Authority Over Death Luke 7:11-17

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome this morning to Faith Bible Church. It's warming up. Finally, summer seems to have arrived, and we're thankful for that. By way of announcements, Richard's out and about again.

And welcome, Richard. It's great to see the Lord working in Richard's life and healing him and seeing him through a difficult time and God is faithful. He always is. And so we're blessed to have you here, Richard.

And his grandson, Nick. So I got that one right, too. Yeah.

Welcome.

For announcements, the summer Bible study is starting Friday, June 16, weekly on the summer Bible study on a Friday. And we're going to be studying through Hebrews, Book of Hebrews. And everyone's welcome to that.

Ladies, Bible study will be June 17 at 10 on Saturday. Ladies, mark that one. And missionary of the month, Jim and Joan Hansen. They've been up on the board here. What a faithful couple. And if you want to know more about their ministry, you can dig into it and look on the board back there.

But let's remember them in prayer as well. And I think that's it for announcements today. Well, this week I was looking, read a devotional. It was on Habakkuk. And Habakkuk was a prophet, as most of you know.

And he was going through a troubling time. And there's lots of parallels to he could be a contemporary person of our times, living under leadership that is ungodly, times of violence, people turning away from God, giving over to false gods, trying to make.

So does that sound a little bit familiar about what we're going through? It does. And he was trying to make sense of it. And so he cried out to God. And I'd like to read. This is really encouraging, because things repeat themselves.

And we can learn so much from God's word. And so Habakkuk chapter 3, verse 17 starts, though the fig tree may not blossom nor fruit beyond the vines, though the labor of the olive tree may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will joy in the Lord of my salvation. And the last verse, 19, the Lord's God is my strength. He will make my feet like deer's feet. He will make me walk on my high hills. What an encouragement. And the hind's feet is a picture of the female deer that runs.

And actually, its front legs land in the very precise point that its front hooves feet land. It's very precise. It's agile. If we have faith in God, we can have that agility in our spiritual lives. We can, as things come at us, we can still have joy.

We can still fellowship with the God of the universe, because he is sovereign. He is Lord over all things. We need not fear. So that was encouraging to me this week. So let's go before the Lord in prayer.

Lord God, we thank you, Lord, that you have brought us here today, that you would allow us to take this time to reflect on you and your goodness and your grace and your mercy. And you are so worthy, Father, of all that we can do and say to give you praise.

God, we ask for those that aren't here today. We pray for Lauren, that you would bless her and heal her, Father, as she cares for herself and for Micah at this moment in time, Lord. Father, we pray for John.

Give him strength, spiritual and physical strength, as he cares for Veronica. We pray for physical healing for her, Father, and just bless them, we pray. And God, be with others that are home, that are infirm, that aren't able to come out to church, Lord.

We pray that you would bless them, that you would draw them to yourself, Father, that they would find peace and rest in the God that created them, Father. God, bless our time now this morning as we open up your word, as pastor shares with us what you've laid upon his heart, Lord.

May our words and our speech be like honey, be with full of grace and joy, Father, as we come before you as your people. So, God, prepare our hearts for communion after service, and Lord, we just rejoice now with all our being and all our soul, Father.

May the Holy Spirit guide and direct us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

Lord.

David.

And let all those that put their trust in the Lord rejoice, and let's stand and sing.

Morning, everyone.

Morning.

Scripture reading today will be out of 1 Kings, chapter 17, verses 17 through 24. Verse 17, now it happened after these things that the son of the woman who owned the house became sick, and his sickness was so serious that there was no breath left in him.

So she said to Elijah, what have I to do with you, O man of God? Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to kill my son? And he said to her, give me your son. So he took him out of her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his own bed.

Then he cried out to the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, have you also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodged by killing her son? And he stretched himself out on the child three times and cried out to the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, I pray, let this child's soul come back to him.

Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came back to him and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother.

And Elijah said, see, your son lives. Then the woman said to Elijah, now by this I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth. This is the word of the Lord.

Please turn with me to Luke chapter seven, verses 11 through 17. Luke chapter seven, verses 11 through 17. 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.

And when he came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother. And she was a widow and a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, do not weep.

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. So he who was dead sat up and began to speak and he presented him to his mother.

