I have no idea why or how it happened but my generation has developed an obsession with zombies.
I have never been cool enough to know what was “in” until it was almost out but I can’t help but noticing that a whole lot of people have become infatuated with the living dead. T-shirts with brain eating zombies are everywhere and I even saw a book called Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies that just threw a bunch of random brain eaters into Jane Austen’s classic chick novel. The weirdest thing to me though, is that so many people have mentally prepared themselves for a Zombie Apocalypse, including the University of Florida which has issued a legitimate safety protocol should a Zombie outbreak actually happen. Go Google it, I’m serious.
All this talk of zombies and no one seems to remember the original walking dead man. I am talking, of course, about good ole Zombie Lazarus.
If you don’t know the story told in John chapter 11 let me catch you up on the details.
Martha and Mary are freaking out because their brother Lazarus is about to die so they go get Jesus to come do His thing, since he had been gaining quite a reputation as a miracle worker. Jesus was like “Hey chill out, this will not end in death because I got this all under control.” And then He stayed where He was. The disciples kept asking and wondering when He was going to do something about this obviously very pressing need but Jesus knew what He was doing and waited a couple more days. Then Jesus finally goes to Lazarus’ house and is met with the news that he has already died. Then Martha and Mary freak out again and start blaming Jesus for the death of their brother, which is understandable. Jesus, however, says that Lazzy is just asleep and He is going to go wake him up.
I don’t generally read the King James Version of the Bible but I love to pull it out if only just for the verse that follows in which Martha responds to Jesus by saying “Lord, by this time he stinketh” (v. 39). I find almost unceasing amusement to the fact that King James used words like “stinketh.” It makes me chuckle.
Anyway Jesus isn’t phased by his odorous beloved and tells the mourners who had gathered around him to remove the stone as He brings Lazarus back from the dead.
What has caught my attention recently about this story is what Jesus tells everybody to do next. After Zombie Lazarus starts walking out of the tomb with burial clothes wrapped around his face and hands Jesus doesn’t say “Hey crank up the chainsaw because this dude is about to try to eat our brains,” like you might expect but simply “Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (v 44).
I find it very interesting that Lazarus did not come out of the tomb dressed in his Sunday best. He had been raised from the dead and restored back to life but if anyone saw him they would probably run away in fear.
I can’t tell you how many zombies I know who have been raised from the dead but are still wearing grave clothes. They have had real life changing salvation experiences but what is hanging off of them is everything that they wore when they were dead. They are alive and breathing, but they still stinketh.
We all stinketh a little. I think we forget that we still have a lot of junk that needs to be dealt with once we become a member of the Body of Christ. We have a tendency of churchifying all of our old issues into something that sounds more acceptable and doesn’t have to be addressed. People who used to take pride in themselves now take pride in the ways God chooses to use them. Drama Queens turn into pew gossipers. Rebels become church splitters.
We never really get to find out what happens to Lazarus after this experience but I think it is safe to assume he didn’t come out smelling like a bed of roses and unless Jesus sprayed him down with a can of Axe as he was making his exit from the tomb we can be pretty sure that he still stunketh. Not that I would know by personal experience but I can imagine that hugging a zombie would not be very pleasant and it would not take long for the excitement of Mary and Martha to be diffused by the urgent need of a bath. Lazarus was alive, but there were still issues that needed to be dealt with.
Every Christian should give themselves a daily sniff check. Though a literal sniff between the pits to check for odor would be both helpful and necessary I am taking a more metaphorical approach. Everything we do, everything we say and even everything we think gives off to the world some kind of aroma. Everyone around you knows what you smell like. Does what is coming off of you remind people of who you used to be? Paul says that we are “to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved,” (2 Cor 2:15 NIV) which means that when the world gets a whiff of us they better think of Jesus. What I love about this verse is that it says we are an aroma to God, so that means when God wraps His arms around us and we breathe in each other’s presence He is reminded of His Son. He knows that we have been with Him because we smell like Him. Shouldn’t everyone else get the same impression? What if someone desperately needed the fragrance of Christ in us and all they got was the smell of the living dead?
