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 that 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 flippancy, 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 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 comforts 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, that 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 might 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 amongst 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. This is what we have got to do, not to explain or defend ourselves, which is sorry work at best for anyone.
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 shadow 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. Ο death, where is thy sting? Ο 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.”
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.
(To be continued, if the Lord will)