Grief is an emotional response to loss that every person experiences.  We grieve because we are made in the “image of God”  and God grieves.

Examples of God’s Grief in Scripture: 

While grief is usually thought of as the emotional response to this loss, there are also physical, mental, behavioral, social, cultural, and other aspects involved.  In grief, we may feel lost, hopeless, alone and question God.

Where is God in our grief?

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
    and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

The temptation to doubt God’s presence and love in the wake of tragedy is strong. You may be wondering if God has forgotten you or if his love for you has failed in some way. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible characterizes Jesus, as a despised and rejected man of sorrows who is familiar with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Just when God seems most distant and unloving, Scripture reminds us that Jesus was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion (Matthew 26:38). He asked his disciples to keep watch with him as he prayed, but they abandoned him to catch some sleep instead. However, Jesus is not like his disciples. He will not abandon you when you are overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of despair. Jesus, who knows what it is to be abandoned in the face of suffering, will never leave you alone.

Rather than leaving us to suffer in solitude, God comes to meet us. Jesus entered into creation and experienced suffering just like you and me so that we would never suffer alone. We now have the opportunity to approach God with confidence because we know he is not distant and aloof. Instead Jesus knows exactly what we are going through because he voluntarily went through the same trials, temptations, sufferings, and worse. Jesus, by entering into our world and our suffering, is uniquely qualified to offer help and hope when we need it most. Therefore, rather than grieving alone, in Christ we “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Today’s passage has a great deal of insight into how we deal with grief — and a perfect model in our Savior, Jesus Christ.

11:1-3 Though John only introduces us to the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at the end of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus and the disciples often visited their home. Jesus enjoyed their close friendship and hospitality on his visits to Jerusalem, for Bethany was a village just outside of the city.  The events described in Luke 13:22–17:10 occurred between chapters 10 and 11 of John.

John identified Mary with an event described in the next chapter (12:1-7) because Mary’s display of love for Christ was well known to the first-century Christians (Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9). Lazarus was sick, so the sisters contacted Jesus, their friend who had healed so many.

11:4 When Jesus heard of Lazarus’s sickness, he said it will not end in death. He knew Lazarus would die, but the end of the story would not be death. Lazarus’s death was an opportunity for Jesus to receive glory. God strategically placed some miracles in human history to demonstrate his wise providence and his sovereignty.

Lazarus had been close to Jesus, yet he became deathly ill. The disciples may have thought, “What did Lazarus do wrong?” But the Bible helps us see that sickness and death do not indicate that God has rejected someone or that they have done something wrong.

We must remind ourselves that neither we nor our loved ones are exempt. These were close friends of Jesus. Jesus loved them. Yet he did not rush to spare them grief. The presence of pain and suffering in the lives of faithful disciples of Jesus can teach us that Christians do not have different experiences in life, rather, they experience life differently. Our hope in Jesus does not insulate us from life’s difficulties, but it does provide a way through and beyond them. God can use difficult experiences to make us more compassionate servants for him as we console others.

11:5-7 This statement of Jesus’ love for the family explains that it was not lack of love that kept Jesus from going to them. Humanly speaking, Jesus would have wanted to go to them immediately. But he was constrained by the Father’s timing. When God’s time came, Jesus headed back into Judea to be with his dear friends in their sorrow. God’s timing is always perfect, whether in guiding his Son through his ministry on earth, or in guiding us today and answering our prayers.

Jesus loved this family and often stayed with them. He knew their pain but did not respond immediately. His delay had a specific purpose. God’s timing, especially his delays, may make us think he is not answering or is not answering the way we want. But he will meet all our needs (Philippians 4:19) according to his perfect schedule and purpose. Often when we pray, circumstances seem to actually worsen. We are tempted to doubt and despair. But delay itself builds patience. Our patience improves as we trust in his timing.

 11:11-15 The disciples missed Jesus’ meaning when he said, “Lazarus has fallen asleep.” They assumed he was getting better. Jesus explained: “Lazarus is dead.” Lazarus died so that Jesus could show his power over death to his disciples and others. He would go and wake him up, thus giving the disciples another opportunity to believe. The raising of Lazarus displayed Christ’s power—the resurrection from the dead is a crucial belief of Christian faith. Jesus not only raised himself from the dead (10:18), but he also has the power to raise others.

The disciples heard the word sleep and misunderstood Jesus’ intention to go there personally to awaken Lazarus from death. Only Jesus can refer to death as sleep because only he has power over death. From a human perspective, death is very real and final.

For those who believe in the resurrection, death is merely sleep in comparison to eternal life.

11:17-19 Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days by the time Jesus arrived. In the warm climate of Palestine, a dead body would decompose quickly, so a person’s body was often buried the same day of death. When Jesus and the disciples arrived in Bethany, many Jews from Jerusalem had gathered to console Lazarus’s family, and some of those who had arrived were religious leaders.

In Jewish society, prolonged mourning for the dead was considered an essential part of every funeral.   It is a tribute to the family that many from Jerusalem came to Bethany to pay their respects and offer their support to the sisters.

Measured by our timetable, many of our prayers’ answers may seem delayed. But knowing that we deal with a wise and loving God, we must consider that the problem may be with our timetable rather than God’s.

Though we experience delays, we can be sure that Jesus does initiate help for us. He will come to our aid. His help may well come in different ways and forms than we expect, but we can depend on his dependability! God will come to you in your time of need.

Although we get many glimpses of Jesus’ compassion throughout the Gospels, his tender conversations with Mary and Martha during their grief are the most moving. Jesus did not ridicule or belittle grief. He affirmed our need for comfort by providing it to the sisters without hesitation and is a good example for us.

In the next post we will look closer at how Jesus meets each of us based on our personality and particular needs when grieving.

Darrell

www.Upwards.Church

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Sources:

https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-life/what-does-it-look-like-to-deal-with-grief.html

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%203%3A5&version=NKJV

— Life Application Bible Commentary

— Life Application Concise New Testament Commentary