The Controversialist No.5 In the face of death

Let's sing that little song, 4-4-8, Lord we long for you to move in power. Then we hear God's word read to us, 4-4-8. Let's stand and sing this.

So hear our prayer and let our cry come up to you, great God. Amen. The reading is from John 11, verses 17-53, which is about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

John 11, verses 17-53. On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. Lord, Martha said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this? Yes, Lord, she told him. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. And after she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside.

The teacher is here, she said, and is asking for you. When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

Where have you laid him? he asked. Come and see, Lord, they replied. Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, See how he loved him. But some of them said, Could he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying? Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.

Take away the stone, he said. But Lord, said Martha, the sister of the dead man, by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days. Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? So they looked up and took away the stone.

Then Jesus said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, Take off the grave clothes and let him go. Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did put their faith in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. What are we accomplishing, they asked.

Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

Then one of them named Caiaphas, who was a high priest that year, spoke up. You know nothing at all. You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.

He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. And not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

As Brian indicated, this evening we are particularly giving time to linking up on the events of yesterday and will endeavor to put them into a biblical framework to the degree that it is possible to speak on these great mysteries of tragedy in people's lives. One of the reasons why we are attempting this is because the press got on to me on a number of occasions last week. Some of the comments they made were accurate.

One or two were understandable, but not quite sharp. It is not true that I was in touch with Mother Teresa during these last few months, though I have in my times in India been in her company. It may well be that we will have a phone call in from one of her colleagues this evening, but I am not too sure about that just at the moment.

But it is particularly this evening when we will be homing in on the death of the princess. But it so happens in God's grace that we have been looking on a Sunday morning at the controversy that Jesus triggered in his ministry. And in one sense it is providential.

It is amazing how you can do a plan in terms of a bunch of sermons not knowing quite what the circumstance will be when you come to deliver what you have planned for. And here we are this morning looking at Jesus and what he had to say about life and death. And we find ourselves at a point where unless you just went to sleep the whole of yesterday, there is no way in which that subject of death can have escaped you.

You have to stop and to think at some stage. Listen to Charles Spurgeon. I literally have only just been reading this.

He has this to say. It is sad that the ostrich buries its head in the sand and fancies itself secure when it can no longer see the hunter. I can hardly imagine that even a bird can be quite so foolish.

And I beg you, do not enact such madness. If I do not think of death, yet death will think of me. If I do not go to death by meditation, death will come to me by experience.

Well, that's Charles Spurgeon. Let's go to a socialist philosopher who was once a member of the Brethren Assemblies when he was a boy and reneged on his faith. He's now towards the end of his political course, and it's in the days, the Barmy days, in more than one sense of the word, of Harold Wilson and Mary Wilson and Michael Foote and so forth.

A colleague has died. And Crossman, in his atheism, coupled with that of Michael Foote, get together. And they try and do the sort of thing that occurred yesterday at Westminster Abbey, but it fouls up.

And they're describing this service. And Richard Crossman, in his diaries, is very, very honest. He speaks about his colleague whose name was Stephen.

And he says of the service, there wasn't a service really, just the coffin waiting to slide down into the fire and a chap playing the organ. Michael Foote got up and said a quiet obituary. Then Harold Davis, another parliamentary colleague, was more florid but curiously touching.

I thought, my God, I'd rather have a bit of ritual at a funeral. It's too desperately heartbreaking for the wife and the kids when it's all addressed to them as human being to human being. And though God may not exist, there is something to be said for him to stop everybody from mopping their eyes, as we are all doing.

We walked out through the back of the chancel into the sunshine and saw the flowers and each other and couldn't say much. Well, of course he couldn't say much. There really is nothing to say.

If your presupposition is that of atheism, then death is for you what the Bible declares it to be. And that is the last enemy. Death is for you, as the Bible declares, then qualifies like a sting that is put into the being of a person and leads ultimately to destruction and arguably from an atheistic point of view to annihilation.