Then fear came upon all and they glorified God saying a great prophet has risen up among us and God has visited his people. And this report about him went throughout all Judea and all the surrounding region.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that we can hope in Jesus who raises the dead back to life. And Father, we look forward to not just a temporary revival but a permanent resurrection because we believe that Jesus had died for our sin and he himself is risen from the dead never to die again.

We long for that day in which your son will call all of us who believe, rise in Jesus' name. Now the Old Testament, we do have to look at the context of this passage with the Old Testament. The Old Testament, really from the beginning as in Genesis one, God is the source of life.

God spoke everything that has breath into existence not just a dead existence. When God spoke, those living things came to life. And not only that, in Genesis two, we see a more intricate creation of humankind in which God breathes his spirit into the nostrils of Adam.

God is the giver of life. In fact, as we went over this morning when we covered Deuteronomy briefly, the Old Testament law reflected what kind of God the Jews served. And it was that the Jews, the Israelites believed in the God of life.

Think about the sacrificial system. Anytime there is a transgression, anytime one sins against God, whether intentionally or not, life has to be given. And that life is represented by the blood. God required the blood of an innocent animal to signify that an innocent life had to be given back to God to pay back what the sinner has done against God.

And the reason why any other Israelites, no Israelites were allowed to consume blood is because the blood, the life force of that animal was the only thing, only God could have the life force of the animal because God is the only source of life.

And that goes with the dietary law as well as we discussed earlier this morning that the Israelites were forbidden from eating any animals that consumed other animals, hence blood. God created another degree of separation from the Israelites and death.

And that's because from what the Israelites consumed, the surrounding nations and even the Israelites themselves would know that they worship the God of life, right? The animals that chew the cud and splits the hoofs, they're herbivores, which means Israelites would only be consuming animals that don't consume other animals because they worship the God of life.

Now, here we see Jesus giving life to a dead man by the words from his mouth. Unlike the previous miracle in which the focus of the passage was the centurion, the faith of that centurion, this passage's focus is on the miracle itself.

While the centurion's faithful response to Jesus highlighted Jesus' authority last week, Jesus' life-giving miracle emphasizes his authority over death. While the Gentile soldier approached Jesus for help, recognizing his authority in the previous miracle, Jesus takes the initiative to show his compassionate authority here.

And this passage is crucial for us this morning. Because we need to truly see what kind of authority Jesus has, and hence, what kind of being Jesus is. This passage is extremely relevant to all of us because death is inevitable.

Everyone will experience death if you live long enough. Whether you'll lose someone whom you love, or you will experience death yourself. Either way, death is one of the most unnatural events a human could go through.

There's so many things that happen to all of us that we're not quite bothered by it. When we get hungry, we all get hungry. If we don't eat at the right time, we all get hungry. Hopefully, we're not too bothered by it every time.

Same with thirst. Same with having to use the restroom. Same with getting tired, having to sleep. They all come naturally to all of us at one point in life. Probably many points in life. However, there's nothing as unnatural as death.

And the reason is, deep inside, we know because God has created in us that death is not natural. God did not design humans, or for the matter, any other animal, to experience death. Even animals know that death is unnatural.

This morning, we get to encounter the very author of life, and how we encounter and believe this being will determine how you experience death. For those who trust Jesus as the author of life, who died for your sins so that he could defeat sin and death once and for all, death is only the beginning of a new life, a better life, a way absent, absent of any effect of sin and sin itself.

But for those of you who do not trust Jesus as how he reveals himself in this text, death is one of the most horrendous things one can experience. So the main point of this text is, although the author of life compassionately overrides death, the crowd underestimates his true identity and authority.

Although the author of life compassionately overrides death, the crowd underestimates his true identity and authority. First, Jesus' authority over death is driven by his compassion. Jesus' authority over death is driven by his compassion.

After Jesus' healing account in Capernaum, he travels 20 miles southwest to Nain. Verse 11, now it happened the day after that he went into a city called Nain, and many of his disciples went with him in a large crowd.

Luke is the only gospel that actually mentions this account, this miracle that occurs in Nain. It's a small city, but something big will happen. Verse 12 introduces the main conflict of the passage. And when he came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out.

