Latest / The TakeAway / John 11:38-54 If God Is Love, Why Does He Allow Suffering? Part 3: The Resurrection

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John 11:38-54 If God Is Love, Why Does He Allow Suffering? Part 3: The Resurrection · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: For the past two episodes, we've been wrestling with one of the hardest questions in the Christian faith.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If God is love, why does he allow suffering?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We followed the question through grief, evil, through unanswered prayers, and through the tears of those Jesus loved.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this story isn't over.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 11, Jesus finally stands before the tomb.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: What happens next is more than a miracle.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is God's answer to the deepest questions we've been asking all along.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: As the stone is rolled away, we discover that God's love is not revealed by avoiding suffering, but by overcoming it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Join Pastor Harry as he concludes this three-part series and reveals how the resurrection of Lazarus points beyond one empty tomb to the hope of every believer.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's message.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome again to the takeaway.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns, and today is the completion of our three-part series on if God is love, why does he allow suffering?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And today is part three of that series called The Resurrection.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: But before we get started, I want to recognize that I know the series has been difficult for many of you, and I want to thank you for having stuck it out with me this far.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know that everything I have told you up to this point has not been softened or rushed past.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that that has caused some of you to carry real mixed emotions through it all, wrestling with the suffering and the tragedy this world holds in light of a God who says he is love, and wondering just how those two things could possibly stand together.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you stuck it out with me anyway, because I asked you to, because I promised you a resolution was coming, and today is going to be that.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: But before we go any further, I want to reflect on something, and it's this it's that the human mind, left to itself, keeps finding its way back to the same place, judging the God who says he is loving and deciding on our own terms whether what he allows is right, fair, or acceptable.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we talked about why that happens back in part two, that it was what we do by nature ever since the garden, and that it is why so many of us struggle to land on a simple reality that God is actually in control of all of it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: But when we see clearly that we live in a world under the weight of what humanity chose, that what we are actually dealing with day by day is the repercussions of our own actions, not some arbitrary cruelty from the hand of God.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when you see that God's love is working through the very actions of fallen people, redeeming us out of the wreckage by his mercy alone, something starts to come together that could not come together before.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're gonna be watching today with Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to see how Jesus carries himself in the middle of it and how the people around him respond to what they witness.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what you're gonna notice by the end of this is that there are two sides to that same moment.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Some are gonna see the miracle and land on the glory of God, while others are gonna see the exact same thing and still not believe.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the question this episode is gonna leave us with at the end of the day is simple.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which side of that coin do you land on?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we're going to pick it up in John chapter 11, moving into verse 38 to 54, where Jesus finally arrives at the tomb and where the story we have been walking through for three episodes reaches the moment it has been building toward all along.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in part one of this series, we saw that Lazarus fell sick.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, who loved this family deeply, chose to stay exactly where he was for two more days, knowing exactly what he intended to do before Lazarus ever died.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then in part two, we saw that Martha and Mary each said the same aching words to Jesus' face.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: They said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we sat with the harder question underneath their grief.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Then we talked about wrath and mercy and the two kinds of evil in scripture: the calamity God is sovereign over and the moral evil he never authors.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about Genesis 3 and the authority we stole and why the question of how a loving God allows suffering is so hard for us to comprehend.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then we watch Jesus deeply moved and greatly troubled weep at the tomb of a man he was second away from raising.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to finish that story.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, let's read verses 38 and 44 together.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: It says, Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Take away the stone.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to them, Unbind him and let him go.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, notice the first three words of verse 38, because John does not let the grief of the previous scene end before this one begins.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It says he was deeply moved again.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is the exact same language used in verse 33 when Jesus first saw Mary weeping, which means the tears of verse 35 have not dried, and the trouble in his spirit has not passed.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus walks to the tomb, still carrying what he carried at the sound of Mary's grief, visibly, physically expressed in his face and in how he carried himself.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if Jesus arrived at the tomb composed, settled, and ready to perform a miracle, it would have suggested the grief was something to move past on the way to the real work.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, he performs the greatest sign of this entire gospel while still visibly grieving.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that resolution does not require the pain to end first.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Isaiah told us this was coming centuries earlier when he says, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, who would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: What he is saying is that the one about to conquer death is not separate from the grief death causes.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what we see is that he carries it with him all the way to the stone.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then Martha objects and says, By this time there will be an odor.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that four days is not a coma or a mistake, it is a real decomposition.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus answers her with the words he already told her before they ever reached the tomb.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: What we see here is that Jesus was always going to raise Lazarus, and the miracle was never contingent on Martha's belief.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So this sentence is not about causing the event, it is about capacity to recognize what the resurrection actually is.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the same pattern we traced back in episodes 47 and 48 with the blind man and the Pharisees.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And now everyone standing at this tomb is about to witness the same event, but not everyone is about to see the same thing.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Some will see an unexplainable miracle, while others will see the glory of God Himself standing right there in front of them.