The Gospel of Luke 7:11-17 The only son of a widow

Good morning. We're going to be stepping our way slowly and carefully through this passage that Courtney just read for us here. And one of the things to point out is Dr. Luke writes uniquely. He writes differently and observes different things than some of the other gospel authors observe. And in this particular passage, we're beginning what's actually a chapter-by-chapter sequence or series about a unique characteristic in Dr. Luke's writing.

It shows up in 712, which Courtney just read for us, and it says, Now he approached the gate of the city, and that's Jesus of course, and a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother. That kind of observation is unique to Dr. Luke. No other gospel author notes this in the same way. And not only that, but here's chapter 7, one of those kinds of observations, chapter 8, as the next one here is 841 through 42 and there came a man named Jairus and he was an official of the synagogue and he fell at Jesus feet and began to implore him to come to his house for he had an only daughter and here's another one of these personal observations about 12 years old and she was dying next we find the next chapter Luke chapter 9 verses 38 and 39 And a man from the crowd shouted, saying, Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only boy." Interesting. And a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly screams, and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth, and only with difficulty does it leave him, mauling him as he leaves.

So here's Dr. Luke, who writes from one chapter to the next, these very personal observations. A careful study of Luke and Acts shows that Dr. Luke pays close attention to historical, geographical, and even political details. But as much as he has that kind of objectivity, he also takes and shows very careful attention to personal details. I think Dr. Luke is just an amazing person that way, where he can look at the technical end, but also be very heartfelt in what he sees and what he says and take note of relationships and in this case three chapters in a row of unique relationships my only my only my only right so here we have Luke 711 this is soon afterwards he went to a city called Nain and by the way this is the only mention of Nain in the New Testament so this is a unique account and his disciples were going along with him accompanied by a large crowd So, here's the way this thing is beginning.

So, you can kind of picture this. Here's this city of Nain, and you've got this large crowd coming up to the city. Alright, we'll complete that, but just kind of picture that. Here's a large crowd with Jesus at the lead of this crowd, and they're coming up to this city of Nain. Here's a map of all of Israel. We're going to zero in on the northern part of Israel, and you have this in the center of your page one in the handout.

Nain here is about six miles southeast of the city of Nazareth, so it's not too far away. You can actually see Nain from Nazareth. It was, in fact, an ancient city of the time. It's been confirmed. Yes, it was there. Nain was large enough. It was not just a village, as Nazareth was, but actually had an entrance gate.

And one of the things we want to bring out as we go into this is this is a passage that has lots of drama to it. And it is valid to point out the drama in a passage and that's something to observe and even try to put yourself into You know imagine being the the people who were there and and what a startling shocking awesome Circumstance this would be you can even before the realization of that this young man is going to be resurrected, you can even imagine how this widow would have felt.

First of all, she's a widow. Her husband is dead. Now her only son, her only son has died. And it's not supposed to be that way. He's supposed to bury her, right? And so now she is really alone. All family connections in her immediate family have now all been cut off, so far as we can tell. It is a valid thing to look at the dramatic character and even turnabouts in the drama in a passage. So that's something that we will do and point out here as we go through it.

So it's a good thing to bring out the dramatic aspect. It's not bad, it's a good thing. So, and I just wanted to make a personal comment, I've just about gotten to the point that if I'm not amazed, astounded, impacted, and struck deeply by the drama and potency of a passage, I probably don't understand it yet. Just about every Bible passage that I come across, I look at it and say, wow, this is really astounding. Much of the Bible is actually quite intense when looked at from this standpoint. All right, so here's 712, which we read just previously, but we'll want to preface it here before we study.

Now, as he approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a sizable crowd from the city was with her. What you see in here, and again, try to take in the drama, here is a crowd with Jesus and they're coming up to the front gates of the city of Nain. Now there's another crowd coming out following this kind of funeral procession. And so you have kind of a collision of two crowds here coming together. And one of them may even be rejoicing, coming up to the city, and they're there with Jesus, and He heals people, and everything is good. And the other crowd coming out is everybody's sad. So a very interesting kind of conflict. And they're not all going to get through the gate at once. So just kind of imagine that situation. First of all, I want to point out something.

Gates are significant in the Bible. Gates are something that is significant starting in Genesis. It carries on through the Old Testament and into the New Testament. The book of Revelation even talks about gates in the final chapter. So gates are hugely significant in the biblical spread of things.

