Bethany: Part 4 and 5

 •  15 min. read  •  grade level: 6
 
We have already noticed the three prominent subjects presented to us in John 11; namely, our Lord’s own path with the Father; second, His profound sympathy with us; third, His grace in linking us with Himself, in so far as that is possible, in all His blessed work. He ever walked with God, in calm, unbroken communion. He walked in the most implicit obedience to the will of God, and was ruled in all things by His glory. He walked in the day, and stumbled not. The will of God was the light in which the perfect workman ever carried on His work. He found His only motive for action in the divine will—His only object in the divine glory. He came down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of the Father; and in doing that will, He ever found His meat and drink.
But His large, loving heart flowed out in perfect sympathy with human sorrow. This we see attested in the most striking manner as He moved, in company with the afflicted sisters, to the tomb of their brother. If any question had arisen in their hearts during the season of trial, in the absence of their Lord, it was abundantly answered; yea, we may add, completely demolished, by the manifestation of His deep and tender affection as He moved toward the spot where the beams of the divine glory were so soon to shine out over the dreary region of death.
We do not here dwell upon the interesting interview between the two sisters and their beloved Lord, so full of teaching—so illustrative of His perfect mode of dealing with His people in their varied measures of intelligence and communion. We pass at once to the inspired statement in verse 33 of our chapter. “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They say unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept.”
How wonderful! The Son of God groaned and wept. Let us never forget. He, though God over all, blessed forever; though the resurrection and the Life; though the Quickener of the dead; though the Conqueror of the grave; though on His way to deliver the body of His friend from the grasp of the enemy—sample of what He will soon do for all who belong to Him—yet, so perfectly did He enter into human sorrow, so completely did He take in all the terrible consequences of sin, all the misery and all the desolation of this sin-stricken world, all the dreadful pressure of the enemy’s power upon the human family—so thoroughly did the blessed One take in each and all of these things, that He groaned and wept—and those tears and groans emanated from the depths of a perfect human heart that felt as only a perfect human heart could feel—felt according to God—for every form of human sorrow and misery. Though perfectly exempt in His own divine Person from sin and all its consequences, yea, because exempt, He could in perfect grace enter into it all, and make His own of it, as only He could do.
“Jesus wept”! Wondrous, significant, suggestive fact! He wept, not for Himself, but for others. He wept with them. Mary wept. The Jews wept. All this is easily grasped and understood. But that Jesus should weep reveals a mystery which no created intelligence can ever fathom. It was divine compassion weeping through human eyes over the desolation which sin had caused in this poor world, weeping in sympathy with those whose hearts had been crushed by the rude hand of death.
Let all who are in sorrow remember this. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. His circumstances are changed, but His heart is not. His position is different, but His sympathy is the same. “We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). There is a perfect human heart on the throne of the Majesty of the heavens, and that heart sympathizes with us in all our sorrows, in all our trials, in all our infirmities, in all our pressure and exercise. He perfectly enters into it all. Yea, He gives Himself to each one of His beloved members here upon earth, as though He had only that one to look after.
How sweet and soothing to think of this! It is worth having a sorrow to be allowed to taste the preciousness of Christ’s sympathy. The sisters of Bethany might say, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” But if their brother had not died, they would not have seen Jesus weeping, or heard His deep groan of sympathy with them in their sorrow. And who would not say that it is better to have the sympathy of His heart with us in our sorrow, than the power of His hand in keeping or taking us out of it? Was it not much better, much higher, much more blessed, for the three witnesses in Daniel 3 to have the Son of God walking with them in the furnace, than to have escaped the furnace by the power of His hand? Unquestionably.
And thus it is in every case. We have ever to remember that this is not the day of Christ’s power. By-and-by He will take to Himself His great power, and reign. Then all our sufferings, all our trials, all our tribulations, will be over forever. The night of weeping will give place to the morning of joy, the morning without clouds, the morning that shall never know an evening. But now it is the time of Christ’s patience, the time of His precious sympathy; and the sense of this is most blessedly calculated to sustain the heart in passing through the deep waters of affliction.
And there are the deep waters of affliction. There are trials, sorrows, tribulations, and difficulties. And not only so, but our God means that we should feel them. His hand is in them for our real good, and for His glory. True, it is our privilege to be able to say, “We glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:3-5).
The Lord be praised for all this! But it is folly to deny that there are trials, sorrows, and tribulations of all sorts. Nor would our God have us insensible to them. Insensibility to them is folly; glorying in them is faith. The consciousness of Christ’s sympathy, and the intelligence of God’s object in all our afflictions, will enable us to rejoice in them; but to deny that there are afflictions, or that we ought to feel them, is simply absurd. God would not have us to be stoics; He leads us into deep waters, but He walks with us through them; and when His end is reached, He delivers us out of them, to our joy and His own everlasting praise.
“He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). At the first, Paul longed to be rid of the thorn in the flesh, whatever it was. He besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from him. But the thorn in the flesh was better than pride in the heart. It was better far to be afflicted than puffed up—better to have Christ’s sympathy with him in his temptation than the power of His hand in delivering him out of it.
PART 5
It is deeply touching to mark the two groans of our Lord as He moved toward the tomb of His friend. The first groan was called forth by the sight of the weeping mourners around Him. “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” The margin reads, “He troubled Himself.”
