More Than a Prophet

Luke 7:11 – 17

 

We believe in an almighty God and that God can do whatever He wants, amen? But, if someone asked you, what is one thing that God does exceptionally well, what does He specialize in, what would you say? And saying “miracles” is too broad. He heals, He moves mountains, He gives strength, He comforts, these are all things He does.

 

But if I had to pick one thing to say that God specializes in, I would say He specializes in giving life to what was dead. Now, I know some of you really enjoy my seemingly random and disconnected openings that I somehow manage to smoothly connect to the passage I’m preaching on, but I gotta tell you that I’ve got nothing when it comes to life being restored into someone or something that was fully dead. Not mostly dead, which is slightly alive, but all dead.

 

But God is indeed the author, creator, and sustainer of life, and He regularly breathes life into the world. This church is a living and breathing example of that. Some of you were here for it, and some of you have no idea about it, but I’m gonna tell you about it.

 

Back in 2019/2020 this place was on the brink of death. They didn’t have a pastor, and Sunday morning attendance was in the single digits. Many people, many pastors even, had written this church off and full heartedly believed it need to close its doors.

 

But there were just enough folks who, even if they wondered if it was indeed time, never quit believing that God could indeed breathe life into this dying body. When Rodney began part-time pastoring here, he and Teri became numbers 9 & 10 regularly attending Sunday morning worship. By the time he retired from paid pastoral ministry (you won’t ever stop being pastor Rodney), and God called me here this places was steadily in the teens.

 

Today, the teens feels like a very, very light day. We’re regularly in the 30’s on Sunday mornings and we’re excited when this place is in the 40’s. You newer folks, look around, you are answers to the prayers of many of the people here. And while this church was never truly dead, God is the only one who can restore life, who can bring dry bones to life.

As we continue on in Luke, we see in our passage today the first of three instances in the Gospels of Jesus raising someone from the dead. This one today, the widow’s son, later in Luke is Jairus’ daughter, and perhaps the most memorable one is Lazarus in the Gospel of John. So, open your Bibles to Luke 7:11 – 17 with me, and let’s read God’s Word.

 

So, soon after Jesus healed the centurion’s servant in Capernaum, soon after Jesus declared how great a faith the centurion for recognizing Jesus’ authority, He goes to a town called Nain, and Jesus has His disciples and a great crowd with Him.

 

Not much is known about Nain, in fact this is the only mention in the entire Bible of this town. It is believed to be a small town around the Jezreel Valley, about six miles southeast of Nazareth and about twenty-five miles from Capernaum, so still in Galilee but you can Jesus is on the move and so is His kingdom.

 

And so here comes Jesus and this big traveling party and as they approach the town gate, they encounter another large crowd, Luke calls it a considerable crowd. But in a dramatic contrast, the atmosphere around that crowd is drastically different from the crowd following Jesus.

 

You ever walk into a room with a group of people and you’re laughing and joking and just having an all-around good time, and as soon as you walk in you feel the difference in the air? Silence, sadness, tension. This is bigger than that.

 

Two crowds, two processions, one following life itself, the other following death. You see, this was a funeral procession, one which essentially the entire town was there for. And while all death is usually a somber and serious time, this one was especially tragic.

 

In his typical style, Dr. Luke in all his detail tells us a lot about this funeral in just one verse. We have a dead man being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. On the surface that just seems really, really sad.

 

But when you start to unpack it and look at that verse in reverse, you start to understand the real tragedy unfolding here. This woman knows loss; she’s already a widow.

Being a widow in those days wasn’t just a sad reality, it meant you’d lost the primary source of your livelihood. Husbands were the providers and heads of their families, and when a woman lost her husband and became a widow her sons, usually the oldest, would step up to provide for his mother.

 

And so when we read these words in v.12, man who had died, only son of his mother, and she was a widow, we feel the reality that each phrase only makes the situation worse and deepens the emotional weight of this loss. There is a real sense of hopelessness surrounding that funeral procession.

 

The town isn’t just grieving that someone died, people die every day. No, they’re grieving with a woman who’s not only lost her only son, but she also now has no protector, no provider, and no hope. They’re grieving for a woman who’s lost her whole future. Death has left this woman completely helpless and silent.

 

And into this hopeless and helpless situation walks Jesus. Jesus’ large crowd collides with the funeral’s large crowd and in the midst of all that, Jesus sees her. Jesus ignores all the commotion around Him at the town gate and He sets His eyes on the grieving widow, and His immediate response is to have compassion on her.

 

Notice that the widow never speaks, she never utters a word, she just weeps. The widow never asks Jesus for help, no one asks Jesus for help. There is no appeal, no request, and no faith expressed. Why should Jesus even do anything here?

 

Unlike last week no one comes to plead with Jesus, no Jewish elders, no friends, no centurion expressing tremendous faith. Just silence. But Jesus sees her in her desperate grief, has compassion on her, walks up to her and says, “Do not weep.”

 

How much are kind words and compassion worth if they are not accompanied by action? When my dad passed away in 2017, we weren’t a part of a church. There was nobody to organize a meal train to ease the burden of existing while grieving. But you know what, there were still those who showed us, showed my kids, real compassion.

 

 

I read something this past week in one of my devotional books that spoke beautifully about compassion and action.

 

The devotional was talking about the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept at the death of His friend Lazarus and seeing the grief his sisters were experiencing. But Jesus didn’t stop there, He wept and He worked. If you know the story you know that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

 

And the writer of the devotional, an American pastor from the 1800’s, asked, “Is there no lesson for us in this? What are tears of sympathy worth if we refuse to lift a finger to help the suffering or to relieve distress?” He then said, “It is only when we bear one another’s burdens that we fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

 

One of the things I’ve seen and been truly touched by since God blessed me and my family with our own church family, a real church, is how quickly the church springs into action to take care of people.

 

Meal trains for grieving families, and joyous ones welcoming home a new baby, building wheelchair ramps for people, and just sitting with someone, listening to them and praying with them through whatever they’re going through are all examples of what I’ve seen since my family joined Hilmar and then came here and joined you all in Delhi.

 

You see, compassion by itself doesn’t solve death, sympathy doesn’t resurrect dead sons. But Jesus is moved by compassion for this woman, and while she might have very little reason in her grief to think that a Jewish rabbi could do anything about her dead son, there is reason for those of us reading this to see the hope that is already there in Jesus.

 

For the first time in the Gospel of Luke, in v.13 Luke himself as the narrator calls Jesus “Lord.” That title wraps up everything that Luke has already revealed and what the church believes about Jesus’ divine identity. It prepares us as the readers to see Christ’s compassion as God’s own compassion pouring out onto the widow, and the world.

 

Jesus’ compassion is more than just pity, it’s genuine, loving concern. His words, “Do not weep,” anticipates His intention to act here. And though no one in that funeral procession expected it, moving into action is indeed what Jesus does here.

He walks up to the bier, the platform, that the dead man was being carried out to his grave on and touched it. And when Jesus touched it, the men carrying it stopped and stood still.

 

They were probably stunned! Jesus, who was becoming known as a teacher, a Jewish rabbi, just touched what was carrying a dead man. He of all people should know that would make Him unclean! In their eyes this awful situation has just gotten worse.

 

But like we saw when Jesus touched and healed a leper, He’s not deterred by what the law says makes a man unclean. Jesus’ own purity is untouchable, He makes the unclean, clean. And he brings life to where there is none.

 

He doesn’t touch the dead man, rather just like He did with the centurion’s servant, He speaks. He says to the widow’s dead son, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” I bet at this point both crowds are holding their breath.

 

Understand that this guy didn’t just die a few minutes prior. It’s his funeral procession. He’s been dead for a day at least. He’s not mostly dead, he’s all dead. And Jesus has done many things up to this point, but raising a dead man back to life hasn’t been one of them.

 

But that’s exactly what He does here, with just His words. The dead man sat up, and he didn’t just pop up, but he began to speak! Can you imagine seeing that? This guy was just all dead, and on his way to be buried, and now he’s sitting up and talking!

 

But look at what else Jesus does. He doesn’t just raise this man from the dead and walk away, He gave him to his mother. Jesus doesn’t just restore life, He restores relationships.

 

It’s at this point here that the connection to Jesus’ reference back in chapter 4 to Elijah raising the dead son of the Gentile widow becomes clear.

 

Luke’s wording in Greek saying “gave him to his mother” is identical to the Greek wording of 1 Kings 17:23 in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was used in Jesus’ day, where Elijah gave that widow back her dead son. This is deliberate.

Jesus compared Himself to one of the greatest prophets in Israel’s history, yet Luke makes it clear that Jesus is greater than Elijah. Elijah raised the dead widow’s son in his day at her request by laying on him and praying to God, but Jesus does so of His own will, by His own power, and by His own sovereign word.

 

Nobody made Jesus do this. His compassion for this widow moved Him. Don’t miss this. This is the gospel right here. The widow contributes nothing to this situation; everything begins with Christ.

 

In the same way, you contribute nothing to your own salvation, except the sin that you bring with you. God takes the initiative in your salvation. It is God alone who calls and draws sinners into saving faith in Jesus Christ. On our own, our sinful hearts wouldn’t believe the gospel.

 

But God’s compassion on His creation moved Him to act. Christ’s compassion for His people is why He bore the cross, and paid the price for our sin. It is by faith in Jesus that when your dead in your sin, you were made alive in Christ.

 

The truth we find in this passage is that Jesus Christ is God incarnate who has come to give life to His people.

 

You must recognize Jesus for who He truly is and embrace the life only He can give.

 

This whole chapter is aimed at answering the question, who is this Jesus? And after He raised the widow’s dead son, her only son, both crowds, the one following Jesus and the funeral procession, are amazed and filled with fear, a holy awe, and glorified God. Look at the end here.

 

In holy awe and glorifying God they make two confessions, and what’s ironic is they don’t truly understand what they’re saying. They cry out that a great prophet has arisen among them and that God has visited His people.

 

The first confession is true and the crowd wasn’t wrong. Like the widow that Elijah gave her son back to in 1 Kings, they too recognize prophetic power from God. Jesus is indeed the greatest of prophets, but Luke has been showing us all along that He is much more than a prophet.

 

So the second confession is even truer. Though they didn’t yet grasp its full weight, the crowd recognizes God’s divine presence and movement among them. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us.

 

So, this week I want you see people the way Christ sees them. This is more than just noticing people. The challenge for you is to slow down enough in your daily life to truly see the hurting, the lonely, the grieving, the overlooked people that God places in your path every day.

 

So I ask you, who around you this week is invisible? The widow? The lonely senior? The single parent? The coworker quietly falling apart? The teenager who’s withdrawing? The church member that everyone assumes someone else will check on?

 

Jesus noticed the person that everyone else was simply walking beside, and He really saw her. So this week, ask the Lord to help you notice the person everyone else overlooks. You’ll be surprised at who He points you to.

 

Next, I want you to move toward people with Christ’s compassion. Perhaps God has already opened your eyes to who your version of the grieving widow in your life is this week. Maybe that coworker just buried a parent. Maybe that lonely senior hasn’t had a visitor in weeks. Maybe those parents are just overwhelmed.

 

Whatever the situation you see someone in, ask God what does Christlike compassion look like this week? Maybe it’s a meal, maybe it’s a phone call, maybe it’s showing up, maybe it’s just sitting quietly beside someone who’s hurting. Compassion isn’t measured by how deeply you feel, compassion is measured by whether love moves you to act.

 

Lastly, live as someone Christ has made alive. The One who spoke to a dead man and gave him life is the same Christ who speaks life into you through the gospel. Because Christ has given you new life, your past doesn’t define you, sin is not your master, fear doesn’t have the final word, and hope is not lost.

 

Embracing the life that Christ gives enables you to share your faith through your testimony of how much Christ has changed you. It empowers you to walk in obedience to God instead of in sin and shame.

 

It means you can face tomorrow with the confidence of the One who gives life. And embracing the life that Christ gives means dying to yourself and serving others.

 

The One who has compassion on the helpless and commands even death is none other than the Lord who has come to bring life to His people. You have to see Him for who He truly is, give Him the worship that is due to Him, and follow Him every day.

 

If you already know Jesus, if Christ has already given you new life, then live like someone who belongs to Him rather to the death that He has already conquered. And like the witnesses to this miracle, you have to spread the gospel news through all the surrounding country.

 

And if you don’t know this Jesus, then tell me and let me introduce you to Him, it would be my honor and privilege.