SJG 8–The Master Raises the Dead #dumcMY #fb

Pastor Mike Ngui, 21/05/2011

The text is taken from John 11:1-48.

In 1983, a Jewish rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book called When Bad Things Happened to Good People. We may find it easier to see bad things happen to bad people but to good people?

John 11 tells of such a story. Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha died. Mary’s devotion and her act of worship must be so well known that John made a reference to it. This is a story that happened among people who loved Jesus and whom Jesus loved.

One of Satan’s most favourite putdown line is that when something is wrong, then we have not been waling with God.

We have a bird’s eyes view of the whole story. But let’s try to put our shoes into the people there and then – imagine the mind of Mary or Martha then. Bad things do happen to good people.
Lazarus was so sick that Martha sent a desperate message to Jesus. In fact, Jesus was a day’s walk away. When the messenger finally got to Jesus, He sent word that Lazarus won’t die. By the time the message got back to Bethany where Mary and Martha were (the round trip took 2 days.) We can deduced that Lazarus died soon after the messenger left for Jesus. Imagine, imagine the irony when Jesus’ message was passed on to Mary and Martha AFTER Lazarus was buried.

When the Lord’s timing is off, we need to trust in His goodness. (v 5&6)

Jesus loved them and yet he didn’t go immediately to see Lazarus. The delay to go to Bethany was not to the immediate benefit of the disciples and Mary and Martha. But it was definitely not because he was callous or he did not love them. On the contrary, he did it precisely because he loved them.

When we are in a tough situation, we pray and don’t see any improvements, we may have negative thoughts and think that Jesus doesn’t care. Do not make assumption of Jesus. The love of Jesus should never be questioned.

We don’t understand when God is ‘late.’ God has our best interest in mind. We may have to wait many years or we may find God answers our prayers in His own way. He has His special timing.

In God’s timing, He indicates to us His purpose and invites us to join Him. (v11)

In John 10, the Jews almost stoned Jesus and his disciples. Now, Jesus wanted to go to Bethany to see Lazarus who, according to Him was asleep. Jesus gave a seemingly cryptic message about walking in the light.

To get God’s purpose, we have to lose our puny ideas (v12)

God’s ways are not just simply different from the disciples’ ways, it’s completely our of the universe of the disciples’ thoughts. In fact, it is also different from ours. The disciples could not fathom what Jesus intended to do.

The disciples ‘reminded’ Jesus that Lazarus died. Jesus told them he was glad he did not prevent Lazarus from dying because this would help grow their faith. They have seen Jesus raised people from the death before but this did not entered their universe of thoughts.

God’s ideas are bigger than our wildest imaginations (v12-15)

Most of the time we try all possibilities along with seeking Jesus and hope one of the possibilities will work. God doesn’t work within our limitations.

Who’d imagine Jesus would live 30 inconsequential years, had 3 years of ministry before he was killed?

Who’d imagine Joseph who were sold as slaves would become Pharaoh’s right hand man? Who could have imagine that Joseph would be the delivered of his brothers who sold him?

Ultimately God calls us to “trust and obey” (v16)

Thankfully, God doesn’t need us to imagine what he could do to do it. All the Lord asked of us it to trust and obey.

Sometimes we worried that we missed our one possibility that God wanted to use and that it would prevent God from using that method to help us.

Pastor Mike shared this “email from God”

Good morning. I am God. Today I will be handling all of your problems. Please remember that I do not need your help. If the devil happens to deliver a situation that you cannot handle, DO NOT attempt to resolve it. Kindly put it in the SFJTD (something for Jesus to do) box. It will be addressed in MY time, not yours. Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold on to it, or attempt to remove it. Holding on, or removal, will delay the resolution of your problem. If it is a situation that you think you are capable of handling, please consult me in prayer to be sure that it is the proper resolution. Because I do not sleep, nor do I slumber, there is no need for you to lose any sleep. Rest my child. If you need to contact me, I am only a prayer away.

The word believe appeared 85 times in John (9 in chapter 11, and a total of 200+ times in the Bible.)
John Piper has this illustration. See complete article here.

Your daddy is standing in a swimming pool out a little bit from the edge. You are, let’s say, three years old and standing on the edge of the pool. Daddy holds out his arms to you and says, “Jump, I’ll catch you. I promise.” Now, how do you make your daddy look good at that moment? Answer: trust him and jump. Have faith in him and jump. That makes him look strong and wise and loving. But if you won’t jump, if you shake your head and run away from the edge, you make your daddy look bad. It looks like you are saying, “he can’t catch me” or “he won’t catch me” or “it’s not a good idea to do what he tells me to do.” And all three of those make your dad look bad.

The harder it seems for God to fulfill his words, the better it makes Him look.

Faith gives glory to God.


God wants us to grow and mature. Praying for a parking space is like training wheels of faith. It’s ok when we start with that but we cannot stop there because we cannot live on that.

Sometimes God draws out out faith in words (v 21-27)

As parents, we rejoice when we see our children progress through crawling and taking the first steps. God draws out faith in us.

From the dialog with Martha, Jesus allowed Martha to affirm her own faith for her to hear it herself. She might not understand what she was saying but she believed it.

Sometimes God draws out our faith in wordless worship (v 28-35)

Sometimes God draws out our faith by reading His words and sometimes with wordless worship. consider what happened to Mary. She ran to Jesus and wept as His feet.

Sometimes we make a mistake and we have nothing to say. We only have remorse. We cannot even say we trust the Lord because we are in great pain and distress. Just run to Jesus. Bring our tears, pains, shattered dreams and despair to Jesus. The very act of running to Jesus is an act of faith. That’s a declaration that we have no where else to turn to and that God cares.

John 11:35 was often quoted as the shortest verse in the Bible. There is no problem / hardship / pain that Jesus would not sit with you and cry with you.

Other times, God draws out our faith in acts of sheet obedience (v 38-41)

We often have objection to God, which we think are sensible and practical. Martha told Jesus Lazarus’ body would stink. But when they obeyed, they saw Lazarus were alive.

God delights to reveal His glory in response to our obedience (v 40-44)

The choice to believe and trust Jesus is in us. God will still be glorified even when we do not obey him but we will not see it and we cannot share it.

We can see and choose to put our faith in Jesus (v45)

Many who saw believed.

Or we can choose something else as more important than Jesus (v 46-48)

The Jewish leaders considered their positions and national security more important than Jesus.
Bad things do happen to good people. When things don’t make sense, we need to trust God. We need to let go of our puny ideas. God’s ideas are always better even though sometimes it takes longer. He wants us to grow in our trust in Him. The choice is with us.