Alright, a good morning to every one of you. It is really good to have a few more people this morning worshipping in-person, and we pray this morning that the Lord indeed might soon remove the virus from our midst, that all the others might be able to join us in-person as well alright in worship. We know that during this time people’s minds are focused on what we call the “health crisis”. So we have indeed a health crisis, and every day people are fixated on this problem. We are thinking about it all the time, thinking about how it is affecting us, our lives, thinking about how to deal with this crisis. But I’ll like to draw your attention to I believe perhaps an even greater crisis in our midst, but nobody pays attention to, and that is a spiritual crisis alright.

As we remember that every day as we wake up to a new day, we are living in a world filled with all kinds of dangers. I pray every day that the Lord will protect us from these dangers, the dangers such as when you go out there you know, you might meet with an accident or you might be robbed or things like these. But we know that this danger, and that is the devil who roams around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And we know that in the Bible the Lord constantly reminds us of this, and therefore the Lord told His disciples to always be watchful and prayerful. The idea of watchful means that we must be fully aware, be vigilant. 

Why be watchful and prayerful? He said: “Lest you fall into temptation”. Peter writes his letter and mentioned the same thing alright that we should be vigilant alright, for the devil roams around, seeking to destroy us. And so we pray that while we are preoccupied with this health crisis and this health danger that we are in, let us be praying for one another that we might not fall into temptation and be drawn away during this time from the Lord.

Now we thank again the Lord that each time we come here in fellowship and we are able to open God’s Word alright and to study it. I would like to mention also that we don’t want to take this for granted alright that we have this opportunity, this privilege, this blessing of studying His Word together. So let us now come together in a sense of privilege and blessing and to open up His Word. Now we are continuing our study on the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, which I call the “Astounding Acts of Jesus”. Now the word ‘astounding’ you can find it in the Bible, or perhaps another word would be the ‘amazing’ acts of Jesus. So that is what we are looking at in this particular series.

Now, this morning we are going to look at another of Jesus’ miracles, another of His mighty act. It’s recorded for us by Luke in Luke chapter 7, beginning in verse 11 through verse 17 alright- verse 11 through verse 17. So the text has been read to you just now, so let us just look at this story again. And every time as we look at the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, now it is important to look at the context, the setting alright, or kind of the atmosphere as it were, and then the act itself. And that is how Luke introduces us this next miracle of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

He tells us in verse 11: “Now it happened” (or in the ESV says, “soon after”). “Now it happened, the day after”, meaning to say referring to what happened just before this. Now you might remember alright two weeks ago we looked at that, that the Lord had just healed the centurion’s servant. So the day after He healed the centurion’s servant, now “He went into a city called Nain”, or a town alright- a town called Nain. And as usual, you know He attracts a huge crowd. As He was entering the city gate, going towards the city gate, He was followed by His disciples. “And a large crowd”, as we are told in verse 11. “Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd.” 

So the picture here is of a procession alright, Jesus leading a procession as it were into this particular city. And as He and the crowd alright the procession as it were were entering the city, we are told in verse 12: “And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out”. So that is kind of the scene. So here is a group of people moving in, and then He meets another procession as it were. Another procession, and that is a funeral procession and that of a young man alright who was dead. Now the other procession was coming out of the city, and so we can have a picture here of two groups of people now meeting at the city gate.

And we are also given information about the fact that this dead young man had a mother or left behind a mother, and his mother was a widow alright. So she had just lost her husband. Alright, so that is the picture here. And then we can imagine of course that in this procession that was coming out, this funeral procession that was coming out with the widow following the coffin and a large crowd of people, and you can hear wailings, crying you know people crying, and this widow crying. And then we read in verse 13: “When Jesus saw her, He had compassion on her”.

In fact, I kind of like the NIV rendering of this, it says when the Lord saw her, the NIV renders it as: “And His heart went out to her”. His heart went out to her. It tells us something about our Lord Jesus Christ. He is a man filled with feelings, emotions. He’s not a hard man. When He sees a person in tears, when He sees a person in sorrow, the Bible tells us that the Lord’s heart goes out to that person. Now we can all take heart to this that if anytime in your life alright where you go through some kind of pain and sorrow and difficulty, you may have a difficult time in your life, remember that our Lord alright, He has compassion on such people. His heart will go out to you alright.

