Resurrection Love

Good morning everyone! How’s everybody doing today? Welcome to Hope Community Church.

As always, it’s a privilege to be up here this morning to share God’s word with you.

This passage of scripture that we’re going to study this morning is one that is very special to me. As Christians we are taught that the word of God is alive, it’s powerful.

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

The word is supposed to change us.

We are supposed to be moved by the message of the Gospel. So often in our walk, we hear the word and it’s nice and it makes sense and it’s presented well, but it doesn’t change us.

Maybe you’re in that season right now. Maybe you’ve always felt like that. Maybe you have faulty beliefs that keep His word from having the effect that it should have on your life.

Whatever the case may be, I’m inviting you this morning to join with me in reading through a passage of scripture that radically changed my heart and set me in a new direction in my life.

 

Open your ears, open your hearts, ask the Lord to help you this morning to cut out all of the distractions and ask Him to change you this morning.

Let’s pray. John 11: 1-44

We are going to read a large chunk of scripture here and then we are going to pull out 3 specific points that I believe the Lord wants each one of us to truly grasp.

 

The First thing that Jesus is telling us is that He knows. Whatever you are going through, He knows it intimately and he knows how He will fix it and when He will move on your behalf. That’s

assuming that we are cooperative in our walk with Him.

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV

 

This is a huge revelation that seems pretty simple to us. Of course He knows, He’s God. Simple to understand, yes; simple to actually live by, not so much.

 

When I was in the program at A Place of Restoration, I had this overwhelming fear of the unknown. Fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of letting people down and not being good enough.

 

This fear in my prior life had actually contributed to producing what I was afraid of. Fear of failure tended to produce quitting in my life. Quitting always produces failure. Failure produced more fear which produced more failure and so on and so forth.

 

If God didn’t change me I was bound to continue producing the things I was afraid of.

 

But this very revelation began to wash over me day by day. He knows. He is in control. I don’t have to know. I don’t have to be in control.

 

The Lord would whisper this to me everyday and I would receive His peace. He would say, “You don’t have to be sober tomorrow, today. You don’t have to be sober, six months from now, today. You only have to wake up and surrender to Me today and if you do that then I will take care of the rest. If you do that, you’ll wake up five years from now and you’ll be blown away by what I’ve done”

 

Do you know that 5 years in, my wife and I were on a date right before we had Aubrey and we were driving around listening to a song by Housefires that says, “Heaven is all around us,” and as I put my hand on her stomach we talked about how grateful we were the Lord reminded me that He had gone far and above what I had asked for and I wept.

 

I didn’t do anything special in those five years, just the simple things day in and day out. He produced what I was never able to.

 

So if fear produces the need for control or the want to quit in you, just know that He Knows.

 

In verse 7 He tells His disciple that they are going to Judea again. In verse 8 the disciples say, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” The second thing that we see is that He Fights.

 

What a powerful thought. I will put myself in harms way because saving one of my children is so worth it.

 

Right before we went on our first HCC mission trip to Nicaragua, we started learning our skits for the trip. I got nominated to play Jesus in this skit that goes along to a Lifehouse song.

 

In the skit, a lot like the one from last week where Mrs Christine was cougaring on Sam, the main character is distracted in life by partying, self image, relationships, and depression.

 

Eventually death shows up and wants her to kill herself and my role was to pull this imaginary rope like it was the most important thing I had ever done. Once the girl throws down the gun, Jesus jumps in while the other “sins” are trying attack her. He holds them back and pushes them away until eventually he defeats them.

 

I just cried when I saw it. This image of Jesus fighting for me was so powerful to me. I’ve seen it 5 or 6 times since then and I’ve cried every time.

 

Jesus knows. He knows what you’re going through. Jesus fights for you. What a powerful image of God almighty pulling for you, straining in your defense, putting himself in danger for you.

 

If you struggle with loneliness, depression, or hopelessness, know that He’s with you and He’s fighting for you.

 

The last point is that He loves. While this seems like an obvious point because if there’s one thing that Christians are supposed to know, it’s that Jesus loves us; what we want to focus on today is how He shows that love for us.

 

In verses 33-36 we see Jesus arriving at the tomb and witnessing the pain of His people.

 

“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. And he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"” John 11:33-36 ESV

 

It says that He is deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

 

But Why???? We already know that He knows what’s going to happen. He says in the beginning not to fear because Lazarus’ sickness won’t lead to death.

 

All the men in the house, we struggle with this. We know the solution and want to skip past the feelings.

 

If we would have showed up on the scene with power to raise him from the dead, we would have been like “why are y’all crying??? Watch this!! Lazarus, come out!!!!!!”

Not Jesus. He weeps. And when He weeps, the people have a noted reaction. They say, “see

how much He loves him.”

 

This is important because a few verses later Jesus will show His power and prove His that He is God. But it is in His humanity that the people see His love.

 

Verse 40 says that He will show God’s glory and verse 42 says that He raises Lazarus so that many will believe. But we see His love for us when He weeps.

 

What a powerful comfort when we hurt to know that God is hurting with us.

 

We have a God unlike any other God. He not only plans to resurrect dead things in your life but He weeps with you while you mourn those things.

 

That is what really changes us. Knowing that God doesn’t just care about the end result. Know that He doesn’t just care about when we finally make changes or get better. He actually cares about the way you feel. That kind of love for us changes us.

 

I had and still have a lot of insecurity and I learned through life that if you want to be accepted I had to be a certain way. I had to be smart or funny or successful or charming. But living my life to convince others that I was worth loving was exhausting. There was a time when I brought that same mindset into my relationship with God.

 

When I do right He loves me, when I do wrong He doesn’t. It’s exhausting. But God showed me that I had it all backwards. I don’t get better and then He loves me; I get better once I know that He loves me.

 

Jesus showed His love for Lazarus before He raises Him up.

 

If you are struggling with sin, with failure, with self esteem, with insecurities, Jesus wants you to know today, that before you taste of His resurrection power, you need to know His resurrection love for you.

If that’s you today, I want to pray for you.