Untying The Graveclothes

[00:00:00] Could read in the gospel of John and chapter eleven from verse 17. [00:00:12] Gospel of John and chapter eleven from verse 17. [00:00:23] So when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days already. Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about 15 furlongs off. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary. To console them concerning their brother. Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him. But Mary still sat in the house. [00:00:50] Martha therefore said unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. And even now I know that whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee. Jesus saith unto her, thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection. At the last day, Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art the Christ, the son of God. Even he that cometh into the world. [00:01:38] And when she had said this, she went away and called Mary her sister, secretly saying, the teacher is here and calleth thee. And she, when she heard it, arose quickly and went unto him. Now Jesus was not yet come into the village. But was still in the place where Martha met him. The Jews then who were with her in the house and were consoling her. When they saw Mary. That she rose up quickly and went out, followed her, supposing that she was going unto the tomb to weep there. [00:02:08] Mary therefore, when she came where Jesus was. And saw him, fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. [00:02:19] When Jesus therefore saw her weeping. And the Jews also weeping, who came with her. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, and said, where have you laid him? They say unto him, Lord, come and see. [00:02:32] Jesus wept. [00:02:35] The Jews therefore said, behold how he loved him. But some of them said, could not this man, who opened the eyes of him that was blind. Have caused that this man also should not die? Jesus therefore again groaning in himself, cometh to the tomb. [00:02:51] Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus saith, take ye away the stone. [00:03:00] Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time the body decayeth, for it been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, said I not unto thee. That if thou believest, thou shouldest see the glory of God. So they took away the stone. [00:03:17] And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me. And I knew that thou hearest me always. But because of the multitude that standeth around, I said it that they may believe that thou didst send me. And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. [00:03:40] He that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, loose him and let him go. [00:03:55] Many therefore, of the Jews who came to Mary and beheld that which he did believed on him. But some of them went away to the Pharisees and told them the things which Jesus had done. Shall we just bow in prayer? Lord, we want to unite together in prayer. We've already asked that thou wouldst really speak not only to the children, but to us as well. And all we want to do now, Lord, is to take by faith that provision which thou hast made available to us all, speaker and hearer, for such a time as this. We pray, Lord, that the ministry of thy word will be a living and powerful and effective ministry. Make it a ministry of thyself. Lord, we pray so that we receive something from thyself that will bring strength and comfort and life to us. And, Lord, we ask all this since thou hast made this anointing available through thy grace. We ask it, dear Lord, with thanksgiving in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. [00:05:14] I want to introduce this matter that's on my heart, I believe, for us all to do with this story very un christmassy in one way, and yet not so in another way, because it was exactly this for which Jesus came. Jesus came really into this world to raise dead people and to bring them into a living union with God. [00:05:47] And what I have as a real burden is the part that those of us who belong to the Lord Jesus have to play in caring for one another. [00:06:03] There was a stone that Jesus did not miraculously move. [00:06:10] He said, take away the stone. [00:06:14] Then when the miracle happened and Lazarus came forth, Jesus said, unloose him. [00:06:26] And I think it is a very good thing for us as believers to get quite clear what we cannot do and get quite clear what we should do. [00:06:39] There is a realm in the work of God where we have to be absolute Calvinists. [00:06:48] And that is in the matter of salvation. [00:06:53] We cannot ourselves raise the dead. [00:06:58] It is the prerogative of God. [00:07:02] Only God can bring out from the grave someone who is lifeless. [00:07:13] Now, all of us were dead in trespasses and sins. [00:07:17] And for every single one who is born of God in this place this morning. The miracle has happened. Somewhere, sometime, Jesus said, come forth, and we came forth. [00:07:33] I doubt that there is any life here in this room. That somewhere, somehow, some place, some believer or believers prayed and removed a stone. [00:07:46] It didn't have to be specifically for you by name. It may be some godly old pious sister somewhere in some country area who has given herself in prayer, but that God hears, and she, unbeknown to her, she is involved in the removing of a stone that has kept some lifeless corpse trapped. [00:08:14] One day, when we're in the glory, we shall all understand the amazing tapestry of our salvation. [00:08:25] The body of the Lord Jesus is one body. [00:08:31] It is not so many bodies. Sometimes I hear people talking about having a body in Chicago or having a body in Toronto, or