Take Off Those Grave Clothes!
John 11:17-26, 38-44, Rev 21:1-5


Walking Around in Grave Clothes.

One of Jesus’ best friends, a man named Lazarus, someone who Christ loved deeply, was dying.  Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha, two very close woman friends of Jesus, send a message to Jesus who seemed so very far away from their grief and trial.  They pleaded with Jesus to come and do something about this tragedy!

Jesus was indeed far away from their grief hanging out with his close followers, the disciples who would become the 12 apostles.  Christ was in a remote area two days travel away from Bethany the city where Lazarus lay sick and dying.  Jesus responded to this desperate plea from these two women by waiting two more days before going to them.

He then told the disciples, “It is time to back to Jerusalem.  The town of Bethany, where Lazarus was, was just a couple of miles outside of Jerusalem.  His disciples protested this decision, “No Jesus, you can’t go back there now!  The religious leaders have vowed to kill you there!”  

So Christ explained to them, “I need to go back.  My close and dear friend is asleep.”  The apostles, in their typical thick-headed, slow-to-catch-on manner replied, “What’s the big deal about him being asleep?  He doesn’t need you to come wake him up!”  Christ shook his head, “Listen, Lazarus is dead!  And I’m glad for your sake so that you can see what’s about to happen and so believe!”  

They apostles began to mumble among themselves, “If Christ knew Lazarus was sick, why did he not go there earlier and heal him?”  Most of them were terrified of going with Christ to Jerusalem.  They were just as worried about also getting killed themselves as they were about Jesus.  They just wanted all the blessings they possibly could get out of this miracle-working messiah.  

Jesus arrived in Bethany, four days after Lazarus had died.  Martha heard that Christ was coming so she ran out to meet him on the road.  With great disappointment, sorrow, and confusion, she complained to Jesus, “Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother Lazarus would not have died.”  

Jesus responded to Martha declaring, “Your brother shall rise again.”  

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Martha, “I know I’ll see him again in heaven.”  But this promise of future resurrection just seemed to come up short in the face of Martha’s immediate sorrow.  She wanted her brother back now!  

“All this talk of how great heaven is going to be is just fine, and I’m sure it will be,” she is feeling, “but such hope does little to take away the stabbing pain in my heart of my brother being dead!”

Mary, Martha and Lazarus’ sister, finally got the courage to go see Jesus as well.  She fell at his feet, and cried out the same confused, disappointed, grieving complaint her sister had made.  “Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  

In other words, “Jesus, where have you been?  Why did you not respond as soon as I had demanded that you respond, and in the manner in which you are suppose to respond?  You’re Jesus!  You’re the one that’s been traveling all over healing people.  I know you loved Lazarus.  I know you love me.  So why did you not keep us from this pain!  Why would you let a young man whom loved you, who was following you, die?”  Why are you so silent, when I need to hear you the most?  Why are you so distant, when I need to feel your presence the most?”   

There was a large crowd now gathered around Christ.  They were all weeping.  Christ became overwhelmed with sorrow and also begins to weep.  The crowd noticed Christ compassion and yet began to mumble, “Could not this man who does all these miracles, and who obviously loved Lazarus, also have kept him from dying?”  In other words, “Why do you possess unlimited power and perfect love God only to let this world drown in sorrow, pain, and injustice?  Isn’t it God’s job to make me happy?”  “God is suppose to use His power and demonstrate His love right now, all the time, to everyone, in every situation in a manner that makes me feel good, be successful, minimizes pain and maximizes pleasure.  So why then is life so blasted hard when there is suppose to be a powerful, loving God in control?”


Take Off Those Grave Clothes!

Christ moves from sorrow to anger!  He is furious that the enemy of death that he came to overcome still has power over those he loves.  But he is just as furious about the lack of faith being displayed by the crowd, by his dear women friends Mary and Martha, and even by his own apostles.  Christ demanded, “take me to the tomb!’  Once there he demands that they roll away the stone that covers the tomb.  

Even as Christ was promising a miracle, even as he was asking them to cooperate with him in this miracle by moving the stone, all Martha can say is, “No Jesus, we can’t do that!  Lazarus has been dead for four days.  There will be a terrible stench in that grave!”  

Christ in exasperated but lingering patience, Christ in anger over dearth and disbelief, declared, “Did I know just say that if you believe you will see the glory of God?  Now move that stone!” Christ prayed to His Father and then screamed out in faith, “Lazarus come out!”  