When the Bible author, when the human author writes behold, it's a way of saying, look here. It's like a highlight bold underline. They didn't have that back then. So they actually said, behold, look here.

A dead man was being carried out. Immediately the attention shifts to the funeral procession. Now in ancient Israel, when a person died, this is the protocol that they followed. First, they actually made sure that the person was really dead, right?

They don't wanna bury a living person. And after that, the family members, they would actually tear their clothes as a physical expression of their internal grief. And I think we miss out on having some sort of grieving response that's widely accepted and expected because people nowadays do not know how to grieve properly.

But the Israelites, they physically showed that they were grieving by what they were wearing. And then the family members would close the eyes of the dead person. And then the body was anointed and it was soon buried to prevent any further decay.

After all, you wouldn't want that stench and also uncleanliness to stay because ritualistic purity was very important for the Israelites. Then the corpse was then covered in cloths and placed on a burial plank rather than inside a coffin.

So the corpse was actually visible. Hence, Jesus was able to touch the corpse without having to ask them to. Could you open the lid, please? The corpse could be seen publicly and then they would recite a portion of Deuteronomy 6, the famous part where it says, "'O Israel, you shall love the Lord God "'with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.'".

And then the family would mourn for 30 days. They had an intricate mourning schedule. They were allowed to grieve the loss of their loved one sufficiently. They weren't pressured to move on. Culturally, they were expected to grieve for 30 days.

And that's because they knew death was not natural. Death was not a part of God's original design for the world. By grieving for 30 days, they were in agreement with God that this is not okay. Now, Luke tells us the extremely sorrowful circumstance of this funeral.

The dead man was the only son of his mother and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. First, as I mentioned, any death is unnatural. God did not create the world to have death in it.

That was not the original plan. Second, this death is even more unnatural because a parent is burying her child. This was not a funeral for someone who has lived a full, fulfilling life. It was a funeral for a child.

There is nothing more heartbreaking for a mom or a dad to lose and have to bury their own child. Parents really cannot move on from that. That's a lasting scar inside. Third, this was her only son. This was her boy whom she raised and believed would one day bury her.

But the reversal occurred. Fourth, she was burying her boy by herself. She was a widow. Her husband was not there to support her because she buried him already. Daryl Bach, a commentator for Luke, describes her as an orphaned parent.

She was all by herself. And she was left to face this tragedy by herself. In fact, this is so tragic that the whole city, the crowd, they gathered a large crowd with her to be a part of this in support of her.

Now, what is Jesus' response? First, without any request from the woman or anyone else from the procession, Jesus responds to the woman directly. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, do not weep.

For the first time in Luke, Jesus is referred to as the Lord by the narrator. This is the same authoritative title that Jesus will be called in Acts 2 after his resurrection. Here, the author of life approaches the victim of death, a victim from whom death has violently robbed her of her only boy.

And Luke tells us Jesus' first internal response. He was filled with compassion. Here, the direct translation is that Jesus was moved from the guts. Jesus was moved from the bowels. What it's saying is at Jesus' very core, he was stirred up to comfort this mourning mother.

Jesus did not approach her because he was asked to. He approached her because he, from the very death of his body, desired to comfort her. And for all of us this morning, did we know, did you know that this was the interior view of Christ's heart toward those who have lost someone?

Oftentimes, God feels so far away when we lose someone we love, especially when it's unexpected, when it comes so soon. But we see the very heart of Christ in this text. He's filled with compassion. His guts cannot contain themselves unless he approaches in mercy and compassion.

Jesus is prompted from the inside to compassionately enter into your lives to reverse the death's detrimental. That's who Christ is. And to this widow, Jesus first comforts her with words. Do not weep.

This is a rather uncommon words of comfort. For most of us, we must not say this to someone who is mourning. But we will see that Jesus' particular command will bring more comfort to this woman than the whole city mourning by her side.

There's a reason for this command, do not weep. Then verses 14 to 15 zoom in onto Jesus' response to the corpse. 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.

Jesus' compassion drives him to approach the dead man. Not only that, although he could have just said it from a distance, he approaches the corpse and touches the dead man. For those of us who know the law, this act would have made Jesus unclean for seven days.

