Text: Luke 7: 11-17
People sometimes don’t realize how true the words are that come from their mouths. Someone blurts out, thank God. Another says my God without even thinking or meaning those words as a prayer.
Now certainly we shouldn’t use God’s name in a careless, mindless way. But there’s more. Thank God! You betcha. Thank God. He’s involved more than we can know. And my God. That throw away expression has tremendous truth. You and I have a God who invites us to call out to him in any trouble and he will hear us.
The people who experienced this blessed miracle of Jesus did not speak thoughtlessly. Rather they said something more profound than they realized. They thought that God had sent a powerful prophet like Elijah into their midst. They did know that in the person of Jesus:
“God has Come to Help His People”
I. He comes to a sad procession
II. The Lord Jesus brings life.
There is something so very special about Luke’s account before us this morning. In these few short verses there is so much to be learned about your Lord. As he encounters this widow immersed in sorrow, we see his grace, his power and his mercy. Now it’s like the Holy Spirit is sitting outside your heart with a truckload of comfort in Jesus. He’s just waiting to deliver it.
Jesus was coming from Capernaum. There he had healed the servant of that Roman centurion who had such a remarkable faith in Jesus. But that miracle was one of many. So many had experienced his healing touch. Those whose skin were rotting with leprosy. Those whose souls were tormented by demons. Those whose blindness left them in darkness. So many had experienced the healing touch of our Savior. So when Jesus traveled that 25 miles from Capernaum to Nain, it wasn’t just his disciples. There was a large crowd that followed him.
Imagine being part of that crowd. Think of the happy, excited conversations you’d be having. The hopeful expectations. But then we’re told: 2 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.
Let’s think about this woman and what she had been through. She had been this way before with the body of another loved one, her husband. And now it was her son, her only son.
Perhaps her son had gotten sick. They had tried the remedies of the day, but nothing helped. He only worsened. The light of his life kept getting dimmer, till it was only a flicker and then nothing. First her husband and now her only son was gone. In grief, she would tear her upper garment.
The body would be laid on the floor where it would be washed, anointed and wrapped in the best the widow could afford. And now the mother was left oneneth– that is to sit on the floor, where she would eat not eat meat or drink any wine. Arrangements would be made. Women would be hired to mourn. A flute player to play a sad melody. Someone to speak at the grave.
When all was ready they would place his body on a bier, a stretcher of sorts. The NIV word coffin is not a good choice. Then would begin the procession out the east gate to the cemetery. The women would go first with the widow. Then came those carrying the young man’s body. And then a large crowd. Back then it was considered an insult to the Creator not to follow the dead. So you went.
Yet in all this careful preparation, there was nothing. There was nothing to console the heart of a widow who had lost her only son and maybe her only child. Full of grief, she leads this very sad procession to the cemetery. This is what meets Jesus this day. This inconsolable sight called death.
I’d like you to think of something now. We were all part of that procession. We were part of a procession that began in a Garden long ago. Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. Now again and again the scene is repeated. Death claims another and the procession takes one more to that place which seems to be the worst kind of dead end. We can sense the grief of the widow. We have felt it ourselves and we will feel it again. Until the day comes when it is you and me who will be what that procession is all about. But God has come to help his people.
Here two processions meet one another. Which one will give way to the other? You might expect Jesus and his followers to pull over to the side out of respect and courtesy. But our Lord has something else in mind. He has something else in his heart. Yes, God has come to help his people. We see it here. The Lord Jesus brings life.
13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” It wasn’t hard for Jesus to recognize the widow. Her bitter, silent tears no doubt gave her away. If we were there we may have thought, oh that’s too bad. But Jesus felt more. The one who carried our sorrows was moved to compassion. His heart went out to her. He looks at her and says, Do not cry.
Don’t cry. We might say that to someone we know in the midst of a tough time. We may have said it to our children. We don’t want to see that person so sad. Don’t cry. But most of the time there is little we can do. Not Jesus here. Not the Lord of life. Not the one to whom we pray.
14 Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. Again don’t think of a coffin, but a body on a kind of stretcher. What Jesus did here you did not do. You did not touch the dead unless it was absolutely necessary. It made you unclean by the Law of Moses and the rabbis had added all kinds of other reasons to avoid it. Yet now Jesus comes up and touches. It’s no wonder those carrying the body stood still. They were shocked.
But that’s why Jesus had come. To confront death. To confront that awful reality that comes to us all. He confronted it here on the road. And the time would come when he would confront it again in a much different way. He would go to that cross suffer it in our place. For the wages of sin is death. And there He would take our sin. He would suffer our death to set us free. And he has. We know because he has risen. The Lord brings life
Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” When we read about Elijah a few minutes ago, what did you notice? Elijah cried out to the Lord. He pleaded with him again and again for the sake of another woman whose only son had died. But here the Lord of life just speaks. He just speaks with the authority that is his as the Son of God. I say to you, get up. For any one else to say that, it would have been silly. Dead is dead and there is nothing you or I can do to change that. But not Jesus. The Lord brings life. His Words brought life.
And they brought life to you. There was a time when you and I were dead in here (our heart). We could no more believe in Jesus than a 2 by 4. We were spiritually dead. But the Lord brings life. His gospel Word has that power. In our baptism. the Spirit brought you life through his Word. God has come to help his people.
5 The dead man sat up and began to talk,… It makes me wonder what the young man then said. Maybe it was like someone coming out of a daze. What am I doing wrapped up like this. What’s going on? Can someone get me out of these. My mother, where is my mother?
And now comes the most touching part. It’s hard for me to imagine the joy and amazement that followed. I’ve seen a young boy who survived a drowning. He was at the bottom of the pool for God knows how long. And praise God. Someone resuscitated him. But what was it like when our Savior spoke those life-giving words. What was it like when Jesus now gave this son back to his grieving mother?
Yet I believe the day is coming when that scene will be repeated many times. When we see our Lord Jesus on that Day to come. That child, a mother and father brought to Jesus in baptism and then lost to death. The hurt never quite goes away. But then it will. For Jesus will bring them together once more and wipe away every tear.
But not just a mother and her son. Parents, grandparents, that husband or wife taken from us. What a scene it will be for all those who died in Christ and those now left behind. For we will be with the Lord forever.
And you know something. If we speak these words, we won’t say them wondering like those in Jesus’ day. You and I will say them with every inch of meaning. God has come to help his people. Amen.