Do You Believe?

Seven signs is the message series that we've been in for the past several weeks as we lead up to Easter. And my name is Mark. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes, and I want to welcome you all—those of you here in this room and those of you joining us on our live stream from living rooms here in our community and so much further beyond that. We're all so grateful to be together today.

I want to invite you to grab your message notes entitled "Do You Believe?" and if you have your Bible with you, you might want to find John 11. Do you believe? Seems like an awkward question for people who are gathered for a church service. Seems like kind of a no-duh question, right? Well, I want to explain where I'm coming from, and I include myself in this question as well. C.S. Lewis put it this way: he said you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death. It's easy to say you believe a rope is as strong as long as you are merely using it to tie a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then discover how much you really trusted it?

He wrote this in the wake of his wife's death that left him quite shaken. How about you? Ever feel like you're hanging from that rope? Everything that you depended on, that you counted on, that helped make life doable for you, has been knocked out from under your feet, and you wonder, will that rope actually hold me? And perhaps even more central to your heart is, Lord, where are you? Where are you in the midst of this struggle, this pain, this circumstance, this loss? Where are you?

Reminds me, several years ago, one of our Saturday night ushers, a man named Tracy, decided to drive down to Bakersfield on a Friday night so that he could help a friend with some home improvement projects over the course of the weekend. Saturday morning, his wife Debbie receives a phone call from that friend: Tracy has unexpectedly died in his sleep—a man in his mid-40s, nothing to suggest that this would happen. And yet, two weeks later, here we are gathered together: Tracy, her two boys, Mikey and Jeremy. And in addition to the layer of grief that is typical at a memorial like this, there's something more going on because prior to their son Jeremy losing his father, he also lost the lower part of one of his legs due to cancer.

And so for Debbie, there's a sobering concern: will the cancer return? And it turns out those concerns were well-founded because almost a year to the day of Tracy's memorial, we're back here in this room for Jeremy's memorial—a 21-year-old young man. What do you say to a widow who has had her family of four cut down to two in one year's time?

Now fast forward several more years. I get a call: Debbie is in the ICU down at the hospital in Watsonville, and when I arrive, I'm informed that she is in terrible condition. She's not expected to survive, and I'm asked, can you locate the next of kin? So I call Mikey and tell him he needs to come down to the hospital, and I pray for the next hour that he will arrive. Medical staff is just working feverishly to keep Debbie alive, that she'll live long enough for Mikey to be able to say goodbye to his mom.

Again, what do you say in a moment like that? I didn't know exactly what was going to come out of my mouth, but I knew this much for sure: whatever it was, I better believe it. Because in situations like that, when people's world is just turned upside down, they don't need mere speculation. They don't need just platitudes or wishful thinking. They need hope. They need truth. They need to know that God is able to work; in fact, he works especially in times when his ways and his timing just confound us.

And my prayer for you today, church, whether gathered here or gathered remotely, is that God will strengthen your faith in such a way that you will have hope and life even in the face of death and discouragement. We're going to be in John 11, as I mentioned, and just by way of context, in his gospel, John uses this word believe 98 times—98 times! That's three times more than the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined. And in our passage today, it's going to be used seven times. And so it's pretty clear that John has a very specific goal here. In fact, he says as much near the end of his gospel, chapter 20, where he says he's written all this that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

But the crazy thing is, despite that being his goal, in chapter 11, you would think that Jesus is actually trying to undermine that very belief by how he conducts himself. Let's jump into the story starting at verse 5. It says, now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Just pause there for a moment. This family lived very close to Jerusalem, and it's thought that when Jesus was in and around Jerusalem, he likely stayed at their place. You know, he didn't go to the Motel 6 in Jerusalem; he stayed at their house. He did life with them. They were close; they were part of the inner circle.

And so it's actually Martha and Mary, her sister, that send word to Jesus that Lazarus is in dire need. And it says, so when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Well, that probably caused just a little bit of confusion. This messenger runs, tells Jesus that Lazarus is in dire need, and then comes back, and Martha and Mary are waiting. Well, what did he do? He said, well, he's going to stay where he's at for two more days. Wow, talk about confusing!

At the same time, it probably made perfect sense to the disciples that were with him because Jesus has, by now, shall we say, worn out his welcome in Jerusalem. It says that after these two days go by, then he said to his disciples—that's Jesus—let us go back to Judea, meaning let's go back to Jerusalem here. But rabbi, a short while ago, the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back? Are you serious? In fact, chapter 5, chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 10 all mentioned attempts to seize and or kill Jesus in Jerusalem, and the disciples are like, that's the last place you should be going.

