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Word from Scotland
by Sandy Shaw
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. John Chapter 11 opens with a bare stark factual sentence. What is this all about? What is going to happen? It is a profound chapter with many practical and spiritual lessons.
This is the last great miracle recorded by John which Jesus Christ performs. It begins in a domestic situation, and in that sense it is similar to the wedding at Cana where they ran out of wine.
This time a man runs out of life and dies. Does death have the last and final word?
No! Jesus Christ has the last and final word. These verses are packed with emotion. There is fear, sorrow, joy, excitement. What a passage!
We are reading here of disease, death and decay, with all the suffering that is involved – the sorrow – the squalor.
Does Jesus Christ have something to say concerning these vital issues? Yes!
Here we have a home where Jesus loved to go. It is the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, situated some two miles east of Jerusalem in Bethany, and, into this family which Jesus loves come disease and death and decay.
We are not immune from these things, even when we know that Jesus loves us.
Sometimes Jesus permits certain things to happen to us and we wonder why. A godly person becomes sick. Something comes into our life or into our experience which we thought would never happen to us. We even think that these things always happen to other people.
Jesus does not come into this situation to heal Lazarus from his sickness, but to do something greater. Mary and Martha believe that Jesus can heal Lazarus’s sickness. They are absolutely sure. They have no question. They do not doubt. But, Jesus leaves them in their anxiety, until anxiety become despair, and pain and fever and sickness develops into death, but Jesus can deal with every physical condition, even death and decay, but always to the glory of God the Father.
The health and happiness of men and women are not always Christ’s first concern.
His first concern is, “What can I do to bring glory to the Father? And also, what can I do to help their faith?
This is not an easy lesson to learn and embrace and assimilate but it is there in the Gospels and we have to face spiritual reality.
This is one of the benefits of going through a book of the Bible – it makes you face up to the more challenging verses and passages and people know if you skip over them!
Alexander 'Sandy' Shaw is pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship in Nairn, Scotland. Nairn is 17 miles east of Inverness - on the Moray Firth Coast - not far from the Loch Ness Monster!
Gifted as a Biblical teacher, Sandy is firmly committed to making sure that his teachings are firmly grounded in the Word.
Sandy has a weekly radio talk which can be heard via the Internet on Saturday at 11:40am, New Orleans time, at wsho.com.
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