Zombification only has one cure, revival.
Revival, though it is often translated this way, does not mean “weekend service with a guest speaker.” Revival comes from the Latin word vivere which means simply, “to live.” So it follows that a revival would mean to live again. It is more than just a special service with a guest speaker but a life infusing process of a Holy God. We focus a lot on specific experiences and moments that we remember encountering God and really feeling HIs presence and we think that it is those moments that bring us back to life but I have come to see those times merely as difibulators.
Difibulators are those really fun things doctors and paramedics have that use electric voltage to bring a person’s heart back to beating normally. They jumpstart everything in your body to get you going again, but they don’t keep you alive. Your body has to eventually kick in and start healing and moving again or you will start the decomposition process all over again.
Before firing off all those volts they always yell one thing. Clear!
Everything has to be cleared before life can come back. Grave clothes have to be taken off and issues taken care of.
In 2 Chronicles chapter 29 King Hezekiah is trying to schedule a revival. He is the first good king in a long time and the Temple of God has been defiled with idolatry and paganism and the doors have been shut. Hezekiah knew that if revival was going to take place in his people then they had to take care of some junk so he assembled a team of consecrated men to go in and piece piece clean through the Temple of everything that should not be there. Everything that defiled the Name of God was found, removed, and destroyed.
This is the forgotten duty of Christians. After coming to know the truth of redemption, we can’t forget that we are still wearing grave clothes. We can’t forget that we had spent our whole life prior to salvation filling up our lives with junk that now has to be removed. This is not a job to be done ourselves, since God is the only one who can purify us anyway but we have to be willing to search for those things deep inside of us and let God take control of them.
So the question is, who do you smell like? What about your life reminds people of who you used to be?
You have been resurrected from the dead so you might as well dress the part.
I have never been cool enough to know what was “in” until it was almost out but I can’t help but noticing that a whole lot of people have become infatuated with the living dead. T-shirts with brain eating zombies are everywhere and I even saw a book called Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies that just threw a bunch of random brain eaters into Jane Austen’s classic chick novel. The weirdest thing to me though, is that so many people have mentally prepared themselves for a Zombie Apocalypse, including the University of Florida which has issued a legitimate safety protocol should a Zombie outbreak actually happen. Go Google it, I’m serious.
All this talk of zombies and no one seems to remember the original walking dead man. I am talking, of course, about good ole Zombie Lazarus.
If you don’t know the story told in John chapter 11 let me catch you up on the details.
Martha and Mary are freaking out because their brother Lazarus is about to die so they go get Jesus to come do His thing, since he had been gaining quite a reputation as a miracle worker. Jesus was like “Hey chill out, this will not end in death because I got this all under control.” And then He stayed where He was. The disciples kept asking and wondering when He was going to do something about this obviously very pressing need but Jesus knew what He was doing and waited a couple more days. Then Jesus finally goes to Lazarus’ house and is met with the news that he has already died. Then Martha and Mary freak out again and start blaming Jesus for the death of their brother, which is understandable. Jesus, however, says that Lazzy is just asleep and He is going to go wake him up.
I don’t generally read the King James Version of the Bible but I love to pull it out if only just for the verse that follows in which Martha responds to Jesus by saying “Lord, by this time he stinketh” (v. 39). I find almost unceasing amusement to the fact that King James used words like “stinketh.” It makes me chuckle.
Anyway Jesus isn’t phased by his odorous beloved and tells the mourners who had gathered around him to remove the stone as He brings Lazarus back from the dead.
What has caught my attention recently about this story is what Jesus tells everybody to do next. After Zombie Lazarus starts walking out of the tomb with burial clothes wrapped around his face and hands Jesus doesn’t say “Hey crank up the chainsaw because this dude is about to try to eat our brains,” like you might expect but simply “Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (v 44).
I find it very interesting that Lazarus did not come out of the tomb dressed in his Sunday best. He had been raised from the dead and restored back to life but if anyone saw him they would probably run away in fear.
