Sermon Transcript
July 19, 2026
Today we’re in the book of Luke. We’re going to be in Luke 7:11–17.
Life on Earth is not easy. It’s filled with a ton of pain. In fact, I love hymns that depict the pain of life that we go through. We don’t get to sing them that often in our local church, but you know the kind of chords and hymns in minor keys that really strike a nerve. There’s this hymn called “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” that’s sung in a minor key. And it says,
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
rolling like a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.
And the whole hymn is about how God’s love feels like the weight and the might of the ocean crashing on your body. I love that key, that deep key that says that life is full of pain, but God’s presence is still there.
In today’s text, we get to witness an event where pain is in the forefront of a woman who has just lost her son after she has also lost her husband. And Jesus is going to comfort her. But what sets Jesus’s ability to comfort her is something that you and I cannot do. And that is: He is able to back up His words of comfort to her. As we will see, He is going to tell her, “Don’t cry”—something that any human can do. We can all tell someone, “Don’t cry.” We can say, “It will be okay.” But can you prove it? There is only One who can.
And that’s why today’s main point is that I want you to find comfort in Jesus, who is the Lord who has compassion for us when we have pain. And He is not only the One who has compassion, but He has the power to give us comfort as well.
So rise with me one more time as we read from God’s Word:
Soon afterward He went to a town called Nain, and His disciples and a large crowd were traveling with Him. As He neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out—his mother’s only son, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the town was also with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said, “Don’t weep.” Then He came up and touched the open coffin, and the pallbearers stopped. And He said, “Young man, I tell you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Then fear came over everyone, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us,” and “God has visited His people.” This report about Him went throughout Judea and all the vicinity. (Luke 7:11–17, CSB)
Heavenly Father, I come to you, and I ask that you would do a great work today. I ask in the precious name of your Son that you would please speak through me. Please help everyone here to see that you are the God who comforts and that you are the God with the power to comfort. Help us to see that you are the God who has compassion on those who are in pain and hurting, that you are with us when we mourn, and that you are moved in your gut to help us and you are able to do so. I pray that this sermon would land on people’s ears and hearts, that they would see that, Lord, and they would be moved to trust you with all their pain. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would speak through me. I pray that you would have me say things where I did not plan, and I pray that you would shut my mouth when I say things you do not want to be said. May this be your sermon, and may your people be moved today, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So as I said, the main point of today’s sermon is not actually that Jesus has the power to resurrect the dead. That’s what I thought would be the main sermon when I planned this sermon weeks ago. I wanted us all to see that Jesus has authority over death. And this is true; He does. He absolutely has authority over death.
But in fact, in today’s story, the boy who is dead is not even the main point. The point is not even that Jesus raises the dead. It’s that Jesus sees a woman who is in pain. He sees a woman who is in pain, and He comforts her, and He has compassion on her, and He has the power to back up that compassion. Anyone can say, “Don’t cry, and it will be okay.” But there is only One who can prove it. And this scene before us proves that Jesus has compassion on the hurting, and He can comfort them, and He has the power behind His words of comfort.
Setting the Scene
So let us begin by analyzing this scene. The scene is being set. Jesus is traveling on foot with His large crowd with Him, and He’s coming into this town of Nain. This is a strange town name; it’s only mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 7:11), and it’s only mentioned here. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that we rediscovered the town of Nain. And there it is—it’s actually a modern town just south of Galilee. And this town is small today. But back then, it wasn’t. Luke says that this is a town called a “city,” a polis. He uses the same Greek word to describe cities like Capernaum and Nazareth, and even Jerusalem, which means that Nain in its heyday here was quite sizable.
He enters Nain, and in the English translation that I read today, the CSB, it doesn’t say “behold.” It says “behold” in the Greek text. This is an important word because the word is meant to draw your attention. It’s meant to set the stage and let you get a grasp of the scene. He is trying to get you to stop in your tracks and recognize that what is underway here is important. And what is underway? The “behold” is drawing attention to the fact that there is a dead body being carried (v 12).
Now, the ESV and the King James Version will say this body is being carried on a bier—B-I-E-R. The CSB says it’s an open coffin (v 14). A bier is quite literally just a plank. It’s a plank with a body that is now wrapped. Funeral customs of this time were that when someone died, they would have died that day. That person would have died that day, and they would have moved as swiftly as possible to anoint the body, to wrap it in a cloth, and they would have moved it on a plank or a bier to the place where they buried them. And it would likely have been a tomb carved into a mountain or a stony hill. They wanted to get him out as soon as possible before the odor took hold of the vicinity at hand.
