Two weeks ago we wrapped up the account of the Sermon on the Mount from Luke’s Gospel. This morning we take up the story again of the amazing things that happened as Jesus traveled from town to town in Israel, announcing and demonstrating the kingdom of God.
This morning’s text is Luke 7:11-17. I invite you to open your Bible to it so you can see it for yourself. You can find it on page 65 of the New Testament pew Bible.
11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
This is a really beautiful story. If you read it with your heart plugged in, you have to really feel for this woman. She’s a widow. We don’t know anything about how long she has been a widow or what happened to her husband. But you have to feel for her. It’s so painful to lose your spouse in any time or place. And beyond the emotional loss, in this era, before social security or pension funds, most widows were very much at risk. Women just didn’t go into the workplace then, so if you lose your husband you would be very much dependent upon the charity of family members and the community.
This widow woman had the good fortune of one living son for a while. But now he has died, too. And he died way too young. And her community felt her pain. A huge crowd has come together to support this poor woman.
And as the funeral procession comes out of the city it meets another procession coming in. It’s Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd of people who are following him. And those of us who have been following the story of Jesus might instantly wonder what Jesus is going to do here. He has done a lot of amazing miracles, but raising somebody who is dead, being carried out to the cemetery is a new challenge.
And you just heard the story. Jesus stopped the procession. He told the woman not to cry anymore. He touched the cot on which they were carrying the young man. And he told him to get up. And the young man got up. He spoke to them. He was alive. And the mood of the crowd changed instantly. Everyone there was just so elated. They shouted out, “A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!"
If you like happy endings or warm chicken soup for the soul, this is for you. When you read it with your heart in the “on” position, through the eyes of faith, it’s a wonderful story.
But in modern times it becomes harder and harder to see the world through the eyes of faith. Probably most of us here have been in situations where loved ones were seriously sick and we prayed for Jesus to heal them. We prayed and we prayed. And it didn’t happen. There was no miracle for us.
And more and more we are surrounded with voices that are struggling to maintain faith that God can do anything in this world, voices that might sound like this:
“You know, I see my friends who have deep faith in God and I wish that I could have the confidence and comfort it brings. But I just can’t believe in a Bible that is full of miracle stories that are so different from the real world that we live in today.
I was raised in a family that believed in science. And how many times have faith and science fought it out and faith had to retreat? People once thought the earth was flat because the Bible talked of the 4 corners of the earth. But nobody believes that anymore.
And when was the last time you saw a healing? Oh, I know. I’ve heard of some people who reported they had been healed, but how do you know they can be trusted? Couldn’t it just be wishful thinking?
I should have been born in Missouri. You know, I’m from Missouri, show me.
Why don’t we see miracles anymore today? And, if we don’t see miracles today, how can we believe that they happened centuries ago?
How can we believe that miracles happened? How can we even understand such a thing as miracles? What does the Bible say we should expect?
Well, one thing the Bible says and assumes over and over again is that for the most part things just happen very regularly, following what we call the laws of science. You’d better not sit on your butt waiting for God to do a miracle and provide food for you. We need to take responsibility to make most things happen.
For example, Proverbs 12:11 says, “Those who till their land will have plenty of food, but those who follow worthless pursuits have no sense.”
And Proverbs 10:4-5 says, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. A child who gathers in summer is prudent, but a child who sleeps in harvest brings shame.”
God has given us a world with amazing stability and regularity. Every time the scientists recognize a new law of nature, I marvel at the wisdom of God for the wonderful way he made this earth.
You mix the right ingredients together and bake them at the right temperature and you’ll have a nice cake, every time.
If I ever get my golf swing perfected, it will produce a good hit every time. But, on second thought, when it comes to my golf swing, it may take more than just science. That really might take a miracle.
The New Testament records many times that Jesus went beyond the normal processes of nature. But he was very cautious about it. One day a huge crowd gathered around him. They were far from home and there wasn’t enough food for them. So, he did something outside of the normal processes, a miracle, that fed a crowd of over 5,000.
But have you ever noticed what he did next? He sent his disciples out of there as fast as he could, and he got away from the crowd. And sure enough it wasn’t long before he was surrounded by people who were thinking about nothing else besides a free lunch. And their obsession with getting free food blinded them to the spiritual message that Jesus had for them. And he would not give in to their desire for constant food without work.
They say that one of the worst things that can happen to a young person in this world is if they go to a casino and strike the jackpot. It can ruin their desire to work and live a constructive life. They’ll be back at that stupid slot machine, sure that they’ll hit the jackpot again any day now. And their lives may be ruined.
Mark Twain wrote that Huckleberry Finn said he once tried praying for free fishhooks. And none came, so he figured prayer didn’t work. Has God ever promised to just provide fishhooks any time we decide he should? No way. Is God in the business of being a procurement agent for anybody who wants anything? He wants us to get fishhooks by earning the money to buy them.
They will never be able to eliminate prayer from schools as long as there are students who come in to tests unprepared. If a student goofs off and doesn’t study, then prays for God to do a miracle by giving them the answers for the test, is God going to answer that prayer? No! He would be supporting and encouraging laziness and irresponsibility. He would be short circuiting the life lessons that that student needs to grow to maturity.
