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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
John 11:17–27
Now when Jesus came, he found
that Lazarus had already been in the tomb
four days.
Bethany was near Jerusalem,
about two miles off, and many of the Jews
had come to Martha and Mary
to console them concerning their brother.
So when Martha heard that
Jesus was coming, she went and met him.
But Mary remained seated in the house.
Martha said to Jesus, "Lord,
if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask
from God, God will give you."
Jesus said to her,
"your brother will rise again."
Martha said to him,
"I know that he will rise
again in the resurrection on the last day."
Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet
shall he live.
And everyone who lives and believes in me
shall never die.
Do you believe this?"
She said to him, "yes, Lord, I believe that
you are the Christ, the Son of God,
who is coming into the world."
Well, good
morning and welcome to the weekend here
at Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm
so glad we get to be part of your weekend.
You know, 2026,
we have a theme for the year
as a church, it is more life.
We are asking God for and believing God
for more life in every area of our lives.
And we're doing that in response
to the Gospel of John
chapter ten, verse ten, where Jesus says,
I have come
so that they may have life and life
more abundantly.
Jesus says his mission is to bring life
even more life.
And so we're leaning in to that mission.
If that's what Jesus has for us,
that's what we want for ourselves.
And this spring, in our series,
we're calling I Am More,
we're seeing seven times
in the Gospel of John where Jesus tells us
that the pathway to more life
is not trying harder or doing more,
it's him.
Seven times he says, I am something,
and he's inviting us to come to him
to experience relationship
with him and promising
that that is what will lead to more life.
That's we're going to see again
this weekend.
So if you have a Bible,
you can open it up to John chapter 11.
Follow along on the screen behind me
if that's your preference or if you want,
there's a Bible in the pew in front of you
or in the back of East Hall.
Same one I use. So I can tell you,
today's reading is on page 855.
You know, if you're like me,
when you think of more life,
what you probably assume Jesus is meaning
is that there are areas of my life
where I'm experiencing very little life,
and then if I give those to him,
I'll go from a little bit of life
to more life.
And certainly
that is one thing that he means.
But it's not the only thing he means.
What we're going to find this weekend
is that he also means areas where we have
no life that he will take us from no life
to more life in 2026.
In fact, to show you that, I'm
going to use a three point outline
that'll be on the screen behind
me, three points, a very simple.
And they go like this
I want to show you that death is real,
resignation is real,
and resurrection is real.
Death is real.
Resignation is real.
And resurrection is real.
I start with the first one.
Death is real.
You probably noticed this
when the story was being read,
but this is a story about a death.
But Jesus has a close personal friend.
His name is Lazarus. Lazarus has died.
In fact, by the time Jesus gets there,
Lazarus has been dead.
A couple of days.
Jesus is not just close to Lazarus.
He's close to Lazarus, his sisters
Mary and Martha.
And so it's not just about the death
of Lazarus.
It's about the grief of a family, a family
that Jesus is close to.
Let me read it to you.
Here's how it begins John chapter 11,
verse 17.
Now when Jesus came, he found that
Lazarus had already been in the tomb
four days.
Bethany was near Jerusalem,
about two miles off, and many of the Jews
had come to Martha and Mary
to console them concerning their brother.
So when Martha heard that
Jesus was coming, she went and met him.
But Mary remain seated in the house.
There is something evocative
about these verses
that you can feel the grief like even
even when Jesus shows up
and Mary, one of the sisters, you know,
someone tells her Jesus is here
and Mary is so stricken by grief,
she she just can't even leave the house.
She just says, I can't do it.
And Martha,
probably more out of duty than that.
Anything says, you know what,
I'll I'll go.
I will go say hello to them.
You can feel their grief,
especially if you've lost someone.
You know what this feels like?
You can feel it.
It makes me think of a particular song
that, for whatever reason, has
stuck out to me over the years.
There's, an artist who, in his early 30s,
lost his wife to cancer.
