EPISODE 11 John Chapter 11 ”Shortest Verse In the Bible”

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. Whether you're just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you'll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. So let's listen in to today's lesson and go a little deeper. The shortest verse in the Bible, John chapter 11. If you're just joining us, we're looking at Jesus up close and personal right now through the recollections of someone who knew him very well. We're learning just who Jesus claimed to be, why he claimed he was here in his own words, and as they are recalled by the man we know as the Apostle John, the author of the fourth Gospel.

I grew up in a church that had youth Bible clubs for kids. What I remember most about them was playing Bible knowledge games and Bible quizzes, sword drills, Bible baseball, all these kinds of games. Some of you who are listening probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you grew up in a church like mine, you probably remember this very well. The games were designed to, in a fun way, engraft God's Word into children's minds and hearts. I always liked playing these games because, well, I'm pretty competitive. When we played Bible baseball, for example, I usually fearlessly took the home runs, you know, the questions, the really hard ones.

They could be home runs because they were from some obscure story in the Old Testament, or sometimes just because they were a little tricky. For example, a tricky one I remember was What were Jesus' mother and father's names? Careful. After many decades, I still remember being tricked by that question and losing a game to April Baldwin. Grrr. But there were also, of course, easy questions for the, you know, less scholarly ten-year-olds, the singles, the sacrifice flies, like, how many books are in the Bible?

Well, and anyone who as a kid ever played these type games should know the answer to this one. What's the shortest verse in the Bible? Time's up. Correct answer: John 11:35. Jesus wept. Maybe you knew that, but if you didn't, make a note of it for the next time you play Bible baseball.

It's the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, and it's found in today's chapter, and we're going to see when and why John wrote that. Throughout the section of John's Gospel that we've just finished, Jesus repeatedly has come into open conflict with the religious leaders of his nation. During the Feast of Tabernacles, which John has been writing about, we know that was in retrospect about six months before his crucifixion. Jesus had been publicly teaching in Jerusalem, making outrageous claims that the religious leaders on more than one occasion found so offensive they would have killed him, John says, if they could have gotten their hands on him. Then as chapter 10 closed, Jesus had once again left the Jerusalem area for a safer place. He crossed the Jordan River into a district called Perea.

Very few people, except those closest to him, knew he was there. He was apparently there for a few months too, and it was while they were there that a disturbing message reached him. A man by the name of Lazarus, a very close friend, was very ill, gravely ill. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, accepted Jesus' claims and were among his most loyal followers. And the message which arrived from the sisters was brief, Lord, Lazarus, whom you love, is very sick. I'm sure they badly wanted Jesus to come, but they dared not ask him to come.

They lived less than two miles from Jerusalem in a village called Bethany, and they were very aware of the danger. So I'm sure they were torn. They wanted Jesus to know about the gravity of their brother's situation, but they left in his hands what he would do about it. After receiving word, Jesus, in fact, at first didn't do anything about it, apparently. Not because he was paralyzed by fear, I'm sure, but because he was operating on the Father's timetable, as he always did. What John remembers Jesus telling them about Lazarus and his illness was, This sickness of Lazarus, it won't end in death.

It has a purpose, and it will glorify God, and the Son of God will be glorified through it. You'll see. For two days, though, he did not react. After that delay, and the timing was important here, he brought the subject up to John and the others again and said, Now let's go back to Judea. They immediately reminded him, You do remember the last time we were there, they tried to stone you, right? Then Jesus told them his friend Lazarus had died and said something provocative that John records here in verse 14.

He said, I'm glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you might believe. Now let's go to him. John and the others must have wondered what exactly he meant by that, but seeing the determination on his face to return to Judea to be with these loved ones, they were resigned to go with him. In fact, Thomas said, Let's go with him, that we may also die with him. I said a moment ago that Jesus delayed going to Bethany because he was operating on God's timetable. Think about that for a moment.

Had he done what the sisters really wanted him to do, this story would likely have had a very different ending. He probably would have been there. Lazarus was sick. He would have healed him, as he had healed many people during his public ministry years. Had he done what the disciples wanted him to do, he would have never gone to Bethany at all because it was too dangerous, too close to Jerusalem, too close to his enemies. I only mention this because I think it's a good example of how we come to God in prayer with what we want, just as Martha and Mary did on the one hand, who desperately wanted Jesus to come heal their brother, and the disciples on the other, who would have strongly preferred to go nowhere near Jerusalem because of the danger.

But God frequently does not do what we want, even less when we want him to do it. One lesson that strikes me from this is that it does not mean that God does not care. It's because our Father in Heaven has an agenda and a time for his agenda working out. The highest thing we can pray for and should seek for is that our desires get lost in whatever is according to his will. What furthers his agenda? God had something in mind to do that was well beyond what the sisters on the one hand imagined or the disciples on the other hand could conceive of.

