Understanding Jesus’ Power Over Death: Dr. Mark Bailey

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Understanding Jesus’ Power Over Death

Guest:Dr. Mark Bailey

From the series:A Conversation with Dr. Mark Bailey (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:April 18, 2025

Mark:Lazarus died physically, but that doesn’t have to be his final end. You might die physically, but that doesn’t have to be your final end. And this is a setup for Jesus might die, but that won’t be his final end. So the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign ultimately of the resurrection of Jesus.

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Okay, we got Dr. Mark Bailey back.

Ann:Yes.

Dave:The most famous pastor, teacher, seminary professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Ann:Was the president for a while.

Dave:Was the president, and we are in Dallas right now, your hometown.

Mark:The Bible says, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.”

Dave:Only you would come back with that.

Ann:All we know is our executive producer is like, “This is the best seminary prof that I had.”

Mark:I must have been his only faculty member. No, that’s great.

Dave:I think he had them all but yeah, we had you yesterday and I know why. That was rich.

Mark:Privilege to be here.

Dave:And one of my favorite passages you’re going to teach us today, John 11. I mean of all the gospels, I just love how he states at the end of the gospel, his purpose: so that you may believe, and I didn’t even tell you all the miracles. Obviously, the raising of Lazarus is one of those miracles that John put in there to say, “Here’s another sign, power over death.” But it’s good Friday. We all know the end of the story, so we’re already to Sunday, but it’s Friday. And Lazarus, we know the end of his story too, but I’d love to hear your perspective on this story and then we want to ask you at the end, how would you apply this to marriage and family and families and legacies?

Mark:You bet. Well, one scholar divided the gospel of John into two big books, the book of signs because you have the seven major signs in the front half of the book, through chapter 12. The resurrection of Lazarus being the climactic one. And then you have what’s called the book of glory, which is relating to why did the death of Christ glorify God and how did it glorify God? And we’re going to see that even in this particular miracle.

But of those seven signs, this one is the seventh, which as you said is the power over death, both physical and spiritual as we’re going to see. So the setup for it is ironic because it’s structured literarily into a giant inverted parallelism sort of in the shape of an hourglass if you looked at it. They call it a chiasm based on the letter X or key in Greek. So it’s parallel purpose of this is to frame, to echo, and to pinpoint, and you won’t be surprised as to where the pinpoint comes as you’ll see. But it’s framed interesting enough in the opening verses of that chapter.

It says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed Jesus with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.” So you have Mary anointing Lazarus in verse one of chapter 11, but you don’t have the history of her anointing the event until the beginning of chapter 12.

And so I want you to see, rather than trying to read through all 40 some verses of this in our timeframe, let me highlight the parallels. It’s packaged in the anointing of Mary framework, and you have Lazarus is sick and Mary is anointing in 11:1-3. You have Lazarus is ultimately well and Mary’s anointed in 12:1-3. That’s the outside block.

You have the sickness of Lazarus is ultimately for the glory of God and His Son stated. And at the end right before the last one, in parallel, the death of Jesus is for the gathering of his church. So how will God be glorified through the death of Jesus in the establishment of his church?

The third one is the leader’s plot is recounted in eight because they want to kill Jesus and see prime the leader’s plot is renewed. They now want to kill Jesus and Lazarus, which is funny to me because Jesus could just raise him from the dead again.

But then you come through and there’s a positive and a negative walking in the light while it’s still in the light, so you don’t stumble. And that’s parallel to the positive of belief and the negative reporting of the responses to Jesus. And he goes through all of this, Lazarus dies in the next section. Lazarus is raised in the parallel section.

But in between those, the purpose of belief, in other words, Jesus says, “I’m glad I did this because this is going to end up in a testimony for faith.” And in parallel to that, there’s a prayer for belief and a thankfulness of Jesus again.

You have him arriving at Bethany where Lazarus has been dead for four days as mentioned. Now here’s the details. The spirit of God guiding the human author John to write in such literary art parallel is his mention of four days in verse 17 matches his mention of four days in 11:38-42.

