Information Related to "Lessons From Two Resurrections"
| Audio/Video |
Lessons From
Two Resurrections
by Bruce Gore
Lazarus
lived with his two sisters in the little village of Bethany. They were close friends
of Jesus of Nazareth, who often stayed with them when He visited Jerusalem.
But one day Lazarus became ill. "Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany,
the town of Mary and her sister Martha ... Therefore the sisters sent to (Jesus),
saying, 'Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick'" (John 11:1-3).
John describes this family as close, filled with love and peace. No doubt Christ
enjoyed visiting these friends' home and relaxing after arduous journeys. Notice
the sisters didn't even ask for Him to come. They knew that once He heard of Lazarus'
illness He would journey to see His sick friend.
But Jesus didn't do what they expected. He deliberately waited (verses 6-7).
In the meantime, the illness claimed Lazarus' life. By the time Jesus arrived Lazarus
had been dead at least four days. Martha, in her anguish, met Christ as He arrived.
"Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." Christ responded
to her in her grief by urging her to have faith and believe in Him. He even told
her, "Your brother will rise again" (verses 21,23).
Martha responded that she knew Lazarus would "rise again in the resurrection
at the last day" (verse 24). She was aware of God's promises of a resurrection
at the end of this age. (To better understand the promised resurrections, request
your free booklets What Happens After Death? and Heaven and Hell: What
Does the Bible Really Teach?)
However, she did not understand that God would use her brother's death to glorify
His Son, Jesus the Messiah. She did not believe she would ever see her brother again
in this life.
Jesus again offered her encouragement. "I am the resurrection and the life"
He told her. "He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever
lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (verses 25-26).
Martha responded positively to some of what Jesus said: "Yes, Lord, I believe
that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is
to come into the world" (verse 27). She may have been unsure about the rest
of His meaning or what He was driving at. Regardless, she summoned her sister Mary,
who was still mourning in their house.
When Mary came, "Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping."
He "groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, 'Where have you laid
him?'" (verses 33-34).
As was a common practice at the time, Lazarus' friends and family interred him in
a cave. Then they covered its entrance with
a large rock to keep out predators. Christ told those present to remove the stone
that covered the mouth of the cave. Martha objected that Lazarus' body would have
already begun to decay.
Jesus persisted, so "they took away the stone from the place where the dead
man was lying" (verse 41). After a short prayer to His Father, Christ, in a
loud voice, shouted, "Lazarus, come forth!" (verse 43).
From within the dark cave came the sounds of movement, and shortly the figure of
a man struggling to walk appeared at the entrance. He was struggling because his
body was still wrapped in the strips of linen cloths in which he had been interred!
"And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his
face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Loose him, and let him go.' Then
many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen the things Jesus did, believed
in Him" (verses 44-45).
Word of this remarkable event quickly reached the religious authorities in Jerusalem.
Perceiving Jesus to be a threat to their positions and the stability of the Roman-dominated
province, they plotted to do away with Him. Little did anyone realize the stage was
being set for another death and resurrection, one far more significant than that
of Lazarus.
An innocent man crucified
Around 3 o'clock on the afternoon of Passover day, the demands of the hostile crowd
were fulfilled. Shortly after Jesus breathed His last, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus,
two less-well-known followers of Jesus, quickly went into action. Both men believed
Jesus' teachings, yet they kept their belief secret out of fear of what their fellow
Jews might do to them.
Perhaps they were ashamed of their earlier reticence. But now they showed the courage
to step forward and claim Jesus' body and begin preparing it for proper, but hasty,
entombment. It was Joseph of Arimathea who went to Pilate and asked for Christ's
body and offered his own new tomb as a place of burial. Nicodemus assisted Joseph
and contributed a vast amount of costly spices for His burial.
Since it was already around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, there was not much time before
the "high day" (John 19:31), one of seven biblical annual sabbaths (Leviticus 23), began. They had much to do before sunset, at which time they would cease work
to honor that Sabbath.
"Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the
spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified
there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.
So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' Preparation Day (for the Sabbath),
for the tomb was nearby" (John 19:40-42).
Jewish burial practices
Because of the hot climate and reli-gious customs, the Jews of that day would bury
their dead quickly. They practiced
neither cremation nor the Egyptian custom of embalming.
The poor would simply bury their dead in the ground, covering the grave with earth
and stones. Others would use caves as a place of entombment, as happened with Lazarus.
Those who could afford to would carve tombs in the sides of some of the many hills
and mountains of the area. Such tombs would typically have several shelves carved
in the stone on which the bodies of family members would be laid.
A body would normally be washed and then wrapped in a clean linen cloth or strips
of cloth, similar to the way Egyptians wrapped their mummies. Families that were
better off financially would put perfumes, ointment and spices on the body and between
the wrappings of cloth. In some cases the spices and ointments would be thick enough
to cause the outer cloths in time to harden somewhat like a cocoon.
Myrrh is specifically mentioned as used in the preparation of Christ's body. Myrrh
is a pleasant-smelling resinous substance from several types of trees in Arabia and
North Africa. Usually a separate piece of cloth would be wrapped around the head
of the deceased. If the death occurred just before a Sabbath, it was especially important
that the body be taken to its resting place before the Sabbath began. The dead were
not to be buried on the Sabbath.
Some of the women who followed Jesus also made plans to buy spices for the preparation
of His body. They took note of His burial place and went to their homes to rest on
the Sabbath. Again, this Sabbath was a high day (John 19:31), in this case the first
day of Unleavened Bread, which fell on a Thursday that year. When the annual Sabbath
was over, on the next day, Friday, they went into the city to purchase the spices
and oils.