And Jesus responds with this cryptic saying, like, don't you know there's 12 hours in a day? And whoever walks around in the daylight will not stumble. And they're like, what does that even mean? I mean, I don't know what that means to this day. And so again, they're further confused, but it just gets better because he says at verse 11, he says, well, Lazarus has fallen asleep, and so I'm going to go there and wake him up. And again, you're going to go into the belly of the beast and risk your neck because Lazarus is taking a nap? Seriously?

It just gets better. Starting verse 14, so then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus is dead, and for your sake, I'm glad I was not there so that you may what? Believe. But again, they've got to just be rubbing their temples, going, wait, wait, wait, time out, Jesus. What do you mean that we may believe? Peter, James, John, didn't we actually leave everything behind to follow Jesus? So what does he want us to believe we don't already believe? That might be a great question for all of us here this morning as followers of Jesus. What is it that he might want you to believe?

Or maybe as someone who you wouldn't call yourself a follower of Jesus, and yet it's still a valid question: what is it about him that he might want you to believe about him today? Especially in the midst of a circumstance, a problem, a loss, something that's just got you utterly confused. Because when the Bible talks about belief, yes, it starts, as Jesus said, as a little mustard seed, but you know the goal isn't for it to stay that little small thing. It actually takes root and it grows and gets bigger and stronger and influences not just our own lives but the lives of others.

Biblical belief always brings us to deeper and deeper trust. In fact, in the original, the word belief and trust are synonymous. Faith—it's all kind of the same word. And that's what Jesus is developing in his disciples then and in our lives now. Reminds me of when I was much younger. I used to go rock climbing fairly frequently. In fact, fellow pastor here, Steve Craig, and I would go to places like Joshua Tree and locally here at Pinnacles and had some wonderful times. But you do that long enough, and you will come to experience what it means to be caught by your climbing rope. Sometimes you may fall just a couple feet; sometimes it might be several feet before the rope goes taut and it catches you.

Or if you're rappelling down a cliff face, same thing. In both instances, you are trusting your life to a rope that's about the width of your little finger. That's the kind of trust we're talking about today. We're saying I'm going to put all my chips on Jesus. I am going to bet the farm on him, and this is what he's drawing them into and us as well. But there's an undercurrent to all this. In between the lines of the story, you might say that the big idea is that one of the hardest things to trust about God is his timing.

You may accept a certain outcome in terms of what it is or go, that's just life, but the timing? Really? I mean, again, the disciples are going, Lazarus is dead. Why even go? Or more relevant to our lives here, Grandpa dies of cancer at the age of 90. It's sad, but it probably doesn't trigger a crisis of faith. But if a four-year-old dies of cancer, that's a different story, isn't it? What in the world is God doing? And so often it comes down to God's timing.

Some of you have heard me talk about when I was director at Camp Hammer many years ago, and I'll never forget there were a young man and woman; they met on staff there, and over the course of a five-year relationship, they decided to be married. And when the day arrived, I remember driving into the church on a Saturday, and as I'm pulling into the parking lot, there are far more cars that are actually driving out. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm not famously early for anything, but this is like really bad. Is it daylight saving time? Did I get the time wrong? And so I flagged down one of the groomsmen who's directing traffic as these cars pull out, and I say, what in the world is going on? Where's everybody going?

He says, well, you're not going to believe this, Mark, but the wedding has been canceled. I'm like, canceled? When has that ever happened? I mean, I guess it happened in that movie, The Graduate, if you're old enough to know that movie. You shouldn't have watched it, but you know what I'm talking about. And so I got to find out what is going on here. And so, well, no, I didn't say that. I said, well, I wonder if there's anyone who needs to be ministered to—a painful situation. Well, again, I knew the bride and the groom fairly well, and so I was asked to actually speak to the bride and her other mom guarding the door to the choir room at this church.

I walk in, and I'll never forget because this young woman is sitting on this couch in this room, and her wedding dress just kind of poofed up on either side of her, looks like a flotation device or something like that, which she may as well have needed because her tears are streaming down her face. I say, what in the world happened? She tells me that it was just 45 minutes before the ceremony was going to begin. She's taking some final pictures with a photographer, and her father approaches her and says, honey, I got to talk to you. The best man just came from our house where he related to me some things going on in the life of your fiancé—some significant things that I just need to make sure you're aware of before you give your vows.

