Does anyone care? (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Mike Abendroth here. Not Patrick James Abendroth, but Michael Lee Abendroth. Not Abendroth. Not Avonro. Not Haferhorf. Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com is the email, especially if you want to order multiple copies of the new book, Jesus and Cancer, a summary condensed version of Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd.

And also, by the time this is aired, the new book, Law and Gospel, or Law Gospel, a primer that is going to be up and ready to be purchased at Amazon. So, without further ado, today on the show, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about sympathy.

Sympathy as Compassion That Acts

Sympathy, that's right. About compassion to the point of wanting to help someone. It's one thing to be empathetic. It's another to feel pain, and it's another to do something about it. Actually, we live in a world full of.

Toil, trouble,.

Trials,.

Pain, hardship, loss, sickness, illness, and more. Very, very difficult world that we live in. Matthew Henry said, What a veil of tears it is. And the question that many have, of course, we as Christians don't have this question really, maybe on our dark days, does anyone care?

Now, maybe humanly speaking, we might ask that. Maybe we're alone, isolated, far from family, family is deceased. Does anyone care when we're going through troubles and trials, the world seems too busy, social media, news, everything else, and how cruel the world is often, how busy they are, distracted.

And so when we're going through trials, does anyone ever care? Does anyone care about the troubles that I'm going through? And of course today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to talk about the subject that we always talk about.

That is the Lord Jesus. The old days, No Co was about not compromising and going after people that did. Francis Chan or Beth Moore or Russell Moore. I probably never really went after him, but I probably should have.

Now the show is about the one who never compromised, the Lord Jesus. And maybe once in a while, I might say something about some thing that I don't like or polemically need to advise you on, but mainly it's about Jesus because after all, that's the Christian message.

And I'm preaching through the gospel of Jesus according to Luke, so it all seems to make sense. Jesus does care. God does care. And thankfully, even during this Christmas season when we think about the Incarnation, the sympathy that the God-man gives, the comfort that he gives, it is very, very important for us to understand that this Jesus that we worship, whom we worship, can comfort you.

He cares, and he can sympathize with you. And more, he is the all-powerful, all-compassionate, all-sympathetic High Priest. And so, no matter what burdens you're facing today, or hardships, or trials, or afflictions, no matter what your situation is, you can have joy because you can answer the question, does anyone care for me?

Every Christian can say, yes, God cares for me. And the passage that I'm thinking about these days is the next one that I'm preaching, and that is Jesus and the widow in a city called Nain. We've just seen, as we have looked through the gospel of Jesus according to Luke, that the centurion's servant was healed on behalf of the centurion's request, and Jesus powerfully, wonderfully heals this person that was suffering terribly, paralyzed, and other things.

And of course, Luke wants you to say to yourself, who is Jesus? Is he the prophet? Is he the priest? Is he the king? Is he the expected one? Is he the one that the Old Testament prophesied of? And so, the answer to all these things is yes, and therefore, we should be believing in him, and trusting in him, and looking to him for everything we need.

And we should walk by faith. No one can do these miracles. Many times, you might say to yourself, why was that miracle done? And the answer is to authenticate the one who did the miracle, and his teaching.

It's a confirmation. It's an authenticating thing to say, well, you know what? Lots of people say that they're God's prophet, but this one can raise people who are sick, and let people hear who are deaf, and let people see who are blind, and this has to be the right Jesus.

The only Jesus. The only Messiah. And of course, in this particular passage in Luke 7, 11, and following, the crowds are going to respond to the next miracle of Jesus with fear, glorifying God, and they're going to go out and tell the stories about who Jesus is.

And so, that's kind of what I'm after here, as we look at, really, the greatest miracle ever. If I ask you, what are the greatest miracles in all the Bible, what would you say? Obviously, blind people seeing, leprosy being cleansed, walking on water,.

Feeding.

5 ,000 men, maybe 10 ,000 people are there, splitting the Red Sea, plagues. There are all kinds of miracles, both positively and negatively, like the plagues being negative, these great signs, we might call them.

See, theologically, you have to kind of edit yourself as you go. Theologically, autocorrecting at all times. The greatest miracle, of course, in the Bible, not even arguably, is resurrection of the dead.