And then the Jews are comforting because of the death of Lazarus. And parallel to that, the Jews are mourning because of what’s happened. Then you have Martha who said, “If you had been here, Lazarus wouldn’t have died.” We’re going to talk about that. Parallel to that is Mary saying, “If you’d been here, Lazarus wouldn’t die.” Those are parallel.

And then here’s the core in the middle: believe in the future resurrection in verse 23. I want to read that because this is where it gets really fun. Right in the middle of this, in verse 23, he says this, “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’” So there’s the promise: your brother will rise again. And “Martha said, ‘I know he’ll rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’” And so “Jesus says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said, ‘Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’”

So right in the center of that, between the Mary Martha account, which if you know that whole, they’re always together and Jesus is always working with both of them. One is the activist; the other is more of the contemplating. And so there’s a belief in the resurrection that’s paralleled with belief. She finally says, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” which goes back to your purpose statement of the book.

And then in English it’s a very tongue tangled section. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will never die. And even if he dies, he shall live.” It’s like, “Well, wait a minute, did he die, or didn’t he live?” And it’s interesting in the Greek text it’s more exact because it’s that chiasm that explains it all. And let me show you there is I’m the resurrection of the life is parallel to the question, which is the question of the hour. Do you believe this? So it’s not an exact parallel, it’s I’m the resurrection. The question is will you believe that?

The next one is He believes in me if he dies, but he who believes in me shall never die. Now he sets you up in the contrast between physical death and spiritual death. And then in the middle of this, both of the parallels are, will live and everyone who lives. So life is the centerpiece of this section, even down to the very word parallels as you back it back out. But Jesus claim is, I’m the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me won’t die. Well, how do we handle all those who have died? Well, whoever does die and believes in me won’t die again but has eternal life.

When Chuck Colson’s book came out years and years ago, I remember it was called Born Again and there was a button that came out, if you remember it, it says, “Born once, die twice. Born twice, die once.” That really is formed and framed in the centerpiece of this.

But let’s take a step back. That’s the thing. And it gets you to that centerpiece and it’s that inversion that explains, seems like a word tangle there, but he’s trying to say Lazarus died physically, but that doesn’t have to be his final end. You might die physically, but that doesn’t have to be your final end. And this is a setup for Jesus might die, but that won’t be his final end. Because she anoints Jesus for his burial.

So the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign ultimately of the resurrection of Jesus. And if Jesus could resurrect Lazarus, then it shows that Jesus was true in chapter 10 when He said, “Nobody takes my life from me, I lay it down and I’ll raise it up in my own accord.” He is the one who has the power over life and death.

Ann:So good.

Mark:So application question backing out, four questions we could raise.

Ann:Do you do this in all your classes at the end of the day? Do you have any application questions?

Mark:Oh, we’re applying it all the way through.

Ann:Are you?

Mark:Yeah; we may do it along the way. We may do it at a conclusion. In the parables and miracles course, yeah, it’s the staccato. What do we learn from this passage? But as I look at this passage, I think there’s some questions when you find out that Jesus was over by Jericho and they said, “Lazarus your friend is sick,” Jesus waits a couple extra days until he dies, intentionally. And of course that bothers Mary and Martha. They’re going, “If you had been here, he wouldn’t have died.” Which raises the question, why did He delay? And in the context—

Dave:Tell us, Mark, why did He delay?

Mark:There’re three reasons. If you go back and read the text, one is for the glory of God and the ultimate glory of God. The second is for the immediate glory of Jesus because by waiting till he dies, he now shows he can raise him. If he had healed him from the sick. That’s just another one of the many that he did. But this one’s a unique one and we’ll come back. There’s three times he raises the dead and we will come back and talk about that in a moment. For his son’s immediate glory and then it’s for the disciples.

He said, the reason I delayed—are you ready for this—was not for you to doubt, but it was for your faith that you might believe. Now what does he want them to believe? That He’s the resurrection and the life. What does he demonstrate? That He is the resurrection and the life and that He has the power to raise people from the dead. And that physical death is no hindrance to eternal life. In fact, it may be a step toward eternal life for the believer.

