Jesus and Martha.
Our Lord had at last come to the neighborhood of Bethany, but not to the village itself.
I. THE CONDOLENCE OF THE JEWS WITH THE BEREAVED SISTERS. "And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother."
1. This visit of sympathy implies that the family at Bethany was well known and highly respected by the Jews of Jerusalem.
2. It afforded a providential opportunity to Jesus for the working of his last miracle in sight of the Jews.
3. The time of bereavement is the time that demands all the resources of consolation. The days of mourning were divided among the Jews into three periods of three days of weeping, seven days of lamentation, and twenty days of sorrow.
II. THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN JESUS AND MARTHA. "Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat in the house." The different character of the two sisters is revealed in these words.
1. Martha would evidently be the first to receive the news of Christ's coming. Not so much, perhaps, because the message would be first brought to her as the mistress of the house, as because, going about the house in the busy routine of her life, she would be in the way of first receiving intelligence.
2. Mary's profound feeling, that made her a better listener than Martha, makes her a more helpless sufferer now. She sits still in the house. She is not so capable as Martha of shaking off her depression at once.
3. Martha's address to our Lord shows that she is not so overwhelmed by grief as to prevent her utterance. "Lord, if thou hadst been here, our brother had not died."
4. Our Lord's answer to Martha's touching appeal. "Thy brother shall rise again."
5. Martha' s apparent misunderstanding of his saying. "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
6. Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life.
(a) as he is "the First-Begotten from the dead" (Colossians 1:18);
(b) as he is the Author or Cause of the resurrection of believers: "I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54);
(c) as his resurrection involves their resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:23).
(a) He is eternal Life.
(b) He gives his life for his people.
(c) He is the Life of his people (Colossians 3:3).
(d) His life in glory is the guarantee of the believer's life. "Because I live, ye shall live also."
(e) He is the Life of both soul and body in the resurrection (Romans 8:11).
(a) They are dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1).
(b) Yet when quickened by God's Spirit they believe upon Christ.
(c) And their faith ensures life spiritual and everlasting. "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."
( α) The faith and life are regarded as equivalent terms, because they are inseparably joined together.
( β) Death cannot break the continuity of Christian life. The second death does not touch it at all.
7. Martha's triumphant faith. Jesus says, "Believest thou this? She said unto him, Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."
(a) Jesus was Christ, the end of the theocratic prophecies and promises;
(b) the Son of God, dwelling in mysterious relation with God, and therefore able to act as Daysman between God and man, and restore the long-broken fellowship;
(c) making the world the theatre of his Divine power in resurrection and life. Her confession was the simple but profound acknowledgment of Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life.