Now, what I also want you to note in this scene is that Jesus calls this man—in verse 14, He says, “Young man” (v 14). This Greek term means that he is at least 24 years old, and it could also be up to his 40s. But the fact that Jesus calls him “young man” means that this man was probably younger than Jesus. So we know this man who has died is the woman’s son, but this son is between 24 and 30 years old. This isn’t just a young man in the way we would use the term. This is a full-grown man, a man who was working and a man who would have been supporting his mother.
What we have in this scene is a weeping widow (v 12), whose plight Luke unfolds very eloquently. Watch how he does this. In chapter 7, verse 12, he says, “Behold”—right?—they’re carrying out this dead body. “He was his mother’s only son.” Fact. But then he takes this fact of sorrow, and he adds another fact: “And she was a widow” (v 12). So it is enough to weep at losing your child, but now add to that the fact that she is also a widow. Her son was all she had left.
In this time, when a woman has no one left and she is a widow, there was no such thing as a woman making enough money to support herself. This is a widow who has now lost her line of financial support. She has lost her husband, her child, and now her financial stability. Luke has unrolled this fact for you to see that her pain is billowing, and it’s only growing.
Luke actually has a particular fascination with widows. Luke, more than any other Gospel, talks about widows. Did you know that? He spends an enormous amount of energy in His Gospel talking about them because one of the unique features of Luke’s Gospel is showing how much Jesus loves the class of the oppressed and the disenfranchised. Jesus loves the women of His day because the women were second-class citizens. He loves the widows because they were the victims of the wicked, and they were at the mercy of the temple to give the widows a portion of the tithe. They were at the mercy and the compassion of society. And we all know, since the Fall in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3), society hasn’t been doing great at taking care of the oppressed. So Luke is making it a point to mention this event—an event that is not included in any of the other three Gospels—because He wants you to see how much Jesus truly cares for the mourning, the broken, and the disenfranchised.
There is nothing that you have ever cried about that Jesus has not seen. There is nothing that you’ve cried about—even in the moments where you had your back turned against Him, in those years where you said He was not your Lord—He still watched and He saw you. And I wouldn’t put it past Him to even have moved a tear for you, because this is something that Jesus does in the Gospels.
In the Old Testament, it says that God is a refuge and the helper of the widows (e.g., Ps 68:5, Ps 146:9). And I love how one commentator wrote about God’s role with the widows. He said, “God adopts orphans and widows because they have lost those who cared for them.”1 And that’s exactly what we see Jesus doing here. This is another reason why we should never say, “Oh, that’s the Old Testament.” The Old and New Testaments are very importantly wed together to depict the same God of the Old Testament becoming the God in person, in the flesh of the New Testament. Jesus cares for the orphan and the widow because He is God in the flesh, who has always cared for the orphan and the widow.
Now, this is a funeral underway. And the funeral customs of this day tell us a few things. The mother would have been leading the procession. Her dead son would have been behind her. We know from the text that this woman is crying. And we’ve all heard the shrill tears of a mother who has just lost her child. It’s unbearable for a mother to lose her child. It is also unbearable to hear a mother weep for her lost child. It is a cry like nothing I’ve ever heard before. And it moves the Lord. You’ll notice that Jesus does not have compassion for the dead man; it says that He has compassion for the mother (Luke 7:13). I think that says a lot about the Lord.
The other thing the funeral customs tell us is that she would have been wearing certain clothing, and the fact that He knows she’s a widow tells us that the husband was not there. But also, customs say that she, as a widow, would have been wearing certain clothing, and because they moved so quickly to bury the dead, her son probably died that day. Can you imagine?
Today we hand over our deceased relatives to a funeral home, and they do the embalming for us, the preparation for us, and then we have a few days before we have to go and bury them. In this day and age, there was no time to rest, no time to collect your thoughts. You had to immediately move to dispose of the body of your loved one.
With the scene set. We now move to our first point.
Jesus Came To Face Death Head-On
Jesus came to face death head-on. That’s why we can find comfort in Him as the Lord of compassion.
