How Long, O Lord? | Tim Henderson

Good morning. Hope you are doing well. So in a church of our size, there's almost always someone that you love who is hurting. One of the people that's hurting right now is Barbara Murray. Many of you know and love Barbara because she's often with you when you are hurting. She's been hospitalized and she is currently in a rehab center and she'll be gone for maybe several weeks as she's getting better.

And so I want to invite you to pray not only for Barbara as she recovers, but also pray for Laura who is our substitute Barbara. Barbara does an awful lot in this church, a whole bunch of things. And one of the things that she does is oversee the volunteers. And we in the summertime, volunteers for things like ushering and greeting are kind of tricky because people travel and have a million things. And you'd be shocked if you saw the number of people that it really takes to pull this off every week.

And so, Laura would love to hear from you. I'd love to ask really for one of two things or maybe even both. When it comes to the infrastructure of things that are a little bit lacking right now that Barbara's not able to give attention to, we would just ask you to be patient with us. If things are not quite as smooth as we would like them to be, there's a reason for that. But second, if you have a hard time being patient, then you could actually help us solve it by emailing Laura. We all have the same email convention. Laura's is laurachsroanoke dot com. And things like ushering and greeting, they're not that difficult to do, but it is important that we do them and we do them well. So if you've got some spare time and you're willing to volunteer one Sunday a month throughout the summer as we're working on this stuff, Laura would love to hear from you. Laurachsroanoke.com will be great.

But Barbara is not the only person right now who is hurting. As long as I've been at this church, it's a little over ten years now, I've just noticed that there are these moments that just arise where many people are hurting, where there's an overlap and there's just some convergence and for whatever reason, so many people are sick. There's often illnesses, very frequently it's cancer. I don't think I understood how common cancer was before I started to work here. Although honestly, there's a lot of different ways to suffer.

We are currently in one of those moments. Many of you know Joe and Yvonne McClure, and Yvonne is in a very serious fight against cancer. And Sally McQuinn had a sudden—at least to me—out of left field, sudden like zero to 60 resurgence of a previous cancer battle. She has stage four throughout her body. It is extraordinarily difficult. I have a friend Dave here who had prostate cancer, and although many of you don't know her, my own sweet aunt, Julie Simon, just discovered that she has a tumor. It's either in or against her intestines, but it's already innervated her pancreas and her liver, and that is also cancerous. And just many of you know someone, there's someone that you love that is suffering right now.

We've had moments where it's not just illness, but that it's actually death. One of Barbara's primary tasks is to oversee funerals. And sometimes we'll go weeks or months without a funeral, and then sometimes it'll just be like one after another as people that we love in this church have fallen asleep in Christ. Just a couple weeks ago, Leanne Duncan died after a recurrence of her long battle with breast cancer. Patrick Murdoch's dad recently passed as well. And it is moments like this where the convergence, where it's just too—it's hard to avoid the reality that we suffer and we die.

That John chapter 11 is particularly worth knowing and understanding and trusting in. Last September, when Sloop and I started this series in John's gospel, we explained to you that John's gospel divides very neatly into two halves. The first half, the first 11 chapters, is known as the Book of Signs, and then the second half, chapter 12 to the end, is called the Book of Glory. The Book of Signs is really a record of all these miraculous things that Jesus did. But as we've said throughout the Book of Signs in John's Gospel, the signs are known, or the miracles are known as signs because they don't just convey mercy. They're not just demonstrations of power. They are messages. They're telling us something. That's all the Book of Signs. And the Book of Signs ends with this climactic event, which is the death and resurrection of Lazarus. This thing is designed by John.

John has organized this material and built to this point as a way to foreshadow the climax of the second half. The Book of Signs is about all these miracles. The Book of Glory is exclusively focused on the last week of Jesus' life, which, as I think we all probably know, ends with its own climax on Jesus' death and resurrection.

So what we're getting into here is we're just getting ready to transition out of the Book of Signs and into the Book of Glory. We're gonna come through the story of a death and resurrection that anticipates a greater death and resurrection to come. That's what John is doing.

This morning, we're just gonna look at the first 16 verses of John 11, in which Lazarus dies. We're not gonna get to the resurrection—that's coming. Although Jesus does, in kind of disarmingly simple language, say that he will go and awaken Lazarus.

Now, there's a ton of interesting details in here that we're not gonna chase down because there's honestly just one key thing that I want you to notice. One word actually, that I think is really important to grapple with. And we need this word. We need to understand this because in understanding it, I think we will be resourced to walk through what will be for most of us the most painful moments in our lives.

For as Tim Keller taught me, I can say without fear of contradiction: for every single person in this room, there is an enormous amount of death in your future. Eventually your own death, which will feel positively enormous to you, but almost certainly the deaths of many, many, many people that you love prior to that. There is an enormous amount of death in your future. And so understanding what's going on here will be of great practical value for all of us.

The Word That Matters

I wanna direct your attention to what's going on in verse six, but I wanna get a running start. I'm gonna read you the introduction to John 11, the first six verses, but I'm gonna specifically read it in the 1984 New International Version. I'll tell you why in a second.

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Lord, the one you love is sick." When he heard this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's son may be glorified through it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. — John 11:1-6 (1984 NIV)

Now, you may know that the New Testament was not written in English. It was written in Greek. It's been translated into nearly every language under the sun, although not quite all of them. We're gonna try to finish that job in this generation. But it's been translated into English multiple times and in slightly different ways.

In the United States, probably the two most popular English translations are the NIV and the ESV—the New International Version and the English Standard Version. In this church, we officially preach from the ESV because it's broadly regarded as the most accurate, and I think it is. I prefer the NIV, partly because it's a little more normal. The language, I think, is a little more accessible and more readable. But if I'm being honest, it's just the thing that I have been reading for thirty years, and so it's familiar and I prefer it.

But the '84 NIV and the ESV translate one word in this passage in significantly distinct ways.

Here again, just verses five and six in the '84 NIV:

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. — John 11:5-6 (1984 NIV)

Here's how the ESV translates that:

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. — John 11:5-6 (ESV)

You guys, that is a meaningful difference. The NIV captures our frustration, our disappointment, our confusion. Jesus, your friend is dying and you love him, yet you delayed. You didn't go. You didn't race to his side to heal him. You didn't drop everything for the obvious priority of getting there in time to heal him before it's too late. And the fact that you claim to love him, that you didn't come in time, is really kind of hard to reconcile. That is the sense of the '84 NIV.

The ESV, however, recognizes no contradiction. It doesn't say, "Well, you know, he said one thing but he did another." It says that Jesus' behavior—specifically that Jesus' delay—flowed directly and inexorably from his love. Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Therefore, he delayed.

Who do you think translates it correctly? It is the ESV.

The ESV gets it right. The NFV just biffed it, which is why in 2011 when they updated it, they changed their own translation to follow the framing that the ESV gives us. Jesus delayed because of his love, not despite it.

What's weird about that is I think our intuition sides with the NIV, but it's mistaken when it does so. It feels to us like Jesus delayed despite his love, not because of his love. And that is the idea that I want to explore with you this morning.

The Love Between Jesus and This Family

So first of all, was there genuine, real, meaningful love between Jesus and these siblings? The answer is absolutely there was. It's all over the place.

Lord, he whom you love is ill. — John 11:3

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. — John 11:5

And right before those two statements of explicit love, there's this weird little vignette. John is going to allude to something that hasn't yet happened in his narrative. He's talking about this moment where Jesus' feet are washed by Mary. But that doesn't happen until John chapter 12.

It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. — John 11:2

It's weird that he refers to it even though he hasn't even gotten to it. Perhaps it suggests that this story was so well known that even though they haven't read the book, his original audience would have just heard about it. But I suspect that even though it hadn't happened in the chronology yet, John included that detail to give depth and color to the enormous affection that flowed between Jesus and this family.

Mary and Martha are grieving their brother and are almost certainly Jesus' closest female friends. They adored each other. And so his delay is poignant, it's painful, it's meaningful. And make no mistake, it was specifically painful to those women.

