Trust
Jesus in your death (vv.23-44)
It
is not enough to trust Jesus in our life; we must also trust Him in our death.
Dying on the cross, Jesus committed himself into the Father’s hands. Can
you do that when death approaches?
Jesus
only needed a tomb for a short while; there was not time nor need to carve an
epitaph on the stone. His word to Martha and us is far better. “I am the
resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall
live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (vv. 25-26).
The raising of Lazarus displays the awesome power of Christ over the forces
of evil, corruption and death.
Ours
is a death-exalting and death-avoiding culture. While rock bands sing about
death, we want the funeral director to disguise death. While some ask the physicians
to take every measure to keep a loved one inhumanely alive, others go to Oregon
and ask for medication to end life. Abortions kill the unwanted infant while
neonatal units fight to preserve the premature born. We can’t have it both
ways. Life is to be lived and death must be faced.
What
was Jesus’ attitude toward death? “He groaned in the spirit and was
troubled” (v. 33). The word groan “connotes anger …. Perhaps
it expressed his resentment against the ravages of death that had entered the
human world because of sin” (Merrell C. Tenney. The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary, Vol. 9, 1981, p. 119). We have His promise that “The last enemy
that will be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26).
Do
you believe this? “Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die”
(v.26). My mother-in-law believed it, and knew her husband did also. That faith,
while she lived, gave her the resources to tell the physicians to remove the
machinery and let her husband go. The Living Christ makes all the difference
in life and death.