THE MAIN IDEA
The glory of God is living life in Christ. 

If you believe … 

YOU WILL KNOW THE LOVE OF CHRIST – This passage may display Jesus’s emotions more than any other passage in the Gospels except for Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane where  He pleads with the Father that He would not have to go to the cross. Here, Jesus comes face to  face with the curse of sin, which is death, the enemy of life and the enemy of God. And it incites  in Jesus rage because of the pain and sorrow that the curse of sin causes the people whom God  loves so, so much. And so, ultimately, this rage is really an outpouring of His great, great love  for us—a love that sent Him to the cross for the forgiveness of our sins—to suffer the full wrath  of God in our place so that we might not have to—if only we would put our faith and trust in  Him. 

YOU WILL SEE THE POWER OF CHRIST – When you come across a passage like this,  you have to ask yourself: Do I really believe that this literally happened? Many so-called  Christian scholars say that raising Lazarus from death to life is nothing more than a metaphor for  finding our true self and living an authentic life. For them, this story and all the miracle stories have nothing to do with our eternal destinies, but only for finding occasional relief from the  struggles of life in the here and now. But this kind of thinking sucks all the power out of the  word of God (1 Corinthians 15:19). If we cannot accept that John wrote to us about what he  literally witnessed in history, then we don’t have a chance of understanding why he wrote this  Gospel at all (John 20:30-31). But if we do believe, we will see the power of Christ. In particular,  we will see the dead brought to life both spiritually and literally. We will see the dead brought to  life literally when Jesus returns. But even in this life, we will see the dead brought to life  spiritually when we see people who once did not believe come to faith and confess Jesus as their  Lord and their Savior. Because that is the testimony of every single soul who believes in Jesus. 

YOU WILL LIVE LIFE ETERNAL IN CHRIST – Reading this episode, I have to wonder how this experience changed the lives of those witnesses, and especially Lazarus. What would  we do, if we had died and come back to life by the power of Christ? Because when we are born  again through faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it’s like being given a second chance at living. And so how should we live the second chance at living that we are given? This passage shows us  that living our eternal life in Jesus Christ involves partnering with Jesus Christ to bring the dead  to life. Jesus went to Bethany to bring Lazarus back to life, but Jesus tells some of the people  there to take away the stone from Lazarus’s tomb. And then after Lazarus comes out, Jesus tells  them to take off his grave clothes and let him go. You see, Jesus came to seek and to save the  lost, and He calls upon His followers to partner with Him in that work. Jesus calls us to do  whatever it is that we can do, and He will do everything that we cannot do, which is to actually  bring people back from death to life. And so are we doing all that we can do to partner with Jesus  as He brings people from death to life? 

DISCUSSION -
Has anyone seen the movie “Groundhog Day” with Andie MacDowell and  Bill Murray? If not, have a house church special event to watch this movie. What can  “Groundhog Day” teach us about the second chances that we are given to live life.