Trust in the One who raises the dead

Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

So far in this Trinity season, we’ve considered two of Jesus’ healing miracles: the healing of the man who was deaf and mute, and the healing of the ten lepers. As we’ve seen, every healing miracle teaches both the identity of Jesus as the Christ, the all-powerful Son of God, as well as His great compassion. Today’s miracle is really the ultimate example of that.

This is the first of Jesus’ three resurrection miracles recorded in Scripture. After this, Jesus would go on to raise back to life the daughter of Jairus, and also His friend, Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. In all three of those events, the compassion of Jesus is evident. When Jairus was told that his daughter was dead, Jesus took him aside and assured him, “Do not be afraid, only believe, and she will be saved!” When Jesus saw Mary and all the people weeping over the death of Lazarus, Jesus Himself wept. Here in our Gospel, we’re told that, when Jesus saw the dead man being carried out of the city, the only son of his mother, who was a widow, He had compassion on her.

That comes as no surprise to us, given everything we’ve learned of our God from hearing and watching Jesus through the lens of Gospels. If God sent His Son into the world to save sinners, if God gave His Son up to torture and death on a cross to pay for our sins, if Jesus willingly accepted all the suffering so that we could be saved, how could God not have compassion? His compassion is well-known to us.

It wasn’t quite as well-known to the world before the time of Jesus. Yes, at various times God showed great compassion to His people Israel in saving them from their own rebellion and backsliding. But the fact is, death reigned in the world since the time of Adam. Every single human being, except for the two exceptional cases of Enoch and Elijah, eventually died, sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently. Where did God stand on death?

Well, we have to acknowledge the truth. God is responsible for human death. He’s responsible for it in the same way that a judge or a jury is responsible for a criminal ending up on death row. When He said to Adam, “In the day you eat of the fruit from that tree, you will surely die,” He didn’t force or entice Adam to do the thing that would lead to his death. But He did enforce His own words after Adam and Eve sinned. And He continued to enforce His righteous decree that the soul that sins shall die.

But, surely the young man of Nain, or the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, or Jesus’ friend Lazarus—surely they didn’t deserve to die? No, not at the sentencing of any human court. Of course not. But before God’s court? The soul that sins shall die. And so all died, because all were born in sin and spent their lives proving it.

So humanity might have wondered where God stood on death, if He was pleased by it, if He delighted in it, because those sinners deserve to die. Israel knew better, because they had the Scriptures at hand, where God spelled it out plainly through the prophet Ezekiel: I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies. But when God sent His Son into the flesh, He made it as clear as possible, both by the life of Jesus and, ultimately, by the death of Jesus. Our God is moved to compassion by the death that we die, moved to compassion most of all for the living who are left to deal with the death of a loved one.

That’s what we see in the Gospel: Jesus’ compassion for the widow, for this daughter of Israel, who had already mourned the death of her husband, and now was grieving the death of her only son.

“Do not weep,” He said. Then he came and touched the coffin, and those who were carrying it stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother.

Before this day, outside the city gates of Nain, it had been about 800 years since anyone had been raised from the dead, as far as Scripture records. That miracle was done by the prophet Elisha, after he cried out to the Lord for the power to perform it. Before that, only the prophet Elijah had performed a similar miracle, also praying to the Lord for the ability to do it. But you notice that Jesus didn’t have to stop and beg God in heaven to listen to Him or to step in and restore life to the dead man. Jesus did it by His own power, on His own authority—power and authority that were freely given to Him by God the Father, as Jesus says in John 5: For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

The fact that Jesus Himself can decide to restore life to the dead demonstrates that He is not just a prophet. He is the promised Messiah, the all-powerful Son of God. It teaches the world to honor Him just as they honor God the Father. And it serves as a warning to those who don’t want Him for a Savior, to those who refuse to call Him their Lord, because He alone is the One who gives life to the dead.

All right. Aside from helping us to identify Jesus as Son of God, in addition to helping us understand the compassion of our God, what is the point of this account for us? What else does it teach us? What does God want us to learn?

He would teach us that, although the miracles of Jesus were only for the people of that time when He walked the earth, the compassion of Jesus remains. We shouldn’t expect Jesus to come back down to earth and start raising the dead again before the Last Day, just as we shouldn’t expect Him to miraculously heal our cancers or our heart diseases or any of these consequences of the curse on creation. But we should expect Him to sympathize with us in our weakness, to care when we’re struggling, and to send the comfort and help we need in the face of suffering, sickness, and death. His compassion continues, even He reigns at God’s right hand.

What else should we learn? We should learn that, although the time has not yet come for the dead to be raised from their earthly graves, the time has come for Jesus to raise people to spiritual life from spiritual death. Jesus explains in John 5: he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.

Even now the voice of the Son of God calls out: Repent and believe in Me! I offer you the forgiveness of sins! I will save you from sin, death, and the devil! I will give you eternal life! And as we believe His promise, He raises us from death to life, here and now. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Even when we were dead in trespasses, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

That’s an awesome thing, pictured for us in all the healing miracles of Jesus, especially the resurrection miracles. But there’s more. The brief three-year window of physical healings and resurrections that Jesus performed on earth was also a sampling, a foretaste of the actual, bodily raising He’ll do on the Last Day. As He concludes in John 5: Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth, believers (those who, as New Men, born again of water and the Spirit, did good in step with the Holy Spirit) to the resurrection of life, and unbelievers (those who did evil and had no faith in Christ to cover their evil) to the resurrection of condemnation. That resurrection is real—just as real as the resurrection miracle Jesus performed in today’s Gospel. Just as real as His own resurrection from the dead. It’s real. And it’s coming, sooner than we might think.

So trust in the One who raises the dead. His compassion and His power were proven in the past, and they continue into the present, and into the future. Trust in the One who called you to faith, who gave you life and gives it still. Trust in the One who will surely come and speak over your grave, Arise! And you will. And you’ll live together with the Lord, and with all those who believed in Christ, the Conqueror of death. Amen