How did the people respond? As you might expect, some believed, and some threatened him because they felt threatened. And the irony is after He heals his buddy Lazarus, the opposition wants to kill Him again. Which answers the big question is, why doesn’t Jesus just do signs and miracles so that people would believe? And the answer is He did and look how they responded to him. And that’s another one that comes out of the resurrection of another Lazarus in a parable, would you send Lazarus back from the dead and everybody will believe. Well the irony is, He sends Lazarus a Lazarus back from the dead and they want to kill him because even an adulterous generation looks after a sign.

And that takes us back to the purpose statement of the book. And that is Christianity could be boiled to three words: a person, a book, and an experience. He says, “Many other signs Jesus did at the presence of his disciples, but these are written,” not done. That’s very important. These were written, why? Because a written record is what you and I will be left with. We’ll not be able to see miracles every day because Jesus is in heaven.

Now, He can do miracles. He can do anything He wants to anytime He wants, and He does but that’s not the norm. The norm is faith comes by hearing, not watching, hearing of the word of Christ. So these were written.

So Christianity is a book, gospel of John in a nutshell but the whole Bible in its whole. Second, it’s a person, that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. There is the full or faith that this Jesus in reality is the Messiah and he’s the son of God. You take those three words is what makes Christianity different than all of the religions of the world. And that believing that—there’s the experience—

Dave:Eternal Life

Mark:—life in his name, eternal life. So how do I respond? How should I respond and how should our families respond? How do I help my families respond? Number one, delay by God in answers to prayer goes back to yesterday’s comments, is no demonstration of a lack of love because He delays but, in the tense, behold how he loved him. He loved Lazarus. He was one of his best friends, but his delay was not because he didn’t love him. It’s because God had a different timing.

Dave:I mean, Mark, you said earlier when God delays, in this case it was—he said it—it’s for your faith, not your doubts.

Mark:Exactly.

Dave:Often in our life experience, I feel the opposite. I find myself doubting rather than waiting and increasing my faith. How do we make that move?

Mark:God’s delays in answers to prayer or if He doesn’t, when I snap, He doesn’t jump, is not to be a sign of indifference on his part. So His delay is not indifference.

So secondly that I should accept the timing of God. Now Martha and Mary I know when the resurrection’s going to happen. It’s going to be all right back then. No, I am the resurrection. I’m giving life to people now. And so the difference is if God doesn’t heal me immediately, like if God didn’t heal my brother Paul immediately, that doesn’t at all mitigate against his eternal plan for my brother. And I think when we think of life as a vapor versus eternity, and we judge God on the basis of that vapor and miss the eternity—

Ann:That’s tiny, tiny—

Mark:—we’re making a major mistake of proportion.

And then I should believe the truth about Jesus. That’s the core. You believe you have life and when you believe you have life, even if you die because He’s the resurrection. So on this Good Friday—we’ll celebrate in a couple of days His resurrection—He pre-teaches the resurrection before He ever does it, in this passage.

Ann:What do you mean by that?

Mark:He goes through the experience with Lazarus to let you know He’ll go through His own experience, and it’ll be His experience on the cross—resurrection that’ll provide the eternal life. So the resurrection of Lazarus is a physical resuscitation. Jesus is a physical resurrection, but it’s the resurrection that guarantees our resurrection because He lives, we too shall live Paul said.

Dave:I mean you think Jesus on this day is thinking about Good Friday?

Mark:Yeah, I think He’s thinking about the cross and the resurrection.

Ann:How much time lapsed between Lazarus and the crucifixion? Do they know?

Mark:We don’t know exactly because what we have here in 11, we go right into chapter 12, which is the transition and sort of summary of this is how it all culminated. And then you go into the upper room discourse and you’re in the last week of his life. In fact, the night before he dies.

Ann:Maybe like a week or two?

Mark:Possibly. Yeah.

Dave:Okay, here’s a question everybody’s always wondered. John 11:35, shortest verse in the Bible, everybody knows it, “Jesus wept.” When I’ve taught that, and maybe I’ve been wrong because I’m now sitting with the scholar, but the word wept doesn’t mean this little cry. It was pretty intense.

