Lord, Come and See | Dave Sloop

Welcome to Church of the Holy Spirit. We're so glad that you guys are here. I am freshly back from vacation. We went away for two weeks. We just flew in, got in yesterday, and we had such a tremendous time. We don't normally take a two week vacation all at once, but it was really fun to talk to Melissa on our last day of vacation. And this was the conversation we had. We said, this was one of the most restful and sweet times with each other and with the Lord, and there's zero shred of dread in going back home. Have you ever had that end of vacation dread in going back to your ordinary real life? But we love our life here. We love our community. We love this church. I'm so grateful. I was thrilled to get to be with you this morning even though I'm a little bit jet lagged. But thrilled to be here.

This morning, we're gonna be looking for the third week at John chapter 11, and we'll have two more weeks after this week. So it'll be a total of six weeks that we're gonna be in John chapter 11. And Tim and I had discussed whether or not we should split up the section that I'm gonna be looking at today. It's the conversation that Jesus is gonna have with Mary. Last week, Tim looked at a conversation with Martha. And if you did not get a chance to listen to that sermon, it was so good. I listened to it from the beach, and I called Tim right after, and it was just so good. So I hope that you will go back and listen to that sermon if you weren't here.

But the reason that we decided that even though that could have been treated as one unit, there's just so much here that's important for us to see. But in order for you to really understand the context and for you to get into the shoes of Mary, I wanted to share with you, starting at the beginning of chapter 11, what has taken place because I think it was almost a month ago that we did that first sermon on John chapter 11. So let me just summarize by reading and giving you some high points of what has taken place so far.

If you remember at the beginning of chapter 11, Jesus receives word that his friend, the one that he loves, Lazarus, has fallen ill. If you don't know this, Mary and Martha and Lazarus were all siblings, and they spoke of Jesus as if he was part of the family. They just loved each other. And they sent word to him saying, Lord, the one that you love is ill, and they were wanting him to come. But Jesus says in verse four of chapter 11:

This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified through it. — John 11:4

And then in verse five and following, we read these really cryptic, confusing words:

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

It almost sounds like a typo. In fact, some of the more modern translations that we have changed that word to "yet." He loved them so much, yet he stayed two more days, but that is not what the original language says. It says, so he stayed two more days.

And what we learned in that first sermon on John chapter 11 is that sometimes God, in his sovereign wisdom and mercy, will allow painful things, which ultimately lead to his glory. And his glory, whether we know it or understand it or not in the moment, his glory is always for our good. He allows this. He says it doesn't lead to death, which we know now what he means or what he meant, but it does lead to Lazarus' physical death. And he tells his disciples at the end of that particular passage, we're gonna go now to Judea. Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to wake him up. I go to bring him back to life.

So understand that Jesus knew that Lazarus was going to die, and he waits where he is so that he would be sufficiently dead. Twice in this chapter, you're gonna see four days he was in the tomb. And the reason that I think John goes to great lengths to make sure we know he had been in the tomb for four days is because ancient tradition held that for the first couple of days, up to three days, the spirit could hover around the body and might reenter it. This is not biblical, but this is what people believed. And Jesus, understanding that tradition, wanted to make sure that the people knew he is dead. He is really dead. All hope is gone.

And that is when Jesus shows up. And that is the point at which Martha hears that he's come into town and she goes out to meet him. And you can imagine the despair, the frustration, the confusion. This is the one that you love, Jesus.

I sent to you to tell you that he was sick. And what she says to him is a perfect window into her confusion and hurt and despair. She says to him, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. This is a phrase that Mary, in our conversation today, is going to say the exact same phrase, but Jesus is going to respond very differently.

Let me just give you a few snapshots of what he said to Martha last week. She comes in her grief, in her disappointment, and Jesus responds to her by saying this, your brother will rise again. It almost feels a little bit cold. He gives her truth. He reminds her what he knows her heart needs to hear in this moment. He says to her:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he dies, he will live forever. And he who lives believing in me, he'll never die.

