“Our friend Lazarus sleepeth,” said Jesus.  Though all of the disciples were thus addressed, we think of John as especially including Jesus and himself in that word “our,” because of the nearness of their relation to the afflicted family.  And then that other word “sleepeth”—­it must have carried him, as well as James and Peter, back to the home of Jairus, where they heard the same voice to which they were now listening say, “The child is not dead but sleepeth.”

We almost wonder that the three did not turn to their fellow-disciples and say that “Jesus had spoken of the death of Lazarus,” while “they thought that He spake of taking rest in sleep.”  But evidently not so; and when Jesus “said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead,” doubtless John was the saddest of them all, because of his special interest in him.  The full record—­the only one of what transpired in that sad, joyful home—­shows how closely John watched every movement of Jesus and the sisters, and how carefully he noted what they said.  We may give credit to his memory, even with the aid which he says was promised the disciples in their remembrance.  He notes the coming of Martha to meet Jesus, while “Mary sat still in the house;” Martha’s plaintive cry, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died;” the conversation between her and Jesus concerning the resurrection; the sudden change from it to His asking for Mary; Martha’s return to the house and whispering in her sister’s ear, “The Master is come and calleth for thee;” the hurried obedience to the call—­all these incidents are recorded by John with the particularity and vividness of an eyewitness.

It appears as if Jesus would not perform the intended miracle until the arrival of Mary.  John’s account of their meeting is full of pathos.  He watches her coming, notices the moment she catches sight of Him through her tears, and her first act of falling down at His feet, and her repetition of Martha’s cry, “Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died.”  He looks into the faces of both as “Jesus sees her weeping.”  He contrasts Mary’s real and deep sorrow with the outward and heartless outcries of pretended grief, at which Jesus “groans in spirit,” because a seeming mockery in the presence of His loving friend.  John measures the depth of the Lord’s “troubled” spirit by His outward movements.  He opens to us His heart of hearts in the brief, tender record, “Jesus wept.”  Where in the whole story of His life do we gain a keener sense of His humanity, especially His tenderness and sympathy.  What a revelation we would have missed if John had been silent, but the emotion of His own heart had been too deep to allow any such omission.  “Jesus wept.”  As Professor Austin Phelps declares, “The shortest verse in the Bible is crowded with suggestions.”

While John is our guide to the tomb of Lazarus, and more than that, the sincere mourner with the afflicted sisters, he is yet more the disciple of Jesus, receiving new and lasting impressions of divine truth and of his Master, which are embodied in his story.