having a body in Birmingham or a body in Glasgow. And it seems to me quite incredible we can't find it in the word of God. There's only one body. There may be expressions of the body of the Lord Jesus in different places, but there's only one body. And even more wonderful, there is only one body in time. [00:09:00] This means that the prayer of saints a generation ago is still being answered in the salvation of men and women today. [00:09:11] And people who died in faith, martyred, their lives cut off in their prime, God is still working because of their faithfulness unto death. [00:09:27] So we are one body. [00:09:31] And it is a marvelous thing to recognize the mystery of conversion because it is never unrelated. It is not as if God says, now, ill just convert that one there and ill save that one there sort of willy nilly. There is a marvelous way in which God has burdened somebody to pray, and they may not know this person prayed that God would save someone today, or that God would loose someone and perhaps a thousand miles away. [00:10:07] For with God there is no such thing as geographical distance. God says to somebody, come forth and they live. [00:10:20] They are alive unto God. I. They are raised together with Christ. [00:10:27] Now, I say that this is the most wonderful thing. And now coming down to ourselves personally, you know, we have all had the experience where we've preached and preached and preached and pushed and pushed and pushed and arranged circumstances and sort of given out tracts and nobody gets saved. [00:10:50] And then all of the sudden, the Lord does something altogether seemingly apart from our track, giving our work our thing and save somebody in something altogether different. I used to always find it very amusing in the old days when we had so much in the way of Sunday evening meeting, evangelism and so on. And there were many who got saved there. Thank God for that. But wasn't it funny in some of those very early days when we used to pray and pray for people to be saved, and then we had all this outreach and hardly anybody came. And then the Lord said, would suddenly save somebody at the Lord's table or in a prayer meeting, just where you don't expect to find an unsaved person, he brings somebody in. Now, I often used to think if we hadn't done the other, we wouldn't see the other, because it was an act of faith in our part, and it could have meant in some ways we would give up. [00:11:38] But nevertheless, a person's new birth is a sovereign act of goddess. I can't save anybody. Not all the work in the world that I could do, my tears, my zeal, my knowledge of the scripture, my preaching, none of this in itself could bring another person to birth in the Lord Jesus. Only the Lord Jesus could do that. [00:12:06] But there is an area in which I am involved and you are involved, and that is in removing gravestones, removing the stone that traps a person within. Now, I shall say something about that later, but I think that we have a lot to do, and there are many different ways in which we remove stones. The prophet, in another connection speaks. Isaiah says that we are to gather out the stones from the highway to make a highway for the Lord so that the people can come along it. These people that are going to be involved in the purpose of God, these people that God is going to call and bring back to himself. But we have to cast up a highway. We have to gather out the stones. Now, building a motorway is no small job. [00:13:04] Removing stones is no small or light matter. It's not little pebbles that we have to remove. Sometimes there are enormous rocks, boulders that have to be shattered or smashed or crushed or certainly removed in order to make a highway. [00:13:23] And it would be good for us to consider ways in which you and I are to remove stones. We all have unsaved relatives, unsaved friends, unsaved neighbors, would to God that we had burden for them so great that even when we recognize that the Lord Jesus is the only one who can save them, there is something we have to do. [00:13:51] And then again, once they are saved, we used to say, when we were in Egypt, Ron will remember Pat, we used to say, well, getting a person saved was a great battle, but once they were saved, actually the battle began. [00:14:12] Every one of us is a load of trouble to somebody. [00:14:17] Is there anybody who's been saved who isn't somehow or other a problem to other believers, I know very, very few who sort of just got saved and blossomed and grown grave clothes to be untied now. They're not beautiful grave clothes. I sometimes think that we have such rose colored spectacles when we read this story, you know, that somehow it's also beautiful. I can't think of anything more macabre than to see someone. How did he get out, I wonder, with his feet bound? [00:14:54] Did he jump, hop? Or was he miraculously moved? How did he appear out of this cave? When they lifted the stone, evidently it was down. It wasn't one on the level, it was down. So somehow he got up and out. But what a sight he must have been when he came out with hands. Now, some people would say, phew, this isn't a full salvation. [00:15:23] God has left the job half done. [00:15:26] Here is someone alive from the dead after four days. Even his sister, the more practical one, said, lord, don't touch the stone. As my version puts it so beautifully. The Americans now and again do triumph. [00:15:42] The body decayeth. But of course, I mean, some of you know, it says, he stinketh. [00:15:50] She was much more down to earth than. My version sort of puts it in a rather pleasant manner. [00:15:58] There's something one would say, this isn't a salvation. Surely, if God has saved this man, if God has given this