The Word Became Flesh (Part 18) – What Does God’s Love Look Like When I am Suffering? – John 11:1-53
December 18, 2017Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
It has been said that John 11, the account of Jesus raising Lazarus, is the whole of John’s gospel in miniature. This Sunday, in our exploration of this chapter, I trust the reason this has been said, will be clear.
In John 3:16 we are told that this is how God loved the world, that He gave His one of a kind Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. What does it mean for God to love the world? What would such love look like in the flesh? What might such love look like in the Son who was given? How does such love walk itself out in space and time?
In John 11 we have, sketched on a canvas for us, a picture of what is truly meant by Incarnation – the One who was in the beginning, who was with God and was God, through Whom all things were made, becoming flesh and dwelling among us in all our suffering and pain (John 1:1-3, 14). How would He act? What would He do? What might it mean? If we could, as John puts it in his first letter, “see the very Word that created all life with our eyes, and touch Him with our hands,” (1 John 1:1-2) in the midst of our worst suffering, what might it look like? This is Incarnation; this is the Gospel; this is the account that is set before us in John 11.
Join us as we explore John 11:1-53.