11:38,39
We now come to the actual raising, and Jesus is again “deeply moved” (see 11:33). Whatever the precise meaning of the word here and in 11:33, “anger” or “deeply moved” almost certainly fail to express what was going on in Jesus. Lazarus was buried in a cave with a stone rolled against it, and Jesus commands the stone to be moved away. This does, of course, remind us of another tomb in a cave with a stone that was moved away! Martha is concerned that there will be a terrible smell, for the body had been in there for four days. This shows that she was not expecting a resurrection at this point! Earlier I had mentioned the significance of the four days, here its significance is purely practical, relating to the degree of decomposition that would normally have taken place.
11:40
Martha did not know what was going to happen, but Jesus did know. “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” There is a rightness to understanding that we will not see the full glory of God until the last day, until the return of Christ, but there are times when amazing things will happen here and now. This was one of them. Not everything is in the distant future. This does give us a very practical problem with faith. Should we be expecting miracles every day? Almost certainly not, a lot of life is getting on with things with faith and patience. There is Biblical support for this. But if this morphs into implicitly thinking miracles never happen now we are no longer being Biblical. We need to walk faithfully with God each day.
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