And this is no exception here. Gates were places where you'd have decisions of city elders, property and legal transactions. Example, here is Abraham. He wants to buy a place to bury his Wife, Sarah. And so what does he do? He goes to the city gates to negotiate a real estate transaction, right? And buys the cave of Machpelah. So property and legal transactions, judgments about crime and punishment.

In biblical times, you did not have prisons that you held people in for long months and years. You only had a way to hold them temporarily while the elders made a decision as to what was going to happen. So it was a pivotal place and we could go into it more.

There are even figures of speech about gates. Gates that are lifted up. Or talk about joy and happiness. Gates that are down. Talk about sadness. The point of the gates here in the city of Nain is that taking this body, the man's body, outside the city gates meant that the death was real and in human terms final. In human terms final. It was a signal they're going outside the gates. Why?

Because that's where you bury someone. In the Bible you will find the expression that someone was buried in, and it will mention a city. And what that actually means is that they're buried just right outside of the city. When Courtney and Ingrid and I were there visiting Jerusalem, lots of graves, Muslim graves, Christian graves, Jewish graves, just outside the city. And that would be described as buried in Jerusalem, not in the gates, but outside. This would be among a number of things that happen at the city gates. This would be another kind of pivotal event that's going to take place right near the gates. Now, this dead man was being carried out.

Deuteronomy 21-23 required from the Law of Moses that anyone who was hanged was not to be left there overnight, but be buried the same day he died. Well, the rabbis get a hold of this, right? And they start, well, if that, then this, then this, and they start making all kinds of extensions of this particular law. So this statute out of the Law of Moses was applied to Christ himself. where he was hung on a tree so they would say figuratively on the day that he was crucified he was also buried and one of the reasons why they had him be assuredly dead and to check it out and they broke the legs of the thieves on each side was to get the bodies off the crosses into graves. So the Jews extended that law to apply to all who died.

Get them buried that day. And there was one exception, and that is if someone died on a Sabbath, you might then, in order not to do work, bury them the next day. So that was the one exception. Otherwise, the Jewish imperative, you bury them the same day that they die.

Now, so that meant that very likely he had died that very day, again the one exception being if he had died on a Sabbath they would bury him the next day, but this day was likely not a Sabbath since the Jews would have buried the man on the day after the Sabbath, and we add to that Jesus and the crowd and disciples would likely not have traveled to Nain that would be about six miles from Nazareth on a Sabbath because that would be too far beyond a Sabbath day's journey so for both reasons this was not likely a Sabbath so this man's body that was being carried out most likely had died that very day and it might have been that he died on a Sabbath and this was the next day after but most likely he had died that very day possibly of an illness that we're not told, and the death might have taken time to come about. This might have been something anticipated.

Then we get the point made, the only son of his mother, a widow. So now we have a double loss. Here's a woman who has lost her husband, and now an untimely death of her son, and now has lost him. There's no mention of daughters, and we know it's an only son.

So her immediate family is now gone. She is the last one left. And so you can get the sense that Dr. Luke is trying to get across, this was a very sad day. And there was a large crowd coming out, so apparently she had a number of friends, possible more distant relatives, but her immediate family now was gone.

Had this death been allowed to stand, she would have had a difficult time ahead of her, emotionally and likely financially as well. Difficult time because all her immediate family had been gone. To bury a son, something very emotionally difficult. Financially, because it was expected among the Jews that the offspring And especially the sons would be responsible for caring for and even financially supporting parents in later years. And of course, she would lose that advantage altogether. Her son could, if he was alive, show her honor. And this is one of the things, as Nancy and I go through and do pre-marriage counseling and marriage counseling.

One of the things we point out is that honor means different things at different stages. Honor your parents. It means obedience under their roof. It means respect in their middle years. And then in their later years, as they need assistance and support of various kinds, then honor looks like that. So honor is the word that is used throughout the lifetime, but it means different things at different life stages. In this case, her son could show her honor, that is, later in life, assistance and support. But now he's going to be gone, at least as far as she knows.

Now, here we come back to the crowds. One large crowd meets another large crowd. So here's this large crowd headed into the city of Nain. It may have even been a joyous procession. coming up upon the city, and that included the disciples, Jesus' 12 disciples, and also other followers of Jesus, people who wanted to find out what he said, people who were expecting, well, he's going to come into Nain and do more miracles. I'd like to see that, right?