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus prays, but watch what he prays here, because it is not a request.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Father, I thank you that you have heard me.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that you always hear me.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: What he is saying is that he is not asking for power he does not already have.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: The prayer is already answered before it is spoken.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then he tells us plainly why he's praying out loud at all.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now this connects directly back to something Jesus said much earlier in the gospel in John chapter six.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: A crowd asked him, What must we be doing to be doing the works of God?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he answered, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, belief itself in that verse is named as God's work, not something the human being manufactures and offers up, but something God produces.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And right here at this tomb, Jesus is doing exactly that work out loud.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: He is not hoping belief happens as a byproduct of the miracle.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: He is actively producing the conditions for it, stating his purpose before the stone is even removed.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: But not everyone standing there is going to believe.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: We already know that from what happens next in this very chapter.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: The same miracle witnessed by everyone produces belief in some and a report to the Pharisees in others.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which means Jesus' stated purpose cannot mean belief lands automatically on every person who hears the prayer.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: It means Jesus is doing the work of producing belief in those the Father has given him.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same language we have been following since John chapter 6, where he said, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and my sheep hear my voice.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus cries out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not a general command to the dead, it's a name spoken directly, the same way the good shepherd calls his own sheep by name in chapter 10, and the man who had died came out, bound, hands and feet, in the linen strips of burial with his face still wrapped.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what we see is that the miracle is complete the instant Lazarus is breathing again.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: But he is still bound.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus does not personally unwrap him himself.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: He turns to the people standing there and says, Unbind him and let him go.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, sit with that choice for a moment because it was a choice.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: The same voice that called a dead man back to life could have spoken those grave clothes right off of him.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: But he chose not to.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: What he does instead is assign that work specifically to the community gathered around the one who had just been made alive.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this answers something almost every believer eventually asks, usually quietly and with some shame attached to the question.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: We ask, if I am saved, if I am truly alive in Christ, why do I still look so much like my old self?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I still wrapped in the same weight, the same patterns, the same filth I was carrying before?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul gives us the answer directly when he tells the Philippians that he who began a good work in them will bring it to completion.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Not that it is already finished, but that it has begun and it is being carried forward.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then he tells the Corinthians that we are being transformed into Christ's image from one degree of glory to another.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a process that is unfolding, not a single instant.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that you are not less saved because you still feel the wrapping.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: You are a man walking out of the tomb, alive and still bound, exactly the way this text describes it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the text also tells us plainly that the unbinding was never meant to happen alone.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Paul tells the Galatians that when someone is caught in sin, those who are spiritual should restore him gently, and that we are to carry one another's burdens.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the writer of Hebrews tells us not to neglect gathering together, specifically because the gathering is where we stir one another up and encourage one another.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: What we are seeing is that the unwrapping is communal work by design.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason for that design.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: We become like whoever we spend our time around.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says it almost bluntly to the Corinthians.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: He says, bad company ruins good morals.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And Proverbs says the same thing from the other direction: that whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is not merely spiritual advice.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's how we are built.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: We imitate what surrounds us, often without even noticing it is happening, which is exactly why Paul warns against being unequally yoked, bound closely, formed continually by people pulling in a direction that is not where Christ is leading.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now try to unwrap yourself alone, cut off from the right community, and you will find that you cannot do it.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: But surrounded by the people God designed for exactly this purpose, the grave clothes come off, one wrapping at a time, in ways none of us could manage on our own.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a reason this moment at the tomb feels like it's pointing at something larger than itself, because it is.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Later in this gospel at the Last Supper, Jesus kneels down and washes his disciples' feet.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is the lowest, most unglamorous task in that culture reserved for servants.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when he finishes, he tells them plainly, If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now the disciples standing at Lazarus' tomb, unwinding those grave clothes, almost certainly did not understand the full weight of what they were doing in that moment.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the same posture Jesus would later kneel down to model for them himself, and the same posture he would command them to carry forward to each other for the rest of their lives.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: These commands, taking the wrappings off of him and washing one another's feet, are different words, but the same act.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: One believer made low, serving another who cannot yet serve themselves.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus ties that posture directly to what will prove them to be his when he says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not by our doctrine alone or by a confidence in what we believe, but by this the washing, the unbinding, the serving of the one another in low, unglamorous places, most of us would rather avoid.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this is not a task that gets finished once.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus told his disciples elsewhere that whoever wants to be great among them must become the servant of all, and that whoever humbles himself will be exalted, while whoever exalts himself will be humbled.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is the shape of the entire Christian life, not a single scene at a tomb.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: What we are seeing here is that every believer at some point stands where Lazarus stood, alive but still bound.