Why does God wait when we’re hurting?

In John 11:1-27, Jesus deliberately waits two more days before going to His dying friend Lazarus — and arrives after Lazarus is already in the tomb. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt asks why God sometimes waits when we are hurting.

Jesus loved Lazarus, yet He let him die — not from neglect, but for a greater purpose and a greater glory. When Martha meets Jesus, she trusts that God always does right, even as she grieves. Jesus responds with a staggering claim: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Dr. Holt explains that our comfort in suffering is not always an explanation, but the promises and presence of God — the One who weeps with us even when He already knows the ending.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did Jesus wait while Lazarus died? Not from neglect, but for a greater purpose — to display God’s glory and deepen His people’s faith.

2. Where is God when His people are hurting? Right there with them. Jesus wept at the grave even though He knew what He was about to do.

3. How does God bring good out of grief? He weaves even death and loss into His good purposes, as the raising of Lazarus would soon show.

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” — John 11:25 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This sermon is part of the John Explained study from New Geneva Theological Seminary. Find more verse-by-verse teaching across the Bible at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[gentle music] In John 11, Jesus got word that his friend Lazarus was dying. But rather than go to his side, Jesus waited until Lazarus had passed before traveling to Bethany. And at that time, no one understood why he had waited so long. But in today's study, we'll see that God has a good reason for everything that He does, even if we can't see it at the time.

The Christians that we love, the Christians that we miss, the Christians who are in heaven, they don't want to come back. Those who are in heaven right now, those that we love, they're not sitting there at the gate of heaven pounding on the door saying, "Let me out." They've seen up close what you see from a distance, and the reality of that exposure to the fulfillment of the promises of God, the fulfillment of their faith, it is a far greater thing to see those promises fulfilled in person than to ever dare or dream to go back to a place where their vision might be clouded once again. The very thing that people have dreaded, the very thing that you and I may dread, became the gateway to a future that our loved ones don't want to leave. Now, you know that to be true. The challenge we have is understanding it, and on this side of the veil, maybe we never will. But here's the thing. God's comfort to you this morning is not in explanations to you about what's going on. It's in promises He gives you that "I'm in charge, and I will yet take every good thing and every bad thing that's going on in your life and in your circumstances, and I will weave them together into a narrative that is better than you could possibly imagine in the present." Do you believe that? Your comfort is not in explanations. Your comfort is that He's made a promise, and He keeps those promises, and in time, you'll see it up close. Our loved ones do now. They're just fine. Now, if God can take death and turn it on its head, then what can't He turn on its head? If He can take death and say, "Where is that sting?" If He can do that to death, then what can't He fix or address or utilize in your present? Relationship hardships, economic, financial, health-oriented stuff. If He can take death, turn it on its head, and turn that into the greatest gateway for our loved ones and for ourselves in the future, then what about our present hardships can He not do the same with? In today's text, there's going to be a man who's going to be deathly sick, and as he's deathly sick, everyone's going to go, "Oh, this is terrible." And not only did God allow such a thing to happen, to be clear, not only did God allow, like look down and go, "My, Lazarus is sick. How did this happen?" Not only did God allow Lazarus to be sick or you and I to go through various hardships, but He decreed them. And that's what we're going to see in today's text. He decrees these things. Now, again, why? Instead of swooping in at the last minute, Jesus, in today's text, let Lazarus die. To everyone involved, that seemed wrong. However, again, they didn't know the whole story. And today, we're going to try to comprehend that story as we look at verses one through 27 together. All right, let's revisit verses one through six and just kind of work our way through as far as time will allow. Verses one through six. "Now this certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. Now it was that Mary who had anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick." Mary's regularly at the feet of Jesus. When Mary shows up, she's at Jesus' feet, and that's what this is a reference to. Verse three, "Therefore, the sisters sent to him." They sent word to him. Their brother is sick. They sent word to the one guy on planet Earth they knew could do something about it. They sent word to him saying, "Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick." Now, when Jesus heard that, he said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, and yet when he heard that he was sick, verse six, "He stayed two more days in the place where he was."

