📖 Bible Characters II — Unit 9: Lazarus — The Dead Man Jesus Called Back to Life

There is a man in the Gospels who died, was buried, lay four days in the tomb — and then walked out alive at the sound of a single voice. His name was Lazarus, and his story is the clearest demonstration before the cross of who Jesus is: the One who said, "I am the resurrection and the life." In raising Lazarus, the Lord of life turned the tragedy of death into the triumph of resurrection.

Subject: Lazarus — the dead man Jesus called back to life, by the One who is "the resurrection and the life."

Proposition: The Lord of life delays for His glory, enters our grief, and conquers the grave.

Lazarus lived in Bethany with his sisters, Martha and Mary, a family that loved the Lord and whom the Lord loved. When Lazarus fell sick, the sisters sent word to Jesus with a message full of quiet faith: "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick" (John 11:3). We will follow three movements: the tragedy, the trial, and the triumph of death.

I. The Tragedy of Death

The message came back at last in three plain and crushing words: "Lazarus is dead" (John 11:14). Death is almost always terrible. It is terrible when a small child dies, the bud cut off before it can bloom. It is terrible when an unbeliever dies with no hope at all, slipping into eternity without Christ. It is terrible when a lingering illness slowly takes a friend from us, day by day. I have stood beside many a casket in my years of ministry, and I can tell you that the hardest funerals I ever preached were the ones for people who had no hope. I have known crushing losses of my own. I remember a dear friend in South Dakota, a man who had been baptized and belonged to the Lord, who died slowly of a disease of the blood; I watched death do its bitter work, and I felt the full weight of what the Bible calls the last enemy. Death is real, and it is no small thing.

II. The Trial of Death

When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, He did something no one expected. He stayed where He was two more days. The Lord who could have healed Lazarus with a word, or even from a distance, deliberately delayed until Lazarus had died. This is the trial of death: the agony of waiting when God seems slow and silent, when heaven appears to do nothing while our hearts break. Mary and Martha must have watched the road for Him, hour after hour, and He did not come. But His delay was not neglect. He had already said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it" (John 11:4). What looked like indifference was love working toward a far greater glory than a simple healing could ever have shown. When God seems slow, He is not absent and He is not idle; He is preparing a deeper display of His power and His goodness than we could have asked for.

Indeed, Jesus said plainly, "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe" (John 11:15). The delay was a gift wrapped in grief, meant to deepen their faith. And when He finally resolved to go to Judea, where enemies had lately sought to stone Him, it was Thomas who said to the others, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him" (John 11:16) — loyal even when he could not understand what the Lord was doing.

III. The Triumph of Death

At last Jesus came, and Martha met Him with both her grief and her faith. To her the Lord spoke the words that have been read at the graveside of believers ever since:

When the Lord asked her if she believed this, Martha gave one of the great confessions of the Gospels: "Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world" (John 11:27). Grief had not destroyed her faith; it had driven her deeper into it.

Then came one of the most tender moments in all of Scripture. When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the others weeping with her, He groaned in His spirit and was troubled, and the shortest verse in the Bible records it simply: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). He knew He was about to raise Lazarus, and still He wept. This is the heart of our Lord: He does not stand far off from our sorrow but enters fully into it, weeping with those who weep even as He holds the power of resurrection in His hands.

Then He went to the tomb, told them to take away the stone, lifted up His eyes, and cried with a loud voice:

And the dead man came out, still bound in his grave-clothes. The Lord who had shown His power over men, over the wind and the waves, over disease and demons, now crowned it all with power over the grave itself. Someone once observed that it was a mercy He called Lazarus by name, for had He simply cried "Come forth!" every dead person in history might have risen at His word. Such is His authority over death.

Notice how Jesus speaks of death. Earlier He had told the disciples, "Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up" (John 11:11). To the Lord of life, the death of a believer is no more final than sleep. It is like a child who falls asleep on the couch in the evening and wakes the next morning in his own bed — and he is not afraid, because he knows his father carried him there in the night. So it is for the Christian: we close our eyes in this world and open them in the Father's house, carried home by the One who loves us. And then notice the task the Lord gives to the living. He says of the risen Lazarus, "Loose him, and let him go" (John 11:44). There is grief work to be done even after resurrection joy has come; the grieving are gently led back to life, to unwrap the grave-clothes and re-engage the living world.

There was a man, a member of Dr. Mike McGough's church, who planned his own funeral down to the last detail. At his request, when he lay in the casket, an open Bible was placed over his heart, his lifeless finger resting on the words of John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Even in death he was still preaching the only hope that conquers the grave.

There is one more thing we must not miss. When Lazarus came out of the tomb, many who saw it believed; but others ran to the Pharisees, and from that day the rulers plotted to put Jesus to death (John 11:45-53). The raising of Lazarus set in motion the very events that led to the cross. In a real sense, giving life to Lazarus cost the Lord His own life — a foreshadowing of the truth that our life is purchased by His death.

This is the great message of Lazarus, and it is the hope on which everything rests. Christ has power over the grave, and the One who is able to conquer death is able to remove all our fear. Without the resurrection, life has no lasting meaning and death has the final word. But because of Christ, the tomb is no longer a wall; it has become a doorway. Lazarus would die again one day, but he was a sign pointing to a greater resurrection that never reverses, secured by the empty tomb of Christ Himself. So when you stand at the graveside of one who belonged to the Lord, remember the voice that called Lazarus out of the dark, and remember that the same voice will one day call all His own. For He is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in Him shall never die.

So we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We weep, for death is real and loss is bitter; but we weep as people who have heard a voice louder than the grave, and who know that the One who wept at the tomb of His friend will one day wipe away every tear from our own eyes. That is the hope of Lazarus, and it is the hope of everyone who belongs to Christ: the grave is not a destination but a door, and beyond it stands the Lord of life.