She Touched The Heart Of Jesus
Psalms 121:1-8 Colossians 3:12-17 Luke 7:11-17
Today we take a moment to recognize the gift of women not only to the body of Christ, but also to the world. As we look at our new testament verses from Colossians 3:12-14. I want you to think about a girl or woman or who has touched your life by having done what this verse tells us all to do. Who comes to mind when you think of a girl or a woman who demonstrated compassion toward you, who demonstrated kindness toward you, who demonstrated humility toward you , who demonstrated gentleness toward you , and who demonstrated patience toward you.
Who is a woman that bore with you in some difficult circumstances, who is woman who willingly forgave you even though you might not have deserved it? Who is a woman that simply chose to love you? Because of what they did for you, your heart was touched by them.
Today we are going to look at a woman who touched the heart of Jesus. There are a couple of women who touched the heart of Jesus through what they did. There was the widow who put in the two copper coins into the temple treasury which was all the money she had left to live on. Jesus commended her for giving for more than the wealthy people did.
There was the single woman who poured very expensive perfume on Jesus to anoint his body. Jesus commended her for her love and thankfulness for being forgiven. There was the mother of a child who was a foreigner that begged Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus commended her for great faith. All of them did something that touched the heart of God.
But the lady we are going to look at today, touched the heart of Jesus without doing anything, without knowing who Jesus was and without asking Jesus to do anything. I want you to know today, that you might be touching the heart of God right now without even knowing it. You may not even know God, but I can assure you that God knows you, and God knows far more about your situation that you can imagine. God is intervening in your life and you probably are not even aware of it.
In Luke’s gospel chapter 7 in the first 10 verses, we find a Roman officer who had at first asked Jesus to please come and heal his servant. A group of Jewish leaders told Jesus, look this man has done a lot of good for our people and he even built our synagogue at his own expense. So Jesus went to the city of Capernaum to heal this man’s servant.
But on the way, a delegation from the man met Jesus, and said, “the Roman officer did not feel himself worthy to come into your presence, and he knows that you have such authority, you don’t even need to come to the house. If you just say the word, he knows that his servant would be healed.” Jesus said, “Wow, now that’s what I call faith. I don’t usually find this even among the people of God.” So Jesus sent the men back, and they got home and discovered Jesus had already healed the servant. News of the healing spread quickly.
We come to our text today in Luke 7:11 which reads, soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. Nain was about 25 miles from Capernaum so it was a good trip walking by foot. The name of the town means “Beautiful” or “Pleasant.” Jesus had just recently chosen his twelve disciples in the chapter before.
This large crowd of people that was following Jesus was made up of people who had all kinds of motives. Some enjoyed the way Jesus preached. Some enjoyed the songs before the preaching. Some were amazed at the miracles that Jesus was doing. Some were hoping they might be healed next. Some just like being where ever the action was. Jesus was the social media of his day with some people liking him, some trying to friend him, and some trying to unfriend him. Some were there because their friends wanted them to come along and they were just trying to make them happy. Some were there and complained about it the whole time.
There a lot of reasons people come to church that were no different than the crowd that was following Jesus. Anybody is welcome to come to church and to come to Jesus. But the only reason to follow Jesus, is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who came into the world, because God loved us so much, that God wanted to save us from our sin. It is when the Holy Spirit lets us know that our sin keeps us separated from knowing God that we discover, this is why I should follow Jesus.
We might think, if we got this one thing from God, then our lives would be okay. The reality is, we still would have a sin problem. Many of the crowd wanted to follow Jesus because they were hoping to get something at no cost to themselves. What Jesus has to offer our lives will actually cost us everything that we have.
Here is this loud and boisterous crowd following Jesus as they are about to enter the gates of the city of Nain. Some are wondering what Jesus is going to preach on in this city. Others are wondering if they will find something to buy to eat after their long trip. Jesus arrives just as another crowd is coming from the opposite direction. The mood of that crowd is completely different. You hear people crying, wailing loudly, and moaning. There sounds cause the Jesus’ crowd to calm down and become more quiet. It is obvious that a funeral must be taking place ahead and out of respect they get quiet.
Verse 12 says “As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried-out.” The bible does not tell us what the person’s name, it simply tell us the person’s situation. He was dead. They were carrying him out of the town and to the cemetery. No doubt the person had died earlier that day, and the Jewish custom was to bury you on the day that you died. The moment you died, anybody that touched you would become unclean and anything that your body touched would become unclean. The people touching you would have to go through a ceremonial washing again before they would be allowed to be with other people.
This person was making that short trip from the city to the cemetery. It’s a trip that all of us are going to make. Have you thought about your trip? Have you thought about how your view of God is going to help you on that trip? Have you thought about how much time you have left before going on your trip.
We discover later in the verse that the person being carried out “was the only son of his mother.” This tells me, this person died with a lot of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. He was a young man, who was not married and did not have any children. You see we can be making plans for the future expecting to be happy when we one day do this. One day, when I get--------, then I am going to enjoy life. God has given you the gift of life to live for him now, because one day is not promised to any of us. Death can come knocking at any time of day, any time of year, any age, and any time of our career.
We discover that not only was he the only son of his mother, his mother was also a widow. This mom was grieving a lot of losses. She had lost her husband, so she had spent some of her time as a single mom and as a widow. But thanks to her son, she still would have some means of financial support. But now her son, her only son has died and she has no idea of what she is going to do in life or how she is going to make it.