man new life, surely he would have burst all the bonds instantly, taken away the napkin over the face, taken away the things on his hands and on his ankles, and his color would have been perfect. His eyes would have been bright. There would have been no smell of death about him. It would have been marvelous. But not so. The miracle was that God, Jesus spoke the word and he came forth, but he still had a napkin over his eyes and over his face, and he still had his hands tied and his body tied, because it was the jewish way. To bury, as today, is to tie around these bands that go right round the body. [00:16:46] The man could not move. [00:16:48] Now, I think it is the failure of us christians of the church in general, and in us, we can say in particular, it is our failure to understand that we have a job to do in relationship to one another that leaves us with so many problems. [00:17:11] There are believers who've been saved and they still have their feet tied 20 years after being saved. They cannot find what is the will of God and walk in it. [00:17:26] They may have all the knowledge in the world up here. They may have Bible studies till it's coming out of the ear. They may know theology inside out. They may know the great truths of the gospel. But when it comes to finding out for themselves what is the will of God and walking in it, they cannot do it. [00:17:44] They have to run around in circles asking other people, what do you think? What do you think? And I'm not talking about the need of fellowship, but fellowship is not finding out what others dictate you to do. Fellowship is finding out whether others really feel you're in the way. When you know the mind of God for yourself, that is real fellowship, any kind of authority that just tells you, go here, go there, without regard to your knowing what is the mind of God is dangerous because it means you become paralytics, always to be carried, always to be, as it were, moved by another force. [00:18:27] The Bible speaks about walking in works afore prepared that we should walk in them. [00:18:34] There are believers, I know, who know everything about the Lord Jesus, about being raised from the dead, about his coming again, about prophecy. And yet, when it comes to doing the works of God, they are a million miles away from it. [00:18:56] To be found within the will of God, to be found doing works of fore prepared by God so that your life is a pattern, that is a divinely ordained pattern, not wearing yourself out on your own christian works or your own religious works, but doing the things that God has afore ordained for you to do. [00:19:25] Oh, there are people with ankles tied. [00:19:33] They are placed by the grace of God in the way, but they cannot take any steps. They cannot walk by faith. They cannot progress. [00:19:43] They cannot go on. And, oh, it is so sad when we see amongst the Lord's people those who have so much, even in charismatic things, may I say, carried away just by endless singing, but who are unable in their own heart to know the will of God and to do the will of God and to be found in works afore prepared for them. [00:20:12] Now, don't let us blame these dear ones. [00:20:16] This is the crunch. [00:20:19] My burden is you and I are responsible for untying those ankles. [00:20:30] We have a job from the very beginning, the moment God does his sovereign work of saving a man or a woman, we have a ministry toward them. We have a provoking of them to love and to good works. [00:20:46] There are believers who have been for many years in the Lord, but whose hands are tied. [00:20:56] They cannot lift up holy hands in prayer and praise. [00:21:03] They cannot lift up hands in blessing. [00:21:08] These are the things that hands are symbolic of in the Bible. [00:21:13] They are symbolic of receiving. [00:21:16] They are symbolic of prayer, and they are symbolic of blessing. [00:21:26] You know, when you bless a person, in the old days, you had your hands like that. [00:21:33] And when you prayed, you had your hands like that. And when you received, you had your hands like that. [00:21:44] The apostle Paul speaks of lifting up holy hands to God in prayer. [00:21:53] Supplications, intercessions, prayers and thanksgivings. [00:22:02] There are people I know who have got all the theory of prayer, but when it comes to prayer, they cannot pray. [00:22:13] You can. [00:22:15] We can stand on the perimeter and criticize everybody else. [00:22:21] And so why don't they do this? Why don't they do that? Why don't they do the other? But in actual fact, there are believers who cannot pray. They cannot lead us in prayer. [00:22:34] Grave clothes that have tied their hands. I don't know what it is about some believers. They're unable to receive what our Lord has so dearly won for them. They're unable to appropriate what is theirs. In our so great salvation. It seems as if they are paralyzed in some way so that those hands cannot reach out and take. [00:23:03] How rarely do you find worship amongst the people of God? Thank God. It's much more common than it's been, I imagine, for centuries and centuries. But you know how rare it is to find people who worship. Why, you can come in and be in the perimeter of something, stand and watch and listen and judge the meeting. Well, it was a good meeting. Well, it was a bad meeting. Didn't seem to be too much life in it this morning or so on. Yet how few there are that are really involved in worship, able to contribute in praise in thanksgiving, able to lead one another in the worship of God, able to take part in prayer privately. Some people can pray a lot corporately and are, seem to be paralyzed when it comes to anything private. And there are people who can pray privately, but they cannot do a thing corporately. [00:24:09] Oh, the grave clothes that all of us in some measure know something about. [00:24:18] Grave clothes. Grave clothes. Grave clothes. Not only stones that lock in some lifeless corpse, but when that one has been raised by the grace of God to walk in newness of life, they're bound hand and foot. [00:24:38] What about the napkin over the face so people cannot see? [00:24:50] It is the job of the church, the job of us who are members of the body of Christ, to take away the napkin, the thing that obscures vision, the thing that obscures seeing. [00:25:06] Now there's a little more I would like to say, but I'm not going to say it this morning about this whole matter of these bondages and where they come from, because we all have them, and it is one of the great lacks in the church that we have not seen. Our responsibility as believers toward one another in the matter of removing grave clothes and napkins, I'm face cloths, I'm afraid. Again, in the states, that means something a little different. But, you know, whatever we say, napkin in british means something different. I'm afraid face cloth means something else on the other side. But never mind. You know what it is? It's something over the face that obscures sight. [00:26:00] Dear Lazarus, he came forth, but he couldn't see the Lord. [00:26:09] Why didn't the Lord, in a miraculous way, cause some breath of God to blow upon him and blow the facecloth clean of him? [00:26:19] That's how we think of it. [00:26:21] We think, oh, someone's got saved. I've only dared to see the Lord. And we speak something about one and say, you know, so and so doesn't really see. [00:26:30] We fail to recognize. We have a responsibility to see that so and so sees. Now, I know we've got problems because we're all human beings, and I'm afraid, well, this, although we've been raised from the dead, we're sometimes incredibly difficult people. And sometimes we don't want to open up to one another. Who wants these? And we're not even conscious. Sometimes our ankles are bound or wrists abound or that we're not seeing. But, oh, the ministry of the church toward one another. Wouldn't it be a tremendous thing if we all had a responsibility for one another in this matter, to remove things that obscure sight, things that stop us moving on with God? [00:27:18] Now I find, and I must finish now, because I know it's easy to belong to the old regime and think that you're going on to one. [00:27:28] But, you know, it is an interesting thing in this story that there are two things that before ever we come to this matter of our ministry toward Lazarus, there are two things I find very, very interesting. The Lord accentuated, first of all, he spoke of this raising of Lazarus as the glory of God. [00:27:55] Did I not say to you, he said to Mary, that if thou shouldst believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God. You know, I sometimes think one of our great problems in christians, and especially those who are moving on with goddess, is that we see the New Testament church through very, very optimistic spectacles. [00:28:28] You know, we just don't see the problems that the early church had as if the early church. Oh, it was wonderful. They were all one. They were all full of the Holy Spirit and of power. They all went round doing mighty deeds and works and signs, and we fail to see that within a few days of Pentecost there was an ananias and sapphira. And I don't know what you would think about a meeting like that, where suddenly someone says something and drops dead. [00:29:02] And then the leaders say he lied and God has judged him. I can imagine something. Oh, dear, dear, dear, what? Unloved. [00:29:15] And then Peter says, carry him out. And as he's carrying out, being carried out, and you can hear the feet taking the corpse out, his wife comes into the meeting and she drops dead. [00:29:30] Now, just transport yourself, if you've got an imagination, into such a meeting for a moment. [00:29:36] I mean, this was a christian meeting, this was a meeting of the early church. How would we like it if God started really work quite like that amongst us? And if the brethren were as severe as that, I think there would be a lot of rumbling all through the company. Unlove and the need of the love of God and the need of greater care. And surely something could have been done for Ananias and Sophia, but they buried them. [00:30:08] And there are many other things. Within a generation, this church, the early church, had gone off the rails. [00:30:17] All kinds of strange teachings came in, the legalistic teachings came in, strange. Other gnostic theories came in. This was this early church. Half the letters we've got in the New Testament were written because of the conditions prevailing in that glorious expression of the body of Christ in the first century of church history. We have jezebels, we have deep things of Satan, we have nicolaitanism, we have judaizers, we have division, we have even the apostle Paul and Barnabas being split one going one way and one going the other way, and God honoring both. [00:31:01] I do sometimes think we look at these early church events as something so marvellous, and we think, oh, poor vas. Poor Vas, here we are. [00:31:16] Well, thank God, so far, we haven't had these kind of deep things of Satan and this other kind of things amongst us to cope with. But this is what the early church, this was the other side of the coin. So on one side you had glory, you had power, you had signs, you had wonders, you had great works, thousands finding the lawn. And on the other side you had a dark, seamy side, which God did not just brush under the carpet or sweep out. He allowed the things to develop in order to test