Death defeated! (11:1-57)

Background

1) Where was Jesus when Lazarus fell ill?

At the site where He had originally been baptised by John (10:40); but where was that? John had ministered up and down the whole Jordan valley. Most believe that his primary venue was at the southern end of the Jordan valley, nearest to Judaea & Jerusalem - since that’s where people are said to have flocked from, to hear him. In some translations this is referred to as ‘Bethany beyond Jordan', to distinguish it from the other Bethany where Lazarus’s family lived. In other versions, it’s called Bethabara.  But there is another possibility, a place called Battanea, just east of where the Jordan emerges from Lake Galilee. This is significant because the former was one day’s journey from Jerusalem, whereas the latter was a four-day trek.

If it was Bethabara, then the sisters’ message saying Lazarus was seriously ill, would have taken a day to reach Jesus. He sent the messenger straight back with an encouraging response (v40), but He then waited two days before setting off back to Judaea. Given that that was another day’s journey, and He reached Bethany four days after Lazarus’s death, Lazarus must have died very soon after the women sent the messenger off. That would mean that Jesus said, “This sickness is not unto death”, after Lazarus had in fact already died; which seems odd. But on the other hand, it would explain why the sisters had hoped Jesus could reach them before Lazarus died.

On the other hand, if He was further north at Battanea, the messenger would have taken four days to reach Jesus, and four days to return with His reply. After waiting two days from sending the messenger back, Jesus realises supernaturally that Lazarus has just died, and persuades His disciples to return with Him despite the severe risk involved for all of them. His initial reply implying Lazarus was ill but not dead, rings more true in this scenario. But there’s still the issue of why He waited for Lazarus to die before setting off.

2). Jewish beliefs about death

In Jewish thinking, a person’s soul lurked near the body for three days after death, hoping to be able to return to it. But on day four, the face of the dead man began to change colour as decay progressed: and at that point the soul gave up hoping and departed. For these first three days, mourners did lots of weeping and wailing because the soul would be watching to see who had really loved them.

Bodies had to be buried outside the community, since tombs were considered unclean. Not every town had a communal graveyard and anyway, they were mainly for the poor. Many families would have a grave cut into the rock, where over the years a number of family members would be buried. Where they were near roads or paths, graves were whitewashed every spring to ensure that pilgrims coming up to Passover would not accidentally walk over them. It seems Jesus didn't know where Mary & Martha had buried Lazarus (v34) though they had a rock-cut tomb with the traditional large millstone to seal it ((v38).

On the day someone died, the nearest-and-dearest would tear their inner garment from the neck downwards a handsbreadth, presumably to express that their heart had been torn apart by the loss. They would visit the grave repeatedly for three days. For the first week they would not wash, anoint themselves, or wear shoes. Studying, and business of any kind, were also forbidden. Mourning continued for a month and then they were supposed to sew up the rip they had made, signifying that mourning was now over.

Jesus had previously raised the son of the ‘widow of Nain’ to life, just as he was about to be buried: likewise, the daughter of the synagogue ruler at Capernaum. But to heal a man who’d been dead four days, whose soul had left and whose body stank of death and decay, was of a different order of magnitude as a miracle. The fact that Martha and Mary had so many good friends in Jerusalem, meant that there were a multitude of mourners to witness this astonishing event: and at four days after death, no-one could claim this was a fake or a mere fainting attack!

3) Bethany’s identity as ‘House of affliction’

A Jew leaving Jerusalem for Jericho would have first come down from the Temple to the Kidron Valley, then climbed up the Mount of Olives, past Gethsemane and then through a huge graveyard. It is estimated that 150,000 Jews have been buried there over the last three thousand years, including some prominent rabbis and even David’s son Absalom. Many of the tombs are cut into the rock, with a stone disk rolled across the entrance.

Coming over the brow of the hill, the traveller would then descend to Bethany, which was around one-and-a-half miles from Jerusalem.

Galileans coming to the feasts, used this road in the other direction.  Having crossed the Jordan and come down its eastern bank to avoid Samaritan attacks, they would then cross back at Jericho and walk up from there to Jerusalem. Bethany was thus their last stopover before entering the city. Archaeologists have discovered many ossuaries (boxes of bones) there, from Jesus’s time, with inscriptions of Galilean names. This suggests that not all the pilgrims made it(!) or else that many Galileans had settled there. Interestingly, while Jesus’s first recorded encounter with Mary and Martha is in Galilee, they later seem to have moved to Bethany; and Jesus stayed with them regularly during his visits to Jerusalem. Specifically, we know that He stayed with them during the week before the crucifixion, and He set off from there the day He entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. We also know that when He ascended, it was from Bethany! (Lk 24:50-53)

Bethany also held a hospice for the sick and dying, run by the Essene sect. This sect, better known for their community at Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found, believed that Jerusalem and the Temple had become defiled - and needed to be kept ceremonially clean from the defilement of illness and death. So they identified three places (one of which was Bethany) around Jerusalem where they could care for such people but also keep them out of the city. This may explain why, soon after Lazarus’s resurrection, a banquet in His honour was held at the house of ‘Simon the Leper’ (Matt 26:6,7). Normally lepers were kept well away from all human society, and were considered very unclean.

