The Resurrection
From the Series: Easter
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: April 4, 2010
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Transcript
Welcome to everybody at all five of our locations, Ebenezers Coffeehouse, Ballston Common Mall, Georgetown, Kingstowne, and for the first time, the Gala Theater in Columbia Heights! We are so excited about launching our fifth location. Just a note, next weekend, we go to our regular 7:00 p.m. service at the Gala Theater. We are excited about serving that part of our city and I want to say a huge thanks for making National Community Church part of your Easter weekend. We want to be part of what God is doing in your life. And we want you to be part of what God is doing in this church, and when those two things come together, some exciting things begin to happen. We are thrilled that you are here.
Right now, we are in a year-long Bible reading expedition, if you will, called From Garden to City, we are reading through the Bible together and our messages are on the reading that we’ve had that previous week. If you want to download one of those reading plans, go to www.fromgardentocity.com and we invite you to take that challenge and be part of what God is doing.
This weekend, we have the convergence of two series. We are wrapping up a series called ‘Tears’ and going into a series called ‘Miracles’ and it is no coincidence that these two series converge on this weekend. In my experience, tears often precede miracles. Isn’t that the truth? Or maybe another way to say it is that miracles often follow tears. Here’s how it is, everybody wants a miracle, right? We just don’t want to be in a situation that necessitates one! But you can’t have one without the other.
In this story we are going to look at this weekend, I think you see a picture of tears and miracles converging. Turn in your Bibles to John Chapter 11. We will put it on the screen. Let me frame this series that we are going into. I’m believing that the next 40 days are going to be the greatest 40 days of your life. Can I say that? We are going to be teaching on miracles and praying for miracles, and I believe God is doing to do something miraculous in our lives. Having said that, let me be careful here, God doesn’t do miracles for miracles’ sake, ok. It is not about selfish motives here, like you pray for the car that you always wanted. I’m not talking about the Mazarati miracle. God does miracles for one reason and that is to glorify Himself. We are the beneficiaries because we get to experience it. So, don’t tell me that God doesn’t want to reveal more of his glory in your life. He wants to do that. That’s why I believe that as we go into this series, God is going to do some amazing things.
Now, right out of the gate, I want to tell you that I believe there are miracles all around us all the time. Right now, you don’t really have a sensation of motion, but the truth is you are on a planet that is spinning at a thousand miles per hour and it will make one full rotation around it’s axis in the next 24 hours. Not only that, we are traveling through space at 67,000 miles per hour. Maybe not any huge plans for today, but you will travel 1.5 million miles today in your annual trek around the sun. My question is this – when was the last time you thanked God for keeping us in orbit? Never, right? We don’t do that because we take these miracles for granted. I know some people who have said that they have never experienced a miracle. With all due respect, go look in the mirror. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Right now, you are looking at me, right? You are looking at me and your retina is performing about 10 billion calculations per seconds and that’s before an image even travels through the optic nerve and into the visual cortex of the brain. If that is not miraculous, I don’t know what is! Your heart will beat about 100,000 times today. About 5 quarts of blood will travel through about 100,000 miles of veins and arteries and capillaries. If you could line up all of your blood vessels, it would wrap around the equator four times! You turn to the person next to you and you say, “You look miraculous!” Go ahead. We are 70% single at NCC, I’m here to help you out and hook you up!
Don’t tell me you’ve never experienced a miracle, you are one. Albert Einstein said that there are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle, the other is as if everything is a miracle. I think my prayer for this series, I’ve been praying for you, is that there would be a rising tide in us as a spiritual family, that there would be a growing holy appreciation, if you will, for the miracles that are all around us all the time. But I’m also believing for a kind of a holy anticipation at what God might do next. I think that a lot of us, if we aren’t careful, we stop dreaming, we stop praying, we stop believing. What happens is we forfeit the miracles that God wants to do in our lives. So I think we need to get that back.
