Text: Luke 7: 11-17<\/p>\n
People sometimes don\u2019t realize how true the words are that come from their mouths.\u00a0 Someone blurts out, thank God.<\/i>\u00a0 Another says my God without even thinking or meaning those words as a prayer.<\/p>\n
Now certainly we shouldn\u2019t use God\u2019s name in a careless, mindless way.\u00a0 But there\u2019s more.\u00a0 Thank God!<\/i>\u00a0 You betcha.\u00a0 Thank God.\u00a0 He\u2019s involved more than we can know.\u00a0 And my God.<\/i>\u00a0 That throw away expression has tremendous truth.\u00a0 You and I have a God who invites us to call out to him in any trouble and he will hear us.<\/p>\n
The people who experienced this blessed miracle of Jesus did not speak thoughtlessly.\u00a0 Rather they said something more profound than they realized.\u00a0 They thought that God had sent a powerful prophet like Elijah into their midst.\u00a0 They did know that in the person of Jesus:<\/p>\n
\u201cGod has Come to Help His People\u201d
\n<\/b>I.\u00a0 He comes to a sad procession
\nII.\u00a0 The Lord Jesus brings life.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is something so very special about Luke\u2019s account before us this morning.\u00a0 In these few short verses there is so much to be learned about your Lord.\u00a0 As he encounters this widow immersed in sorrow, we see his grace, his power and his mercy.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s like the Holy Spirit is sitting outside your heart with a truckload of comfort in Jesus.\u00a0 He\u2019s just waiting to deliver it.<\/p>\n
Jesus was coming from Capernaum.\u00a0 There he had healed the servant of that Roman centurion who had such a remarkable faith in Jesus.\u00a0 But that miracle was one of many.\u00a0 So many had experienced his healing touch.\u00a0 Those whose skin were rotting with leprosy.\u00a0 Those whose souls were tormented by demons.\u00a0 Those whose blindness left them in darkness.\u00a0 So many had experienced the healing touch of our Savior.\u00a0 So when Jesus traveled that 25 miles from Capernaum to Nain, it wasn\u2019t just his disciples.\u00a0 There was a large crowd that followed him.<\/p>\n
Imagine being part of that crowd.\u00a0 Think of the happy, excited conversations you\u2019d be having.\u00a0 The hopeful expectations.\u00a0 But then we\u2019re told:\u00a0 2\u00a0<\/span><\/sup>As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out\u2014the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s think about this woman and what she had been through.\u00a0 She had been this way before with the body of another loved one, her husband.\u00a0 And now it was her son, her only son.<\/p>\n Perhaps her son had gotten sick.\u00a0 They had tried the remedies of the day, but nothing helped.\u00a0 He only worsened.\u00a0 The light of his life kept getting dimmer, till it was only a flicker and then nothing.\u00a0 First her husband and now her only son was gone.\u00a0 In grief, she would tear her upper garment.<\/p>\n The body would be laid on the floor where it would be washed, anointed and wrapped in the best the widow could afford.\u00a0 And now the mother was left oneneth<\/i>– that is to sit on the floor, where she would eat not eat meat or drink any wine.\u00a0 Arrangements would be made.\u00a0 Women would be hired to mourn.\u00a0 A flute player to play a sad melody.\u00a0 Someone to speak at the grave.<\/p>\n When all was ready they would place his body on a bier, a stretcher of sorts.\u00a0 The NIV word coffin is not a good choice.\u00a0 Then would begin the procession out the east gate to the cemetery.\u00a0 The women would go first with the widow. Then came those carrying the young man\u2019s body.\u00a0 And then a large crowd.\u00a0 Back then it was considered an insult to the Creator not to follow the dead.\u00a0 So you went.<\/p>\n Yet in all this careful preparation, there was nothing.\u00a0 There was nothing to console the heart of a widow who had lost her only son and maybe her only child.\u00a0 Full of grief, she leads this very sad procession to the cemetery.\u00a0 This is what meets Jesus this day. This inconsolable sight called death.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like you to think of something now.\u00a0 We were all part of that procession.\u00a0 We were part of a procession that began in a Garden long ago.\u00a0 Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin<\/span>.\u00a0 Now again and again the scene is repeated.\u00a0 Death claims another and the procession takes one more to that place which seems to be the worst kind of dead end.\u00a0 We can sense the grief of the widow.\u00a0 We have felt it ourselves and we will feel it again.\u00a0 Until the day comes when it is you and me who will be what that procession is all about.\u00a0 But God has come to help his people.<\/b><\/p>\n Here two processions meet one another.\u00a0 Which one will give way to the other?\u00a0 You might expect Jesus and his followers to pull over to the side out of respect and courtesy.\u00a0 But our Lord has something else in mind.\u00a0 He has something else in his heart.\u00a0 Yes, God has come to help his people.<\/b>\u00a0 We see it here.\u00a0 The Lord Jesus brings life<\/b>.<\/p>\n 13 <\/sup>When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, \u201cDon\u2019t cry<\/span>.\u201d It wasn\u2019t hard for Jesus to recognize the widow. \u00a0Her bitter, silent tears no doubt gave her away.\u00a0 If we were there we may have thought, oh that\u2019s too bad.\u00a0 But Jesus felt more.\u00a0 The one who carried our sorrows<\/i> was moved to compassion.\u00a0 His heart went out to her.\u00a0 He looks at her and says, Do not cry<\/span>.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t cry.\u00a0 We might say that to someone we know in the midst of a tough time.\u00a0 We may have said it to our children.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to see that person so sad.\u00a0 Don\u2019t cry.<\/i>\u00a0 But most of the time there is little we can do.\u00a0 Not Jesus here.\u00a0 Not the Lord of life.\u00a0 Not the one to whom we pray.<\/p>\n 14 <\/sup>Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still<\/span>.\u00a0 Again don\u2019t think of a coffin, but a body on a kind of stretcher. What Jesus did here you did not do.\u00a0 You did not touch the dead unless it was absolutely necessary.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s no wonder those carrying the body stood still.\u00a0 They were shocked.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s why Jesus had come.\u00a0 To confront death.\u00a0 To confront that awful reality that comes to us all.\u00a0 He confronted it here on the road.\u00a0 And the time would come when he would confront it again in a much different way.\u00a0 He would go to that cross suffer it in our place.\u00a0 For the wages of sin is death.\u00a0 And there He would take our sin.\u00a0 He would suffer our death to set us free.\u00a0 And he has.\u00a0 We know because he has risen.\u00a0 The Lord brings life<\/b><\/p>\n Jesus said, \u201cYoung man, I say to you, get up!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 When we read about Elijah a few minutes ago, what did you notice?\u00a0 Elijah cried out to the Lord.\u00a0 He pleaded with him again and again for the sake of another woman whose only son had died.\u00a0 But here the Lord of life just speaks.\u00a0 He just speaks with the authority that is his as the Son of God.\u00a0 I say to you, get up.<\/span>\u00a0 For any one else to say that, it would have been silly.\u00a0 Dead is dead and there is nothing you or I can do to change that.\u00a0 But not Jesus.\u00a0 The Lord brings life.<\/b>\u00a0 His Words brought life.<\/p>\n And they brought life to you.\u00a0 There was a time when you and I were dead in here (our heart).\u00a0 We could no more believe in Jesus than a 2 by 4.\u00a0 We were spiritually dead.\u00a0 But the Lord brings life<\/b>.\u00a0 His gospel Word has that power.\u00a0 In our baptism.\u00a0 the Spirit brought you life through his Word. God has come to help his people. <\/b><\/p>\n 5 <\/sup>The dead man sat up and began to talk<\/span>,\u2026 It makes me wonder what the young man then said.\u00a0 Maybe it was like someone coming out of a daze.\u00a0 What am I doing wrapped up like this.\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s going on?\u00a0 Can someone get me out of these.\u00a0 My mother, where is my mother?<\/i><\/p>\n And now comes the most touching part.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard for me to imagine the joy and amazement that followed.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen a young boy who survived a drowning.\u00a0 He was at the bottom of the pool for God knows how long.\u00a0 And praise God.\u00a0 Someone resuscitated him. \u00a0But what was it like when our Savior spoke those life-giving words.\u00a0 What was it like when Jesus now gave this son back to his grieving mother?<\/p>\n Yet I believe the day is coming when that scene will be repeated many times.\u00a0 When we see our Lord Jesus on that Day to come.\u00a0 That child, a mother and father brought to Jesus in baptism and then lost to death.\u00a0 The hurt never quite goes away.\u00a0 But then it will.\u00a0 For Jesus will bring them together once more and wipe away every tear.<\/p>\n But not just a mother and her son.\u00a0 \u00a0Parents, grandparents, that husband or wife taken from us.\u00a0 What a scene it will be for all those who died in Christ and those now left behind.\u00a0 For we will be with the Lord forever.<\/p>\n And you know something.\u00a0 If we speak these words, we won\u2019t say them wondering like those in Jesus\u2019 day.\u00a0 You and I will say them with every inch of meaning.\u00a0 God has come to help his people<\/b>.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text: Luke 7: 11-17 People sometimes don\u2019t realize how true the words are that come from their mouths.\u00a0 Someone blurts out, thank God.\u00a0 Another says my God without even thinking or meaning those words as a prayer. Now certainly we shouldn\u2019t use God\u2019s name in a careless, mindless way.\u00a0 But there\u2019s more.\u00a0 Thank God!\u00a0 You betcha.\u00a0 Thank God.\u00a0 He\u2019s involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}