To this day, Lazarus's tomb still exists, though with a mosque built over it. There is even a two-thousand-year-old house which claims to be that of Martha and Mary! And the town now has the Arabic name, ‘El Azariyah’, commemorating the amazing event that happened there.

4) The family’s character and social standing

Jesus’s first encounter with this family is recorded in Lk 10:38-42. You will remember that Mary sat at Jesus’s feet hanging on His every word, whilst her elder sister Martha got more and more frustrated at having to cope with all the catering alone. Everything we are about to read, fits with their characters. Martha’s the practical one who sets out to meet Jesus before He is surrounded by mourners. Mary prostrates herself, sobbing, at Jesus’s feet.

Bethany’s name is now thought to mean ‘House of affliction’: and overall, the picture that emerges is of a town given to caring for the sick, the destitute, and pilgrims. If Mary, Martha and Lazarus moved there from Galilee to be involved in such work, that would explain why they were seemingly held in high esteem by many Jerusalemites.

Whilst they may have been self-sacrificial in their role as a family, seemingly they were not poor themselves. Mary owned a jar of ointment worth a year’s wages, and Martha ran the catering for the banquet at Simon’s house! Judas’s objection to Mary's ‘wasting’ this on Jesus, is the only time we hear of the poor being mentioned in the gospels; and Jesus’s response that ‘The poor are always with you’ would fit well with the town’s role as an almshouse for Jerusalem (Mark 14:5-7; Matt 26:8–11; John 12:4–6).

As we read on into John 12, we find Mary - as usual for her - at Jesus’s feet, anointing Him for burial. She alone has realised that Lazarus’s resurrection is going to cost Jesus’s life: it representing the last straw for the Sanhedrin, and leading to their formal decision to kill Him.

The following day He would ride down through the graves on the Mount of Olives, coming as the Lord of Life and Death to the city where He was to be crucified.

Lazarus seriously ill, his sisters send for Jesus: (11:1-16)

John starts his account by pointing out the link to the next chapter: Mary is the one who was to anoint Jesus’s feet with ultra-costly essential oil of a honeysuckle variety. John-the-Baptist had counted himself unworthy to undo the buckle of Jesus’s sandals: but Mary loved Jesus so much she was willing to use her long tresses to wipe away the dirt from his feet.

Mary knew Jesus loved her brother, and counted on that drawing Him back to Bethany to heal Lazarus - even though she must have known how dangerous that was for Him. She must have been desperate, to ask Jesus to take the risk. It seems both she and Martha had faith that Jesus could heal their brother, but only if He (Jesus) came in person.

If we believe that Jesus was in Bethabara, it took the messenger a days’ journey to reach Jesus. Jesus responded with a message that seemed reassuring: Lazarus’s illness wouldn’t end in death, but rather would bring glory to God and to Jesus Himself. But by the time the messenger arrived back, Lazarus had already died: in fact, he’d died the same day the messenger was sent off. Had Jesus got it wrong, and given a false prophecy? The sisters’ trust must have been shaken. Worse still, Jesus didn't arrive for another two days: was His successful mission in Bethabara more important to Him than their brother’s life?

If on the other hand, Jesus was in Battanea, further north, it would have taken the messenger four days to get there, then another four days to return. Meantime Lazarus's condition was deteriorating, and two days before the messenger returned, he'd died. Jesus, realising supernaturally that Lazarus had died, set off and arrived two days after the messenger. So the challenge to the sisters’ faith was just as great.

(When someone first comes to Christ, they often experience a ‘honeymoon period’ when God answers their prayers frequently and everything is wonderful. But then He starts to test and stretch their faith, to differentiate between the faith of sel-interest and the faith that comes from a deep love of God. We see this particularly clearly in the Old Testament account of Job. He often does this by making us wait for His answers, as in this case.)

