Resurrection and Life

Order of Service

• Announcements
• Opening Hymn — Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
• Call to Worship — Isaiah 9:2-7
• Hymn — Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin
• Assurance of Pardon
• Baptism of Macy All
• Prayer
• Hymn of Response — Marvelous Grace of Our Loving Lord
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn of Preparation — O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
• Sermon
• Closing Hymn — Just As I Am
• Benediction
• Gloria Patri

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Sermon Title: Resurrection and Life

Scripture: John 11:1-27

I. The Purpose of the Resurrection and the Life

A. Lazarus's illness is explicitly said to be "for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it" (John 11:4), paralleling the healing of the man born blind in John 9

B. Jesus deliberately waits two days before going to Bethany, arriving when Lazarus has been dead four days

1. First-century Jewish belief held that the soul lingered near the grave for three days; by the fourth day all hope of natural restoration was considered lost
2. Jesus deliberately acts at the point of greatest hopelessness to maximize the display of God's glory — as with Gideon's 300 (Judges 7), God is seen to get the glory precisely when human resources are exhausted

C. Jesus describes Lazarus as merely "asleep" (John 11:11), using the word from which the English "cemetery" (a Christian's place of sleep) is derived

1. This points forward to Christ's own resurrection — and to ours: those who die in the Lord are simply sleeping, awaiting the day of bodily resurrection
2. The raising of Lazarus is the seventh and final miraculous sign in John 1–11, strategically placed as Jesus turns toward Jerusalem and the cross, signposting that Good Friday will give way to Resurrection Sunday

II. The Person Who Is the Resurrection and the Life

A. Two predominant views of resurrection existed within first-century Judaism

1. The Sadducees denied any resurrection
2. The Pharisees affirmed a future bodily resurrection at the end of the age — an eschatological Last Day event; this is the view Martha holds in John 11:24

B. Jesus does not deny the future resurrection but goes radically further: "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25) — present tense

1. He is not merely the agent who brings resurrection; he is resurrection and life in his own person
2. The raising of Lazarus is a sign pointing beyond itself — Lazarus will die again; Jesus rises never to taste death again

C. Jesus is the eschatological Last Day reality breaking into the present

1. Richard Gaffin (Westminster Theological Seminary), commenting on 1 Corinthians 15: "In his resurrection, the resurrection harvest that belongs to the end of history is already visible. His resurrection is the guarantee of the future bodily resurrection of believers — not simply as a bare sign but as the actual beginning of the general, epochal event."
2. To be united to Christ by faith means that though you die, yet shall you live — Christ tasted the full curse of sin at Calvary and rose victorious, so that believers will never experience death as the manifestation of God's curse
3. The challenge of John 11:25-26: "Do you believe this?" — not merely a future hope but a present reality for those united to the risen Christ

III. The Partakers of the Resurrection and the Life

A. Thomas, often remembered only as "doubting Thomas," here exemplifies cross-bearing faith

1. Not fully understanding what Jesus is doing, he nevertheless says "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (John 11:16) — the response of a disciple called to take up the cross and follow Christ

B. Martha, often remembered negatively from Luke 10:38-42, here runs to meet Jesus and makes the great confession

1. "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world" (John 11:27) — echoing Peter's confession, the rock on which Christ builds his church
2. It is Martha, not Mary, who stands firmly on the good confession here

C. The faith being deepened here is not conversion faith (as with the man born blind in John 9:35) but the ongoing, deepening faith of those already in Christ

1. Leon Morris: "There are new depths of faith to be plumbed, new heights of faith to be scaled. The raising of Lazarus would provide their faith a content that it did not have before."
2. Believers live on this side of the cross and the empty tomb — a privilege the Old Testament saints longed for but did not receive (Matthew 13:17; Hebrews 11:39-40)
3. We are to live as raised-up men and women in Christ, running the race in the light of resurrection life and not wasting the privilege of living after the first fruits of the resurrection harvest have been raised