The only plan set up for widows to have food, was the plan in which farmers were not to go over the fields a second time after the harvest, so that what was left could be gotten by the poor and by widows to support themselves. That was going t be a meager existence, fighting healthy poor men for the same grain left behind in the fields. In the last 24 hours, her life has been completely turned upside down through no fault of her own.
God never promises that if we do everything right, everything is going to go according to our plans. The promise from God, is that “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Nothing can destroy you when you are in God. Life may hurt, life may cause grief, life may cause pain and life may set you back, but we are called to remember, Psalm 121: Psalm 121:7-8 (NIV2011)
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life; 8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
This widow must have been feeling very alone at the moment even with the crowd. The verse went on to say. And a large crowd from the town was with her. You might think this meant she had a lot of people she could count on, but it doesn’t. She is like the person with 1500 facebook friends, but not a single one who will send you a loan for $100 in your time of need.
You would have the coffin, followed by the family, followed by friends and paid mourners. These people you paid would cry out and wail and yell out the good things the person had done. Then after that, anybody you passed by was suppose to join in the procession as you marched from the city to the burial ground. Even the crowd following Jesus, out of respect would join in the procession and march to the cemetery outside the city.
Even though there was a large crowd, but after the burial, everybody would pretty much go back to their lives, except this poor widow who would be going back to a very different life-style. She didn’t even know if she would have food at the end of the week. Finding a job was out of the question.
But then we find verse 13. “When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her.” There are people who believe that God created the world and then simply left it to work things out on its own. This verse rejects that viewpoint of God and says God is far more involved in our lives than we might think. The King James version says Luke 7:13 (KJV) 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her. The only other time this word compassion is used in the bible is in the story of the good Samaritan when the Samaritan had compassion on the person who had been beaten, robbed and left for dead.
This woman moved the heart of Jesus. She didn’t move Jesus by doing any good works great or small. She didn’t move Jesus by praying feverishly or asking him to do something. She didn’t exhibit any great faith on her part. She moved the heart of Jesus, simply because she was in pain and didn’t know what to do. My friends you don’t have to try to impress God to get his attention. All you need to do is to admit that you are in pain, you don’t know what to do, and you don’t know where to turn to next. When we’re actually willing to admit we need a savior, we put ourselves in the place to move the very heart of God to respond to us.
We don’t know if this woman knew anything about Jesus or not. If she did, she certainly didn’t know he would be showing up in Nain at this point of great pain in her life. She certainly didn’t expect to the words, “don’t cry.” Who would have the authority to tell a widow not to cry under these circumstances? Only someone with the authority to drastically change the circumstances can tell us “don’t cry”.
The next thing Jesus did was sort of shocking. A righteous person would avoid touching a dead body or coming into contact with anything a dead body was on because it violated to the ceremonial law about what would make a person clean or unclean. Yet verse 14 says, Luke 7:14 (NIV2011) 14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. Jesus had just stopped the funeral procession. Some of the people were thinking, “ I don’t believe Jesus touched that coffin life that. Doesn’t he know what the ceremonial law says. Of course Jesus knew what the ceremonial law said, but he wanted people to realize that he was the fulfillment of what the law was trying to get them to do. The law was attempting to get them to love God and to love people. Here was a widow in need of God’s love. To show that he was over the ceremonial law, Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” All of the eyes immediately went off of Jesus and to the dead young man.
We may have a whole lot of rules we want people to follow that are based on our traditions and not on loving the people that are involved. Our rules do not move the heart of God. There are people we think are unclean and if we somehow touch them or get to close to them, some how we will become unclean. Jesus saw the opportunity to be compassionate as an opportunity to show people what God is really like.
Verse 15 tells us, Luke 7:15 (NIV2011) 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. What would you have done if you had been carrying the coffin and this young man sat up and started talking to you? What would you have done if you had been one of the ones complaining about Jesus touching a dead man’s coffin and becoming unclean? What would you have done if you had been one of the disciples?
Most important of all, what would you have done, if you had been this widow, and you realized, you had done nothing to deserve what Jesus gave to her. Did Jesus reach out and take the hand of the young man and deliver him to his mother? If it had of been you, who would you have hugged first, your son or Jesus?
I want you to realize that this same Jesus that had the power to raise this young man from the dead, still has the power to lift you above the circumstances in your life. We don’t know what happened to this young man or this widow after this miracle from Jesus. We hope they became followers of Jesus. Jesus demonstrated to both of them and to the both crowds that he had power over both life and death.
Yet even before this chapter is over, there will be those who will reject that Jesus as the Son of God. You don’t need a miracle to believe that God is concerned about your life and your circumstances. You simply need faith to believe that God loves you and is concerned about the pain in your life.
We know nothing about this woman’s spiritual life at the time she moved the heart of Jesus. I think its because God wants us all to know, today is the day in which you and I can make a change. God is already willing for it to happen.
Are you willing to get to that point where you realize, that not only is death is going to invade your life to end it, some dark days are going to enter your life that will push you to the brink of disaster without God. Jesus Christ came into this world because God loved you enough to want you to come back to Him. You moved God’s heart enough to Him to send Jesus to die in your place for your sin so that you can have eternal life. There’s nothing you can do to earn it. Your need moved God’s heart. Don’t let it be in vain.
