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When Lazarus died, Jesus went to Bethany. Martha came out to meet Him, and later her sister Mary. These two women were grieving the death of their dearly loved brother.
When Jesus saw her [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. (John 11:33–35)
Why did Jesus weep if He knew that in five minutes He would raise Lazarus from the dead?
He told Martha, “Your brother will rise again” (11:23) but He did not say to Martha, “Don’t grieve.” He is the Resurrection and the Life, but He weeps with Martha and Mary over their loss. Jesus wept!
He Knows Your Tears
God is always intimately involved in the grief of His people. There is a beautiful verse in the book of Psalms that speaks of God gathering all our tears in a bottle:
You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book? (Psalm 56:8)
Every tear you have ever shed is completely known to your heavenly Father. Not one of them is ever forgotten. The tears of God’s children are precious to Him. They are part of why He sent His Son into the world.
There are many wonderful statements in the Bible of why Jesus Christ came into the world. In one of them the Messiah says, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to… bind up the brokenhearted… to comfort all who mourn… that they may be called oaks of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:1-3), so that you may be able to stand and not be destroyed in your grief.
Bring Your Pain to Him
Our Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). In the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). When your soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, your Savior has been there. You have a Savior who knows what it is to weep.
You also have a Savior with Whom you can talk. There is a great gulf between this world and the next. You cannot talk to your loved one who has died. But if your loved one was in Christ, he or she is with the Savior, and you can talk to the Savior about your loved one who is now in His house. You can tell the Savior how much you miss them and how much you love them. You can bring the pain of your loss to this Savior Who is familiar with sorrow and grief.
One day Christ will wipe away all tears from your eyes. Literally, the Bible says He will wipe all tears “out of” our eyes (see Revelation 21:4), as if He would take away not only the tears, but the tear-ducts themselves (in the resurrection body), because they would no longer be needed. It is not only the tears that God will take away, but also the sorrow and loss that gave rise to them. Lord, hasten that day!
That day has not yet come, and until then, there will be tears. But there is also the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, who says in the book of Lamentations, “See if there is any sorrow like my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12). He plumbed the depths of sorrow when He suffered on the cross. And no one is more ready or more able to walk with you through the valley of grief, sorrow, and loss than Jesus Christ.
Learn more about God’s comfort for our sorrow in the book For All Who Grieve: Navigating the Valley of Sorrow and Loss. Get your copy this month for a gift of any amount.
Colin Smith
Founder & Teaching Pastor
Colin Smith is the Senior Pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has authored a number of books, including Heaven, How I Got Here and Heaven, So Near - So Far. Colin is the Founder and Teaching Pastor for Open the Bible. Follow him on Twitter.
