May 29th 1 Chron 26-27, John 11:18-48

I’m sure many of us will know Henry Scott Holland’s poem Death is nothing at all, a popular reading at funerals:

Death is nothing at all. It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you, and the old life

that we lived so fondly together is untouched,

unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes

that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word

that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort,

without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you,

for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

All is well.

One wonders how Jesus, “deeply moved in Spirit and troubled” (John 11:33) and weeping, would have felt if these words were quoted at him. “All is well” doesn’t seem to picture how Jesus was feeling at the grave of his friend Lazarus.

As someone who has had both parents die before I reached the age of 31, there isn’t a singe part of me that agrees with the statement “death is nothing at all.” I’m sure the odd card I was sent by well meaning folk quoted this, but though the thought may have been a kind one: to provide comfort, in fact the result was the opposite.

The consistent picture of the Bible is that death is an enemy (1 Cor 15:26) It is an alien intruder into our world as a result of sin, and is not part of God’s perfect created order. The message of the Bible to those who are grieving is that they are right to grieve. It is normal, it is proper. Jesus did it! He cried when his friend died, despite knowing he would raise him from the dead just a few moments later.

To be told by the Bible that death is as bad as I think it is, is a wonderful comfort. It shows that there is a God who understands, a God who cares – that life is valuable and has meaning, that relationships are important and breaking them is tragic; that human beings have dignity and to be buried in a box in the ground is not what we were made for. The Bible tells us that death is awful – and we must be so careful that we don’t pretent it isn’t, in order to try to help people who are grieving.

Contemporary society’s approach of trying to minimise death, and play down its wrongness, must surely be based in part upon the total absence of any other answer. If there is no solution to death, we might as well embrace it and get used to it.

But the picture of the Bible is vastly different. What Jesus offers in the Bible is not a hopeful re-living of memories, but the conquest of death itself:

“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.” (John 11:25)

Death is not minimised, it is defeated. In fact it was defeated through Jesus’ death – that dealt with our sins so that we need not face the penalty for them:

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-- that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Heb 2:14-15) 

Jesus is the one who now controls people’s eternal destinies:

“I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” (Rev 1:18)

The Bible’s view of death is that it is terrible – which I find a great comfort. I don’t want to live in a world where death doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to worship a God who doesn’t care.

The Bible also says that death is defeated – which I find unspeakable comfort. I long to live in a world where death is no more, and worship a God who cared enough to face death for me.

So lets not give the false comfort and false hope of Death is nothing at all. And in a world with no answer to death, lets proclaim the most wonderful truths of the gospel, through which life and immortality have been brought to light!

Lets bring our own souls, and other people, to Jesus, who not only wept with those who wept, but also died instead of those who should have died. The answer to the problem of death is not minimising it, or learning to cope with it. It is nothing less than resurrection!

[see http://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog/2009/01/king_of_terrors_death_still_not_nothing.html for full sermon of Holland, from which Death is nothing at all is taken. In fact, this poem is taken out of context – Holland was using it to express what he thought was a common, but wrong view of death! How tragic that is has been so misused, and what a reminder of how important context is!]

May 28th 1 Chron 23-25, John 11:1-17

In the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the final “sign” in John’s gospel, we are reminded of the purpose of these signs. Like a signpost, they point to something beyond themselves. When Jesus heard that Lazarus is ill, he told the disciples:

“This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory to that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (John 11:4)

Like the turning of water into wine at Cana (2:11) this sign reveals Jesus’s glory. In John’s gospel, ‘glory’ refers not to the praise that is due to God, but to “his revelation, his self-disclosure” (Carson). Through these signs, Jesus is showing us something fundamental about who he is – in this case that he is “the resurrection and the life” (11:25)

Perhaps this explains the strange logic of verses 5-6, best captured in the ESV translation:

“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.” Jesus loved them, SO he delayed. What? This seems absurd (and so many translations prefer ‘yet’ to ‘so’). Regardless of whether Lazarus was already dead when Jesus got this message or not, and whether Jesus could have actually got to Lazarus in time, we must still deal with the fact that Jesus could heal at distance . If he had wanted Lazarus not to die he could have achieved it. There is one sense in which he allowed Lazarus to die – and he did this because he loved Mary and her sister and Lazarus.

This is so instructive to us. More important for Mary and her sister than having Lazarus back, was to understand Jesus’ identity – to see his glory. This is why Jesus delayed. The most loving thing he could do for them was not to raise Lazarus (though of course he did). But the most loving thing he could do was to show them himself, his character, his power as lifegiver – his glory. When we suffer, or see others suffering, the ‘answer’ is not found in philosphical reflections nor apologetic arguments. It is the person of Jesus who brings comfort, and trust.

We may struggle with how Jesus could delay when he loved Mary and her sister so much. We still struggle today as Jesus permits his people to suffer greatly in this world, and appears to ‘delay’ in coming to help. We won’t know all the reasons now. As Job’s 'comforters' demonstrated, there is a great danger in trying to rationalise what God is doing, and presume we have all the answers. (It would be wrong, for example to assume that if someone is suffering, it is because God is trying to tell them something – this may be the case, but we simply do not know.)