And Jesus raises Lazarus, as you know, in John 11. He's raising Jairus' daughter later on in Luke. And in this particular case, he's going to raise a young man, the only son of a widowed lady. And so, what's going on in the passage is Jesus has just healed the servant of the centurion, and now he's headed southish, and he's going to a city called Nain.

And coming with him, Luke 7 -11 says, a bunch of disciples and a great crowd. And there's kind of a collision of the crowd, because he's got all the people with him, most likely, besides if, unless there were Pharisees following,.

Everybody else, happy, joyful,.

Exuberant,.

Expecting,.

Glad that the Messiah is among them. It'd be pretty amazing to be back in those days after all the years of silence between Malachi slash 2nd Chronicles and Matthew. You've got to be so excited. And you're going to have these joyful people that are with Jesus and following Jesus intersect with, or I use the word collide, with the funeral procession, just opposite of these other folks in their demeanor.

And so, they would be sad, weeping, wailing,.

Dust,.

Sackcloth,.

And more. And what you see, if you just back up for a little bit, is sovereignty. Jesus is called Lord, and of course, he's orchestrating everything, and he knew the exact minute that this procession was going to go out of the town to go to the tombs, probably, for burial.

And he shows up exactly at the right time. He's always on time. Perfect, providential happening in Luke chapter 7 and in everywhere else. The timing, you should not respond with how lucky you get, woman, because as you're going out to bury your son, you're going to meet Jesus.

Jesus is going to meet you, to be more technical. You cannot say the stars are aligning. A fortune's good. Astrology, people said this was going to be nice. There's a coincidence. No, the scriptures littered with the language of, you know what, Abraham needs a ram to sacrifice, and he looks up, there it is.

It's just like, wow, coinkidink. Abraham's servant's got to go find a wife for Isaac, and oh, there's Rebekah right there. There she is.

Ruth,.

Chapter 2, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz. No, just by chance, the priest was going down that road, and he saw him. He passed on the other side, the story of the.

Good.

Samaritan. Providentially, this is all happening. It shouldn't surprise us. There's no coincidences in God's eyes, no luck, no serendipity, no fortune. This is a sovereign God that we worship, and he is comprehensive in his sovereignty.

He is complete in his sovereignty. No rogue atoms, no rogue molecules, and how should we respond? Oh, he's so far off. He's so transcendent. This is not the kind of God who walks with me and talks with me alongside life's narrow way.

On the contrary, we should have great comfort that Proverbs 16, 4 says the Lord has made everything for its purpose, that he is sovereign. Even to the little things, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every what?

Decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 19, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it's purpose, or but the purpose of the Lord will stand. And even Nebuchadnezzar knew that God is the most high, and he lives forever, and his dominion is an everlasting dominion,.

And.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he, God, does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can.

Say,.

Stay his hand and say to him, what have you done? And of course, if you ask the question, does anyone care? Does anyone care about me? I'm in a trial. Can someone comfort me, care for me, have compassion on me, have sympathy for me?

I think you should be trusting in the sovereignty of God. Your life is in an accident. It's not, from God's perspective, spiraling out of control so that he can't do anything about it. Here, God wants us to see, oh, this is perfect timing.

Jesus is going to a city called Nain,.

And.

He meets this lady. He meets this funeral procession about 20 miles or so southwest of Capernaum, some say 25 miles, let's just say about a day's journey. Jesus has the power to heal the sick, obviously, and he meets this funeral procession.

The mother would be at the front, then they'd have a kind of a a wooden, almost kind of like.

Slab,.

A.

Huge,.

Not plywood back in those days, but imagine like a big thing of plywood, and they put the corpse that was wrapped up on top of that, and we're not thinking coffins or anything like we would think now.

And then afterwards, they would have some musicians there, and there would be dirges and laments. There would also be, in this procession, people that were crying, and they were paid to cry, paid mourners and weepers and people who would wail, and then after that there would be people that were friends, just people coming to pay their respects, and off they're going to some rock tombs, and they even found some rock tombs around Nain.