Jesus gives Martha truth, knowing that it was what Martha needed to shake her out of her despair and her disappointment and her doubt so that she could hope again. He knew that what Martha needed was to cling to truth, that there is a battle, that this world has fallen and it's broken, but that I have overcome the world, which, by the way, is what Jesus says to his disciples. He says to them:

In this world, you're gonna have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world.

He gives Martha truth. And it almost seems like John is setting you up to think that the same conversation is gonna happen with Mary. Look at the similarities. It's the same day. We're gonna learn in our passage today that Jesus is hanging out in the same exact place waiting for Mary to come. It's the same circumstances. Their brother has died, and she literally says verbatim the exact same thing that Martha says. If you're an investigator and you're interviewing witnesses separately and they start using the exact same language, what do you assume? They've been talking to each other. This is the conversation that Mary and Martha, in their grief, were having with one another. If he'd been here, our brother wouldn't have died. Mary's gonna say the same thing, verbatim.

But what Jesus gives to Mary could not be more different than what he gives to Martha. Jesus, in a sense, gives Martha a sermon fine attribute, his character. I am the life. Notice he does not say, I have the power to give life. He does, but that's not what he says. He says, I am the life.

The Meaning of Life

I've been studying First John along with the Gospel of John, and one of the observations that I've made is that this idea of life is both a gift that Jesus gives and a divine attribute that he has. At the beginning of John's first letter, he says:

The life was made manifest, and we've seen it, and we testify to it, and we proclaim to you, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.

He's saying there, the eternal life was made manifest. It is a quality, a divine attribute. Jesus was saying to Martha, I am God. I am the one who gives life. John would say this at the beginning of his gospel:

In him was life, and his life was the light of men.

In other words, nobody wakes up, nobody opens their eyes unless he allows it and sustains their life. In him, we live and move and have our being. But at the end of chapter two of John's epistle, he would say this:

This is the promise that he made us, eternal life.

Eternal life is both who he is and what he gives. When you have eternal life, you are getting him, his life. I am fully God. That is the message to Martha. That is not the message that he gives to Mary.

In fact, if you held these two passages up to one another, what you would see is that the conversation with Martha is filled with red letters. The conversation with Mary has almost no red letters. There's only one sentence of Jesus, and it's a short one, and it's not even a statement. It's a question. We'll get to that.

Truth and Tears

In Tim Keller's book, Encounters with Jesus, which I highly recommend to you, he refers to the two encounters that are so similar in so many ways, but so different in some as the ministry of truth and the ministry of tears. That when we are seeing Jesus' divinity, his truth, we need to know that. But what he gives to Mary is the ministry of tears because we need that too.

With Mary, what we're going to see today is the fact that he is fully man. He is fully God, but he's fully man, and we need both. Sometimes, like Mary, we don't need someone to give us a sermon. We just need someone to sit with. We need someone who cannot solve our problems, but share our pain. Amen?

My sweet daughter, Libby, recently, she gave me permission to share this. We were having a conversation and she was sharing with me something that was particularly troubling. And, as all dads do, I gave her the solution to her problem. Because, obviously, she's come to me, she wants a solution. You know, there's a reason that when kids get hurt, they instinctively say, mama. Because dads, they just want to solve your problems.

And I could tell by the look on Libby's face that what I had to say that day, even though it was wise and correct, was not what she needed. And I said to her, was that not helpful? And in her sweet, authentic way, she said, actually, no. She said, dad, sometimes when I share something that's hard for me and you give me advice, that's not what I need. I just need you to hear it and listen. I so appreciated that reminder and I will likely forget again.

But can I tell you something? Jesus doesn't forget, and he knows exactly what we need. He knows what Martha needs. He knows what Mary needs. It doesn't mean that he's changing like a chameleon. What he said to Martha was equally true in Mary's case, but they were different. And he knew what each of them needed because of where they were at.