But here we do see that whilst suffering still happens and is real, and whilst we may not be given the explanation (only the disciples got this, not Mary) we do know that our greatest need is to come to Jesus in this situation, and see more of him and his character. We may not get answers, but we know he is good. We may not have situations restored now, but we know he will one day restore all things. We may not understand how he can allow evil and suffering as part of his good purposes – but we do know that he does.

Ultimately, when we wonder how God can allow evil and somehow bring good through it, we must go to the cross of Jesus Christ. God the Father could have rescued Jesus, just as Jesus could have stopped Lazarus from dying. But through the greatest act of human wickedness, and the greatest depths of human suffering, God worked his exquisite plan of salvation. No human mind could have conceived it, angels long to look into it, without the Holy Spirit we could never understand it: well might we say of the death of Jesus Christ “it is for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified through it.” (11:4)

May 27th 1 Chron 20-22, John 10:22-42

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:27-30)

What precious words these are to Christians! What comfort, hope and assurance they give. As Jesus continues his metaphor of being the “good shepherd” we see the confidence this gives his people, and the certain hope of heaven.

As Christians, we can have certainty that we will keep going and not fall away, not because our hold on Jesus is strong, but because his hold on us is strong. If a parent is walking with an unsteady toddler, they may let the toddler hold onto their hand, or even just a finger, to steady themselves. But of course the toddler may let go at any point, or may stumble and lose their grip. But if you see a parent walking with a toddler by a busy road, they hold hands in a very different way. The parent’s hand completely envelops and grips the toddlers hand – and there is no way the toddler could let go, even if they wanted to. If the toddler stumles, or lurches towards the road, their Mum or Dad has got them, and will not let them fall.

So it is with us as Christians. Whilst we read elsewhere of our responsibility to cling onto Jesus (e.g. “remain in me” John 15:4), and there are warnings of what would happen if we didn’t, nevertheless our ultimate confidence rests not on how hard we are clinging on to Jesus, but on how hard he is clinging on to us.  Like the toddler we are safe – Jesus has not just got hold of our hand, but our whole self is safe in his hand. If it is Jesus who has got hold of us, no wonder no-one can snatch us our of his hand.

So our first reason for confidence is that God has got hold of us –salvation is his initiative, and “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus .“(Phil 1:6)

But there is even more reason for confidence here: “My Father, who has given them to me.” As Christians not only have we been chosen by God (the doctrine of election that underpins all the discussion above) but we have also been given by the Father to the Son. Like any good father, God gives good gifts to his son. What is almost too wonderful to believe is that what he has chosen to give to his Son is “a people that are his very own” (Titus 2:14) This may not seem much of a gift – to give a bunch of weak, sinful no-hopers like us. But like the unwanted abandoned girl of Ezekiel 16, God has washed us, clothed us, cared for us and made us beautiful – with the washing of Christ’s blood, with the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, and the beauty of the Holy Spirit within us making us daily more like Christ. We are God the Father’s gift to God the Son for eternity!

How could we who now belong to Jesus ever be lost? How could we ever fail to reach heaven? How could we fail to persevere in faith? We’ve been given by God the Father to God the Son to be his people forever. And God the Father doesn’t give rubbish gifts. If he’s promised it to the Son, it will happen. We can be utterly confident that Father and Son will hold us in their hand until the day of Christ Jesus, when we will be Jesus’ people forever. Our confidence doesn’t rest in how much we love God, it doesn’t even rest in how much God loves us. Our confidence rests in how much God the Father loves God the Son! Picture that blazing, pure, delighted love between God the Father and God the Son – infinitely greater than the best Father-Son relationship we know on earth. Picture that love that was, and is, and evermore shall be between Father and Son. That is the ground of our confidence! That is the ground of our salvation!  How well we need to remember that, when we sin, when we doubt, or when we wonder if we will ever keep going. God the Father doesn’t give the Son rubbish gifts! Hallelujah!

May 26th 1 Chron 17-19, John 10:1-21

Jesus famously described himself as “the good shepherd”, but perhaps less well remembered is that he also called himself the gate: “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.” (John 10:7)

These images shouldn’t be put in opposition to one another – as if we are looking at a diagram of a sheep pen on a hillside, and each bit has an allegorical meaning. If that were the case, it would be very confusing for Jesus to be both the gate and the shepherd. Rather, these descriptions describe different aspects of what Jesus is for the sheep.

As the gate, he is the one through whom entrance to the sheepfold is found. In other words he is the way in to the security of eternal life with God:

“I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture.” (10:9)

There is only one way to find life, one way to enjoy spiritual security, one way to enter into the kingdom of God – through Jesus.

“The thief only comes to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (10:10) All the other things, people and ideologies that promise to give us ‘life’ actually take from us. False Gods and false saviours don’t serve us, they take from us; they don’t provide for us, they need us to keep sacrificing to them. (cf Acts 17:24-25) Jesus on the other hand came that we may have life – and have it to the full. This undoubtedly has connotations of salvation and eternal life – see the word “saved” in v9 – but it is not restricted to that. The picture here is of abundance and joy and fellowship with Jesus that transforms even life now – there is nothing stingy about the life that those who come to Jesus receive.