By the way, the weather is getting nice, I’m loving it, and this weekend I pulled out a pair of shorts and put them on and I put my hand in my pocket and found $95 in my pocket! How do you forget about $95? What I’m saying is I’m living in holy anticipation right now! I can’t wait to pull out the rest of my shorts! That’s just 95 bucks, but this is a day where, listen, if Jesus was raised from the dead, all bets are off. Anything can happen! I think we need to live with that holy anticipation that God could invade the reality of our lives at any moment and change everything.
Part of the reason I’m excited about this is that about five years ago, we did something similar. We are in a season where we celebrate Easter this weekend and then it’s a 40-day season and we celebrate Pentecost. A few years ago, we did a ten-day Pentecost fast, like the disciples prayed for 10 days before Pentecost, so we were like, let’s just fast and pray for 10 days and see what God does. We are going to do that again this year, by the way. We did it 5 years ago and I remember we challenged NCCers to identify, what is the miracle that you are believing God for. What is it that you are believing God to do in your life? We wrote them down. I remember there was an event we had and we actually wrote them down on rocks. I don’t know why, but this has been in my office for five years. Number 7, because there were 7 miracles that I believed God had put on my heart to believe Him for. I pulled this out this week because I knew we were going into another season where we were just going to be believing God. Let me keep it real, I looked at some of these and I laughed, like what was I thinking? I didn’t quite get it, ok? Honestly, I looked at these and some of them have not manifested themselves yet. Some of them may seem as far off as they did 5 years ago, but a few of these miracles have happened, big ones, and a few of them are in the process of happening. So I’m believing that the next 40 days are going to be the greatest 40 days of your life. I’m excited about it and excited that it starts this weekend. I invited you to be part of this journey over the next 40 days.
John 11, let’s start unpacking this passage of Scripture. Verse 1
1Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. 3So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick."
4When he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it."
Let me stop right there. To be perfectly honest, I have forgotten most of the sermons by most of the preachers I’ve ever heard. As a preacher, that is depressing. I’ve also forgotten most of the meals that I’ve eaten but I’ve been nourished by them. But I heard one a few years ago, an old preacher with one of those old preaching voices, preached a sermon called ‘God’s grammar.’ I’ll never forget one line from that sermon. He said, “Never put a comma where God puts a period and never put a period where God puts a comma.” That’ll preach, you might want to write that one down. See, this passage used to bother me, because Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death,’ I’m ruining the end of the story here but he dies! So it seems to me like Jesus was wrong. But the operative word here is ‘end.’ I was putting a period where God put a comma. Jesus knew Lazarus would die but He also knew it wouldn’t end there. I think it was Jesus’ ways of saying, ‘It’s not over ‘til I say it’s over.’
A few years ago, I had a conversation with Parker and Summer when they were smaller about their Grandpa Schmidgall. I remember we were talking about him. He passed away when they were very young and Parker said, “I wish I could have said goodbye to Grandpa and told him to say Hi to Jesus.” That was quite a moment, but then in this real excited voice, Summer said to Parker, “When we die, we’ll get to go to heaven and see Grandpa Schmidgall!” And Parker said, “You shouldn’t get so excited about dying.” It was one of those moments, it was so cute, Summer was all worked up about dying and seeing her Grandpa, but Parker puts it in check. But here’s the thing about that, I love life and I hope I’ve got some life left to live, but here’s the good news, here’s what we celebrate on Easter weekend, the reason we can have a level of excitement about this is because it’s not the end. It doesn’t end on Friday because three days later, Jesus was raised from the dead. This whole ‘Tears’ series that we are coming out of, the whole thing is pointed to Revelation 21:4. It says He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away and He who is seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new.’ See, death is not the end. It is a new beginning and that’s why death doesn’t scare us. It is actually something that we can approach with a holy anticipation because the Bible says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
Isn’t it amazing to live within a reality that is true in a reality that dictates at the end that it is not over until God says it is over? Verse 5
5Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.
11… he went on to tell them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up."
12His disciples replied, "Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better." 13Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
Is this not encouraging? These guys have followed Him around for three years and this stuff is just going right over their heads. Don’t you need someone to follow you around to make you feel good about yourself by comparing yourself to them? Maybe you are seated next to them right now. I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get it every time! It’s going right over their heads.