What we're going to see today is the beauty of Jesus' humanity, and we're also going to see hidden within this, not only something about his nature, but what he understands about your nature and my nature.

Jesus' Humanity

Let's look at Jesus' humanity beginning here in verse 28:

When Jesus had said this, she went and called her sister Mary saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you. — John 11:28

Just want to park here for just a second. Notice the tenderness of Jesus. It's not recorded in scripture, but at some point in his conversation with Martha, something like this happened. Jesus said, how's Mary? I noticed she's not here with you. Who knows what Martha said? But maybe she said something like, well, Jesus, if you think I'm upset, you're probably not ready for Mary. And Jesus said something like, I tell you what, I'm going to stay here. I'm not going to come into town yet. And I'd like you to tell Mary that I'd like to talk to her. When she's ready, if she's ready, just let her know, I'll be out here, away from the crowd.

What tenderness and compassion. We might read this at first and think, you know, it would be more loving for Jesus to initiate with her, to pursue her, to go to where she is. But Jesus knows she might not be ready for that. There's such a tenderness and a kindness to Jesus. After all:

A smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. A bruised reed, he will not break. — Isaiah 42:3

He is filled with wisdom and compassion and he knows exactly what Mary needs on that day.

But Mary hears that the teacher's calling for her. And in verse 29:

She rose quickly and she went to him. Now, Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still waiting in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary rise and quickly go out, they followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now, Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him and she fell at his feet saying to him, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. — John 11:29-32

Just a couple of quick observations. Tim mentioned this in passing last week, but don't you love that Mary is always at his feet? The first time we meet Mary, she is at his feet—Martha is frantic serving dinner, and she's just at his feet, listening. She doesn't need anything. She's not upset about anything. She's just enjoying him. Next week, or in a couple of weeks, we're going to look at a time when she's at his feet worshiping him, anointing his feet. And then here, in her grief, she is at his feet. She's always at his feet.

And there's something instructive here about how she's at his feet. Because here again what she says—Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died—there's no pretense. There's no pretending. She is raw and honest at his feet. This is the one difference between what she and Martha say. Martha tacks on kind of a polite little thought at the end of hers, a little qualifying statement. She says, but even now, Lord, I know that God will give you whatever you ask. Mary doesn't. She is unfiltered. He gets the real, raw Mary. And in return, she gets the real, raw emotion of our Savior. She gets his humanity.

He doesn't explain her pain. He enters into it. Martha gets his head, his knowledge, his wisdom, the truth. Mary gets his heart. It just spills out. Listen to what it says:

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. — John 11:33

It says he was deeply moved, but that is not how the original language reads. In fact, almost every commentator would tell you that every modern translation that we have gets this wrong because it's so uncomfortable what it actually says. He was angry, indignant, outraged. He was mad.

And it doesn't really fit because he's angry, but then he weeps. And they want to kind of maintain this tender, compassionate Jesus, which he is. But the reason that he's mad—why is it? Is it because he's mad at the people that are weeping and grieving? Of course not.

But notice, he's also not mad at himself, which means that in Jesus' mind, there is no contradiction between the fact that he is the lord of all, sovereign over life and death, and also well within his right to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. Why? Because he is the perfect God-man. We might think, look, he had control over this. You don't get to cry over something you could have controlled. In fact, this is exactly what the crowd says at the end of this passage if you look ahead. Half of the crowd see compassion. They see his tears and they say, "Oh, look how he loved him." The other half see contradiction. How is it that this one who healed the blind did not prevent Lazarus from dying? Couldn't he have prevented it? He doesn't get to cry. If what he said to Martha was true, his tears are out of place.

