There Is Nothing That Is Impossible for God
The Rev. Dr. Bill Lawson
Senior Pastor, Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church
Houston, Texas

(This sermon is also available in audio.)

It is a season when the entire church needs to focus. Unfortunately, many of the congregational churches do not focus on Lent, we don't all observe this season. But it is a critical time, because it speaks to all of our hearts. It is a time when we are forced to think about death as Jesus thought about death.

You will recall that some forty days before his crucifixion, Jesus withdrew with his disciples to focus on preparing them for the time when he would go to Calvary and perform the love act of redemption for all of us. It was that season that began the tradition of Lent. It really was not started in one of our liturgical churches; the saints themselves started it.

It is an important time for us, because it is a time when we have to think, even as Jesus thought. At noon, as Jesus hung from the cross, he cried out, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?" He thought about death in a very real sense.

There are a lot of theological interpretations as to what he meant by that cry. But the fact was that here was a very human being, with all the fullness of God dwelling within him, who had deliberately limited himself to the size, shape and limitations of a human being, asking his Father why He had forsaken him.

You look at much that is happening in our world right now, and you must wonder some of those same questions. ....Everyone in this room has somebody about whom they wonder, why did that person have to suffer or die? We live in a world in which there seems to be suffering everywhere. Lent forces us to look at death, to look at death as Jesus looked at death. If Jesus can question, then why not us? We ought to be able to ask God, "Why, why, why?"

I want to spend just a few minutes looking at the incident that guaranteed that Jesus would be crucified. A young man had died, and Jesus raised him from the dead. That incident made it certain that Jesus would have to die. If you were in a Baptist church, I'd tell you to open your Bibles to John 11, and I would tell you that my text was going to be fifty-seven verses long. No, I'm not going to read fifty-seven verses, but the story of the raising of Lazarus is critical. It gives us some messages about suffering, about agony, about misery.

Among other things, it says that while we all have to live with it, God's time is not our time. He works things out in his own way. That is the message of the first fifteen verses.

After we learn that God's time is not our time, we also learn that we ought never to give up. We ought never to give up, because Earth's calamities do not represent the end of God's power. That's what verses sixteen through thirty-five say. They are fairly important verses for us to look at, but then there is a third message.

The third message is that there is nothing that is impossible for God. However bad the suffering, however rough the adversities we face, the fact is that God still has the last word. Verses thirty-six through forty-five tell us that.

There is a kind of epilogue that takes us down to verse fifty-seven, and the epilogue simply says that some people can see God's hand in circumstance, while some people are blind to it. Those last verses in that epilogue are ugly verses, because they say that while some people rejoiced at the raising of Lazarus, there were other people who decided we can't let these miracles go on, we've got to stop this man somehow. So, there was a price put on the head of Jesus by the Chief Priest and the Pharisees. They decided that he was to be picked up, dead or alive, and gotten to the cross by whatever means necessary. That's the ugly part of John 11.

I want us to think about that event that led Jesus to take his disciples off into a place of retreat where they could think and talk and pray and focus for forty days, the first Lent. Part of what led them to do it was the decision of the Chief Priest and the Pharisees to put Jesus to death. But it seems to me that another part of the decision was that God does not operate alone.

I know you didn't hear me, so let me say it again: God does not operate alone. Yes, He is absolutely self-sufficient. No, He does not need anything that we have to give to Him. Yes, He could very well work out redemption with a legion of angels. He does not need what we have to offer, but, for some reason, He has decided, "I will not operate alone."

When He first spoke the worlds into being, you remember, He spoke with a communal voice, "Let us make man, and let us make him in our image and after our likeness." If you think only of the Hebrew shema, which says, "Our God is one God," then you have missed at least a part of it. For while God is one, He is also communal, He is also corporate. When He said, "Let us make man," what He made was not an individual, He made a couple. Then He told them, "Have babies, create generations; multiply, replenish the Earth. I want people."

Now, all the way through, from that time until this, God has been raising up somebody who could do for Him what He will not do alone. He raised up Israel, and now He has raised up the church. Here you are sitting in this place, part of a huge extended family of God, meant to do what God could do by himself, but will not. He wants us, with all of our weaknesses and all of our flaws.

Now, with that backdrop, look at this eleventh chapter of John, particularly, the first forty-five verses of it. When Mary and Martha sent after Jesus to say, "Our brother is sick; come heal him," Jesus deliberately delayed and didn't go. He delayed for two days, and then he said to his disciples, "Okay, now let's go to Lazarus." His disciples said, "But master, you don't want to go back there. There's a price on your head." Jesus replied, "It is important that I go. I am glad that Lazarus died, because now you will get a chance to see the glory of God."

