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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Luke seven 1117.
Soon afterward,
he went to a town called main,
and his disciples
and a great crowd went with him.
As he drew near to the gate of the town,
behold, a man who had died
was being carried out.
The only son of his mother,
and she was a widow,
and a considerable crowd from
the town was with her.
And when the Lord saw her,
he had compassion on her, and said to her,
do not weep.
And then he came up and touched the buyer.
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.
Fear seized them all,
and they glorified God, saying,
A great prophet has arisen among us,
and God has visited his people.
And this report about him
spread through the whole of Judea
and all the surrounding country.
Everybody, good morning
and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
So, so, so glad you're here.
I haven't told you this in a while,
so I want to tell you this today
that I love you guys.
I love being a part of this church.
And, all that's going on,
if you were here and you watched
the priest service video, you're in.
Zack, talk about commitment. Night.
Now, you guys came
and you brought your commitments, and.
But you also wrote the names
of people up here on the cement
where the carpet's been pulled away.
And I just want you to know
that this is, baptism weekend.
And on Thursday night, a man was baptized
whose name
was written on the floor over in East Hall
when we replaced that carpet.
How cool is that?
And his neighbor, who started inviting him
to church,
was able to walk him over there and say,
your name is right underneath, right here.
Right.
We want that to happen hundreds of times,
because of what we're doing
with Every Minute Matters.
So very cool. Don't miss,
celebration night.
I got to tell you two, Thursday night had
a five year old little boy come up to me.
His name is Elijah, and he gave me this.
It's,
a dollar bill,
four quarters in two pennies.
And. Yeah, let's go. Yeah.
I asked him what that was was for,
and he said for the building,
which I assume he wants me to apply it
to the indoor playground.
So we're going to do that.
Don't miss celebration night.
It's going to be
a blast tonight. All right.
Okay.
Jesus has a lot of things
that he's the son of God.
He's, miracle worker, teacher,
rightful king.
But, of all the things that Jesus
is the most important thing he has for us
is Redeemer.
He is the only one who can deliver us,
who can forgive us,
who can save us, who can set us free.
Which is why we're spending ten weeks
looking,
in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus the Redeemer.
And today we're in Luke chapter seven.
So if you have your Bibles,
you can turn there.
You can wait for it
to come up on the screen.
You can pull it up on your phone.
If you're going to use one of our Bibles,
it's on page
eight, 11, page 11.
And my, my outline
for this passage is very simple,
but I think the truths are very profound.
And here are my three points.
I just want to talk about what Jesus sees,
what Jesus feels, and what Jesus does.
That's it.
What Jesus sees, what
Jesus feels, what Jesus does.
It's, seven verses.
Let me read it again.
So it's fresh in your mind.
Then we'll talk about it. This is what,
Luke says soon afterward,
he, being Jesus,
went to a town called Nain,
and his disciples in a great
crowd went with him.
As he drew near to the gate of the town,
behold, a man who had died
was being carried out, the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow.
And a considerable considerable
crowd from the town was with her.
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,
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.
Fear sees them all.
And they glorified God, saying,
A great prophet has arisen
among us, and God has visited his people.
And this report about him spread
through the whole of Judea
and all the surrounding country.
I think
there are some stories in the Gospels
about Jesus that,
strike me as being almost comically brief.
What I mean is that Jesus raises
somebody from the dead,
and and Luke gives it all of seven verses.
I just think if, if sometime in my career,
I stopped a funeral procession
and I raised somebody from the dead,
and you were writing a biography about me,
I think that event would merit
at least a whole chapter.
Hey, can I just say that?
And the reason
I want to point out a couple of things.
One is, in the Gospel of John,
John at the very end says, Jesus
did a lot of things, and of all the things
that Jesus did were all written down.
He said, I suppose all the books in
the world could not contain it.
That's why some stories are so brief.
But when you take such an amazing event
and you make it so brief,
we should probably pay attention
to the details.
So in this story, in verse
11, we're told that Jesus
was coming into this little town of Nain
and there was a great crowd with him.
I don't know when the last time
you were in a big crowd was,
but whenever I'm in a big crowd, there are
a couple things that are happening.
I'm I'm looking at the person
in front of me.
Usually I'm looking down
because I don't want to hit their feet.
I'm trying to stay at the same speed
of the rest of the crowd,
because I don't want somebody coming up
and hitting me in the back, right?
I'm trying to get where I'm going
so I can stop being,
you know, in the midst of a crowd.
That's the kind of crowd that Jesus is in.
And then he looks up
and he sees a funeral procession.
And, verse 12 actually gives us
a lot of details
about that funeral procession.
We know that, that the, the main mourner,
the only real mourner was a woman.
And the man who was being buried,
who had died was her only son,
and she had already lost her husband
because it says she was a widow.
Now, you're probably like me.
You've seen a lot of funeral processions.