We will get into this passage a little bit more in the weeks to come. Mary and Martha both reproach Jesus using the exact same words for his delay. They both will say:

If you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Verbatim. And they're right, of course. Jesus could have healed Lazarus. He could have done it effortlessly. He didn't even need to travel. He healed the centurion's son from a distance. He could have just done it, but he didn't. He waited. He let him die. And so what in the world is going on with that?

I think that if it is difficult for us to grasp that his delay was not despite his love for this family, but it was because of his love for this family, then it is probably also the case that we misunderstand the priorities of Jesus' love.

The Purpose of Jesus' Delay

So what was his purpose? I want to throw out a few possibilities.

Maybe Jesus delayed so that Lazarus could die and that we could witness Jesus' own sorrow over this, and thereby gain insights into his compassion. As you might recall, John chapter 11 contains the shortest verse in all the Bible about which much has been said. Jesus wept. It's the easiest memory verse there is. It does reveal the compassion of Christ, his tenderness toward this one that he loves. And I think there probably is value in giving us a window into Jesus' heart.

But maybe it wasn't that. Maybe Jesus held off simply so that he could display his power. Maybe raising Lazarus from the dead was just a way to show off his limitless authority. And I think that's plausible too. Jesus gained a lot of notoriety for having raised him from the dead.

Or maybe it was this: maybe Lazarus just needed to die and be raised from the dead to set up the story, to prepare us in some way for Jesus' more consequential death and more enduring resurrection. And I do think the story does that too. This story does have a foreshadow effect.

But the good news is we don't have to guess why Jesus delayed because Jesus makes his reasoning explicit. According to Jesus, why did he delay? Why did he allow this suffering to proceed all the way to death? Look down to verse 14 because he addresses it directly.

Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died and for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe. — John 11:14

You guys, the Bible is filled with wonderful promises and beneficial commands. God is deeply interested in things that benefit us. He cares about our well-being. He points us over and over towards happiness, towards health, towards financial security. He gives us bodies that heal. He places the lonely in families. He cares a great deal about our wellness and comfort in this world, our happiness.

But what he cares about more than all of those temporary things is that we would become the sort of people that are capable of trusting him. Faith is his highest priority.

He does so much in our life, including sometimes giving us the things that we long for, and sometimes withholding from us the things that we long for, so that we may believe in him. Faith is his highest priority.

I may share with you that a couple years ago, a certain line in Romans that I had previously not given much attention to got lodged in my mind. It's Romans 4:20-21. It's about Abraham and it says:

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he has promised. — Romans 4:20-21

When I read that a couple of years ago, it struck me not so much that it is true about Abraham, but that it's not true about me. But I wanted it to be true of me. And I felt like perhaps the Lord wants it to be true of me. So I made it this particular focus—I memorized it and I recited it to myself a thousand times. Every time I found myself growing fearful or anxious about something, I would remind myself, willing myself to be a person who trusts him. I wanted to develop a deeper posture of dependence, trust, and hope. Because though it was true about Abraham, it wasn't true about me.

And you would like to guess what happened in that season of my life? The bottom fell out for Blue Ridge Fellows. All of my recruiting strategies that had been pretty reliable up until that point just stopped working. Not only that, but my son Max was in a terrible motorcycle accident that filled me with an enormous amount of fear. Fear being the opposite of faith.

In fact, those two worlds converged. The night of Max's accident, I was in his impound lot trying to have a gracious, frustrated conversation with a tow truck driver to get him to give us his broken motorcycle back while his broken body lay in the hospital. While I was in that parking lot, three different students who I had recruited to be fellows, who had applied to be fellows, who accepted to be fellows, all called to tell me that on second thought they decided not to be fellows. My heart was just so agitated about Max and my phone just kept ringing from these kids that were turning us down. I'm sitting there saying, "Lord, I'm trying to trust you. And every time I turn around, something that I have no control over breaks or slips through my fingers."

How God Builds Faith

In my mind, I had thought the best way that I could grow in faith is that I will ask the Lord for something and then he'll do it. He will just give me what I ask for, and when he comes through, I will learn that God is a good provider, which will help me to trust him more. I thought that was brilliant. But it turns out instead that it was his pleasure over and over and over again for all these months to just keep taking away the things that I was hoping in, to reveal that I wasn't really trusting him at all. I was trusting in something else—my ability, my possessions, my wisdom. But in order to trust him, or at least to trust him a little bit more, he had to take things away. And I hated that.

