“When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was
there, they came, not only on account of Him but also to see Lazarus, whom He
had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to
death as well, because on account of Him many of the Jews were going away and
believing in Jesus.” (John 12:9–11, ESV)
While Jesus had not yet returned to Jerusalem, He was very
close. He had returned to the site of His greatest work—the raising of Lazarus
from the dead. It was this even that seemed to have tipped the scales and
captured to belief of more of the Jews than any other He had done, and it was
one that happened very close to home. In fact, for the chief priests and the
Pharisees it happened much too close to home, and now hearing that both men
were gathered together in one place they saw it as a prime opportunity to
eliminate not only the miracle worker but the miracle, the One who came to
declare the Word of God and the one who was given back his life to demonstrate
its power.
I thought about including this passage into the next several
or adding it to the last, but sitting on it a bit I realized that these brief
verses which contain none of the words of Jesus do contain a heart attitude
which Christians have faced throughout history and are facing in many ways
today. The world cannot lay hands on Jesus. He has already gone to the cross,
been buried, and raised from the dead just as the Scriptures had foretold (1
Corinthians 15:3-4). He has already ascended to heaven and has sat down again
at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). These things are done, and He will not
return fully to this place until He returns at the end of the Great Tribulation
(Revelation 19:11-21). The big and significant interruption is that He will one
day, and hopefully very soon, return in the clouds to take His church up to
Himself (Rapture: 1 Thessalonians 4:17). Just as His religious persecutors
could not touch Him until His time had come, now that His time has come no one
can ever touch Him again.
But this is not true of us. When Jesus went to the cross, Lazarus
remained. We don’t know if they ever laid hands of Him because this is the last
we hear of Him. With Jesus’ crucifixion they may have taken their sights off of
Lazarus thinking they had cut the head off of the movement. But we know that no
one touched Him unless God let Him be touched, and because He was touched we
all have been given life and stand firmly planted in eternity. This is true
regardless of what man may do to us now. There is nothing the enemy can do to
rip us from God’s hands. We are firmly in His grasp. There is no one who can
separate us from His love. Jesus is our intercessor and our advocate.
Having said this, however, we also know that God has not yet
removed us from this place and while we remain we will have to endure trials of
all sorts. But in enduring these trials we know first and foremost that Christ
endured much more for us, and because of what He did we have been guaranteed
life. When man thinks he wins by striking us down, what really happens is that
his efforts are proven futile as we step into the presence of God. Man cannot
do what God does not allow. We live in a world that is racked with the ravages
of sin and death. There is much evil rampant around us, and God knows this very
well. It was because of man’s lost-ness that Christ came. And it is because of
man’s salvation that God endures and restrains the evil one without fully removing us. We
may not understand all of this, and we truly grieve at the atrocities around
us, but even in this we do so as ones who have hope.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, just before He
stopped to pray He told His disciples, “I have said these things to you, that
in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart;
I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, ESV) Later on in life John wrote, “For
everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory
that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world
except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4–5, ESV)
The world’s plans are already doomed. That’s just the way it is.
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