Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 21, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Unfeeling

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October 21, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Unfeeling · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you in the College Avenue building, this is like Hicksville over here where people just kind of chat with you like you're at a rodeo.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll have to shout out.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, thank you very much.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh great to be here.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're in a series called When God Doesn't Make Sense.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the third installment or episode.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this morning is entitled When God Seems Unfeeling.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to start uh by imagining, picturing yourself in a little prayer time, maybe with one friend who's going through hard times.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe in that November 4th concert of prayer we're gonna have here, or maybe at the end of a small group study, and uh the person next to you prays uh something like this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: They say, uh, uh I cry out to you, oh God, but you're not answering.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're not even looking at me.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've become cruel to me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you already wince a little bit, sort of gasp, you know, you know, like, whoa, I get that you're hurting, but uh you just accuse God of being cruel.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're like me, you try to balance the books a little bit.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's your turn to pray next.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you pray something like, uh, God, I know, yeah, we're hurting, but uh, you know, thanks for loving us, and thanks for reminding us that all things work together for good.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: To those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And your prayer was biblical.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm here to tell you this morning that your friend's prayer was just as biblical as yours.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because those are the exact words of a prayer by a man whom God said was at that time the most upright, the most godly man in all of the world.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Job.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the prayer that you'll find in the 30th chapter of Job and in verses 20 and 21.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is pretty much the New Living Translation.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: In the ESV, it goes like this: I cry to you for help and you do not answer me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I stand and you only look at me.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've turned cruel to me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why would Job, the most upright man in all the world, say something like that about the God that he worshiped and adored?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is, of course, that Job had lost everything in life that he loved except for his life and his wife.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And at times he wasn't sure about the second.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, but he'd lost his children, he'd lost his property, he'd lost, you know, his health.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, much of what, much of these things that he'd lost, he'd lost to what we call acts of God.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, and so forth, catastrophes of nature, his herds and his flocks, all of his property had been lost to like a forest fire started by lightning from heaven.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: His children had all died, his seven children had been in a house together and a hurricane had come and it had crashed down and killed them all.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Acts of God.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I know all about acts of God.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're happening all the time and especially a lot lately.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been less than a month, just three weeks ago, when we had that humongous earthquake over in Indonesia, followed by a giant tsunami and so forth.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So far, they found over 2,000 dead, and there's still 5,000 missing.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right here's a picture of a little five-year-old named Mernie who wandered around for the longest time, having lost her parents.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's found her dad now, but she forges alongside the road for dry noodles like this and for other stuff.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we know about acts of God.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or just this past Thursday in Uganda, which is just southwest of Kenya, Nairobi, we know about that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, earlier this week there's this huge flash floods in the mountains, and it caused giant mudslides, which have destroyed villages, and you know, they've counted 40 bodies in the mud, but there's over 400 more still missing.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or, for instance, right here in America, Hurricane Michael hit the Florida panhandle 10 days ago because we're an intelligent church staff, one of our own, Sam Reed, IT uh tech director, decided to take his wife.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, this is, I love making fun of him, decided to take his wife on a romantic trip down there at about this time, just to head down to the Florida panhandle and welcome in Hurricane Michael.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw on Facebook his pictures as they were huddled terrified underneath the table in their apartment on the coast.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I shouldn't make fun of him.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's living.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: They've found uh uh 36 dead already down there and whole cities decimated.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: The hurricane, these high winds took one huge uh block of concrete and slammed it down through a roof right onto an 11-year-old girl named Sarah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: She was staying, uh it was a fall break from school, and she and her older brother Devin, age 12, had moved 100 miles away from the coast to spend the week with their grandpa and grandma.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he heard the noise, grandpa did, and he came in and he lugged the block of concrete off his precious girl's face, and then lifted her lifeless body and wept, put it down, put a blue quilt over her, and then did the hardest thing he's ever done, picked up the phone to call her daddy.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Roy said at Sarah's funeral this past Thursday, Roy, as a man of faith, he said God took our little girl home.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Words which were very much like the words that Job said 4,000 years ago.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord has given and the Lord takes away.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got to tell you, you call these things acts of God.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, it's more like the acts of an unfeeling God.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because what feelings are there in tsunamis and earthquakes and floods?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: When the book of Revelation describes God Almighty this way, it says his voice is like the sound of rushing waters.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think of Niagara Falls.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's what his voice sounds like.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, when we see his face, it'll be like the noonday sun, and I think, wow, that's bright.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know something about Niagara Falls and the noonday sun.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know that neither one of them have any feelings at all.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you wonder, does God have any feelings at all?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Evening before last, I my mouth was open.