Mark:Yeah, it was.

Dave:What do you think is happening in his soul?

Mark:I think Jesus is a hundred percent human and a hundred percent deity. And so his love is as deep as it would be for any other person and maybe more. And I think that the concept of death being a sting and being a victory for the enemy, he knows how important that is to understand. And so death of his, even though he’s going to, if I could say it, he could say, Lazarus, come forth and it’s done.

Ann:He knew he was going to do that but…

Mark:Yeah. He knows He’s going to do that. In the same way He knows what’s going to happen for the entire future, but he weeps over Jerusalem. I wish you would, but you didn’t. And so the agony and the emotional relationship therefore, the relationship with Lazarus, it’s a deep agony of I see what death does to a person and to their families.

Dave:And again, when you read it and the perfect illustration of that’s The Chosen. Of course they do it perfectly. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Ann:But it’s still so good.

Dave:And we just did watch it. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong because there’s a lot of liberties they take, but when you see the son of God crying, it does hit you, His humanity. He’s deity, hypostatic union. He’s both, but He felt what we felt and sometimes it grabs you like, He really did. And it broke His heart, even though He knew what I’m bringing him back to is worse than where he was. He was in eternity. But it just makes you fall in love with our Savior. It’s like He lived the life. He feels what we feel, and He understands.

Ann:Yeah. I think that’s what I have felt too. Even reading this again, and I’ve read it so often, but how much Jesus must have mourned with us, that we die, and our flesh dies and the mourning and the suffering that we feel, He understands that. And it’s good to know that He understands that.

Mark:Yeah. Speaking of another film, The Passion.

Ann:Yes.

Mark:I grew up in an evangelical family. So for me it was the old rugged cross. It was resurrection and that was all great. And I had dismissed in my thinking by default, the agony leading up to that resurrection. So the whipping and the scourging and the trials. And in the middle of all of that going on, we did a book at the seminary called Why, O God on suffering and disability in the church as a ministry. Joni Eareckson Tada did the opening and closing chapter. Well, we did a course and then we wrote a book about it, and I was assigned Suffering in the Gospels.

Ann:Wow.

Mark:So page by page went through the gospels and this relates to what you were just saying. We only have about 50 to 60 days out of 3 ½, 4 years that we know are recorded in the gospels. That’s why many other signs He did in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. And I found that before the passion week, the last week of his life, there were 50 times he was disparaged, attacked, called names. I mean, that’s an average of once a day.

Ann:Wow, 50 times!

Mark:Fifty times before you ever get to the passion week. And so the suffering of Christ was not just on the cross. And so that full humanity He entered into, He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. Hebrew says He suffered in all points as we are yet without sin. That suffering, the cross was ultimately the culmination of that. But the incredible suffering that He faced on an average of every day of his life.

Ann:The rejection.

Mark:That rejection.

Ann:I’ve never really thought of that.

Mark:I hadn’t neither and it moved me. And plus that with The Passion film. I saw the previews. I was in Dallas with a group of leaders, and we got to see a pre-edited version before they put the whip in the hand by CGI and things like that. You just, it was gut wrenching because I just had never thought of that in physical terms before. And it doesn’t take away from the expiation on the cross for sin. That’s obviously the culmination of it, but all that He felt, and so—

Ann:All that we have felt.

Mark:And all that we have felt, He felt perfectly.

Ann:Yeah.

Mark:Ours is an imperfect feeling because we’ve got mixed emotions. He has no sinful emotion but feels the emotion to the fullest. And that’s a factor we can’t forget.

Dave:And as you think, as we wrap up, today’s Good Friday, what Mary and Martha felt that their brother’s gone. He’s never coming back. Good Friday ends that way. In the original story, and even as we experience it now, it’s like we don’t know if Saturday or Sunday’s coming.

Ann:And imagine the pain they felt.

Dave:There’re people living in sorrow right now walking into Easter weekend. What would you say to them? I mean, I hear the story, and it gives me hope, but some are even reading the story and still not hopeful. So what would you say?