But John knew that Jesus loved the whole family deeply (v36): in fact, it was because of His love that He delayed coming (vss 5,6). Having made the decision to return, He invited His team to come with Him. They thought He was crazy to take the risk (v8), but Jesus said they’d be safer with Him than staying back (vss 9,10). Just as there were (in Jewish timing) always twelve hours of daylight, when the sunlight showed up any trip hazards, so until God brought the day to an end, He was absolutely safe doing the Father's will. “This is kairos timing - seize the day!”

He then told them that Lazarus was asleep: the specific word used means lying down and resting, but can also be used of death. Since the message Jesus had sent back said that Lazarus’s illness would not end in death, they presumed that Jesus was saying that Lazarus was now on the road to recovery: but Jesus clarifies that actually, Lazarus is dead!

Strangely, Jesus says He’s glad for them that He hadn’t returned earlier. The extra delay will make the miracle all the greater, and develop their faith further.

Now they understand why Jesus is going, and that it’s important they go too. Thomas, who has forever been known as ‘Doubting Thomas’, is in this instance the one with the most courageous faith: even if it leads to his death, he wants to follow Jesus. Some think that maybe Peter wasn't with the group at the time, else he would have been the leader: but here it's Thomas who sets the example. Of course, in the end eleven of the Twelve were actually martyred for Jesus’s sake. Thomas later took the gospel to India, and after twenty years of missionary work there, he was was martyred in AD72 in Mylapore, near Madras.

Jesus stretches Martha’s faith, revealing more of His identity to her: (11:17-27)

Martha, ever the practical one, hears Jesus is nearing the town and leaves Mary and the mourners so she can meet Jesus in relative privacy.

As the account goes on, we watch Jesus stretching Martha’s faith step by step:-

Step 1:

“If you had been here my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” (v22). She has faith in Jesus’s ability to heal disease, but maybe not death, and not from a distance. But she also has great faith in Jesus’s ability as an intercessor. (In this, she is right; see v42!)  

Jesus challenges her by saying, “Your brother will rise again’.

Step 2:

“I know Lazarus will rise again in the last day.” (v24). She has faith in the eventual resurrection of the dead, but not in a here-and-now resurrection. Miracles have happened for other people in the past, and will happen for Lazarus in the distant future, but not for me, and not today.

Jesus challenges her with a new ‘I AM’ statement: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And he who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Much has been written about this statement, each sentence of which has hidden depths.

Jesus starts by underlining that He is God, with the ‘I AM’ formula that corresponds to the name ‘Yahweh’. But this also conveys to Martha, that resurrection life is not some remote event in eternity future: it is already present in His person, here and now, standing in front of her and talking with her. The Greek word for life used here is ‘zoe’, meaning spiritual life - as opposed to ‘psyche’ which means soul life, or ‘bios’ which means bodily life.

Jesus is, in His very Person, both the Resurrection and the Life. His voice has power to call the dead to life again both physically and spiritually. The Father, who is the source of all eternal life, has given Jesus this life too; and has also given Him the power to communicate it to those whom He chooses (5:25-29). “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (1:4). When someone believes in Jesus, God judges them as righteous in Christ, and they never have to experience the judgement of God: they have passed from death to life. This life becomes ours, by union with Christ (1John 5:11,12).

The Expositor's Bible puts it like this: He comforts her, not by pointing her to a far-off event which was vague and remote, but to His own living person, whom she knew, saw, and trusted. And He assured her that in Him were resurrection and life; that all, therefore, who belonged to Him were uninjured by death, and had in Him a present and continuous life. Christ, then, does not think of immortality as we do. The thought of immortality is with Him involved in, and absorbed by, the idea of life. Life is a present thing, and its continuance a matter of course. When life is full, and abundant, and glad, the present is enough, and past and future are unthought of. It is life, therefore, rather than immortality Christ speaks of; a present, not a future, good; an expansion of the nature now, and which necessarily carries with it the idea of permanence. Eternal life He defines, not as a future continuance to be measured by ages, but as a present life, to be measured by its depth. It is the quality, not the length, of life He looks at.

His second and third sentences have been interpreted in various ways; the important point is that the same words for life and death are used in both. The first sentence is easy enough: if a believer dies, as Lazarus just has, their physical death does not end their spiritual life, which goes on beyond the grave. The second sentence is harder, for Christians who have eternal life and believe in Jesus, do go on to suffer physical death. One can read it as saying, “Once saved, always saved” - but that involves reading death as referring to physical death in the first sentence, and spiritual death in the second. The only scenario where this sentence is obviously true, is if we compare believers who die before Jesus’ return with those who are still alive at that time.

However, the Greek word for death which Jesus uses here, is also used when Jesus refers to passing from death to life (5:24). So it seems it refers not only to physical death, but also spiritual: it is the opposite of zoe life. If zoe life means union and communion with God in Christ, then death means separation from the life of God.