At face value, that's the most counterintuitive thing you could imagine. If you had a loved one, someone so dear to you, dear as life itself, and you heard that they were sick, that they were hurting, maybe even dying, what would you do? Well, in all likelihood, you'd drop what you're doing. You would rush to be at the side of he or she whom you love. What you would not do is say, "I think I'm going to hang out right here." So, in these verses, verses five and six, we see that Jesus loves him, loves him, loves him, yet when he hears that he's sick, he stays two more days in the place that he was. Even the people that God really, really loves get sick. Even the people that God really, really, really, desperately, dearly, fervently loves get sick. In verse one, we encounter Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, one of the close friends of Jesus. This is not like someone that Jesus didn't care for. This is not an acquaintance, just someone he bumped into, nothing quite like this. This is someone that was close to Jesus, dear to his heart is what we see here. So dear to his heart that everyone expected he would do something about it. He loves this man. Surely, he will do something about it. That's the idea, but that's not what happens. Verse six says this counterintuitive thing. Now, when Jesus hears that he is sick, he stays put for two days. Now, if you're the disciples, let's talk about the context here for just a moment. Jesus had been in Jerusalem, and everyone had been opposing Jesus in Jerusalem. The Pharisees, the leaders, the elders, the scribes, the Sadducees, and the like, the Magices, all these sort of guys were mad. They were angry at Jesus throughout his time in Jerusalem. We've talked about that the past few weeks. Well, where is he now? What has happened? Well, he has gone. He's gone across over by the Jordan. He's gone to the place where John the Baptist had been baptizing. So Jesus takes his ministry on a road trip to get away from Jerusalem, so to speak. And where he's at, scripture says at the end of chapter 10, where Jesus is at, at this time, he's not being harassed. There aren't people trying to stone him. In fact, people are coming to him, coming to him to be healed and to talk to him and touch, to have his shadow fall upon them. They want to interact with him. It's a pleasant situation, and his own disciples have got to go, "Things are going pretty good. When we're in Jerusalem, that's not the best place for us. We should probably stay away from there for a bit." But this is great. We're in the home territory of John the Baptist, and here's the thing. Jesus is doing better things than even John the Baptist had done. We see this at the very end of chapter 10. It says specifically that Jesus was doing signs that even John had not done. So if you're a disciple and you're sitting there, you're saying, "This is good." The end of chapter 10, and we've put the hardships behind, the angry people with the stones and rocks to throw, they're a long ways from us, and here we are. Then what happens? Then a messenger shows upIt says there's a problem. Just as you think everything's good and your life has finally got some stability, what happens? A messenger comes, says there's a problem. And here's the problem. You know that Lazarus guy, the brother of Mary and Martha? You know the ones we all love. We go to their house. Whenever we're in Bethany, where do we go? We go to Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus's house. We've had such great times there. Well, here's the thing. Lazarus is sick. And he's not just sick, but he's dying. If you're the disciples, you're going, "Oh, no. Oh, no." On the one hand, you feel bad for Lazarus. You're like, "We really love that guy. That guy's pretty awesome. I don't want anything bad to happen to Lazarus." But on the other hand, you're saying, this means if we're going to do anything about it, and surely Jesus is going to do something, surely he's going to want to go rush to heal him, that's going to mean we go where? We got to go back to Jerusalem, so to speak. Now, Lazarus, and Mary, and Martha, they actually lived in a place called Bethany, but Bethany is just a stone's throw, maybe 40 minutes walk from the east gate there in Jerusalem. You go across the Mount of Olives, which is actually more like a little hill, you go a little bit over there, and then there's Bethany. So it's like a suburb, basically. Bethany is a suburb of Jerusalem. And what's in Jerusalem? All the people that want them dead. So you're the disciples, and you're going, "This cannot be. This is just the worst. Everything was going so well for us. We're safe. And now not only is someone in peril for their life that we care about, but then we got to go back there, and it's just going to be-- It may be the end." In fact, Doubting Thomas, that's what he's going to say in a couple of verses from now. He's going to say, "Well, if we got to do this, we got to do this. Let's all go back and die with them." That's how certain they were that this was a bad idea and a bad circumstance. So if you're the disciples, this couldn't be worse news. And yet Jesus, for his part, is going to be like, "Yep, everything's right on schedule." What seems to us like a point of crisis, in the view of God, and the decree of God, is not necessarily a crisis. In fact, it may be the very means by something wonderful is going to enter our lives that otherwise we would never have access to. And that's exactly what's about to go down in this passage. All right, let's look now at verses seven through 16. "Then after this, he said to his disciples, 'Let's go to Judea again.'" Remember that Jerusalem's the heart of Judea. "Let's go to Judea again." In verse eight, "The disciples said to him, 'Rabbi. Rabbi.'" They're probably just holding this coat going, "Oh no. Rabbi, lately the Jews have sought to stone you, and you're going to go there again?'" Verse nine, "Jesus answered and said, 'Are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he doesn't stumble because he sees the light of the world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in them.'" In other words, Jesus had a set amount of hours to do his work, and he says, "I'm going to be about my father's business here." Verse 11, "These things he said, and after that, he said to them, 'Our friend Lazarus sleeps; that I may go and wake him up.'" Now that at that point it was more enigmatic than we think. They didn't understand that. The concept of sleeping, that does reappear several times in the New Testament, but up to this point, not so much. So when he says that so-and-so is sleeping, that was interpreted how? As he's sleeping. So that's what we see there in verse 11. "These things he said: 'Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go to wake him up.'" Verse 12, "Then his disciples said, 'Lord, if he sleeps, he'll get well.'" They're like, "Oh, this is wonderful. He's just sleepy. He's convalescing. Okay, Jesus, if he's just sleeping and convalescing and just kind of resting up, and the road to recovery is nigh, then we can probably hang out here and not go through, and all the stones, and the death, and all that sort of stuff doesn't have to be on our horizon." So that's what they imply here. Verse 13, "However," however, "Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was speaking about taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus said to them plainly," guys, "Lazarus is dead." Lazarus is dead. And I'm glad, which is the oddest confluence of things. Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad. That's not a statement you usually see yoked together. But why is he glad? Why is he glad? Well, what does it say? "And I'm glad, for your sakes, that I wasn't there." I'm glad, for your sakes, that this thing that everyone thinks is terrible, everything thinks is awful, I'm glad it went down in the exact way it went down, and I'm glad I'm over here and he's over there. Why am I glad? Because I know what this is going to mean to you when what happens, happens just a couple of short days from now. Of course, he knew how everything was going to unfold. In the moment, they didn't have a clue, but he knew. And he says, "I'm glad this has happened, this thing you don't want, this thing no one wants, this thing everyone thinks is awful. I know how I've ordained it to bring about something just positively wonderful that will teach you, and instruct you, and glorify the Father. I know all the good I'm going to bring from this, and all you see is everything terrible, but trust me. Trust me, guys. It's going to work out just fine." "I'm glad for your sakes," verse 15, "that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless, let's go." And then verse 16, "Then Thomas, who's called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, 'Let us go also, that we may die with him.'"

