---

The man Jesus loved lay there on his bed dying. Now, I emphasize that, because there used to be a great deal of thinking about God's relation to those that love Him and whom He loves — a great deal of teaching in the Christian Church that counted itself most orthodox, and which was, indeed, deadly heresy, coarse, materialistic, despicable, misunderstanding the ideal grandeur of the Bible promises. Some of you know the sort of thing that used to prevail — the idea that God's saints should be exceptionally favoured, the sun would shine on their plot of corn, and it would not shine on the plot of corn of the bad man; their ships would not sink at sea, their children would not catch infectious diseases, God would pamper them, exempt them from bearing their part in the world's great battle, with hardness and toil of labour, with struggle and attainment and achievement. It came of a very despicable conception of what a father can do for a child, as if the best thing for a father to do for his son was to pet and indulge him, and save him all bodily struggle and all difficulties, instead of giving him a life of discipline. As if a general in the army would, because of his faltering heart, refuse to let his son take the post of danger, as if he would not rather wish for that son — ay, with a great pang in his own soul — that he should be the bravest, the most daring, the one most exposed to the deadliest hazard. Ah, we have got to recognize that we whom God loves may be sick and dying, and yet God does love us. Lazarus was loved by Jesus, yet he whom Jesus loved was sick and dying. Ah, and there is a still more poisonous difficulty in that materialistic, that worldly way of looking at God's love; that horrible, revolting misjudgment that Christ condemned, crushed with indignation when it confronted Him. "The men on whom the tower of Siloam fell must have been sinners worse than us on whom it did not fall." Never, never! The great government of the world is not made up of patches and strokes of anger and outbursts of weak indulgence. The world is God's great workshop, God's great battlefield. These have their places. Here a storm of bullets fall, and brave and good men as well as cowards fall before it. You mistake if you try to forestall God's judgments, God's verdict on the last great day of reckoning. Still we have got the fact that Christ does not interpose to prevent death, that Christ does not hinder those dearest to Him from bearing their share of life's sicknesses and sufferings, that God Himself suffers death to go on, apparently wielding an undisputed sway over human existence. Is not that true of our world today? The best of you Christians, when death comes to your own homes, do you manage to sing the songs of triumph right away? Well, you are very wonderful saints if you do. If you do not, perhaps you say, "If God is in this world, how comes that dark enigma of death?" And others of you grip hold of your faith, but yet your heart cries out against it. You believe that God is good, but has He been quite good to you? Like Martha, you feel as if you had some doubt; you feel bound in your prayers; you say, "O God, I do not mean to reproach Thee;" weak, sinful, if you will, yet the sign of a true follower of the Christ. And then the enemies of Christ, the worldlings all about in this earth of ours, as they look upon death's ravages, they are saying: "If there were a God, if there were a Father, if there were a great heart that could love, why does not He show it?" Now, I said to you that at first it looks as if nothing but evil came of God's delay to interpose against death; but when you look a little deeper, I think you begin to discover an infinitely greater good and benefit come out of that evil. I must very briefly, very rapidly, trace to you in the story, and you can parallel it in the life of yourselves, that discipline of goodness there is in God's refraining from checking sickness and death. Christ said the end of it is first of all death, but that is not the termination. Through death this sickness, this struggle of doubt and faith, should end in the glory of God. That tremendous miracle compelled the rulers of Jerusalem to resolve on and carry out His death. That miracle of Lazarus's resurrection gave to the faith of the disciples and of Christ's followers a strength of clinging attachment that carried them through the eclipse of their belief when they saw Him die on Calvary. Now, what would you say? Was it cruel of Christ to allow His friend Lazarus, His dear friends Mary and Martha, to go through that period of suspense, of anxiety, of sickness, of death, and of the grave, that they might do one of the great deeds in bringing in the world's Redeemer "Ah" you say "you have still got to show God's goodness and kindness to me individually. My death may be for God's glory, it may be for the good of others; but how about me and those who mourn?" Well, now, look at it. You must get to the end of the story before you venture to judge the measure, the worth of God's goodness. After all, was that period of sickness and death unmitigated gloom, and horror, and agony? Oh, I put it to you, men and women, who have passed through it, watching by the death of dear father or mother that loved the Lord and loved you, and whom you loved — dark, and sore, and painful enough at the time; but oh, if I called you to speak out, would you not say it was one of the most sacred periods of your life — the unspeakable tenderness, the sweet, clinging love, the untiring service, the grateful responses, the sacredness that came into life? Ay, and when the tie was snapped, the new tenderness that you gave to the friends that are left, the new pledge binding you to heaven, and to hope for it, and long for it — death is not all an evil to our eyes. Death cannot ultimately be an evil, since it is universal — the consummation, climax, crown, of every human life. It is going home to one's Father. Yes, but you want the guarantee that death is not the end, and that day it was right and lawful for Christ to give it to anticipate the last great day, when in one unbroken army, radiant and resplendent, shining like jewels in a crown, He shall bring from the dark grave all that loved Him, fought for Him, and were loyal to Him on the road, and went down into the dark waters singly one by one, in circumstances of ignominy often, and yet dying with Christ within them, the Resurrection and the Life. Ah, that great grand vindication of God and interpretation of this world's enigma was made clear that day when Christ called Lazarus back and gave him alive to his sisters in the sight of His doubting disciples, in the sight of those sneering enemies.

(W. G. Elmslie, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

WEB: So Jesus said to them plainly then, "Lazarus is dead.