Jesus challenges Martha, “Do you believe this?”

Step 3:

Martha responds, “Yes Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (v27). This is a remarkable theological statement which acknowledges both Jesus’s anointed Manhood, and His full divinity. But it hints at something more when she says, “.. who is to come into the world..” It suggests she has realised that Jesus will come again!  But theologians have two different Latin words for faith. ‘Assensus’ means theological assent to a doctrinal statement, whereas ‘fiducia’ means practical trust and reliance on a person. Martha’s faith seems as yet only of the former kind: it has not moved from her head to her heart!

Step 4:

When Jesus goes to open the tomb, she’s horrified: “Lord, his body will be so rotting that he’ll stink - it’s four days now, You know!” Jesus has to encourage her to hang on in faith: “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?”

Mary’s inconsolable grief moves Jesus to tears, but also to anger: (11:28-37)

Jesus now sends Martha to fetch Mary. Martha tries to do so covertly, so that Mary too could meet Jesus in privacy. But the mourners, who seem to have been more concerned about Mary than about Martha, realise she is leaving and follow her (vss 28-31).

As with Martha, there’s a note of regret - if not anger - in Mary’s comment, “Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died”. Unlike Martha, Mary doesn’t soften her remark with a statement of trust. How easily we blame God for apparently not answering our prayers in the way we want, when He has something better in mind!

Instead she falls at His feet weeping, which sets the mourners off into loud wailing. Jesus, fully aware He is about to raise Lazarus, nevertheless is distressed emotionally by this: He has deep compassion for her, being Himself ‘a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’. But He is also deeply angry at the effects of Adam’s sin on the whole human race, whereby ‘death came in’ in Eden. And perhaps He is angry too, that no-one has faith that He can raise Lazarus from the dead. Some of the bystanders see His grief and are touched by His empathy; but others mock the fact that though He healed the man born blind, He doesn’t seem to have been able to prevent Lazarus’s death.

Jesus asks where they’ve buried Lazarus, and they invite Him to ‘Come and see’. As He approaches the tomb, the full horror of death comes home, and He too starts to weep.  We can easily slip into thinking of God as distant and detached from human suffering - our own, and others’. Indeed for the Greeks in John’s time, it was a given that God could not be touched by human emotion but was impassive. Jesus, who declares the Father’s heart to us (1:18), shows us otherwise.

Jesus demonstrates the reality of eternal life, in raising Lazarus from the dead: (11:38-44)

Jesus’s anger remained, as He was shown to the grave. Lazarus’s tomb was just the same as the one He Himself would be buried in, a few weeks later: it had a large millstone rolled across the entrance to seal it. The reality, as Martha knew, was that inside there would be a stench. Lazarus had been dead four days, and in that climate decomposition would already be well underway. His soul would have departed - what could Jesus be thinking of, asking to enter and see the body?

As next of kin, Jesus would need her consent for the stone to be removed. He reminds her of His message: “Have faith, and you will see the glory of God”; and she tremblingly agrees. Some of the mourners step forwards and put their shoulders to the stone, exposing the interior darkness to the bright daylight. They step away, covering their faces as the stench floods out.

Jesus pauses and looks up to heaven, thanking His Father for always hearing His prayers; then explaining that His reason in doing so is so that all the bystanders will believe that He has been sent by God Himself. His prayer implies that He has previously prayed privately for Lazarus to be raised to life. He is in fact demonstrating what eternal life is: continual fellowship with the Father, utter dependence, doing only what He shows to do (5:19-20; 17:3; 1John 1:3).

God had given Him authority to raise the dead, and now He uses that authority, shouting “Lazarus, come out!” Kingdom authority always comes from above, through prayer, to surrendered hearts. As the song goes, ‘Kingdom authority flows from His throne, unto His own; His Kingdom reigns’. From His prayer, came assurance; from assurance, authority; and from authority, came that memorable command: "Lazarus, come out!”

During burials, after anointing with aromatic oils, bodies were laid with their feet at one end of a long sheet of linen. The rest of the sheet was then folded back over the face and body, back down to cover the feet. Then the arms, and legs, were bound together with thin strips of linen. Bound like this, it would have been very difficult to move.  Some think that Lazarus floated out of the tomb by another miracle; others, that he was able to shuffle. Either way, he needed to be untied, before he could be re-clothed and free to move again.

This miracle was witnessed by many Jews from Jerusalem (11:18,19; 12:9-11; 12:17-19), and had a dramatic effect in setting the stage for the Triumphal Entry a few days later. News of Lazarus's being raised meant there were hordes of people wanting to see Jesus.  He rode down the Mount of Olives, through the massive graveyard, proclaiming His kingship over life and death.

