Are You Still Tied Up?

“The danger is to be out of the grave, but not being loosed.” –Reverend Andy Rubin

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (John 11:38-44)

For me, the most compelling part of Sunday’s sermon was the moment when Pastor Andy illustrated the plight of Lazarus. Our pastor took a long strip of fabric, symbolic of the cloth that would have been used to wrap Lazarus, and began wrapping a man. As Pastor Andy bound the man in the cloth, he spoke of the things that bind, cripple, and ultimately kill people.

After sharing with us the reality of Lazarus having been called out of the grave, Pastor Andy shared a second point that was critical: Lazarus was alive, but Lazarus was still bound. And this is where we, as people of God, are warned. There are forces, seen and unseen, that have a vested interest in keeping God’s people bound.

We have an enemy whose goal is to destroy us, and many in the body of Christ are as tightly bound as the volunteers Pastor Andy wrapped in our two morning services. Some people are physically ill. Others are under the curse of witchcraft. Still others are in psychological crisis. And, as in the case of Lazarus, it has been “four days”: that is, it seems as though it’s far too late for anything to be done.

But it’s not too late! Our pastor shared another point during this illustration that I have received as personal encouragement. It is this: Although Jesus could have done the unwrapping Himself, He told the people standing by to unloose Lazarus. The Lord has invited us to be participants in the process of setting people free from bondage. What a privilege we have! Though we may have stood by helplessly as we waited for Jesus to work a miracle, we are now commissioned by our King to “unloose” those who are bound. We have seen the power of the Lord as He calls people from death to life, and we have been authorized to appropriate His power as we call people from bondage to freedom.

Do you know believers who are still tied up? Don't stand at the edge of their grave as a spectator. Loose them.

Lord God, thank You for empowering us to speak Your word of deliverance to those who are bound. Help us not to be discouraged by the number of years gone by, nor to be fearful of the depth of their bondage. We know Your word can break every stronghold. So we rest in Your word, we stand on Your word, and we speak Your word to a world that is tightly bound. We rejoice in anticipation of complete deliverance of Your people, to the glory of God. In Jesus’s name we pray in expectation. Amen.

All Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Time Peace...

In Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Andy shared from the eleventh and twelfth chapters of John. Today, I’d like us to reflect on something that our pastor shared (paraphrased here): Jesus is not compelled to honor our idea of “timeline”.

As we read John 11 and 12, we notice a theme that threads through the account of Lazarus’s sickness and the account of the crowd witnessing Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. It may be your theme as well. It is a theme that pleads, “Jesus, do something now!”

In John 11, Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus of Lazarus’s illness, believing that Jesus would come and heal him right away. Their disappointment at Jesus's delay was expressed in a simple sentence: “Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died.” (John 11:21; John 11:32)

In John 12, the crowd shouted for Jesus to save them. Our pastor noted that the crowd was expecting Jesus to rescue the Jewish people from the political oppression they experienced. Their disappointment at Jesus's delay was also expressed in a sentence: “Give us Barrabas!” (see John 18:36-40)

Though Mary, Martha, and the crowd longed for Jesus to respond to their sense of urgency, Jesus instead showed that His power to heal and deliver was not bound to man’s sense of time. As Pastor Andy noted, Jesus has the ability to change situations that seem hopeless. Mary and Martha experienced the joy of having their brother brought back to life. The crowd was given the offer of a spiritual rescue through eternal life in Christ, a deliverance far more valuable than a short-term respite from Roman tyranny.

Are you in an urgent situation? Are you wondering why Jesus is taking so long to respond to your prayer? Do you think that it's too late for God to act on your behalf? Be encouraged. We serve a God who stands outside of time, whose timing is perfect, and who knows what is best. Trust Him today.

Lord Jesus, give us grace to trust Your timing.

All Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Wait-er?

"There are some things we can only learn in God's waiting room." -Rev. Dr. Bud Reedy

So when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was two more days. (John 11:6)

Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?" (John 11:40)


In John 11:1-44 we have the account of a family that experienced God's Waiting Room. When Lazarus became ill, Martha and Mary did the best thing they knew to do: they called for Jesus, their Lord and Friend, and they waited. Jesus waited too. And, from the perspective of Martha and Mary, Jesus waited too long. The sisters buried their dead brother. When Jesus showed up, Martha was reluctant for the tomb to be opened after such delay. But Lazarus, who had been in the tomb for four days, was brought back to life by the word of the Lord, and the community was astounded at the powerful miracle.

Fast-forward to June 27, 2014. Some of us are asking the Lord to show up on our behalf. Some of us are experiencing the pain of God showing up "too late". Some of us are asking the Lord to not open the tomb where our lost hopes are buried. And some of us are on the edge of witnessing a profound miracle.

