It doesn’t really make sense does it. He is the one who indeed could have kept Lazarus from dying but he chooses to delay so that God will be glorified.
When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within Him, and He was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” He asked them. They told Him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much He loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t He have kept Lazarus from dying?” Jesus was still angry as He arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.
John 11:33-38
What a strange passage! He deliberately delays going, to make sure he is outside the Pharisees theological time frame for when the spirit should leave the body. He tells all those around him on a number of occasions that this is all so that God can be glorified and so that you might believe. But then Jesus gets deeply angry, deeply troubled, cries and remains angry for sometime afterward. Why? He is certainly not showing the usual human emotion. Normally we cry at funerals because we are saddened by the departure of a close friend or relative. Even if the deceased was a Christian then we are really crying for ourselves because we will not see them again in this life and will miss them. But Jesus can’t be crying for that reason. He plans to raise Lazarus from the dead. It would be more fitting for Him to stand there and laugh at death in the midst of the funeral.
How do we solve this one? If a passage doesn’t make sense at the paragraph level once you have connected all the pieces then you will need to examine its parts to see if you there is something you are not understanding or something you are missing. Or look at the cultural background of the passage to see if there is a key there. In this case the key is at word level related to the emotional words used.
How to do that in E-Sword
Select any of the versions with a Plus (+) from the versions available to you. Double click on the Strong’s reference number. Under the available dictionaries chose either NASEC, Strongs or Thayers in the bottom dictionary panel. The meanings of the words will appear in the panel below. But you need to have these Dictionaries loaded in E-Sword before you can use them. But don’t worry they are free. It just takes time to set it up. Now you have the power of a Greek lexicon at your command and you don’t even have to know Greek. The definitions are all in English. Take your time to work on it now and find out what is going on behind the scenes in this section. I will break it open with you tomorrow. Don’t forget to look at the Commentaries as well (especially Barnes, Gill, Jamieson Fausset and Brown (JFB) and Vincent’s Word Studies (VWS).
Our world is in trouble because we are too serious about trivial matters & flippant about things of eternal significance.
Rick Warren
It’s stupid to let people from your past continue to hurt you today through memory. They can’t hurt you anymore unless you allow it.
Rick Warren