And this is the battle for you and I, by the way. Either we strip him of his divinity to maintain his compassion, or we strip him of his humanity in order to maintain this kind of neat, tidy God who's in control. And John is telling you, it's both, and it's always both. And you cannot rob his divinity, and you cannot rob his humanity. You have to sit right in the middle of those two uncomfortable, seemingly contradictory truths, which in John's mind and in Jesus' mind, are not contradictory.

What is Jesus angry at here? An anger that eventually leads to tears that he shares with Mary. Jesus is angry at the devastation that we experience in a fallen, broken world. He is angry at what Paul would call in 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy. Do you remember in the garden what God said?

In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. — Genesis 2:17

Death is the worst part of the curse. And Jesus was close to it, and it caused a sense of outrage and indignation, but he also was not responsible for it. And so he grieved and he wept.

The Question Jesus Asked

Just a couple more observations that I want us to see. Notice what happens. These are the only red letters in your Bible in this passage. Notice what Jesus says and what is said to him before he weeps. He said, "Where have you laid him?" Why does Jesus ask that question? I want to give you two possible reasons that he asked the question. One is so obvious, we might not even think to say it. But when I say it, I just want to warn you, it's going to feel uncomfortable because it doesn't really fit our paradigm of Jesus, and I'll explain why.

I think the reason he asks that question is because he doesn't know the answer to it. Are you comfortable with the humanity of Jesus whereby he so limits his divinity that he doesn't know certain things? I mean, he said himself that there are certain things he does not know. Jesus would go on to say, "I don't do anything unless the Father tells me to do it. I don't say anything unless the Father says it to me."

What we see in Jesus is someone who was fully God. But in Philippians 2, Paul explains what that meant.

He was in very nature God, though he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, and so he emptied himself. — Philippians 2:6-7

This is called the kenosis. He made himself nothing. He was the most dependent human being to ever live. He didn't take a breath without consulting his Father. His whole existence was unto him for his glory. He was never out there on his own agenda, his own initiative. He was completely submitted to the Father's will, only doing what would please him. And when we see displays of his power, what we are seeing is an empty human vessel through whom the Spirit had complete freedom to work.

And by the way, he had the Spirit—John would tell us in chapter 3—without measure because he was living the completely yielded life. And by the way, it's the life he invites you and I to live also. He calls it abiding. He was yielded and he was human.

I gotta be honest with you. I think for a lot of us, myself included, when we talk about the humanity of Jesus, what we kind of think but would never say out loud is he was really God, but he was pretending to be human. That just like he knew the Pharisees' thoughts in Mark chapter 2 who were grumbling about him, he knew everyone's thoughts all the time. I don't think that was the case. I think God was revealing to Jesus what he needed to know in real time to fulfill divine orders from on high that were coming to him as he received them.

In John chapter 4, when he went to meet a woman at the well, it wasn't his initiative. God said, "Go to the well," which is why he said, "I must go through Samaria," because he was carrying out the Father's wishes. When he knew stuff about her life, it did not necessarily follow that he looked at every person and knew everything about everyone or that he could hear everyone's thoughts all the time. As God, did he have the capacity? Sure.

Just like he had the capacity to take himself off the cross, but he emptied himself. He laid down his divine rights. He wasn't faking his humanity, friends, and he wasn't faking it when he wept with Mary. You know, as human beings, we don't really begin to heal until someone sits with us in our pain. Someone with a compassionate presence—the wisdom of God to know that that is what we need deep down.

And the next phrase they say to Jesus is going to confirm that. But let me tell you first the second reason that I think Jesus asks this question, "Where have you laid him?" He's asking to be invited to the place of her deepest pain and disappointment and sadness. The place where she looks at her world and she says, that doesn't square with who I thought God was. She's heartbroken, and he says, would you take me to that place? And he asks the same thing of you and me.

And listen to the response that they give to Jesus, which I think is part of the reason he weeps. I didn't read that in a commentary, so I say that with some humility. I was hoping that someone would say this, so it might not be true. But the fact that Jesus' grief, his weeping follows this sentence is so interesting to me that I couldn't escape it. I couldn't get away from it. They say to him, "Lord, come and see."