14So then he told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead, 15and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
Call me Captain Obvious, but if your friend is on his deathbed, why would you wait to go see him? Does this not seem a little heartless, a little thoughtless? It seems like you would get there as quickly as you can. Can I share with you one of the low points of my ministry? It happened a few months ago, just enough distance for me to be able to talk about it. It was 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon, I’m at the mall in a dressing room trying something on. My phone rings and I answer it and it’s someone asking me why I’m not at the wedding I was supposed to be officiating that was supposed to start at noon. I died a thousand deaths. Here’s what I didn’t say, I’m glad I was not there. It really didn’t even cross my mind. I got home and showered and I got there at 3:00. They were so gracious. Here’s the real miracle in this – they still attend National Community Church! Unbelievable! So I read this story in light of that, like a deathbed scenario here! I’m thinking to myself, why would you not get there as quickly as you can, but He waits two days. Have you ever been there? Have you ever felt like God was two days late, a day late and a dollar short? God, where are You? You are late! I’ve been there so many times that I think I’m finally learning an important lesson, and I think this is where I want to speak into your life. In my experience, you can’t have a resurrection without a crucifixion, but sometimes things need to die in order for them to be resurrected in a different form. It’s the heart of what we believe and it’s the thing we anticipate at the end of the day, that God would resurrect our bodies and our spirits and that we would live with Him forever. But shouldn’t we be a people that believe in death and resurrection right here and right now? Yet I think it’s something we don’t want to talk about.
Let me give you an example. I think sometimes something precious needs to die so that God can resurrect something different. Maybe a good example is in the area of relationships. How many of you know that breaking up is hard to do? There are few things that are more difficult than a dating relationship coming to an end. I have some experience with this. It feels like the world is going to end. It feels like your life is over with. But listen, I am so grateful for the 17 girls that broke up with me before I met Lora. I’m just kidding! It wasn’t that bad, only 15. You know what I’m talking about. You feel like you are dying, but you hang in there. And what I’ve found is that then God can resurrect something that can bring back a peace that has died that He can bless you with, and you’re like, thank you, thank you, thank you, that for those little deaths along the way so that He could resurrect the right things at the right time.
Let me put it in terms of National Community Church. For 13 years, we met in the movie theaters at Union Station. We loved that place. I think it is where doing church in the marketplace became part of our DNA. We had so many accumulated memories there and we loved Union Station. Then, last October, the theater manager informed us that the Union Station management was shutting down the theater and we had all of five days to figure out where to go and what to do. It was painful! It was like mourning a death. I remember grieving that week. This weekend, in particular, I’m so grateful. I want to tell you something. I don’t think that if we were still at Union Station that we would have been thinking about different possibilities or opportunities. I think what happens is, we started meeting in movie theaters, so innovative and so different, but here’s the danger. A new wineskin can become an old wineskin and you can do something and get locked into that box. So we weren’t really thinking outside of that category, so I don’t think we would have considered the Gala, which is a performance theater. But I think here’s what’s happened, I think Union Station died so that we could be resurrected at the Gala Theater. I absolutely believe that, and I believe that God is going to do something amazing in that part of town as we begin to serve and love and reach out to Columbia Heights.
I’ve seen this in my personal life. The first book I wrote, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, you might not know this, I wrote it twice. I gave the first manuscript to the publishers and my editor killed it. It was so painful! It is so hard writing a book once, then, they were like, ‘You need to write it again.’ I remember it was so hard to even muster the motivation to do it again, but I rewrote that book. Here’s what I’m convinced of a few years down the road, by the way, last week, an organization placed an order for 50,000 copies of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day! Hallelujah! It would not have done that with the first manuscript because it was a different book. It needed to die and it needed to be resurrected in a different form. Do you see how in every area of our lives, there are things that need to die so that God can resurrect them. I want to speak hope into your life. Some of you are in that place where a dream seems like it’s dead or a relationship seems like it’s dead, but here’s the bottom line – God is in the resurrection business! Sometimes you need to end that unhealthy dating relationship. Sometimes you need to quit that dead-end job. Sometimes you need to make a move. But here’s why you are afraid to do it, because it feels like a death. But if you don’t die to that unhealthy or unholy thing, it will never be resurrected in a form that’s right. So, let’s just not celebrate the Resurrection as something that happened 2,000 years ago, let’s celebrate it as something that God is doing in our lives all the time. He wants to raise that thing back up so that it can serve his purposes.
