When God makes you wait

Pastor Max Lyons opens by asking the room to rate their patience on a scale of one to ten and admits he would give himself a negative seven, preferring to call it "a bias for action." He tells of pre-ordering fish and chips from a new seafood place, waiting, and finally realizing nobody had even started cooking it. Being made to wait feels like being uncared for. But what happens when God makes you wait, not by accident but on purpose? With Easter less than a month away, Elan pivots from the spiritual practices to walking the road to the cross with Jesus, and that road begins in John 11.

Jesus loved them, so He made them wait

Mary and Martha send word that "the one you love is sick." The expected response is that Jesus drops everything and rushes to Bethany. Instead He stays two more days, saying the sickness is for God's glory. Pastor Max notes that the sisters describe Jesus' love with the Greek word phileo, brotherly affection, while John says Jesus loved them with agape, a selfless, sacrificial love. Their understanding of His love did not come close to the real thing, and neither does ours. The love of Jesus doesn't always move fast, but it always moves best.

Not yet: the story of Elan's beginning

Pastor Max recounts how he and Pastor Juliet felt God call them to plant a church in Chicagoland and were ready to move immediately. God said, "Not yet." They spent five months with his parents in Idaho, a year in Nashville, and two years on staff at a church in Florida before God finally released them. Had they gone on their own timeline, they likely would have launched in 2019 or January 2020, a brutally hard time to start a church. Just because God doesn't show up on your timeline doesn't mean He doesn't love you. From Psalm 103, Israel knew only God's deeds, while Moses came to know God's ways by interpreting his circumstances through God's love.

I am the resurrection and the life

By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days, past the point Jewish tradition held any hope of return. Martha says her brother will rise at the last day, and Pastor Max pauses to teach on the Christian hope of bodily resurrection when Jesus returns, drawing on 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15. The kingdom has already begun and will be fully here when Jesus comes back. Since the death rate still holds at one hundred percent, he urges people to spend more time preparing for eternity than for their next vacation.

Jesus wept, and Jesus snorted

At the tomb Jesus weeps and is "deeply moved," a Greek word that can mean to groan or snort like an irritated horse. He is not angry at Lazarus but at sin and death, because this is not how creation was meant to be. When Jesus says to take away the stone, Martha objects about the smell. We do the same when God asks us to step out: too busy, too unqualified, afraid of rejection. It is God's job to do the miracle, but our job to move the stone, whether that means a hard conversation, daily prayer, serving, giving, or ending a toxic relationship.

The miracle that led to the cross

Lazarus walks out of the tomb and many believe, yet some run to the Pharisees, and from that day the chief priests plot to kill both Jesus and Lazarus. Fearing a growing crowd would bring Roman wrath, Caiaphas reasoned it was better for one man to die than the nation perish, yet Jerusalem fell in AD 70 as Jesus predicted in Luke 19. Quoting William Barclay, the very steps they took to save their nation destroyed it. When we grasp control in our own strength, we often ensure the very thing we feared. When you rush the process, you can ruin the promise.

A table of transformed lives

Six days before Passover, Jesus reclines at a table in Bethany with Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Simon the leper, and the disciples, every one of them transformed by Him, which is why the priests wanted Lazarus silenced. A life transformed by Jesus is the loudest sermon you will ever preach. Pastor Max closes by inviting three groups forward for prayer: those in a season of waiting, those who need to step out and move the stone, and those who need to release control and trust God.