Turn your Bibles this morning to John chapter 11, and I'm going to begin reading in verse 28 to set the stage and frame our study in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to Him.
Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in a place where Martha had met Him.
When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him,
Lord, if You'd been here, my brother would not have died.
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who were come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled.
And He said, where have You laid Him?
They said to Him, Lord, come and see.
And Jesus wept.
Several years ago, Pastor Saul and I were pondering the difference in some measure between the perspective that the disciples had of Jesus and the view that we have.
And Pastor Saul made this comment.
He said, the disciples didn't have any trouble grasping His humanity, but they struggled somewhat with His deity.
And we see illustrations of that over and over again.
While they would on occasion, and they did make various clear theological declarations as to their confidence.
Remember Peter?
You're the Christ.
Martha?
You're the Christ.
They could see Him in the flesh.
And they understood that He got tired and that He was thirsty on occasion.
And they watched Him walk the very pedestrian walk of people in that ancient day.
And they understood His humanity.
But the idea of Him being absolutely God was a stretch.
I mean, for Him to walk on the water blew Him away.
For Him to take care of the crowd, 5,000, remember?
Hey, what are we going to do about these?
Well, hey, 200 denarii wouldn't even touch the crowd.
Well, have them sit down.
What?
They didn't get that.
Now, we, on the other hand, we are in a different frame.
We can kind of get our head around the idea of His deity because it's abstract.
And no man has, I mean, other than the pictures we have in our little story Bibles, you know, about what Jesus looked like, which is not a truth.
You know, it's like, we get it.
He's God.
But the idea of His humanity, it's hard for us to get our head around.
And I have to tell you that faith calls us to believe fully in the humanity of Christ and in the deity of Christ and to put those things together.
It's complex.
We like things that are either or.
However, I watched a father the other day explaining to his son that he could either sit on his daddy's lap quietly or play with the others nicely.
Now, can you imagine when you explain to the choices in those kind of words, either or, to a young boy who's about 5 o'clock, 5 years old, what's his choice going to be?
What is it?
Oh, I can't think of anything more enjoyable than just sitting quietly on dad's lap while all the other kids are running around having a blast, right?
That was a master statement of diplomacy of the first order.
You know, it's like, you can choose this or choose that.
We're into either ors.
The both ends are far more complex.
And yet, when we think about the reality of who the Lord Jesus Christ is, I want you to understand that the God and Savior that we worship is both transcendent.
And by that, I mean he is high and lifted up.
And he is God.
But he is also one who is intimately and personally engaged with us.
And he knows us by our name.
And he loves us personally.
And we can hear that as an abstract statement.
And we can believe it as a check this box theological truth.
You know, yeah, I get that.
But what we're going to see this morning in this passage is we're going to see this illustration of the absolute deity and glory of Christ and the absolute humanity and tenderness of Christ.
So as we kind of work our way into this passage, allow me at least to lay out a little bit of the background for you.
Remember that chapter 11 begins by giving us a picture of the fact that Lazarus got sick.
And Mary and Martha, in their concern for their brother who they loved, decided the appropriate thing to do would be to send a servant over to talk to Jesus and tell him,
Hey, come on.
Your friend who you love is not well.
You need to be here.
And what happens, we find, is that when Jesus had the messenger come and say,
Lazarus is sick, instead of immediately rushing off, Jesus decides to wait two more days.
How many of you have ever found yourself waiting for God to do something that you knew was absolutely necessary and you wanted him to do it on your timeline?
How many of you are out there?
It's like, hey, do it now.
Do it right now.
And I can wait another minute and a half, but then do it now.
And God delays and God delays and God delays.
And you know what?
We forget what Jesus said in the very frame.
He says, you know, this is for the glory of God.
Jesus always cares for issues in a manner that brings glory to his Father.
In this case, he waited.
Then he says to his disciples, it's time for us to go.
And off they go.
And when he gets near to the town, to Bethany, out comes Martha, evidently having heard that Jesus was on the way.
And she meets him.
And I really appreciate the statement that she made to him there on the roadway.
She says, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
That was an expression of faith.
Jesus immediately steps beyond that.
And we find in the text that what he says is he reminds her of the reality of the resurrection.
And she says, yeah, yeah, I get that.
That's an Old Testament truth.
And I appreciate that.
And Jesus said, hey, listen, those who believe in me shall never die.
And he makes it undeniably clear that he indeed is the God and Savior of the world.