And I have to make sure that we know that being ritualistically unclean did not mean it was morally unclean. There was a different spectrum. Now, sin did make someone both morally and ritualistically unclean, but burying the dead was not a sinful action.

In fact, it was sinful to not bury your family members. It was dishonoring of your parents to not bury them. Now, what is bizarre here is that Jesus, a non-relative to this young man who's dead, touches him directly, presumably making him unclean.

However, something more bizarre is that it is not Jesus who is made unclean by the corruption of death, but the dead man who is made clean because he is no longer dead. Jesus revives him. I do not use the term resurrection here because it does get confusing when I do.

There's a difference between revival or resuscitation and resurrection, mainly because the resurrection has this end day connotation to it in terms of you're being risen from death to live eternally. When we are gonna be resurrected, it's not to rise from the dead to die again, just like this young man.

This young man is no longer living. That's resuscitation and being revived. But the resurrection is forever. You're risen from the dead to be freed from death once and for all. Now, verse 15 shows us the response of the young man.

So he who was dead sat up and began to speak, and he, Jesus, gave him to his mother. Verse 15 tells us two signs of this resuscitation. He sat up. This act of sitting up occurs also in Acts 9 .40 with Tabitha who's resuscitated by Peter who prays to Jesus.

She also sits up after she's resuscitated. This action is recorded because dead people do not sit up. They stay lying down. Dead people also do not speak. However, upon Jesus' authoritative command, the boy sits up and begins to speak.

Again, this is another clear sign of Jesus' authority over death. He completely reversed it. This passage is important to us this morning, not because I'm here to tell you that whatever the next funeral you go to, you can just command the dead corpse to rise, and he or she will rise.

That is not the purpose of the passage. The purpose of the passage is to show what kind of Lord Jesus is. First, he's compassionate. It's not just that he has the authority to raise someone from the dead, but the compassionate Lord desires to raise the dead.

It's one thing that someone is capable of doing something good. It's another thing that someone at his core being longs to do it. Someone who is just merely capable of doing good may not be good at all, and there's no guarantee that he'll do it ever, but Jesus is not just only capable, but he desires to.

He desires to reverse the touch of death. In one sense, the compassionate Lord Jesus ruins every funeral he attends. When the source of life encounters the procession of death, he compassionately cancels it by giving life back.

That's who he is. And ultimately, Jesus' compassion for the sinners who are headed toward death is amplified when we find out how much he mercifully longs to reverse the trajectory of death. He hates death so much that he's willing to die to abolish it once and for all.

We may not hear Jesus' command to rise up at our own personal funerals. Unlike the young men, we may not be resuscitated after we die. The odds are we won't. However, for those who are in Christ, the command to rise up will be heard.

And just as the young man said of we too will rise up from our graves. For Christians, we have hope because Christ has defeated sin and death once and for all on the cross. Because he hated death and sin so much, he took your sin and your fate, which is death, and he suffered on the cross to reverse that trend.

And on the third day, he rose from the dead. You don't need more proof than that as to who won between Christ and death. Death could not keep Christ in. Christ even ruined his own funeral. Now, for those of us who believe in Christ, unlike the young man who was resuscitated to die again, we will not experience just mere resuscitation just to experience death again.

But rather, we will be resurrected to never experience a glimpse of death. It's not that you'll be risen so that you live a longer life. It's not that you're risen so that you live a healthier life. It's that you'll be risen to live.

And that's accomplished for you on the cross. Now, how does the crowd respond? Although they acknowledge Jesus' power in fear, they underestimate who Jesus is. Although they acknowledge Jesus' power in fear, they underestimate who Jesus is.

After seeing Jesus reviving a dead boy, the crowd responds in fear. Then fear came upon all and they glorified God, saying, a great prophet has risen up among us and God has visited his people. Now, why did the crowd think Jesus was a prophet?

Well, as Dexter read to us this morning, the prophet Elijah and Jesus actually performed very similar miracles. Elijah raised a son of a widow from the dead and Jesus here did the same. The crowd knew, oh, the widow's son and the widow's son must be a prophet.

And in fact, after the prophet Elijah raised the widow's son in 1st Kings 17, his response was very similar to that of Jesus. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother.