How precious is the thought of this to the crushed and sorrowing heart! The sight of human tears drew forth a groan from the loving, sympathizing, tender heart of the Son of God. Let all mourners remember this. Jesus did not rebuke Mary for weeping. He did not rally her on account of her sorrow. He did not tell her she ought not to feel — that she ought to be above everything of the sort. Ah! no; this would not be like Him. Some of us heartless folk talk in this style, but He knew better. He, though Son of God, was a real man; and hence, He felt as a man ought to feel; and He knew what man must feel while passing through this dark vale of tears. Some of us talk largely and loftily about being above nature, and not feeling the snapping of tender links, and much in that strain. But in this we are not wise. We are not in sympathy with the heart of the Man Christ Jesus. It is one thing to put forth, in heartless flippance, our transcendental theories, and it is quite another to pass through the deep waters of grief and desolation with a heart exercised according to God. It will generally be found that those of us who declaim the loudest against nature, prove ourselves to be just like other people, when called to meet bodily sickness, sorrow of heart, mental pressure, or pecuniary loss. The great point is to be real, and to go through the stern realities of actual life with a heart truly subject to God. Fine-drawn theories will not stand the test of real sorrow, trial, and difficulty; and nothing can be more absurd than to talk to people, with human hearts, about not feeling things. God means us to feel, and — precious, soothing, consolatory thought! — Jesus feels with us.
Let all the sons and daughters of sorrow remember these things for the consolation of their sorrowing hearts. “God... comforteth those that are cast down.” If we were never cast down, we should not know His precious ministry. A stoic does not need the comfort of God. It is worth having a broken heart to have it bound up by our most merciful High Priest.
“Jesus groaned”—“Jesus wept.” What power, what divine sweetness in these words! What a blank there would be were these words erased from the page of inspiration! Surely we could not do without them, and therefore our own most gracious God has, by His Spirit, penned these unspeakably precious words for the comfort and consolation of all who are called to tread the chamber of sorrow, or to stand at the grave of a friend.
But there was another groan evoked from the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of the Jews, when they heard His groan and saw His tears, could not help exclaiming, “Behold how He loved him!” But alas! others only found, in such affecting proofs of true and profound sympathy, occasion for the display of heartless skepticism—and skepticism is always perfectly heartless—”Some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?”
Here the poor human heart lets itself out in its ignorant reasonings. How little did these skeptics understand either the Person or the path of the Son of God! How could they appreciate the motives that actuated Him either in what He did, or in what He did not do? He opened the eyes of the blind, in order that “the works of God should be made manifest in him.” And He did not prevent the death of Lazarus, that God might be glorified thereby.
But what did they know about all this? Absolutely nothing. The blessed One moved at far too high an elevation to be within the ken of worldly religionists and skeptical reasoners. “The world knew Him not.” God understood and appreciated Him perfectly. This was enough. What were the thoughts of men to One who ever walked in calm communion with the Father? They were utterly incapable of forming a correct judgment, either of Himself or of His ways. They carried on their reasonings in that thick moral darkness in which they lived and moved and had their being.
Thus it is still. Human reasonings are begun, continued, and ended in the dark. Man reasons about God; reasons about Christ; reasons about Scripture; reasons about heaven, about hell, about eternity; about all sorts of things. But all his reasonings are worse—far worse—than worthless. Men are no more capable of understanding or appreciating the written Word now, than they were of understanding or appreciating the living Word when He was among them. Indeed, the two things must go together. As the living Word and the written Word are one, so to know the one we must know the other; but the natural, the unrenewed, the unconverted man knows neither. He is totally blind, in utter darkness, dead; and when he makes a religious profession, he is “twice dead” — dead in nature and dead in his religion. What are his thoughts, his reasonings, his conclusions worth? Nothing! they are perfectly baseless, totally false, thoroughly ruinous.
Nor is there the slightest use in arguing with unconverted people. It only tends to deceive them by leading them to suppose that they can argue. It is always the best way to deal solemnly with them as to their own moral condition before God. We do not find our Lord taking any notice of the unbelieving reasonings of those around Him. He simply heaves another groan and goes on His way. “Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.”
This second groan is deeply affecting. He groaned at first in sympathy with the mourners around Him. He groaned again over the hardness and dark unbelief of the human heart, and of the heart of Israel in particular. But, be it carefully noted, He does not attempt to explain His reasons for not having hindered the death of His friend, although He had opened the eyes of the blind.
Blessed, perfect Servant! It was no part of His business to explain or apologize. He had to work on in the current of the divine counsels, and for the promotion of the divine glory. He had to do the Father’s will, not explain Himself to those who could not possibly understand the explanation.
This is a most weighty point for us all. Some of us lose a quantity of time in argument, apology, and explanation, in cases where such things are not the least understood. We really do mischief. Better far pursue in holy calmness of spirit, singleness of eye, and decision of purpose, the path of duty. That is what we have got to do, not to explain or defend ourselves, which is sorry work at best for any one.
But we must pass for a moment to the tomb of Lazarus, and there see with what lovely grace our adorable Lord and Master sought to associate His servants with Himself in His work, in so far as that was possible; though, even here too, He is sadly intruded upon by the dark unbelief of the human heart. “Jesus said, Take ye away the stone.” This they could do, and hence He most graciously calls upon them to do it. It was all they could do, so far. But here unbelief breaks in and casts its dark shadows over the heart. “Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.”
And what of that? Could the humiliating process of decomposition, even if completed, stand for one moment in the way of Him who is the resurrection and the life? Impossible! Bring Him in, and all is clear and simple; leave Him out, and all is dark and impracticable. Let but the voice of the Son of God be heard, and death and corruption must vanish like the darkness of night before the beams of the rising sun. “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying, that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 0 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:51-57).
How magnificent! What are death, the grave, and decomposition in the presence of such power as this? Talk of being dead four days as a difficulty! Millions that have been moldering in the dust for thousands of years, shall spring up in a moment into life, immortality, and eternal glory at the voice of that blessed One to whom Martha ventured to offer her unbelieving and irrational suggestion.