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what He intended to do.  It wasn’t for the bodily death of Lazarus that Jesus wept.  He wept for the spiritual deaths of so many who surrounded Him.  They were angry with Him!   Why couldn’t Jesus have come quickly to save His friend Lazarus?  What kind of a friend was Jesus to Lazarus?  They grumbled against the Lord.   To be angry with Jesus is to be angry with God.  Jesus is God. 

 

And Jesus looked around and He saw all the dying–all the distrust of Him and the promises He had given.  They were dying wrongly.  They were all dying wrongly.

 

To die rightly with Jesus is to die to our selfish will.  It is to submit to what God has ordained in either His active or permissive will.  Dying rightly is believing the

promises of God.

 

Has your loved one died?  What has God promised?  “He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live...”  Do you believe that the souls of the faithful who die have crossed over into life everlasting?  Or have you died wrongly, and you

despair because your worn spirit tells you that the loved one is lost forever–despite all the hopes of your Christian faith.

 

Have you died wrongly after years of personal suffering, or watching the suffering of a loved one or friend, so now life is numb to you.  Does despair silently lace each moment of your life with depression and muted rage?

 

Why doesn’t God deal with evil by simply destroying it before it gets its pound of flesh from us? 

 

The answer to that question is complex [see Great Evil… Good God].  We know that the answer lies within a God who is all powerful, all loving, and completely good.  I can tell you that not even Jesus was spared the pains of this broken world. 

 

“Father, can this cup be removed?  Is there another road but to Calvary and the cross?  Father....   Father....   Father....”

 

Hebrews tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are tempted.  And I proclaim to you a strange gospel this Good Friday.  Jesus also suffered our feelings of wrongful death.  He knows what it feels like when we cannot understand where God is in the sickness, in the suffering, in the dying.  “My God, My God,” He cries, “Why have You forsaken me?”

 

Jesus, true man and true God, knows our numbness and pain when we are perplexed–when we just can’t figure out why God is doing what He’s doing in our lives

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