John 11:39-43
In this story the Lord wants us to know what God’s plan is for us, that everything that happens to us in our lives is for a purpose so that the Lord glorifies himself in our lives and sometimes we believe that they are pure coincidence. And that things have to happen because they have to happen.
God’s plan is this: that you without God cannot do it; but God does not want to do it without you.
When this man named Lazarus fell ill, his sisters Mary and Martha sent word to the Lord that this man whom Jesus loved was sick. They knew that the Lord was going to take pity on his brother Lazarus.
Martha and Mary who here represent the unbelieving Christians, because although they had heard of the greatness of the Lord, in their Hearts there was that thorn of doubt. For this reason, before the Lord came to them, the Lord had already told the apostles that Lazarus’ illness was not for death but for the glory of God, and so that the son of man may be glorified.
And in the sovereignty of God of which many do not understand, and many do not want to submit to his sovereignty, the Bible says that the Lord took his time and stayed two more days where he was. When the Lord wanted, he said to his disciples, our friend Lazarus sleeps but I am going to wake him up. The disciples still did not understand that Lazarus had died. But the Lord let them know that Lazarus had died.
When the Lord arrived at Bethany, Lazarus had already been dead for 4 days, and as soon as Marta found out that the Lord was near, she left to meet the Lord. But not to tell him that He could revive his brother, but to blame him that if the Lord had been there, Lazarus, his brother would not have died. (Don’t blame the Lord for your failures)
And look how Marta confesses one thing with her mouth but denies it with her heart, when the Lord tells her Marta your brother will rise again, and she tells him if I know he will rise again but in the last time. (Sometimes we forget the God we serve). The Lord told him I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he is dead, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will not die eternally, do you believe this? Marta tells him, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the son of God.
Marta runs out to look for her sister María and it seems that disbelief struck her, when María arrived where the Lord is, she also accuses the Lord of the death of her brother Lazarus. And she tells him the same thing, Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died. But the Lord in his divine mercy only says the Bible that he shook in spirit and was moved and wept. The Lord did not cry or was moved by the death of Lazarus since He had said in advance that he only slept, and that it was necessary for God and the son of man to be glorified, the Lord cried because he felt the pain that the sisters felt for Lazarus.
There are times when the people around you hit you with the negative things they have, Marta had hit her sister María with disbelief. And with them walked a bunch of unbelieving Jews (Christians) and they began to murmur saying: if she opened the eyes of the blind, she could have prevented Lazarus from dying.
The Lord told them REMOVE THE STONE, Marta who was full of disbelief, that minutes before she had told him that she believed that He was the Christ, son of God said: Lord already stinks, he has been dead for 4 days. The Lord returns to tell Marta, I have not told you that if you believe you will see the glory of God.
You have to do your part, remove the stone, remove that disbelief, remove that discouragement, remove that desire for the things of the world, remove that vanity, remove that laziness, remove that constant complaining, remove that I can’t.
The Lord prayed and said Father thank you I give you for having heard me, I know you always hear me but I say it because of the crowd that is around so that they believe that you have sent me. (REMOVE EVERYTHING THAT HINDERS YOU FROM SEEING THE GLORY OF GOD). We have to know how to sacrifice some things that we think are good for us, in order to fill ourselves with the glory of the father.
The Lord was giving thanks to God before the miracle, He was giving them a clinic of what FAITH is. Because He calls things that are not as if they were, and Lazarus said come out, the Bible says that immediately Lazarus came out of the tomb bound hand and foot, and with bandages on his face.
And the Lord told them to untie him and let him go. So many of the Jews believed in Him (not all). He removes the blinders from your eyes that are not letting you see the supernatural of God; remove the bandages from your hands that you notice are allowing to work for the work of God, and remove the bandages from your feet so that you can continue on the path.
The Lord said I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life, no one comes to the Father if it is not through me….. Remove your stone!
Two Other Biblical Diagnoses For The Problem Now, before we move on to the remedy and see how to find the renewing of mind that God demands, let’s consider two other Biblical diagnoses for the problem. See how Peter describes the problem of our minds in 1 Peter 1:13-14: “Therefore gird your mind to action, do not conform to the desires which you once had in your ignorance.” There is an ignorance about God—a willful suppression of the truth of God (Romans 1:18)—that makes us slaves to many passions and desires, which would lose their power if we knew God as we should (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:5): “the desires that you had before in your ignorance.” Paul calls these desires “deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22). These are desires that ruin life, destroy worship, and derive their power and vitality from the deception of our minds. There is a kind of knowledge of God—an insane renewal—that transforms us because it frees us from deception and the power of foreign desires.
The other biblical diagnosis is in Ephesians 4:17-18: “walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts.” Here Paul takes us deeper than Peter. He penetrates below the “vanity of the mind”, the “darkened foundation of the understanding”, the willful “ignorance”, and says that everything has its roots in the “hardening of their hearts”. Here is the deepest disease, which infects everything else. When we mentally suppress liberating truth, we do so out of the hardness of our hearts. Our hard hearts will not submit to the supremacy of Christ, and therefore our blind minds will not be able to see the supremacy of Christ (cf. John 7:17).
The Holy Spirit Renews the Mind
The foregoing brings us finally to the remedy, and shows us how we can obey Romans 12:2: “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” First, before we can do anything, a double action of the Spirit is required. And then, we joined him on those two. I say that the action of the Holy Spirit is required, because this word “renewal” in Romans 12:2 is used only once in another place, in the entire Greek Bible, specifically in Titus 3:5 where Paul says: “The He saved us, not by works of justice that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. There is the word “renewal” that we have already seen that is so necessary. And it is a renewal by the “Holy Spirit”. The Spirit renews the mind. This renovations, first of all, and decisively, a work of the Holy Spirit. We totally depend on him. Our efforts follow their initiatives, it is the Spirit who enables us.