O Lord, our Lord, we submit to Your schedule; we trust Your timing; we wait with believing hearts. 

Privilege Can Wait.

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21)

Now when Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32)

In this past Sunday’s sermon, Reverend Dr. Bud Reedy brought up an important question for us to consider: When we are in crisis, do we expect that Jesus will grant us special favors because we are “tight” with Him? There is a prevailing notion that our joyful tithing, our presence in church, our participation in ministry, and our faithfulness in prayer are tokens that garner privilege with God, and that therefore He is somehow “obligated” to immediately rescue us from every crisis that comes our way.

In the John 11 narrative, Martha and Mary expressed a sentiment that is not unusual in Christian circles: Jesus, if You had shown up when we asked for You, then we could have been spared from this tragedy. As Pastor Bud noted, there is a sense that Jesus is supposed to “drop everything and come running” when we call Him. But let us consider Jesus. His desire is to obey His Father, even if the path of obedience brings pain. He did not refuse the way of the cross.

“Jesus responded, ‘Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?’” (John 11:40) Sometimes, our experience of God’s glory is birthed through tragedy. Sometimes, our “privileged” status as lovers of Jesus even makes us a target for tragedy, as Satan seeks to turn our devotion away from our Lord (see Job 1:9-11). When those tragic moments touch our lives and break our hearts, let us continue to rest in the goodness of God.

Lord Jesus, You are the One who can reach into tragedy and extract Glory. May You be glorified in us today.

"Wait"-Bearing...

In yesterday’s sermon Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene was blessed to hear the message of the Lord through Rev. Dr. Bud Reedy, a Nazarene pastor and our brother in the Lord. Our guest speaker shared with us from John 11 and Luke 10, and we took time to understand the love of God expressed through the discipline of waiting.

As we go through this week, we will take time to consider points from the sermon. For today, though, I would encourage all of us today to re-read the Scripture passages from yesterday. One of the dangers of “familiar” passages is that we tend not to read as closely or as carefully as we do when approaching new material. But I hope that today we will come to the Word with the expectation that God will reveal something new to our hearts.

Luke 10:38-42

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. But Martha was distracted with all the preparations she had to make, so she came up to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her.”

John 11:1-44

Now a certain man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived. (Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, look, the one you love is sick.” When Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.) So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained in the place where he was for two more days.

Then after this, he said to his disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples replied, “Rabbi, the Jewish leaders were just now trying to stone you to death! Are you going there again?” Jesus replied, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If anyone walks around in the daytime, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks around at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” Then the disciples replied, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” (Now Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he had been talking about real sleep.) Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for your sake that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” So Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us go too, so that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days already. (Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, so many of the Jewish people of the region had come to Martha and Mary to console them over the loss of their brother.) So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you.”Jesus replied, “Your brother will come back to life again.” Martha said, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who comes into the world.”

And when she had said this, Martha went and called her sister Mary, saying privately, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” So when Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. (Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still in the place where Martha had come out to meet him.) Then the people who were with Mary in the house consoling her saw her get up quickly and go out. They followed her, because they thought she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the people who had come with her weeping, he was intensely moved in spirit and greatly distressed. He asked, “Where have you laid him?” They replied, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Thus the people who had come to mourn said, “Look how much he loved him!” But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?”

Jesus, intensely moved again, came to the tomb. (Now it was a cave, and a stone was placed across it.) Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, replied, “Lord, by this time the body will have a bad smell, because he has been buried four days.” Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you that you have listened to me. I knew that you always listen to me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing around here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he shouted in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The one who had died came out, his feet and hands tied up with strips of cloth, and a cloth wrapped around his face. Jesus said to them, “Unwrap him and let him go.”

Meet The Real Lord Of Time.

Because I am a fan of the British series Doctor Who, I associate the term “time lord” with the series’ title character, who is capable of traveling into any moment in time. It’s not unusual for Doctor Who to step into his ship, set a chronological date, and fly to wherever he needs to go. The whole series is founded on the Doctor’s ability to travel through time.