Is that the right spot or not? We don't really care for today's program. Obviously, because of sin, now there's death. Not necessarily always our personal sin in terms of we sinned and then therefore God just killed us because of that sin, but because of our sin nature inherited by Adam and then our own consequent sin, we are going to have to die because the wages of sin is death, and death, of course, is not pretty.

It is not beautiful. It is horrible. It is ugly. It is unnatural. It is the enemy. It causes sorrow. Romans chapter 5, sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

How tragic sin is, the consequences of sin, so awful. Martin Luther said, when you hear of death, you must think not only of the grave and coffin and of the horrible manner in which life is separated from the body and how the body is destroyed and brought to naught, but you must think of the cause by which man is brought to death, and without which death and that which accompanies it would be impossible, namely, sin and the wrath of God on account of sin.

The happy, joyous, excited crowd that's with the Messiah, everything's upbeat, everything's great, comes into a collision with people who are proceeding out of Nain. I find it interesting that Nain means pleasant or beautiful, and one writer said there's nothing beautiful or pleasant in this site.

The finality of.

Death.

And the two large crowds coming together to witness this great miracle by Jesus. I was reading one guy online. He said this whole scene is a funny thing happened on the way to the cemetery. Using kind of slogans and slang, but I don't know if I really like it that much.

The mourning has begun, M-O-U-R-N. You would bury the person on the same day they died because of defilement and smells and everything else. You wouldn't call them mortician or anything like that.

You were responsible, and so they would start mourning. This would be the beginning of 30 days of mourning. As a matter of fact, in some Eastern cultures, even in Bible days, when the person died, people would let out a shriek, and that would kind of let the neighbors know, in fact, that person had died.

In those days, to mourn, you would put dust in your head. You might tear your garment. You might cut your beard, all kinds of things. The people would not eat until they would bury the person, and then they would probably have some wine and some bread.

Jeremiah says, neither shall men break bread for them in the morning, M-O-U-R-N, to comfort them for the dead, neither shall men give them the cup of consolation drink for their father or for their mother.

One of the things I don't think we get, and maybe if you're from an Eastern culture, you can just ignore these the next few minutes,.

But.

Mourning in Israel and in the Oriental culture, in the Eastern culture, it's not like we Germans mourn. Between my background of German, Swedish, Danish, we're pretty quiet. We don't mourn out loud that much.

I think I've gotten over how I was raised, where everything's stiff upper lip and stoic, and don't let them see you cry. I don't mind crying now. I don't wipe away my tears now, because if I cry, it should be for a good reason.

With Luke, when he was growing up, and even the little girls, they'd skin their knee and cry. I'd say, don't cry. Get back in the game or get back playing and stuff like that. There's a time to cry. You don't need to cry now when you just stubbed your toe, but there's a time to cry when grandma dies or there's somebody that you love is sick or something like that.

The psalmist in Psalm 119, rivers of water run down my eyes because they have not kept the law. The idea is much louder weeping in that culture, much more vocal. Jeremiah chapter nine, oh, that my head were waters and my eyes, a fountain of tears that I may weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.

Excuse me. There's a lot to cry about because there's two strikes against this lady. Number one, she's a widow. And number two, her only son dies. She has done this whole thing before, this whole funeral procession thing before when she went to go bury her husband.

Yet the disposition of God, as it were, toward orphans and widows is what? And we know God protects. God has a special loving care for them. And he even has in his law in Deuteronomy that you should have justice for a widow and justice for the fatherless and justice to the sojourner.

This lady, she now has no one to care for her. Her husband has died and now her son, her only son has died. And there are no IRAs back in those days, no 401Ks, no 403Bs, no SEP IRAs, no social security, no retirement, no pension, no life insurance.

And it's going to be hard for her. Sometimes destitution if you have no way to earn money. And how are you going to have any provision for your life unless the neighbors come alongside? And again, you can just hear the commotion and the paid mourners.

And here's this lifeless body wrapped up on this kind of board, as it were. How sad. Some have said this is the saddest funeral that anyone could imagine. The saddest funeral, loud wailing. I've been to some cultures, other cultures' funerals, and it's people like they throw themselves on the casket, just crying.

But typically, I'm in a reserve culture. And people are kind of dressed up. They look nice. It's not like back in these days where people would wear scratchy sackcloth and dark colored sackcloth and kind of goat hair, stuff that would just rub you and rub you the wrong way literally, just kind of inflicting more pain.

