The Grieving of the Righteous

The Death and Resurrection of a Man – Five Sermons

Part 3: “Mary”

(John 11:28-37, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, July 5, 2009)

Q: How did Jesus react at the tomb of His friend?

A: Jesus wept. (John 11:35)

Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany (28-31)

We have been considering the story of three siblings, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany. The three were friends of Jesus. One of them, Lazarus, had died. His death was not, in the final analysis, a random mistake. No death is. Psalm 139 tells us about God who is sovereign over the length of every life, saying, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” God knows the number of our days. He has planned it. It is written in His book.

The story in God’s book for Lazarus was very unusual. Lazarus had died. That part is not uncommon. Jesus, informed by messengers from the man’s sisters, delayed His return in order to arrive after Lazarus had been in the grave four days. What that means is that Jesus intended to arrive in Bethany in the middle of a time of mourning at the death of this beloved friend.

Last week we considered our Lord’s interaction with Martha, when He revealed to her this wonderful truth, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Martha believed this, and she said so with these words: “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” This is where today’s passage begins. John writes, “When she had said this,…” that is, when she had said “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world,” Jesus apparently sent Martha back home to ask Mary to come to Him. We know that because Martha said to her sister, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” Martha gave that message discreetly to Mary. Those who were with her did not know what was happening. Mary got up immediately, and when the people who were with them saw her do this, they assumed that she was going to the grave to weep, so they followed her.

She fell at His feet (32)

“The Teacher is here.” He had come near a house of mourning. He is Himself a Man of sorrows, Isaiah warned us, a Man acquainted with grief. He draws near to us when no one knows what to say, when there may be nothing that can be said. Mary, the woman who loves to listen to this greatest of all teachers, goes to Him, and falls down at His feet, weeping, in a posture of brokenness and of humble submission.

Then Mary says the same words that Martha had said earlier to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Even though her words are the same as her sister’s, the response of Jesus is different this time. This must have something to do with what Jesus knows about these two women. He always knows what is behind our words. We saw this at the end of John 2, just before the account of Jesus’ meeting at night with Nicodemus. John wrote that Jesus “needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” He knows you.

He knew Martha’s heart. He knows Mary’s heart. Their words may be the same, but they may mean something different. Even if they mean precisely the same thing, they may not be able to hear the same divine reply. There is wisdom in this. Jesus brought the grieving Martha to profess her faith in Him as the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who would come into the world at the last day to bring about the resurrection of the dead. When Martha had said these words earlier to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she had the strength to add immediately, “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Mary doesn’t do that. She falls down at His feet weeping, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Mary is different than Martha. We can only speculate about those differences from the few clues that we have in the Bible. Jesus knows about it fully. We all know that there are some people who have unusual insight and intuition in dealing with others. At best, this gift is partial. Jesus is different. When you have communion with Jesus in your time of sorrow, He knows you perfectly. When you are saying to Him, “Lord, I can’t take this,” he knows what you have within you, and He knows what He can give you to help you bear up in that moment of greatest need.

Jesus wept (33-36)

So Jesus knew Mary, and when He saw her weeping like that at His feet, and the people from Jerusalem who were there with her, He was also deeply moved. In fact, the word that is translated here “deeply moved” has a note of stern anger in it. The words that follow that are translated “greatly troubled,” literally say that he stirred himself up. Jesus was moved, but it was not the helpless emotion that we feel when someone is dead and we can’t do anything about it. Jesus was moved, and He was angry. He was like a great Samson, stirred up by the Spirit of God against the Philistines. He looked at the enemy of death in the grief-stained faces of His friends, and He had a fury about Him, the fury of a righteous warrior who is able to win.

He was angry with death, and He went after it, as someone who knew what needed to be done. “Where have you laid him?” They said, “Come, and see.” That must have been an interesting little walk… people not saying anything, some weeping quietly, some sobbing, and Jesus, the Son of God, furious in His Spirit about the fall of mankind, about the way sin and death had entered the world and brought grief to the sons of men. Death was making Mary sad, and Jesus was not happy about it.

Then He broke. The shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” We worship a God who weeps. Do you have a place in your heart for the complexity of a perfectly sovereign God who weeps? He is in charge. He knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. Before we ever existed, He numbered our days. He hates death. He’s mad about it, and He’s willing to be broken up about it. So He weeps. The people there saw it. They said, “See how He loved him!”

I say that Jesus was broken up about this, but there is more here than that. Mary was broken up about the death of her brother. Lazarus was broken by death. What about Jesus? Not only was He broken up about the death of Lazarus, He was willing to be broken by the death that Lazarus deserved, and that you and I also deserve. Do you see the love of God for you in this? Look at the cross. See how He loves His beloved. See how angry He is about death. He not only weeps with you. He dies for you. Only Jesus could have saved Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and you forever. He has a powerful resolve to defeat this horrible enemy. He will not be stopped.

The problem of death (37)

The passage ends with these difficult words that were on the lips of some of them, but had to be on the hearts of many more, “Could not He who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” Well let’s be clear about the answer to that question. The answer is “Yes, Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying.” If the people that day had heard that answer, don’t you think that they might have had a follow-up question? “Why then…, why didn’t He keep Lazarus from dying?”

We know something of the answer. Jesus had a better plan, and it was a plan that included the death of Lazarus, that horrible separation between a man and his two sisters. You and I are going to have to trust Him through that kind of separation, remembering that there is something about death that makes even Jesus weep. Then we need to remember again what we believe about heavenly life, looking to the One who died for us, and rose again. He knows about the problem of death, and He has taken serious measures to conquer that problem for His beloved friends.

Application: How should a godly person react to the death of someone he loves?

I want to conclude with these two applications for those who have loved and lost.

First, it is more than right to weep, and even to be angry at the death of a friend that you love. We have been made not only to think, but to feel. Jesus was perfect not only in His reasoning, but also in His emotions. He wept at death. He was angry about death. When we simply refuse to feel, that’s not strength; that’s just destroying our own hearts, and delaying our healing. God made us all to feel. You have permission to feel something in your soul, and to let your body move consistently with your soul in grief and even in righteous anger against death as an enemy.

Second, do not grieve as those who are without hope. Jesus cries were not those of a powerless man. When death comes to someone we love, it is normal for us to feel helpless, but it is not altogether accurate. Even you are not helpless. In due time, you can take dominion of the rest of your life. Do you know why? Because Jesus was not helpless. When He faced down death on the cross through His own death, He defeated that enemy. You do not have to wonder about whether or not Jesus defeated death. His resurrection was the proof of His victory.

This victory of the One who is the Resurrection and the Life is the answer for your soul. If you let your soul grieve honestly over your loss, and you let your body weep, then you must also let your soul rejoice again at the victory of Jesus over death. Life continues on. Life continues on for those who are left in this mortal world. Life especially continues on for those who have gone where Jesus lives. You are allowed to grieve, and you are allowed to rejoice.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What do we know about the family of Lazarus and their relation to Jesus?

2. In what way is Mary different from the others?

3. Why did Jesus weep?

4. What is the problem of death? Is there an answer to this problem?