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was sitting across the table from an Israeli.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's moved to the States.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Still a young guy, but he was sharing with me the most horrifying week of his life.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some years back, he was a teenager, and he and his roommate uh live in large, you know, older teenagers, and then his roommate went missing, and that week they're terrified.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it turns out that his roommate and friend had been kidnapped and uh tortured and then brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't a Christian at that time, Aaron wasn't, and basically what he said to me was if I'd believed in God, you know, I thought, how could God be so heartless, so unfeeling as that?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: On the front of the bulletin uh today, I asked you to imagine a scenario, or scenario, if you're from New York or something like that.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually have to imagine that uh that you had a best friend and he had left town, and uh, and by the way, let me say about this, you know what one philosopher said about this today?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh he said, Robert Price said, Who needs Satan when you have a God like this?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I ask you to imagine a scenario in in which um in which your friend had left town and he was not only your friend, but the friend of your family.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And after he left town, uh just on a trip or something for a few days, your brother took really ill, and so you pulled out your cell phone and you texted your friend, your best friend, and told him about this.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you were surprised when you didn't hear back anything that whole day.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next day, your brother was in really serious condition, and so you texted him again and you left your friend a voicemail saying, This is really looking bad.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm worried about my brother.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the emergency room, and again on that day you didn't hear back.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the third day, um, your brother's life was clearly coming close to an end.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you just texted and left phone messages for your friend constantly saying, Please call me.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dying here.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't hear a thing, and your brother died, and then you were planning the funeral, but you kept thinking that your best friend would at least be sitting beside you at the funeral because he loved your brother too.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But nothing, and you went to that service, that funeral service without your friend.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then a few days later, he showed up in town and he came and hugged you and said, I'm sorry, and you backed off and you said, I'm where were you?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Was your cell phone down?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't you get my message?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, I got him.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you respond?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you come?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why weren't you at the funeral?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm here now.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And at that moment, as much as you loved him, you realized you needed to sort of recalibrate your understanding of that friendship, that it wasn't quite to him what it had meant to you, that somehow, somehow his love for you and your brother was not what you had thought it was.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of down deep you thought he's he's kind of cold and unfeeling, uncaring.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that story actually comes to us on the pages of the New Testament out of the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a real famous story.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the Christian Standard Bible, it goes like this a man was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a brother here and two sisters.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: The brother's name is Lazarus, and the sisters are Mary and Martha.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: The town is Bethany, which is just about a mile and a half east of Jerusalem, so it's pretty close to the main city up there, right over the top of the Mount of Olives.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Mary was the one, John adds, who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That story isn't even, it's in the very next chapter in John.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It hasn't even been told yet, but it's a really emotional story, and so what the author's trying to tell us is that there's a personal relationship here that's really deep between Jesus and between Mary and Mary's sister and brother.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then we read in verse 3 that the sisters send a message to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: They had to send a message because even though Jesus had been there around there in Jerusalem the week before, there had been this real mess-up, this real row with uh with the hottie-totties, with the with the Pharisees, the religious leaders.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: They had been arguing with Jesus, and they said, Listen, everybody's calling you the Messiah, and Jesus said, Well, yeah, the evidence is there, and they said, But the Messiah is supposed to, you know, be like the Son of God and so forth.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Are you he?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Yeah, I am he.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then they pick up stones, they try to kill him, and the disciples, and Jesus said, Hey, it's not our time to die yet.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so they bamoused, they went east, they get down to Jericho, they crossed over the Jordan.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're a couple days away now, they're in the modern land of Jordan, and so they have to send a message to him.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: They send a runner saying, Lord, the one you love is sick.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus heard it, he said, This sickness will not end in death.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: By that I guess he meant death, death, but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we don't quite understand that yet, but I will tell you there the three key words of this whole story are caught right here in verses three and four.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: One word is love, the second word is death, and the third word is glory.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Love, death, and glory.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'll keep those three words in mind and sort of try to draw a line in between them, then you've got the key that unlocks this story.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so keep thinking, love, death, and glory.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, then we read in verse 5, Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in verse 6, so when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's weird, that's random, that doesn't seem right, but the story just rambles on.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then after that he said to the disciples, let's go to Judea again.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Rabbi, the disciples, told him, just now the Jews tried to stone you, you're going there again.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you back off from the story, you realize that the answer is yes, because Jesus, who's alive, is going to go see someone who's dead.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's Lazarus, so he can make Lazarus live.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in exchange, Jesus is gonna die.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a picture, of course, of the gospel that Jesus gives his life so that you and I might live.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're worried about this.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Listen, our friend Lazarus is taking a nap.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's falling asleep, but I'm on my way to wake him up.