We have a saying for it. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” And like it is with so many other sayings, I wonder why does it have to be that way? “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” We all enjoy the dawn. I’ve had opportunities, if you want to call them that, to look longingly for the dawn to come. One of the times was during my seminary career when I had my calling strengthened by knowing that I was not going to be a night watchman. I had to watch a building in downtown St. Louis overnight, and make sure that some of the things inside it were not stolen because it was in the midst of construction. Just to keep an eye on it. And waited, I remember, through that long night looking at the little light blipping at the top of the St. Louis Arch, and just thinking, “You know, eventually the sun is going to hit that thing and this is going to be over.” Boring comes to mind, but there was just a loneliness about it. No danger, no problem, but just dark, dark. And yet how often we use that to describe much darker, much harder circumstances that we go through. Not a literal night perhaps, but a night of the soul. Darkest. Why is it always darkest before the dawn? We try to bargain with God. We try to tell him, “You know, we promise, honest, we’ll be grateful.” Because the one explanation we ordinarily hear is that when it’s really darkest, then you appreciate the dawn a lot more. You’re much more grateful for it because things have been so bad, then by contrast, now they’re so good, and finally instead of saying, “Oh yes, of course they’re good, we deserve it, and we’re kind of used to it and take it for granted,” now we don’t take it for granted anymore. We’re really thankful, and so we promise the Lord, “That’s ok, you don’t have to make it dark anymore. I’ll be grateful, honest! This time! Just give me one more chance.” But....it continues. We find ourselves in those dark places again from time to time, and wonder still why it is, because actually there are times when it’s been light. We’ve had times in our life when it’s been light, and it’s been good, and it’s been prosperous, and we have been grateful, like Job was. Never do we read in the account about Job that he had not been grateful enough for all the good things that God had done for him. It wasn’t that God needed to get his attention. There’s simply not an explanation for what happened in the book of Job. Job brought sacrifices to the Lord continually, not only for himself but for his children, lest they might have sinned against him. Job was a righteous man. He loved God. And yet, look at the darkness that Job had to undergo. And so do we have to undergo these things? Is the explanation just so that we might appreciate the good things later on when they do come? Enjoy the dawn, enjoy the sun when it finally does rise? It doesn’t wash. Why? Why does it have to be darkest before the dawn? Why is it that all hope, it seems, must be lost before God very often will intervene?
Well, in this account of the death of Lazarus, we have the final sign that is given in the book of John, and it is a sign which is given in the midst of a situation even more hopeless than has heretofore occurred. As we go back through the various signs there was in every case some kind of problem, some kind of distress. In the first case, probably not the most grievous of situations, but it certainly was for the host, who ran out of wine. That first sign that took place, where Jesus turned the water to wine, and a hopeless situation, at least on the social end of things, was resolved. But then we have the second one, again in Cana, the healed official’s son. Then the third one: He healed the invalid at Bethsaida or Bethesda in Jerusalem in chapter 5. There, of course, someone whose prospects of ever even being able to get up and get to the pool were utterly hopeless. And yet, the Lord Jesus intervened. The feeding of the five thousand: absolutely a hopeless task there in chapter 6 back in Galilee. And yet, the Lord fed them all. And immediately after that there would be no prospect of being able to catch up with His disciples, and yet He walked on the water, the fifth sign. It’s after the second sign that they don’t keep track anymore. They say, “This was the first sign: water into wine. The second sign was healing the official’s son,” and then they don’t number them after that, but we do eventually wind up with seven. After the walking on the water we go a couple of chapters to chapter 9. The sixth sign: healing the man who was born blind. And we’re seeing, maybe not a direct, clear, step by step pattern here, but we certainly see a progression from changing water to wine to healing someone who was born blind. Not someone who was blinded. We know of cases where someone got there head jostled and something fell back into place and they were able to see again. This is someone who never had the eyes to see with from birth. A really hopeless situation, and yet the Lord Jesus heals him. He gives him sight. Now we come to the most hopeless situation of all, where someone has died. And eventually, as most of us are familiar with this account, we know that by the time that Jesus does stand before Lazarus’s tomb, and utter those words which cause him to come forth, Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days. He is dead. This is an absolutely hopeless situation. But we have stopped at this point in verse 6 to focus on Jesus’ preparation for this, because we have a problem in Jesus’ reaction to the news that one whom He loves is sick. A problem really so severe that one, modern translation alters the way it literally ought to be translated in verse 3. “It was after saying it was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill, so the sisters sent to Him saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it He said, ‘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.’” Now, it is between verses 5 and 6 that the problem occurs. “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.” You see the problem? The problem here was so acute that the New International Version translates that saying, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, yet when He heard that Lazarus was ill He stayed two days longer.” The fact that Jesus decided after hearing that Lazarus was ill, probably to the point of death, He decides to linger a couple of days longer, is so incompatible with the idea that He loves Lazarus that one translator says, “We have to oppose these things somehow. It just doesn’t make sense. We have to make the