Emotions of Faith

 

February 21, 2021        NOTES NOT EDITED

“The Emotions of Faith”

John 11:1-45

SIS—God has given us emotions and we need to master them in order to harness their power to bring glory to God, even in the most challenging of circumstances.

Our nation is in an “emotional crisis,” a collective nervous breakdown. Employment is down; suicides are up. Drug overdose which had been a crisis before Covid, had become an apocalypse during Covid. Families are starting to feel the pressure of nearly a year of talking about nothing but the potential of dying from Covid.  Covid is driving everything, and driving people to the emotional brink. Someone has said, and maybe it was me, “Emotions are what drive us and what can drive us astray.”

Someone else has noted the spelling:  “e . . .motion” and noted that feelings put us “into motion--emovere:  L. “e,” meaning out or away from, and “movere,” meaning to move.  For example, fear puts us to flight, anger pushes us to fight, and confusion pretty much spins us like a top. Every action was first an emotion of some sort.

Emotions can even be analyzed physiologically.  When we experience strong emotions our muscles tense or relax and blood vessels dilate or contract, depending on the emotion.

Emotions are primarily designed to keep us alive, and so most emotions are negative reactions.  They can also be trained to be “positive responses.” Therefore, we need to use caution and control to harness our emotions for the purpose to bring honor and glory to God.

Let’s read the introduction to an “emotion-packed” story:

11 Now a man was sick, Lazarus, from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was sick. 3 So the sisters sent a message to Him: “Lord, the one You love is sick.” 4 When Jesus heard it, He said, “This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 (Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.) 6 So when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. 7 Then after that, He said to the disciples, “Let’s go to Judea again.” 8 “•Rabbi,” the disciples told Him, “just now the Jews tried to stone You, and You’re going there again?” 9 “Aren’t there 12 hours in a day?” Jesus answered. “If anyone walks during the day, he doesn’t stumble, because he sees the light of this world.   10 If anyone walks during the night, he does stumble, because the light is not in him.” 11 He said this, and then He told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen •asleep, but I’m on My way to wake him up.” 12 Then the disciples said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well.” 13 Jesus, however, was speaking about his death, but they thought He was speaking about natural sleep. 14 So Jesus then told them plainly, “Lazarus has died.  15 I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe. But let’s go to him.” 16 Then Thomas (called “Twin”) said to his fellow disciples, “Let’s go so that we may die with Him.”

BACKGROUND

The event exposing the emotions surrounding death occur a little over a week before Easter Sunday.  Our text involves a story that may be at least two weeks away from Easter.  Shortly after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, He himself will ride into Jerusalem in great triumph, only to end up dead Himself within days.  Like Lazarus, Jesus won’t stay dead.  Unlike Lazarus, Jesus will never die again. So here’s a major principle to note regarding “emotions or how you feel about a situation:  with Jesus, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over and it ain’t over ‘til we are enjoying the bliss of God’s Presence in Heaven!” I’ll get back to this a little bit later.

Jesus refers to Lazarus as “a friend.”  This family of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha in Bethany (the Bethany just outside Jerusalem) was very dear to Jesus and their home was sort of a refuge for Jesus and His disciples. Lazarus takes ill and word is sent to Jesus who was in the area.  Notice in verse 4 Jesus uses a significant play on words:

“This sickness will not END in death.”

The disciples did not understand this fully, then, but they would come to understand it later and we have the benefit of full knowledge, now.

For a believer, death is not an “end,” but a beginning. That’s the whole purpose for this story, and indeed the purpose for the entire message of the Bible.  Jesus came to die so our lives would not “end in death.”

This encounter is, as I said, and emotion-packed encounter.  God has given us emotions and we need to master them in order to harness their power to bring glory to God, even in the most challenging of circumstances.  I want to unpack the emotions in this passage and show how we can glorify God even in the most “emotionally draining” circumstances of life. The first emotion we encounter is: 

❶ CONFUSION (4-14; 21-24)

As this story begins, one can almost see the confused looks on the face of the disciples.  The get a message that Lazarus is sick, and it must be an urgent message or the sisters would not have taken the time to send it.