They had a one year old daughter
very early, very unexpected, very sudden.
And he wrote an album about it.
It's an interesting album
because it's kind of lo fi.
It's. It's him in the living room
with the guitar.
It's it is not artistic quality,
but it is visceral.
And he has a song, the opening
song of the album, where he says this,
he says, I can memorize it.
It's just stuck out to me.
He says, death is real.
Someone's there.
And then they're not.
And it's not for singing about,
and it's not for making into art.
When real death enters
the room, all poetry is dumb.
It's always
stuck out to me, I think in part
because you can feel his grief,
but also
because his grief is multi-dimensional.
Do you know?
I mean, he's not just mourning the loss
of his wife that that's bad enough.
He's mourning the death of other things
associated
with his wife,
the life they will not have together,
the childhood his daughter will not have,
the dreams they had that are now gone.
He's he's describing death as something
not just
physiological and biological,
but something bigger than that.
And you know, that is true.
But obviously when we lose someone,
when someone physically,
biologically dies, that is devastating.
But it's also devastating when,
for example,
a marriage dies.
Or a friendship
dies or a family relationship,
a career,
a dream, your reputation.
But you get my point.
We experience death when we lose someone,
but we experience
death in all kinds of forms,
and it's just as painful,
just as powerful.
I wonder when I put death in those terms.
If we say death is not just who you lose,
but what you lose.
It's not just someone who dies,
but something that dies.
I wonder what comes to mind for you.
Like what is dead in your life
and in your story?
Well, I think that's what this is about.
Death in all kinds of forms is real.
And that's painful enough.
But if you don't mind,
I'll push a little further
and say there's a second thing
that maybe is even more painful.
And that's not only that death is real,
but that resignation is real.
What I mean by that is we live in a world
where people die biologically,
physically, where relationships
die, careers die, dreams die.
And we've had to learn
to make our peace with it.
We've resigned
ourselves to death being normal.
You're going to see that in this passage,
particularly in Martha.
There's a resignation in her.
And in fact,
I want to put it into two categories
what I'm going to call irreligious
resignation and religious resignation.
And I don't know your story,
but maybe you'll identify
with one or the other or even both.
Let me show you first,
the irreligious form of resignation.
You can find it the very next verse.
Pick it up.
In verse 21, Martha said to Jesus, Lord,
if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
Or if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
Now Mary will say the same thing
later on in the passage, both sisters
saying to Jesus, if you had been here,
my brother wouldn't have died.
I think they're saying two things.
The first thing is that
they're they're frustrated with Jesus.
It took him a lot of
time to get there, and by the time he gets
there, Lazarus has been done.
Been dead for days there.
They're mad at Jesus for not hurrying,
not coming faster.
Let's leave that for another day.
Here's the second thing that's going on.
What Mary is saying is, is Jesus,
if you had just gotten here earlier,
maybe you could have done something.
Maybe you could have prayed a prayer.
Maybe you could have worked a miracle.
I mean, if you had just been here earlier,
maybe we could have done something.
But now he's dead.
And here's what she's saying.
Once something or someone dies,
it's too late.
That's what she's saying.
If he had gotten here before he was dead,
maybe you could help.
Now he's dead.
There's nothing to do
if you're not religious.
This.
This might be how you feel
when you think about death.
Might be even your chief objection
against Christianity or religions like it.
You know, kind of saying,
look, we're all going to die.
And when we die, there's no point
in believing a fairy tale
about what happens after that.
I'll say some more about that at the end.
But that is what Martha is saying
right up until the moment of death,
something can happen, but once it's dead,
it stays dead.
And she's talking, of course,
about the physical death of her brother.
And we get that
because you and I have been to funerals,
and we've never been to
one where the person got up.
Once you're dead, it's over.
But if we're honest
that we feel the same thing
about things that are dead, like,
for example, I have friendships
or family relationships
that I would call dead.
And if I'm honest about them,
I have as much optimism about them
as I would at going to a funeral
and thinking
the person will get up.
