not seem to have attempted it. They were too many, too public, and too thoroughly witnessed for them to dare to deny them. How, in the face of this fact, modern infidels and skeptics can talk of our Lord’s miracles as being impostures and delusions, they would do well to explain! If the Pharisees who lived in our Lord’s time, and who moved heaven and earth to oppose His progress, never dared to dispute the fact that He worked miracles, it is absurd to begin denying His miracles now, after eighteen centuries have passed away. 11:48 The leaders felt they could no longer remain inactive. If they did not intervene, the mass of the people would be persuaded by the miracles of Jesus. If the people thus acknowledged Jesus to be their King, it would mean trouble with Rome. The Romans would think that Jesus had come to overthrow their empire; they would then move in and punish the Jews. The expression take away both our place and nation means that the Romans would destroy the temple and scatter the Jewish people. These very things took place in a.d. 70not, however, because the Jews accepted the Lord, but rather because they rejected Him. F. B. Meyer put it well: Christianity endangers businesses, undermines profitable but wicked trades, steals away customers from the devil’s shrines, attacks vested interests, and turns the world upside down. It is a tiresome, annoying, profit-destroying thing. 11:49, 50 Caiaphas was high priest from a.d. 26 to 36. He presided at the religious trial of the Lord and was present when Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin in Act_4:6. He was not a believer in the Lord Jesus, in spite of the words which he here uttered. According to Caiaphas, the chief priests and Pharisees were wrong in thinking that the Jews would die on account of Jesus. Rather, he predicted that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. He said that it was better that Jesus would die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should have trouble with the Romans. It almost sounds as if Caiaphas really understood the reason for Jesus’ coming into the world. We would almost think that Caiaphas had accepted Jesus as the Substitute for sinnersthe central doctrine of Christianity. But unfortunately, that is not the case. What he said was true, but he himself did not believe on Jesus to the saving of his soul. 11:51, 52 This explains why Caiaphas said what he did. He did not speak on his own authority, that is, he did not make these things up by himself. He did not speak this of his own will. Rather, the message that he uttered was given to him by God, with a deeper message than he intended. It was a divine prophecy that Jesus would die for the nation of Israel. It was given to Caiaphas because he was high priest that year. God spoke through him because of the office he held and not because of his own personal righteousness, for he was a sinful man. The prophecy of Caiaphas was not that the Lord would die for the nation of Israel only, but also that He would gather together His elect among the Gentiles of the earth. Some think that Caiaphas was referring to Jewish people dispersed throughout the earth, but more probably he was referring to Gentiles who would believe on Christ through the preaching of the gospel. 11:53, 54 The Pharisees were not convinced by the miracle at Bethany. Rather, they were even more hostile toward the Son of God. From that day on they plotted His death with a new intensity. Realizing the mounting hostility of the Jews, the Lord Jesus went off to a city called Ephraim. We do not know today where Ephraim was except that it was in a quiet, secluded area near the wilderness. 11:55 The announcement that the Passover of the Jews was near reminds us we are coming to the close of the Lord’s public ministry. It was at this very Passover that He was to be crucified. The people were required to go up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. For instance, if a Jew had touched a dead body, it was necessary for him to go through a certain ritual in order to be cleansed from ceremonial defilement. This purifying was done through various types of washings and offerings. The sad thing is that the Jewish people were thus seeking to purify themselves, while at the same time planning the death of the Passover Lamb. What a terrible exposure of the wickedness of the heart of man! 11:56, 57 As the people gathered in the temple, they began to think about the miracle worker named Jesus who had been in their country. A discussion arose as to whether He would come to the feast. The reason some thought He would not come is given in verse 57. Official orders had gone out from the chief priests and the Pharisees for the arrest of Jesus. Anyone who knew of His whereabouts was commanded to notify the authorities so that they might seize Him and put Him to death.