And so that’s what we read of a beautiful truth of our Lord Jesus Christ. His heart went out to this widow and He said to her: “Do not weep.”, or “do not cry” alright in the NIV. Do not cry, do not weep. And then alright the next two verses alright tell us what Jesus did. Verse 14: “Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And so he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He (Jesus) presented him to his mother.”. So that was the scene alright and the act of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came, He saw someone in sorrow, His heart went out to this person, and then He did something wonderful. He did something amazing alright.

This is another amazing, astounding act of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we are told of the reaction of the people in verse 16: “Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”; and, “God has visited His people.””. The people immediately recognize something unusual about Jesus, and that should be the case as we come and study this passage of Scriptures and learn something of our Lord Jesus Christ. We should respond or react like these people in verse 16 to see that Jesus is such an amazing person. I’m not sure how many times or how often you have that thought about the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord whom you have come to believe in.

What are your thoughts about Him? Every time you think about Jesus, do you think of Him as a wonderful and merciful Saviour? Do you think of Him as these people say, someone special, someone great? Or we are you know, we just treat it as nothing, just one ordinary person in our life? No, Jesus is amazing, and that’s what Luke wants to tell us here. And that’s how the people felt about Him. And so verse 17: “This report about Him went throughout all Judea and all the surrounding region.”. Sure. Now if this is your perception, this is your understanding, if this is how you see the Lord Jesus Christ, you would not want to be quiet. Wouldn’t you want to proclaim and tell other people of this wonderful Saviour, of this Jesus? 

You see, that is how these people felt. They could not keep silent. How could they? They have just witnessed something amazing. They have seen an amazing person. They have now come to see this Son of God. And so Luke tells us about this story. And so as we look at this passage now in more detail, we, therefore, want to ask this question: So how are we to understand this miracle here or this passage here? How are we to understand what the Lord is doing here?

Now to answer that, we first of all need to remember alright what I have been saying all these while as we begin, as we study the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, to remember that the whole point, the whole focus of the miracles of our Lord Jesus is not so that we can just copy Him you know, we go around and we start performing miracles. Now that is not the whole focus. The whole focus is about salvation. The whole point alright as I say is to point us to this greater work of saving souls, a greater miracle alright of redeeming us, the miracle of salvation. Now once we grasp this, once we remember this as we study His miracles, then we will not go wrong alright in our understanding of you know the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alright so with that, we ask again: So what are we to make of this particular, mighty miracle? Nothing short of raising the dead alright- nothing short of raising the dead, it’s an amazing thing. Now I want to point out that in each of the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is a particular focus. So it’s not a vain repetition. Now Luke telling many miraculous acts of the Lord Jesus Christ there is just another, just another, just another. No, Luke has a purpose in telling us each of these miracles. You might remember when Luke tells us of the miracle of healing the leper, what was the focus there? You remember?

Well, the focus there was Jesus’ willingness to save sinners alright- Jesus’ willingness. Remember the question asked: If you are willing. And Jesus said: “I am willing” alright. And in the other miracle, that of the healing of the paralytic, well what was the focus there? The focus there was forgiveness. “Your sins are forgiven you” alright. And then in the last miracle that we studied that is the healing of the centurion’s servant, what was the focus in that miracle? Well, we are told alright it is about faith in verse 9 of Luke 7: “When Jesus heard these things, He marvelled at him, and turned around and said to the crowd that followed Him, “I say to you, I have not found such great faith””. So Jesus’ willingness to save us, He is able to forgive us of all our sin, and this focus on faith. 

So what about this? What about this particular miracle this morning? Well, you see that the keyword here, although Jesus tells this widow do not cry or do not weep, but the keyword is not weep. (The keyword is actually ‘weep’ alright). Now that is the keyword there, He said: Do not cry. Do not weep. Now although He was facing with a corpse alright, He was dealing with death, He was raising the dead. So the keyword here is ‘weep’ alright. Now do not cry. Do not weep. And you see that death brings sorrow to men, and therefore Jesus’ exaltation as it were, His word of comfort is “do not weep”.

