When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. (John 11:43-44)
Lazarus lay in the tomb for four days. The stone sealed him in, the mourners accepted the finality of death, and the sisters felt the delay pressing on them. When Jesus arrived, he approached a situation that already smelled of decay. Four days had passed. The scene carried a message that the process had finished and nothing further could be done. Jesus answered it with a command. He called the man by name, and the dead man walked out. This is how the glory of God appears. He chooses a moment that looks finished and then speaks in a way that rewrites the end of the story.
If God raised Lazarus after four days, then believing that Jesus rose after three should be even easier. The source of both is the same. The Father works, the Son speaks, the Spirit gives life. Lazarus did not raise himself. He received an act of God executed through the word of Jesus. Jesus did not negotiate with the grave. He treated death as a servant and ordered it to release the man. The point is simple. God does the work. Time and decay do not bind him. We can expect God to act instantly, but even when there is delay, there is never defeat. Any delay will only provide a theater where faith can behold the power that governs time itself.
People act as if they must protect reverence for Christ by shrinking the expectation of power in the church. That instinct insults Christ, because it forgets that the miracles belong to him in every case. Those who resist the promise of greater works should consider Lazarus. God raised him after four days, and God raised Jesus after three. The same worker acted in both cases. Length of time establishes no difference. It exposes the error of treating Jesus’ earthly experience as a ceiling. Lazarus’s four days shattered that imagined limit while keeping all honor with Christ who commanded the grave. Greater works remain his works, extended through his people. The increase magnifies the worker, not the instruments. The only reasonable conclusion is that the days mean nothing to God. If four days did not hinder him, three days could never stand in the way. The church expects increase in scope and reach because the living Christ acts across nations and generations. Faith draws its confidence from the worker, not from the previous catalog of outcomes. If he chooses to do what no prophet has seen, faith agrees at once, because faith believes the worker.
Unbelief is often rooted in self-worship. Its confidence is small because its object is small. Faith turns toward God alone. It judges every situation by his character and by his promises. Faith opens the mind to possibilities that history has never recorded. The Lord may do something unprecedented in our experience. He may surpass what we have read. He may multiply a sign or enlarge a mercy beyond the pattern we expected. None of this exalts man. The honor belongs to the one who acts. The instrument never becomes greater than the hand that wields it.
Faith has its own language, but it is not rigid. Some misunderstand and think the main task is to avoid negative statements. They become superstitious about words and anxious over every sentence. Scripture teaches something sharper. The mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart. The answer is to fill the heart with the word of God until faith naturally comes out in speech. Words then bend toward promise and expectation. This does not require a nervous refusal to acknowledge present circumstances. Jesus told the disciples that Lazarus had fallen asleep because he wanted them to think about resurrection as easily as waking a friend. When they misunderstood, he stated plainly that Lazarus had died. His confidence remained intact. He preferred to cast the situation under the light of power, but he could also name the present condition without surrendering expectation.
Follow the same pattern. When a person lies sick, we can say that he is sick, and in the same breath say that God heals. When a family carries debt, we can say that the burden exists, and also say that God prospers and that the future will not look like the present. A pattern of speech that centers on present circumstances is an unmistakable sign of unbelief, so this offers no cover for it. The confession that governs the mind should always point toward the outcome promised by God. We do not train ourselves to fear certain words, as if syllables control providence. We train ourselves to live inside the promises until they set the tone for every observation. Faith keeps a forward posture. It treats the current state as material for God to work on. It never grants finality to a condition that God has spoken against.
Martha warned about the odor. She knew what four days means for a body. Jesus redirected her attention. He told her to believe and to look for the glory of God. Four days provided the stage on which that glory would stand out. When the stone moved and the command went forth, no one could pretend that a miracle had not occurred and that the whole thing had been a huge misunderstanding. God had acted. The command created what it required. The voice of Jesus produced obedience in a man who could not hear. Every difficulty that piles up in your sight only enlarges the place where the word will display itself. Faith refuses the counsel of sight and then watches the counsel of God prevail.
When we bring a man to Christ, we do not say that we saved him. We carried a message and announced God’s command. He granted repentance and faith. When a person recovers from sickness after prayer, we do not say that we healed him. We obeyed the instruction to pray and to lay hands. God gave life and strength. The same applies to every sign and every answer. If anyone insists that greater works would turn attention toward men, he has already shown that his eyes are fixed on men. The church should speak in a different way. We speak as people who have met the worker of miracles. We point to him and repeat his words until the result appears. We accept that he can enlarge the work far beyond anything we have handled before, because his arm reaches farther than our imagination.
Confident and relaxed perseverance grows from this understanding. Do not retreat because the case looks old or the delay has lengthened. Four days announced the end of hope for Lazarus, and four days set the moment for the command to land with resurrection power. Keep praying and speaking in faith. Keep moving toward the tomb with Jesus. The schedule belongs to him. The grave does not own the clock. Every hour lies open to the voice that called the world into existence. A believer who holds this outlook becomes steady. He rejects the tyranny of appearances and treats reports from the senses as material for the Lord to overrule.
Unbelief has no excuse in the presence of a Christ who calls himself the Resurrection and the Life. People tried to destroy him and discovered that death cannot hold the one who authors life. The rulers canceled his breath and then saw him return with the keys in his hand. Since he lives by his own power, he can impart that life whenever he wills. If the grave could not hold Lazarus after four days, it could never hold Jesus after three. The grave surrenders to him. Demons and diseases obey him. History takes its shape whenever he speaks.