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they go, he's falling asleep.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll get well, you don't even need to go.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus goes, Oh, they're a little slow.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, told them plainly, Lazarus has died.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad for you that I wasn't there so that you may believe after you see what I'm about to do.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But let's go to him.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so Thomas, there's always one of these guys in every crowd.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's the cynic, there's the guy who, you know, is kind of a funny guy.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas said to his fellow disciples, Yeah, let's go so that we can die with him.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's supposed to be a little funny, so you don't have to laugh.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Bible humor.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, so Thomas is saying, yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there's, frankly, there's one of these guys.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was that guy for years, uh, the cynic.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and then we read in the next verse, when Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Two plus two.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Took him a couple days to get there.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure of this, but maybe the reason Jesus waited so that it was four is that the Jews back then, it was pretty well known.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Jews then, and even today, by the way, if there's a death in Israel, they bury that same day.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't believe in waiting till the next day.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So they bury him, but they had the view, and it's in the Talmud and so forth, that the ghost, or the soul, I'm sorry, hangs around the dead body for three days.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes uh, you know, you see bodies revive after a couple of days and the toes start moving and they get off the slab, and that's because the soul is entered back into the body.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm thinking that maybe in order for Jesus to let everybody know this was no accident, this isn't the soul jumping back in the body, this is a miracle miracle.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's gonna make sure they know that he's not just dead, he's dead, dead.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: To steal a line from one of the great Christian movies of all time, The Princess Bride.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, and watch the movie, you'll know what I mean.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is Martha, the one who's the cook, you know, and she's really practical.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Ouch.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell what she's feeling.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: She's feeling that Jesus doesn't have any feelings.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the message, and you didn't come.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You left us alone at the funeral?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just reminding you that if you'd been here, you could have done something about it.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you know you could have done something about it, but I needed to let you know that I know that you could have done something about it.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, hey, your brother will rise again.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Martha says, what any of us would say if our beloved had died?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Says, yeah, duh.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not a pagan.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know that he'll rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly what I was looking for.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that allows Jesus to unleash one of the great, most powerful verses in the New Testament, this statement here.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not just that there's a resurrection in the future, I am the embodiment of life and of the resurrection, so that the one who believes in me, even if he dies like your brother has, he will live.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a resurrection day, but I'm gonna tell you there's something even more.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: From the moment he believes, he gets eternal life.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die, ever.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not die, die.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: They'll die, but not die, die.
• 18:37
  unknown: Die, die.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe this?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Martha's response is great.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Yes, Lord, I don't fully understand it, but I do believe you're the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world, the Messiah in Jewish literature was the person who had the power of life and death.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So she's a woman of faith, so she runs away, she runs back to get her sister, Mary, who's sitting in the house.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: When Mary came to where Jesus was and she saw him, she fell at his feet and she told him, get ready for this, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: The girls have been practicing this line, obviously.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Had it down, Pat, word for word.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Again, knife in Jesus' heart.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just want to let you know, Lord, that I know you could have done something.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know you know you could have done something.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just want you to know that I know that you could have done something that you didn't do.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd had feelings, you know, maybe.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus saw her crying, and when he saw the Jews who'd come with her crying, he had mixed emotions.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was angry in his spirit, he was deeply moved, maybe angry at the whole idea of death and just angry at the unbelief and so forth.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then we read in verse 35.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus wept.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Shortest verse in the English Bible.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were in Sunny Scope for the first time and the teacher said, I'll give you a piece of candy if you recite a verse.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You ask around, you know, real quickly, what's the shortest verse?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody said, John 11, 35, Jesus wept.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You go, right, I don't even need to look that one up.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Practiced it a couple of times, said it to the teacher, got your candy.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking this week, though, thinking about this text, and I was thinking, I wonder why Robert S.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: D.N., Robert S.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: D.N.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: was the guy in 1551 in lived in Paris, and he's the guy who put the verses in the New Testament.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Had some verses before, the about a hundred years before from the Catholics, but the verses were like a page long a piece.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if your mother told you to memorize a verse, you were in trouble.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, so but Robert SDN's riding a horse, the story goes.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's riding across France, and I just thought, I wonder what it was like when he got here.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he's thinking, okay, I've usually put a verse division every 15, every 20 words.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: John 3, 16 was uh 25 words, Galatians 2.20, 41, you know, or something.