But, Jesus, who the disciples know really loves Lazarus, acts as if it is no big deal.  Then Jesus says after two days, “Let’s head to Judea (the region of Jerusalem where the people took up stones to kill Jesus).  They probably were scratching their heads at such a move.  Then Jesus gives this rather odd reply in verses 9-10:

9 “Aren’t there 12 hours in a day?” Jesus answered. “If anyone walks during the day, he doesn’t stumble, because he sees the light of this world.   10 If anyone walks during the night, he does stumble, because the light is not in him.”

Jesus was pointing out that God had a plan—God always has a plan—and nothing can stop it, not even death, and certainly not an angry mob.  The disciples were very confused by all this.  Then Jesus adds to their confusion by saying,  Verse 11:

“Our friend Lazarus has fallen •asleep, 
but I’m on My way to wake him up.”

So, now Jesus is a “wake up service.”  This was all very confusing to the disciples.  The events surrounding a death are always confusing and filled with mystery, and even misunderstanding.  Confusion is a natural emotion we experience frequently.

Humor:  Life Is Just So Confusing! 

·         Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?

·         Is there another word for synonym?

·         If a #2 is the most popular pencil used, why is it still #2?

·         What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?

·         If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

·         Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

·         If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

·         Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

·         Is it called “sand” because it is between the “sea” and “land?”

·         If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to speak?

·         Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?

·         Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

·         Is it true, cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?

·         If you try to fail, and succeed, is it failure or success?

·         If time heals all wounds, why do we still have belly buttons?

·         If rabbits feet are so lucky, what happened to the rabbit?

I’ll leave you with one more idea that will bend your mind:  “If you change the ‘W’ to a ‘T’ in the following words—When? What? and Where?—you will have the answer.

One of the emotions we experience frequently in life is confusion.  If we patiently seek God through His Word, by the end of the story, the confusion will nearly always be gone.  **I wonder how many of you are still working on “When, What, and Where?”

Another emotion we experience often is one that Martha and Mary (and others as well) experienced when their brother died.

❷ ANGER (21, 32)

Both Martha and Mary said the exact same thing when they encountered Jesus after their brother died:

21 “Lord, if You had been here,
my brother wouldn’t have died.”

A natural reaction when something bad happens is to get angry and look for someone to blame. Jesus is going to use their “anger” as a backdrop to teach an important lesson about “trust.”  Now, later on Jesus will display a “righteous anger,” but here he addresses a misplaced anger—and anger is often, very often, misplaced.

It seems rather apparent (and natural) that Mary and Martha had a discussion about the delay of the Lord.  Verse 6 makes the “two day delay” an intentional part of the story, intended to make sure that Lazarus would indeed die in order for God’s greater purpose to be realized.

NOTE:  God does not always spare us (in fact often does not spare us) difficulties in life.  His goal for us is not that we would have a “comfortable life,” but that we would have an “effective life.”  Sometimes the only way we can learn is through experience. 

You must connect the “intentional delay for a greater purpose” with Martha and Mary’s statement in order to properly understand what they were feeling.

They were not expressing “unqualified trust in Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life” (otherwise Jesus would not have needed to instruct Martha in this very matter in verses 25-27).

The only way to naturally read the statements of both Martha and Mary is that they had discussed the Lord tarrying, and they were angry.

Anger is perhaps the strongest of the negative emotions.  Anger, left unchecked, can turn to bitterness and bitterness becomes like acid in a tin can, destroying the container that is holding it.

But, anger can be managed.  Paul says in Eph. 4:26:

“In your anger, do not sin. 
Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

There is no sin in having the emotion of anger (or any other emotion) but the sin comes by not dealing with the emotion in a way that honors and glorifies God.

Now, neither Martha nor Mary allowed their anger to get the best of them.  Notice that Martha “talked it out,” and Mary “cried it out,” but they both got it out.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.”  We must recognize that while we cannot control the emotion, we can control the actions that come from it.

