The associate pastor at my church, Revival Tabernacle, in Highland Park, was stabbed in his home last week. He survived, but is expected to be in the hospital recovering for a month. It is sometimes difficult to go through times when God seems to allow bad things to happen. One of the natural tendencies is to ask why. Pastor Tim Dilena spoke about Lazarus and how Jesus knew he was sick and yet waited to come and heal him until he died. Lazarus was a close friend of Jesus and yet He dawdled when He heard that Lazarus was dying. But when a Centurion, a stranger, came to Jesus, He healed his servant the same day. Why?
Jesus made it clear that the reason was so that God would be glorified. There are times when God allows things to get uglier than He has to before He steps in, and the reason is to bring glory to Himself and draw people to Him. If Jesus just heals him, it would have been another of thousands of cases of Jesus healing folks, but if He waits until he dies and then raises him from the dead, that was new. And the part that we tend to forget was the result of what Jesus did there:
John 12:9-11 9Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, 11for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.
Because of what Jesus allowed to happen in letting Lazarus die, many people put their faith in Jesus. So many, in fact, that the chief priests who wanted to kill Jesus also wanted to kill Lazarus.
So in the midst of this difficult time, there were a number of miraculous things that took place in that he survived. Thank God that He is being glorified through it. We just need to trust that God has the ability to work things out for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.