WHY DOES JESUS HELP?
Luke 7:11-17 - June 29, 2003
LUKE 7:11-17
11Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out--the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don’t cry."
14Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get up!" 15The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
16They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." 17This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
In our lifetime sometimes we ask "why?" Certainly, as we were growing up or are still growing up, we may have those questions that ask "why?" We hear them from the children--why is the sky blue and the grass green, and the list goes on and on. But as we grow in wisdom or as we really grow in knowledge, we learn the answer to some of those questions of "why." As we grow in our Christian faith, we learn the answer to those questions of why. Why does God do this or that?" Yes, there may yet be those times that we may ask "why?"
Today, our text really, at least in my mind, brings us to ask a why question--why does Jesus help us? We are just sinners here on earth. We don’t deserve to be helped. Sometimes, we don’t even ask for his help, and yet the Lord still helps us. So we ask ourselves "why?" We begin to see why because we know that Jesus loves mankind. As Jesus walked on the earth, as He preached and taught, He was always looking for the opportunity to benefit mankind in its sinful condition. One time coming off the boat after traveling across the sea, the crowd was gathered to hear Him.
We are told these words in Matthew: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd"(MATTHEW 9:36). That begins us on the journey to understand why. The Lord doesn’t want to see us harassed and helpless. He doesn’t want to see us like sheep without a shepherd, and so He helps us. As our text points out,
Why does Jesus help us?
I. Jesus is full of mercy.
II. God is to be glorified.
I. Jesus is full of mercy
With today’s text we continue where we finished last Sunday. Last week we looked at the first ten verses of Luke and our text today picks up from that point. It says, 11Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain. In the original it really means the next day. We remember from last week how Jesus had been in Capernaum and there He healed the servant of the centurion who had an unselfish faith. Capernaum was in the north with Nain in the middle of the Promised Land in between Jerusalem and Capernaum. He comes to Nain not by Himself but we are told: His disciples and a large crowd went along with him. Jesus is gaining popularity because He is doing these miracles. Not only did the disciples follow Him, but a large crowd of people because they saw that He was a man full of mercy, a man filled with compassion.
As Jesus approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out. The city of Nain was set on a hillside surrounded by a great wall to protect it from its enemies. Many of the towns that had walls around them did not have very many entrances or exits. Their enemies could only come in one place and that was through the main gate. Here we find Jesus coming to the main gate of the city of Nain. As He comes with His crowd of people following Him and His disciples, they are filled with joy. They meet another procession that is coming out of Nain, a funeral procession. This was a sad procession. A dead person was being carried out--the only son of his mother. She was a widow. I am sure on that day there were many in the crowd asking, "Why would such a thing happened to this lady?" She was already a widow with only one son, and now he too had passed away. In the time of Jesus the women didn’t have jobs. They could not provide for themselves. That was the duty of the husband; and if the husband passed away, it was the duty of the son. Now she was left alone.
But we are also told Jesus’ compassion for this lady: 13When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, "Don’t cry." A good translation from the original--His heart or whole emotion went out to her and Jesus spoke a compassionate command, "Do not cry." There are better things for her. These two processions were meeting at the gate. We know it wasn’t by chance that this just happened, but it was all according to God’s plan. We read about the procession that was coming out: And a large crowd from the town was with her. They were both coming to the gate at the same time, and the Lord is full of mercy and compassion for this lady and for the crowd that was there. In a bit we will see what Jesus does.
It reminds us of how the Lord is compassionate to us every day from the very beginning of time. We have heard in our first lesson this morning (Genesis 3:8-15) how Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect world, and yet they sinned. What happens as they sin? They begin to blame one another. Adam says, "I did not do it; the woman did." The woman says, "I didn’t do it; Satan made me do it." How disappointed the Lord must have been. They are made to leave the Garden of Eden, but before they do that--the last verse of that text--He gives them the promise of Savior, a Savior who would crush the head of Satan, a Savior who the people in the Old Testament looked forward to for thousands of years until He was born, a Savior which reminded them of the Lord’s compassion and mercy. The Psalm writer says: "The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made" (PSALM 145:8,9). The Lord is good to all. He has compassion on all He has made, and you and I can be thankful that the Lord is full of mercy. He is slow to anger. If someone would have done the same thing to us, destroyed one of our perfect projects or creations, we might not have promised them a hope or a Savior. We might have done just the opposite, unlike the Lord.
Even though perfection and a perfect world were destroyed, He promised mankind a Savior. Why? That brings us to that question--why? Why could the Lord do such a thing? He could have just easily said, "A perfect world is destroyed, and so mankind should come to an end." But He did not. Instead, He causes us to live here on earth enjoying our time of grace, giving us a chance to look at our lives in perspective and seeing yes, we do not deserve salvation, but He provides it. We do not deserve heaven itself, but Jesus provides it because He is full of mercy. Paul wrote in Romans: "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out"(ROMANS 7:18). He says we don’t even do the things that we ought to do because of our sinful nature that is with us. Our sinful nature leads us down the broad path of destruction time and again. Our sinful nature cannot lead us into heaven.
Instead, as we look at ourselves, we realize we can’t help ourselves, can we? So the Lord who was full of compassion promises a Savior. A Savior comes, born, lives and dies on the cross for our sins and rises again that we would have eternal life. Why? Simply because He is full of compassion and mercy. His heart goes out to each one of us, almost beyond our comprehension.