A while ago a group of doctors in Coral Gables, Fla., arranged a study of 18 men:  nine with heart disease and nine healthy.  They then put each of the men through a series of different types of stress.  They gave them a ❶physical test on a treadmill.  The gave them an ❷emotional stress test by having them do math in their heads!, and they gave them an ❸emotional stress test by having them dwell on an incident in their past that really made them angry.

The discovered that in all the men, the stress tests caused the heart to pump less blood to the body.  They also discovered that the “emotional stress” caused the greatest reduction in the hearts pumping ability, especially in the group with heart disease. Dwelling on anger is deadly.

Clearly, anger is an emotion with powerfully negative consequences if it is not dealt with properly.  Like Martha and Mary, we should not internalize our anger, nor externalize it by lashing out at others.  We have to deal with it in a positive way:  through talking with God and others, or simply by crying it out.  But, you do have to get it out!

The greatest emotional response in this story comes from the Lord Jesus Himself, especially if you look at the original language that describes His emotions.

❸ COMPASSION (11, 35-36)

Whatever we make of the complex emotional response in these verses one thing is without question:  Jesus loved Lazarus and His family deeply.  Look at vv. 35-36:

³⁵ Jesus wept.  ³⁶ So the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”

The past tense (imperfect) here translated love, actually carries a more intense meaing of “See how He WAS LOVING him,” a CONTINUOUS action.  Jesus’ love for Lazarus and his family was not a passing feeling, but an on-going, meaningful, deep compassion.

Even the Jews who would find it a bitter taste in their mouths to say something good about Jesus could recognize the Lord’s deep compassion. 

But, there is something more than compassion here—much more.  The emotions of Jesus are intense at this point and the original language is complex.

❹ RIGHTEOUS AGITATION (33, 38) 

In verse 33 it says,  33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He was angry [stern indignation]  in His spirit  and deeply moved [waters of His soul were troubled].

Again in verse 38 we read, ³⁸ Then Jesus, angry in Himself again,
came to the tomb.

There is a lot of emotion happening here across the whole spectrum of emotions—anger to deep compassion.  At this point, the emotion of Jesus is a “righteous agitation.”

① In the first case, I think Jesus was rebuking in His soul the exaggerated, hypocritical behavior of Jews when someone died.  They made a big deal of it and even hired “professional mourners” to cry and wail.  Bodies were not embalmed in Palestine, so burials happened the same day of death, and the mourning took place afterward. Mourning was intense for a week or so.  The word for weeping means to “cry loudly.”  In verse 35 when it talks of Jesus crying, it is a different word meaning “to burst into tears.”  The professional mourners had not tears.  It was all for show.  This no doubt agitated Our Lord.

② In another sense, Jesus was agitated or indignant at the very fact that death had ever entered the human condition for that was never God’s intention. Death appears to give a “temporary victory” over Satan—not only temporary, but false.  This agitated the Lord.  We see this issue come up again in verse 38.

Whatever the case, the fog of emotion was thick at this point.  The HCSB translates the ① first Greek expression as, “angry.”  I think agitated better fits the description of the original word that means “to make a snorting sound,” almost a guttural sigh.  The ② second word, translated, “deeply moved,” in verse 33 paint a picture of crashing waves on an ocean.  It refers to any substance that is “stirred up.” Jesus was agitated and stirred up about something. 

It is too simplistic to simply account for all this inner turmoil of the Lord to the death of a good friend.  He knew Lazarus was not going to stay dead.  There is something more. Death itself is the object of the Lord’s wrath at this point. 

Maybe He was agitated at the lack of understanding from His disciples, including Martha and Mary.

Maybe He was agitated at the very idea that there even was such a thing as death, since it was not in God’s plan.

Maybe, He was agitated because death represented the on-going rebellion of the Fallen Angel Lucifer.

Maybe He was deeply troubled because this death foreshadowed what was soon to come in His own life.

