There was a man which will call him Charlie, that's not his real name.

Charlie spent most of his life avoiding the subject of death.

He really did.

I mean, he refused to go to a doctor less he will give him some sort of a terminal diagnosis.

He would not make a will because he felt

that it would be a bad omen. He refused to buy life insurance or burial plot because that would

admit his mortality. But around his 70th birthday, a friend led him to the Lord. And from that day on, everything's changed.

Everything. The fear of death gave way to confidence and assurance of eternal life in heaven

with Jesus. A few years later, he was attending a funeral of a business

acquaintance, and as he sat in the pew next to a friend, as they were leaving the church,

he said to his friend with great joy in his voice, he said, the next one of these parties they

throw, I will be the guest of honor. And he was. Many of us, like Charlie, live our lives

in a state of denial of death or fear of death or both. But those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ

should never be afraid of death. We know what to expect on the other side. We know and therefore

we anticipate that with great joy, not fear. And today we're going to come to the last in

the seven claims of Jesus, I Am, which we call this series, there is an I in the I am, where Jesus says, I am the resurrection

and the life. So I want you to turn with me, please, to John Chapter 11, because Jesus

makes this claim, not in a vacuum, but he makes it in the middle of a funeral. Like all the other claims of

Jesus, you have to understand them in context in order to comprehend what they really mean for

us today. Context is of out of most importance. The whole atmosphere of John 11 in the little town of Bethany was filled with death and decay and distress.

Lazarus, who had been a friend of the Lord Jesus, was buried for four days.

His family and friends were in a state of shock. They were a state of sorrow. They were grieving.

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