one clause a concession to the other one, because if He really does love him, we’d have to say, ‘yet, for reasons which we can’t imagine, He decides to linger around for a couple of days before He finally goes and offers the help that He’s been able to give all along.” After all when He does arrive there that’s the first thing that Martha confronts Him with. “If you had been here my brother would not have died.” Of course, we will get to what she says next, and to that glorious, glorious declaration of faith that she makes. But that’s a problem. How is it that He would decide when He had demonstrated the power to heal (they’d seen Him do it), why wouldn’t He come as quickly as possible? Why wouldn’t He do what He did way back in that second miracle, with the healing of the official’s son? Remember, He didn’t even have to go there. All He had to do was declare that the son would be healed, and He was able to tell the man, “Go back, your son is healed.” And so when the man goes back and however long it took him to journey back to his home and he finds that his son has been healed already, and calculates the time at which, as he interviews the people there, the time at which his son rose up from his illness, he says, “That is the very time that I was talking to Jesus.” That was the very time that He said, “Go, your son is healed.” Jesus could have done that. It didn’t matter how far away He was. Well, alright, we understand the problem. Where was Jesus anyway at this point? That’s been a little bit of a puzzle, and it may be that we have a clearer understanding from some more recent study, and archeological discoveries that the region where Jesus had gone, and its referred to just back in the previous verses at the end of chapter 10, when it says, “He went away across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first.” We recall all the way back in John 1:28 that this place across the Jordan where John was baptizing, and that was the place where John pointed out Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” “These things took place in Bethany, across the Jordan where John was baptizing.” Bethany across the Jordan. Of course the first question comes to our mind, is this the Bethany where Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary live, which is a little town that is just a couple of miles from Jerusalem. Well, the difficulty there is that that Bethany is not across the Jordan. The Trans-Jordan, across the Jordan, is over to the east side. Jerusalem and Bethany are on the west side of the Jordan. This Bethany, whatever it is, wherever it was, and there still is a difficulty in locating it exactly, this Bethany was across the Jordan. And recent scholarship has theorized that perhaps what is meant here is a region that was called Bethania, which if you spelled it just a little bit differently would sound like Bethany. And it was a whole region that was about a hundred and fifty kilometers away over to the northeast in the Trans-Jordan. So, Jesus would have been between a three and a four day walk away before He could have possibly gotten back to Bethany which is near Jerusalem. And so, this is most likely where Jesus is at the time that He receives this news. We know very little from the Scripture about the relationship that Jesus had with these sisters and their brother. It is told us here, there is a window that speaks of a very dear relationship that had arisen between them. We have a description in Luke of how this whole thing began. In Luke 10 Martha had invited Jesus into their home, and that’s when they first became acquainted with Him. That is the account where Martha is preparing everything and Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to what He teaches. From that time it is apparent that Jesus spent time in that home, and got to know those people, and had come to love them dearly. So when Martha comes and finds Him, she sends this word, “Lazarus, whom you love is ill.” Jesus says, “This illness does not lead to death.” He of course is looking forward and He is giving away the end of the story here, although His disciples don’t yet understand what He means. But He says again as he said about the man who was born blind - notice the parallel there - he was not born blind because of his sin or the sin of his parents, but in order that the glory of God might be displayed in him. And so, in the same way He says here, “It is for the glory of God.” This illness is for the glory of God. This darkness is for the glory of God. This hardship, this tragedy is for the glory of God. So that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. John puts that in there that there might be no doubt that Jesus does indeed, not just in Martha’s mind, but He does indeed love Lazarus, and love Mary, and loves Martha. He would have done anything for them. If He would heal one stranger after another who had no human claim on Him, surely He would heal Lazarus. But then we come back to that problematic word there in verse 6. As a result of His love, because He loves them, therefore when He heard that Lazarus was ill He stayed two days longer in the place where He was. Excuse me? Isn’t this the time to put on all haste? Well, let’s take a moment here and go back and see how perhaps the Lord Jesus taking......well, we know that He doesn’t take a page out of anybody else’s play book, just because others came before Him, we know that they were really taking a page out of His.....but we go back to Elijah on Mount Carmel and it just amazes me always when I read that account of just how cool Elijah is. I mean, he’s got 450 prophets of Baal, who obviously have knives and things like that that they’re cutting themselves with, and at any given moment they might all of a sudden decide, “You know what? We could use these knives on Elijah.” But that just doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s making fun of them, because they just can’t manage to get this god who Elijah knows doesn’t even exist, they’re bleeding into the air, to answer. And surely I think most of us, and most modern people today wouldn’t have any difficulty, as long as they didn’t think that the prophets would turn against them, they would probably have the same confidence. Of course no one is going to answer by fire. Fire’s going to come down out of heaven from this god Baal? No, I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. And so, Elijah was certainly in a pretty good position there. I could be speaking to any crowd of any persuasion, and I think all would agree that Elijah was in a strong