Widow Of Nain

Widow of Nain

Big Idea: Jesus has compassion for people, authority over death and is the means to receive Gods help.

Intro: As a PE teacher I take being healthy pretty seriously. I try and eat healthy, not have too many of those evil crispy cream donuts. I try and exercise every so often – instead of using the TV remote I stnd up and change the channel. The aim of being healthy is because I want to live a long life. But in the back of my mind I know that I cant beat death, the best I can do is to try and hold it off for a while.

But did you know some people believe that they are going to beat death?

27 people in fact. I’m sure there is more around the world but currently at the Alcor Life Extension Institute in Arizona there are 27.

They have chosen to be frozen in liquid nitrogen at – 320 degrees

10 of them have paid $150 000 to have their whole body frozen with the hope that one day they will be able to bring it back to life.

But 17 people, these are people with great confidence or people with not as much money, because they have paid $70, 000 to have only their heads frozen. They are full of confidence because they believe that not only will science be able to bring them back to life but science will be able to create a whole new body for them.

I’d love to go to their institute to see if its like the movies, you know the sterile white room with large tanks along the wall with heads and bodies floating in mid air. I could imagine that I’d be like that clumsy character in the movie who accidentally hits a switch which starts to defrost the bodies.

We can laugh at the silliness of these people but I don’t think they are as silly as they sound.

They are not silly because they have actually thought about the afterlife.

I know I didn’t stop and think about the afterlife until a friend of mine was tragically killed in an accident. I’m guessing many of you here are in the same boat. For what ever reason you have not stopped to think about life after death. On the other hand there my be people here who have thought about it and the thought actually scares you so you have put it to one side.

I want to put it to you today that death should be spoken about.

Tonight we are going to look at the afterlife and we are going to discover that its not something to be fearful of. In fact we are going to discover how we can beat death and the good news is it wont cost you $150,000.

We are going to look at a true story of a young man who experienced the life giving power of Jesus.

Let me first set the scene for you.

Read: 11-12

State: At the outskirts of Nain a crowd with Jesus encounter a crowd mourning with a widow who has just lost her son.

Its 2000 years ago, a small city called Nain is located at the foot of some picturesque mountains. The name of the city actually means ‘pleasant’ because it was an ideal place to live. But there was trouble in paradise. A young man had passed away that day, and his mother and people from the village were carrying him through the streets on a plank of wood to bury him outside of town.

Put yourself in the mothers shoes, can you imagine the grief she would have been feeling? No one expects to outlive their children, on top of this she has already lost her husband. She has no sons left. Noone to provide for her, no one to care for her, and no one to protect her. What a sad, sad situation.

But at the same time another crowd were walking into the city. The picture here is the total opposite. The crowd were with Jesus and they were walking with a spring in their step because Jesus had just been performing some mighty miracles. On top of that the people were heading to Nain, a tourist hotspot. This would be like us going away up to the Gold Coast. I wonder if they had packed their gaudy Hawaiian shirts and zinc cream so they could fulfil the stereotype of a holiday tourist?

The two groups are on a collision course, they are getting closer and closer to each other. Finally they meet ‘clap’. What do you think is going to happen?

Lets turn to sentence 13 to see

Read: 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her, and he said “Don’t cry”.