When Jesus got there, he found out lesson two. He found out that there were some people who believed that Earth's calamities represent the end of man's possibilities. He found that people had given up. When Jesus got to the tombs outside the city where Mary and Martha lived, he found that Lazarus had been buried four days ago. (This part of the story shows very clearly how much God wants us to be a part of what He does. There are some things God will not do unless we help Him; He doesn't need our help, but there are some things He will not do unless we help Him.)

Jesus' disciples are standing there, knees knocking, teeth chattering, scared to death that somebody is going to find out that Jesus is in town, and grab him. Martha, who was in the house with Mary, comes out to meet Jesus. Martha is the fastidious one. She's the one who knows exactly how you set a table--salad fork to the far right, dessert fork at the top of the plate, and the coffee always served after you have placed the dessert, I think her last name was Stewart. Martha said, "Master, you finally made it, but you are so late; if you had just been here, my brother wouldn't have died. We've given up, it's too late."

Jesus looked at Martha and said, "Martha, your brother is going to rise again." Martha, not knowing what Jesus meant, not being able to understand the breadth or the depth of it, said, "Well, I know he is going to rise at the last days. You told us from those scrolls of Job, that even though the skin worms destroy the flesh of the body, in his flesh he will see God."

Then Jesus, who loved Martha and tried to reason with this woman who thought primarily about what was proper and what was etiquette, said, "Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Don't give up because you've seen somebody die. Do you know that when this world was created, it was my hands that took the dust of the ground and formed them into a mannequin six feet tall? Do you know that it was my breath that was breathed into that mannequin so that it became a living soul? Do you know that when I told the prophet Ezekiel, 'Go out and look at that valley of dry bones,' I was the one who sent him out there? Then when he began to preach to them, it was my breath that made them come together and suit themselves with muscle and skin and hair and stand as a full army.

"Do you know that it was I who sent the prophet Isaiah to Hezekiah to tell him, 'You don't have long to live; you're going to die.' I was the one who had determined the time of his death; I am the one who sets the time.' When Hezekiah came pleading to me, turning his face to the walls saying, 'Lord, let me finish my work,' I'm the one who gave him a reprieve and gave him fifteen more years! I control life and death," Jesus continued. "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said what was politically correct. She said, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God." Then she said, "Let me go and get my sister, Mary." So, she rushes off to go and get Mary. Jesus is searching desperately for somebody to believe in him. His disciples are scared, and Martha hasn't a clue as to what's happening.

Martha runs back to the house, and there is Mary, surrounded by the weepers. That's a whole story. I wish I had the time to tell you the whole story about the weepers. These are people who have been paid to wear sackcloth and ashes and use tambourines, and to roll around on the floor and weep for somebody they don't even know. They are paid fifty dollars an hour, and they are supposed to do that for a long time. Martha and Mary have hired the weepers, and they are at the house.

Martha says to Mary, "Jesus is finally here. Can you possibly break away from these folks and get out to the tombs to see him?" So Mary gets up and leaves with Martha. One of the weepers says, "We are losing our meal ticket, we have to go with her," and so they follow.

Jesus sees this strange procession of people and feels awfully bad. Martha never did understand him, but he thought Mary did. But when she gets to him, she says, "Lord, if you had just been here, my brother wouldn't have died." Jesus looks at Martha, and he looks at Mary. He looks out of the corner of his eyes at his disciples, and he is very disheartened. Verses thirty-three and thirty-four are eloquent in their statement of Jesus' despair. He doesn't have anybody who believes in him right now, and faith is the key ingredient to the doing of the miracle. He needs to do a miracle, wants to do a miracle, but nobody believes in him. How many times has he said to somebody, "According to your faith, be it unto you"? Over and over again he makes it clear that faith is the key ingredient, so verse thirty-three says he groans in his spirit and is troubled.

There is one last chance that there is a shred of faith someplace in this bunch, so he asks, as he looks around at the sepulchers, "Where have you laid him?" They say, "Come and see, Lord." He sees the sepulcher with the huge, round stone rolled in its groove that seals the door, and he knows that they have given up. Death for them was the last thing that they could imagine, and so they had given up.