And Martha comes out with this beautiful, absolutely profound declaration of her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Look at it there just for a moment in verse 27.
She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.
You are the Savior.
You are God.
You are the one who is the answer to the Old Testament prophecies regarding your coming.
You are the fulfillment of all the promises that God has ordained for us to enjoy and rest in.
Immediately behind that, what we find next is this picture of the character, the heart, and the power of Christ
that is something that should be a great comfort and consolation to every one of us.
Now, I want you to look, first of all, as we break down the passage here in front of us, verses 28 down through 44,
first of all, the tenderness of our Savior.
What follows in the immediate verses that we're looking at here is that Jesus has finished his communication to Martha,
and immediately after her declaration of her faith, tremendous statement about who Christ is,
evidently what he did is sense the importance of the fact that Mary is not here.
Now, what do we know about Mary from a previous passage in Luke chapter 11?
What do we know about Mary?
The picture that we got in Luke chapter 11 is of Mary being a fairly sensitive spiritual person
and being interested in listening to Jesus and learning more about him,
and yet here, in this situation, she's not there.
Where is she?
We understand that she is back in the town of Bethany
and that she is engaged in grieving.
And so here is Jesus who says to Martha evidently,
Would you go and call your sister?
Now, Martha goes back to the village and goes in privately to talk to Mary,
and here is Mary grieving, Martha coming in, reaching in,
and doing something kind of quiet and tenderly.
And what is the display of is the spectacular love of Christ.
He senses Mary's deep need, and without embarrassment, without putting her on the spot,
he says, Martha, would you go and call her and have her come here to me privately?
It is evident that at this time in Martha's life, or Mary's life,
she was really pretty caught up with, just afflicted with the grief of what had happened
with the loss of her brother.
And here is Martha, knowing that Jesus had come.
She goes out to meet him, and the hope and ambition of her life is the person that she's gone to meet.
Mary there is grieving and overwhelmed.
She doesn't get it.
And so we have Jesus sensitive to her state
and sending Martha back to be an encouragement to her sister.
Now, how do we know that Mary is pretty well overwhelmed by grief at this moment?
There are a couple things.
Number one, you'll notice there in verse 31 that it says that
she was in the house being consoled by others.
There she was.
She was overwhelmed by grief at the moment,
and there were individuals in that house that were just comforting her.
Their presence was something that was a consolation,
kind of lifted her spirits,
and it was not so much the things that they were saying,
but just their presence.
It's interesting also in the latter part of verse 31
that when she does respond to the message that Martha brought
of Jesus calling her to come,
when she goes up to leave,
the people in the house assume that what she's doing
is going to the grave to weep.
Look at the verse there in verse 31.
They saw Mary rise quickly and go out.
They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Then, too, as we think about Mary's spirit,
we realize that when she finally does get to where Jesus is,
look in verse 32.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,
she fell at his feet, saying to him,
Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died.
Now, by the way,
that's exactly the same set of words that Martha used.
However, Martha took it a little further than that,
and we don't want to overplay that because of our conversation last week,
but we find here that as a result of this deep grief in Mary's life,
she wasn't able to look past the bubble of the moment,
and she was locked in on the loss
rather than the person whose presence she was in.
And I want you to recognize that what she evidently did
was return to weeping after this.
Now, it's undeniable that Mary was deeply grieved
by the death of her brother.
And the picture that I want you to get here
is a woman that is sobbing her eyes out
very verbally, very verbally, very loudly,
and she was engaged in a level of expression
that is a little atypical for our culture.
How many of you understand that the way you handle grief varies?
And it varies to a certain degree according to culture.
In the New Testament era,
the way in which the average Jewish community grieved
was to be very verbal.
In fact, if you had a little bit of money,
according to one of the articles I read,
the average person would at least hire two flutists
and one professional mourner.
Now, guess what a professional mourner was paid to do?
I mean, sit around and honk on a Kleenex,
just, no, that was not it.
I'm not going to give you a demonstration,
but I can tell you that professional mourners
made their money by being very, very emotional and loud.
And I'm not going to demonstrate Indian mourning.
I could do it, and some of you would probably leave
at the moment, but I got to tell you,
growing up on a mission field where we had tribal people
who were very much like the American Indian tribes in America,
and then we had Bengali people who were,
I tell you, they were maxed out in terms of emotion.
You could cut off a tribal person's arm,
and he wouldn't say a word.
It was like, go for it.
And a Bengali, you know, get a splinter,
and you would have thought the person was having,
you know, major surgery without anything going on.