Does that phrase sound familiar to you? It is the repeated refrain of John chapter one at the beginning of the book of signs. The invitation is, "Come and see." Come and see what he's like. It first comes out of Jesus' mouth, and then it comes out of Philip's mouth to Nathaniel, who's sitting as a skeptic under the fig tree. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Come and see." And what everybody discovers as they come to see this man is that he was precisely who he claimed to be. He was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. When you look at Jesus, you are looking at God in the flesh.

He is the image of the invisible God. — Colossians 1:15

The exact representation of his being. — Hebrews 1:3

You wanna know what God is like? Look at Jesus. But there's another side to the coin when it comes to the incarnation. Not only that we would see what God is like, but that we would know—that we would know rather—that he sees what we are like. That we have a sympathetic high priest who has suffered in every way. And when we pray to him, he's not just pretending to know what it feels like to be you. He became a human. He suffered, was tempted. He gets it, and we can know that he gets it.

"Lord, come and see."

There's a beautiful passage in Exodus 16. If you remember, Abraham and Sarah were promised that they were gonna give birth to this child who was gonna bless the nations, and it wasn't happening. They were old. And Sarah takes matters into her own hands. She invites her maidservant Hagar to lay with her husband. Hagar gets pregnant. She gives birth to a baby. Sarah gets jealous. She kicks them out. And Hagar is weeping in Exodus 16, and God speaks to her. He comforts her. He gives her hope. Do you know what she says to him?

You are the God who sees. And I have seen the God who sees me. — Exodus 16

My question for you this morning as we begin to wrap up is: Have you seen the God who sees you?

Would you be willing to hear him as Mary did on that day, that he was calling for her specifically to come out away from the crowd? If you would go out to meet him, do you know what you'd hear him saying? "Where have you laid him?" In other words, take me to the place of your deepest pain, your deepest regret. Maybe it's even your deepest shame—that moment that causes you to wonder if you're actually forgiven and could he actually love you. Whatever that place is, he wants to go there, and he wants to enter into your pain over the devastation that you've experienced because of the fall. He won't be faking it. It will be genuine. And until you know the one who knows you, you will be limited in your experience of God.

If you're willing to invite him to "Come and see me—my brokenness, my failures, my disappointments, my despair"—he will meet you there.

I shared this story once before, not too long ago actually, from this stage, but it so fits with this narrative that I wanted to share it again. Not too long ago, Claire learned how to jump rope, and I was out of town, but she really wanted her daddy to see it. And so Melissa FaceTimed me, and we couldn't get FaceTime to work. I could see Claire, but I wasn't showing up on their screen. And we were trying to fix it, Melissa and I—I was trying to tell her, you know, I was providing the solution, obviously. And we couldn't get it. And finally, Claire interrupts us and she said, "Guys, Dad, I don't need to see you. I just need to know that you can see me."

And Melissa instantly said, "That was for me."

Friends, have you seen the one that sees you?

Have you invited him into the place of your deepest sadness and despair? He wants to meet you there. He is fully God, and we need that. We need truth. He's fully man, and he knows what it's like to walk in your shoes. Call on him.

Prayer

God, we need you. We're a mess without you. Truth is, Lord, we're a mess with you and you're willing to enter in to our sadness. Would you give us the courage today to invite you to that place where we have laid whatever it is that we have thought would be more comfortable to hide from you, to keep from you, to keep from others? Give us courage to believe that you want to see it, and you'll weep with us when you do. In Christ's name, amen.

Closing

Friends, we have folks in the back that would love to pray with you, especially on a day like today when we hear a message like that about a God who wants to enter into your pain with you. There are people in the back that are hoping you would come. They've been praying that you would for the rest of us. These rails are open. Maybe you just want to meet privately with God. And for the rest of us, let's go ahead and stand and worship.