Weeping, acquainted with grief

The shortest verse in the Bible is, “Jesus wept.” In Luke 19, Christ wept over Jerusalem. Hebrews 5:7 says He wept in Gethsemane the night before He died.\

Every time you see Christ weep it’s in connection with the effect and consequences of sin. And in John 11, as Lazarus has been claimed by death and Christ has come to vanquish death, He weeps.

Jordan says, “When you read verse 33 there where ‘he groaned in the spirit and was troubled,’ the plain fact is He wept for the same reason that we weep. Death is an enemy. ‘It’s a horror of great darkness’; it’s not a friend.”

“ ‘Then said the Jews how we loved him.’ The fullness of His grief and His sympathy. 'A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.’ Some of them said, verse 37 kind of shocks you back into reality, ‘Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?’

“There are always going to be some people in the crowd just absolutely determined not to believe anything good about Him. They’re going to find fault if there’s any way to find it and, if not, they’re going to make up something.

“The healing of that blind man on that Sabbath day stuck in the craw of some of these guys and it’s still an issue in John 11. They’re still perplexed by it. It’s still in the air.

“In verse 37, even at the graveside, is lurking that spirit of unbelief and antagonism. This time Christ’s not groaning because Lazarus is dead; He’s groaning over and in response to the unbelief; the capacity to not believe.

“There’s a great verse in Hebrews 12:3: ‘For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.’

“He felt the antagonism. My point to you is that when Christ went through these things, it wasn’t just stoic passivism. You know, some time we just harden ourselves against resistance and just gut it out. He wasn’t doing that; this stuff struck at His heart and He FELT it! He endured the contradiction of sinners against Him.

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“Anything that would demonstrate who God is, what’s going to demonstrate it any more (‘I am the resurrection the life’) than standing in the presence of death and seeing death flee away?

“As He goes to perform the miracle He’s really the dependent one giving the Father the honor. ‘And in know that thou hearest me always.’ He’s got complete, total confidence in His Father because He’s fixing to stand there and call Lazarus forth
and it’s either going to work or it isn’t going to work.

“As the one who comes do the Father’s will, He’s risking it all on that. And when He thus had spoken He cried with a loud voice,’ so everybody could hear Him. Nobody misses Him. Everybody hears what He’s going to say. ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ Don’t you know every eye turned to the mouth of that grave!

“He told them back in chapter 5 the day was going to come when all they that are in the grave are going to hear His voice. The preacher story is that’s why He said only Lazarus—if He had said, ‘Come forth!’ they would have all come out! But He only wanted Lazarus.”