Sermon by Hunter Irvine on June 17, 2012
at Wheat Ridge United Methodist Church.
JOHN 11:17-27
There was a family of two sisters and one brother. The sisters were Martha and Mary, and their brother was Lazarus. All three had a friendship with Jesus. Yet Lazarus has died, and Martha goes to greet Jesus as He is traveling into the town of Bethany. I jump to the verse where Jesus states: “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responds, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” What is Martha talking about? Daniel 12:2 speaks of resurrection. Martha believed the prophet Daniel, and believed that resurrection would take place.
Why then was there such a huge debate during that time regarding resurrection between the religious leaders who were Pharisees, and the religious leaders who were Sadducees? The Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection, yet Sadducees did not. The point of theological debate may have come from Ezekiel! In Ezekiel 37, there is the passage that is now termed “the valley of dry bones.”
The background of Ezekiel 37 in a one phrase synopsis is that because the Israelites, the Jewish people, had disobeyed God, a disaster was underway which would result in Jerusalem being destroyed, and which would result in many of the Jewish people ending up as captives in Babylon. In my opinion, the odds were zero that the Jewish people would ever see Jerusalem again.
The prophet Ezekiel was taken captive in the second wave of exiles in 597 B.C., only 11 years before the fall of Jerusalem. God told him how Israel was going to fall to Babylon. Yet then in Ezekiel 37, there is a vision of a valley of bones.
The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision which started with a valley where bones were lying all over the place. God tells Ezekiel to instruct the bones to come to life. Ezekiel does so, and sure enough, these bones start rattling, then they take on flesh, and the next thing you know, there is a huge group of alive human beings.
Then God explains the purpose of this vision! God gave Ezekiel this vision as a metaphor to tell the Israelites that as a nation, even though they are dead, that He will resurrect them and bring them home in the future to Jerusalem. This vision was a prophecy of the miracle of God bringing the Israelites home from captivity in Babylon in the year 536 B.C.
Regarding the Pharisees, I think they recognized that this vision was a metaphor, but they added on to it, making it a double entendre, which is a bad Biblical interpretation practice, which some scholars even steadily employ today. A double entendre is different than the hermeneutics of what is called “types,” yet that is another sermon. The key here is that the Pharisees went so far as to say that a key need for resurrection was the bones of a person.
On the flip side, the Sadducees probably reacted against the interpretation of the Pharisees, and simply started saying that there was no bodily resurrection. Thus the division.
Going back to the Pharisees, the result of their theological belief was the development of “secondary burial.” For a period before 20 B.C., the flesh was burned off of dead bodies, and then they would store the bones. After 20 B.C., dead bodies were put in tombs which often were carved out of the limestone cliffs. A stone would be rolled over the entrance so that wild animals would not get in there. After about one year, someone would go back in the tomb, and the flesh would be rotted off of the bones. The bones would be retrieved and put into bone boxes, or caverns.
“Bone boxes,” which are technically called ossuaries, are limestone containers which are about 2 feet by 1& ½ feet, and there are bones in them, often of several family members. Archaeologists have been digging up bone boxes for over half a century! They have thousands of these boxes.
Usually these bone boxes were only for the wealthy. For the lower classes, bones might be thrown all together into big rooms in a cavern. And for criminals, their bones were usually not given a proper burial.
The focus in secondary burial was the bones.
The bones were ready for resurrection.
After all of this focus on bones, Jesus totally changes the focus! Resurrection for Him had nothing to do with bones, rather it had to do with Him. Jesus states that if a person believes in Him, then he or she will have eternal life. This is the big idea of the passage. Jesus is the One who makes resurrection possible.
And for us, there is a personal message. That message is that you need to believe in Jesus to have resurrection, and in order to have eternal life!
Martha believed!
Martha, the same Martha who once had been in the kitchen cooking rather than listening at the feet of Jesus like her sister, has since decided to listen to Jesus. And now Martha is able to identify Jesus as the Messiah.
How did she know a Messiah was coming? There are numerous Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, yet a big one comes from Daniel, where even the exact time period that the Anointed One would come is foretold. Christ is the Greek word, whereas Messiah is the Hebrew word used. Both mean Anointed One.
Another prophecy of the Messiah concerns what Ezekiel stated, which is that the Messiah would be a Shepherd! In Ezekiel 34, it is revealed how God Himself would be the Shepherd of Israel. And in John 10, Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd!
I did not grow up in a Christian family. I only went to church a handful of times in my youth. However, I was extremely active in Boy Scouts, thus on most Monday nights I was at the Annandale United Methodist Church in Annandale, Virginia. Our Boy Scout troop went camping every month, except for August and December. Early one Saturday morning, I was in the church gathering equipment for our weekend campout. For some reason, I was having an intense feeling of apprehension! Most of the other Scouts were getting equipment out from our storage closet upstairs. However, I had to go to a closet downstairs by the fellowship hall to get so utensils. As I walked through the fellowship hall, I stopped and looked at the stain glass window. The window was a picture of Jesus with a lamb in His arms. The apprehension left, and I had a complete peace.
I would learn years later that the Good Shepherd not only offers peace, yet He also offers the forgiveness of sins.
Isaiah 53:6 states, “We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (NIV).
That “Him” is Jesus. Jesus died on a cross for the forgiveness of sins of anyone. He was the substitute for the wages of sin, which is death.
If you believe in the Good Shepherd, your sins will be forgiven, and you will have eternal life with God.
I am not going to call anyone up to the front here, rather I am inviting anyone to an altar call right where you are sitting. If you have never believed in Jesus before, you can do so right now right where you are sitting. To know resurrection and eternal life, you need to believe in Jesus!
