BP 189
Today, I want to share a word from the Lord with you. I was reading John 11, the account of Jesus traveling to Bethany in response to Martha and Mary’s summoning because of their brother’s illness. As we know, Lazarus died, and Mary and Martha were disappointed that Jesus had not come sooner and healed their brother before he succumbed to his illness. Fortunately for the amazing comfort of the two sisters and for the joy of Lazarus, Jesus raised the young man from the dead.
In John 11:43 it says, “He [Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!'” Of course, these words were uttered after Jesus had wept and twice groaned deeply in His spirit (just as we born again believers are said to be groaning in Romans 8 as we await the glory of full adoption and our new bodies).
Let’s focus on the phrase, “He cried out in a loud voice.” Literally in the Greek, it says, “He cried (screamed) out loudly in a loud (great/megala) voice.”
The word megas/megala (large, great) is the same word that is used in Mark 4 when Jesus calmed the fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee and there was a “great calm”. It also appears in the same account when it says that the disciples were “filled with fear, a great fear” when they saw what Jesus had done. We can see that the word megas is used to accentuate something highly significant and amazing.
In John 11:43, then, we see the same word—megas/megala—being used when Jesus cries out loudly in a great voice. Megas here increases the volume of Jesus’ voice from simply a loud cry to a scream or from a scream to a very loud scream!
The best part about John 11:43, however, is the word used for cry out, namely, kraugadzo. The word literally means to scream loudly and excitedly in a moment of exaltation. The same verb is used in John 12:13—just a few verses after 11:43– on Palm Sunday when the crowds were “crying out, ‘Hosanna!'” They were crying (screaming) out excitedly and with exaltation to Jesus, “Save us!”
Going back to John 11, we encounter Jesus weeping and groaning deeply in His spirit at the tomb of Lazarus. But then in verse 43, Jesus transitions from grief and anguish to screaming excitedly and loudly in a great voice, “Lazarus, come out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (This same word is used in Acts 22:23.)
To top it all off, in Matthew 12:15ff, Isaiah speaks of Jesus and says that “He will not quarrel or cry aloud (kraugadzo), nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets; a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not quench, UNTIL He brings justice to victory . . .”
The way I interpret all these passages is that Jesus was screaming a victory cry at Lazarus’ tomb that had not been heard in the streets until that amazing moment. He groaned and then he screamed in exaltation. It appears that this scream at Lazarus’ tomb foreshadowed the words of Jesus in Luke 23:46 when He committed His spirit into the hands of the Father. (The word mega appears here as well.)
Mark 15:37 records the words, “And Jesus uttered a loud cry (phona megala)” and breathed His last.” These final words by Jesus were the ones foreshadowed at Lazarus’ tomb: “It is finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Both utterances were indeed a scream of victory!
Jesus’ scream at Bethany tore open the shroud of death at Lazarus’ tomb, and Jesus’ loud cry at Golgotha tore open the curtain of the temple and tore open the rocks as well.
Looking even further into another gospel, we see that in Matthew 27:45ff it is written, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’” that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Soni of God!’”
If any of you have lost loved ones to death, I simply want to remind you from the passages above that Jesus has already stood at your loved ones’ bedsides and, at the moment that they breathed their last and yielded their spirit, escorted them to heaven. Your loved ones are already in Jesus’ presence because Jesus in a loud voice screamed, “It is finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Come forth (_______________ insert the name of the person you love here) from death into new life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am making all things new!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
How amazing for us that Jesus screamed excitedly the cry of victory at Lazarus’ tomb and also when He died on the cross! For as long as we are in our mortal bodies, we will continue to groan as Jesus did at Lazarus’ tomb, and we will weep just as Jesus did (just not with the same intensity as the Son of God who carried the weight of sin and death and hell on His shoulders).
Because of what Jesus did, we await our full adoption where there will no longer linger the dissonance between this world and the next, between the earthly tent and the eternal house in heaven. Our loved ones who trusted Jesus and left this world are already screaming the victory cry. We who are still on earth usually do not have the ears to hear that great scream of exultant victory, but on certain special days if we strain our ears just a bit, maybe we can hear at least a whisper of it, and it sends tingles rushing up our spine!
So, we do not grieve as those who do not have the hope of Romans 8:23-25. Granted, we do grieve, but we also scream in victory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once again, I think it is comforting and amazing how much John 11 gives us a hint of the awesome victory that was going to happen only days later the on the cross and on that Great Resurrection Day! When Jesus was in Bethany outside Lazarus’ tomb, He knew that His own death was soon to come, but He also knew that His tomb would be ripped open just as He was about to rip open Lazarus’ tomb. Thus, His victorious scream in a loud voice, “Come out Lazarus!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Unless you are alive when Jesus returns with a shout of victory, you will one day die but then be raised with a scream of victory! May you sense Him close to your heart.
Beloved daughter and son of the King, know that I am groaning and hoping and screaming with you. We will grieve on this side of heaven, yes, but the day is coming when we will hear the great scream of The Lion of Judah. Then we, too, will scream in victory as we exalt the name of Jesus, He who came to make everything right!
“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” ~ 1 Corinthians 15:50ff