Thomas gets kind of a bad rap at times. What do we refer to Thomas as?

Doubting Thomas.

Yeah, [laughs] Doubting Thomas. That's just kind of rough, and I'm sure it's not going to be fair. When you see him in heaven, I have no doubt you will not go up and, "Doubting Thomas, good to meet you." That's not going to be the case. This was a disciple. This was an apostle. This was a guy-- Look at the bravery. No one calls him let's go and die with him Thomas, right? You think of him as this anxious, nervous ninny. Oh, mercy me. Well, here he is saying, "All right, guys." He's the one who says, "Let's go die with him," but no one calls him let's go die with him Thomas. Whatever the case is, here he says, "Let's go die with him." So he's demonstrating devotion, even bravery here in the face of what he expects to be death. He says, "Let's go. Put the shoes on. Let's go do this." And yet, even as he demonstrates this great devotion, what's missing? What's missing here? I would say doctrine, theology. There's a number of things about his statement that don't conform with what just came out of Jesus' own mouth. Jesus had regularly said things that the disciples heard, but they didn't hear. Promises he'd made that they didn't quite believe. Things he said that they didn't quite apply to their reality. It happened all the time. It happens to us, too. God says all manner of things to us, and then something scary happens in our world, and we go, "Ah!"Ah, this is just terrible. And we become Thomas, rubbing our hands together, and we don't quite fully understand when God has said, "Hey, when you go through those moments in life when hardships strike, and cancer, and death, and difficulty, when these things hit, let's start there. Go to my word and see the promises about how good things can come from even this, and how it's not the end." Thomas here, all he could see was his expectation of what was about to go down. It wasn't Christ's expectation in the least. In fact, it was 180 degrees the exact opposite. There was not death that awaited in Bethany. There was life and resurrection.

