Gospel

The Great SetUp

by Terry Barlow
12/22/14
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What credit could Lazarus ever have taken for having been raised from the dead by Jesus? (John 11 v.43-44) Had he been especially good? Did he have a choice in the matter? When Jesus called him forth, was he in his tomb thinking, "do I want to answer this call, do I want to go back out there, do I really have to obey this command? I don't want to hurt the feelings of Jesus, but can't I just pretend I didn't hear him, that I kind of slept through it?" I don't think so.

  Neither was he in there thinking, "That's the voice of Jesus, I really trust Jesus so I'll get up and walk out of here. He must have something very important for me to do, or he wouldn't be disturbing me like this." No, Lazarus didn't have a choice in the matter. The call to come out of his grave was what we might call irresistible.

  It was the same way with our initial conversion experience. Though we may have thought we initiated this process of walking through life with God, we did not. We could not, because we were all just as dead and helpless in our trespasses and sin as Lazarus was biologically dead and helpless to change the fact that day. God had to quicken us or breathe a higher life into our spirits. As Jesus said, "You did not choose Me, I chose you." (John 15, v.16)

 Because Jesus chose us, we could be enabled to choose Him and come alive from the dead spiritually the way Lazarus did and others have physically. There were choices to be made by Lazarus after he came forth from the dead, surely. And those choices helped make it possible for many to believe in Jesus as Messiah through the resurrection miracle that had been publically witnessed in his life. But the essential work had been wondrously and strategically performed by Jesus as Son of God. He set Lazarus up for the impact he was to have, as He intends to set up each one of us who follow Him (and has already begun to) for the impact purposed for us in this darkening world.