So Jesus, with his not too happy to be along disciples, crossed back over the Jordan into the area of Judea and approached the village of Bethany. With the travel time, it's now been about four days since Lazarus actually had passed away, and this is exactly the time of God's appointment. When they approached the village where these friends lived, word got to Martha, the older sister, that Jesus in fact had come, and she immediately rushed out to meet him on the road. When they met, her first words were, Lord, where have you been? If you had been here, my brother would never have died. Martha was a very straightforward woman.

She was heartbroken, and I'm sure she just blurted out what she and her sister had said to each other several times over the last few days. Can you see Jesus taking this woman, whom he really cared for, by the shoulders and saying, Martha, your brother will rise again. Of course he will, Lord, she replied, at the resurrection at the last day, thinking Jesus was offering her kind words of consolation. Most Jews believed in a future resurrection at the end of time, when the righteous would be brought up from death and would live some kind of eternal life. But that's not what Jesus meant. He responded again, Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never really die. Do you believe that? Notice Jesus did not say, I promise you he'll be resurrected. He said, I am the resurrection and the life. A person who believes in me, that's who is connected to me by faith, even though they die will live again. In fact, that person who believes in me never really dies.

That's an astounding thing to say. It's one of the things that John wants to be sure that we, his readers, hear Jesus say and understand Jesus claiming, another of his remarkable claims. The most interesting part of this to me is not the first part about promising a resurrection for those who have faith in Christ. That's important, of course. The more important thing, or the more interesting thing at least to me, is when he says, Whoever is living and believes in me will never really die. Think about that.

How could Jesus say that? In what sense is that true? I think it's because Jesus promised that at the moment we place our faith in Him, accept Him as our Savior and Lord, in John's words, we pass out of death and into life. And at that instant, we place our faith in Him, we are born again, again, John's words from chapter 3, remember? And we begin to live our eternal life from that moment. Eternal life is not out there somewhere in the vague future.

I've already begun to live eternal life the moment I, by faith, embraced Jesus as my Savior. Physical death is not going to end my life, not even really interrupt my life. It will just change the location where I am living it. To be absent from this body, the apostle Paul assures us, or Christians, is to be at home with the Lord. In her mental state, I'm not sure Martha was fully processing any of this that Jesus was telling her. But she did believe in Him, and she responded to Him, Lord, I believe you're the Messiah.

You're the Son of God. You're the one who's been promised. The picture is going to get clearer from Martha shortly. Jesus sent Martha back into the village to summon her younger sister Mary. Their home was filled with mourners. Try and picture this.

This was a prominent family in Bethany, and many people had gathered to be with them in their grief. In that culture, people really mourned. In my culture, mourning is usually subdued. Death is pretty clinical. But in their world, death was much more in your face, and the reaction to it much less restrained. When Martha arrived back at the house, Mary would have been sitting on the floor.

One thing they did when someone died was to turn their furniture over, literally flip it over upside down. It was a visible way of saying everything in our lives is topsy-turvy right now. And they would sit on the ground and they would wail. Their grief was demonstrative. The grieving reached, by the way, a climax on the fourth day. That's the day Jesus showed up on time, because according to their beliefs, a soul hovered near the body for three days after death, but it was on the fourth day that it left for good.

So the fourth day had a sense of finality about it when Jesus arrived. Martha returned to the house full of mourners, and she whispered to her younger sister that Jesus indeed had come and was calling for her. Mary rose up and quickly hurried out of the house. When the people gathered there saw her leave in such a hurry, they assumed she was headed to the grave of her brother, and so they followed her. At the edge of town, where Martha had left them and where she told Mary he would be, she too met Jesus. True to her character, Mary fell at his feet.

She was a much more tender and emotional person than her older sister, and she was just devastated at this loss. Her sorrow gushed out of her. Lord, if you had been here. Jesus responded to Mary, though, differently than he had to Martha. The Bible says when he saw Mary in such a state and the people with her wailing, Jesus was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled. This whole scene deeply, deeply affected him.

Seeing these people's response to death, feeling their overwhelming grief, he was overcome with emotion too. The word John uses suggests Jesus was so full of emotion that he was hyperventilating. All he could say to them was, Where have you laid him? Come, we'll show you, they responded. Then at verse 35 is where it says, Jesus wept. Jesus was sad.

He was emotional because his friend Lazarus had died. But it's much more than that. Jesus was almost angry at seeing what death was doing to these people he loved. The whole scene, I think, elicited a raw reaction in him. He was disturbed by it. The words here literally indicate the scene angered him, made him angry.

Death and the grip that it has on people, the fear it engenders, the confusion it brings, the despair it produces, all this deeply affected him that day. When he followed the mourners to the burial site, he was on a mission. Lazarus had been laid out four days earlier in a cave cut into the rocky hillside outside Bethany. When they arrived there, Jesus ordered, Take away the stone from the entrance to that cave. Martha protested, Lord, you don't want to do that. It's been four days.

