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[ Silence ] [MUSIC] ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh, sit up, why don't you answer ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ House like Jesus ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ House like Jesus ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh sinner, why don't you answer ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Can't you hear him ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Can't you hear him ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh, sinner, why don't you answer ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Answer Jesus ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Answer Jesus ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh sinner, why don't you answer ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Jesus calls you ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Jesus calls you ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh sinner, why don't you answer ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Can't you trust him ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Can't you trust him ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh sinner, why don't you answer ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Somebody's knocking at your door ♪ ♪ Oh, say that, why don't you answer ♪

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♪ Somebody's knocking ♪ ♪ At your door ♪ Our text is found in the Gospel according to Saint John, the 11th chapter and the 43rd And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice,

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"Lazarus, come forth." Subject of the message, Lazarus, rise. Lazarus, rise. From time to time, we have messages concerned with the Christian ministry and the pastorate in the 11 o'clock service.

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We have been considering for several weeks a series of messages based on the "A Troubled Church," with 1 Corinthians being the scripture passage that we've used in that connection. Today, I want to speak concerning matters related

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to conflict resolution in the church. This is a growing problem, conflict resolution. Over a thousand ministers just in the Southern Baptist Convention alone are involved in matters related to conflict.

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The convention is working with churches as well as with pastors. those who are outside don't realize what is happening inside. So today I want to deal somewhat with the inside. Lazarus arrives.

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The incident related to our text is an event which occurred late in the ministry of Jesus. He's coming to the close of his earthly ministry. He is in an area not too far from Jerusalem. He has been with his disciples,

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a sort of a withdrawal that he has at this time. Public opinion is turning against him. And he has sought the quiet seclusion that is often the desire of a prophet as a means of resting, being

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refreshed, and renewed for the task that is before him. The interesting thing is that as the tide of public opinion turns, there are those that remain faithful. Some people say to you, "I'll be with you through thick and thin, but when it gets too

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thick, I'll thin out." So it's a trying period. It might be called the dark night of the soul. And all of us, this is not something limited to the ministry, all of us have periods in

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our lives when we experience what one philosopher, theologian calls the dark night of the soul. This family, Lazarus, Mary, Martha, these persons who constitute the family that is very close to Jesus, lives in Bethany. Bethany is about two miles from Jerusalem.

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And it is a place that Jesus visited frequently in his ministry as he made trips to Jerusalem. He knew where he was going to stay. He would be in the home of Lazarus' family. They were very close to the Master, and as he is engaged in his ministry, he receives

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what we may call a telegram today. today, "He whom thou lovest is sick." That's a message that expresses a whole lot in a few words, "He whom thou lovest." Whether they wanted to talk about the ailment and all of that, we don't know, but the message comes.

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It is a message that could have been cloaked in some secrecy because they didn't want to announce who it was, but Jesus knew. He whom thou lovest is seriously ill.

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Come at once. And when we receive messages like that, many times we become upset. Some people become hysterical. But Jesus goes about his ministry in a quiet way, peaceful, continues doing what he was

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doing, staying where he was staying after having received that message. And he stays there two days, and then finally he says to his disciples, "Lazarus sleeps." They didn't understand what he was saying. They thought he meant that he was going to be awakened from his slumber, but he spoke

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again rather plainly saying, "Lazarus is dead." Now, the name Lazarus means "he whom God helps." whom God helps. All of us need the help of God. That's not something that's limited to the pulpit. It is something that is needed in the pew as well as the pulpit. And many people who are

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outside the ministry have rather glamorous conceptions of what the ministry is and what the ministry is not. I guess I had my eyes open when I was a teenager concerning the ministry. I was a paper boy, as I've told you, throwing the Dallas Morning News, and I threw the paper

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to my pastor and he never paid his paper bill on time. That should have been a lesson to me, but I went into the ministry with my eyes wide open that he was always having a difficult time. And I noticed the Sunday school classes and the like, when they were asked for an offering,

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they not only got as much as they could from the members of their class, but they always came to the pastor. Every teacher would come and ask the pastor to contribute to their offering, and I thought that was so unfair that all of them expected him to contribute when others weren't doing

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the same thing. But my eyes were open as to what the ministry is all about. And the one who serves God certainly needs the help of God in the struggle. He whom God helps.

