"Jesus was Troubled"

"When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,"(John 11:33)

"Jesus was Troubled". The friend of Jesus, Lazarus, had died and Jesus was in another town preaching the Gospel when He got the tragic news. When He was to told about Lazarus, He continued His ministry for two more days then He left for Bethany to visit this family. If you will read the entire chapter, (John 11) you will find many revealing things about yourself byway of the personalities in this chapter. We all perceive things differently, as well as handle things differently. After Jesus and the 12 arrived and were greeted by various ones, we read that Jesus was "troubled"!! The word troubled in the Greek means "agitated". What was Jesus agitated or stirred about on this particular day? Please allow me to answer my own question with a question, I learned this from reading the gospels, Jesus often answered questions with a question. Was He troubled with the 12 disciples, given the conversation along the way to Bethany? When Jesus told them that they were going to Judea, the 12 immediately reminded Jesus that they were almost stoned to death there on their last visit. How could the God of the universe possibly make it through each day without us to keep Him informed on past, present and future events? Jesus tells them that Lazarus is asleep so let's go wake Him up, exactly what every dead Christian needs is a good shaking and waking!!! Once again the 12 come to the rescue with brilliance, if he's asleep, he's doing good. At this point in the spiritual lesson, Jesus plainly informs the 12 that he is dead and faith filled Thomas chimes in with, "Well by all means, lets go die with him". The fact that the 12 were as blank as a sheet of paper spiritually sometime was definitely troubling to Jesus. Could have the Spirit of Jesus been agitated by the underlying element of the war between God and satan, light and darkness, life and death, faith and flesh, spiritual knowledge and spiritual ignorance, etc..?? Do you think that it could have been the obvious fact that He was actually blamed for Lazarus death by the sisters, "If YOU had been here"? I'm amazed that all the stuff God gets blamed for every day. If you read the story of Adam and Eve very closely, you'll notice that Adam wiggles his way around to blaming God by saying the "woman" made me do it and You gave her to me. Could it have been the fact that these were some of His closest followers, friends and disciples but yet there is very little faith shown in this whole event except by Jesus Himself? Jesus longs for us to be as powerful and faith filled as He, can we be? "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."John 14:12). Could it have been that when He was about to perform the miracle of a lifetime, that He was informed one more time that He couldn't fix this, "He stinketh"? In this chapter we have some of faith's finest but yet they were a long way from where they needed to be!! Where are you today on your journey of faith and maturity? How are you handling the stress or even sometime tragic events of life? In spite of the display of humanity at its best on this particular day, we have a MIRACLE! You too shall get your miracle, just lean on JESUS!! BTW, we all stink, some of us just don't know it yet.......


I Believe,
Scott L. Boatner