Verse 18
18Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22But I know that even now [even now, even now, even now] God will give you whatever you ask."
Is this not an unbelievable statement? Even now, he has been dead for four days. Even now, God will give you whatever you ask. One of my favorite philosophers is Jack Handy. Deep thoughts, one of my favorites: You drop your keys in a river of molten lava, let them go because they are gone. It’s a little embarrassing to admit but it’s one of our family values. If it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s not coming back. If it’s done, it’s done, you can’t do anything about it. If you’re dead, you’re dead. Yet, even now, God will give you whatever you ask. I think in this passage, there are two kinds of faith. Did you pick up on it? If you had been here, he would not have died. I call that preventative faith. If you’d been here, you could have prevented it. A lot of our prayers are preventative faith aren’t they? Traveling mercies, Lord don’t let anything bad happen. Hedge of protection around my kids, God protect them. It’s about those preventative prayers. That’s a measure of faith. I applaud that. It’s wonderful. But there is a whole ‘nother level of faith in this passage, that if we could tap into this, it would take us to a whole different place of operating, of thinking, of living, of the way we approach life in general. This would be a whole different ballgame. This is a faith that believes God can change what has already happened; that God is in the business of reversing the irreversible. It gets so good right here. Let me try to paint a little picture. One of my earliest movie memories was the 1978 version of Superman. As a little kid, I went and saw the movie. The storyline and special effects blew me away. When I watch it now, not so much. But I remember one scene in particular in the movie where Lois is driving her car through the desert, there is an earthquake and her car is swallowed and she is killed. Superman gets super angry and do you remember what he does? He flies around the earth, counter-rotational at supersonic speed, thus reversing the rotation of the earth and reversing time and saving Lois. I know that isn’t based on very good science. For one thing, with the earth rotating at about a thousand miles per hour, if Superman had done what he did, he would have saved Lois but the entire planet would have died of whiplash. But it’s a cool concept. Don’t you wish you could reverse time? But the arrow of time points in one direction. You are stuck in a moment, you can’t get out of it. You can’t undo what you’ve done. In other words, some things in life are irreversible.
When I was a sophomore in college, I learned this lesson the hard way. I played basketball and I tore my interior ligament. I went in to see the doctor and I remember his diagnosis, he told me it would never heal. What I didn’t understand is that that ligament doesn’t heal itself, I had to have reconstructive knee surgery. But I remember this feeling of such finality, nothing I could do. You cannot untear a ligament. I have also learned that you cannot unbake cookies. You can’t unrun a red light, or undelete a document or unfortunately, uncut hair. Most of us have been there and done that. You are on the receiving end of divorce papers or you lose your job or a loved one dies, or in D.C., you get the ticket in the mail. You can’t undo what’s done. Those are the worst moments in life. I remember standing in front of my father-in-law’s casket a few years ago and feeling like there’s nothing I can do. 2,000 years ago, all of that changed. Read the gospels. We are reading through the gospel of John right now and here’s what you see, Jesus was in the business of reversing the irreversible, wasn’t He? He reverses weather systems in unbelievable ways. He reverses blindness, paralysis, leprosy, and then on a Sunday morning, 2,000 years ago, He reverses death itself. Jesus came to do a reversal, to reverse the effect of death, to reverse the effect of sin, that’s what He came to do in our lives. It gets even better. Verse 23
23Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
24Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
25Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
27"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."