And as he started to relate these things, he could tell by the look on her face that she had no idea these things were going on in her fiancé's life. And then her father, very wisely with great restraint, says to her, honey, you have the information now; you have to choose what you're going to do next. If that were me, I'd be like, honey, I got this covered. Okay, see you at the car. Far wiser man than me in that moment. So she goes, and she confronts the groom, and she says, this is what I've been told; is this stuff true? And he says, well, yes, it is true, but I'm never going to do any of that stuff again. I love you; we can get married today.

And as he's trying to persuade her to go forward, bear in mind now, it's about, you know, T-minus 20 minutes before the ceremony is going to start. There are guests from as far away as Europe there. How in the world do you pull the plug? And yet in a moment of just amazing courage, she says, I don't know what's going to happen with this relationship. I don't know what my future might be with this man, but I'm not going to get married today under this cloud.

I remember seeing, prior to even learning all this, the groomsmen and his family drive out in a huff, this young woman's father inviting the guests to go to the reception where they politely ate all the food as was their duty to do in that moment. And this young would-be bride goes off to her parents' house, closes the bedroom door—the very bedroom that she grew up in—and begins to sob and sob over how a five-year relationship blew up in her face just moments before she would have walked the aisle.

What do you do when the bottom falls out of your life? What do you do? I have no idea. Actually, I know this much: if you are struggling today with something that you would not have welcomed, I would venture to say that one of the difficult aspects of that has to do with the timing. Again, we all know that life happens, but sometimes these difficult trials come at the most inopportune times, and that's where we find Martha and Mary. Because when Jesus shows up, he's four days late—just four days.

Now, if you do the math, delaying by two wasn't going to change the outcome. But there are some ancient extra-biblical sources that would lead us to believe that the conventional thinking at the time was that the spirit remained in the body of the deceased for up to three days, and that it would be on the fourth day that decay would set in. And so when Jesus intentionally arrives on day four, it could be because he wanted everyone to be clear that Lazarus wasn't kind of dead or even mostly dead; he was really dead.

But when he stands before Martha, the first thing out of her mouth, verse 21: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. No, hey, great to see you, Jesus. Welcome back to town. How have you been? She cuts right to the chase, as does her sister Mary, who says the exact same thing, verse 32: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. I mean, let's be honest: has there ever been a situation where you've thought to yourself, you know what, God? Sometimes your timing's just a little bit suspect. You know, this is not a great PR moment for you, Lord. And that's how they feel because, again, they follow Jesus. They were friends with Jesus. They had seen him heal countless people, but when it came to Lazarus, Jesus didn't have the time. Can you feel just the angst of this?

And maybe you don't have to imagine it because you're feeling it now. And when you struggle with God's timing—and by the way, you will; if you haven't yet, you will, I promise you—I want to give you three things that you can just take to the bank. Three things that you can count on. And the first one is this: when I struggle with God's timing, I can trust him personally. Personally. Again, sometimes God's timing is a complete mystery, but who Jesus says he is and how significant he is? Well, that's pretty crystal clear. We're going to see an example of that in these next verses. Watch this.

Jesus said to her—that's Martha—your brother will rise again. Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. And I don't know about you, but I'm kind of a church brat, so this sounds like a Sunday school answer to me, right? Oh, well, thanks, Jesus. That's great to remember that, you know, in the sweet by and by, we'll all see dear Lazarus again. That's cool. And yet Jesus responds to her, and he says, 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 die. And then he looks Martha in the eye and he says, do you believe this?

Do you believe this, Martha? Not just as tradition or as what your parents told you or something that you may believe because it makes you feel better, but do you believe that this is true? Because listen, I'm all for sound doctrine. We need to have sound doctrine, but our ultimate faith is not in our doctrine; it is in a person. It is in Jesus Christ who makes this all very personal with each one of us. Okay? And so Jesus finds a way to come to us with that same question: do you believe me? That I have the answer to even your greatest problems of sin and death, that I am the resurrection and the life.

And maybe you've been around church long enough; you've heard the story of when Mary and Martha have a party at their house, and Martha's all running around dealing with all the tasks, and there's Mary sitting dutifully at Jesus' feet. And the moral of the story is be like Mary, right? Well, Martha never gets enough credit for what she says next here when Jesus says, do you believe me? Look what she says: Yes, Lord, she told him, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. In other words, I may not understand your ways, and I certainly don't understand your timing, but I believe that you are the Messiah. You are Emmanuel. You are God who is with us in our deepest, darkest valleys, and that you will never leave me again.