Mark:I would come back around and say the very reason He came and took on flesh was to identify with us, to suffer with us and to suffer for us. And therefore He understands us. Even if we don’t know and aren’t sure, the Bible says He does. And then what did He do for us as He identified with us and suffered for us? He went to the ultimate level of humiliation, sacrifice obviously to the point of death. The whole Philippians 2 model: being God all the way to a point of death. He who was rich became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich Paul says. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He took the penalty of sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. So to understand that he knows us, he understands us, he identifies with us, he suffered for us, and he has an answer for us. As you stand at the coffin of a loved one, eternity suddenly becomes more real. And so job as a family member—father, grandfather—do my kids and do my grandkids know that truth He wants me to know. I’m the resurrection and the life, parallel to that in the passage, do you believe this?

Dave:Yeah.

Mark:And she’s going, “Well, I believe the big”—no, no. Do you believe it now? Not the long distance one. It’s what starts now and the difference it makes because eternal life doesn’t start after I die. Eternal life starts when I believe. And so that’s the hope factor. There is a place for hope.

Dave:As a preacher for 30 years, a lot of sermons, a lot of text of scripture, every Easter, I get so excited because the message is so important to understand. God still raises dead things, a dead marriage, a dead faith, a dead hope. He did it. He hasn’t stopped doing so I mean, we get the bunny, and we get all the other stuff. I’m like, just get that out of here. You got to focus on the truth of what God’s saying. I am, not a resurrection, the resurrection and the life.

Ann:That’s what I was going to say.

Dave:Do you believe this?

Mark:That’s right.

Ann:It’s so easy to get caught up in holidays.

Dave:Yep.

Ann:Busyness, meal prep, all of that. But as you’re speaking and talking through this scripture, the weight of the gospel and the beauty of the gospel presses in. I think we really need to take our time, read through that scripture again, really think through what He’s done for us, and He’s with us. He understands all of it. And even to take some time with your family, with your kids, of just thanking God for what He’s done for us.

Mark:That’s true. The motivation that comes at the end of the resurrection chapter in 1 Corinthians 15 is, “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Why? It’s not in vain in the Lord.

Ann:Yes.

Mark:It makes all of it worthwhile because it’s true. It’s true. We have the ultimate meta-narrative. It’s God’s message. His worldview is the right worldview, and this is the critical part of it. Because if that’s not true, the resurrection’s not true, none of it is true. He put it all on the resurrection there in that chapter.

Dave:There’s possibly somebody listening today on Good Friday who’s not a believer and maybe has listened to yesterday and today and said, “Today’s my day. I think I believe. I want to believe.” Would you be willing to pray for him?

Mark:You bet. You bet.

Father, for that one or more that might be listening and hearing the truth of your gospel, maybe entering their heart and mind with clarity for the first time. It’s easy, it’s simple and it’s easily confused, but you basically bring it down to, do you believe this? Do you believe who Jesus is and what He’s done?

And so Father may they in the quietness of their heart just say, “Lord Jesus, I believe that you are the Savior as the gospel of John preaches and teaches all the way through. You are the Savior who died on a cross for my sin. I believe in you. I trust what you did on my behalf to be God’s answer for my sin and my eternity. I believe in You, and I welcome You into my life by faith. I trust what Your Word says about You and about what You’ve done on my behalf. And I trust you as my Savior. Come into my life. I look forward to the difference that You’ll make by Your Word and by Your Spirit. And I say this with the sincerity of my heart. Amen.”

Ann:Amen.

Dave:Amen. Thank you.

Ann:Thanks, Mark.

Dave:This is FamilyLife Today, and we are Dave and Ann Wilson. You were just listening to Dr. Mark Bailey pray on Good Friday for you and for all of us. And with that in mind, we thought we would love to pray for you as well. We have a prayer team that will pray for you as you send in your request. You can go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme and list your request there and we’ll pray for you.

Ann:We all need people that are praying for us, so send those requests to us. We have a team, we will do it, and we would love to. We’d be honored to in fact. FamilyLife.com/Prayforme.

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