Your sandals are taken off. Any kind of jewelry, they're taken off. And here's this pallet, and you've got a corpse on top of it. They didn't have a lot of wood, so you don't bury in caskets like now.

And so, what's happening here? We're going outside the city, mourning, death, no support, no hope. Does anybody care? And the writer Luke is wanting you to say, the scene is set for a great miracle. We know Jesus cares for people.

He, when healed the centurion's servant, I mean, the centurion even cared for his servant. How much more? The servant's maker. And the scene is set for the compassion of Christ. And that's what we see next, the compassion of the Christ.

Christ's Compassion for the Widow of Nain

And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, do not weep. Then he came up and touched the beer, B-I-E-R, like kind of that plank. And the bear stood still. And he said, young man, I say to you, arise.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother. Wow. D .L. Moody once said, Jesus spoiled every funeral that he went to. He spoiled every funeral. I wonder if she'd already paid the mortician.

Just kidding. Jesus did not say, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm going to miss him too. I hope you feel surrounded by much love, sharing in your sadness as you remember your son, with deep sympathy as you remember your son.

My thoughts are with you, thinking of you all as you celebrate your son's remarkable life. We're missing your son along with you with heartfelt sympathy. Now, I'm not saying those are always wrong to say, but that's not what Jesus said.

I was reading online about advice in expressing sympathy, how to offer real sympathy. And everything had to do with helping. It wasn't just, I'm sorry for your loss. It was, I'm sorry for your loss. And if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I'm here for you.

Just call me. It was, I'm sorry for your loss. And if there's any way I can help, I want to. What's a good night to bring over a meal? It wasn't just, I'm sorry for your loss and I'm thinking about you.

It's, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm thinking about you and we'll take care of the mowing and your yard work for the next month. Don't worry about it. It's, you know what? We'll take care of your dog or we'll take care of this, that, or the other.

That's how you show sympathy according to one website. And I think they were very smart. Good advice. Now, if we know that's right, and we can get the sense of that as being right, what would the perfect man do?

What would the true man do? Out of all the men that ever been born of a woman, there's one man who did everything perfectly. The compassionate man, the true man, the perfect man, the sympathetic man, the God man, Jesus.

And sympathy is, I've got so much compassion for you. I'll help. That's what real compassion is. I'm going to do something about it. I'm compassionate and I will assist. Makes me think of Hebrews chapter four.

Since then we have a high, great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Holding fast our confession because we've got the priest who can sympathize with us.

Isn't that wonderful? He's not far away. He's close. The song says, Jesus knows about all your troubles, the high priest ability. First Peter chapter five, verse seven, casting all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you.

And of course the glorified Christ is still incarnate. The God man is in heaven and he still identifies with us then in heaven. And so he's not far away. He helps. He sympathizes with our weaknesses, whatever those weaknesses may be, runs the whole gamut.

And now Jesus, we see, takes the initiative to heal. Grace initiates, mercy initiates, God initiates. Hosea 14, four, I will love them freely. That's just what happens. Grace initiates, mercy initiates.

Grace sees the unworthy and initiates. Mercy sees the one that has pity, needs pity, has a need, and it initiates. She, the woman, did not ask Jesus. People weren't sent to Jesus to ask on her behalf.

He, Jesus, goes right up to her with his compassion, with his sympathy, with his mercy, when she's not even seeking it. The man who's been born of a woman knows what a woman who's weeping must be going through.

And as Psalm 68 calls God the protector of widows, here now the God man loving this widow. I mean, sometimes people go up to Jesus, can you help me? Like the leper and Jesus heals. Other times you go on behalf of someone else, my paralyzed friend or the centurion's servant.

But here, no one asks. Jesus sovereignly initiating has the perfect man. And of course, what gets me here is the wonderful fact that sometimes we're so busy with our own problems, we don't have time to go after others.

But of course, that's not what the Lord is doing here. Did you know, dear Christian, that somebody cares, that God cares, that he's a great friend? He's compassionate to the point that he'll do something about it.

That's called sympathy. My name is Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Thanks for listening.