I mean, they were very, very emotional.
Everything was a catastrophe.
And so here we have all these professionals,
these people came in,
and the appropriate thing to do was be pretty verbal and loud.
And here is Jesus in the middle of this.
He comes in.
He's sensitive.
He respects the grief that Martha and Mary
and the rest of them were engaged in,
and he responds with a tenderness in the middle of it.
Now, I want to say one little side note here.
One of the things we have a tendency of doing
is judging everyone else in our arena by how we respond.
How many of you understand what I just said?
I was watching.
How many of you noticed I turn around and watch you guys sing?
Okay.
Now, here's what I don't particularly take pleasure in.
It's someone sitting like this.
I figure you may not know the words to the song,
or you may not be happy in Jesus.
That I can't change.
But what I do, well, that's the Holy Spirit's got to do that.
But here's what I see a variety of people.
Some people are got their hands up and pretty enthusiastic,
and other people are singing along.
But, you know, they grew up in a home where if you went like this,
it was called dancing, and you're going to get stoned.
And so it's like, you know, don't be doing that.
You know, it's like you move a little bit more than that, bang, you know,
you get nailed.
You know what?
God puts differences together.
And so be careful that you don't bring your prejudicial perspective of how much you should
grieve to the table when you listen to other people going through the process of dealing
with death.
In that culture, there was a lot of noise.
There was a lot of participation.
And so we know quite obviously that Mary was deeply worked up.
Now, the thing that is really significant here is not that Mary was deeply moved,
not even that she was deeply disappointed by the fact that Jesus hadn't arrived on time.
The thing that is really striking is what we find there in verse 33,
and I want you to look at it just for a moment.
Let me read it.
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping,
he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
Now, what is being said here?
It's interesting when you read a variety of commentaries, they pick up on the fact,
this word's only used three times in the Scriptures.
And when a word is only used three times in the Scriptures, guess what?
It would be nice that they were all three used exactly the same way.
Because then you could kind of zero in and say, yeah, that's the idea that is there.
The word can use to be agitated.
The word can also be used to express a level of emotion in the moment and the circumstance.
And I believe that what we have here is Jesus, as he was looking at the emotional turmoil of people that he loved,
his spirit will weld up within him.
How many of you have on occasion heard a piece of news and just had it deeply affect you emotionally?
You ever had that happen?
I mean, it's kind of like something moved inside.
I remember, I think it was Friday evening, Dave Malone called me and told me about Kevin Carndine.
Ron and Judy used to go here before they moved out to Canal Winchester.
And they lived on Angaro, near to us.
And I remember just when Dave told me that Ron and Judy had lost their son.
Just the turnover inside my stomach.
And I want you to recognize that this passage here in verse 33 gives us an indication, I believe,
of Jesus just being deeply moved emotionally by the heartache and the grief that Martha and Mary were enduring.
He's not talking about him being angry.
Now, how do I know that?
For one, in two other resurrections where he raised people from the dead,
there is no indication of his being angry with the amount of noise in the crowd,
and they're carrying on in the moment.
When he stopped the widow of Nain, remember, they're coming out of the city carrying the body,
and he said, guys, back up.
Calm down.
Don't be so upset.
You know, he doesn't do that.
And when he arrives in town, remember Jairus' daughter who had died,
and he comes into the city, the situation, and he says, she's sleeping.
Yeah, right.
And he doesn't scold them there either.
I think when you really stop and think about it,
when you find the same word used again in verse 38, look at it there in verse 38,
then Jesus deeply moved again.
It wasn't him getting angry a second time.
It was just the emotion of the moment.
And so what's the comfort of that?
Stop and think with me just for a moment and turn in your Bible.
Keep your finger there in John chapter 11.
But turn over to Hebrews chapter 4.
Hebrews chapter 4.
Who is our Savior?
He is the lover of our souls.
He knows our frame.
He knows that we are dust.
He is moved deeply by the things that affect us.
I want you to know this.
As you sit here this morning, there is not a one of you that is not aware of moments of heartache and suffering
where you're just, you're not certain how you're going to handle this.
And I want you to know that Jesus is sensitive to your frailty and he sympathizes with you with a genuine sympathy.
Look at Hebrews chapter 4, verse 14, or 15 rather.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
But what's the benefit of that?
That we have a high priest who is sympathetic with us.
Look at what it says in verse 16.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Does he know our frailty?
Does he know how many times you've fallen?