If they only knew. All right. So back in verse four, Jesus had said this enigmatic statement about Lazarus's illness. He says, "The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God." Now, if you heard that, you might say, all right, well, maybe he's going to pull through. And especially when Jesus talks about sleeping and such, you might think, all right, I think he's resting up and things are going to be okay. But Jesus here, he clarifies. He says, "No, no, no, no, no. You're just mishearing or not understanding me clearly, so let me be clear. He is dead. Lazarus, in fact, is dead." And then again, he says, "I'm glad that I was not there." Now, again, that didn't mean that he didn't care. It didn't mean that he wasn't going to do anything. But what he was going to do was going to be in his timing. Many times, we want to rush God's timing. We say, here's the terrible circumstance. God, if you love me, you'll act. All right, here, circumstance, you're up there. This is here. Anytime, this would be good now. So we give him our prescription, remember? That's half of our prayer life, is we write out a prescription to God and we go up to the counter and we say, "Here you go, God. Here's what I need and here's the time frame in which I need it." But oftentimes, that's just not how God works. That's not how he works most of the time, I would say. So with that said, Jesus says, "No, no, you misunderstand. I know he's dead and I know he's dying, but I'm actually glad he's not there for reasons that you don't know yet, but trust me, trust me, trust me, you will know soon enough." And that meant, again, they were going to have to go to Bethany, where there were people waiting there to stone him. So if you're the disciples, before we look at the next verses, if you're the disciples, at this point, you go, okay, so we're going to do something. The sitting around part for a couple of days, that didn't make a lot of sense. So now we're doing something, not in the time we expected it to be, but we're doing something. But then Jesus had said and explained he's already dead. Now, if you're at this point, you're going, really? What's going on? So wait a second. When he was alive, you didn't want to go to this dangerous place where people are waiting to kill us. When he was alive, you didn't want to go. Now, after he's dead, you do want to go. How often do we do that? Something happens that really confounds us. We say, "God, everything I expect that I knew about you dictates you should act in a certain way in this circumstance, and yet you're not. You're not doing that." If you're his own disciples right then, you didn't get it. In fact, we see that they didn't get it in everything that they say in these verses. So let's see how this plays out. Just as a side note, we're not going all the way through chapter 11, all the way through the actual resurrection. We may look at that another interval. We just want to go through the next block of text, verses 17 through 27. So let me read that, then we'll see what it says. Verse 17. Now, when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb for four days. Let me ask you just to stop there. Why was that significant? Why being in the tomb for four days? Why did that matter? There was a rabbinical teaching that understood, and this was stinking thinking. This was not good theology. But the rabbis had this idea that after an individual died, for a period of three days, the soul kind of just hovered about. You know, ruh. It just kind of hung around the body. So for three days, there was this possibility that someone could come back, and part of that's because back in the day, without great surgeons and medical practitioners, they didn't really know what they were doing. They might say so-and-so's dead when they really weren't quite dead, and then they'd bounce up. Ah! And so they had this idea. They developed this theology around bad medicine. They had this theology that said that someone who seemed mostly dead, partly dead, you know, what's the Princess Bride thing? Somewhat dead, slightly dead, almost dead, right? They had this idea that you could be slightly dead, somewhat dead, almost dead, and yet not be fully dead, but after four days, eh, then you're no, no, no. No more chance. In fact, it was after three days. So by the fourth day, Jesus note, he's allowed just enough time to go by, just enough time that in everyone's purview, Lazarus is dead, and he's not coming back. In fact, later in the verses we're not even going to look at, Jesus is going to go up to the tomb. He's going to go ahead and call out to Lazarus. But Martha's going to say, "Jesus, you know it's been four days," right? And then she's going to say something, if you read it in the King James Version, it's just wonderful. What does it say in the King James Version?

He's stinketh.