I can’t tell you how many zombies I know who have been raised from the dead but are still wearing grave clothes. They have had real life changing salvation experiences but what is hanging off of them is everything that they wore when they were dead. They are alive and breathing, but they still stinketh.
We all stinketh a little. I think we forget that we still have a lot of junk that needs to be dealt with once we become a member of the Body of Christ. We have a tendency of churchifying all of our old issues into something that sounds more acceptable and doesn’t have to be addressed. People who used to take pride in themselves now take pride in the ways God chooses to use them. Drama Queens turn into pew gossipers. Rebels become church splitters.
We never really get to find out what happens to Lazarus after this experience but I think it is safe to assume he didn’t come out smelling like a bed of roses and unless Jesus sprayed him down with a can of Axe as he was making his exit from the tomb we can be pretty sure that he still stunketh. Not that I would know by personal experience but I can imagine that hugging a zombie would not be very pleasant and it would not take long for the excitement of Mary and Martha to be diffused by the urgent need of a bath. Lazarus was alive, but there were still issues that needed to be dealt with.
Every Christian should give themselves a daily sniff check. Though a literal sniff between the pits to check for odor would be both helpful and necessary I am taking a more metaphorical approach. Everything we do, everything we say and even everything we think gives off to the world some kind of aroma. Everyone around you knows what you smell like. Does what is coming off of you remind people of who you used to be? Paul says that we are “to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved,” (2 Cor 2:15 NIV) which means that when the world gets a whiff of us they better think of Jesus. What I love about this verse is that it says we are an aroma to God, so that means when God wraps His arms around us and we breathe in each other’s presence He is reminded of His Son. He knows that we have been with Him because we smell like Him. Shouldn’t everyone else get the same impression? What if someone desperately needed the fragrance of Christ in us and all they got was the smell of the living dead?
Zombification only has one cure, revival.
Revival, though it is often translated this way, does not mean “weekend service with a guest speaker.” Revival comes from the Latin word vivere which means simply, “to live.” So it follows that a revival would mean to live again. It is more than just a special service with a guest speaker but a life infusing process of a Holy God. We focus a lot on specific experiences and moments that we remember encountering God and really feeling HIs presence and we think that it is those moments that bring us back to life but I have come to see those times merely as difibulators.
Difibulators are those really fun things doctors and paramedics have that use electric voltage to bring a person’s heart back to beating normally. They jumpstart everything in your body to get you going again, but they don’t keep you alive. Your body has to eventually kick in and start healing and moving again or you will start the decomposition process all over again.
Before firing off all those volts they always yell one thing. Clear!
Everything has to be cleared before life can come back. Grave clothes have to be taken off and issues taken care of.
In 2 Chronicles chapter 29 King Hezekiah is trying to schedule a revival. He is the first good king in a long time and the Temple of God has been defiled with idolatry and paganism and the doors have been shut. Hezekiah knew that if revival was going to take place in his people then they had to take care of some junk so he assembled a team of consecrated men to go in and piece piece clean through the Temple of everything that should not be there. Everything that defiled the Name of God was found, removed, and destroyed.
This is the forgotten duty of Christians. After coming to know the truth of redemption, we can’t forget that we are still wearing grave clothes. We can’t forget that we had spent our whole life prior to salvation filling up our lives with junk that now has to be removed. This is not a job to be done ourselves, since God is the only one who can purify us anyway but we have to be willing to search for those things deep inside of us and let God take control of them.
So the question is, who do you smell like? What about your life reminds people of who you used to be?
You have been resurrected from the dead so you might as well dress the part.
After Jesus brought Lazurus back to life, we read later on that Jesus returned to Bethany 6 days before the Passover & that Mary made a dinner in His honor. In John 12 we find Lazarus reclining at the table with Jesus. The last thing we read about Lazarus is that when the chief priests made plans to kill Jesus, they wanted to kill Lazarus too. Maybe it was the chief priests who were really zombies and they preferred brains to unleavened bread.
ReplyDeleteVinnie R.