You come up to a traffic light,
there's a police car that's turned
kind of diagonally with the lights on,
and you see a long row of cars,
each with their headlights on.
And that's how you know.
And when I've seen that, you know,
I wonder who the person might be,
particularly
if there are signs that it might have been
a really important person here.
Jesus finds out the details.
I don't know what my guess is.
He asked somebody
and they told him, all right,
so so he knows
that this is a mom
who's lost her only son, who's a widow,
which of course,
put her in a terrible place
because by losing her husband
and now losing her only son,
she has lost all of her support
and all of her security.
She is now completely alone in the world.
And Jesus sees
hard son.
Do you know how wonderful
those three words are to that woman,
to you?
That Jesus, in the midst of a crowd,
looks over and sees this woman
who is in the worst place, who
who has lost her husband, lost her son,
and he sees her
because sometimes in the midst of a crowd
and she's in a crowd, two
you can feel the most alone.
And that could be you.
Like, right here in this crowd.
And if you are here and
you feel alone or in pain,
can I tell you something wonderful,
something amazing?
Jesus sees.
He sees you.
And not just that he sees the detail,
the unique details
of your particular situation,
of your pain, of your in aloneness.
That's the first thing.
That's what Jesus sees.
But he doesn't just stop at sin.
The second point is what Jesus feels.
You know,
when I was doing my doctoral studies,
I remember
writing a paper on comparative religions.
And so I did do some research
into Buddhism.
And Buddhism began
with a man named Siddartha.
He became known as Siddartha Buddha.
But when he was a young man,
he was very sheltered.
His father was very, very wealthy.
His father decided
that he didn't want his son
exposed to any pain or suffering or death.
So he raised him in a bubble.
And instead Martha,
when he was a young man, ventured
outside the bubble
and was stunned by what he saw
and all the suffering and all the pain
and the death.
And Buddhism was really developed
by Siddartha to to deal with the pain
and suffering of the world.
And the way he did it was that he
he felt like your pain and your suffering
was connected to whatever
your desires were, your attachment was.
And so what he would say is, what you
don't want to get attached to anything.
Because of course,
if you're not attached to anything,
it won't hurt so badly
when you lose everything.
And of course, that makes sense.
It's a little bit
like cutting the nerve endings,
but as a philosophy
to deal with pain and suffering,
it could not be further away
from Christianity and Jesus,
because in verse 13, what this says is
when Jesus saw this woman
who was mourning,
he had compassion on her.
That's a very,
very strong word in the original language.
It means to feel pain to such an extent
that it implies attacks you physically.
And that's what Jesus did.
And when I say Buddhism couldn't
be further away from Christianity,
or Buddha further away from Jesus,
what I mean is that if
if Siddartha Buddha
could sit with that woman,
he would have sat in complete serenity
and peace and told her she was in agony
because she was too attached to her son
and probably too
attached to her late husband.
But Jesus
would sit with that woman
and he would feel her pain.
He would experience pain with her
and for her. You.
Whenever I'm talking to somebody
who is struggling with Christianity
or with God,
because of all the pain
and the suffering in the world, I always
try to see them first, because that's
never just a philosophical question.
If somebody says,
I just can't believe that God exists
when there's so much pain and suffering,
that's a personal thing.
They've been through pain and suffering,
but I always end up telling him
that Christianity is different
than all the other religions in the world,
because there's no other religion
in the world that even remotely suggest
that God cares so much about the pain
and suffering of this world
that he was willing to enter into it
and actually feel it.
But that's what Jesus does.
If you've ever been in pain,
you know the difference between sympathy
and compassion.
Sympathy is something
somebody can feel from a distance.
But compassion, you have to be up close
because the word itself
means to to feel with someone.
And that's what Jesus does here.
In many ways, this story is a
harbinger of what is to come, right?
That Jesus here is feeling
the pain of this woman.
He's feeling the pain for this woman.
This is chapter seven.
In Luke chapter 23, Jesus will be hanging
on a cross experiencing pain.
That should be my pain.
Pain that should be your pain.
One of those wonderful things about
Jesus is
his teaching is so connected
to how he lived and what he did
right.
So this story is pointing us toward that.
Jesus feels compassion for this woman,
and he is filled with that.
All right.
So, Jesus, you know, in some ways,
this story, maybe as much
as any other story in the Bible,
is a glimpse into Jesus heart.
Because, you know, for me, the busier I am
are the the less I pay attention
to what anybody else is going through.
Maybe you're like that.
I wouldn't want to compare my busiest day
to Jesus average day,
but here he's in this huge crowd.
They're all trying
to get something from him.
They're pushing him to a place
where probably he has to teach them.
And still he sees this woman,
this woman who was once
a wife
and is no longer wife, was once a mother,
is no longer a mother.
And his heart breaks for her.
That's what Jesus feels.
So Jesus sees what Jesus feels.
Finally, what Jesus does
this is verses 14 through 17.
It says, then he came up and touched
the beer, and the hearers stood still.
