‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’

This transcript has been automatically generated

And as we sit, let’s bow our heads and let’s pray that God will teach us more of his amazing grace.

Our sovereign God, we thank you that you are a God of grace. We thank you for your undeserved love. And we pray that in your mercy you’d teach us more of that this morning and you’d give us ears and minds and hearts and wills to hear and obey. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Well, Fred Ling, I imagine, is a rather embarrassed man at the moment. I don’t know him, but it seems he’s just set up a new business on his own where he’ll do various searches for you and dig up any certificate you need. And he’s got a flyposter advertising his services which he’s put through the letterboxes in the East End, and it runs like this: Do you suddenly need a copy of your birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate, If so, ring Fred Ling. He worked it out in time and he’s had to borrow in above it someone’s death certificate.

But there we are. He may be embarrassed, but nevertheless he draws attention to the problem that we’re facing this morning. The problem I’d like us to consider is one the 20th century indulges in a conspiracy of silence over. It is the great unmentionable, and yet of course it’s inevitable.

That is death.

See, the moment I mention that word, I am instantly relevant, aren’t I? We’ve all got that in common, that it’s coming to us.

And those who’ve had the honesty to face it down the years have rarely faced the grave and turned to offer us much hope.

Aristotle, centuries back, said, death is a dreadful thing, for it is the end.

And Bertrand Russell in our own century put it even more succinctly, when I die, I rot.

Rousseau, the French philosopher, said, he who pretends to face death without fear is a liar.

And though Muhammad Ali hardly rates as a philosopher— well, except for in some people’s book— he nevertheless gives credence to it, doesn’t he? He once said, I’m scared of no one. I’m only scared of death.

Aldous Huxley said, if you’re a busy film-going, newspaper-reading, chocolate-eating modern, then death is hell.

And as I was in the coach yesterday, I was reading the Times review section. Like every paper, the Times seems to insist you have to have 150 pages on a Saturday. And it was the second of 2 articles about the extraordinary relationship between Salvador Dalí and his mistress and then wife, Gala.

And here’s how it ended: They never thought she would die first, and when she went in 1982, Dalí lost his will to paint or even live. He shut himself up in her room, pulled the curtains, and refused to let any sustenance or friends relieve his darkness. He forbade anyone to mention Gala’s name. Alone in the tower of his surrealist museum, he raged against his decrepitude, terrified of his approaching death.

Oh, now let’s be quite clear. If that is the reality of death, then we must face it.

Nothing I’m saying this morning is trying to run away from the truth. There is no point in that. I want to face up to reality. But the question I have for so many people I meet is this: why are we so keen to be atheists and humanists?

Why are we so anxious to have that as our philosophy? It has absolutely nothing to offer us at this point, doesn’t it?

Hasn’t a shred of hope.

I am very thankful to be Christian. See, we can’t avoid death. We must all face it. The undertakers know it. That’s why they sign their letters, yours eventually.

Or so the joke has it. Our Woody Allen is far too perceptive a viewer of life, not to keep on mentioning death.

You know, his comment on life is this, will none of us get out of this alive?

Now, you can be absolutely sure you’ll face this problem.

Because we’re a young church at St. Helen’s, that is to say, we’re made up of young people, we can hide it quite nicely because it doesn’t happen too often. But even here, there are some of us who’ve had to come to terms with it. And are still having to come to terms with it.

Now tell me, it is something that casts a shadow over the whole of life. It is guaranteed to meet us. Do you have an answer to it?

Can you face it with any certainty? Can you face death and still have peace of mind?

Can you be secure in death as well as life.

See, I want to say to people who have faced the problem of death that I have good news this morning.

I want to equip you to face it, and I want to do that because, of course, I want to turn to the person of Jesus, the man who claimed he could do just that. So would you be good enough to take out the Bibles and turn to John’s Gospel? To chapter 11. The reading we just had is page 100 in the second half of the Bibles.

And come and study with me the remarkable promise with which Jesus meets this problem of death. It’s John chapter 11 and it’s verse 25.

Jesus said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Now, no wonder, Mervyn said earlier, he claims to be the most important man in history. I mean, you go down the great list of the philosophers and the complete blank they come up with when they face death, and suddenly this man strides in and says, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he dies, yet he shall live.

It is a staggering claim, isn’t it?

And notice exactly what he says, because it’s even more striking when you look at it. He says, I am the resurrection and the life. Isn’t that a strange order?

Wouldn’t you have expected him to put it the other way around?

