How strange to Martha and Mary must have appeared the lack of the Lord’s response to their earnest appeal, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick”! But for us the record furnishes an illustration of the working of divine love and wisdom.
Their hearts are exposed by the utterance of each one: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” Are we not all prone to dwell upon such ifs, and to occupy ourselves with vain regrets, instead of setting our hope in God, and asking Him to work n us His will through the sorrow He permits?
The “therefore” of John 4:6 is a very striking one. The previous verse says, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus,” and we should expect to read, “When He heard therefore that he was sick”–He hastened off to Bethany. Instead it is written, “He abode two days still in the same place where He was.” Divine love always acts in divine wisdom, and sometimes permits deep sorrow that by that sorrow subjection to the will of God may be wrought, and out of it deeper joy and truer holiness may spring. So when the Lord said to His disciples, “Lazarus is dead,” He added, “And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.” Was He not also glad for the sake of the sorrowing sisters, even though for the time their sorrow had been deepened through His absence?
But, in due time, He went to the house of mourning with such sympathy as none other ever displayed. His reply to Martha’s “if” was a promise of resurrection–followed by a revelation of Himself as “the Resurrection and the Life,” to encourage her faith. The “if” of Mary and her grief drew forth His tears of sympathy.
There was truth in the “if” of Martha and Mary, but it seemed to imply some lack of full confidence in His wisdom, or His love, or His ability to help in what to them were hopeless circumstances. His “if” was calculated to raise the heart by faith above questionings and reasonings (v. 40). Then He speaks the life-giving word that brings the dead to life, and so makes good the utterance, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”
When we are tempted to say, “If that had not been,” the answer to us is, “If thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God.” Faith in God, and that alone, brings comfort in sorrow and peace in perplexity. Our question must as yet remain unanswered, and we feel that “His footsteps are not known.” But the voice from the sanctuary calls us to believe, and thus to see the glory of God.
Each difficulty encourages us to look for a fresh display of His grace and His power. The day of Christ will make it manifest that, in ways which we little dream, God has been glorified by the very things that seem to us to hinder His work. If He takes Elijah, He can give Elisha to carry on the prophetic ministry in Israel; and if He suffers Stephen to be put to death, He can prepare and bring forth Saul of Tarsus for yet wider service.
Would the feast of John 12 have been what it was if the Lord, being present when Lazarus was sick, had healed him? Would Mary have known Him as she did, and yielded such a costly act of worship? Should we have had such a record of His tears of tender sympathy, or the manifestation of His glory as the Resurrection and the Life?
Here we have proof that, in doing what we would not have expected Him to do, He acted in perfect love and wisdom. Then let our faith and hope in Him be strengthened. Let us remember, too, that in all His ways He is the Revealer of the Father, and when we reach the end of our course and, in the light of His presence, review the ways of the Master with His servants, and the Father with His children, we shall see that whatever “clouds and darkness” shrouded the acts of God, His ways were all perfect and worthy of Him who is Light, and in whom is no darkness at all.