The Way Of Life Meets The Way Of Death
Jesus is drawing near to this city gate, and it says that a crowd of Jesus and His followers meets another crowd—the crowd of the funeral procession. If you’ve seen West Side Story, be it on Broadway or in the movie or movies, you’ll remember the prologue scene. It opens up with jazz-like music, and there’s the cool and calm gang leaning up against the metal fence—the gang known as the Jets—and they’re snapping their fingers real lazy-like. Until the rival gang, the Sharks, step onto the scene, and then that gang starts snapping their fingers. And to the tune of jazz, these two gangs start marching towards one another. And it’s meant to depict—to have you feel—the tension building in the room. And the tension is meant to be a symbol for the inevitable explosion of fights between these two rival gangs.
It’s a similar picture of this story. Here we have the gang of Life, being led by the One who is the Author of Life, meeting the gang of Death, being led by the harrowing cries of a mourning mother. On one side, you have a group of outcasts who are being filled with a natural high because they are celebrating the glory of watching miracles breaking into a land that has not had a prophet from God for hundreds of years. And on the other side, you have a group of people whose eyes and minds are on the perils of death and Hades.
Jesus Has Compassion On The Hurting
But instead of a fight, we get the exact opposite. When these two groups meet, we see that Jesus has compassion on the hurting. That’s why we can find comfort. He has come not just to face death head-on, as He does in this funeral procession, but He also has compassion on the hurting.
His Compassion Sees All Pain
In most of the healing accounts that we read about in the Gospels, in most of these healing accounts, Jesus heals because someone pleads with Him to do so. But that’s not the case this time. She does not ask for help. It says that the Lord Jesus saw her (Luke 7:13). Therefore, His compassion sees all pain. That’s the point.
Jesus comforts those who are hurting. He has compassion on them because He sees all pain. He doesn’t just look at this woman; He sees this woman. What do I mean by that? I had a friend who was a therapist once, and she was going through a lot, and I kept saying, “What’s the matter?” And as a loving therapist, she looked at me, and she said, “Josh, can I give you a bit of advice? I really want to encourage you to just stop asking people what’s wrong all the time. Just look at them and say, ‘I see you.’” So, as a Christian, I say, “I see what you’re going through, and I’m praying for you.” That’s what Jesus does here. It says that He sees her—not just physically, but He sees her heart. He sees all the pain and the plight that is in this woman’s heart.
And I want you to know that Jesus sees you, too. He sees your struggle at work. He sees your pain and your struggles in marriage. He sees your pain when you lose your child, your son, your daughter. He sees when your spouse has an affair; He sees the pain that your spouse is causing you. He sees the unruly burden that your boss is putting on you. He sees the pain—the pain of loving someone who is aging, and it’s wearing you down. He sees you.
The other thing I love here is that Jesus sees this woman, but Luke calls Him “Lord” (v 13). He doesn’t say, “Jesus saw the widow.” He says, “the Lord saw the widow.” Luke is the author, and he’s using an authorial comment. He’s the narrator here, and this narrator is not hiding his bias. He’s letting you know in retrospect that what happens in this scene is happening because Jesus is YHWH in the flesh. You see, most of the time in the Old Testament, when you’re reading the Old Testament, if you have the word “LORD” and it’s written in all caps, that is because the Hebrew behind those all caps is the word YHWH. Not merely Adonai, but YHWH (Exodus 3:14–15, 6:2–3). And that is a very special name, because that is the name of the One who rescued the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 20:2). He’s the God who made the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 12:1–3, 26:3–4, 28:13–15). He’s the God who promised the Messiah to come from David (2 Samuel 7:12–16, Jeremiah 23:5–6).
And Luke is using the word kurios, which is the Greek word that translates the Old Testament name YHWH. And he’s using this word not just to say that Jesus is a lord; Jesus is the Lord. So I want you to be confident that the Lord who made you is the same Lord that has compassion for you when you shed a tear. Jesus is the Lord who has compassion.
And the word that He uses here is splanchnizomai. This is such a hard word! Anyway, it’s a hard word to say. It’s got like five syllables, and it makes my mouth do funny things that make me uncomfortable. The Greek word here is a word that refers to movement in your gut. It is the kind of feeling that you get when you just want to unzip your stomach and take it out because it’s making you feel uncomfortable. It’s that level of compassion. It is hurting Jesus to see this woman wail. And this is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. He sees your pain, and it moves Him. So believe you me, when you are hurting, He is not just there to see you go through it; He is equipping you with power to endure it. You are not alone. He is giving you power and strength.
Compassion is a hallmark motive for Jesus’s ministry.