I mean, you know this, right?
When a marriage is dead, when a friendship
is dead, when a family relationship,
when a dream, when your reputation,
when things die, they stay dead.
We don't hold out hope for them.
We just resign ourselves
to saying that relationship, that dream,
that opportunity,
that part of myself is dead.
So were you.
Find yourself.
Maybe when you think about it,
you think about it.
Maybe if I had said this,
or maybe if I had done that,
maybe if they had said this,
maybe if they had done that, maybe.
But it's too late now.
When something's dead, it stays dead.
That's
the irreligious form of resignation.
Let me show you another kind, though,
because if you're here
and you call yourself a Christian,
you think of yourself as religious,
as spiritual.
You're probably more likely
to fall into this bucket.
Let me show you.
Look at what Jesus says in verse 23.
Jesus said to her,
your brother will rise again.
Verse 24, Martha said to
him, I know that he will rise again
in the resurrection.
On the last day, Jesus says to her,
Lazarus is going to rise again.
And Martha says to Jesus, oh,
thank you, Jesus.
Yes, I know, I know the Bible.
I know we're going to die, and eventually
we're going to raised from the dead.
We're going to stand before God, and he's
going to welcome some of us into heaven.
I know one day I'll see Lazarus again.
Thank you for the Bible story.
Thank you for Jesus joking me.
Jesus, I believe in future hope.
But here's what she's really saying.
That has nothing to do with today.
I wonder how many of us resonate
with this.
Martha believes in a powerful God.
She believes in a resurrecting God.
She just believes that all the
power and the resurrecting
is for the afterlife.
She doesn't believe it's available today.
Now, if you're reading the passage,
you might say, well, hold on, Zack,
I don't know if that's fair.
Look at what she says in verse 22.
And I want to look at that,
because if you're like me
and you are religious,
this is going to hit pretty hard.
Look at what she says in verse 22 right
after she says, if you had been here,
he wouldn't have died.
Verse 22 she says this, but even now
I know that whatever you ask from God,
God will give you and you say,
hey, that's faith.
She's believing.
But can I tell you, I don't think she is.
I think she's doing something
that you and I know how to do really well.
She's saying the right things,
but she doesn't mean them.
Let me show you why I think that.
Look at verse 38.
Verse 38 says this.
Then Jesus deeply moved again,
came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
And Jesus said, take away the stone.
And Martha, the sister of the dead
man, said to him, Lord,
by this time there will be an odor, for
he has been dead for days.
Jesus says,
do you believe she says,
I know whatever you ask, God will do.
Jesus goes to the tomb.
He moves the stone
and she doesn't say it's
happening.
She says, hey, Jesus.
I miss him too.
But by now he's going to stink.
Do you see my point?
She doesn't believe
she's just saying what you say.
How many of us
who would call ourselves
Christians believe in a God
who's powerful, believe
in a future of resurrection power,
but believe all the power
and all the resurrection is on layaway?
I mean, we'll pray, right?
We'll pray. And we say all the things
you're supposed to say.
God, we believe you can do anything
we're asking,
but we don't really mean it.
It's because we're religiously
resigned, believing in future hope
that really makes no difference
to what is presently dead.
And if that's where you find yourself,
you're going to love.
My third point,
because not only is death real,
not only is resignation real,
but resurrection is real.
Look at what Jesus says to Martha.
Pick it up in verse 25, Jesus said to her,
I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet
shall he live.
And everyone who lives and believes in me
shall never die.
Do you believe this?
Jesus is saying something powerful. Here's
what he's saying.
He's saying, Martha, Martha, listen to me.
Resurrection
is not a moment on a calendar,
is it?
That that seems to be
what you're thinking.
You're thinking
that resurrection is a calendar event.
It's a moment in time.
Like there's a resurrection day
and we're all moving towards it.
And sometime between today
and that day, we'll die.
And then we'll get to that day,
and that day will raise from the dead,
he says, Martha,
resurrection is not a calendar event.