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then he goes, this is way too short.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Should I put it at the end of the previous or should it put it at the beginning of the following sentence?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: See how I loved him.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: That maybe would fit, but I just pictured him as he's riding that horse, thinking about putting in the numbers there.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought about him looking around.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: This was the year, first year in a long time.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: The war between the English and the French had just ended.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Been a huge flood in Europe not long before.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was afraid it was the end of the world.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine Robert S.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Dean looking around at all the acts of God, all the pain, all the poverty, all the dying and so forth.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back down and thinking, man, that's that's not that's just not a little throwaway phrase Jesus wept.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is incredibly profound.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That earlier in this chapter, the very person who could have done something about it and didn't do it, deliberately, intentionally didn't do it, still feels so deeply that when he sees people weeping, his friends, he weeps too.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm just gonna stop right there, puts a period there and starts the next verse.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a profound, profound sentence.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the Jews said, This is now the fourth or fifth time in our passage.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So as though John's going, I better tell them a lot of times that Jesus loved these people because the evidence sort of works the opposite direction at times.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the Jews said, see how he loved him.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let me draw some uh some observations from this story, which starts off so cold and unfeeling on Jesus' part, and now ends as the most emotional chapter in the whole New Testament.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here are my observations.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not real profound, but the first one is that Jesus loved Lazarus.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: The sister sent a message.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord, one you love, is sick.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus not only loved Lazarus, but this passage wants us to know he loved Mary and Martha also.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's as though it's saying, whatever you're about to hear, just hold on to this idea.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: He loves them no matter, no matter.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't gonna sound like love in just a minute.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have verses five and six, where it says he stayed two more days in the place where he was.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jesus deliberately let Lazarus die.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now get this.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls his behavior love.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to miss this.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is controversial, but this is the heart of my message.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I say that because did you notice verse 35, verse uh five goes, Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus so, therefore, you know, of uh that's a little particle that means what I've just said leads to what I'm about to say.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm about to say flows directly out of what I've just said.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: What I've just said is the reason for why this person acted the way he did.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because, in a sense, Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: When he heard he was sick, he stayed two more days.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Whoa, whoa, this is not what we think of when we think of love.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is not loving.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what anybody thinks of when they think of loving behavior.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is it any wonder that the translation that I use the Christian Standard Bible does?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think any other translations do it, but the this very modern translation had a real problem with that, like we do.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it put parentheses around verse 5.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, now, by the way, Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus, so as to sort of pull that away from the so.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how can you love someone to let them die when this is the book that told us that God loves the world so much that he lets his son die?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a book that tells us that God loves us so much, he lets us die, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so by putting parentheses around it, it makes verse 4 lead into verse 6.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's so that God may be glorified that I'm gonna let him die.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I found myself wondering, even reading what the translators of this translation did, and as much as I love the Christian standard, I thought, but you haven't really answered.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why in the world would the writer still slide that in there?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if even if it's a side comment, why not put it where it's more appropriate?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Could it possibly be that Jesus' behavior not only came from his love, but also from his desire to see the most important thing in the universe happen, which is that God gets glory.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: For after all, Jesus had himself said in verse 4 this whole thing, my behavior, the sickness, the death, it's all for the glory of God.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in this book, the glory of God is why Jesus mounted the cross, the glory of God is why Jesus came to earth in the first place, the glory of God.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The same author is gonna tell us in Revelation is why you and I even exist, why we live.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we're gonna be so happy about forever and ever in the future.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be enthused and enthralled when we see the glory of God, and we're gonna be so excited about elevating the glory of God and the display of his brilliant attributes one way and so one day.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's the glory of God and the love of God.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, those things must work together in such a way that Jesus can act not only for the glory of God, but for the love of us in the same moment that he intentionally lets us suffer and die.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Though it was his choice, and get this at the end, though it was his choice to let Lazarus die, in the midst of all of this glory of God stuff, Jesus still weeps.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: He still cares so deeply that even though it was his choice to let Lazarus die, man, this is a better translation than just weep, he bursts out in sobs.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know this isn't an easy message, but what I want to do is answer the question, what difference does this make?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give you probably more.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you eight, not seven, not six, not five, not my normal four or three.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you eight applications.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: You ready for them?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're really profound.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the first one.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: At times we cry to God for help.