- Mark 1:41 He has compassion for a leper, so He cleanses him.
- Two times the Gospels mention that Jesus sees a people—He sees a people, and He says they are like sheep without a shepherd, so He has compassion for them; it moves Him (Matt 9:36, Mark 6:34). So Jesus is moved, and He starts to teach them and then feed them. (By the way, this is for free: Jesus’s heart breaks when He sees His people, His Christians, belong to a Church that is doing a poor job of shepherding His people. It moves Him. He never wants to see sheep without a shepherd. This is why it is very important for us to never be alone, to prioritize coming to Church weekly. If it was important for Jesus for you to have a shepherd, then come to the place where your shepherds are. )
- Then Jesus has compassion again; that’s why He feeds both crowds, the crowd of the 5,000 and the 4,000 (Matt 14:14, Matt 15:32).
- It says in Matthew 20:34 that He is moved with compassion for two blind men and He heals them.
- And then, one of my favorite texts in all the Bible is John 11 where Jesus resurrects Lazarus (John 11). It says that Jesus is moved in His spirit. It doesn’t use the same word, but it’s very clear that He’s having compassion. It says He is deeply moved in His spirit and troubled when He sees Lazarus’s sister, Mary, weeping (v 33). And it even moves Jesus to cry Himself (v 35). He cries before He resurrects Lazarus. The Man who knows that Lazarus will not remain dead cries for Mary. This is the truth of all the moments that Jesus exhibits compassion for the suffering: He loves you in all of your suffering.
One of my favorite verses to remind people when they’re going through hard times is Psalm 56:8 (CSB):
You yourself have recorded my wanderings.
Put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?
There is not a single tear that has hit the ground that did not first land in God’s bottle that collects them. Every tear you’ve ever shed, they are recorded in His book. And if they are the result of injustice, those tears will be vindicated at some point—either because that person has repented and those sins have been paid for on the cross where Jesus was crucified, or those tears will be vindicated by God’s righteous wrath on the Day of Judgment. Your tears are not lost on the Lord.
His Compassion For The Hurting Shatters The Rules Of Religion
And Jesus’s compassion for the hurting—next point—it shatters the rules of religion. What? What do I mean by that? It says that Jesus touches the bier, the open coffin (Luke 7:14). When He touches the bier, you must understand that He is becoming ceremonially unclean. According to Numbers 19:11 and Numbers 19:16, when Jesus touches this thing, He is touching an object that is touching a corpse. That means that Jesus could not visit the temple. That means He could not feed His followers. That means that He could not sit on any seat where other people were sitting, because He would risk making other people unclean. It’s all according to the book of Numbers.
These are ceremonial rules for the people of Israel that they had to follow. You could not touch a dead body or something that has touched a dead body until you had gone through the arduous process of washing and waiting before you were considered worthy again to participate with the community in temple worship.
We already see a foreshadow of the crucifixion here. Jesus is sacrificing His ability to draw near to the Father in the temple by becoming unclean to help this mourning mother. His love for the hurting shatters the rules of religion. Jesus is not afraid to look bad because He loves you. God’s love for you means that He was willing to come in the form of a man. As the book of Isaiah says, His form had no appearance that we should desire Him (Isa 53:2). He is not worried about His reputation to save you.
And we ought to have the same drive and motivation in ourselves—that we are willing to be scoffed at and mocked, not just by the unbelievers, but by the people who call themselves Christian. There will be people in your life—if you try to help a stripper leave the industry, and they see you, Lady, driving a stripper around town and trying to get her on her feet, there are some people that will laugh at you, mock you, talk bad about you behind your back, and they will also call themselves a Christian. Men, if you try and go to a bar to tell people about Jesus, just going in there sipping on a Coke, there will be people who call themselves Christian that will talk bad about you because they saw you walk into a bar, and they never even stopped to ask you, “What were you doing in there?” So we must remember: the mission that we have must be accomplished in the same way that Jesus accomplished it. We must not let the pressures of legalism stop us from loving the people that God puts in our lives.
Jesus Has The Power To Comfort
Now, Jesus has instructed this woman. He says, “Do not weep” (Luke 7:13), and He has stopped the funeral procession. That is the reason why He touched the bier, the open coffin (v 14), because the woman was leading the procession. Now, in my mind, I picture this woman, after Jesus tells her, “Don’t cry,” she probably kept walking. And so the way to get her to stop is to stop the rest of the funeral procession. So Jesus puts His hand on the bier, and the whole thing stops (v 14).
