Jesus Is Glad for Your Belief
And then notice, verse 15. And I am glad? Huh, that's an interesting twist on the story, isn't it? I am glad?
It could sound ghoulish, almost, if we didn't know Jesus and his purpose and his intention. If we hadn't heard him express what he does in verse four, we didn't understand that verse five, love governs his dealings with this particular family. So when Jesus says, and I am glad, notice what he says, for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless, let us go to him.
Again, if he was present, he may have healed him. If he was present, closer to his actual death, there would have been that potential for confusion that maybe he was just mostly dead and Jesus is a witch doctor. Jesus is simply a magician, which, by the way, is how the Talmud treats Jesus Christ. They don't confess Jesus as the Messiah of God.
They don't confess Jesus as the Son of God. They don't rehearse God from God, light from light, true God from true God. As far as the Talmud is concerned, Jesus was a fake and a sham and a deluder. And if anything, he had magical powers.
And so they didn't, Jesus doesn't want that to be the case. I am glad for your sakes, he said, and then notice the target. I am glad for your sakes that you may believe. Isn't that interesting?
Jesus is glad for your sakes that you may believe.
Hyper-Calvinism Inverts Christ's Gladness
There's a type of preaching out there, we call it in terms of theological identification, hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism turns the gladness of Jesus right up on its head. Look at what the text says. What makes Jesus glad?
Ask yourself today, if you're an unbeliever, what would make Jesus glad? I know we don't usually think like this, and we don't usually ask these sorts of questions, but when you have a ball lobbed over the plate like that, you take a swing at it. And when Jesus expresses what makes Him glad, and the gladness that Jesus expresses is at the level of your faith in Him, Does that seem like he's telling you to stay far away? Don't ever come to me.
Don't ever approach me. Don't ever believe on me. Never listen to these offers of mercy and grace that come repetitively in the scripture. I mean, go from Genesis to Revelation, what do you find?
A God running from His creation? No, a God running to His creation. When Adam and Eve sin, they run into the garden, into the midst of the trees to hide themselves. Who comes to fetch them?
God. When the men of Babel build that temple, or build that tower to raise up into the heavens, and God confounds their lips, how does God respond to that? He calls Abram out of the Chaldeans and says, I'm going to make a great name out of you. In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
In the fullness of the time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Everything in the Bible converges upon you today to believe in him.
The Object of Christ's Gladness
What makes Jesus glad? He's not glad that Lazarus is dead. He's not glad that Martha and Mary are sad. His gladness is not in the circumstances revolving around the tragedy in this family.
His gladness is in the blessed effect. It's in the fruit. He knows what he's going to do. He knows that he's going to call this stinking man out of the grave.
And he knows that many are going to believe in him. And Jesus says, that makes me glad. If in your head God is this distant being upon whom no man can approach, that's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is the God of Luke 15. who when the prodigal was a long way off, the father runs to him, the father falls on him, the father kisses him, the father brings him back to the house, puts a ring on his finger, and then orders the slaying of the fatted calf.
The Father says, my son that was dead is now alive, my son who was lost is now found. If you've got this concept in your head that God sent Jesus into this world to save just a tiny handful of people, and they all happen to be connected to the same church, that's not Scripture. from every tribe, every tongue, every people, and every nation. When you ask the question, why is Jesus glad in John chapter 11, that you may believe. I'm glad that I was not there for your sakes.