Does he know how weak you are?
Yes, he does.
And his heart is leaning towards you and he's interested in your well-being.
And here was Mary at the moment less perceptive, I think, fair to say, than Martha.
And she had been overwhelmed by grief, more so perhaps than Martha.
And yet instead of scolding Mary because of her weakness in the moment and saying,
Jesus didn't say to her, hey, listen, buck up.
Your brother's going to be out of the grave here in just a moment.
Relax.
No.
He is moved by it.
He is touched.
And I'm just struck when you really stop and think about it that here is the Lord Jesus.
While he is our supreme solution, he's also very sensitive to our struggle.
He knows what we're going through.
I think there's another proof of this sensitivity there in going back to the passage in John chapter 11.
And kind of look with me at verse 34 through 37.
He asks the question, so where have you laid him?
And they take him to the tomb.
And actually it is in front of the tomb that we find Jesus having another little bit of this emotion.
Okay.
He didn't actually cry at the tomb.
He wept before he got there.
And it's very interesting when you stop and look at verse 38.
It says that Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave and a stone that was laid against it.
So when you think about Jesus and his response to the difficulties of Mary and Martha,
what I want you to do is carry it over and recognize he has that level of sensitivity for you.
That's why, let me stop and go off on a little tangent here.
That's why, are you listening?
Because I think we need to pay careful attention to this.
That's why we as people who know the blessing of salvation should engage consistently with learning more about Christ.
How can you love someone you don't know?
Can't do it.
And investing your energy and your time in growing and understanding who Jesus is has a two-fold benefit to you.
Number one, 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 says this, that as we see him, we change to be more like him.
Number two, passage in 1 Peter 1, it says, whom having not seen we love, though now we see him not.
How do you love somebody you haven't seen?
Guess how?
You understand through the reading of the Scripture and applying it to your life,
this is my Savior, this is the lover of my soul, this is his sympathy and sensitivity to me,
and I am affected by that, and I grow in loving him.
And so you look at this passage and you find here is Jesus at the tomb,
or before he gets to the tomb, he cries.
Now, by the way, there's two different Greek words that are used here,
and just kind of play out on this so you understand it.
When Martha, when Mary was weeping, and when the Jews were weeping,
the word that is used there is for a loud, very, very,
do you understand that?
How many of you have ever been to a funeral where there is some pretty verbal sobbing?
Our culture doesn't do that very much.
It's like hip, hip.
I'll see him on the other side.
You know, it's like, okay.
But how many of you have been in a funeral where, I mean, it is just let it go.
Give him a box of Kleenex and just, you know, what?
Matthias, should we demonstrate this for them?
Sister, should we demonstrate for them?
No?
Okay.
So, when it says that Jesus wept, it is not talking about weeping like the Jews or weeping like Mary.
It's talking, actually the word that is used is talking about a person weeping that you would know
because there are tears running down their face.
That's it.
Huh?
Just emotion.
Not professional bellowing.
Just caught up in it.
And so, here is my Jesus, my Savior, the lover of my soul who I love to talk about,
who knows my weakness and is affected by it.
Now, let's look at another piece, and that's the power of our Savior.
There in John 11, verse 38, Jesus comes to the tomb, and he finds where the cave is and the stone laid against it.
And it tells us that he was again moved by the hold that death had on human life.
The passage tells us that he was deeply moved by this.
And here he is, the creator, the Savior.
In the face of death, he is affected by what he was seeing as the undeniable evidence of the judgment of God against sin.
I am struck by what we read in Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 11, where it says this,
that God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked.
There's no...
There's grief.
Why?
Because that's not what his purpose in creation was.
And we also read in Luke chapter 19, very interesting statement,
that Jesus wept over Jerusalem as he was coming upon the city because he knew the judgment that was in front of them.
So here is Christ at the tomb, affected by the emotion of the moment,
and we come to a very interesting thing there in verse 39.
Jesus said, take the stone away.
Why do you do that?
Stop and ask yourself the question, could he...
Question.
Could he have moved the stone with a word?
Yep.
Could he have done like a Power Rangers thing and just shot fire out of his...
Could he have done that?
Yes.
A stretch?
Not at all.
I mean, had fire come from heaven and consumed all kinds of things?
Yeah.
Could he have said, Lazarus, come out of the tomb.
And Lazarus, come...
Remember, how were people in the ancient world wrapped up for burial?
I'll get to that in a minute, so you're wondering.