And so with that, I shall want to now expand on this and look at two things here alright. The first is to look at the state of this widow alright- to look at the state of this widow, and second is look at what Jesus did in response alright. So first look at the state of this widow. The state means the condition of this widow. And we are told right that’s the first thing that Luke wants us to pay attention to alright, to take note of. So the first thing is to take note of the widow’s state of sorrow or grief that this widow here is in tears. She is in tears.

Question is: Why is she in tears? Now I’d just like to read this of a man called Joseph Bayly alright (I think he’s a friend of one pastor and he mentioned him). And Bayly, he says, knew what the loss of a child was like. He and his wife had lost three sons- one at eighteen days after a surgery, the second at five years with leukaemia, and the third died at age eighteen in an accident. So when Joseph Bayly wrote about the death of a child, now people will listen. In fact, he wrote: “Of all death, death of a child is most unnatural and hardest to bear.”. 

How many mothers or parents have lost a child? And those parents will know, it’s hard to bear when you lose a child. And here is a couple that lost three sons. And when I was preparing this sermon actually, and just I was looking at it and studying it, and then suddenly my WhatsApp you know sounded and I just turned it on. And I received this news about Tim Challies who has just lost his son. And here is Tim Challies’ heart-wrenching words: “Yesterday the Lord called my son to Himself—my dear son, my sweet son, my kind son, my godly son, my only son.”. Now, this is what we are looking at here in this passage.

Now, this is what Luke is trying to paint, trying to show us about the condition of this woman here. She has just lost her son, her only son. There’s no other children as far as we know. That’s her only child, she lost her child. Now she is now leading a funeral procession of her only son. Then we are told further not only she (this woman) is leading the procession of her only son, but she was a widow. In other words, Luke is kind of helping us to ponder, to think about this woman.

Here’s a widow. Now when was the last time she walked the same path? Maybe because when her son was still a little baby when she had to bury her husband. And now after burying her husband, perhaps she looked at her little baby boy and said: This is my only hope. This is my consolation. This is what probably now from now on will give me that little joy in life. But now he is also gone. Whatever little joy in her life has been kind of snuffed up from her life. Now so she is a woman now in deep sorrow, and that’s what Luke wants to tell us: In deep grief, in tears. She is crying. We can imagine. We can imagine she’s probably wailing there loudly, crying: My son! My son! Why must this happen to me? Why must this happen to me again?

Now we see if happened once is bad enough. But when it’s a repeated tragedy in your life, now it’s hard for people to bear. And so here is a woman in grief. Now consider you know her further- her situation, her despair. Now what must have meant for her in a number of ways right? You think in terms of her financial situation. Now economically, she would be in financial hardship. Maybe that is not even the immediate of her concern. But emotionally, it’s terrible for her. It’s a terrible thing for someone in a situation like this. Emotionally, she must be, I mean it’s hard to describe. Like even when I was reading Joseph Bayly’s story, losing three sons. It’s hard for Tim Challies to have lost his only son. It’s hard.

Now I mentioned this, again and again, is that when we are not in the same situation, sometimes it’s perhaps you know difficult for us to empathize. Maybe we can somewhat sympathize with these people, but you know if we come to these people and we may say all kinds of comforting words, people may turn around and say perhaps you can only say alright. You can only feel, but you cannot really empathize with me. You’re not in my shoes.

And so Luke tells us about this woman. Oh, how pitiful, not just emotionally and economically, but I believe also socially. She will be considered an outcast, a social outcast. And therefore, she would be by herself, she would feel the loneliness of her life, joys removed, friendship, social life, and now all by herself. The loneliness she must have felt. I say how pitiful is this woman! That is what Luke wants us to see how pitiful is this woman. But can you not see? Can you not see when Luke tells us about the pitiful condition of this widow, he is really talking about us?

Remember he’s not just talking, telling us something that has no relation to us, nothing to do with us. He’s talking about us. In fact, this widow in a sense is a picture of life on earth. I mean the longer we live in this world, we know that this world is filled with suffering. I mean in this pandemic alone alright, I think many people can already feel it that this is a world filled with suffering, problems everywhere, and all kinds of problems. It’s not this problem, it’s that problem. When you’re younger, you face this problem. You’re older, you face a different set of problems. And you guys grow older, now we are, it’s always problems that we are facing in this life. 

And that’s why Job wrote in Job 5: “man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward”, meaning to say it’s just part and parcel of life on earth. It’s just part and parcel of life on earth. Or Solomon writes: “For all his days are sorrowful, and his work grievous; even in the night his heart takes no rest.”. Now that kind of burden that we have in this world, even at night people cannot rest well. How many people have sleepless nights, or at night they’re still thinking about the troubles and trials and the kind of things they are going through that are faced in this life? So can we deny that this world is where there is a great deal of crying, that this woman is not unusual? It’s not an exception. 

There are cries everywhere. You can hear or can you not hear cries in Iraq, in Syria, in Africa? All over the place. Not only we can hear cries everywhere, now we can hear every kind of people crying. We can hear babies crying, we can hear little girls crying, little boys as well. We can hear young ladies crying and young men crying. We can hear grown aged women and men crying. All kinds of people cry, and we hear them everywhere. Now perhaps at this point, some of you might ask: Why are we living in such a terrible world, such a sad world? Or why did God make such a sad world? 

Now let me tell you that God did not make a sad world. The world that God created was a happy world. It was a paradise, but this world is made sorrowful by sin. The world is made sorrowful by a human rebellion against God. Sin, or our rebellion against God, finally speaking is the cause of all sufferings in this world. All tears, all weeping in this world, now sin ultimately is the cause. And as we look at this passage, we see death. And death brings into a sharp focus the problem of sin alright. We know that Covid-19 brings into sharp focus alright the problem of sin. Because of sin, there is pain, there is suffering, and therefore there is tears. So that is the condition, the state of the woman here. The woman in tears. 

Now that leads us to the second thing we want to look at in this passage, and that what did Jesus do? What would Jesus do? What could He do? I think that is not only an interesting question but this is an important question. Can anyone do something about our situation? Can anyone do anything about the situation of this poor widow? That’s where Jesus comes along. And that is a picture right. Here is a procession of tears and sorrow; here is a procession of hope. And they come and meet at the city gate. So let us now consider what did Jesus do. Now Luke now tells us the good news in this miracle. The good news is there is hope.

There is hope in this hopeless world. There is hope in this world filled with troubles and sufferings and pains and tears. There is hope, and that is what we see here. And therefore in verse 13, you see we are told that Jesus sees the tears of this woman, He understands her sorrow, and He held up hope. That’s why in verse 13, “When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and He said to her, “Do not weep.””.

That is what Jesus is saying to us. Do not cry, do not weep, for there is hope. What hope is there? Now it’s easy to say. You know sometimes at the funeral that’s what we tell people. Don’t worry, it’s okay. What is okay? What can we say to this widow? What is okay for her? What hope is there when her husband is lost and now her son, her only son is dead? Note again you know to understand the good news or the hope that Jesus is holding out here, again to remember that the miracles point to the greatest salvation through the gospel because it is the gospel. 

So it’s the deliverance from sin and the effect of sin and to give us life. Now that is the hope alright, deliverance from sin and the effect of sin and thereby give us life. Therefore hope that Jesus offers is the removal of sin. Finally speaking alright, that is the hope that Jesus gives to us, that He will remove sin which is the cause of all the troubles that we face in this world. And so when we look at this passage, it is really what Luke is telling us here. Now how does He do that if that is the hope? How does He do that? How does Jesus do it? And so we are told in verses 14 and 15, now this is what Jesus will do. He does not just tell the widow don’t worry, do not weep. He does not just say.

Then He did something. Verse 14: “He came and He touched the open coffin”. He came and He touched the open coffin, “and then those who carried the coffin stood still. And then Jesus said to the young man, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And so the young man who was dead sat up and began to speak.”. In other words, he actually did rise. The young man is now alive. This is an amazing thing alright. Now verses 14 and 15 is telling us that Jesus is so different from us who very often holds out empty hope or hollow something empty promises, hope that is hollow. But not Jesus. This is no hollow empty promises. Jesus came and He did something, and something happened.

Now notice three things here in Jesus’ act alright in raising this man. First, He went up and He touched the coffin in verse 14. Now that might come as a shock to the people alright. Remember these people, for them you know to touch a corpse will make you unclean alright, according to their Leviticus law. And so for people to come and touch it, it is like you kind of doing something unexpected. Now you see that this is the second time Luke focuses on Jesus’ touching something unclean. The first time was when He touched the leper.

