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THIS WEEK’S BIBLE INSIGHTS ARE BY:
Kevin Shaw and are based on John 11:32-44 (NIV)
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ MORE ON THIS WEEK’S MAJOR THEME:
John 17:1-26
32When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34“Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. 35Jesus wept. 36Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39“Take away the
stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days.” 40Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” 41So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44The 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.”
Sunday April 21 - Back to front
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” John 11:44
A non-Christian friend once shared with me about a personal challenge, and I said God could help him. He said, “Yeah, right, I’ll see that when I believe it!” He had of course got the saying back-to-front, but had inadvertently spoken a great truth. “Exactly!” I said.
This week’s text is the well known story of Lazarus, and I too want to start back to front – looking at the story backwards in order to show how our confidence in prayer should be in God’s ending, not our beginning. At Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus prays openly to help the onlookers learn something about his nature and his mission; then, after his friend has emerged alive from the tomb, points to the one thing that remained to be done, saying “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
As Christians, we live ‘in this world, but are not of this world’ (see John 15:19), creating a sometimes challenging ‘in-between’ state for which Lazarus’ grave clothes can serve as a metaphor. We have new life in Jesus but can still be entangled in our ‘grave clothes’, whether that be our doubts, old thinking, habitual sins or lack of spiritual resolve. The discipleship process is in part to strip off our ‘grave clothes’, so that we and the world around us may know that Jesus has made us alive indeed!
Father, rid me of the grave clothes that entangle me in the life I lived before you came into my heart. In Jesus’ name I tear them off now! Amen.
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PRAYER FOR TODAY