But what he’s saying really is you’ve got to sort death out first if you’re going to understand life. It’s the old road sign, isn’t it, with those sort of yellow markings on the, on the roadway? Don’t enter the box until your exit is clear.

You can’t get life right until you’ve solved death.

See, if death is really the full stop, why, well then we’re just left to make what we can of between now and then. But if it’s not, if there’s a life beyond, a world beyond that gives meaning and purpose and actually is the whole essence of the life we’re to have now, why, that’s a very different ballgame.

Jesus says, if you can solve death, then you know what you’re living for.

So he says, I am the resurrection. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. I bring resurrection to the body.

And because I’m the one that knows the key to that, because I’m the one who is the key to that, I’m also the life.

And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. There’s a life you can have that nothing can separate you from, not even death.

And you see, Jesus makes it very clear later in this gospel that the essence of this life is that we know God and Jesus Christ. He says, I’m the one. Who’s the source of that life. And when you have that life, why, absolutely nothing, not even death, not even the grave, can interrupt it. Do you see Jesus is reaching into the future, isn’t he?

He brings it down into the present. He declares it’s for now, and he offers it to whoever, whoever lives and believes in me.

The question, of course, is, can he deliver?

It’s all very well making the promises, isn’t it? I mean, that’s a relatively easy thing to do. Can he deliver? Well, I want you to notice the setting. You see, Jesus doesn’t come and make this great statement in a lecture room.

It’s not an offer that’s put on the negotiating table in some plush suite of offices in New York or Geneva or even the Acast building. No, this is made at the pit face. The scene is a mourning household.

A brother has died, buried 4 days back. They’re all friends of Jesus.

Martha, in fact, has come to meet him, and Jesus says to her, I am the resurrection and the life.

You do realise that to say that in that situation, if he’s wrong, he really is a charlatan, isn’t he?

I mean, to talk like that if he can’t back it up, it is a staggering claim in that situation. He’s not saying, here, I’m an extra, I’m the kind of trimmings that will make a funeral proper or somehow or other lessen the pain. No, he says he’s essential.

Jesus keeps driving us into these black and white situations. If he’s wrong, he’s a charlatan. If he’s right, why, any wise man must include him on the core curriculum. I am the resurrection and the life. How can you possibly ignore him?

There isn’t a middle road.

Now, the scene is actually more complex than we might imagine. Just turn back a page, will you, to the beginning of this chapter.

And you’ll see why we’re going to spend some time on the setting for this claim. You see, Jesus is elsewhere when Lazarus, the man who was ill, falls ill and is obviously seriously ill. The news comes to him at the beginning of the chapter, and in verse 5 we read this: Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus.

So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed 2 days longer in the place where he was.

You know, has ever the word so been less appropriate? He loved them very much, so he did nothing about it.

You know, if you’re willing to suspend judgement for a few verses, you think, well, all right, God may have something up his sleeve, but it must be something remarkable. To justify a verse like that, mustn’t it? Then you turn over the page and we discover verse 14. As Jesus speaks with his disciples, he told them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

Well, at least that’s facing reality. But look how he goes on. Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I’m glad that I was not there.

So that you may believe.

Do you see what he’s saying? I have some truth in store for you, and I’m glad I wasn’t there to get Lazarus better. I’m glad that Lazarus has died so that you can believe this truth. It must be something gigantic.

He is in effect saying, isn’t he? He’s putting Mary and Martha and Lazarus through all the anguish of a death and a funeral and bereavement to teach some truth so that his disciples, so that you and I can believe.

Well, so the story goes on. Martha comes to meet him and Jesus makes this staggering claim. We begin to get the insight as to what this truth is. I am the resurrection and the life, he says. And we say, well, can he deliver?

And Mary comes to meet him.

And verse 35, that verse that is beloved by all of us who’ve ever been made to learn verses of Scripture in the past, Jesus wept. We could all manage that one.

And yet, of course, it teaches a tremendous truth, doesn’t it?

Almighty God, the one who made this world, this galaxy, this universe, the one who will judge every one of us, has come and stood by a graveside, stood by the tomb of a friend, and wept.

He does know what he’s talking about.

And the Jews said, see how he loved him. But some of them said, quite rightly and understandably, couldn’t he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?

And the answer is, of course he could, but then we’d have never known if he was the resurrection and the life, would we? See, everyone takes it for granted that he could have made him better. Martha and Mary both come to him with precisely the same words, Lord, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Then Jesus, verse 38, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

And Jesus said, take away the stone. And Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there’ll be an odour, for he’s been dead 4 days. And the Authorised Version here for once is less subtle, but it’s very blunt. Said, Lord, by this time he stinketh.

But either way, it makes the point very clearly, isn’t it? Here has been a genuine death and they all know it.

There’s no phoney act.

And Jesus says he knows what he’s doing. In verse 43, he cries with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out!

And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, his face wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go.

Now that’s impressive, isn’t it?

When we ask, can he deliver?

That’s impressive evidence, isn’t it? If you were listening when Phil was reading earlier on, you’ll discover that afterwards some believed Jesus because of this. Others wanted to kill him. But both sets knew that the miracle had happened. Neither of them were denying the miracle.

See, Jesus calls Lazarus up from the dead, 3 days gone, so that I can believe when he says, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he shall die, yet shall he live.

Trust me, says Jesus.

I can handle death.

Have you anyone else to trust in the face of it? Jesus is saying, I am in charge of what happens after death.

That’s the essence of his claim. Please, when people want to say, well, I just think when I die, that’s it and there’s no more. On what authority do we make that? Isn’t that wishful thinking?

That’s certainly saying Jesus is wrong. He claims to be in charge of what happens then. He says, I am the resurrection.

And he says, what happens depends on your attitude to me.

I find we so often keep on talking when it comes to death and the future, we keep on talking in terms of ifs and buts. We seem to have a perverse delight in vagueness. I wonder why.

I wonder why we’re so happy to be vague. Do you remember waiting for exam results? It wasn’t a particularly happy time, was it? I mean, not unless you knew you’d failed, in which case it was better still to be waiting for it. But for most of it, it was an awful time.

Well, Jesus steps into the midst of this funeral wake with these amazingly encouraging words, and he says, I’ll tell you the results.

I’ll tell you the outcome of Judgement Day. There’ll be no ifs and buts.

Your attitude to me fixes your eternity. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live.

Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Death isn’t the end.

I have a friend who spent a lot of his life out in the Far East, and he told me once about the cobra farms they had out there. And he said you’d go visiting the snakes and you’d find yourself almost surrounded by them, and they would, they would rear up and they’d be hissing. And they’d look as fierce and ferocious and swaying in that menacing way that fortunately I’d never seen on anything but the BBC Two films.

And he said, yet ultimately, of course, they were harmless because they’d had the poison milk from them. They’d had their fangs cut.

Well, death’s like that to the Christian.

I’m not trying to pretend that it doesn’t still look fierce and ferocious. It doesn’t still hiss and sway.

But ultimately it’s harmless.

It’s still an enemy, but its sting has been drawn.

Because its sting is sin.

And it was expedient that Jesus should die for others.

And he, the innocent, died to draw the sting and drink the poison of judgement for us guilty ones who believe in him. Trust me, says Jesus, I can handle death. I am the resurrection and the life. The problem: death.

The promise: resurrection and life.

Do you have a philosophy with any shred of evidence to sustain it that can offer you that?

The person: Jesus himself.

See, look back again, will you, at those verses 25 and 26. It all depends on our attitude to Jesus. He is not saying there is resurrection, there is such a thing as resurrection and life. No, he says, I am the resurrection. He who believes in me, he says, whoever lives and believes in me See, it’s this extraordinary paradox.

Here’s a promise that’s for who— that is for whoever. You can’t be more universal than that, can you? But it’s for whoever lives and believes in me, and you can’t be more particular than that.

Look at Martha.

When Martha came, she said, Lord, you could have prevented it.

Jesus said to her, verse 23, your brother will rise again. And Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. What did she mean by that? I wonder if it was the first-century equivalent of, well, yes, I know he’s gone to a better place.

The kind of vague optimist’s comforting line, because we find it difficult to know what else to say.

And Jesus gives her this great promise: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

Look at Martha’s answer. Do you believe this? said Jesus. She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe you.

It all depends on the person. I think back to last year and watching my mother die. And towards the end, we often spoke of death.

She had an amazing peace of mind, a very definite certainty about the future. But you know, she never spoke in terms of doctrine, a doctrine, a theory of the resurrection. She always spoke in terms of a person.

The Jesus whom she trusted to lead her through death.

It all hinges on that relationship with him.

I went up to Norwich yesterday to Clare’s parents to collect her and the children, and when I got there, Anna, our eldest daughter, was watching a video of a circus that they’d recorded previously. And I sat down and watched a bit of it with her, and they saw the trapeze artists, you know, extraordinary people. I don’t know whether— with all their little twizzles and get caught again blindfolded and everything else. And I found myself wondering— I don’t know if you ever do this when you see things— I put myself in the shoes of people, and I wondered what would ever induce me to let go of the trapeze.