And so a large crowd was along with him. And then the other large crowd, following this funeral procession, coming out of Nain, which was very unlikely to be joyous or even neutral, but very likely sad. It was custom among the Jews to have very loud weeping and wailing when someone died. And in some cases, someone who was well off might even hire additional weepers and wailers.

So you made sure that there was plenty of weeping and wailing So these two crowds, rather than colliding with one another, were about to become joint witnesses of the event that was about to take place, and we'll soon read about their reaction to it. They come with conflicting emotions to this point.

The ones coming with Jesus likely joyous and expectant, the ones coming with this widow, and her dead son coming with great sadness and probably very open expression of it and now they're going to come together and what's going to be very interesting although they have very conflicted mindsets and emotions coming to this point there's going to be a unity very soon in how they respond so it will be very interesting okay let's take a look here here's Luke 7.13 When the Lord saw her, he felt compassion for her and said to her, Do not weep." Now, we have no record of Jesus having previously met this lady personally. It is one person to another.

However, Jesus being the divine Son of God, he would have known all sorts of details about her. Even been able to come up and say her name, whatever it was, right? And he would have known the family history already, and the death of her one and only son. He would have known all that. So what was his response there? As Jesus faced this very difficult and tragic situation, he was not unfeeling.

I think that's something very important for us to keep in mind as we face different circumstances. God's not just sitting up there objectively doing a scientific study on you to see how you're going to react to different circumstances. God is not unfeeling or unmoved by the things that are going on in your life. And Jesus here, having this compassion, is expressing God's character. He's expressing God's character.

So that's a key thing to see out of this. God is not ignorant, and God is not unfeeling about what's going on in your life. And that's very important for us to know. God does know what's going on. As a matter of fact, He knows more than what we know. We don't pray to inform God.

Even though the situation was about to change, He felt compassion. As a matter of fact, the compassion is very likely what drove him to make the change that was about to take place. Now, at first I put myself in this widow's place. Can you imagine a guy walks up to you, you've never met him before. You're standing near your dead son's body covered, and Jews knew what this meant. You're carrying this body wrapped up, usually in white, outside the city gates, and Jesus walks up, don't weep.

Huh? You're kidding me! You know? You really don't understand. If Jesus had simply said, don't weep to this woman, those actually would have been cruel words. What? What are you doing telling me don't weep? And if that had been all that he said, it's like, huh?

Go away. Get out of here. You don't get it. You haven't a clue. Of course, it was only Jesus who knew that it would be seconds before she would see her son alive. It's the only thing that makes sense of it. She might otherwise have said, you really don't understand. You really don't get it. Get away. I've got to face up to the situation here. So it is only what Jesus said, and what he did immediately after saying, do not weep, that made this whole story make any sense at all.

Here's Luke 7.14. He came up and touched the coffin. And the bearers came to a halt, and he said, young man, I say to you, arise.

Now, some might have to make a comment about that word for coffin. We think of some metal and or wooden container that holds the body and is actually, in many cases, very heavy in itself. So we will typically have six pallbearers to hold the coffin and the body at the same time. The coffin in this case, since the custom was not typically to have some kind of a metal end or wooden box, and it was typically not to bury this box on the ground, this word for coffin actually can refer to a plank or even a cloth pallet with a wooden frame. And so and that's more than likely what this is referring to not some kind of a box But rather a supporting plank out of wood or wood frame and then some cloth so anyway, here's the Situation so Jesus comes up and touches the coffin.

So first of all, he came up he He didn't just kind of stand at a distance. Okay He came up And it says, Jesus had healed the centurion slave from a distance. In this instance, he came right up to the coffin and touched it. And by the way, Numbers 19 says Jesus has now just defiled himself. Twice in Numbers 19. Jesus came up and touched the coffin.

According to the Law of Moses, you weren't supposed to do that because he just defiled himself unnecessarily. But how is he going to undefile himself? We're going to see that in a minute here. He came up and touched it and the law of Moses would have said you don't do that. That may have been what got the pallbearers to just kind of in a startled way stop at that point.

Nonetheless, then Jesus said to the young man, he said, Young man, I say to you, arise! And that word for young man means a man of under 40. So he wasn't a youth, but he was a man under 40, probably somewhere in his 20s or 30s. Now you could ask the question, this is an interesting one to ponder, did the young man in the coffin actually hear Jesus tell him to arise? Or did the body respond to what Jesus spoke?

Now think about this for a minute. Think about this. How did God create light initially? God said, let there be light. So here we have Jesus who is the creator is out of Colossians right through him all things were created Jesus the creator who spoke and things came into being now speaks to this young man Who were not told?

Had he already been? Brought back to life and could hear or was Jesus speaking to the body and having power of resurrection in his words and just like creation came about just from his words we don't know but here's Luke 7 15 the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him back to his mother now we have immediately to make a clarification we ought to clarify that by the time that this young man sat up and he began to speak he was no longer dead okay got that Does that make sense? He was no longer dead. We might put it something like the man who had been dead sat up and began to speak. But nonetheless, you get the idea.

For the young man to sit up right then would have most certainly gotten everybody's attention. Now you've got two different crowds all gathered around this point. One crowd having one kind of emotional background coming to this point. The other crowd being very, very saddened for this woman. And now they've come together and this man, whoo, sits up and starts talking. That really would have grabbed your attention, right? And now we see these crowds with different mindsets and emotional settings coming to this point, now beginning to line up. They are all stunned. And we'll talk about that more in a minute. What Dr. Luke recorded for us here is, this man spoke, we don't know what he said right then. We have no idea. Now we can speculate, and that might even be fun. We might think, okay, one of the things he said was, boy, you guys woke me up from a dead sleep. I felt like I swelled up and died until morning. Or, he may have said, Mama, give me some of those matzo balls! Fast! I'm hungry. We don't know.

So, then it says, Jesus gave him back. It would appear that this young man had perhaps first directed his attention to Christ, the one who spoke to him. After all, he responded to Christ's voice and command, who had raised him. from the dead back to this life. And I think that's a key thing for us to realize. Like with Lazarus and other resurrections, this man was not experienced a resurrection like you and I will as believers when we have a new body. We'll talk about that more in a minute. This man was raised back to this life and to continue this life for whatever time God had given him.

Jesus gave him back to his mother and certainly that meant that his attention was directed to her But also that he was restored to life for a renewed relationship With her and I would venture to say one thing Their lives would be different now from now on than if he had never died They would never again Forget what they had gone through that he died that she was sad and now everybody is stunned here he is back again neither this young man nor his mother would ever be quite the same and there would be immense thankfulness that he had been restored and they could actually continue to have life together so here's Luke 7 16 Fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, a great prophet is among us, and God has visited his people.

And I don't think that they just spoke this quietly and with subtle tones. I think it's very likely in view of the crowds that people shouted this out so that others in the crowd would hear. And at least as this film still shows that they're bowing down, that's probably one of the responses, bowing down. People may also have just stood there stunned.

Because, you know, continuing to look at, is this guy really, really alive? And is he going to stay alive? You know, how's this widow who has lost her son, how is she holding up? How is she being impacted? So people may have bowed, but they may also have continued to study the situation out of disbelief. Am I seeing what I'm seeing? Is this really happening? Is this continuing to show itself to be real?

It's clear that there are different kinds of fear, and you've probably experienced that. Fear is not all monolithic one kind. There are different kinds of fear in human experience, and the way I put that is, not all fear is created equal. So this kind of fear, this particular kind of fear, is a realization of awesome power that Jesus has over the ultimate and final enemy, which is death.

Nobody, either the ones who were coming in the crowd approaching Nain, or the ones who were coming out of Nain, following the body, nobody was expecting this outcome. They're all in shock. Perhaps continuing to stare, just to make sure, did I see what I thought I saw? Did you see that too? Yeah, yeah, I saw it too. likely most if not all those following Jesus had seen him heal and cast demons. This is the crowd coming up to Nain. That was wonderful, but this was real different. I just witnessed an actual resurrection. I just witnessed a resurrection.

Now one of the questions that comes up here is, who is this guy? He just walks up Young man, arise. Who is this guy that tells dead bodies to resurrect? Who is he? So raising a body back to this life was most certainly an astounding thing to watch and didn't happen often, even in the Bible. It was so uncommon, it raised the question immediately, who is this man that he can tell a dead body to arise?

So that question came up. Since both Elijah and Elisha, we'll talk about that in a minute, had raised individuals in the past, it would be natural for most Jews to conclude, oh, since Elijah and Elisha are prophets, this must be another one. And so that's exactly what you see in the text. Jesus must be another one of the prophets, like Elijah and Elisha. Are they wrong? No, they're not wrong. It's just not the full picture, is it? They didn't recognize all of who He is.