Remember the leper came to Him: “If you are willing”. Jesus said: “I am willing”, and Jesus grasp him. I told you that the word ‘grasp’ there means He actually held him tight alright, and that came as a shock to the people as well. That symbolically means that He is being defiled alright by touching something unclean. But the whole point is this: The whole point in Luke mentioning in this miracle story and the one regarding the leper is to tell us about Jesus’ saving mission.

He said this is how Jesus saved us. He comes and as it were, He touches something unclean and becomes symbolically being defiled by the unclean thing. But that is the mission. That is what Jesus came to do. He came in order that our sin may be transferred to Him, that He became a sinner for us. He became what Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Listen to this. This is what is being pictured: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”.

So that is what is being pictured here, both in this miracle and the one with the leper. And that is how. So in other words, this act illustrates His saving work, that He became sin for us. Now that is amazing. He who is without sin touched us, and now He became sinful and bear the wrath of God on our behalf. So that is the first thing in this miracle here, what Jesus did.

Now the second thing is this: That Jesus spoke to the dead man. He not only touched the coffin, then he spoke to the dead man. He said: “Young man, arise!”. Now, this is to illustrate alright or to point out the truth about the power of Jesus’ words. The power of His word. Remember the last time that when that was being illustrated was when He came to Lazarus who was dead for a few days. It’s now stinking, and Jesus came to Lazarus and said the same thing: Lazarus, come out! Or earlier on in the other miracle story now where the person came to Jesus and said: Just say the word. And Jesus said the word and that person was healed. 

So in all these stories, it is to illustrate to us that there is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is what we are doing when we go and preach the gospel. We are saying with the Apostle Paul that we are “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation”. That is our hope. Our hope that the hope that we’re giving out to people is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s where there is power, and that’s being illustrated here when the word goes out, when the gospel goes out, people are raised spiritually from their spiritual death, raised to life.

And thirdly, we see here Jesus presenting the young man. This young, (I don’t know how old he was) but He was presenting this young man alive to his mother. It must have been an amazing scene alright. Here’s a group of people in a funeral procession crying. You can see the mother wailing. And then all of a sudden, everything changes. The whole scene has changed, transformed. How? It is joy. It is joy. The Bible tells us that angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner repents. That is joy. That is how we should feel when we go and preach the gospel and people are converted. You know what is happening? Do you know what is happening when you preach the gospel and someone is being converted? It is this picture here, that is someone who is dead but now he’s alive. He’s alive. 

And so Jesus now presents this boy alive back to his mother. Imagine the joy. Now Spurgeon referring to this incident said this. He said: “This is a rehearsal on a small scale of that which shall happen by and by.”. Every time you know this is just in a small way, but one day alright we shall be in heaven. And listen to what the Bible says: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes; there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”. Everything will be passed. That day will come when we arrive at heaven’s shore. 

There is hope. There is hope in Jesus Christ. There is hope in the gospel alright of Jesus Christ. And if you come to Jesus Christ and trust in Him, now this is what Jesus is holding out. You will be made alive again, made alive in Christ. One day we shall be all gathered in paradise, where Covid-19 will be gone. All kinds of things that bring us grief and sorrow, these will all be gone because there shall be no more death, no more pain, no more sorrow. That is what this parable is about (Mistakenly mentioned “parable”, supposedly “account”). That is what Jesus came to do, and here is a picture and an illustration of it. Let us pray.

“Our Father in heaven, we can see that here is a woman in grief, in sorrow, in tears. We can now see something of the pain that she had gone through. And Lord, we know that this is about us that we live in a cursed world, a world filled with troubles, a world filled with pain and sorrow. And we know that from time to time we experience something of this, and we know what Luke is saying here in this story of the widow.

And we pray most of all that You’ll help us to understand that all the troubles that we face in this world is because that we are living in a sin-cursed world, that sin ultimately is what has brought this world into this present state. But we thank You that You have sent Your Son, Jesus Christ to this world to deal with that very problem that we are all faced with- the problem of sin and rebellion against You, that He has come to give us hope. And therefore, we pray that we may all turn to Him, trust in Him, that we may too receive life in Him, for this we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.