The Prayer Life of Jesus – At the Tomb of Lazarus
The Prayer Life of Jesus – At the Tomb of Lazarus.
“Tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a righteous man!” (James 5:16).
The Lord Jesus always was and still continues to be the ultimate prayer warrior. He prayed to the Father even before He was born (Hebrews 10:5-7), and He kept praying until the moment of His ascension (Luke 24:50-53). But He didn’t stop praying when His work on earth was done, for He continues to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father as we read this! (Hebrews 7:25). His ministry was largely a prayer ministry in the sense of prayer being the foundation for everything He did. He prayed for saints and sinners, privately and publicly, with His face to the ground and His head up facing the heavens. He prayed in grief and He prayed in gratitude, while exhausted and while full of energy. Jesus prayed with His dying breath and He prayed after He rose from the dead. He prayed before major decisions and during dramatic miracles. He prayed spontaneously and He prayed in words prepared thousands of years before Him. He prayed short, one-sentence prayers (John 12:28), and He prayed in at least one long prayer that seemed to encompass just about everything (John 17). Jesus developed a lifestyle of prayer that was common to observant Jews, but nonetheless uncommon in its intimacy with the Father.
Jewish Lifestyle. Being born and raised in an observant and orthodox Jewish household, Jesus was immersed from Day One on earth in prayer, in the centrality of prayer to one’s life and faith. Observant Jews practiced formal prayers frequently during the day, and spontaneous prayers throughout each day. They would pray the Sh’ma twice a day, the primary statement of faith for all biblical Jews, starting with its first line, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might…” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Then there’s the Amidah, a series of 18 sacred benedictions that each Jewish father would recite at home twice a day, or perhaps each rabbi in the local synagogue. The Psalms were memorized and on the lips of all believing Jews, as were other classic prayers from the Hebrew Bible, most notably Aaron’s Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.” But by no means were the Jews content with all those formal prayers each day. The rabbis taught each Jew to offer up sincere blessings for just about everything in the course of each day, as many as a hundred blessings, giving God praise and thanks for every common blessing enjoyed. There were blessings for practically every conceivable grace and event, from successfully going to the bathroom, to waking up each morning, to the blessing of being able to retire at the end of the day. These formal prayers and the more informal blessings developed a habit of prayer in each earnest Jewish believer, and made sure that God was seen as the main reference point all day for everyone in the faith. The Jewish prayers were constant reminders of God’s grace and goodness, and made sure that each Jewish home and synagogue were cultures of prayer. Jesus was shaped and directed and nurtured in this Jewish prayer life, and since He was a faithful Jew, prayer was certainly second nature to Him throughout His time on earth.
Inner Dialogue. Few mysteries in the faith are less likely to be understood than the union between the Father and the Son. Their level of intimate, eternal communion is well beyond our grasp. “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” (John 17:21). The prayer life of Jesus has everything to do with their intimacy. Somehow, the Father and the Son were inside each other in Spirit. So when Jesus prayed to the Father, He was spiritually looking inward to the Father’s presence. Jesus was speaking to the Father in a secret place within Himself where the Father dwelled. The prayer life of Christ was an inner dialogue between Father and Son, a private conversation of two divine Beings who love each other. Jesus said that He would not even take a step without the direction from the Father, He wouldn’t say a word without the Father’s approval. Jesus placed Himself completely at His Father’s disposal, such was the level of trust between the Father and the Son. Certainly, Jesus was the perfect example of one who “prayed without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:16-17). Jesus’ prayer was conscious and deliberate, and it was also subconscious and intuitive. Jesus walked prayerfully every second of every day, out of devotion to the Father.
“Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.’ After Jesus had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” (John 11:41-43).
As recorded in John 11, Jesus received word that His close friend Lazarus was deathly sick in his home town of Bethany. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, were very close friends of Jesus, and so this news certainly troubled Jesus. But He decided to stay where He was for a couple of days. Jesus saw a timely opportunity to make a big statement, and unfortunately He needed Lazarus to die to make it. When he tarried, Jesus had a master plan… “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so the Son of God may receive glory through it.” Finally, on the fourth day after His friend’s death, Jesus and His disciples arrive in Bethany, which is only two miles from Jerusalem.
Feeling the Heat. Shortly before Lazarus took sick, Jesus was surrounded by religious leaders at the Temple in Jerusalem. They are accusing Jesus of blasphemy, because he clearly was claiming to be equal to God, the long-expected Messiah. In fact, the leaders were so convinced of this charge that they picked up stones to kill Jesus right where He stood. But Jesus somehow talked His way out of this crisis. It simply was not time for Him to die. So the leaders intended to arrest Him instead, and once again Jesus was able to walk away unhindered. Then Lazarus enters the scene by getting sick and dying. Jesus miraculously raised him from the dead, and this became too much for the religious authorities. They begin to plot Jesus’ death, and He left the Jerusalem area. He stopped His public ministry, and stayed near the wilderness for a while till He knew the time was right for His grand Palm Sunday appearance.