The second image continues the idea. Not only is Jesus the gate through which people enter into life, he is also the shepherd who looks after them and guides them. Jesus as the “good shepherd” brings to fulfilment the promise made to David in our reading in 1 Chronicles. God promised David, the shepherd-king (1 Chron 17:7) a greater son who would reign on David’s throne forever. (1 Chron 17:11-14) Jesus, like the kings in the Old Testament, shepherds and guides his people. But as the last and greatest shepherd, he also died for them:

“The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” (John 10:11) This is the source of the abundant life that the sheep enjoy! Jesus could only give us life, because he first gave his life. No other god would die for us, and so no other god can provide for us!

Lets dwell on these images. Jesus is the gate by which we may enter the safety of the sheepfold of the kindgom of God, and through which we may go to find pasture. He is the way to security and life – abundant life!

Jesus is the shepherd, who guides and protects us. He is the strong, tough warrior who defends us from wolves. He is the one who leads us beside still waters and gives us rest. Unlike all the false shepherds and false saviours that we so often give our time and service to, he will not let us down. These false shepherds only take from us, but Jesus gives. These false shepherds don’t love us, but Jesus loved us even to death. Life, and grace and abundance and joy are found in him, our shepherd-king who reigns forever over his wonderful kingdom of righteousness. Lets delight in him! Lets praise him! Let’s give our devotion to him, and find our security in him, and give thanks that his goodness and mercy will surely pursue us all the days of our life, until we dwell in the house of the Lord forever! (Psalm 23:6)

May 25th 1 Chron 14-16, John 9:24-41

After the failure of trying to bring the Ark to Jerusalem in chapter 13, and the death of Uzzah, in chapter 15-16 of 1 Chronicles we see the ark again being brought to Jerusalem. The incident with Uzzah teaches us the danger of worship of God not informed by revelation from God. This time things happen “according to the word of the LORD.” (15:15)

But we should see that doing things “according to the word of the LORD” doesn’t mean being dry, or dull or boring:

“David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers to sing joyful songs, accompanied by musical instruments: lyres, harps and cymbals.” (15:16) “So all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouts, with the sounding of rams horns and trumpets, and of cymbals, and the playing of lyres and harps.” (15:28) David famously celebrated and danced before the ark as it entered Jerusalem! (15:29)

The presence of God amongst his people is a cause for celebration and rejoicing – and the people really went for it! Imagine the noise of all the trumpets, horns, lyres, cymbals, not to mention all of Israel shouting! David had the temple singers sing a song recorded in Ch16, made up of parts of several psalms, which praises God for all he has done for the people. Indeed, this song commanded and motivated the people to praise God, by reminding them of what God had done for them. Theology is not meant to be confined to books in a library – the deeds and character of our great God are to be sung and shouted and delighted in!

When Mary realised her son was the Messiah, she sang! (Luke 1:46-45). When the birth of our saviour was announced to the shepherds, angels sang! (Luke 2:13-14). As Richard Pratt puts it “In many respects, the first coming of Christ’s Kingdom was a musical event.” [HT to him in his commentary on Chronicles for much of the insights here!]

Song is a right and natural response to all God’s goodness. In many ways, song is where all history is heading. One day we will join the living creatures, the angels and the elders, as they sing songs round the throne of the lamb! (Rev 4-5) One day not just Jewish people, not just a few nations, but all peoples will sing praise to God! (Rom 15:11) Songs are declarative – they tell of God’s acts and his character; they are emotional – not just our heads but our hearts are involved in devotion to God; they are pedagogical – we remember what we sing, and meditate on it. As the 17th century Scottish writer Andrew Fletcher said: "Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who writes its laws.” Singing isn’t an optional extra for Christians – it is part of who we are, and it is part of who God is that we should sing to him.

One of my favourite contemporary Christian songs captures so much of this I think it worth quoting in full:

1. Come hear the angels sing:

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain”

Gathering ‘round the throne

“Hail the Son of Man, hail the Son of Man”

Not for their sin he died

It was no angel crucified

And yet they hold him in their sight

And live to praise their Lord!

2. Come hear the elders sing

As they fall in praise to the Lamb

Bowing before the throne

Laying down their crowns,

laying down their crowns

They praise him for his blood

With which he purchased men for God

They praise the Saviour of the world

The Lamb, he is their Lord!

Hear the heavens shout:

“Worthy is the Lamb”

All creation bows

Giving glory to the Lamb

Worthy is the Lamb

3. What is the song we’ll sing

As we join in heaven with our God?

A people from every land

Crowding round the Lamb, crowding round the Lamb

We’ll sing salvation’s song

How many million voices strong!

We’ll sing the glory of our King,

Of Jesus Christ our Lord!

© 2006 Michael Morrow

[For my own efforts in this area see my other blog: http://www.mostlydavid.blogspot.com/]