The prophet Micah asks the question: "Who is a God like you? He delights to show mercy." And He tells us how He does this and why He does this. He says, "You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea"(MICAH 7:19). The Lord is full of mercy, isn’t He? He takes that great big mountain of sin, which is a great big mountain of sin every day and throws it into the sea where it sinks--never to be seen again.
Jesus’ heart goes out to us. Jesus does all this so that you and I would react with a life that glorifies God.
II. God is to be glorified
We see the crowds meet here, a procession of Jesus and His disciples and followers coming into the gate and the funeral procession coming out. What does Jesus do? He says, first of all to the widow, "Do not cry." 14Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. Jesus has the people stop and they stopped. A coffin was not like today. It was just a stretcher. They put the body on the stretcher and carried it out to the tomb and placed the body into the tomb and sealed it up. This makes more sense when we read the next verse: 14Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get up!" We know that he got up. In a coffin like today he would not be able to do that, but in the time of Jesus he was able to do that. The young man gets up. Because of His mere words saying, "Young man, get up," we are told: 15The dead man sat up and began to talk. He was no longer dead. We have a touching moment where we are told: and Jesus gave him back to his mother. For a time he was gone, wasn’t he? He didn’t belong to his mother anymore. He was dead. He didn’t belong in the world anymore because he was dead and gone. 15The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. Jesus’ heart goes out to her and to the people that were there in the crowd asking "why" this would happen.
We see their reaction when Jesus did all of this. 16They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." Another miracle takes place. These people now see with their hearts of faith that this is the Son of God. There are some commentators who would say, "Well, they don’t call Him the Son of God. They call Him just a prophet. It is too bad that the commentators stopped there. When you look at the words closely, they say that God has come to help them. They realize that this Jesus is not just Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus is not just the carpenter’s son. He is not just the son of Mary, but He is the Son of God. They said, "God has come to help his people. Jesus is the one who they were calling God. They praised God; they were filled with awe at such a miraculous event.
Of course, the most miraculous event really is the fact that they had faith to recognize Jesus as the Son of God. He walked around like us, but yet they saw Him as the great prophet that God had promised. Then we are told why this all happened 17this news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country. You can imagine how everybody around telling what had happened. As they came out with their funeral procession and saw the crowd of disciples following Jesus, the widow’s son was brought back to life. And God was praised. Jesus never sought praise for Himself but for His Heavenly Father.
The dead son was brought back to life. You and I are able to see this same comparison quite clearly for us. We are dead because of our sinful nature, dead because of the world in which we live. God tells us in Ephesians: "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved"(EPHESIANS 2:4,5). We too, like the widow’s son, lie dead in our sinfulness; and God makes us alive through Christ. We too, like the widow’s son who didn’t do anything to come back to life, are dead in our sins and transgressions. We don’t do anything to save ourselves, but by grace we are saved. God comes and says to us, "Your sins are forgiven." God comes to us through the washing of water and the Word in baptism. He says, "You are my child. You are now alive in Christ."
Again in Colossians: "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins"(COLOSSIANS 2:13). You and I would be hard-pressed to find anyone on this earth who would be willing to do the same, wouldn’t we? Maybe, we are never willing to do the same to forgive someone all their sins, to forgive someone who has done wrong against us, to say I am going to forgive and forget. It is not in our nature. Our nature is sinful, but we have a God who delights to show mercy, who is full of compassion, and day in and day out forgives our sins.
Then, we are just like the crowd that followed Jesus or the crowd that followed the widow of Nain. We rejoice. We are filled with awe and wonder that God would do such a thing for us. Instead of casting us out, He gives us heaven. He provides us with a Savior so that we might glorify God, so that we might give Him our praise. Sometimes, in this world we see lots of people who aren’t so happy. How can they be when they listen to all the news that goes on and scares people half to death? So it is all the more important that we who have the good news, the good news as part of our life, to share that with our Christian living to let people know that the future isn’t so bleak. It is easy when we are sure of eternity. The writer to the Hebrews writes: "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name"(HEBREWS 13:15). That is how we glorify God. We glorify God because of His great mercy for us.
We come back to that question--why does Jesus help us? He is full of mercy and compassion. His heart goes out to us, because He knows we cannot help ourselves? Why does He help us? He knows we cannot save ourselves. Why does He help us? Jesus wants all men to be saved. Why does He help us? So that we can give glory to God. In our lives in this world we would really let others know that everything we have and the life that we live, we have and live because God loves us and God loves others also.
That is our surety. That is our certainty. God is our salvation. So from time to time we may still ask why. We may question God "why?" Yet, as our second lesson (2 Corinthians 4:13-18) also said, we sometimes look at the things seen. We need to focus, not on why this or why that, but why does Jesus help us? Jesus helps us because He is concerned about our eternal welfare. Our confidence is that heaven is our home. 2 Corinthians tells us: "Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God"(2 CORINTHIANS 3:4,5). We cannot do anything for ourselves, but our help comes from God. So why does Jesus help us? We cannot help ourselves. He is full of mercy and compassion, and He wants us to glorify God by being thankful for His mercy and compassion. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
