In the Fourth Gospel it is clear that Jesus regarded the Cross both as his supreme glory and as the way to glory. In John 12:16 John says that the disciples remembered these things after Jesus had been glorified, that is after he had died and risen again. And it was of his Cross that he spoke, for he went straight on to speak of the corn of wheat which must fall into the ground and die. When the Greeks came to him, Jesus said: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" ( John 12:23). John tells us in John 7:39 that the Spirit had not yet come because Jesus was not yet glorified, that is to say, because he had not yet died upon his Cross. Again and again in the Fourth Gospel Jesus talks of his glory in connection with the Cross. (i) The cure would undoubtedly enable men to see the glory of God in action. Now this was true in a double sense-and Jesus knew it. But he went on to say that his sickness had happened for God's glory and for his. When Jesus came to Bethany he knew that whatever was wrong with Lazarus he had power to deal with it. The other, at peril of his life, crawled out to help his friend and, when he reached him, the wounded man looked up and said simply: "I knew you would come." The simple fact of human need brings Jesus to our side in the twinkling of an eye. One of them was wounded and left lying helpless and in pain in no-man's-land. Andrews tells of two friends who served together in the First World War. and said it was sufficient that Jesus should know for it is not possible that any man should at one and the same time love a friend and desert him. They knew that was unnecessary they knew that the simple statement that they were in need would bring him to them. It is lovely to note that the sisters' message included no request to Jesus to come to Bethany. Lazarus fell ill, and the sisters sent to Jesus a message that it was so. The name Lazarus means God is my help, and is the same name as Eleazar. No man can have a greater gift to offer his fellow men than rest for weary feet and that is the gift which Jesus found in the house in Bethany, where Martha and Mary and Lazarus lived. Thou hadst for weary feet, the gift of rest." Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends? "What hadst thou that could make so large amends,įor all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed? Sir William Watson, in his poem Wordsworth's Grave, paid a great tribute to Wordsworth: It does not cost money, and does not need lavish hospitality. It is open to us all to make our own homes like that. To have someone to whom we can go at any time knowing that they will not laugh at our dreams or misunderstand our confidences is a most wonderful thing. The greatest gift any human being can give another is understanding and peace. There were three people who loved him and there he could find rest from the tension of life. In the home at Bethany he had just such a place. That was doubly true for Jesus, for he had no home of his own he had nowhere to lay his head ( Luke 9:58). It is one of the most precious things in the world to have a house and a home into which one can go at any time and find rest and understanding and peace and love. "Lord," they said, "See! The one you love is ill." When Jesus heard the message, he said: "This illness is not going to prove fatal rather it has happened for the sake of the glory of God, so that God's Son should be glorified by means of it." Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. It was Mary who had anointed the Lord with perfumed ointment, and who had wiped his feet with her hair, and it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. 11:1-5 There was a man Lazarus, who came from Bethany from the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived, and he was ill.
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