The crowd didn’t believe in the power of Christ.  Christ closest followers didn’t have enough faith to persevere until the miracle.  Only the dead man had enough faith to believe.  Only the man who had no other hope, who had no other source of freedom and life, who had sunk past the depths of despair unto death, heard and believed the promises of Christ, and Lazarus got up and hopped on out of the grave!

But even after experiencing the resurrection power of Christ, Lazarus was still bound up in his grave clothes.  He still was wrapped like a mummy from head to toe.  So Christ again invited the people to participate in His miracle.  Christ instructed the people to unbind him, “Take off those grave clothes,” Christ commanded!  

We read in our Bible story, in the verses just following the passage we read earlier, that because of this resurrection miracle, many believed and put their faith in Christ as Lord and Savior.  But as incredible and unbelievable as this is, some saw Lazarus come back from the dead, and instead of responding in belief and surrender to Christ, they responded in disbelief, cynicism, and bitterness.  


Taking Off Our Grave Clothes!

Friends, even after the miracle of new life, Lazarus still needed others to come by his side, and layer by layer take off his grave clothes.  Friends, this is true of us as well.  Whether you are here today as an unbeliever, a Christian young in the faith, or have been serving Christ for decades, everyone of us will always have another layer of grave clothes that we need to allow Christ, through God’s Spirit and God’s people painfully remove.

There are all manner of grave clothes we put in.  Grave clothes that represent those areas in our life where we choose to live in old, stinking thinking and fleshly habits instead of living in the resurrection life that Christ calls and empowers to live.  In our Bible story, we discover some of these layers.  We discover five different layers of grave clothes that if you will let God’s Spirit and people help, you can begin to remove them today!


Letting Christ Take Off Our Grave Clothes!

The grave clothes of misbelief  

In our Bible story, those that witnessed the miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection, yet still did not believe in Christ as Messiah, Lord, and Savior, represent those of who are still bound by the grave clothes of misbelief.  They can also represent those who are Christians, and yet still have areas in their life that have not yet experienced all of God’s power, or who have areas not yet surrendered fully to Christ’s Lordship.

Perhaps you fit into this group.  Perhaps you are still bound by the grave clothes of misbelief.  You heard the gospel story of Christ’s death, Resurrection, and soon return, but just haven’t made that next step by head belief to heart surrender.

Or perhaps you fit into the group that is holding on to deep pain or life-controlling behavior.  You know it hurts or that it is sin, but you just aren’t yet willing to let Christ heal you or free you.  You just cannot imagine life without your identity as the victim, or cannot envision life without the sin that makes you feel so alive or that takes away the pain of life.

Perhaps you’re saying in your heart the same statement Martha made when Christ asked the crown to roll away the stone.  “No Lord, you don’t understand, if you roll away this stone in my life there will be a terrible stench!  
This sin is too horrific, you can’t possible forgive it.  This pain is too deep, you can’t possible heal it.  This addiction is too controlling, you can’t possibly free me.  If you smell the stench of my hidden pain and shame you can’t possibly still accept me, love me!”

And to you, Christ responds the same way, “Move that Stone, come out from the land of the dead into the land of my life, love, and joy, and let me take off those grave clothes!”


The grave clothes of meager faith

In our Bible story, we discover that the apostle’s of Christ, at this stage in their walk of faith, really had very little faith.  They just couldn’t see that Christ was completely in control, even in allowing this death of Lazarus.  The apostle’s were still bound by the grave clothes of meager faith.

This is faith, to believe that God is writing a good story, with ultimately a happy ending with all human history, and with your life.  Despite all the data that seems to deny this truth.  Faith is God’s gift that empowers us to believe that God is taking every chapter of tragedy and trial and weaving into a story of triumph.  Faith declares that the defining theme of your story, and the story of the human race, is not death, but Resurrection!

Perhaps you are one the millions who just cannot embrace such faith.  Your sensitivity to life’s horror and injustice, and your intelligence that refuses to settle for shallow, cliché answers to disturbing questions, just cannot, will not, embrace a faith that pretends that life is easier than it is, that God is more understandable than he is, that playing Christian somehow makes life all sugary sweet and easy.  Well good!  Because neither I, nor God, nor the people of GracePoint embrace such a shallow, meager faith either!  

Or perhaps you are able to believe in a large scale manner that God is writing a good story with your life and all human history with ultimately a happy ending, but there is an area in your life right now where you just can’t see how this is true.  