The Sickness of Lazarus. When Jesus was told of His friend’s deathly sickness, He could have dropped everything and rushed to the rescue of Lazarus. Jesus could have immediately healed Lazarus on his sick bed. But He didn’t. He waited two more days before He started His trek to Bethany. The disciples still couldn’t get what was about to happen, even though Jesus told them earlier, “Our friend Lazarus has gone to sleep, but I am going to wake him up!” His apparent tardiness disappointed a lot of people, especially Mary and Martha. And imagine Lazarus’ thoughts as he lay on his sick bed knowing that Jesus could heal him but He did not. But Jesus had other plans. He waited for Lazarus to die so He could bring glory to the Father, and hasten the Son’s death that, with this miracle, was now a certainty. Jesus certainly knew a resurrection miracle would get a lot of attention, and would be the last straw for those who wanted Him dead. So Jesus had a grand plan that no one else knew about. Jesus wanted to create an unforgettable teaching opportunity. He wanted to use a powerful object lesson to show everyone that He is the source of life, that the Resurrection is a Person, not a moment. And the Person is Him.
Another Miracle, Please! A resurrection of a dead person is still unexpected, even if Jesus had already accomplished two resurrection miracles: 1. – Jairus’ daughter was raised to life by Jesus (Matthew 9, Mark 5, Luke 8); and 2 – the widow’s son was raised, while lying dead in his coffin, no less (Luke 7). Is this what Martha was thinking when she told Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” (v. 22). Perhaps Martha, in a moment of great faith, was hoping against hope that God would give Jesus the power of another resurrection miracle for her brother Lazarus.
“When Jesus looked at Mary and saw her weeping at His feet, and at all her friends who were with her grieving, a deep anger (embrimaomai) welled up within Him, and Jesus was deeply troubled.” (John 11:33).
“embrimaomai” = a Greek word that is rooted in the snorting sound of an agitated horse; this word has been translated many ways, including deeply moved in spirit, profound indignation, greatly distressed, a deep groan, a profound sigh, an emotional shudder, stirred with deep anger. The Aramaic for this verse includes, instead of anger, literally, “His heart melted with compassion.” Much has been said about the Greek idea of Jesus being angry at this scene. Certainly, Jesus was angry at the devil for bringing misery and death to the world, for introducing sickness and suffering into the human experience. Angry perhaps that His beloved creation, the people made in God’s image, had to go through the experience of death. Maybe He was even angry that Lazarus had to go through death in order for Jesus to prove that He is “the Resurrection and the Life,” and that Lazarus’ death and resurrection was needed to get the ball rolling for His own impending Passion. Every so often, we get to observe a more passionate side of Jesus’ human emotions. Jesus reveals many times in the gospels that He is in total union with the human story. The Son of God was fully human. He was recorded in the gospels as being deeply moved with anger, with compassion, with joy, with zeal, and, as a man of many sorrows, was known to be in absolute agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Lazarus story is certainly one of those times. When speaking with Mary, Jesus was deeply moved. The various translations have Jesus groaning deeply, sighing profoundly, stamping His feet in anger like an agitated horse, greatly distressed in His spirit. John records in verse 33 that Jesus was also “troubled.” The Greek word there was “tarasso,” and is rooted in the idea of calm waters being stirred up. Jesus had a calm spirit, but in this Lazarus situation it was stirred up. He became disturbed in His mind, agitated when he was usually calm.
“I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25).
I AM. In literally a matter of life and death, Jesus once again used the I AM formula in a startling self-description. He is taking the Name of the Great I AM as His own. This is a scandal in the eyes of the religious authorities. The sacred Name of Yahweh, I AM WHAT I AM, is the most treasured and most personal Name for the God of Israel. With this claim, Jesus states that He is on equal footing with God Himself! Who does He think he is? Jesus used the name tag I AM around 20 times in John. The seven metaphors He uses with I AM are especially enlightening as to the roles Jesus has in His ministry on earth. Throughout Scripture Yahweh has power over death and is the Source of life. Jesus embraces these divine powers when He claims to be I AM. Jesus underlined His being the Author of life by inserting “life” into three of those seven metaphors… I AM the Bread of Life (John 6:35); I AM the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25); and I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). As Jesus says in John 10:10, “I have come so that my sheep may have real and eternal life, that they may have life in abundance – to the full, till it overflows – Better life than they ever dreamed of.”
Lazarus! Is it true that Jesus had to shout His friend’s name at the tomb, because if He didn’t specify the name, He may have had other dead people rising from their tombs? Could the voice of Jesus be filled with such life-giving power that others buried nearby would have been risen as well? At the tomb, the body of Lazarus had already begun to decay and emit a terrible stench. Nowhere else in the Bible is there a miracle like this one in which a body that was dead for four days was raised back to life. Jesus had the power to not only raise Lazarus after being dead for so long, but He healed the decaying body as well. After unwrapping his burial clothes, they found that Lazarus’ body was as good as new. An amazing miracle.
Other Tombs. At the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross, this Lazarus miracle was multiplied in the tombs surrounding Jerusalem. “Then Jesus shouted out again, and He released His Spirit. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. They left the cemetery after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people.” (Matthew 27:50-53). How amazing and profound that Jesus was so full of life that even at His death He caused others to resurrect! Jesus is the Source of life, even at His death! As He was dying, life was slipping through.