It's a power that I have.
In other
words, he's saying things don't raised
from the dead because it's time for them
to raise from the dead, things
raised from the dead,
because I tell them to,
I am the resurrection and the life.
Well, let me use a metaphor.
I have a jar here.
I meant to bring one from home, but I.
I didn't, so I took this from our kitchen.
I'll put it back.
You know, my wife,
Amy, does all the cooking in our family.
I don't know how to cook anything.
And if you've been coming for a month,
I realize I'm making it sound like
I'm useless at home.
I guess that is what it is.
My. But my wife, Amy does all the cooking.
She's an amazing, amazing cook.
And we great things.
And every now and then
when she's in the kitchen cooking,
she comes across a jar she can't open.
Okay, now it doesn't happen
very often. She's tough.
She's strong. Right.
But every now and then
and when that happens, we have five kids.
So she'll call the oldest kid in the house
down and give them a crack at it.
So she'll call my 18 year
old son down to open the jar.
But he's weak.
Then she'll let my 16 year old daughter
try my 14 year old daughter.
Try my nine year old son.
Weak, weak.
My seven year old daughter.
Eventually, she realized
nobody in the house can open the jar.
And she'll say, well,
when your dad gets home, I'll having him
open it now, most days
I get home at five, 530.
I'm like, you write up working.
I get home at five, 530
and I'll walk in and Amy will say, hey,
can you open the jar every now and then?
My schedule will clear
up, a meeting will get canceled.
My assistant will say to me,
hey, if you leave right now,
you can get home early, right?
So I'll sneak out to get home.
And so sometimes I get home at 334.
Now when I walk
in, how do you think Amy responds
when I walk in?
Do you think she says, hey, welcome home.
Go relax for an hour.
But if you could come back down at 5:00,
it's jar opening time now.
As soon as I walk in, what does she do?
She hands me the jar and she says,
Will you open this?
That's because the jar opening
is not a moment in time.
I don't want to brag.
It's a power that I have.
Brothers and sisters in Christ,
resurrection is not a moment in time.
It's a power that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, has.
We don't wait for a calendar event.
We bring him the jar.
Can you open this?
And you raise this?
And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, wait a second.
Are you saying that everything that dies
from people to marriages to relationships
to dreams,
that we can give them to Jesus
and he will raise them from the dead?
I'm not saying that I can't write you
a blank check of promises from God.
You know that because I told you
I have relationships that are dead.
So if I could write you
that check, I'd write it for myself.
You know that.
Because if God raised everything
from the dead
all the time, Lazarus
would be the one preaching the sermon.
He gets up this time.
Next time he doesn't.
One way of dishonoring God is
to is to expect him,
to demand him to raise everything
from the dead, to demand him to open
every jar we give him.
He's God, he has a plan.
He has purposes
we couldn't possibly understand.
I cannot make you that promise.
I would never dishonor God in that way.
But can I tell you something?
Another way of dishonoring
God is to never bring him
any jars at all.
This is just simply believe
the things that are dead.
Stay dead.
Until eternity.
There is no way to read the New Testament.
There's no way to read this story
and not believe you ought to be handing
Jesus
some jars.
You know, if I get home at five 530
and I say to Amy, hey, what's for dinner?
And she goes, nothing.
And I say, what?
And she goes, yeah,
there's a jar we can't open.
And then she said to me,
I don't want to bother you.
You've worked hard all day.
I don't want I don't want to bug you.
Do you think she's honoring me?
No, no, I will say to her.
Give me the jar.
By the way, that's what happens.
Look with me. Verse 43.
When he had said these things,
he cried out with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come out!
And the man who had died came out.
His hands and feet bound with linen
strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.
And Jesus said to them, unbind him,
and let him go.
And Martha said, and take a shower.
You see,
Jesus looked at a dead
man and said, give me that jar.
Friends,
resurrection is not a calendar event.
It's a work that the Son of God can do,
and we do not honor him
when we don't ask him.