He didn't come walking out like, you know, Frankenstein with bandages.
So Jesus says, roll back the stone.
What's the pushback from that?
Do you realize he's been four days dead?
He wasn't embalmed.
There was no refrigeration.
All of the above contribute to the smell test being an undeniable reality that dead has happened.
You got me?
How many of you sniff things in the back of the refrigerator?
If the stone had been rolled, I want you to understand, Martha was really concerned about what the takeaway from all that experience was going to be.
So, why did Jesus say, take the stone away?
Look at verse 40.
Jesus said to her, after this pushback, do you realize she's been four days dead?
Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?
So, where's the little bit of belief that takes place?
Huh?
What's Martha do?
All right, guys.
Roll it.
There they go.
Push the stone back, right?
And I got to tell you, your faith is going to have similar moments where you're put on the spot to act.
I was doing a little bit of background research on this idea of, and it's not every time that God calls us necessarily to act in advance of some spectacular work that he does,
but there are a lot of times that that happens.
Remember when the nation of Israel was told to cross, whether it was the Red Sea or the Jordan?
Did it all part in front of them hours in advance, and they got to kind of ponder the issue?
They walked down, and when they put their feet in the water, what happened?
Right?
A couple from John, you'll remember that the lame man was told what?
Take up your bed and walk.
And the blind man, remember?
Jesus put clay on his eyes, and he said, go wash.
And expect this, that there are going to be moments in your life where God calls you to act in faith ahead of you seeing all the evidence of the blessing that you're going to receive.
And so evidently what we find here is that the stone was rolled away, and the next thing we do is we see Jesus praying.
Look at verse 41.
So they took away the stone.
Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that...
By the way, are you paying attention to the text and notice the tense?
What does tense mean?
That you have heard me.
What's that tell us?
This business of Lazarus' resurrection had already been a request that Jesus had made, and the whole setting of this moment, something they already prayed about.
So why did Jesus pray out loud?
Verse 42.
I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing here that they may believe that you sent me.
So here is Jesus praying publicly and praying in a different tone, or I don't mean tone like sound, but praying with a different objective than some other indications of teaching that he gave.
Remember when Jesus said this?
When you pray, you are to pray where?
Privately.
You're not to go out banging a gong and clanging around and saying, Oh, Holy Father.
Sometimes people pray just to be heard to be elevated.
But there are other times that, and we see this in the life of Jesus, where the prayers that we pray to God are also instructive and informative to those who hear us.
How many of you have prayed the gospel as you're finishing up a little opportunity of sharing the sweetness of the truth and hope you have in Christ, and you'll say to the person who's pretty brain dead at the moment, Hey, do you mind if I pray with you?
And the person, well, okay, go ahead.
They're trying to get you out of the way.
So what do you do?
Lord, don't strike this guy with lightning.
Give him another chance.
You know what I mean?
I don't do that.
Some of you are going to send me an email.
But you slip it in, don't you?
Don't you slip it in?
Jesus has said, They're going to be listening, and so he prays.
Now, we get down to the next little part.
And what happens is here in verse 43,
When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.
And as I was studying and praying, I decided I wouldn't demonstrate what the word loud voice means,
because there's some of you that are taking a little premature rest.
And I wouldn't want to unnerve you, okay?
But Jesus was loud enough that everybody heard.
Now, you have to stop and get the picture of this.
Verse 44,
The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips.
So that you know the burial customs of the Jews,
they would take a cloth, a sheet,
that was basically double the length of the individual.
They would start at the feet,
wrap it up around,
the person's lying on the,
on the,
whatever it is,
bed or mat or whatever,
and they would scoot the sheet underneath them,
and then they would wrap it over the body,
across the head,
and they'd come back around the feet,
and tuck it back under the feet, okay?
Then they'd fold up the sides,
kind of like you do with aluminum foil,
when you're packing a thing of ribs or something like that.
You got that?
And then they would wind,
they would wind linen bandages around.
So it's kind of a,
you got it?
So I don't want you to get this idea that Lazarus just kind of strolled out.
I'm not,
I can't say with absolute certainty,
and I'm a little bit caught up in the fact that it says here,
the man who had died came out.
That doesn't guarantee that he actually came out like that.
I mean, can you imagine,
you go home,
wrap yourself,
don't do that.
But just imagine,
trying to hobble out of a grave.
How do you get off the stone?
I mean, you know,
wherever you are,
how do you get up?
You can't.
