Daily Bible Verses for 3/15/2016

Bible Verse
So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Reading Notes
Jesus is the truth and the life and without Him there is no life. In this passage of scripture we see the death of Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha. Both of these sisters knew and believed in the healing power of Jesus. They were convinced that if Jesus had come sooner while their brother was still alive He could have healed him and saved his life. However, even though they believed in a future resurrection of the dead, they did not fully understand that Jesus is the Author of life. They did not fully understand the role, power and person of the Messiah. They only thought in terms of healing and did not understand the true identity of Jesus, nor understood His divinity. That He Himself was God incarnate and therefore had the power not only to heal, but to give life itself. Why does He have this power? Because Jesus is the Author of creation, and through Him all things are held together. So through this event Jesus taught them and us that we can trust in Him personally for salvation and eternal life when we die. Moreover, the Bible tells us to, “absent from the body, is to be in the presence of Christ.”

We read that Lazarus had been dead four days and at this point his body would have begun decomposing with absolutely no hope of recovery. Jesus purposely waited till it was beyond all hope, so no one could find an excuse for the resurrection of Lazarus. More importantly, Jesus waited in order to give the people an object lesson as to His divinity and reasons for His incarnation. Jesus is the Author of life and with a single command, Lazarus was alive once more. Dear believer, we must never forget Jesus is life and through Him creation came into existence. Through Him and by Him everything was created that was created. Without Jesus there is no life, no resurrection and no eternal life and therefore, no hope for salvation. This means that through faith, Jesus not only restores our relationship with God the Father, which was broken by sin. But Jesus also gives us life! He gives us a more abundant life now as we live for Him and serve in God’s kingdom work, as well as eternal life in the age to come. Through faith we become children of God, adopted into the family of God by faith. By our faith, we become a new creation in Christ Jesus our Lord. As the Bible tells us “when we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ.”