Oh, yeah, you got it. [chuckles] By now, he stinketh. We've been around long enough to know that he's now not in the sort of shape that we need to encounter poor Lazarus. Let's just leave the tomb there. All right, so four days has gone by, and again, that's exactly according to the clockwork, the time that Jesus had appointed to this end. So verse 17, when Jesus came, he found that he'd already been dead. He'd been in the tomb for four days. Now, Bethany was near Jerusalem. Again, about two miles away. This is a suburb of Jerusalem. And many of the Jews had joined the women around Mary and Martha to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, she went and she met him. She ran out. That was her nature. She was very action-oriented, right? So she went out and she met him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Now, Martha asked Jesus, or said to Jesus, "Lord, Lord, if you had been here, if you had been here, then my brother would not have died." See how she, in effect, draws conclusions based on her right understanding of him, that he always does the right thing, but her wrong understanding that Lazarus living was the right thing. You see, she believed Jesus would do the right thing. He always does the right thing. God always does the right thing, right? We can agree with that. God always does the right thing. The problem was we don't always know what the right thing is, and here she conflated the one alongside the other. Jesus, you always do the right thing, and yet the right thing would've been this, and you didn't do it. You see the misfire going on? You see kind of the confusion that she has?If you've lived long enough on this globe, you've seen enough hardship that you've taken things to God and said, "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" And part of it is because you've elevated your senses of what should go down alongside His nature. You have a right view of His nature. If you think He's in charge, amen. If you think He's good and holy and just, and He always does what's right, amen, amen, amen, amen. The problem is sometimes what you think is right, when you elevate that alongside His nature and say, "Surely these things work out together. Surely He always does what's right, and I know what's right, so surely He would've done that, but He didn't. What's going on?" If you do that, you will spend a great season of your Christian walk just flustered,

as His disciples were here, as Martha is here. She's kind of flustered. You get that He's wonderful and loving, and He has all this power, and yet look what happened. So that's what she says. Says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know..." Now, this is cool. She had faith. Listen to what she says here. "But even now, even after he's dead, even now I know that whatever you ask of God,

God will give you." And Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." All right. Now we're getting somewhere, Jesus. [chuckles] That sounds promising, but here's the thing. In that culture, even the Pharisees, who were not the most brilliant of theologians, but even the Pharisees talked about the resurrection. Even the Pharisees, even some of the pagan cultures, basically every culture on the globe, even the most pagan, secular ones, tend to have some view of life after death. Right? Atheism has never been the norm in any generation on this planet. So when he says that he'll rise again, she gets that. They already sort of believe that. That's not the problem. So there, Jesus says, "Your brother will rise again." And Martha says, "I know. I know that he will rise again in the resurrection, the last day. I know that when it all goes down at the very end, I know then that he will rise. I understand that." But then in verse 25, Jesus clarifies, as he's been doing throughout this chapter. Verse 25, he says to her, "I am the resurrection and the life." Remember she had said, "Whatever you ask of God, God will do," and he says, "I am

the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die..." He's making a claim of divinity yet again, yet again here in the Book of John. "He who believes in me, though he may die, yet he shall live. Though he dies, yet he shall live." Something terrible is the soil for something good, he says here. Verse 26, "And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." And we'll explain that in a moment. "Do you believe this?" He asks of Martha. "Do you believe this? I'm the resurrection and the life. The one you're looking in the eyeball. I am he. The hope not only for Lazarus's future in the tomb there, but yours. I am he. I'm the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me shall never die. Do you believe that?" That's a question 2,000 some odd years later we can ask one another. Do we believe this to be true? Well, what does she say? Verse 27, "She said to him, 'Yes, I believe that you are the Christ, the Messiah.'" Remember, Christ was not just his last name. You're the one. You're the one who is the fulfillment of all the promises and prophecies in this book. You're him. "Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Christ. You are the Son of God who is to come into this world." All right. As we look to wrap up today, let's consider a little bit of this last interaction here in these verses. Everything that Martha says in these verses, I imagine it's really relatable to you and I. On the one hand, again, she expresses hurt and frustration. "Jesus, if you'd been here, Lazarus would not have died." As we said before, I know that mirrors thoughts and concerns and prayers that we've brought to God. "Jesus, if you had done blank, then blank would've happened, or blank would not have happened. Some better outcome, in my assessment, would've taken place if you had acted as I think you should've." Right? You've got to be careful when you go down that road in your prayer life. But in the midst of grief and hurt and anxiety and death and hardship and cancer and the things like that, we're sinful, weak people. We think all manner of things that I think theologically in our heart of hearts we know aren't true, but yet we don't understand. We don't understand, so we bring it to God. As a side note, let me just say this. If you've ever done it, that's okay. What does Jesus do here with Martha? Does he say, "Be gone from me, you doubter"? No.