position at that point. But then when he turns and he says in that very simple prayer, (no yelling, no screaming, no cutting himself, no running around, but bowing his head and simply praying) “Lord, you are God. Show them.” Then he’s way out on a limb, because he has set it up. He set the stakes awfully high. Now of course, we didn’t read that far, did we? We didn’t read Elijah’s prayer. What we did is we read about what he did before hand. It seemed that he was determined to make the problem even worse. He’s got his bowl and he’s going to soak that bowl. And they soak it once....that’s not enough. He’s going to soak it a second time, and then soak it a third time, soak it so much that the water pours out and fills up this ditch that he’s made around the alter. And by the way, that was not a common thing. They didn’t usually have a ditch like that around the alter, but for this sacrifice you were going to need it. Everything was a mess. It was soaked with water. And after all, there had been a drought for three years. It hadn’t rained for three years. It was really dry. You know what they tell you, “Be careful about any kind of a spark. Anything can start a fire.” So, some little spark hit this bone dry sacrifice and sure, sure everything flew up in flames. Elijah wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. He soaked that sacrifice. We all know what happened. The fire did indeed come down from Heaven. But Elijah was bound and determined, deliberately to make the problem worse, in order that God might be glorified, showing that you can't make it too hard for God. You cannot, even with all of your ingenuity, come up with a problem or with a situation which is too difficult for God. Go ahead, make it worse. Soak the sacrifice. The fire will still come down and will consume it entirely because it is God who is doing it. The same thing happens in Acts 27. We read the account there of Paul on his trip to Rome as a captive. Usually, your ordinary captive doesn't try to give advice to the captain: “Oh, by the way, you might want to hang around. Things are going to get dangerous out there.” And of course the captain reacts as one might ordinarily to a prisoner, and just dismisses what he says. He takes the word of the experts as they get out into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and they find out that Paul was right. But remember that verse right in the middle when it says, all hope of salvation, all hope of deliverance was abandoned. All hope was lost. And it was at that point that Paul stood up and said, “An angel of the Lord appeared to me, and he said we are all going to be saved.” Now, he has to get it in. I mean, Paul was only human. “You should have listened to me. Told you so.” But God was going to deliver them. He was going to save them.....after all hope was lost. Was that something unique? Was that something different? Look back.
The first time Jesus appeals to this pattern is back in John 3, and He deliberately points it out when He is talking to Nicodemus, and He says, “I thought you were a teacher in Israel. I thought that you understood these things.” And then He mentions the bronze serpent which was raised up in the wilderness. You go back, and you read that account in the book of Numbers. In that account God is angry with the people and so He sends serpents among them, and the serpents bite them. These are deadly serpents. Once you are bitten your death is certain. You have minutes to live. So, all hope, once you have been bitten, is gone. You're dead. It's over. It is too late. And yet after it is too late (not when there is one more chance, but after the last chance is gone) Moses raises the bronze serpent, and those who look to it live, after it’s too late. Jesus points out that pattern. And then we see it throughout the Scripture. After the fruit is eaten, when it's too late, when all is lost, paradise is lost, the promise of the woman's seed is given. After Abraham and Sarah are past childbearing age the promised son is born. After the Israelites are trapped with their face towards the Egyptians and their backs to the Red Sea, after it’s too late, the waters of the sea part. After the people are bitten by the serpents, the bronze serpent is raised. After the armies of Amon and Edom are upon Jehoshaphat, and it’s too late to mount any kind of defense, the Lord says, “You will not fight this battle. The battle is the Lord's.” Or when the armies of Assyria surrounded Hezekiah, and all hope of deliverance is futile, God did deliver. And indeed, now we see, after the greatest civilization of the ancient world, the only truly worldwide empire that history would ever know, had quietly spelled its own doom by conferring the title 'Augustus' upon its emperor Octavian, declaring Caesar to be God, the son of God and Savior (Augustus marks the turning point, his own reign marks the high point of the civilization of Rome, and it begins to decline. It is to last for a few more hundred years, but it is on its way out at that point), at that point in the years of Caesar Augustus, a child is born. A son is given, and the government would be upon His shoulders. This is the pattern that the Lord has used all the way through the Scriptures. Because He loves those whom He has determined to save, it becomes darkest before the dawn. We see why it is that when Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, therefore so, He determined to delay in order that God might be glorified, in order that He might be glorified, and in order that the sign might be given: “This is the salvation that I have come to bring. I will save sinners from the very worst.” He is showing that it doesn't matter how bad it gets. It doesn't matter how deep the pit is. It doesn't matter how great the disaster is. It doesn't matter that all ordinary hope is entirely gone. It’s not just those who are sick, where Jesus can intervene and can keep them from dying. It is those who actually have died and who are beginning to decay that Jesus can and will save. What had to be demonstrated is that the last enemy, the most powerful enemy, the most implacable enemy, the enemy that no one, no one, no one beats: Death itself would fall before this Son of God.
And so, because the Lord loves you, sometime takes you through dark nights to show you, yes, that He will never leave you or forsake you even in the midst of that night, but also that He always will, no matter how dark it becomes, He will always bring the dawn. You need some application? Believe it.
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