Christ declares to you this day, “Let me take of those grave clothes of meager faith, or cynicism, or bitterness, or misbelief, and let me give you today a faith that can handle the most disturbing of questions and overcome the darkest shame or pain!”


The grave clothes of misunderstood love

In our Bible story, Mary was confused.  She knew Christ loved her and Lazarus.  But she still had deep, mostly unfelt and always unexpressed questions that nagged at her faith, she puzzled, “is this the way you treat someone you love?  Does love allow the one loved to suffer?”  Mary was defining God’s love to mean the absence of sorrow and trial.  You see Mary was still bound by the grave clothes of a misunderstood love.

Perhaps you are still bound by the grave clothes of not understanding what is true love?  To understand God’s love, you must understand this truth: God loves us enough to wound us!  The familiar and yet still powerful way of stating this truth is this:  God love’s will always accept us just as we are, but God loves us too much to let us stay that way!  

If you say you love someone, and you see that person engaging in behavior that is self or other destructive, and you do not confront his or her, you do not really love that person.  True love is willing to courageously and sacrificially move into another’s life despite the fear of offending or rejection to call that person to be all he or she can fully be in Christ.  

The predominate value in our world right now is a satanic counterfeit of true love called tolerance.  Tolerance defines love as this: you let me do whatever I want and I’ll let you do whatever you want.  

God’s love says, “I love you too much to let you be anyone less than who I called you to be.  And because your sin, doubt, and selfishness are so deeply rooted it often takes my severe mercy of trials to free you and make you more like my Son.”

Sorrow, trial, spiritual warfare, and suffering are always purposeful in a Christian’s life.

So Christ is inviting you this day, “Let me take off those grave clothes of a false understanding of love and fill your heart and life with my love, a love that will transform you and empower you to move in transforming ways into the lives of others!”


The grave clothes of a mistaken view of God

In our Bible story, the crowds were still bound by the grave clothes of a mistaken view of God.  They lived with a demand that God would always protect and provide in a manner that gave them immediate pleasure, success, blessings, and happiness according to what they wanted now!  Perhaps in ways small or large you too hold to such a view of God, that it is God’s job to make you happy, to make your life work well.  

To understand God, you must understand what God is up to right now with the human race.  If this life on the current planet Earth is all we get, then God is doing a miserable job because our life right now is too short and too full of shattered dreams, broken hearts, failed expectations, and sorrow.  But God does not deal with us according to what will bring us the most possible happiness right now.  All of life on this current planet Earth is preparation for the next life on the New Earth that God will re-create at the end of this age.  

Remember we read about this new heaven and new earth in our opening Scripture reading.  God’s plan for us is to be co-rulers with Christ over all the universe.  Everything God allows in our life right now is to prepare us for these positions of eternal leadership.  We will reign with Christ from a new physical Jerusalem on a new physical Earth in new physical bodies in a perfect, unending, and always expanding kingdom of God.  

Our passage from Revelations describes this kingdom this way:  “God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death'  or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Now that’s what Resurrection is all about!  

So hear now Christ’s invitation to you this day, “Let me take off your grave clothes of your too-small, too-selfish view of God and let me show you who I truly am in all my mystery, power, beauty, and glory!”


The grave clothes of misplaced hope

In our Bible story, Martha only understood the promises of God to be available in the future, in the “some day” that is always too long from now, when God finally decides to bring in the eternal kingdom of God.  Hope, for Martha, was a future blessing, not a power that could transform the present.  Martha held a misplaced hope.

Jesus corrected her, “No Martha, I am not given you just a promise of future blessing.  I am not just promising to you that I will be the Resurrection and Life.  I am declaring to you right now, I am the Resurrection and the Life!  He who believes in me shall live even if he dies, and those who right now believe in me will never die!  Do you believe this?”  Christ asked Martha.


“Do you believe this?” Christ asks you this day.  “Do you believe that I can be for you this day the Resurrection and the life?”  Will you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Crucified One who became the Resurrected One, and let Him take off whatever grave clothes still bind you?

In our passage from Revelations, Christ declares that God is making all things new!”  Not just that God will someday in the future will make all things new.  God is making all things new right now!  

We serve a Risen Savior who is in the Resurrection business!  Today, right now, now matter where there is death in your life, no matter how many layers of grave clothes have you bound, Christ can bring Resurrection power if you call on Him alone!