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And every believer is called again and again to stand where those disciples stood, kneeling down, hands on someone else's wrappings, doing the humble and repeated work of helping another person walk free.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then John tells us in the verses that follow that many of the Jews who had come to see Mary believed in Jesus because of what they had witnessed.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same miracle and same power, but only some believe.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: While others went straight to the Pharisees to report what had happened and again saw the same miracle with the same power, but betrayed him.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the sharpest evidence in the whole gospel that witnessing God's revelations is not the same as perceiving them.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Witnessing God's revelations is not the same as perceiving them.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that glory in John's gospel has never been raw, unexplained power on display.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: John told us in the prologue that we have seen his glory full of grace and truth.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what that means is that glory rightly perceived is glory recognized as love.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now the men who ran to the Pharisees saw the same power everyone else saw, but what they rejected was the person behind it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: They witnessed love, embodied, standing at a tomb, and they answered it with a plot to kill him.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then we read in verses 45 to 54, it says, So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, What are we to do?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: For this man performs many signs.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: He did not say this for his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with his disciples.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, watch the response of the council here.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's not worship, wonder, or fear.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They say, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: What happened here is that they witnessed the single greatest display of God's power in the entire gospel, and their conclusion was that he was a threat.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that sentence is still spoken today in different words.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Every time someone hears the claim that God is love and looks at the suffering in the world and decides that claim cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: They say, if we let this go on, that is the same voice happening again.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus told his disciples plainly that this hatred would not stop with him.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: He says, If this world hated me, it will hate you also.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's from John chapter 15.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: The world that could not tolerate the claim of his goodness cannot tolerate it in his people either.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: When we affirm that God is good in the middle of a suffering world, we are not saying the suffering does not matter or that God is striking people down moment by moment for what they have done.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: What we are actually saying goes back to Genesis 3, back to the authority we stole.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to be the ones who decided good and evil for ourselves.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And every generation since has been exercising exactly that stolen authority, deciding for itself what is good without the wisdom to see the full weight of that decision.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: The examples are all around us.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: We spray the fields to grow more food and the poison finds its way into our own bodies.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: We build the car to carry us further and faster, and the road takes lives it was never meant to take.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: We go to war sometimes to defend, sometimes to conquer.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And either way, the dead do not come back.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: None of that is evil in its intention, but all of it produces suffering because the wisdom required to wield that kind of power rightly was never ours to hold.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: I used to tell my own kids something when they were growing up.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, you are forgiven, but you still have to deal with the repercussions of what you did.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I never abandoned them in that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I walked with them through it faithfully every time.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But there was another side to that love, one I talked about years ago in our study through Ephesians.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I said, My love was not only about making sure they faced what they had done.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was also about making sure that whoever they had wronged did not get to demand more from them than was actually required.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: What they learned was that love does not erase the repercussions, but love stands over them on both sides and makes sure that what happens next is just.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: That is what is happening in this world at a scale I cannot fully picture but can trust completely.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity wanted the authority to decide good and evil for itself, and God has given us exactly what we asked for.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the world we have built with that stolen authority is producing exactly what you would expect.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: That is the repercussion, and God does not remove it.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: But his love does not stop there.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: His justice governs both sides of every account this world has ever opened.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Those who have done evil will answer for it fully, and those who have suffered evil will not be told their suffering did not matter.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Revelation 21:4 is not merely about comfort.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It is the promise that the ledger will be closed rightly when it says, Every tear will be accounted for, and every wrong will be made right by the one with the wisdom and the standing to close it justly.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is one more piece to this that we need to understand before we move on.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Paul tells us in Romans 13 that governing authorities are established by God, not perfect people, not always faithful people, but instituted for our good, to restrain the evil we are capable of.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Peter says nearly the same thing, and this is also what Israel was meant to be for to the nations.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is what the church is meant to be in the world today.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And just as Israel's own leaders were often corrupt, and just as some shepherds over Christ's church are wolves who have crept in to devour rather than to serve, that does not mean the restraint has failed everywhere.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: There still remain those genuinely.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Set in place by God, sustaining a measure of order and goodness against the tide of what we would otherwise do to ourselves.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I taught on this in more depth back in our season one study of Revelation, and I would point you there if you want to go further.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And here is a short version of how I read it.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: There comes a period described in that book where God, as part of his justice, hands the full reins fully back to man.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not the Spirit's absence, but his restraining hand lifted, so the world finally receives exactly what it has always wanted.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Full, unrestrained self-rule.