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe right now you're crying to God for help, for someone else, for their help, for their lost job, for their marriage, for their love life, for, you know, anything.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's you you're praying for.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's for your love life, it's for your marriage, it's for your job, it's for your children, it's for your help.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: The doctor just gave you bad news, but at times we cry to God for help.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: And occasionally, this text tells us that God demonstrates his love.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on to this by deliberately seeming, keep that word in there, seeming to ignore us.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: At times, occasionally, God demonstrates his love by deliberately seeming to ignore us.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And at such times, even the best of us feel that God is cold and unfeeling.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: King David was one of the best of us.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when God treated him this way, he cried out, Will you forget me forever?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis was one of the best of us.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then a grief observed after the loss of his wife.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: He complained, he said, You know, when you're happy, so happy you have no sense of even needing God, and you like forget about him, but then if you remember yourself and you turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be, or so it seems, welcomed with open arms.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You find a door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: The next sentence is, and after that, silence.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't even our Savior hanging on the cross feel that his father was cold and unfeeling?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And his mother at the foot of the cross, imagine how Mary felt crying out to her son's real father in heaven for his deliverance, must have felt, wow, Jesus, your father is cold and unfeeling, cruel and uncaring to let you die this way.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even the best and most godly of us, when we're going through stuff like this, feel that God is unfeeling.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, it's because, however, it's because true love wants what is best and most glory of God centered that God's love allows pain and loss.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again, because it's true for you if you truly love someone else.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's true of God, it's true of all true love, it's because true love always wants what is best and most glory of God centered, because that's what we'll care the most about for eternity, that God's love allows pain and loss.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's number four.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I know this is hard to understand, but my thoughts are frankly not your thoughts, and your ways aren't my ways, declares the Lord.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: As far as the heaven is above the earth, so my thoughts are higher than yours.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: My ways than yours.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, who cried out to God repeatedly to remove this thorn in the flesh, and God flat out even ignored his prayers for a while, so unfeeling, so uncaring, until basically he said, Shut up.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Paul goes, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: How unsearchable are his judgments, amen.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And his paths beyond tracing out.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then later wrote, We see through a glass darkly now, but then face to face, now I know in part.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then finally I'll know even as I am known.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, so don't trust your feelings about what God is doing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Trust what God says about what he's doing.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: You feel one thing, you feel there's no way that God can be genuinely kind and gracious and knows what in the world is going on.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you feel.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the appearance, but don't trust that.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Trust instead what God says about what he's doing.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And number six, and trust what God says about what he's feeling about what he's doing.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: I am feeling your pain.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I do care.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: I do love you.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I do love Martha, Mary, and Lazarus says it once, twice, three times, four times.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't believe what it feels like I must be feeling.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Trust what I say about what I'm really feeling.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And seven, and I throw this in because next week is basically on when God seems late.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: This text tells us, doesn't it?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: God may delay, as Jesus did, but he's never too late.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the takeaway from this morning, number eight, and the final one.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Make your prayer this week, Lord, I'm not trusting appearances.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting in promises.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Make it your constant prayer this week.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm not trusting appearances.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting in promises.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say that with me, Lord?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trusting appearances, I'm trusting in promises.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I can hear you saying that over and over this week as the pain comes and as you feel as though God has rejected you.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you who are older will remember an old hymn that asked the question: Does Jesus care when my heart is too full of pain for me to smile or sing?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, he cares.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know he cares.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: His heart is touched with my grief.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Someone came up after last service to hand me the song, the prayer by Martin Luther.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Feelings come and feelings go, but feelings are deceiving.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll place my faith in the Word of God.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing else is worth believing.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And on the basis of those truths this week, make your constant prayer, oh God, oh Lord, I will not trust.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am not trusting in appearances.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting in your promises.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, at times you show us uh a hidden face or even an angry face or a face that seems cold and unfeeling.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: You don't show up for the funeral.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You don't show up at the bedside.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: It seems as that you really don't care.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the comfort that even the best of us down through the centuries have complained about feeling as though you just don't have a heart.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: This week, Lord, give us the strength to look at you once and again and to say over and over, I'm not trusting in appearances.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting instead in promises.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: For Jesus' sake and for the sake of our hearts and the sake of our loved ones, we pray.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And all God's people said, Amen.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.