Jesus:Expect the Unexpected! by Linden Malki

It should have been obvious that Jesus had power over life and death; there are descriptions of almost 40 people that He healed from illness and disability in the Gospels, and three that were raised from the dead.  Most of the healings are recorded in Mathew, Mark and/or Luke, and three in John, which are not in the others.  The first one mentioned was in Galilee; an official who probably worked for the Romans who asked Jesus to heal his dying son; who was healed by a word of Jesus spoken to the father. We are told that the whole family believed,  but there was no apparent response from the Jewish establishment.   The other two were both on the Sabbath, both in the Jerusalem area, and both set off a firestorm with the Pharisees. (One was the man at the Pool of Bethsaida, and the other a blind man who was sent to wash his eyes in the Pool of Siloam.)

One of the resurrections from the dead is told in all three of the other Gospels; the raising of the daughter of Jairus, a leader of a synagogue in Galilee. Matthew says that the word spread, despite Jesus' word to not tell about it, but there is no mention of opposition. Another is mentioned only in Luke, early in Jesus' ministry, the raising of the son of a widow in Nain, which got a lot of talk but not opposition. So both Matthew and Luke indicate that these raisings of young men from the dead were widely known in the Galilee region but without the criticism of the Pharisees, which seems to have been primarily a Jerusalem area reaction.

It was, however, the raising of Lazarus in Bethany,  not far from Jerusalem, that blew the lid off. Jesus knew of Lazarus' illness, but deliberately waited four days after his death to make an appearance.  This allowed for the full burial rites to happen, and there was no possible chance that he wasn't actually dead. John, who seems to have had some connections within the Sanhedrin, describes their reaction: intolerable!! Time to get rid of this troublemaker! They should have been aware that Jesus had brought three people at least back from death; that He was going to be difficult to finish off. Matthew describes the efforts made to keep Him in the tomb; the others don't include the details but all mention a very large rock covering the entrance.  God's answer was a long way from the human expectation!