John 11 - CSB Spurgeon Study Bible

11:6 “So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was.” Notice the connection. “Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.” Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he waited two days to go to him. Sometimes true love may think fit to make us wait. It may be the truest love on God’s part to let us lie sick and not to come immediately to us to make us well. Yes, the truest love may demand that the sickness should turn to death, for out of death he may bring the greater glory. The Lord does not act according to human scales, for humans do not see what the Lord sees (1Sm 16:7). He sees the end as well as the beginning. If Jesus’s love in its wisdom made him tarry, however, that love in its sincerity at last moved him to seek the house of grief.

11:16 “Then Thomas (called ‘Twin’) said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let’s go too so that we may die with him.’” A singular mixture of faith and unbelief! Thomas so believes his Master that he is willing to die with him. He so doubts him that, although the Savior had plainly told him he was immortal till his work was done, yet he is afraid his Master and all of them will be put to death. The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves, and the Lord accepts us notwithstanding our infirmities.

11:24-26 “Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’” Martha is an excellent example of a class of anxious believers. They do truly believe but not with such confidence as to lay aside their cares. They do not distrust the Lord or question the truth of what he says, yet they wonder, “How will this thing be?” So they miss out on most of the present comfort the Lord would minister to their hearts if they received his word more simply. How? and Why? questions belong to the Lord. It is his business to arrange matters so as to fulfill his own promises.