John 11:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Now here comes the second intimation. The first has not penetrated, will the second? ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.’Well, that might throw us today. We put these things in separate compartments. Sleep is sleep, and death is death. But sleep was a common term for death in those days. You read it often in the Bible. So they should have understood the meaning of his words. Lazarus is sick. It is so urgent he has been sent for by the sisters. The message has been sent. It is obviously more serious than an ordinary kind of sickness. ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.’You think that the disciples would catch on. He has died and he is going to raise him. He has said this was a sickness not unto death, but for bringing glory to the Son of God. It is obvious he is going to do something. ‘That I may awake him out of sleep.’ What a beautiful term that is, used in the New Testament about believers who die. They sleep. What a term! The body sleeps; the soul lives. The body is dead. Ah yes, but this term is used. No, it sleeps, because it is going to be raised again one day, even though it should entirely decompose, yet it is going to be raised. Sleep is the appropriate term for the body when a believer dies, because sleep, after all, is only a preparation for getting up the following morning and rising again. And a person is relatively easily aroused from sleep. And at the word of Christ, all those who are believers, whose bodies are in the grave, will rise.