Jesus makes an incredible claim here, a unique claim. Honestly, it is what sets Christianity apart and Jesus Christ apart. See, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, they don’t claim divinity. There is no claim to a resurrection. There is no power over death. In that respect, Jesus Christ stands alone, and He literally says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In other words, I have power over death itself. I think this is where a lot of people get stuck, because most people believe Jesus to be a great moral teacher, or a prophet or a healer or just a compassionate person, but He didn’t claim to be a wise prophet or a compassionate healer, He claimed to be the Son of God, and that means we are only left with two choices. Either He was or He wasn’t. This is not a multiple-choice question, this is true or false. If it is false, we are all wasting our time, but if it is true, if it is true, then the only logical response is a complete surrender of your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. That’s the only logical and theological response. Jesus said, “ Do you believe?” Can I suggest that He is asking the same question today? Romans 10:9-10 says:
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.
That is what I’m building my life on. That is what I am banking my eternity on. That is the promise that on this day we celebrate. Verse 32
32When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34"Where have you laid him?" he asked. "Come and see, Lord," they replied.
35Jesus wept.
Every kid’s favorite memory verse! If you grew up going to church, you remember this one. We can all get that one. But those two words speak volumes, don’t they? Because of the verb in the Hebrew language here, this probably isn’t the best translation. What it ought to say is that Jesus burst into tears. This is no measured response. This is one of those moments where Jesus loses it in compassion for his friends who have lost their brother. I don’t know about you, but that does something for me. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, who is deeply moved, who cries when we cry. We are coming out of this ‘Tears’ series and we are talking about God’s grace and his mercy. He cries when we cry, but what I love is that He has the power to do something about it. There are moments in my life when I need someone to cry with me. But there are moments when I need someone who can do something about it. We have both in Jesus. Verse 38
38Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.
39"Take away the stone," he said. "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."
This is a little off topic, but this week, one of our campus pastors revealed to me that during college, they once wore a pair of jeans for 18 months without washing them. I’m not going to tell you their initials but the name is Joel Schmidgall. Ballston campus, we are praying for you! Martha is afraid the odor is going to be overwhelming. It’s been four days, the body is decomposing.
40Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
41So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."
43When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!”
We need the audio here! Don’t you want to hear that voice? I think it’s coming out of deeply moved and great sadness, but it’s also coming out of this power and authority that He knows He has the right to do what He is about to do. Lazarus come out!
" 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."
Ok, briefly, I think to fully appreciate what happened here, we need to understand ancient Jewish burial traditions. When Lazarus died, his feet would have been bound at the ankles and his arms would have been tied to his body with linen strips. Then his body would have been wrapped in approximately 100 pounds of graves clothes. According to some scholars, the head would be wrapped with so many linens that it would measure a foot wide. Mental picture – that of a mummy. I’m just thinking there might be two miracles here, one is the resurrection, the other is how in the world did he get up and get out of there! It’s a double whammy, a double miracle. I don’t think he walked out, I think he did the Lazarus! What a moment! I think there is just this spontaneous combustion as this deep sorrow turns into the most joyous celebration with dancing and shouting. Oh! What a moment!
I want to end with this. He came out, hands and feet bound in clothes, his face wrapped in head clothes, Jesus said, “Unwrap him and let him go.” I want to tell you that’s exactly what he wants to do in your life today. See, in all these stories in the gospels, what you have are pictures of the gospel story. I think sometimes we think about sin as right and wrong. It is more than that, it is life and death. When we sin, when we make a decision to move in a direction away from God, we die. As we sin, a part of us dies; a part of our heart and spirit dies. I don’t care if it is pride or anger or lust or what it is, when we sin, it is almost like burial clothes begin to entomb us, and if you keep sinning, before you know it, you will be buried alive, entombed by your own sin. Jesus Christ came to set you free, to unbind you. He says come out. And when we come out, it is on the cross that those sins were nailed to the cross and we’ve been forgiven. It is on Easter Sunday morning that He comes out so that we could come out. Let’s pray.
Father, thank You. We celebrate, we rejoice who You are and what You’ve done. God we worship You and we praise You and we thank You for the victory You have won. God we pray that that victory would be in our hearts and in our spirits this weekend and that we would walk in the victory that You have won over death and over the grave. We give You thanks and we praise You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