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.
Fear sees them all.
And they glorified God, saying,
A great prophet has risen among us,
and God has visited his people.
And this report about him
spread through the whole of Judea
and all the surrounding country.
So Jesus starts
to make his way over to the funeral,
and people are craning their necks
to see what he's going to do
because they don't know.
And then all of a
sudden there's
this there's this wave of fear
that ripples throughout the people
when they see this man sit up.
You know that what the Scripture says
is that fear sees them.
And even that's an interesting phrase.
It means that there was power
that was unleashed,
that made them feel undone,
and that power was unleashed by Jesus.
And that power actually
changed the flow of nature
in at least three ways.
The first
is the flow from clean to unclean.
Like I told you that
when a story is this brief,
you should pay attention to the details.
And in verse 14,
right at the beginning it says,
Then he came up and touched the beer.
A beer was up
is the plank that the body was laying on.
And it's interesting that Luke would
include the detail that Jesus touched it,
but that's a detail that's included
in a lot of stories about Jesus.
And in Luke chapter four,
he's in the town of Capernaum.
And it says, this night
where the sun was setting, all those
who had any who were sick
with various diseases brought them to him.
And he laid his hands on every one of them
and healed them.
And Luke, chapter five
A leper comes up to Jesus and says,
if you're willing, you can make me clean.
Jesus says, I'm willing.
Then Scripture says, he reached out
and he touched him.
Reason that's so important is whenever you
you touch someone who's sick,
you risk getting sick yourself
because that's the way things move.
Like if you have multiple children
and one of your kids comes home sick,
you can just count
on all the rest of the kids getting sick
because that's the way things
flow in our world.
It never flows the other way.
I can't be so healthy
that when you come up to me and you're
sick, my health overwhelms
your sickness and makes you well, right?
Because our world doesn't work like that.
The reason that
Luke includes that detail, that Jesus
reached out and touch in that culture,
that everybody would, would have gasped
because that would have made him unclean.
Because uncleanness
only goes in one direction.
You have to.
If something unclean touches you,
then you become unclean.
But Jesus touches the funeral, the earth,
the reason that Jesus touches the leper,
why he touches all the sick people,
is that he's showing everybody
that he has the authority and the power
to change the unclean, to clean
with the touch.
That's the first flow that he changes.
The second flow is from joy to sadness,
from overwhelming joy
to the depths of grief.
If you could take human emotion,
if it's a 100 point scale
and 100 is the most joy for a human
being can be,
and one is the deepest sadness
someone can experience,
that woman was very close to a one,
and it's there.
It's a very rare thing
for somebody to go from 1 to 100 here.
This woman is walking with this,
her deceased only son, and she is thinking
she can never imagine
smiling again, let alone laughing again.
And in a moment
she is filled with overwhelming joy.
That's the power of a redeemer.
Can you imagine
what that must have been like?
You're, talking in Lord of the rings?
Has one of the characters say, well,
all sad things come untrue.
It's one of my favorite
lines in that whole book.
And here Jesus makes
the saddest thing in this woman's life
come untrue.
And she is filled with joy.
And that flow changes
because of the Redeemer.
And finally the flow from death to life.
Right?
That Jesus is.
He comes and he is going to undo,
all the damage
that sin has wreaked on our world.
And here death is our final enemy
and Jesus takes death.
And for this young man makes it
nothing more than a peaceful nap.
Right?
This is what I want you to see.
That this is the gospel in seven verses.
Do you see that?
That Jesus comes and he sees you?
Okay, there we go.
We are quick.
It's the gospel in seven verses, right?
Jesus sees you
in your particular circumstance.
Whatever is going on with you,
your sadness, your brokenness.
But more than that,
your sin, your guilt, your shame,
and instead of being indifferent,
instead of being repulsed,
Jesus is filled with compassion.
That's Romans five eight,
but God demonstrates his love toward you,
that while you were still a sinner,
Christ died for you.
And Jesus, filled with compassion
and with a single touch,
he he changes your uncleanness
to clean.
Your sin and your guilt.
He takes on himself.
So you are set free.
He promises to take every sad thing,
all of it,
and one day make it untrue.
So you are filled
with joy and to take death itself for you
and make it
the most glorious beginning,
not an end, but a beginning.
So great is the power of Jesus,
your Redeemer.
Would you pray with me?
Our father in heaven.
I love that there are,
more and more stories
that we will one day, here
in heaven about all that
Jesus did when he was here on earth.
But I'm so grateful
for the stories that you did include.
I'm grateful for this particular story,
that Jesus would see this woman
in the midst of her alone aloneness.
And that means that Jesus sees us
in the midst of being alone and in pain.
I pray for the people who feel that
right now.
I pray that they would experience,
the love
that Jesus has for them,
but not just his love,
his power as a Redeemer.
And we celebrate that we worship
Jesus
because he is such a wonderful Savior.
Thank you.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.