Maybe, the “righteous agitation” involved all these issues.  I’m not sure why the Lord was agitated to the point of anger, but I know this:  He never lost His composure.  His agitation was righteous because it was “controlled” and brought honor and glory to God.  In both verse 33 and verse 38, the emotion Jesus experienced was controlled.  In verse 33 we read, “in His spirit.” In verse 38, “in Himself.” Jesus experienced intense emotions, but controlled them and contained them to the glory of God.

We get agitated, even with those we deeply love.  We need to do what the Lord did:  turn our emotions into a positive action that will bring honor and glory to God.  Look what Jesus did with His emotions:

38 Then Jesus, angry in Himself again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.   39 “Remove the stone,” Jesus said. Martha, the dead man’s sister, told Him, “Lord, he already stinks. It’s been four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You heard Me.   42 I know that You always hear Me, but because of the crowd standing here I said this, so they may believe You sent Me.” 43 After He said this, He shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out bound hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him and let him go.”

Turning emotions into actions that lead people to “live free, Spirit-filled lives” is the essence of being a follower of Christ.  Christ-followers should be the most passionate, the most emotional people in the world. We “set people loose through our service and witness.”

Emotions are powerful and can be harnessed to bring honor and glory to God.  Perhaps the most powerful, and most positive of all our emotions is:

4.  Hope (22-27)

Hope is not technically a “feeling or emotion.”  It is the lampstand upon which the candle of our emotions burn.  Hope is the “harness” that reigns in the power of our emotions to the glory of God.  Amidst all the tragic circumstances of life, just like in this situation, there is always hope in Christ.  Through tear-blurred eyes and cracking voice Martha declared:

22 Yet even now I know that whatever You ask from God,
God will give You.”

Jesus went on to give Martha, and you and I, this hope:

23 “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.  24 Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live.  26 Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever.  Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she told Him, “I believe You are the Messiah, the Son  of God, who was to come into the world.”

Someone has said, “Life without Christ comes to a hopeless end, but life with Christ is an endless hope.” Hope makes all things possible.

WHAT IS POSSIBLE WHEN THERE IS HOPE?  The story of a school teacher who was assigned to visit children in a large city hospital who received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child. The teacher took the boy’s name and room number, and was told by the teacher on the other end of the line, "We’re studying nouns and adverbs in this class now. I’d be grateful if you could help him with his homework, so he doesn’t fall behind the others."

It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s room that she realized that it was located in the hospital’s burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a young boy horribly burned and in great pain.

The teacher felt that she couldn’t just turn around and walk out. And so she stammered awkwardly, "I’m the hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs." This boy was in so much pain that he barely responded. The young teacher stumbled through his English lesson, ashamed at putting him through such a senseless exercise.

The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" Before the teacher could finish her outburst of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: "You don’t understand. We’ve been very worried about him. But ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back; he’s responding to treatment. It’s as if he has decided to live."

The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw the teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears, the boy said: "They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a boy who was dying, would they?"

Without hope, life is nothing more than a string of meaningless—often painful—events.  There’s no power.  There’s no drive to push through difficult circumstances.  Like the little boy, without hope, we just give up, and give in to our circumstances. Without the hope of heaven, death is a horrible end to our earthly life.  With the hope of heaven, secured by the grace of God, death is the blissful beginning of eternal life.

We need to harness the power of hope, as with the power in all our emotions.  We need to meet the challenges of life head-on.  We need to roll up our sleeves and roll away the stone.  We need to unwrap the grave bindings of our circumstances that keep us in bondage.

All around us in this world is death, destruction, and despair, especially in these days of Covid.  Things are likely to get worse, before they get worser.  As Christians, we must control our emotions, especially our fear, and forge forward with great hope.

The love of God should stir our emotions.  We should turn those emotions into actions.  It’s not enough just to have an emotional response to the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we must be moved to action—e-moted.  It should cause us to repent of our sins and make a life-changing decision to passionately pursue a holy life in honor of God.

—“God has given us emotions and we need to master them in order to harness their power to bring glory to God, even in the most challenging of circumstances.