But of course, the Bible, in referring to death as the last enemy, also holds that intention with Jesus as the great victor. And the reason why Jesus came on earth, at least one of the byproducts of his ministry on earth, was to look at the enemy of death, fight it, and be victorious over it. For in the 20th century, when we go soft on convictions in terms of biblical religion, but expect convictions in terms of political philosophy, let it be said that our Lord Jesus and the Christian faith is the only person and the only religion that does address the problem of death and claims that its founder, in other words, the Savior Himself, dealt with death, went through death, came back after death, and as a result of the impeccable nature of His life and the sacrifice of that on a cross, makes it possible for the benefits, the cumulative benefit of His life to pass through to people like you and me, who when death visits us, as we're brought into the presence of God, will be appallingly embarrassed because of the things that we have done that are wrong and because there has been no atonement made, no proffer of forgiveness have we sought for.

And as a result, in those final moments, we are in a desperate condition. Now, let's again examine our Lord Jesus because He really was in one sense a very ordinary man. I mean by that, He's the people's Savior.

We hear of the people's princess. I think if I had to put another term alongside son of man as my most popular one to describe Jesus, that is a non-biblical term, is that He was the man for others. You see, He got the crowns.

He really did. In one sense, they did line the streets. He was never afraid, never afraid of the religious squad, never afraid if they had them in those days, of the photographers.

He had nothing to be afraid of because, well, He's completely open, you see. Now, at the beginning of His ministry, and I'm bypassing the early years of His life when I could bring further evidence to show, but at the very beginning of His ministry, His life is threatened. The life of a good man is always under threat.

At the hands of those who do not find that goodness an attractive thing. And so you discover our Lord Jesus in Mark's gospel right at the very beginning on the home territory, Capernaum and Nazareth. There He's preaching and what He has to say and the astonishing implicit claims that He makes to be God so riles the authorities that they try to do Him to death even in His native territory.

Now, this plot to assassinate Jesus is permeated throughout the whole of the gospel. You find it particularly in Mark, but also Matthew and Luke and John, they give evidence of it. So what I'm suggesting to you is this, that our Lord is a man, I use the expression without apology, I speak colloquially, who dices with death.

Death just dogs His footsteps all the time. It's predictable that He will die a bloody, ugly death. And it's not surprising to Him.

He knows. He knows. So, woven even into the infancy stories is the idea that Jesus eventually will go from this world in a horrific way.

Now, let's just go back to the infancy story for a moment or two, because it seems to me very important to say this, although I don't want to plunder it for evidence, because most of the evidence concerning the fact that Jesus knew that He was going to die is found in His public ministry in those three years. Let's take this old man, Simeon, shall we? I mean, he's a pensioner. He's a Hebrew pensioner.

And when he goes to the grave, he goes in peace. Now, I have buried more people than I can actually remember in terms of numbers here. That's not an extravagant claim.

It just happens to be one of the things of being a pastor for so long in a large church on the coast of the south of England. Now, not everyone dies in peace. But here is Simeon, an old-age pensioner.

You read his story in Luke's Gospel in the early chapters. What does he say? Well, what he says is so wonderful that the Latin church gives it, his comment, a title, the nunc dimittis. It has become a very, very famous prayer.

Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Why? Because mine eyes have seen thy salvation. What have they seen? Well, he has resting in his arms an infant child who he believes will be the Savior of the world.

And not only is he a pensioner who's looking for something in the last moments to hang on to, which is not dishonorable, he also is a man of prophetic ability, and he speaks to Mary, this virginal woman, about this child, and he catapults forward 33 years, and he says, When this child of yours is mature, a sword will, as it were, sever your heart. And here at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, so to speak, at least it's not the ministry, the very beginning of the life of Jesus, is an old man speaking to a teenage girl and saying that not only will the death of Jesus in anticipation affect the pensioner, but it will affect his mother. You see the point right at the very beginning.

The beginning of the beginning of the life of Jesus, references made to his death. The beginning of the public ministry of Jesus, references made to his death. It's astonishing.

You really can check all the biographies, the modern biographies, and find me a man who has constantly been dealing with the thought of his own death, and yet can, in the way that our Savior deals with it, come through without being, in one sense, melancholic or depressive. You see, Jesus has got a bunch of disciples with him, 12 men, one's dead, but the 11 are relatively true. Now, when Jesus is preaching, even when the crowds swell to thousands of people, he always has in his mind that initial company of disciples, the 11, the 12, because he's teaching them especially, as they will continue his ministry when he's gone.

And what does he increasingly tell them about? He tells them about his death. But he never mentions his death. I put anyone on here on test, check me in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Jesus never mentions his death as though it's something final. Jesus always links his death with what will happen later, his resurrection. Now, so, I almost am tempted to use the word balshy.

If balshy can be sanctified as a term, then I'll stay with it. If it seems rude, then find something else. He is so balshy about this that he takes out his file of facts, and he goes a few days after his death, and he says, I'm still making appointments.

I'm still making appointments. Peter, we met originally on the seashore of Galilee. Now, leading up to the death of Jesus, Peter doesn't play the most wonderful part.

He feels very ashamed. He's almost suicidal as a result of what he's done. But Jesus is very concerned to meet with Peter after the event of Jesus' death, and he meets with Peter at the very point where he first encountered Peter three years ago.

But have you got it? In the words that have spilled out from my mind, is it plain? Jesus makes this appointment with Peter after Jesus has died. So, was Jesus deranged? Well, there's no evidence to suggest that any mental aberration was part of the problem of Jesus. I mean, he's as clear mentally as people come.

He can speak on the subject of his death with the resurrection and address the disciples and say, fellows, I will meet you. I'll meet you back in Galilee where they didn't want me, where they chucked me out. There I will meet with you.

And when he meets with them, he gives them another commission. Now, bear in mind that when Jesus is talking to his disciples during these three years, not only is he aware of the savagery of his departure, he also tells them that they're not a very good insurance risk. I mean, he really does.

If the prudential's got an office in Jerusalem, then there's no doubt for the prudential that's going to come after the disciples of Jesus because he has a canny knack of being right about his predictions and the future for the disciples doesn't seem, as far as the human level is concerned, particularly glorious. I mean, here he is, this is our Lord, and he's speaking to a large crowd, as I say, with the disciples at the forefront, and he's proclaiming what we call the Sermon on the Mount. And he leads off with some happy expressions.

Now, Jesus has a quaint idea of happiness. Blessed are you, happy are you when you're persecuted. Oh, jolly good, Jesus.

I mean, here we are, here's my body, just put it on the torture rack. I mean, that is literally what did happen to some Christians, and in quite recent times, as recent as last month, when two Christians were beheaded in Saudi Arabia, and I long for somebody in the United Nations to get up and shout, But, you see, Jesus will speak to his disciples as though death, even if it's suffered in a very nasty way, has to be approached, as far as they're concerned, with such a unique mindset that actually it won't become the problem that it was for people 2,000 years ago. You see, 2,000 years ago, there was no hope, not really, in terms of an afterlife.

At least the hope that there was was so sort of class-divided, the rich make it, or it was so blurred, the Sadducees got their theology all wrong. It was so philosophical, as far as the Greeks were concerned, that nobody, nobody, really, I'm not exaggerating to make a point from the evangelical pulpit, read the philosophers through, read your Greek philosophers, bring me someone who speaks about death like Jesus speaks about death, teaches honestly his disciples that to follow me may mean, yes, a great deal of joy, but also blood, sweat, and tears. And yet the disciples, they did follow Jesus, and they came to a realization after his own death and resurrection of what our Lord really meant.

When he said one day at a funeral occasion, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. You see, Jesus, as a controversialist, knows that not only is his life under threat from a human level, it's also under threat from a satanic level.

Again, you check the gospel record. Here he is, asleep, in a boat, on the Sea of Galilee. Now, his disciples, by and large, were nautical men.

They were sailors, not all of them, but the bulk of them. They were men's men. They were not foppish.

In no way were they weak-minded people. They knew about storms. They were seafaring men as far as this inland, treacherous Sea of Galilee is concerned.