But at this point, anybody could do any of those things. So how is Jesus different? He’s different because Jesus has the power to comfort. Everything about this was scandalous. He speaks to a dead corpse. He looks at a dead body and He says, “Get up” (v 14). What? As one commentator said, this would be “humorous or tragic if it were not dealing with a uniquely empowered man of God.”2
Luke describes this particular resurrection in such a way—hear me out—He is describing this resurrection in such a way that He wants you to see the similarity between Jesus and Elijah. Elijah resurrected a widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17–24). And after the son rises, it says that Elijah gave the son to his mother (v 23). Our text says the exact same thing: Jesus hands the young man to his mother (Luke 7:15). Luke wants you to see how Jesus is like the great prophets of old. Specifically, we see how Jesus is meant to be like the prophets Elijah and Elisha.
So if you look real quick at Luke 4:16—this is for my advanced Bible readers. If this is a little over your head, don’t worry. You’ll be there in a few years; you just keep reading. But in Luke 4:16, we see Jesus. He comes to Nazareth, and He enters the synagogue, and they hand Him the scroll of Isaiah to read. And so He unrolls Isaiah, and He starts reading from this passage:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19, CSB; citing Isaiah 61:1-2)
And then He does this super boss move where He just rolls up the scroll, and then He looks at them, and He says, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21). It’s like the most epic mic drop ever! Okay, first of all, just so you know, it’s hard for us to find a spot in the Bible just by flipping it. Okay? They had to find the spot by rolling and unrolling with both hands at the same time. Well, Jesus, like a boss, knows exactly where He wants to go in this book. He probably has this book memorized, goes straight to the passage, rolls it up, and says, “This passage is talking about Me.”
Okay, so they all start speaking, and they’re like, “This guy is crazy. Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). Then, beginning in verse 23,
“Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘No doubt you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. What we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in your hometown also.’ ’ He also said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had leprosy, and yet not one of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’” (Luke 4:23–27, CSB)
Luke has recorded that unique passage—it’s only in Luke—because He wants you to see what Jesus says in this passage is setting the stage, and how He is going to show you that Jesus is just like Elijah and Elisha. That’s why He has recorded this passage the way He records it for the resurrection of the boy in Nain.
So returning to Luke 7, Jesus is like Elijah in that He heals this man—He resurrects him. And Jesus is not the only one; there was also Elisha. Elisha, we just read, healed Naaman the Syrian of leprosy, but He also resurrects someone. Let’s look at those real quick, because I want you to see how Jesus is not just similar to them, but He is entirely different from them at the same time. Watch this.
In 1 Kings 17, the passage Owen read for us this morning, we see that Elijah raises the widow’s son in Zarephath, but he has to stretch himself over this boy. And how many times does he have to do it? Three times (v 21). And then, is the boy healed the first time? Nope. Second time? Nope. Third time? Nope. What does he have to do? It says that he has to call out to God: “Lord, my God, please let this boy’s life come into him again. Please” (v 21). And this was the greatest prophet that the world had known in that day. Nobody surpassed Elijah.
Well, then his successor, Elisha, he raises a Shunammite woman’s son to life (2 Kings 4:18–37). And at first, he gives his staff to his assistant, and he tells his assistant, “Run over there, go put the staff on the boy. My staff is going to resurrect this kid.” He gets there, and he puts the staff on him. Nope, doesn’t work. It’s like the worst feeling in the world—you go to plug in a new device, and you get no power. That’s exactly what happens. So the assistant runs back to Elisha, and he says, “Elisha, it didn’t work” (2 Kings 4:31). Elisha gets there, and he has to come and do what the staff could not do. And he also needs to beg and pray to the Lord, “Heal this boy, resurrect him,” because he can’t do it.
Jesus comes on the scene. Does He pray to the Lord to resurrect this boy? Jesus comes on the scene. Does He command this boy to be raised three times? Is there any failure here at all?
Jesus is not like the prophets because He says, “Boy, get up” (Luke 7:14). What does He say to Lazarus? “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43). It’s done. It’s done. It’s done. Jesus commands life because He’s the Author of Life. And because Jesus is the Author of Life, you have every reason to be comforted when He has compassion for you in all of your pain.
You have every reason to be comforted. Jesus sees it, and He’s got the power to get it done. The day is coming when He will return, and He will vindicate all your pain. And in the meantime, I want you to know He has not left you.
