Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.

• 2 Corinthians 4:11

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

• John 11:1-44

The Boilerplate

My wife took a Bible Study in 2011.  (There was a note in the study guide that identified September 2 and that the study was being held on Friday mornings, or I might not have ever figured out what year.)  My wife had become a Christian in 2000. She greatly respected the pastor’s wife who was also a pastor.  The pastor’s wife spent time as the interim associate pastor, and this Bible study might have been during that time.

My wife passed away in March 2023, and I found this study guide as I was cleaning up.  It is a Beth Moore study guide.  Most of the questions are close-ended, mostly fill-in-the-blank.  But my wife was eager to learn.  She wrote her thoughts in the margins, sometimes encouraged to do so by Beth Moore.  I will use her comments as I did once before, calling this a “with a little help” series in that my wife contributes.  There is more to follow in that she wrote Scriptures and prayers in a notebook.  Probably what she found in her personal Bible study, giving her encouragement through the long illness that took her life.

So, instead of writing about a topic at random, I am going to write on my wife’s comments in the Study Guide. It may follow the study guide topics, but it may not.

Discussion on this topic

Beth Moore asks a couple of general questions to start the discussion.  One was what loss have you most recently experienced, and what kinds of losses have affected you lately.

“Death. … losing a job, health issues.”

• My wife’s response

The death that she talks about here is in my family.  My brother passed away.  Then almost exactly three weeks later, my father passed away.  My mother passed away a couple of months after that, after she hung on long enough to essentially make it impossible to move onto the family land after I retired (forced on me three years later).

As for losing a job, I had two job losses fifteen years before, but since we moved to the Pennsylvania area, she had lost three jobs.  In one case, she was hired as a temporary employee, and set up a doctor’s entire business, just to be shown the door without a thank you.

When she cleaned up the record keeping for a home nursing care group, she was replaced by her boss’ next door neighbor.  Within a year, the company closed their doors for good.

But as for the health issues, she had “worries” more than issues at this point, failing kidneys, diabetes that was under control, and a heart murmur that did not require surgery.  All would become major issues seven to ten years after this point, but my wife studied all aspects of the medical field, and she knew what was coming.

In reading John 11, what evidence was there to suggest a close relationship between Jesus and Lazarus, Martha, and Mary?  My wife went a little further than just John 11.

“Mary poured perfume on the Lord and dried His feet with her hair.  Much love, Jesus walked back through a city who wanted to kill Him.  Jesus wept with the sisters.  He raised Lazarus from the dead.”

• My wife’s response

The disciples were saying that Bethany was too close to Jerusalem, not that they would travel through Jerusalem to get there, but my wife’s point is that Jesus and the disciples walked into danger to pay their respects to Martha and Mary.

What did Jesus say about the delays before returning to Bethany?

“Verse 4: Not end in death, but to glorify God.  Verse 11: He was going to awaken Lazarus.  Verse 15: Lazarus is dead.  Have faith in Jesus.  Verse 40: Believe.  You’ll see the glory of God.”

• My wife’s response

Looking at verses 19 and 45, why were there a lot of people who placed their faith in Jesus?

“[There] to comfort the family, a custom.  Also to show others that Jesus was the Messiah and chose to follow Him.”

• My wife’s response

How do you think a loss of faith could turn into bondage?

“By reliving the pain – not letting go.”

• My wife’s response

We can let go of the pain and the loss, knowing that our loved one is in Heaven, but with a loss of faith, there is no foundation to have any hope at all.

Have you ever felt this type of bondage?

“By giving me a sense of hopelessness and pity.”

• My wife’s response

I think she meant self-pity.

But what did Jesus prove to Martha?

“He’s the great ‘I AM’.  God Himself.”

• My wife’s response

This was a short lesson, and my wife wrote very little in the margins.  The deaths within my family were recent, and the emotions were still raw to her even though she had an uneasy relationship with my brother and my mother was antagonistic toward my wife to the end.  My wife might not have understood why there was strife, but part of her loss was that she could not learn what the strife was to correct it.  She continued to love when no love was given in return.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory