We might read it just to get
a context because the Holy Spirit has put things together so that
we would see one story of grace and one way that the Lord conveys
mercy on top of another. our God and his activities. One of the reasons I was keen
to do this is that we've had my son down and he brings books
by these famous atheists and there's one famous one in England
called A.C. Grayling and he writes against
religion and when he talks about religion he writes with extraordinary
accuracy about the religion of this world and condemns it and
rightfully so when he talks about God he lies and he blasphemes
him in the most appalling way and the solution for God's people
in every situation and every trial is that we come back and
we need to spend time just gazing at our God again as He's revealed
in our Saviour. It reduces and relieves the heaviness
of heart. It's like light to us. It lightens our darkness again
and again and again. Okay, now here we have in Luke's
Gospel In the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, as
she was to be, we have just another picture of the Lord Jesus and
His amazing mercy. But He actually speaks of faith
beforehand. And so He has, in the Scriptures,
we have so many examples where the Lord Jesus encourages faith. and applauds faith, and we know
that faith is his gift. And then he gives in himself,
his person and his work, he again gives reason for growing faith. Let's just read these first 17
verses of Luke 7. Now when he had ended all these
sayings in the audience of the people, he entered Capernaum,
and a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick
and ready to die. And when he heard of Jesus, he
sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he
would come and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus,
they besought him, instantly saying, He that was worthy of
for whom he should do this, for he loveth our nation, he hath
built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with them. And
when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent
friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself, for
I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof. Wherefore
neither have thought I myself worthy to come unto thee. But
say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I am also
a man set under authority, having under me soldiers. And I say
to one, Go, and he goeth. And another, Come, and he cometh. And to my servant, Do this, and
he does it. When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at
him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed
him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not
in Israel. Then they that were sent returning
to the house found the servant whole that had been sick. It's interesting, isn't it, that
the Lord Jesus isn't recordant of saying something. It was just
faith in the fact that He would just speak. He would speak and
the deed would be done. And now we have the story that
we're looking at just briefly tonight. Verse 11, And it came
to pass It's a great expression of God's activities. And it came
to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain,
and many of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now
when he had come nigh the gate of the city, behold, there was
a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was
a widow, and much people of the city was with her. And when the
Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep
not. And he came and touched the bier,
and they that bear him stood still. And he said, Young man,
I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up and
began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.
And there came fear on all, and they glorified God, saying, that
a great prophet is risen up among us and that God hath visited
his people. And this rumor, this report of
him went forth throughout all Judea and throughout all the
region round about. Here we have just yet another
glorious picture of the grace of God in action, the goodness
of God in action. As the psalmist said, O that
man would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful
works to the children of men. The Lord Jesus' miracles and
his words and his activities are all public. One of the things
that these atheists have to get rid of, they have to get rid
of the Word of God. And they have all the normal
party tricks to get rid of the Word of God. The other thing
they have to dismiss is history. History no longer holds any validity
for them whatsoever. They just deny that these things
were so. And yet the Bible again and again
in Deuteronomy 4 God says, you ask from one end of the heavens
to the other. Has any God ever behaved like this God? Has any
God ever taken for himself the people out of a nation like Israel
with great signs and wonders? How many people saw it? Two million
Jews. How many Egyptians saw it? The word of what God had done
spread all the way to Canaan and spread all over the world. And when Peter stood before those
people in Jerusalem, possibly again a crowd that numbered in
the hearing in the tens of thousands, but numbered in those who heard
on that day, there was reportedly in Jerusalem at the time of Passover
and the time of Pentecost, a million people. God gathered these witnesses
from all over the world and gathered them to Jerusalem, and did these
remarkable deeds in Jerusalem, and then sent them back to all
the world. And Peter stood before them.
Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested
by God to you, by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did through
him in your midst, as you yourselves know. God's history is real history
and God's people need to know that and be reminded of it despite
what these deceitful men would say. And here we have not just
the crowd that was with the Lord Jesus, we have the meeting of
two crowds and in this remarkable event we will see that this word
was spread. This report The witnesses spread
this throughout all Judea and all the region round about. Isn't
it great to think that our God might spread this report of what
he does amongst us here throughout all this region round about.
OK, so let's just picture the players in this remarkable, small
drama. God the Holy Spirit's only recorded
in Luke's Gospel. He does nothing by accident.
It's a beautiful picture of grace. It's a beautiful picture of salvation. Here is this man, the only son
of his mother. He was mature. It's called a
man, but in verse 14 we see that he is a young man. He's a young
man in the prime of life. And he's a young man dead. And he's a young man dead, carried
by others to his place of burial. What a picture. What a picture. God has painted for us in this
man of human beings in this world. What miseries sin has brought
with it. The wages of sin is death. Wherefore by one man sin entered
the world and death by sin. So death passed upon all men
for that all have sinned. Death is a powerful enemy. Death is a powerful judgment
of God on humanity. What a picture of fallen man,
dead and being carried by other men to a place of death, a place
of burial. What a horrible, horrible wicked
master we have in Satan. Carried by him through this world,
in death, to a place of eternal death. What a horrible, horrible picture
it is of man outside of Christ, dead and carried to a place of
burial and yet thinking he's alive and king, reigning on his
little peanut throne. And here we have a mother, a
widow now, A widow with no one to share her grief and her burdens. She only had one son. She has
no husband. She had one means of care, one
means of protection, one means of sustenance into her old age. Now that he is dead, she is left
with nothing. She's stripped of all, she's
desolate. And God pictures the desolation. of a woman in the scriptures
who has lost her only son, as the greatest misery that befalls
humanity. Jeremiah 6.26 says, O daughter
of my people, dress in sackcloth and roll about in ashes, make
mourning as for an only son, make a most bitter lamentation. Her loss was a public loss, wasn't
it? Deeply grievous to her. Her loss
moved the hearts of many in the city, and they followed her in
this terribly sad journey, as helpless as she is, to the place
of burial, to the place of death. And what she had hoped for, as
her support in this world. Like anyone who looks to anything
in this world for their hope and their sustenance will find
that it is just a broken reed. And here we have the most remarkable
intrusion of God. See, salvation is an intrusion
of God into that scene, isn't it? Salvation is God stepping
in to that horrible scene. And we can picture ourselves
in the son who is dead and helpless. And we can picture ourselves
in the mother who is grieving and has no hope. He steps in,
this Lord Jesus, this glorious God. He steps in to the sinner's
world of woe. When he steps in, misery becomes
mercy and darkness becomes light. Just look at how verse 11 begins. This is how everything happens
in God's world. And it came to pass. What a remarkable accident. There's
the Lord Jesus going along with this crowd of people following
Him. And there, accidentally, coincidentally,
miraculously, sovereignly, we have the Lord Jesus interfering
with the funeral yet again. The Lord Jesus raised three people
from the dead in the scriptures, all of them emblematic of his
conquering that last and horrible enemy, that last enemy to be
destroyed is death. This young man was the first
of them. We might remember he raised Jairus'
daughter in the next chapter in Luke and then right at the
very end of his ministry in those last few weeks he raised Lazarus
from the dead. All of them pictures of salvation. all of them pictures of grace. See, the word grace conveys the
idea of benevolence. It conveys the idea of goodness. It is one of the terrible entailments
of the fall, isn't it? That Satan would allow to come
into our thinking and to govern our thinking in this world that
God is not good. What was Satan's temptation to
Adam and Eve? What was it? God is withholding
some good from you. God is holding something back
which will benefit you. You will be like gods. You can take and disobey and
you will have more goodness. than you have right now. What
a horrible evil lie that lives in all of us. In our times of
misery, in our times of darkness, how easy it is to forget that
God is good. that is his character. All the
goodness that happens in this world is but just a shadow of
the reflection of his goodness. His goodness is just who he is. It's essential to his being. Here we have our good and our
great and our gracious God stepping in to time and stepping in to
the life of people. And He does so remarkably in
this story without there being any invitation. Neither the widow
nor the mourners nor the disciples who saw this ask anything of
the Lord Jesus. We are dead. As Isaiah was very
bold to say about our God, I was found of them that sought me
not. What a great blessing. He finds
us when we're not even seeking Him. I was made manifest unto
them that ask not after Me. He comes and He acts sovereignly,
purely from the goodness of His nature. He comes and reveals
Himself as compassionate and with pity. You see, His eyes
are always upon, fixed like an eagle who doesn't miss a thing,
fixed upon His loved ones to comfort them in their sorrows. As God, He knows all, and as
man, He feels for all, and He feels with all of His people.
He comes, acts sovereignly and compassionately, and He acts
with power. And He acts with a power to give
life where there was death, to give hope where there was despair. He acts to reveal His divinity. He acts to reveal himself as
God. In the scriptures there are many
mighty miracles. We know of Elisha raising a young
man from the dead. But how did it happen? Elisha
pleaded with God for it to happen. How does our Lord Jesus raise
this young man from the dead? You see, he touched him. He went
over and he touched this litter that they were carrying this
dead man on. And he said, you can take this
man in death to a place of burial only this far. You now must stop. He touched the bow, and they
that bore him stood still. Enough, says our Lord Jesus. They will go no further. This
young man will go no further. And he speaks. He firstly spoke
to this woman. When the Lord first saw him and
the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said unto her, weep
not. Unless his actions were going
to be remarkable, that weep not would have been a cruel, cruel
thing to say, would it not? She's got every right to weep. But here, the Lord Jesus just
speaks. He speaks to her. Weep not. His tender mercies are just multitudinous,
aren't they? They are just multitudes. They
just flow one on top of the other. And then He speaks. You see,
this is how God saves people. He just sovereignly intervenes,
and then He sovereignly speaks, and when he speaks, when God
speaks, I speak to you and other men speak to you, but when God
speaks, as many of you have heard his voice, when God speaks, life
flows. With his words, with his words
of command, come the power for him to do as he says, as effortlessly
as he did in the beginning when he said, let there be light and
let there be stars. And all of a sudden there were
hundreds of billions times hundreds of billions of them. He just
speaks. He speaks and it is done. New life is delivered to those
who mourn. Blessed are those who mourn,
he says, for they will be comforted. This is how our great God saves
people. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God. But God must give the word, and
God must give the hearing eyes, and God must give the hearing
ears, and God must give the life, and God must shine the light. And He shines the light of His
work, His work of redemption, to undo what we have done and
what we have sold ourselves into. the work of God in regeneration
and the work of God in resurrection power. Genny gave me a little thing
a couple of years ago and it says, out of Psalm 18, 28, it
says, For thou wilt light my candle, the Lord my God, will
enlighten my darkness." What darkness this man was in, what
darkness this woman was in, what darkness this town was in. And our God, our God remarkably,
our Saviour never changes. He's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. Is He doing these same acts in
the world right now? He must do it. Will He do it
again? He is doing it. Will He give us the marvelous
opportunity to see it? He may do so. He may do so at
any moment. You see, all of us, to some extent
or other, have people that we love dearly who are as dead and
hopelessly lost as this young man and are being carried along
to a place of burial. not aware of what's happening
and not aware of what's before them, dead to who God is, dead
to who they are themselves. You see, our gospel is a gospel
of hope. Our gospel is a gospel that gives
us great reason to look around at the horizons and look around
at the people who come into our lives and pass us by and just
have hope. God can raise them from the dead.
And it's no effort to Him whatsoever. No effort whatsoever. We've got
every reason, as much as we grieve, as much as we lament what we
see around us, We never sorrow. We should never sorrow as those
that have no hope. We've got every reason for hope.
The gospel is the power of God. It's God revealing himself. It's God sovereignly coming along
and just supernaturally intervening in someone's life and giving
life where there was death. giving hope where there was no
hope, turning mourning into rejoicing. Our God is a great and awesome
God, and He hasn't changed. And He hasn't changed His methods
of saving His people. He will. He is God. And the result of this sovereign
mercy is down there in those last two verses, aren't they? 16 and 17. The result of sovereign
mercy and the revelation of God in the face of the Lord Jesus.
Just look at them there. Firstly, a fear fell on all. A fear fell on all. a reverent,
holy awe. If God can do this, He can do
anything. We are in His hands. He is the potter, we are the
clay. He has the right to do with His
own creation as He sees fit. As the Father said, You have
given Him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal
life to as many as you have given him. He has ultimate authority
over all things. They feared and they glorified
God. And the two are not opposed to
each other ever in the scriptures. Fear and glorifying God. And then they describe our Saviour.
In the words of Deuteronomy 18, Moses, at the end of his life,
said that God will rise up from among you a prophet like me. What a prophet our God is. What
a prophet the Lord Jesus is. He speaks, and what happens? Does He speak truth? Arise, young
man, and what happens? He speaks the truth. He speaks
the truth about himself, about God, about us. And he speaks
the truth about the future. A great prophet has risen up
among us. And then they say, they acknowledge
who this prophet is. What do they call him? They call
him God. That's who he is. God has visited
his people. He's visited his people. God
visits his people. And God comes and visits, and
he does his work, and reveals himself, and he comforts his
people. and he grows faith, and then
he comes back and he visits again, and he visits again, and he visits
again. If he hasn't visited you just
recently, just wait. He visits his people. And this
record is proclaimed, isn't it? This history, this declaration
of who he is, and what he's doing is declared throughout Judea
and then it's declared further and it's declared to the ends
of the earth. What a great reunion it must
have been between this son and the mother. What darkness, what
great darkness is such a backdrop to such remarkable joy. Imagine
how she must have held him. Imagine what that reunion would
have been like. What would have been the conversation? Not how wonderful he is, not
how wonderful she is. What's the topic of conversation
when God brings light? There's one topic of conversation.
Isn't Jesus Christ amazing? What a great and awesome God. And God will wipe every tear
from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow,
nor crying. There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have passed away. He who sat on the throne
said, behold, I make all things new. It is done. Let's pray.