They should have known that death was not the end for Jesus, but they didn't. Now he stands here and realizes that they don't believe in him. They are frightened to death, and there is nobody who believes in him. He does not have the necessary ingredient to overcome the death of Lazarus. So, we see in verse thirty-five, the shortest and saddest verse in the Bible, "Jesus wept."

What is tragedy in our time? It is our giving up. It is our assuming that there is no answer. Then Jesus said, "Well, maybe I've got one last card I can play. I can make an off-the-wall command." Jesus is good about that, by the way. He'll tell you to do something that makes no sense in the world. He'll say, "Even while you are having a hard time paying your bills, give God the first fruits." Now, that makes no sense. He'll tell you, "Even when your enemy has kicked you in the crotch, forgive your enemy." He makes all kinds of off-the-wall recommendations. You remember what he said to his disciples one time, "I know you fished all night and haven't caught anything, but drop the net on the right side, anyway, and let's try." Off-the-wall maybe, but they did it, and it worked.

Remember the blind man? Jesus spat on the ground and made spittle out of the clay, smeared all that mess on the man's eyes and said, "Now, go and wash." The man did, and came back seeing. Over and over again Jesus will make off-the-wall commands and something great happens. Don't feel that when God tells you to do something you can't understand you ought not to obey.

So Jesus said, "Roll that stone away." Way off-the-wall! Martha is the first one who screams, "Oh, Lord, do not profane my brother's grave. Do you know he's been in there for four days? Do you know what's happened to him? We learned how to embalm back in Egypt. We cut open the carcass; we took out all of his entrails, including the brains and the eyes. There is nothing there except a shell wrapped up in a whole bunch of linen tapes. You don't want to let that thing out." Jesus said, "Didn't I tell you that if you would believe you could see the glory of God? I've got to have a shred of faith here."

Somebody, I have no idea who it was--Peter, John, James--somebody grabbed the rim of that stone and began to roll it. It made no sense, it was off-the-wall, but the stone began to roll. Then Jesus said, "Lazarus, come out of there." Inside the place where the stone had been rolled away, bats fluttering out into the sunlight, they could see a little bit of movement as that linen-wrapped corpse began to wriggle. Jesus said, "Okay, take the tapes off of him and let him go." They had seen an incredible miracle.

That's why the High Priest and the Pharisees had to put him to death; if he could do something like that, then he was too much of a threat to them. Now, all of that is to say that God's time is not our time and that we ought never to assume that God has come to the end of his rope because we have come to the end of our rope. Therefore, we ought to take it for granted that with God all things are possible. I don't know what God can do with us right now, but I know that no matter what your adversity is, I know that no matter what your grief is, I know that no matter what your problem is, God can work. ...

So, Jesus, at noon time, hanging on a cross, with the agony of death all around him, asks, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" That's the human part of him. But finally, he says, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." He knows that death is not the end.

Why has God forsaken Jesus? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why does God permit adversity, tragedy? We don't have any easy answers for that, but the fact that you are sitting here right now, two thousand years after Jesus was born, suggests that there is a reason why God allowed everything to happen that He wanted to happen.

Aren't you glad that Jesus did not come down from the cross when he was taunted and challenged to come down from the cross? He made himself obedient to death, even the death of the cross, following the will of his Father. Whether it was an off-the-wall command or not, God required that somebody should die that we might be redeemed.

There are men and women all over the world who are still proclaiming the glory of God through Jesus Christ because God allowed a tragedy to occur. You don't ask, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" You ask, "My God, why is it possible that in the midst of misery, some people can still rejoice? Why is it possible that when people don't know how they are going to pay their next bill, they can still say, 'Thank you, Jesus'?"

How is it possible that some people can be crushed by grief, put back by bad circumstance, and yet still sing hallelujah and praise God? How it is possible that two men shall go into a jail and be locked in the stocks, surrounded by the rats and the roaches of a dungeon, and at midnight sing praises to God until God opens the door of the prison?

It is true that God's time is not our time; it is true that God does not come to the end of his rope when we come to the end of ours; it is true that God has no limits to his possibility, that He can do all that needs to be done, but there is an important truth that ends all of this. It is that God will not do it alone. He can do it alone, but he won't. He needs you and me. He wants you and me. He made us in his own image and after his own likeness, so He expects that we, brothers and sisters each to the other in Jesus Christ, in whom there is no east or west or north or south, shall be able to work together to help God to redeem a world which He could redeem alone, but will not.

Copyright 2001 The Rev. Dr. William A. Lawson

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