Is there not a time in which the sun will not go down - in which it is safe and right for men to work? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If that love in its wisdom made him tarry, yet that love in its sincerity at last moved him to seek the house of grief. and that because he loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again. He sees the end as well as the beginning. The Lord acts not upon the scale of man, for he sees not as man sees. Ay, the truest love may demand that the sickness should turn to death, for out of the death he may bring the greater glory. It may be the truest love on God’s part to let us lie sick, and not to come post-haste to us to make us well. “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus” and yet when he had heard that Lazarus was sick, “he abode two days still in the same place where he was.” Sometimes true love may think fit to make us wait. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Here was one that was sick, but Jesus loved him just as much for all that. Jesus was not of that cruel sort of people, of whom we have some in these days, who call themselves saints, and who attribute all sickness among God’s people to their sin or to their want of faith. Jesus loved Lazarus, yet Lazarus was sick. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. “Not unto death, but that the Son of God might be glorified.” So the Lord speaks of things, not as they seem to be, nor even as they are in the present moment, but as they shall be in the long run. But he who sees the end from the beginning streaks with a grandeur of style which could not be imitated by us. He should have said that the sickness was unto death, but, ultimately, to the glory of God. Our Saviour speaks in a different style from us. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. I like the omissions of Martha’s and Mary’s prayer. Some prayers would be all the better if they were shorter - all the better if they did not so much declare our own will as declare our confidence in the good will of Christ. They felt that it was quite enough to tell him that Lazarus was sick, and they left it to the tender heart of Jesus to do whatever seemed good in his sight.
Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick). It was “the town of Mary and her sister Martha.”
“The town of Mary and her sister Martha.” A day will come when a city shall be more illustrious for a saint than for a Caesar - be more renowned for deeds of faith than for deeds of battle. In God’s book, towns are most remarkable for saints that dwell in them. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town or Mary and her sister Martha.
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