"And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where He was laid.
Now when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome
bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him" (Mark 15:47; 16:1).
The women spent the remaining time on this Friday preparing the spices for the anointing
of Christ's body. "Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils.
And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment" (Luke 23:56).
Notice that Mark mentions the women buying the spices after the Sabbath, and
Luke states they prepared the spices before the Sabbath. There is no contradiction
when we realize that two Sabbaths are involved in this three-day period. After resting
on the weekly Sabbath, which ended Saturday at sunset, they went to the tomb the
next morning to be there at first light. (To better understand the timing of Christ's
crucifixion and resurrection-which were not on Friday and Sunday-request our free
booklet Holidays or Holy Days: Does It Matter Which Days We Keep?)
An astounding discovery
When the women arrived at the tomb, they discovered the stone cover had been rolled
back and the tomb was empty! They rushed to inform the other disciples. When they
returned and saw the evidence of what had happened, they realized God had indeed
raised Jesus Christ to a new life exactly as He had said would happen.
But what was the evidence? The most astounding discovery was not the empty tomb,
nor the announcement of an angelic being proclaiming that "He is not here, He
has risen!" It was something else. Among the Gospel writers, only John records
what that was. Let's read it in John 20.
"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala
came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance, and
ran to Simon Peter, and the other disciple (John), the one whom Jesus loved. 'They
have taken the Lord out of the tomb,' she said, 'and we do not know where they have
laid him.'
"So Peter and the other disciple set out and made their way to the tomb. They
ran together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first.
He peered in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not enter. Then
Simon Peter caught up with him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings
lying there, and the napkin which had been round His head, not with the wrappings,
but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first
also went in, and he saw and believed" (verses 1-8, Revised English Bible).
What did the disciples see that made them believe? It wasn't simply an empty tomb.
If the body had been stolen, as Mary of Magdala had assumed, all they would have
seen was an empty tomb.
But there was more. Christ had told them several times He would die and rise again,
but that prophecy hadn't sunk in. What Peter and John saw instantly convinced them
not only that His body had not been stolen, but that God the Father had raised Jesus
to glory and immortality! (Acts 3:13-15).
Powerful evidence left behind
Christ's wrapped body had lain on a rock shelf in the tomb. Yards of linen cloths
had been wrapped around His body. Spices and thick myrrh were placed inside those
wrappings, essentially pasting them together.
What Peter and John saw as they peered into the dimness of the man-made cave was
a neat, collapsed cloth form. If thieves had removed Jesus' body, if grave robbers
had been at work, why should they leave these wrappings?
No tomb robber would have taken the time to unwrap the body and leave the burial
cloths there, especially since they would have been in danger of being discovered
by the guards the Roman authorities had posted there to prevent that very thing from
happening (Matthew 27:62-66; 28:11-15).
But there was more. The cloths were not scattered; they were still wrapped.
This resurrection was not like Lazarus', in which he was restored to live a few more
years and would eventually die again. This was the resurrection of a spirit
body (see
1Corinthians 15:44).
What John saw made a profound impression on him. The grave clothes were not disheveled
and disarranged, as would have been the case if someone had removed them or someone
had struggled to free himself from the wrappings. The original Greek wording means
they were lying there still in their folds, the clothes for the body where
the body had been and the "napkin," a smaller, separate piece of cloth,
where the head had lain.
The whole point of John's description is that the grave clothes did not look as if
they had been discarded or taken off. They were lying in their regular folds as if
the body of Jesus had simply evaporated out of them.
The sight instantly penetrated John's mind. He realized what had happened-and he
believed. It was not what Jesus had said so often that convinced John that Christ
had risen. It was what he saw with his own eyes!
John's convincing details
Notice this comment from Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament
Words about Jesus' head covering being "wrapped together in a place by itself"
there in the tomb (John 20:7, King James Version): "... 'Wrapped together' might
suggest that this cloth had been 'rolled' or wrapped up and put in a certain part
of the tomb at the Lord's resurrection, whereas, as with the body wrappings, the
head cloth was lying as it had been 'rolled' round His head, an evidence, to those
who looked into the tomb, of the fact of His resurrection without any disturbance
of the wrappings either by friend or foe or when the change took place" (W.E.
Vine, 1985, "Roll"). Jesus' glorified body had passed right through the
cloth!
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, in its article "Resurrection
of Jesus Christ," states: "Significantly, the grave clothes were undisturbed
... Long ago, Chrysostom pointed out that the grave robbers would not have stolen
the body naked because of time restraints and other difficulties ('it was buried
with much myrrh, which glues linen to the body not less firmly than lead' (Hom. (homily)
85 on Jn. 4)). The Gospels describe an orderly scene, not one of confusion that would
have resulted had the grave clothes been torn from the body. That something extraordinary
had taken place is shown by the fact that the beloved disciple 'saw and believed'
..." (1988, Vol. 4, p. 151).
|
Recommended Reading Would you like to better understand
Jesus Christ's role in our salvation? What about the destiny you can fulfill with
Him? Request the booklets You Can Have Living Faith, What Is Your Destiny? and
Transforming Your Life: The Process of Conversion. All are free you can request
or download them from our Web site at www.gnmagazine.org. |
© 2001-2022
United Church of God, an International Association
Related Information:
Table of Contents that includes "Lessons From Two Resurrections"
Other Articles by Bruce Gore
Origin of article "Lessons From Two Resurrections"
Keywords: Jesus' resurrection resurrection of Jesus Lazarus' resurrection
Lazarus: