Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.
12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.
13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”
14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”
15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!”
17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
The situation that Jesus finds himself in is particularly distressing. For a woman to be without her husband, (she was a widow) and then having her only son die,
would have meant vulnerability of an excruciating type. There is no welfare state and she would have no means to take care of herself. Perhaps the large crowd, which is starting to be a commonality in Christ’s life, people following or flocking to him due
to the signs he performed, suggests that the people appreciated the woman’s situation. One commentator put Jesus’ encounter with this woman this way: “The way of life meets the way of death.”
Luke tells the story masterfully, albeit briefly, almost with a bit of flair. “Young man I say, arise…and the dead man sat up! (Dead men usually don’t listen and then
act!) Then the dead man began to speak! Picture yourself in the crowd…perhaps you knew the man, your kids grew up with him, you were there when he died. You have wept, and tried to console his mother and now…this dead man…starts speaking!!!
Verse 16 describes the effect this had on those who saw it: Fear and praise. Fear seized them…they glorified God! They realized that Jesus was unique, a prophet…more
than that, God was present! I don’t think we are to take this as a dogmatic belief in the incarnation rather that it was undeniable that Jesus was wielding the same power that Elijah and Elisha had wielded long before him. That put him on the same level with
the great prophets of Israel’s past. This would be high praise indeed. The Jews knew that there had been no such prophet in Israel for centuries, but such a miraculous occurrence proved that there was once again a prophet in Israel. You would have to
be a Jew living then under the thumb of the Roman state, hoping against hope as your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had for some divine intervention on behalf of God’s people, to realize what an impact this realization would have
had on all who were there to see it and then on those who simply heard of it second-hand.
They also recognized that the power such men had at their disposal was not their own. It was from God Himself and so they very rightly, if not with full understanding,
drew the obvious conclusion. The Almighty had come among them and was working on their behalf through Jesus of Nazareth.
In this miracle, and others that follow, the emphasis will fall on the compassion of Jesus. The miracles served to vindicate Jesus as Messiah and were also the gospel
presented in another form: Jesus’ authority to forgive sins…Jesus’ power over His creation…Jesus power over demons and the spiritual world…Jesus’ power over death and the grave. So, the miracles reveal his power and authority but also as we have here, they
reveal the Lord’s heart. The Gospel writers comment on this a number of times, that Jesus was moved to help because he saw people’s dire situation and their hopeless need and had compassion on them.
In the text this morning it is clear that Jesus healed the man, not even chiefly for the man’s sake but for the sake of his broken-hearted mother. You
see the emphasis on the mother here in that the Lord is said to have seen her
not her son’s dead body and that he had compassion on her not on him. He spoke to
her: “Do not weep.” And then, after he had restored life to her dead son, the last thing we read that he did was to “give him
to his mother.” He was acting on her behalf. This was all about the grieving widow.
We need to stop and think about the picture we have here of the Lord Jesus. There is a great difference between the “idea” of sympathy and that which is personal. Jesus is so deeply
moved by the feeling of someone else’s sorrows that the sorrows of another became His sorrows. We may know that another person is suffering, we may genuinely wish for better things for him or her, but there are no tears on our cheeks for what they are going
through, no sag in our shoulders because of their spiritual weariness, and we do not struggle to fall asleep at night for the same reason they can’t sleep. This is not merely theoretical or intellectual for Jesus. He felt this woman’s desolation, the pain
in her heart, and His own heart went out to her.
We are told in Hebrews 2 and 4 that the Lord Jesus sympathizes with our weakness. He is called a man of sorrows. (Isaiah 53:3) He knows the heartbreak, the trials, the deep strokes that
grief brings to men and women…for He was fully human and not shielded from what it means to be so. This is who we are looking at here in Luke 7.
Jesus felt this woman’s pain and moved with deep compassion for her, he wanted to bring her relief. And so, He made a woman who was as sad as only a grieving widow and mother can be
at that moment the happiest woman in the world! And there is one more thing to notice here. Did you notice that the Lord’s compassion was utterly free? There was no request made; no demand. No one was clamoring for Him to do something. The procession
was making its way out of the town to the nearby cemetery. No plans had been made to leave the town at the moment the Lord and the crowd following him drew near. No doubt the two groups were utterly unaware of one another until they found themselves occupying
the same road traveling in opposite directions. The one thing we know for sure is that the woman had absolutely no expectation that her son might or would be brought back to life. Death is always final, in the world of men, death has the final word. This woman
wasn’t looking for the Lord. She hadn’t sent anyone to get him. More than likely, she was consumed with her grief and didn’t even know Jesus was passing by, if she even knew about Him at all.
Jesus does what no Jewish man would ever have done…he touched a dead body. This would have made Jesus “unclean” according to the Law of Moses. But when Jesus touched the “unclean” it
was no longer unclean! When Jesus comes into contact with sin, death and even demons, it is the malady that is defeated! As Isaiah put it long before the Lord Jesus appeared in the world: “The Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion;
blessed are all who wait for him.” [30:18]
What Jesus was that day outside the town of Nain, He is today as well. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! His heart of compassion is the same. The same tender heart, the same
tender sympathy that motivated Him to take action on this widow’s behalf, is how he looks at us. Suppose in
your trials and sorrows, suppose in your heartbreak you were able to see his face as this woman saw it, full of all of that tender sympathy; suppose you felt his touch; suppose you heard him say to you, “Do not weep.” Do you not see what a difference
it would make, it must make: such compassion, such love, mixed with such power?
I know the temptation is to say, “But pastor, I cannot see Him or hear Him as this woman did!” That is true but at the same time it means nothing. He is just as near to you as He was
to her, His heart as tender to you as it was to her, and He is as ready to act on your behalf as He was to act on hers. And I realize that this does not answer all the questions we have with regard to the mystery of the Divine Will, specifically why at times
we are left in our sorrow without the relief we crave.
But that too must take a back seat because Jesus has proved His compassion for you and me, if not in the answers to our prayers that we desire, in this simple fact: No
other God but our God has wounds; and that is because no other God loves as the living God loves! The compassion of Jesus is seen for all eternity in the wounds He bears…wounds that make His compassion for us, His love for us, His desire to be with us…unquestionable!
Prayer: Father, You are a God of compassion and mercy. Forgive me for forgetting or acting as though You were stingy and uncaring. My wicked heart cries out often,
“Savior, don’t you care?” I am ashamed of myself to doubt Your love when all I need to do is look to Calvary and to fix my gaze there. Father, I submit myself and my circumstances to Your Fatherly care and providence and I praise the compassion that my God
has for sinners! Through Jesus Christ and in His name, I pray, Amen.
Hymn: Lord with Glowing Heart I’d Praise Thee (I realize this is not the greatest recording, but we are going to sing this hymn Sunday and it would be good for us
to familiarize ourselves with it! Sing loud!!!!