I think there's a little mini miracle that took place in getting the guy to the front of the tomb, right?
Okay?
I mean,
it must have been pretty spectacular for Lazarus to show up.
I mean,
Lazarus,
come out!
And,
oh,
there he is!
Pretty stunning.
Well,
then he says,
okay,
unbind him
and let him go.
So here are two closing thoughts I want you to hold on to this morning.
For one,
the creator and savior of the world is sympathetic to your sorrows.
And that ought to just be a comfort to you sitting here,
knowing as you do the heartaches and challenges of your life.
I mean,
one of the things that we are so incredibly blessed by is that the God who is the creator of this universe knows us personally and cares about us with a sympathy that is actually beyond our full comprehension.
He loves us.
And he hasn't changed his mind about us regardless of our frailty.
But there's another thing that I want you to hold on to.
He who has raised the dead can save the sinner.
And it's something that you need to put your arms around.
One of the things I got to tell you that is a blessing of going on Saturday mornings to go give oatmeal to homeless people is we're talking about individuals whose lives have been unbelievably marked by sinful,
hopeless,
miserable decisions over and over and over again.
And when I share the gospel with them and when others share the gospel with them,
I share the gospel with them without a moment's hesitation that the Lord of glory who can bring a man out of the tomb,
can raise the dead,
can save sinners like that.
How do I know that?
Because he saved me.
Because he found me in my brokenness and in my sin.
And I got to tell you this,
that if you are here this morning,
you who do not know Christ,
and I have no doubt there are some of you sitting here this morning that don't know him,
I got to tell you this,
there is no need to stay a slave to sin.
There is no need to be bound
in that hopelessness.
There is no need to stay in that condition of broken, unhappy, self-focused misery that is the natural outcome of being a person who is afflicted deeply by your sin.
Why do I say that?
Because the Lord Jesus who raises the dead can also change your life.
Now listen to me.
Do you believe Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead?
Do you believe that?
Do you really believe that?
Do you believe Jesus can save sinners?
Do you believe that?
If you believe that,
then you have a natural play out to that truth in going around and letting other people know,
hey, guess what?
The Jesus I know,
he's in the business of changing lives.
He's in the business of raising the dead.
He is in the business of saving sinners.
And I want to bring you to that person.
Is that the characteristic of your life?
That your affection,
your confidence,
your joy in the Lord Jesus Christ
is the thing that drives you day by day
in the places that he has put you
to raise a testimony of the power of the Lord Jesus Christ
who raises the dead and saves sinners.
Let's close in prayer.
Our Father God,
this morning as we consider the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Savior of the world,
and the one who knows our frame and our frailty,
we are thankful that this morning
we have the privilege of seeing him
through the Word of God
and through the ministry of the Spirit of God
to our souls.
I pray that the outcome of our study in the Word of God
and the outcome of the work of the Spirit of God in our lives
would be that we who know Christ
would be motivated to lift up the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ
and speak often much of his power.
that we would live gospel-focused lives,
that we would live gospel-encouraged lives,
and that we would be quick, ambitious, joyful
in speaking of the Savior that we know.
I pray for those who are here
that do not know the Lord Jesus Christ,
that this morning your Spirit would draw them to the cross,
and that they, seeing the hopelessness of their sin,
would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
in whom alone is salvation.
And that's our prayer together this morning.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Let's stand together as John leads us in our closing song.
And as we are singing together,
I encourage you, if you are here this morning,
I want you to...
What does that mean?
My mic is off?
Oh, John.
Okay.
A brief break for technology.
Now, back to the message.
Okay.
If you're here and you don't know Jesus,
let me tell you,
there's no reason to walk out that door
without coming face-to-face with a couple truths.
Number one, I'm a sinner who desperately needs Christ.
Do you need any more hard evidence?
What's the answer from a reasonable person?
No.
Does he stand ready to save you?
The answer is yes.
And you may call upon the name of the Lord
right where you sit.
Salvation doesn't happen in a little ring around me here.
It happens when the Spirit of God
gets your heart right where you are.
But coming down front
is a way of letting us share in that beauty.
It's a little bit like the Samaritan woman
charging into town that says,
Man, I found him.
Okay.
Not a bad thing.
There may be some of you
that the Spirit of God is calling
to be part of our fellowship.
This is where God wants you to worship and serve.
This is where he wants to have your heart strengthened
in the work of gospel ministry.
And if God is prompting that,
it's time to put it on the line
and respond in faith.
And you may find him holy