In fact, let me give you three things
I can tell you
Jesus wants to raise from the dead.
Here's the first one.
You ready?
Your relationship with God.
The Bible says the thing that is most dead
about all of us is our relationship
with God because of our sin,
because of our rebellion.
You've experienced this.
You lay in bed at night. You pray.
You feel like your prayers don't go
any further than the ceiling.
You feel totally disconnected.
You feel as though
your relationship with God is dead.
The Bible says you're right.
You're not wrong. You're right.
But what you're wrong about
is that he's okay with it.
The story of Lazarus, his resurrection
points to a greater one Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, who will live senselessly
in our place, die
sacrificially on the cross, coming up
under the anger and judgment of God,
exhausting it in his death, so that when
he raises from the dead three days later.
By the way, if you're holding on
to that irreligious resignation here, this
Jesus Christ proves
that life after death is not a fairy tale.
When he historically in the center
of the known universe at the time,
Roman Empire lives and dies
and historically raises from the dead.
Which means if you feel as though
your relationship with God is dead,
it does not have to be for one
more second.
You can simply say to God, God,
I feel as though you and I are dead,
but I have heard that you sent your son,
and he lived in my place,
and he died in my place,
and he rose from the dead.
And he promised that on the basis
of his life and his death
and his resurrection,
you would forgive me, you would accept me.
You would include me,
and you would bring us back to life.
Here's the second thing,
brother, sister in Christ,
do you know that resurrection
will be part of your story?
You will die.
One of us will more than likely attend
the other's funeral.
We're going to die.
And when we die,
we will raise from the dead.
But we won't raise from the dead
because of some kind of natural reflex
we won't raise from the dead
because of a calendar event.
When you die, the Son of God from the throne of heaven will say, give me that jar.
He will raise you himself.
And then here's the third thing.
Between today and that day,
he wants to open a lot of jars
to drive this metaphor home.
I was going to open jars
because, you know, you get that satisfying
pop sound when you open it.
But then I realize
you only get that sound once.
And there are six services,
and that's a lot of apricot
preserves to waste.
But here's what I want you to know.
The local church is meant to be a place
where jars are popping all the time,
where marriages that were dead
are brought back to life, friendships
that were dead are reconciled.
Dreams that are dead, careers
that are dead are revived.
Reputations that are dead are restored.
We are meant to hear jars popping.
I can't promise you every jar will pop.
But I can promise you, between this day
and the day of your resurrection,
God wants to open jars.
He wants his church to come to him and
pray, God, can you do what we can't do?
Here's the jar.
Can you bring dead things back to life?
He wants us to pray for the cancer
diagnosis.
He wants us to pray for the marriage,
that his family wants us to pray
for the rebellious teenager and he doesn't
want, verse 22 kind of prayers.
God, I'm saying you can do anything
but I don't mean it.
He wants his people to come to him
and say, Will you do what only you can do?
We are looking forward
to the day of resurrection, but Jesus,
you said,
and we believe you are the resurrection.
Here's a dead
thing will you open this jar?
Are you ready for that?
2026 as a year of more life
means things that we thought were dead.
To the grace of God
and the power of Jesus Christ, His Son
will be brought to life.
So pick up your jar.
And take it to him.
Let me pray for us.
Father God, thank you so much
for the story of Lazarus.
Thank you.
I mean, there's so much more we could say.
Thank you for the empathy
Jesus that you show in the story.
You weep because we weep.
You're moved because we are moved.
So great is your empathy,
so great is your kindness.
And you raise the dead.
So great is your power.
And God.
We're all sitting in here
holding a jar or an armful of jars.
Relationships, dreams, careers,
reputations, marriages that are dead.
And we're praying with
the guy in the gospel
said to you, Jesus, Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
But God, we're asking for your glory,
for our joy,
and for the good of a watching world.
Will you open jars in this church?
We ask that in the name of Jesus,
the resurrection and the life.
Amen.