Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” - John 11:32–36 (ESV)
There is a verse in the Bible so brief that a child can memorize it in thirty seconds. Sunday school teachers have used it for generations as the perfect memory verse for the youngest students in their classes. Two words. Nine letters. A complete sentence. And yet, in the history of human literature, in the long sweep of everything that has ever been written down on parchment or paper or screen, there may be no two words more weighted with meaning, more saturated with glory, more startling in their theological depth than these: Jesus wept.
Don’t let their familiarity rob them of their power. Sit here for a moment. Stay in Bethany. Feel the grief hanging in the air like a heavy cloud that hasn’t broken yet. Smell the burial spices. Hear the sound of mourning. And watch the Son of God, who spoke the universe into existence and holds all things together by the power of His Word, stand at the graveside of His friend and let the tears fall.
This is one of the most important passages in all of the New Testament, not because it tells us the most about what Jesus can do, but because it tells us everything about who Jesus is.
The scene begins with Mary. If you know your New Testament, you know that Mary of Bethany has a habit of ending up at the feet of Jesus. In Luke 10, she sat at His feet to listen. In John 12, she would anoint His feet with costly perfume. And here in John 11, she falls at His feet in grief. She is a woman who knows where to bring the full weight of her life - the wondering, the worshiping, and the weeping - and it is always to the same place.
She says to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Her sister Martha had said nearly the same words just moments before, in verse 21. Some commentators have suggested that these two sisters had likely said this to one another many times over the four days since Lazarus died. It was the sentence that haunted the house. If only He had come sooner. If only He had been here.
There is raw, real, human grief in these words. But there is also faith. These women are not abandoning their belief in Jesus. They are bringing their confusion to Jesus. They don’t understand why He delayed. They don’t know what He is about to do. But they fall at His feet anyway. They address Him as Lord. Even in the middle of their sorrow, they are still looking to Him.
That is one of the most important things I can tell you today. The goal of the Christian life is not to never grieve. The goal is to grieve in the right direction, to grieve toward Christ, not away from Him. Mary’s tears did not drive her from Jesus. They drove her to Him. And when you are in the valley, when the phone rings with news you never wanted to hear, when the doctor’s report changes everything, don’t run from Him. Fall at His feet. That is exactly where He wants you.
Now watch what happens next, because this is where the passage becomes almost breathtaking in its intimacy.
Verse 33 tells us: “When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.”
The Greek word translated “deeply moved” is a word that carries within it the idea of an inward groan, a stirring at the very core of one’s being. It is not a polite, restrained, dignified emotional response. This is visceral. This is deep. The Son of God looked upon the grief of Mary and the mourners surrounding her and something moved in Him at a level that language barely reaches.
And then He asked, “Where have you laid him?”
They said, “Lord, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
Now, some people have read this passage and tried to explain away the tears. They’ve suggested that Jesus was weeping over their unbelief, or that He was troubled by the presence of death in a world that was never meant to know it, or that He grieved because He knew what Lazarus had experienced in paradise and now had to call him back into the suffering of this world. And there may well be layers of theological truth in all of those observations. But don’t let any of them become an excuse to explain away the simplest, most straightforward, most beautiful truth right here on the surface: Jesus wept because He loved Lazarus, and Mary, and Martha. The crowd saw it immediately. They said, in verse 36, “See how he loved him!”
They were right. This was love made visible in tears.
I want to spend a moment here, because I think this is the pastoral heart of this passage. And I want to say it as clearly as I know how.
Jesus Christ is not an indifferent sovereign sitting on a distant throne, unmoved by the suffering of His people. He is a person, fully God and fully man, and the tears He shed at the tomb of Lazarus are the tears of one who genuinely, deeply, personally cares about the people He loves.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. The same Lord who stood in Bethany and wept is the same Lord who sits today at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. He has not forgotten what it felt like to weep. He has not moved so far into glory that the pain of His people no longer reaches Him.
Are you grieving today? He knows. Are you confused, like Mary, wondering why God didn’t show up sooner, why the miracle didn’t come in time, why the prayer went unanswered in the way you needed it to be answered? He sees you. Are you standing at a graveside, or sitting in an empty house, or lying awake in the dark with a grief too deep for words? He is not unmoved. He is not untouched. The Bible says He weeps with those who weep.
That is not a minor footnote in the story of the Christian faith. It is at the very heart of the gospel that God did not watch our suffering from a safe distance but entered into it. He came. He stood in Bethany. He wept.
There is one more thing I must tell you, and it is the most important thing of all.
Jesus wept, but Jesus did not stay weeping.
If you keep reading in John 11, just a few verses beyond where our passage ends today, you will find that Jesus stood before the sealed tomb and commanded, with the authority that belongs only to the Creator of life: “Lazarus, come out.” And Lazarus came out.
The tears did not mean defeat. The grief did not mean that God had lost control of the story. The delay did not mean abandonment. Every tear on Mary’s face, every tear on the face of Jesus, every bit of sorrow in those verses was the darkness just before the dawn.
John tells us in verse 4, at the very beginning of this chapter, that Jesus said of this sickness: “It does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” From the very beginning, Jesus knew where this was going. He knew that Lazarus would walk out of that tomb. He knew that this moment of grief was not the final chapter.
And here is the word I want you to take with you today: whatever tomb you are standing in front of, whatever situation looks sealed, finished, beyond hope, Jesus knows where it is going. He is not surprised by your suffering. He has not been caught off guard by your circumstances. And while He weeps with you in the middle of your pain, He is also, at this very moment, working all things together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
The same Jesus who wept at the grave of Lazarus is the same Jesus who rose from His own grave on the third day. Death does not have the final word. The tomb is not the end. The last chapter has not been written.
Weep if you need to weep. He will weep with you. But never stop trusting the One whose tears prove His love, and whose resurrection proves His power.
Lord Jesus, thank You for weeping with us. Meet us in our grief, steady us in our confusion, and remind us that no tomb has ever had the final word over You. We trust You with what we cannot understand. Amen.
Wonderful message
Great message and much needed!