I couldn’t think what would ever induce me to do it, and so I began to wonder whatever made them do it.

And I realised in the end it must be that they’d got good grounds for believing the other person would catch them. They must have gone through the practice so often. It wasn’t just letting go and hoping for the best. No, far from it. It was quite clear there was split-second timing going on and great confidence that though it looked as if they were miles apart and going to miss, at the crunch moment, that pair of hands will be there.

I want you to realise that when the Bible asks questions about believing and so on, when the Bible speaks of faith, it is something like that. It is not a blind leap.

Please pack up your brains and put them away and just take a jump. No, it is saying there are good grounds for trusting the other person to catch you.

And in this case, the other person is Jesus, the one who’s done it himself, who’s gone through death himself.

And there is remarkable evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Do get that book, When Death— The Day Death Died, if that’s a problem for you.

There’s Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in a sense on that day pointing to Jesus and saying, why do you think we went through all of that if he can’t catch you?

We went through it to show you he can.

Friends, death one day will prise our grip from the trapeze.

We know that it’s inevitable. Who are you trusting to catch you?

Who will you trust your death to?

Because he’s worth trusting your life to.

The problem— death. The promise: resurrection and life. The person: Jesus.

That remarkable man who claims, I am the resurrection and the life. I am trustworthy. I will catch.

As some of you this week and some of you this morning, you’ve reached the stage where perhaps you realise it’s time to start looking.

There may be no more than just a chink of light at the moment, but there’s a sense that there’s something that needs exploring here. There are issues that are too big to dismiss. I want to encourage you to go on looking. I’ve got a number of copies of John’s Gospel, which I’d be only too happy to give you if you’ll read them, because it’s a great place to start the research, to see if this man is reliable. Do ask me for one at the end.

But there are some of you who are further on than that.

There’ll be some who know that actually the need isn’t so much to start looking, but it’s time to start finding. You know it’s true.

You know that for you there’s a need to face God and say, well, what Martha says here. Yes, Lord, I believe.

Yes, Lord, I believe you are the resurrection and the life. Yes, Lord, I entrust my life and my death to you.

Well, I have only one more thing to say, and that can wait for a moment. So I suggest we are all quiet for a moment or two. We face up to the claims of this Jesus. Some of you may still be working out where your stumbling block is. Others of you may need to take this opportunity to pray and to say, yes, Lord, I believe.

Let me read to you that promise again, and then let’s be quiet. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this?

One last thing before I finish.

On your way in this morning, you should have been handed amongst the notice sheet and the service sheet one of these little cards with the Double Take logo on it. I wonder if you’d be good enough to get it out and just open it up for a moment.

And when you turn to the inside, you’ll discover it’s all about something that we’d call Discovering Christianity. Some small informal groups where people can get together and receive some input about the Christian faith and thrash out their questions and problems and the issues together.

Please, what I want to say as I end is this. If you’re someone who knows you need to start looking, you may not have anything more than just a tiny chink of light at the moment, but you know you need to start looking, then this is a great next step for you. It’s a great place to do it. We had someone a few weeks back who said precisely that about his position. He says, it’s like a tiny, tiny chink of light to me.

And he went to a group like this and he did some of his own research and thinking, and now it’s as if the floodlights have been switched on.

He’s now saying, yes, Lord, I believe.

Or if this morning you’ve started to find to the Jesus who said, do you believe this? You said just a moment ago perhaps, yes, Lord, I believe you. Well then, here’s a great place to work out what the next steps to take are. Please do just fill in that last page. Tick the evening you’d like to come.

It really doesn’t matter which. There are a number of people coming on all those evenings. If you can’t make all of them, don’t worry, just cross out the nights you can’t make. If you can’t make any of them, just write help, and that means we’ll do our best to get in touch with you and arrange something else. And then fill in your name and so on so we can get in touch with you if we need to.

If you’d then tear it off, doesn’t require much strength, we’ve put holes in it already, and slip the details that you filled in in one of the red bins that’ll be at the door, that’d be a great help. Hang on to the rest of it because that tells you what you’ve done, and we know that already. If this isn’t for you, please would you fold the whole thing up and put the whole thing in the bin. At the end. If you’re saying in a significant way for the first time, yes, Lord, I believe you, I have also got a very simple little booklet here called Starting with Christ.

And many people have found it a great help to have in black and white in just a very few pages outlined for them what we’ve been talking about and what they may just have begun to do. So again, do ask me for one at the end. Thank you for listening.