Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.
I consider it no small thing that our brother was able to have one last Resurrection Day with his family before Jesus took him into His arms. I read this tonight from Matthew Johnson on Boar’s Head Tavern, Michael Spencer’s group blog which he maintained separately from InternetMonk.com:
7 years ago, before I did my first funeral, I hopped onto AOL IM and asked Michael what I should say. I copied and pasted it all into a document and kept it to follow for all the ones I’ve done since. In short,
Speak of the Gospel, salvation by grace through faith, and its application to death. Speak of hope of eternal life.
His life spoke all those things to me. I already miss him something fierce.
Such is the nature of our grief. Why? Because death is as unnatural a thing as can be imagined. We were not meant to be separated from our God and our loved ones this way. Ever. We were not made to live short lives and then die.
Death is something of our creation. Adam and Eve were seduced by the devil and death was the result. It is our inheritance bequeathed to us by the old Adam. We see it constantly, even in little ways in this life.
And it is painful. Some deep part of us senses that this is not right. We would do anything we could to bring back those whom we love so that we would not have to be separated from them.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Yet, as great as our love is for our dead family members and friends, how great is His love that He would send His only Son to die for us?… all of us! So that we may live with Him in heaven for eternity?
This is what God has done. He has come down, humbled Himself to be born of a virgin and became a man so that He could do what Adam and Eve did not. He is the perfect sacrifice Who redeems us from our sin, saving us from death, hell and the devil.
I love what Scripture has to say about death. It is incredibly reassuring.
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
We mourn. We mourn long and deeply when someone we love dies. The God of the created universe wept bitterly over the death of His friend even in the knowledge that He was about to resurrect him!
I will mourn, but not as one without hope. The Spirit clings me to Christ. Even if I must endure the rest of this life without hearing great new recordings or reading wonderful new writings by Michael, I remain steadfast in the knowledge that I will see him someday and have even better conversations… forever.
So I will miss Michael greatly. But only for a short while. I am ever thankful that God blessed me to know Michael and the great work He worked in him.
Please continue to pray for Michael’s loved ones and all those who were close to him and feel this loss, that they are blessed with faith and that our heavenly Father send His Spirit to bring them great comfort in Christ.
Come, Lord Jesus!
So the Jews were saying, “See how He loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have kept this man also from dying?”
So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they removed the stone Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.
“I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.”
When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”
The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.
But that isn’t the best news… the best news is that Mockingbird NYC has made all their 2010 Conference audio available for FREE!