And they wake Jesus up because they're terrified. And if you read the incident and take it very slowly and examine the original language, you will discover that they feel there is a sinister element about this storm. And indeed there is, because attacking Jesus at a subhuman level is a whole realm of the underworld, a whole realm of Satan and demons and so on and so forth.

This may sound strange to the modern year, but is it really so strange? I mean, if one of our beloved, as far as many people are concerned, young women this century will take a helicopter ride to see some clairvoyant who lives near my home city in the north of England, if millions of people will check the astrological charts in the Daily Mail day by day, then is it so absurd, is it so non-modern to suggest that there are evil forces, that there is a whole element of the unknown, and here is Jesus 2,000 years ago, and he is attacked at a human level and substrator at a demonic level. It seems as though there is an attempt to snuff out his life before he has fulfilled the purposes for which he was born. And so Jesus the controversialist will take a dispute, will engage in argument with the religious leaders who want his death because he represents a threat to them, because he has the ear of the ordinary person, and our Lord is also under attack at the demonic level.

And yet, as death pursues Jesus, Jesus will always face death. You say, what do you mean? Well, here is another incident plucked from his life. He is with a couple of Old Testament personalities, Elijah and Moses.

He is on a mount. Three disciples are with him. They are not quite understanding fully what is happening because Jesus is moving into the very super-spiritual level.

He has an eye to not only the Father, he has an eye to righteous men who have lived in Old Testament days, and Moses and Jesus in what is known as a transfiguration, when the glory that is innate within Jesus becomes apparent and his garment glistens whiter than any natural whiteness. As Moses engages in conversation with Jesus, what does he speak about? The answer is his death. But he does not use the word death or the gospel writer in the way that, say, tribes or dillestans, our funeral agents here in Worthing will use it.

He uses the word exodus. When Jesus talks about death, he talks about an exodus, a movement from one plane to another plane. You see, Jesus really has got this death thing into perspective.

Now, let me not make an issue which is a difficult one. Let me not trivialize it. I mean by that, let me not oversimplify it.

You see, it's all right for we evangelicals to talk about the glory that lies beyond, but the mechanics of death can be something of a problem. It's not the fear of death. It's the process of dying that can create certain difficulties.

Of course, if your death comes quickly, as it did to most of the occupants in that car smash in Paris, then you don't have a chance to think about it. But the average person, they have to go through the dying process. Now, can Jesus help us here? And the answer is he can.

Because, you see, on several occasions, particularly towards the end of his public ministry, he says to his disciples, my soul is sorrowful unto death. And you get this human picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with bloody perspiration on his forehead. And he's praying to his father.

He speaks of his death in metaphorical language. He talks of it as a cup, because the cup of suffering is a Jewish expression that denotes the whole business of the cessation of life. And he says, Lord, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

Later on in the epistle to the Hebrews, we get this little comment about our Lord Jesus. We have not a high priest who cannot be touched for the feeling of our infirmities. He was in all points tempted as we are.

I'm not suggesting that Jesus had fear of death in the same way that some of us have a fear of the mechanics of death, because sickness had no hold on Jesus. I think the way that you can interpret Jesus' feelings at this stage is he was a man who never knew sin in any way at all. And in front of him is the horror of taking upon himself the consequences of your sin and my sin.

And that will mean for him the breach of a relationship between his father and himself. So on the cross comes out that expression, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now, faced with that, Jesus experiences sorrow. He experiences trauma in the face of death.

And that qualifies him, so to speak, at the human level to come alongside people like you and me who are utterly convinced that death cannot be the cessation of being, but the process can be a little frightening, and to find his consolation. You see, when these two women who are in emotional trauma because of the death of the beloved Lazarus, when they realize the gravity of the situation, they send for Jesus. Now Jesus delays coming, why he did that I don't have time to go into, but it has to do with coaxing them to a greater faith.

But they were quite right in sending for Jesus. The Old Testament says God is a very present help in time of trouble. Now I put many of you on witness here.