The next question is, what has God done here? God has visited His people. So what does visited mean? Does that mean God sat down and He had a cup of coffee with some people? No. From the Old Testament on into the New Testament, unless it specifically in the context indicates judgment, To visit actually means that God came and acted favorably. That will come either expressed as a visit, visits, or visited, or visitation. You'll find that in different parts of the New and the Old Testament. His people in this case means the people of Israel in this context. So God has come and shown His favor. to these people, the people of Israel. So here's the last verse, Luke 7, 17.

This report concerning him went out all over Judea and all the surrounding district. So here we have the map of Israel, and Judea is at the southern end there as we have it labeled. Here's Nain shown by a large yellow dot with a red circle. Going from Nain, which is up in Galilee, down to Judea, which is all the way down, you know, including Jerusalem, that right there would have said, well, wait a minute, how come it went to Judea?

And I think there's a good answer for us. Even though they're way far apart, There's something that drove the people of northern Israel to go down to Judea several times a year, and that is the Jewish festivals. So if this had taken place, and we don't know exactly what time of year it took place, but if this had taken place any time around one of the seven Jewish festivals, and by the way there were additional things, that was the seven from Moses, and there was Hanukkah and Purim as well, But the Jewish festivals would have taken them down to Judea and brought this.

Now, imagine what happens. Jews from all over Galilee are gathering together. And where do they go? They all go to travel down the Jordan River Valley together. And because you don't have email and texting and people taking a picture of this boy who's just been raised and then sending it off to everybody you know. Because you don't have that, what do you talk about when you get in the Jordan River Valley and are heading down to Jericho where you then go up to Jerusalem?

You're going to say, hey, what's been happening since we last talked? Well, let me tell you, I just witnessed a resurrection. You did? Tell me about that. So it would have brought them all together, it would have had them passing the information along, and it would have taken them all to Judea, where they would have told more people what had taken place. Now let's look at the resurrections in the Bible. We make reference at the top of the page to a few of them.

Nine individuals in scripture are clearly presented in the Bible as being raised from the dead. And that's, again, nine individuals. There's an account of multiple resurrections at the end of Matthew. So this is individual resurrections. Of these nine resurrections, three occur in the Old Testament. So three occur in the Old Testament, the other six occurring in the New Testament. At least three individuals were raised from the dead by Jesus. We're going to see another one when we get to chapter 8 and we're going to not cross it here, but we'll mention at that point in time Lazarus and his resurrection. So those are the three raised by Jesus. Did Jesus raise more?

Could be. These are the ones that are recorded. It could be that he raised a number more than what's recorded here because we don't have a record of everything Jesus did. Both Peter and Paul raised a person from the dead, and both the Old and New Testaments have possible resurrections, but it's not quite as clear. One of those would be Jonah in the Old Testament, and one in the New Testament is where Paul has been stoned and left for dead, assumed to be dead, and he gets up. Was that a resurrection, or did he actually not die.

We don't know from the text. So those are other possibilities. The most important one of all, of course, is Jesus himself was resurrected. It has multiple kinds of importance to us. What was different about Jesus' resurrection that makes it stand out from the others? Jesus' resurrection was central to the eternal covenant made before God said, let there be light. The eternal covenant that Christ would die and be buried and rise again. Made before God said, let there be light.

Before we make this stuff, let's get this problem dealt with. While a number of people were resurrected to this life, only to die again someday. Can you imagine dying twice? What a thing to go through. Only to die again someday, Jesus was raised to a new kind of life, never to die again. So that's radically different. Jesus wasn't resurrected to this life and therefore was unlike the resurrection we just read about in that he would never die again as these others would.

Only in Christ's resurrection were we who believe identified with his resurrection to a new kind of life. We just read about here in Luke 7 about this young man being resurrected. We just read about that. But nobody was identified with his resurrection.

This resurrection of Christ, however, is radically different. in that you and I as believers in Christ were identified with him in his crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Radically different. A new kind of life, and we were identified with him, all of us, every single one, all of us, in his resurrection. That didn't happen anywhere else. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for, as we see this account, we see that you have resurrection power. We see it was a marvelous, stunning, awesome event that turned the hearts and minds of many and certainly impressed them at that moment. And as we look at the distinctions, however, between that and your resurrection, we are amazed at the difference. And it's a difference that impacts our eternity. And so we thank you for that. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.