And Elijah said, see, your son lives. Just as Elijah gave the boy to his mom, Jesus also gave the boy to his mom in verse 15. The response is so similar. Hence, the crowd believes that this Jesus guy must be a repeat.

He's like another Elijah, a great prophet, right? And Jesus, according to them, belongs to the same category as Elijah. Oh, Jesus is one of the elite prophets of the old. Now, the second proclamation results from the recognition of the first.

Because God has raised up another great prophet like Elijah, the crowd proclaims God has visited his people. Now, this is not literally that they believe that Jesus is God. We have to read it in the context.

In the context, their praise of God visiting his people is because God has given them a great prophet like Elijah. So, what this means is this idea of God visiting his people does not mean that Jesus is God.

Rather, in the Old Testament, God's visitation signified his gracious act on behalf of his people. So, for example, in Ruth 1 .6, Naomi returns to Bethlehem after staying in Moab for so many years because she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread.

This was not to say the Lord came down in the flesh and started multiplying bread in Bethlehem during Ruth's time, but rather, the famine was over. The very reason why Naomi and her two sons and her husband went to Moab, which was the famine in the land, it was God.

And that's because God visited Bethlehem. The famine was over. So, in the similar sense to the crowd, Jesus, as another prophet coming to them, was a sign of God's gracious act. We have another prophet.

And this was worth celebrating because for centuries, God has not sent another prophet after Ezra and Nehemiah. It was silent. The word of God was silent. So, they thought, oh, good, we were not abandoned.

God hasn't forgotten about us. So, they spread the news to all the surrounding regions of Judea that a great prophet has come, and this is a sign that God has visited them. Now, because crowds saw this life-giving miracle, they believed God had mercifully visited them by sending another prophet.

But the problem is that they only saw Jesus as another prophet. Ironically, they missed the fact that God literally visited them because he took on flesh. What they thought figuratively and celebrated so, wow, God hasn't left us.

See, we have another prophet. Ironically, God was among them, not as another prophet, but as the very deity himself. And one may say, how are we supposed to know that Jesus was different from any other prophet?

The Old Testament prophets raised the dead to life, right? Elijah did it, Elisha did it, right? Elisha did it twice.

How can we tell?

How do we know that Jesus is not just another prophet? Well, look at how he raises the dead. Whether Elijah or Elisha, the Old Testament prophets raised the dead after praying to God. First King 1721, and he stretched himself out on the child three times and cried out to the Lord and said, oh Lord my God, I pray let this child's soul come back to him.

Elijah was not relying on his own authority. He was relying on God's authority. On the other hand, how did Jesus raise this young boy from the dead? Well, Jesus directly commanded him to rise. While Elijah requested for resuscitation from God, Jesus directly orders the dead to rise.

He says, I say to you, I say to you. Whose words is it? It's his words. I say to you, arise. Jesus' words are sufficient. Jesus has authority over death himself. And your relation to this God matters this morning because your eternity's at stake.

How you respond to Jesus who has authority over life and death today will determine your eternal life. If Jesus has the authority in himself to override death just by speaking, how are we going to respond to him?

How we trust him now will determine what he says to us. What we do in response to Christ this morning will set the trajectory of our lives. Whether as time goes by, we're getting closer to true life or we're just crawling to the death's front door.

If Jesus is just another prophet, it doesn't matter how you respond to Jesus. Just as it doesn't matter how you respond to Elijah. The only thing that mattered is how you responded to the words that God has delivered to Elijah.

And this morning we see the same authoritative word that comes out of Jesus' mouth and the source is Jesus himself. His authoritative word has the power to give life. His powerful word has the capacity to overrule death.

How will you respond to him this morning? And that will determine your eternal trajectory. Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that Jesus has the authority to raise anyone from the dead. And by trusting in him, there is no disease, no disorder, there is no condition that is too strong for him to reverse.

He will one day reverse it all. There is nothing, no pain, that Christ's resurrection cannot fix. Help us to trust him this morning, not to rely on ourselves, not to buy the lies that we can go back in age, that we can have an anti-aging effect, but rather trust in the one who can truly give life to the dead.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

What a great blessed time we've had together this morning and we are now dismissed.