However, this has no comparison to the power of God. Our God, as Pastor Richie shared on Sunday, does not need to travel through time because He is not subject to time. He created time, and He commands time. Time does what God says. We have this evidence in Scripture:

The day the Lord delivered the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua prayed to the Lord before Israel: “O Sun, stand still over Gibeon! O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon!” The sun stood still and the moon stood motionless while the nation took vengeance on its enemies. The event is recorded in the Scroll of the Upright One. The sun stood motionless in the middle of the sky and did not set for about a full day. (Joshua 10:12-13)

Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, “What is the confirming sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the Lord’s temple the day after tomorrow?” Isaiah replied, “This is your sign from the Lord confirming that the Lord will do what he has said. Do you want the shadow to move ahead ten steps or to go back ten steps?” Hezekiah answered, “It is easy for the shadow to lengthen ten steps, but not for it to go back ten steps.” Isaiah the prophet called out to the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back ten steps on the stairs of Ahaz. (Second Kings 20:8-11)

Pastor Richie made an awesome comment concerning Jesus’s apparent delay in responding to the illness and death of Lazarus (see John 11:1-44). In arriving to Bethany four days after Lazarus’s death, it appeared to the people that Jesus showed up “too late” to do anything. But Jesus, the Lord who is not subjected to time, has the power to command creation irrespective of time. If Jesus speaks life, then death has to step aside. Therefore, and I paraphrase Pastor Richie here, “There is no such thing as praying too late. So if you were supposed to pray for someone at 9, and didn’t remember until it was 12, pray anyway!” If we really believe this, and if we live as if we believe it, our prayer lives will be completely transformed. This power of God is a power that transcends time, and even transcends death.

If time is not capable of preventing God’s hand, then how can we ever say it’s too late for Him to act?

Inexpressible Light!

We are so blessed to have Bibles. Most of us have not one, but several copies. Some of us have so many in our possession that we actually aren't sure of the total number. And we are free to read them anytime we want, anywhere we want, without fear of persecution.

We are even more blessed to have an intimate relationship with Jesus. As we read our Bibles, as we pray and fast, as we give, as we seek His face, we encounter Him and are immersed in His love. Because we have experienced His love, we are glad to experience His discipline and chastening. And even if the day comes where we are persecuted and our Bibles are taken away, nothing will ever separate us from the love of Jesus (see Romans 8:35-39).

This Jesus, the One we read of in Scripture, the One we love intimately, has revealed Himself as the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25). Because of Him, we are brought back from the deadness and decay of our old sinful life. Because of Him, we have the promise of living with Him in eternity. And as we live out our days on earth in this love relationship, we find ourselves becoming increasingly like Him. We reflect His truth, His compassion, His heart for justice, His love and patience, His mercy.

My friends, that is the ultimate compliment: when people see us, they see Him. I pray that's true for each one of us. God, help us to reflect Your glorious, inexpressible Light, so the Bronx and the world will know You.

I Am, Not Kidding.

I exist.
I was.
I become.
I continue.
I happen.
I accomplish.

In John 11:25, Jesus's statement begins with a profound concept expressed in the tiniest of words: "I am".

Do you believe I am?

(I suppose the only answer I can give is "Yes, I believe you Jesus: You're the I Am, the Holy One, the Lord.")

Do you believe I know what's best for you?

(It shouldn't be too hard to agree with that: after all, Jesus knows everything- surely He knows what's best for me. "Yes, God.")

Do you believe I am incapable of error?

(Uh-oh. If Jesus makes no mistakes, then I'd better not make the mistake of ignoring what He says.)

What reason can you give for not doing what I have asked you to do?

(How dare I say no to the Lord of everything? What am I still afraid of? Why can't I just say yes and really mean it?)

Friends, let's get bold about our total obedience to Jesus. It might cost us love, relationships, jobs, convenience, reputation, whatever... but what greater experience can we have than the joy of being on the same page as our Lord?

Do you really love Him? Don't be found in opposition to His plan for you. He Is, and He's not kidding.

True For Who?

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies..." (John 11:25)

Yeah, we've all heard it so many times. Every Easter, every funeral, there's that verse again. And there it was on Sunday, plastered on the front page of the bulletin. No surprise there.

But what does that verse mean? Is your day-to-day living any different because Jesus made that statement?

Let's pull out a few words from John 11:25 to reflect on.

Resurrection: something (or someone) was alive, then died, then was brought back to life again. This word comes from Latin and French origins which suggest the idea of rising: an implication of not just death having occurred, but also burial. In other words, the assumption was that this thing (or person) was permanently dead and disposed of- even decaying- but was then brought back into existence.

Life: something (or someone) is breathing, interacting, responding, growing.

Believe: accept a statement as true, and subsequently engage in action(s) based upon that truth.

SO, getting back to your day-to-day living:

-if I see you with an umbrella, I would say that you believe it might rain, and you've made preparation so that if rain comes you will not be drenched in the storm.

-if I see you making faces and complaining when you're asked to sing to the LORD, or to give to His work, or to pray, I would say that you believe He's not worth your time, talent, or tithe. Sort of a strange place to find yourself in, since He's the One who gave it all to you...

Oh, I would love to follow you around for a week, because your Monday through Saturday life says so much more than your few hours with me on Sunday.

Really, do you believe what He says?
Are you prepared for His reign, or are you about to be drenched in the storm?