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This is a time, I said, of the dark night of the soul. It's a time of the gathering storm, gathering storm in Jesus' life. The Sadducees and Pharisees have decided that they're going to put an end to His ministry. And not only do we have these two strong religious parties conferring with one another about

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what to do, they confer also with the Herodians. So the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians, that's the worldly crowd they got with the religious people and they combine their efforts against Jesus. The high priest, Caiaphas, and his supporters are all making plans.

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They're circulating the word that it is fitting that this man ought to die because if we don't put him out of business, he's going to put us out of business. It's that kind of climate that Jesus is in when he receives the word that Lazarus is dead.

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He receives the word, but he goes on as if he has not received it, and four days later He appears at the doorstep of the family, and they say to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." And often we think if something else had happened that this death would not be in the family.

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And Jesus listens to this. You listen closely to those words. They're sort of blaming him for the death of their brother Lazarus. If you had been here, you put off coming, you acted as if nothing had happened.

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All of that is sort of hidden behind that. If you had been here, this would not have happened. So Jesus goes with them. They go to the cemetery where Lazarus is buried.

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The Jewish people had a practice of burying the dead the day the dead passed. So Lazarus is buried. In fact, they remind Jesus that it's been so long that his body now probably has an odor.

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And Jesus said, "Well, take me where He is." And they take Him there, and Jesus calls Lazarus by name. Lazarus. Some preachers have said that if Jesus hadn't called Lazarus by name, just that name, that

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all the other dead people would have gotten up. Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus, arise. Well, so often we find ourselves submerged

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by the troubles that we encounter. We're quick to give up, but he says to him, Lazarus, arise. He has on his grave clothes.

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And Jesus speaks the word of life. Lazarus arise. There are certain lessons that we have to learn from Lazarus, lessons concerning the resurrection, certain lessons. One lesson

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is life goes on. Too often we feel that when we take them out to the cemetery that's the end. If we didn't believe that some of us would not

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act the way we do, we never go back until somebody else is dead. Lazarus come forth, come forth, rise and he says to them, loose him,

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let him go. Well, when the preacher says ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's not the last word. It's not the last word. Life goes

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on. In fact, beyond this veil of wrath and tears, life goes on. It doesn't end at the cemetery.

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It goes on and on and on. So, no matter what may occur and how many relatives we may have lost in that sense, life goes on.

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We have the task, the responsibility, the challenge to keep living. Keep living because life goes on. It's not

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not a boundary that we can't overcome because Lazarus rising from the tomb is a definite message that life goes on beyond the tomb. Beyond the tomb, life goes on. So another message is that sickness is an opportunity for us to glorify God.

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Sickness. Lazarus is sick, but he dies and he lives again. And sickness is an opportunity. Sometimes we think sickness is an opportunity to curse God for what has happened to us,

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but it's an opportunity to glorify God, to glorify. And many times we say, "Oh, so-and-so is sick. He's just getting back what he gave out. God is punishing him."

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That's one of the arguments the friends of Job gave. But we have the opportunity, the more things are going against us, the more we have opportunity to see the goodness and the greatness and the powerfulness of God and to glorify God. This is what we see in the resurrection story of Lazarus.

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So every one of us has a task. We all have goals. We all have dreams that we'd like to achieve. When I went to pastor the first church that I pastored, we had a goal of selecting ways

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by which we would build a parsonage. Church had never had a parsonage, almost 100 years old, but it had never had a parsonage. So one of the things that the church agreed to do when I became the pastor was to build a parsonage.

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They were united in that. But things just don't happen. And most of the time when you select certain goals, you'll find people who've selected contradictory goals.

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So the church voted unanimously to build a parsonage. Groups in the church began to raise money to build a parsonage. But the first thing we had to do was to select an architect. And when I mentioned it to the deacons, they said, "Architect?

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We haven't ever had any architect in our homes. When we get ready to build, we just go to the lumberyard and get a contractor and build a house. That's the way we do."

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So there was not a single deacon that had built a house with an architect. So I said to them, "Let's pray over it." So we prayed over it and then a month later we had another meeting and it was unanimously adopted that we would secure an architect.

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Many times you may get defeated when you're trying to run your programs overnight without giving time for meditation and prayer. So we cleared that hurdle. Next thing we needed was an attorney.

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And when we had an attorney, we met and decided that we would have him to check out the land that we were purchasing, hoped to purchase, we would purchase as the case may be. So the lawyer was visited by some of the members

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of the congregation. And when I got a call from a lawyer of another, of the person selling the land, they said, well, Reverend, We can't deal with your lawyer."

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And I had to get another lawyer. So that was another hurdle. Then some of the people went down to the bank and told the banker, that young man is not receiving support

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from the church. He's trying to make them do something they don't want to do. So the banker saw me once in the bank and he said, I think it's going to be necessary for you

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to have another meeting. I said, I don't mind having another meeting. And then I said, no, I don't think I want to have another meeting.

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There's just some people who are coming down who think they have enough influence with you at the bank to stop this effort. How do you think we raised $30,000 for this effort

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if the people weren't for it. And when I said that, he just jumped up as if someone had shot him. But to make a long story short, that man not only

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supported the effort-- he was living just a short time ago. He came to Austin. He's 90-some years old.

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And he came to Austin and came by to see me. Sometimes people may put stumbling blocks in your way, but they can be made stepping stones to success. So the man became a lasting friend.

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When I came to Austin, he wanted to send some references and recommend me to banks and all of that, and became a friend. You can be knocked down, but you can get up.

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We fall down is the language of one song, but we get up. So Lazarus is put into the ground, but he gets up. He is raised by the Lord of life,

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by Jesus Christ himself. He is raised to a new life. So, life goes on. Sickness is an opportunity to glorify God,

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and we have opportunities every day of our lives rise. Disappointments come, there are opportunities for us to get up again. Disease may invade our bodies, but there are opportunities for us to grow closer and to glorify God when this happens. And even death comes. Death with all of its awfulness, with all of its

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dread death comes and God can use his power for us to overcome it and to bless us in a magnificent way. So Jesus comes, Jesus comes. That's the wonderful thing, Jesus comes. Jesus comes. No matter what may be the conflicts, no matter what may be the difficulties, Jesus comes. He may not come when we expect him. He's four

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days getting there. And it seems that there is no hope, the body has an odor, but Jesus comes. He comes right where we are. He shares our grief. He comes and lifts our spirit. Jesus comes. He brings us into a new understanding of God's presence and his power and his love. Jesus comes. So, as we look at Lazarus, the name itself, "He whom God helps," is the name

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that we can identify with because all of us need the help of God. And God helps us. Wherever we are, whether we are conscious of it or not, God has helped us. He's lifted our spirits, he's carried us through the dark valleys and over the difficult hills, God has carried us. He has helped us and in spite of all of the conflicts, in spite of all of the defeats,

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has helped us and has brought us to this hour. So life goes on. Thank God for His goodness. Thank God for His grace. Thank God for being the governor of our lives and bringing us to times when we can celebrate. The wonderful thing about the presence of God is that we can celebrate in all circumstances. We can celebrate

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With the presence of God in sickness, we can celebrate the presence of God even in death. Thanks be to God who is with us in our sadness and in our gladness. We extend now the privilege of the church to accept this God who comes to us through Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives.

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The door of the church is open. We invite you to come to accept Jesus Christ as as Lord of your life while we sing, come ye this consulate. ♪ Come ye this consulate ♪ ♪ Where he languished ♪

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♪ Come to the mercy seat ♪ ♪ Where the bleeding ♪ ♪ He'll bring your hope and light ♪ ♪ He'll turn your rain into light ♪

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♪ Life has no sorrow ♪ ♪ And the hill ♪ ♪ We'll see the rail ♪ ♪ Of bright sea ♪

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♪ Waters flowing ♪ ♪ ♪ Walked from the throne of God ♪ ♪ Walked from the throne of God ♪

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♪ To the world ♪ ♪ To the world ♪ ♪ Born to a feast of love ♪ ♪ Peace the Lord ♪

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♪ Come, brethren, glory ♪ ♪ Faithless, bold and strong ♪ ♪ Again and again ♪ ♪ I hear you ♪

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- Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

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The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace now and forevermore. Amen. [ Music ]