Some other key facts here about the difference between Elijah and Jesus. In Elijah’s story, the woman thinks that Elijah’s presence is God’s judgment (1 Kings 17:18). You see, Elijah comes around to this woman, and what happens? The son dies after Elijah shows up, and so she says to Elijah, “Are you here as a sign of judgment on me?” Is that what happens when Jesus shows up? It’s the exact opposite. Jesus shows up, and He does not represent God’s judgment; He represents God’s peace and reconciliation.
The message is clear: while Jesus might share a lot in common with the greatest prophets of old, He far exceeds them in status and power. Because He is the distant YHWH who has now drawn near—and not for judgment. He can help. And this is why the people say, “God has visited us” (Luke 7:16).
Jesus has the power and authority over death. He’s not just the Author of Life; He has the authority over death. And this is a theme that is thoroughly explored in the Gospel of John.
“Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (John 5:25, CSB)
If you hear the voice of God today, you will live. Jesus doesn’t say “if you want to live”; He says, “you will live.” He says, “A time is coming when all who are in graves will hear His voice and come out” (John 5:28-29, CSB). Why did these people rise? Why did they come to life? Because Jesus speaks their resurrection into existence. That’s so powerful. So powerful!
Dr. Quarles—you all remember him; he came and spoke for us here last year—I love what he says about this passage. He says, “Do you know why Jesus had to say Lazarus’s name? Because if He just said, ‘Get up,’ every dead body in the region would have risen from the grave!” That’s the power of God’s voice in Jesus.
So this dead man, this young boy in our passage in Luke 7, he rises, and how do the people respond? They respond in two ways: with fear and glorification (v 16). It says, “Fear came over everyone.” In verse 16, I want you to know there is a blessing for those who fear the Lord. It says in Proverbs 1:7 that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
You fear the Lord, you become a wise person. And according to the book of Proverbs, when you are wise, you flourish as God intended you to be. So how do you flourish? You fear the Lord. You recognize He is all-powerful; He has the capability to crush me; He deserves to be respected and obeyed.
America used to fear the Lord. And in those days, we flourished as a society. Since we have taken the fear of the Lord out of the public sphere, our society is seeing the degradation of marriage, the degradation of our economy, the degradation of leadership. Everything is degrading. But for a people who fear the Lord, there is much blessing. That’s the kind of fear they are embracing in this miracle before them.
Now, the fear of the Lord is a typical reaction to a divine presence. When the angels appear at the beginning of Luke, it says that they feared (Luke 1:12, Luke 2:9). Fear was also the result of all the healings. We see this in Luke 1:65, Luke 5:26, Luke 8:37. And then we see it several more times between Luke and Acts after this passage. We see the people be afraid because they’ve experienced God’s presence. It is a normal reaction. So yes, I want you to know that God does love you and He is compassionate, but don’t think that that’s incompatible with having a healthy fear of the Lord. They belong together. They belong together.
And how do they respond? They glorify God (Luke 7:16). So how do they glorify God? Maybe you’re like me and you have heard somebody say, “Give glory to God.” What does that mean? Does that mean I have to take off my shirt and dance like David does in the Old Testament? (2 Sam 6:14).
Well, Luke actually tells you how they glorify God. They make two statements. They say, “A great prophet has risen” (Luke 7:16). The Greek text behind this wording is a passive verb, which implies that God has raised the prophet. So they are saying God has given us a prophet today. And then the second thing they say is, “God has come to visit His people [that is, to help them]” (Luke 7:16).
How do they glorify the Lord? They simply state out loud—and they tell everyone about it—what God has done. That’s how you glorify God. You tell the world what God has done for you. It’s that simple, folks. What has Jesus done for you? Now, don’t be afraid to let everyone know.
When it says that “God has come to visit His people,” this is also a special word that means it’s a visitation that emphasizes providing help. That’s what Jesus has done: He has come to Earth to help us. So just like the word has spread for them, let it spread for us. May the word go out that Jesus has compassion for the hurting and He has the power to back it up.
Let’s go to Him now.
I thank you, Lord, for being the great God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Comfort us in all of our pain. Lift us up. And I pray that you would give us confidence to know that you are always near, and that the day is coming when you will vindicate every tear we’ve ever shed. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
- Gustav Stählin, “Χήρα,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 450. ↩︎
- Darrell L. Bock, Luke: 1:1–9:50, vol. 1, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1994), 652. ↩︎