God wisely expects us to live responsibly every day, planning on the wise order that he has established.
But God is God. If he wrote the laws of nature, can he bend them here and there? I think he can.
Or, maybe he doesn’t change them. Because he knows how nature works better than any of us, he can use laws of nature that we never heard of before to do things we don’t understand.
Two hundred years ago nobody could have imagined that a huge jetliner could ever leave the ground, carrying hundreds of passengers and tons of freight. They would say it would take a miracle. But science has discovered many, many laws about how nature works and how to use them to make this ‘miracle’ happen.
One hundred years ago nobody could imagine the number of radio signals that fill our air today, cell phone conversations, TV, radio, police band. We can’t see it with our eyes. I have to say I don’t understand how it works, but scientists have discovered the laws of science and how to use them to produce amazing results.
What other laws can God use that we don’t understand yet? And, if God is there and half as big as the Bible says he is, why couldn’t he just plain change the rules he wrote any time he wants?
And is there any way that we can know when to expect when God is going to surprise us with a miracle?
Our text gives us two clues. In verse 13, why did Jesus raise this young man from the dead? What was his motivation? He felt compassion for this dear woman. She really was in a hard spot, emotionally and economically. And often Jesus asked people to take a step of faith or speak a word of faith before he healed them, but he asked nothing of this woman. With all she suffered, how could you ask anything of her?
And if you look through all of the miracles of Jesus you often see this word, “compassion.” God just plain loves his people. And he just plain looks for those times when he can step in without messing things up. God sometimes does miracles out of compassion for his people, when we really, really need it.
There’s another principle in our text that is pretty much invisible to us, but was recognized by the people there. Jesus raised the widow’s son in a town called Nain. And the next town over was called Shunem. And in the Old Testament there was a woman from Shunem whose only son died. And the prophet Elisha prayed for him and he was raised from the dead. And I’m sure that everybody who grew up in Nain had heard the story over and over again, always pointing out that this story happened right near their town.
And when you go back and read the life of Elisha in 2 Kings, you’ll see right above the story of when Elisha raised a woman’s son from death, he miraculously fed a small crowd, in a way very similar to the way that Jesus fed a large crowd.
So, when the crowd saw Jesus raise an only son, they immediately connected it with Elisha, and that’s why they said, "A great prophet has risen among us!" This was a special sign to them that God was moving in their town in their lifetimes. This was the God of their ancestors moving among them again. This miracle was also a sign.
There were many, many people who died while Jesus walked this earth, and mostly he didn’t intervene. But by healing that woman in that town, he spoke a clear message about what God was doing among them.
There have been certain periods in history when God was moving in special ways and he did many more miracles to let people see he was moving.
This year’s confirmation class started out with making a timeline of Bible history. And when we do that project, it always sticks out that there are big gaps in the Bible record where we aren’t told of anything God did. There was a gap of several centuries when the Israelites were in Egypt and they multiplied, but nothing miraculous happened and they must have wondered whether God had forgotten them.
Then the moment for the Exodus came and ‘wham’ there was miracle, after miracle.
When they were in the desert, where there was no food, God provided miraculous food for them, called manna. But the day the crossed the Jordan River into country where they could find food for themselves, that miracle stopped.
There is another gap of 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament. God hadn’t forgotten about them, but he was waiting for the timing to be right. And when the day came, then there were many miracles to help people see that God really was doing something among them, hopefully to help them listen and pay attention.
God does more miracles in those times when he is doing special things on the cutting edge of where people need to hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Kathy and I saw that many times.
In 1973 we were in Kabul, Afghanistan, one of the most spiritually needy countries in the world. The Kabul mayor had a campaign to demolish the only Protestant church in town. One of the missionaries wrote him a respectful letter warning him that he was opposing God, and that if he demolished God’s house, he would be punished for it. On the day the demolition of the church was completed, there was a military coup and that mayor was in jail.
Military coups happen from time to time. But do you think the timing was an accident? I don’t think so.
Two years earlier, before we arrived, Kabul was in the midst of a three-year drought. They had no rain for three years. The group that we worked with had several of the European and American travelers who came through make commitments to Jesus Christ, and they needed to be baptized. So, they went up to a reservoir on the edge of the Kabul valley for a baptism service. And right as the baptism service finished, it started to rain, for the first time in 3 years, and a rainbow appeared. One missionary said it might have been the first public baptism in Afghanistan in a thousand years.
And rain comes and goes and we know that rainbows are caused when direct sun light passes through raindrops just right. That’s not a miracle. But the timing tells me that God had tears of joy in his eyes and wanted us to know what this meant to him. And so he did something very special, a sign.
And in those days of mission work we were often hopelessly understaffed and underfinanced. But God always provided, again and again.
There have been so many times then, far away, and now, back home when I haven’t known what to do or I just needed a word of encouragement and in my daily Bible reading the answer has been there. And I know that God has reached down and touched me.
Does God do miracles? Every day. Have faith to pray for his help. But understand that he does miracles out of real compassion for real needs. He will never become some genie who grants whatever wishes we ask.
And understand that we will find his power as we organize our lives around the one mission of letting the whole world know that God is good and God is here. AMEN