This is personal. And it says, this testimony from over 2,000 years from the mouth of Martha today says, listen, I knew him; he stayed at our house. We served two meals; we did life with him. He is who he says he is. He is God incarnate who loves you on a very personal level. You can trust him. And not only can we trust him personally, but secondly, when I struggle with his timing, I can trust his heart. I can trust his heart.

And if you show fans, any of you ever see the movie Jesus of Nazareth? Remember this movie? Prior to the Passion of the Christ, this was like the movie about Jesus. They'd show this every year a couple weeks before Easter and stuff like that. This is a British actor, Robert Powell, who played the part of Jesus here. He has those liquid blue eyes, right? He's just kind of like that. He never actually blinks throughout the whole movie. He's just gazing at people the whole time: look into my eyes. He never really gets very riled up either; he just kind of walks from scene to scene like this. And in fact, in this very scene talking to Martha and Mary, he's like, your brother will rise again. Do you believe?

You're like, somebody get him a sandwich; he's about to pass out. It's kind of like Jesus of Nazareth is more like Jesus of Santa Cruz. He's just kind of walking around like this. I can say that; I was born here. Okay? Now, let's just compare that with the real Jesus back here in John 11. It says in verse 33, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. And if you're taking notes, you might want to circle deeply moved here because in the Greek, this one word term was sometimes used to describe a horse when it snorts in anger. And if you've ever seen this, it's hot and it's snotty and it's visceral. And not only that, but he's troubled here. And again, that describes a state of physical agitation.

So can you imagine? Here's Jesus, you know, it's like when we sob, and it's just—it's like ugly crying, and he's wound up like a spring because he is offended by the grave. It's not Jesus meek and mild here. This is Jesus feeling this on a very deep level. And let me tell you why this is important because I don't know about you, but sometimes I got the message subtly from Christian culture that if you really, really trusted God, nothing could actually ever bother you. You know, just kind of bulletproof, like, hey man, I trust God. Well, yeah, well tell that to Jesus. He knows what he's about to do; he's God in the flesh, and yet he is deeply moved and troubled in this moment, which tells us there's nothing wrong with feeling grief on a real, honest level—feeling confusion, sadness, anger. In Gethsemane, Jesus would experience what we might call depression. Deep crisis on the cross, he describes it; it's like God forsaken us.

So don't think that becoming a Christian means you have to be less human. Jesus demonstrates that Lazarus wasn't just some number; he wasn't just a face in the crowd. He wasn't part of the countless children of God only; he was a dear and loved friend just as you are. And you have a Savior who knows what it's like to suffer on the deepest levels imaginable. You can trust his heart. Amen?

The third thing that we can trust when we're struggling with God's timing is that we can trust his power. We can trust his power. Jesus finally arrives at the tomb amidst all this grief and chaos and turbulence, and then at verse 43, it says Jesus called out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! And then something no one expected happened. It says that the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, take off the grave clothes and let him go. Wow!

See, Jesus doesn't just claim to be the resurrection and the life; he backs it up. In fact, a friend suggested to me last night that the reason that Jesus specifically says Lazarus, come out, is because can you imagine Jesus just walking into a graveyard and just going, come out? And then you got the whole lot there, right? That's power! That's power over the grave itself, as we're going to celebrate two weeks from now. Jesus was laid in his own tomb, but he did not stay there. And this is where the rubber meets the road right here because listen, if it's all just a myth and a fairy tale and wishful thinking and Jesus is still in the ground, then he means nothing to us. Good teacher? Come on, if he's dead, he means nothing to us. He's a relic of history, but if he overcame the grave, he means everything. He is the ultimate game-changer; he is the source of our greatest hope because he has power over death. Do you believe this today, church?

Then may it inform our lives and our perspective. And I might add that this type of hope, this type of focus, isn't just for funerals. Yes, you could call it our ultimate hope to be resurrected and restored perfectly and immortally; it's the ultimate hope, but it's not the only hope. Because there's all sorts of little resurrections that God is doing all the time. We tend to fixate on the deaths, but I know marriages that have been resurrected—many of them. I know addicts that were, for all intents and purposes, dead, and yet Jesus resurrected them out of their addiction. I know people—I know a seminary student who dropped out of seminary, turned his back on the Lord, and thirty years later, he came back with a fervor for Christ that just astounded his family.