But whilst many ordinary people believed, as far as the Sadducees and Chief Priests were concerned, it sealed His fate. In their eyes, He had to be killed: but why were they so opposed?

The Sadducees’ hatred of the idea of resurrection life (11:45-57)

At one level, the reason for the Sadducees’ opposition is obvious. They were concerned that If Jesus’s influence continued growing, the Romans would step in to crush any possible rebellion. And in doing so, the Temple would be destroyed and their lives of priestly privilege would end. It was in their interest that this one man should die, rather than the whole nation (11:49-50). They began to actively work out how to achieve this.

Strangely enough, their decision had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. Eventually in AD70 Jerusalem was destroyed by a Roman army; the Temple was razed to the ground; and the Sadducees vanish from human history completely. Even their writings completely disappeared. As Jesus said, "He who seeks to save his own life, will lose it: whereas he who loses his life for My sake and the gospel, will keep it unto eternal life.”

In the short term, their decision meant that Lazarus’s newfound life was at the expense of Jesus’s imminent death. Jesus once again withdrew, but this time only twelve miles or so, to a village called Ephraim. The Passover was near, and He knew that His crucifixion was fast approaching.

However there is a deeper truth about why the Sadducees hated Him. Whereas the Pharisees hated Jesus’s teaching about grace, the Sadducees hated the idea of resurrection and eternal life.

Like the Pharisees, the Sadducees were a sect of Judaism that had arisen during and following the overthrow of the Greek Empire’s occupation of Israel, around one hundred and fifty years earlier. The Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes had deliberately defiled the Temple in order to destroy Jewish cultural identity and assimilate them into Greek culture.  But Judas Maccabeus led a revolt and eventually managed to drive them out and re-dedicate the Temple in 136 BC. This was the occasion marked each year in the Feast of Dedication, or Hanukah as it is now called.

During that conflict, the Pharisees had sought to preserve the nation by holding to traditions such as circumcision, Torah, shabbat etc. Many of them had given their lives to do so. The Sadducees however emphasised Temple worship as the heart of Jewish identity, thus elevating their own status as custodians of the Temple and all its sacrificial rituals.

In terms of their civic responsibilities, the Sadducees represented the state in international negotiations, collected taxes, equipped and led armies, and served as judges in domestic law courts. They held the majority of seats in the Sanhedrin, though the Pharisees were also represented.  With the Roman conquest of Jerusalem by Pompey the Great in 63 BC, the Sadducees worked in concert with magistrates of the Roman government and also the local Roman client-kings, the Herodians. What concerned the Sadducees the most was never allowing Rome an excuse to shut down the Temple, as Antiochus had sought to do. This led to criticism by other Jewish sects that the Sadducees were collaborators with the enemy. They were also unpopular because they used the need for ceremonially-pure sacrifices, to create a gravy train for themselves. They were the elite: wealthy, powerful, and driven by self-interest.

Doctrinally, the Sadducees were miles apart from the Pharisees. ‘The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things’ (Acts 23:6-9). They completely disbelieved in the spiritual realm, and thus would find the concept of resurrection or eternal lifeline.

They ridiculed Jesus’s teaching about the resurrection using the hypothetical example of a woman who had been married to seven different men. In the resurrection, whose wife would she be?! (Matt 22:23-32). Jesus replied using a text from the Torah which stated that God was still ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ long after their deaths. Since God is not God of the dead, they must have risen from the dead. In other words, the Patriarchs had eternal life!

Caiaphas was the fake High Priest appointed by Rome for that period; but Jesus, we know, is our true High Priest whose prayers on our behalf are always heard by His Father. Caiaphas was concerned to preserve his own life of privilege and wealth, whereas Jesus was about to lay down His life for us. Caiaphas was completely unaware that his words about Jesus actually represented unconscious prophecy: whereas Jesus lived in permanent intimate communion with the Father, and was about to be restored to His previous glory, sitting at the Father’s right hand.

Summing up

This sign was the climax of the series of miracles John selected, and it speaks powerfully about eternal life as being:-

• A life lived by faith in Christ and union with Him.

• A life of continuous communion with the Father in prayer, out of which comes assurance and authority.

• A life of self-sacrifice, contrary to the interests of our flesh-nature.

• A life of patience which withstands the tests of waiting.

• A life which can look beyond death with equanimity, indeed with joy - counting death no more than ‘falling asleep in Jesus’, to be wakened again by His beautiful, powerful voice calling us into our resurrection bodies, far more glorious than what Lazarus experienced!