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in a matter of a few short years, humanity brings itself to the very brink of its own destruction.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: That is not God punishing the world with some foreign disaster.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is the world finally ungoverned, reaping in full what it has always been capable of sowing.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, in his mercy, God does not allow it to finish itself off.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: The wickedness in the human heart did not arrive from outside of us.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It has never left us since the garden.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is what we stole, still working itself out generation after generation, exactly as you would expect stolen and misused authority to produce.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And God, in his justice, has let us deal with the repercussions of that theft.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: But in his grace, in a love that had every right to leave us in what we chose, but he refused to, instead, he has redeemed us, not because we deserved it, but because he loves what he made enough to enter the wreckage himself and make it right.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that God's love meets a suffering world not as its author, but as its redeemer, walking through the very repercussions we created at the highest possible cost to himself.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there's still more to see yet in how far that redemption actually reaches.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's look again at what happens in the middle of that plotting.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Caiaphas, the high priest, says, It is better that one man die for the people than the whole nation perish.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And John tells us something remarkable here.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: He says he did not say this on his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what we see is that a man actively engineering the murder of the Son of God speaks without knowing it, one of the clearest statements of the gospel in the entire New Testament.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: He describes penal substitution, one dying in place of many, with total accuracy, but he rejects in the very same breath the identity of the one he is describing it about, and the truth passing through his own mouth.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: He gets the doctrine exactly right and the person catastrophically wrong.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now the second half of this prophecy reaches further than he could have meant it, not only for that nation, but to gather into one the scattered children of God.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Ezekiel said the same thing about the coming shepherd centuries earlier when he said, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out and gather them from every country.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Caiaphas plotting a murder to protect his own position speaks directly into that ancient promise.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what we see is that the men trying to stop the gathering of God's people become the very occasion for that gathering to begin.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what we see is that God did not lose control of evil in that room.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: He was sovereign over what we stole from him, even there, taking the very rebellion aimed at silencing his son and turning it into the mechanism of salvation for everyone that son came to save.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, let me bring this whole three-part series home for us.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: We open part two with a hard truth that even in the new heavens and the new earth, even when every tear is wiped away, the evil that happened still happened.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is not erased from having occurred.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Revelation 21:4 does not say the former things never took place.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: It says they have passed away, ended finally in their power to wound.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: And John 16, 21 gives us the same distinction when Jesus says, When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that a woman does not forget the labor happened.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: The anguish simply no longer holds power over her in light of what it produced.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this cannot be argued into anyone.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: It can only be trusted.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: The way Martha had to trust Jesus before she saw what he was about to do.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that Hebrews 11 tells us faith is the assurance of things hoped for and conviction of things not seen.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have been given the knowledge.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Romans 8 28, Revelation 21 4, without yet having the capacity to fully fathom it, because fathoming requires arrival, and we have not arrived.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says in Romans 8 that hope that is seen is not hope.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: We wait for what we do not see with patience.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1 Corinthians, he tells us that what God has prepared exceeds not just our experience but our imagination.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot dream our way to accuracy.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: We can only receive it as a promise.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: But we are not without proof that the pattern is real.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Job says, After everything was finally restored, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And no lingering grief is recorded after that encounter.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brother, stands before them years later and says, You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is no rehearsal of the injustice done to him, only a reunion with the ones who did him wrong.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Lazarus, the very man at the center of these three episodes, walks out of that tomb and by the next chapter is simply reclining at a table in Jesus' honor, as though four days in a grave were not just a fact of his biography rather than an open wound.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that in every case, what was faith becomes sight, and what was grief becomes celebration.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Not because the pain was erased from having happened, but because what it was building toward was finally received.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And once received, it is no longer faith, it is sight.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the delay was real, and the grief was real, and the resurrection is real.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Both the one Lazarus walked out of and the one every believer who trusts in him is promised.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Present and future, both already true, both held in the hands of the one who wept at the tomb while already holding the power to empty it.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Father, thank you that you do not leave us in the repercussions we created for ourselves, and thank you that your love stands over both sides of every account this world has opened, and that your justice will one day close every one of them rightly.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you that the grief we carry now is not permanent, even though we cannot yet fathom what it will feel like when it lifts.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Give us the faith to trust what we have been told until the day we finally see it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to thank you again for joining us today and through this series, and I hope it has truly helped you take a step closer in knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know him.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if anything in this message or in this three-part series has resonated with you, if you have any questions or comments, please visit us at thetaway.faith.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: There you can send us an email or you can click on the text us link in the episode description, as we would truly love to hear from you.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in our next episode, we move into John chapter 12 as Passover approaches, and Jesus is anointed for burial in the very town where Lazarus, now alive, sits at the table.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.