But I just have to admit, I think it works. I think it's working. I expect and, to be honest, I dread that I will probably need to go through that process again, probably over and over and over. But subsequent to that miserable season, God has provided in my life in so many ways, far beyond what I could have ever imagined or produced in my own power. My family is doing well. Blue Ridge Fellows has never been more prosperous. So many parts of my life that were fearful and I was nerve-wracked by are going fantastic and I'm so grateful both for this moment of loss and then this moment of gain.

Have you ever noticed that same pattern in your life? That God produces faith in your life through the freeze and thaw cycle of loss and gain. Loss and gain. Loss and gain. He takes away the things that you're actually trusting in and sometimes he takes it all the way down to the sand and then he provides. He breaks and he rebuilds.

But for our purposes today, at this point in the story of Lazarus, he breaks. He let Lazarus die so that those who loved him could believe. Which is kind of breathtaking.

For this entire conversation, as we are ostensibly talking about why Jesus, who claims to love Lazarus, behaved as he did toward Lazarus—we haven't just been talking about why he delayed for Lazarus. Because truthfully, what do we care about Lazarus? We don't know him. Who cares? What we care about is us. This is what we care about.

What we care about is every time we are facing a circumstance, some grave situation, and our real question is Jesus, where were you? If you had been here, that particular terrible thing would not have happened. Or even more painful maybe than where were you, is where are you? Why do you still delay?

A passage that Eric read this morning is just a subset of one of the dominant themes in the Psalms where the recurring phrase is, how long? How long? Just I'm gonna give you a compendium of this.

My soul is in anguish. How long, Lord? How long? — Psalm 6

How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts? And every day have sorrow in my heart. How long will my enemy triumph over me? — Psalm 13

Oh Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue my life from their ravages, my precious life from these lions. — Psalm 35

How long, oh Lord, will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire? — Psalm 79

How long, oh Lord, will you hide yourself forever? — Psalm 89

Relent, oh Lord, how long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. — Psalm 90

How long must your servant wait? — Psalm 119

Friends, I know some of you, I know you're there right now. You are where Jesus seems not to be. If so, can you bear to hear him say to you right now, for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe? Friends, he is doing something. He has not abandoned you. He is making you into the sort of person who is capable of trusting him. He's making you into someone who can believe.

And if, as has been true for me, the best you can say right now is, Lord, I do believe, but help me in my unbelief, then just notice his very next words, still in verse 15. The next thing he says is, but let us go to him. You guys, he does not delay despite his love, but because of it, so that we may believe. But he will not delay forever. There comes a time where he says, but let us go to him.

He will never leave us. He will never forsake us. Eventually, when he has accomplished his purpose to break us, he will say again, but let us go to him, but let us go to her, and he will rebuild. You guys, it is because he loves you, not despite his love, that he is relentlessly committed to making you into a person that can trust him. This is what he is doing. This is his highest value. It is his pleasure to make you and I both into people that when life is difficult, we trust him. Because we've seen that he comes through often at the very end of the game. In Lazarus' case, even after we think that the game has already ended.

It is his pleasure to do. And I want you to remember, as we have discussed before, if you are in one of those moments right now, if you are in the breaking phase, remember, our bad things will turn out for good, and our good things can never be taken away, and the best is yet to come.

Lord Jesus, you are relentless and we affirm that you are smarter than we are, you are wiser than we are, that you have your purposes. And sometimes, Lord, we cannot see it. We cannot conceive of what you could possibly be doing. And all we could think of is, Lord, if you would have been here. Let us pray that as you proceed with us, you would continue. We would like to be people who trust you. We would like to become people who are unstoppably reliant, who are unstoppably hopeful, but we're not. And so we would ask you Lord, do what you do, continue your work, but Lord, would you be gentle with us? I know that you know how we are formed, that you remember that we are dust. So that we submit to you, we surrender to you, but would you be gentle? That we would, on the other side of all of it, trust you resolutely. We love you. We praise you. We affirm that you are good. Amen.