"Where Have Ye Laid Him?"

Scarcely had the Lord Jesus asked this question about Lazarus when tears, telling of pent-up sorrow, began to flow down His holy cheeks.

"Jesus wept" (John 11. 35). What a tiny verse-the smallest in the Bible! To write about it, any pen is unworthy. Words but poorly describe the Lord's feelings, and thoughts fall short in assaying to imagine what was passing through His mind.

"Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister (Mary), and Lazarus." When Martha heard that the Lord Jesus was coming she "went and met Him : but Mary still sat in the house." Martha said, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," for so she confidently thought in her great love and appreciation of the Lord. Then Mary went to the Lord, and said exactly what Martha had. They had sent a touching message whilst Lazarus lived, sick as he was, but the Lord's coming was not immediate, purposely. What seemed like delay, they did not understand; nor did His disciples. But there was a great truth to come from the Lord; and to sorrowing sisters, His own disciples, and others would be manifested who He was. By one miraculous act (His chief miracle) along with His unique words, "Lazarus, come forth," would it be forcibly shewn that He was able to raise dead ones, and was therefore the Son of God with power, giving evidence for the powerful assertion of Romans 1. 4.

The deep sorrow of those sisters, expressed by words and tears, altogether apart from thoughts which He alone could read, and the demonstrative sympathy of their friends, gave the Lord much concern, and he was troubled exceedingly (the margin of the Revised Bible says "He was moved with indignation in the spirit and troubled Himself").

Note, please, all that is said about the Lord in the three verses, 33, 34 and 35, of this eleventh chapter: what He saw, what He did (inwardly first, and subsequently outwardly), and what He said. What shall be said or thought of all this!

"Where have ye laid him?" the Lord asks, and He weeps for loved ones in sorrow, causing Jews to say, "Behold how lie loved him." What precedes these enquiring words, and follows therefrom, give a chapter containing a simple yet

profound story of One who is tender in feelings, and in His words as truly human as He is divine.

unknown | Jun 1932
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