Lilac Ministries

Bible Study Lessons

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Scripture: John 11:1-37

Topic: A Profession of Faith

“Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary . . . was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord.”

If John were writing about US, how would we want him to describe or identify us? Among our answers were “helper” and “one who loved God” and “persistent” - and “I’d need more time to think about that!”

We agreed that the recorded conversations between the Lord and the disciples are (and must have been) confusing. Was Lazarus truly dead or sleeping? But Jesus’ deliberate delay and are-there-not-twelve-hours-in-a-day decision to return to Jerusalem, a dangerous place for Jesus to be, were clear. And the four-day wait could have left no doubt, in the minds of the disciples and in the tears of those who had come to comfort Mary and Martha, that Lazarus was indeed dead.

Martha, who seems forever remembered as one who, at least by implication in Luke 10, chose the lesser portion (service vs prayer - but does Christ really mean for us to choose one at the expense of the other?), finds her redemption in John 11, where her profession of faith is recorded for all to see. Both sisters are quoted as having expressed their trust in Jesus’ healing power, but we couldn’t decide whether their “my brother would not have died” was a statement of blame or a statement of faith and fact.

We DID agree that “Jesus wept” out of compassion for Mary and Martha in their grieving. We also affirmed that there will always be those who are ready to criticize, as did some of Mary and Martha’s friends: “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?”

Lazarus remained in the tomb as we closed our study (but we have every intention of reading the rest of the story next Sunday!). We concluded that we are not always able to see what the Lord is doing in the midst of our difficult times. We found great consolation, however, in knowing that the Lord cries WITH us in our sorrows. And what a blessing to know that Christ has power that goes beyond what we can see.