The body has already begun to decay. Jesus looked at her with a just do as I say look on his face. Martha, didn't I tell you that if you had faith in me, you would see the glory of God? Move the stone. He didn't really need to move the stone, by the way, but I think he wanted some of the people who were there to have a front row seat for what was going to happen next. So some men clambered down the hill to where the opening to the cave was and rolled the large disc-like stone away from the cave's entrance.

Jesus looked up and whispered a prayer, and then he called out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! And out of the darkness of that tomb emerged a man, still bound in a cocoon of grave wrappings. I don't think he hobbled out either, because the way the Jews wrapped people was with strips of cloth bound over and over around the corpse. I think Lazarus was literally propelled out of that tomb at Jesus' command. The men by the entrance of the tomb who had rolled the stone away must have been completely freaked by this. Jesus called down to them again, Unbind him and let him go.

Then, to the astonishment of everyone, these men began gingerly undoing the grave coverings around Lazarus' head, revealing his shocked, smiling face. I wondered if he was even able to say a word at that point. He had to be the most astounded of them all. Then they stripped away the grave wrappings around his quivering body, and there standing before them was the living proof that Jesus was, in fact, the resurrection and the life. Their stunned silence in a moment gave way to excited shouts, tears of joy. John says what he witnessed that day with his own eyes in Bethany has to be one of the most amazing things people have ever seen.

Do you find what John tells us here impossible to believe? You know, there are two primary views of death in our culture, my culture anyway. Some, of course, think that we humans are just highly evolved animals, we're soulless bundles of tissue wired together with nerves. Those who hold this view claim that death for us is no different than death for a rabbit or a cow or any other living creature. When the brain waves stop and the heart quits pumping, that's it. You put them in the ground, dispose of the carcass, because that's all there is except for the memories.

Personally, I find that impossible to believe. It flies in the face of too much evidence that there is more to us than that, that we are not just physical, material life forms. For example, did you know that the cells which make up our bodies are continually living and dying and being replaced all of our lives long? In fact, what I've read is that there's not one cell in my body today that was part of me even seven years ago. Physically, materially, I am not in any way the same person that I was just seven years ago. Every cell in my body has been changed since that time.

So at this point in my life, I've been through that cycle several times. But you know what? I am certain I've been the same person all through my life. And you know the same thing too, don't you? Why? Because we're not just physical.

There's an immaterial part of us, a spiritual part of us, a soul, as the Bible calls it, that is distinct from the physical. And that's the real me. That's the real you. No matter what my body looks like and the changes it undergoes as the years pass by, the real me is not the skin and the joints and the bones and the organs. The real me is the spirit, the soul that lives within. But most people are very much bound up by this enemy we call death.

Several years ago, I heard the famous TV interview host Larry King asked, and he was a tough-minded pragmatist, how he managed to hang around so long in such a competitive business, in show business, and if he ever worried about anything threatening his career. He answered honestly, The only thing I ever really worry about is dying. He was smiling when he said it, but he wasn't joking. In that honest admission, Larry King reduced matters to their most irreducible place. Physical death looms ahead of all of us. Death is actually the most certain thing about life.

The death rate is 100%. When I went to my first church as a young man, as a pastor, I officiated at, if I remember right, at least a half dozen funerals during the first year. And I had never even attended a funeral before that time. I remember something that struck me then at the funeral home where the body was laid out in one room. People would come in and pay their respects, usually briefly, as briefly as decorum permitted, and then they'd get out of there. Even big tough guys, coal miners, steel workers where I was, they'd be out on the porch of the funeral home smoking cigarettes and talking about football or whatever, anything, anything, to avoid what was really going on at that place at that time.

Death is uncomfortable. People are bound by the fear of death. It's up ahead of all of us, and we well know it, but we do our best to keep that out of our minds. We just don't think about it. Is that wise? I mean, wouldn't it make sense to be prepared for something we have no way to avoid, something that important?

That's exactly what Jesus said he came to our planet to do. He came to loose us and unbind us from the fear of death. And that afternoon outside the village of Bethany, through this great sign, Jesus demonstrated he has the power to do exactly what he said. He demonstrated it by calling Lazarus out of the tomb, and many people, including John, our author, witnessed it. I'm going to leave you with this thought. Listen again to this challenge.

Jesus put this to a grieving sister, Martha, because it's for every one of us as well. He assured her, I am the resurrection and the life, and he who believes in me will live even if he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never really die. Do you believe this? I do. I absolutely do.

And I hope and pray you do too. Thanks for listening. We hope you found this commentary both interesting and insightful. If you're just joining us, visit ShareTheWord.org and check out all the podcasts we've already released, as well as other offerings available to you. Everything that's produced at Share the Word is free for you to use and to share. Before you go, please consider becoming a financial partner so that we may continue the Great Commission to share the Word around the world.

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