Some of the most remarkable experiences of God's presence we have known at the tab have been in funeral services, not so? Or up at the crematorium. It is just almost uncanny, you have to be there to believe it. I have to be there sometimes myself to hear what I have to say.

That sounds daft. But then a preacher is dependent on God for what he says. In some measure, not with full inspiration of course.

And I am amazed at times of what I feel enabled to say. Now what is this? Well surely it is the felt presence of God. Him being around.

Now Crossman with his denial of the Christian faith, and a lot of atheists, and I am not wanting to denounce atheism per se without having some sympathy to the problems of grappling for faith. But really cannot speak to an occasion like this. One of the reasons for the magnificence in some degree of that service yesterday morning in the great Westminster Abbey was that some of those songs had good biblical backing to what was being sung.

And when our Prime Minister came and read in such a wonderful fashion from 1 Corinthians 13, you realize that the service had reached the peak. Here was God speaking a word to this nation, a word to this world. God comes alongside.

Jesus comes alongside at the point of someone who is going through great trauma, even the trauma of death. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Why? Because when I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.

Jesus, and with this I bring my remarks to a conclusion, Jesus is being questioned by these women folk, Mary and Martha. Now, some years before he'd been questioned by another woman who was not a Jew. That's interesting because Jesus has a concern for Jew and for non-Jew.

This wasn't a righteous woman. She was a prostitute or seemingly so. And Jesus spoke to this woman and he said to her, Look, I am able or I know a source of water which will ever satisfy your thirst.

And this woman says, Lord, lead me to that man. And Jesus said, Well, you're looking at him. I am the one who can satisfy your need for spiritual water.

Now, when these two sisters are talking to Jesus about the death of Lazarus, who now stinks because he's been in the grave for three days, Jesus starts to talk generally about the resurrection. And though they've got some theological concept because they're Jewish women well-taught about the resurrection, they're still hazy about the detail. And then Jesus, using almost the same approach as he did with the Samaritan woman, says, Hey, Martha, Mary, I am the resurrection.

I am the life. All that will happen at the end is a result of who I am and my authority. And don't you see, my Christian friend, and those of you who are struggling towards the faith, that what I'm showing you this morning, and the good Lord knows it's just an example.

I could have stayed. I'm preaching without my notes because, quite frankly, if I preach with them, I go on forever. There is so much evidence.

There is so much wonderful evidence of the authority of Jesus in this whole area of life and death. He alone is the one who can speak at this particular point in our history. He's the only one who can help you when you come to the end of your life.

And the assertion that he made became so controversial that some accepted and embraced it. And others, you remember, those of you who are familiar with the story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, some of them went back to Jerusalem, and they plotted his death with greater passion and fervency because they could not stomach the idea that the way through life is embracing Jesus, and the way to prepare for death is by acknowledging him as your Lord and Savior. So, my friends, it's left to you right now.

Are you sure? Do you know Jesus as your personal Redeemer? Are you aware that when you die, you don't go to purgatory? You don't go into a state of unconsciousness? You slip immediately into the presence of God, and there you give an account for the way that you have lived. The grace of Mother Teresa, it may be abundant, but it can never be transferred to your account. The good work of all the so-called saints, of any righteous person, of your mother or your father, it cannot be applied to your account.

The only way in which you can prepare yourself for death and moving into the presence of the Lord is by embracing Jesus Christ as your Savior this side of eternity. Let's sing a song that speaks of this. And I want us to go to the old song, The King of Love My Shepherd Is, 649.

And then we'll move on into Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah, which is 201. Parents need to slip out to collect their children. Then, I'm sorry, you'll forfeit the blessings of singing these hymns.

But nonetheless, you have your responsibilities with your families to attend to. So please feel quite free. 649.

I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.

Father, imprint that conviction on the minds of the royal family, on the minds of the Spencer family, on the minds of Parliament, on the minds of the people of this nation. Speak this word to this world and help us to go out living our lives convinced as to where the future lies and therefore seeing you more clearly, loving you more dearly, and following you more nearly. Amen.