the saints, so that the approved of God might be made manifest. [00:31:52] Now, it is my conviction anyway, that when the Lord said, did I not say to you that if you would believe, you should see the glory of God? I don't know whether one would describe this apparition appearing out of a tomb as the glory of goddess. [00:32:15] I would love to know how many here, if they were really there, would have called this the glory of God. I think, again, was Lazarus a changed character? I don't think so. I imagine, and I'm going to be very vulgar now, but bring it home to you. I imagine that if he picked his nose before he picked his nose afterwards, I imagine that if he had some habits that were unpleasant, he still had them when he was raised. [00:32:50] I imagine that if he was a stubborn man, he still was a stubborn man. And if he was a naive man, he was still a naive man. In other words, what did the Lord Jesus mean when he said the glory of God? [00:33:04] He meant, of course, this man had been raised from the dead by the power of God. And the glory of God was this, that he had done it and this was one of his chosen ones. That's the glory of God. Now, I'm not saying that Lazarus remained the same. We don't know how long Lazarus lived after this event, but I'm quite sure he was in the process of being changed from glory to glory. But what I'm trying to get at is this, that we tend to think glory of God. The glory. Oh, it was absolutely marvellous, was Lazarus with rosy pink cheeks and a glistening eye and hairs beautifully brushed, standing there outside of the tomb absolutely like a fashion model. Absolutely. Sort of exhibiting vitality, virility. I don't think it. I can't think of anything more pathetic than there standing a man who had been raised from the dead after four days of death with grave clothes round his body and a napkin over his face. Now, I want to say something. I know it's shock, you know, in. But never mind. [00:34:14] Those of you nurses will know very well that when a person's had some ulcerous wound or some evil smelling issue of some kind, it seeps into bandages and however much the person may be healed, underneath, those things smell. [00:34:39] Martha, with her normal practical outlook, had said, lord, he stinks. [00:34:47] Some may feel that's a rather unfortunate way of speaking about one's brother, but I mean, she was an I eminently down to earth and practical lady. And she said, lord, he stinks. [00:35:03] Now he was raised from the dead. If I may put it again very crudely, the stink had gone. [00:35:09] The stink of death inside of him had disappeared and in its place was resurrection, life with all its power and wonderland. But the grave clothes must have had an awful smell of death. [00:35:30] Now, think about that when later we talk about removing the grave clothes. From one another. Some people seem to think they can only minister to one another when everything's beautiful. I tell you, some of the grave clothes upon us smell a mile away. [00:35:45] And it's very easy to criticize one another and to say, oh, so and so. [00:35:55] Who sees a responsibility to remove death smelling, corrupt bandages of death? [00:36:08] Glory, the glory of God. [00:36:15] What a wonderful thing it is when God saves us. Oh, my. [00:36:19] You and I are nothing but lifeless corpses that God has brought to life in Jesus. [00:36:29] Now we've got to go on with the Lord and move on with the Lord. And there's a lot more. I said there were two things. I'll take up the other matter later, but it's faith. [00:36:40] Jesus said, believest thou this? [00:36:44] Did I not say that? If thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see faith living faith. [00:36:58] When we see somebody like a perfect copybook pattern as they ought to be, every hair in place, pure and glistening, we think, wow, that person's been saved. [00:37:15] That's not faith. [00:37:18] Faith living faith is our attitude, not only toward the Lord, but toward one another that sees through the grave clothes and the napkin over the face, to the saved soul behind it all, and believes and trusts that God has a glorious purpose, a purpose of glory for that person and is ready to be involved in the taking away of what covers the face and what binds the hands and the feet. [00:37:57] May God give to us such faith and such obedience that we may help one another, minister to one another, care for one another in such a way that there will be lazaruses walking around without any grave clothes, without any cloth over the face, alive, functioning, fulfilling a purpose. May God so help us. Shall we pray? [00:38:31] Lord, we have a responsibility toward one another in this matter. We all love to see people saved, but, Lord, we have a responsibility when people are saved. And, o Father, we pray together this morning that thou wilt deliver us from any mentality of any kind that somehow or other destroys and paralyzes this ministry and relationship to one another. Now, Lord, thou seest all of us here. Thou seest where there are still grave clothes, grave clothes that should have been long ago removed, coverings that obscure spiritual sight and clarity and lucidity. O Lord, we pray together. Wilt thou work amongst us, bringing us to the place where we are ready for people to help us, ready for the church to minister to us, ready to open up to one another if necessary? [00:39:33] And wilt thou work in all of us in regard to our relationship with each other in this matter? [00:39:42] Lord, may we see thy glory fully, wonderfully in the whole church. [00:39:50] May that house of thine be filled with glory, so that we cannot even stand to minister. Lord, make it so. We pray. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.