People who their families thought it was hopeless—they would share Jesus with them, and like they didn't want to have anything to do with it, and then on their deathbed, they received Christ into their heart and their lives moments before going to glory. And so yes, you know, we've all learned God does not always answer our prayers when and how we would ask, right? You know that. But then again, sometimes he does, and not only that, but he answers them better than we asked. Remember that woman Debbie, who the doctor said she's not going to make it? Well, I'm happy to tell you a number of years later that Debbie is still alive and well. In fact, Debbie was here in our service last night. I didn't force you to come back, so we took a picture. There's my friend Debbie Holmes, and not only is she doing well, but eight months ago, God blessed her with a granddaughter.

This is little JC Grace—eight-month-old JC is the first initials of Jeremy Carson, her uncle who passed away at 21. And JC Grace and her dad Mikey there—it's good to see Mikey on a day when things are just going so well. And because of COVID, I kind of didn't know about JC, and when Debbie told me about her this week, my heart was just filled with such joy knowing that, yeah, she's had significant losses, but her story is not over yet. And God had some additional blessings in store for her, just as he does for you.

Oh, and by the way, that young lady who was left crying in her bedroom over the wedding that was just 20 minutes away from happening? Long story short, she never ended up marrying that guy. Over the course of time, no, she didn't. Trust me, and I'll tell you why I know that she didn't marry that guy. She married this guy. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I feel. I know some of you are looking at that going, who is that guy? That's not you. That's younger Mark; that's skinny Mark. That's my lovely wife, Laura, who is still just so lovely and such a blessing. That was over 25 years ago. We're walking up the aisle of this church right here, and that's taken, yeah, now.

But that just rolls around in your head for a moment. I mean, come on, could anyone have scripted that any better? I don't think so. But listen, yeah, praise God, I'm a blessed man. This moment was 20 minutes from never happening. Yeah, and not only that, here's a relatively recent family photo here: my son Jack, my son Luke, my daughter Annabella—20 minutes from never existing. Now you want to talk about God's timing? Man, I tell you, sometimes the best thing God can do is not give us what we ask for because he has something so much better in store.

And listen, I'm not trying to be glib; it's hard when you're in the moment. But I'm here because I believe with all my heart, whether it's in this life or when we're in glory, we will look back at the things that confound us and break us and shake us, and we will go, oh my goodness, God, you are so much greater than I ever imagined. Do you believe that, church? Because that day will come.

So, let me just ask you this. First of all, let me go—cute little saying here. This is from a poet named Lemmon Brooklyn; it kind of sums up what we've been talking about. God may not always come exactly when you call him, and you know that, but he is always on time. God's time is always on time.

So I may invite you to ask this final question of yourself: where am I struggling to believe Jesus right now? Let's make this personal. What is it? I'm sure that there are problems, there are struggles, there are griefs, there are uncertainties, there are doubts, there are relationships—the list goes on. And could it be that right now, in this moment, that Jesus is calling you to trust him, and he's saying, you know what? I know you don't got this, but I do. And could you be perhaps like the man in Scripture that said, I believe; now help me with my unbelief? And that's okay.

And then just the fragility of where you're at right now, would you be willing to bring that before the Lord and say, Jesus, I need your help. I need your strength. In fact, let's do that right now as we go to him in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that we have in Christ. We thank you for the hope. We thank you for the daily moment-by-moment ministry that our good Shepherd Jesus has with each one of us, who knows everything about our lives more than even we do, who tends to his lambs with just such love and care and skill and wisdom.

And so, Lord, I pray that each one of us, wherever we're at, these giant question marks that reign in our life or these heartaches, that we bring them to you, Lord, and we say, Lord, would you allow me in this moment—in fact, I know you invite me to cast my cares upon you—and they are received in love. So, Lord Jesus, we're your flock. Would you continue to do your work in our lives in such a way that it would bolster our faith? And not that we don't feel things, but we also have a perspective that informs every aspect of life—that we have a God who is able, we have a God who knows, we have a God who is with us, who understands every single human burden personally.

So it's you we come to today, and in faith, knowing that you will work in our lives to such a way that someday we will look back, and it will be hallelujah! God be praised! My God is faithful; my God is good. Pray this in the name of our matchless Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And all God's people said, Amen. Amen.