He says, "Hey, come here. Let's talk about this." Even with his own disciples, when they were freaking out in the upper room, they didn't know what was going on. They didn't like what was going on. He says, "Come here, guys. Let's talk about this." He brings them close and he says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me." In a sense, that's what he's saying here. He's saying, "Martha, we've got this." He works in the midst or in spite of your discouragement and hardship and your questions and even your doubts. It's okay to bring them to him. It's okay to lay down your anxieties and your hurts and your grief before him. Why? Because, A, he's patient and long-suffering and merciful and gentle, and because, B, the great desire of a God who made you and loved you and formed you and calls you a son or daughter, the great desire that he has for you is that he would take his finger and wipe away your tears, because that's the single most tender thing that a father can ever do for a child,

to wipe away the tears and say, "Come here. I've got you." Not necessarily answer and explain everything. There's things that happen to my children, I can't explain all of it, but I can convey to them I love them.

And for many of us, well, not all of us, that's what God would convey to us. "I can't give you all the answers, and even if I did, you still wouldn't understand. But know this, I love you.

Come here." So that's what we see in these verses. Martha had cried her tears. Mary was home crying her tears, and yet they're honest with Jesus about their heartache. Mary would say, just a couple verses from now, she'd say the same thing that Martha did. It's like they talked about this. "Lord, if you'd been here, things wouldn't have gone on this way." They didn't understand, and yet what they did understand was when Jesus looked them in the eye and said, "Look, here's the thing. I promise you that Lazarus' story is not over. I promise you that this is not the end. And if it's not the end for himThat when you and I go the way of the daisy, when you and I pass from this mortal coil, it's not the end for us. So that's what Jesus affirmed her. "Mary, Martha, Lazarus, story is not over. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. The one who's making you these promises has the ability to fulfill them." I, as a pastor, can make you all sorts of promises, but I do not have the ability to fulfill these. I can tell you you're going to be resurrected. I promise you, if you're a believer, this morning, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, if you trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation, I promise you, you will live again. I promise you that even as you perish, even as you pass on this mortal coil, I promise you that you'll be resurrected unto a better hope and glory than you could possibly imagine. You will not be banging on the glass saying, "Let me out." That will not be the case. I promise it to you. But here's the difference. I can make that promise, but I do not have the ability to fulfill it. Jesus does.

Jesus looked in the eye, said, "I make you this promise, but here's the thing. I am the one who has the power, the authority, and the inclination to do what I have promised. I am the resurrection. I am the life. I'm the way and the truth of life. No one comes to the Father but through me. I'm standing before you, and I'm telling you, Martha, I'm telling you, Mary, I'm telling you it's going to be all right.

I'm telling you, just wait. I'm telling you that memorials pave the way to reconciliations and reunions, and they're not that far off." In fact, in short order, in short order this morning, that's what Jesus was going to do. See, here's the thing. Jesus knew something that no one else there knew. He knew that in just moments, they would be holding and hugging Lazarus once again. Not in just moments. He knew it. He absolutely knew it. But interestingly, though he knew exactly how this was going to play out, and though he had the good theology, he knew what was going to happen. He had the good theology to understand why it was going to happen, though he had all that. It's interesting how he approached Mary and Martha, and then in just a few verses later, how he deals with a whole group of people that are beside themselves weeping by Lazarus' tomb. The God who knows everything, who knew how it was going to turn out, whose theology was excellent, the shortest verse in the entire Bible, verse 35, says he did what when he came alongside those who were crying? It says, Jesus-

Wept.

Jesus wept. Jesus has empathy and compassion for what we are going through. Jesus has empathy and compassion. So on the one hand, he tells you, "It's going to be okay. I promise you it's going to be okay," but at the same time, he comes alongside and he holds us and says, "While you are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled, let's just stand together here now. While you're confused still and you see through a glass darkly, I'm going to come up right next to you and I'm going to prop you up and hold you together until you see the fulfillment of the things I promised you." Jesus wept. He stands alongside those weeping. He offers them empathy, understanding, counsel, and in due time, he wipes away their tears, and the tears never return. Guys, this Christmas season, that's a God I can worship. How about you? Let's pray.

[outro music] To search through an archive of Dr. Holt's previous sermons, please visit us at fpcgulfport.org, or you can look us up at sermonaudio.com. [outro music]