Jesus and Death | Jesus the Redeemer | Pastor Joe Coffey

Luke seven 1117.

Soon afterward, he went to a town called main,

and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.

As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died

was being carried out.

The only son of his mother, and she was a widow,

and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said to her,

do not weep.

And then he came up and touched the buyer.

And the bear stood still.

And he said, young man, I say to you, arise.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak.

And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying,

A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people.

And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea

and all the surrounding country.

Everybody, good morning and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.

So, so, so glad you're here.

I haven't told you this in a while, so I want to tell you this today

that I love you guys.

I love being a part of this church.

And, all that's going on,

if you were here and you watched the priest service video, you're in.

Zack, talk about commitment. Night.

Now, you guys came and you brought your commitments, and.

But you also wrote the names

of people up here on the cement where the carpet's been pulled away.

And I just want you to know that this is, baptism weekend.

And on Thursday night, a man was baptized whose name

was written on the floor over in East Hall when we replaced that carpet.

How cool is that?

And his neighbor, who started inviting him to church,

was able to walk him over there and say, your name is right underneath, right here.

Right.

We want that to happen hundreds of times,

because of what we're doing with Every Minute Matters.

So very cool. Don't miss, celebration night.

I got to tell you two, Thursday night had a five year old little boy come up to me.

His name is Elijah, and he gave me this.

It's,

a dollar bill, four quarters in two pennies.

And. Yeah, let's go. Yeah.

I asked him what that was was for, and he said for the building,

which I assume he wants me to apply it to the indoor playground.

So we're going to do that.

Don't miss celebration night.

It's going to be a blast tonight. All right.

Okay.

Jesus has a lot of things that he's the son of God.

He's, miracle worker, teacher,

rightful king.

But, of all the things that Jesus

is the most important thing he has for us

is Redeemer.

He is the only one who can deliver us,

who can forgive us,

who can save us, who can set us free.

Which is why we're spending ten weeks looking,

in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus the Redeemer.

And today we're in Luke chapter seven.

So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there.

You can wait for it to come up on the screen.

You can pull it up on your phone.

If you're going to use one of our Bibles, it's on page

eight, 11, page 11.

And my, my outline for this passage is very simple,

but I think the truths are very profound.

And here are my three points.

I just want to talk about what Jesus sees,

what Jesus feels, and what Jesus does.

That's it.

What Jesus sees, what Jesus feels, what Jesus does.

It's, seven verses.

Let me read it again. So it's fresh in your mind.

Then we'll talk about it. This is what,

Luke says soon afterward,

he, being Jesus, went to a town called Nain,

and his disciples in a great crowd went with him.

As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died

was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.

And a considerable considerable crowd from the town was with her.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said to her,

do not weep.

Then he came up and touched the beer, and the bear stood still.

And he said, young man, I say to you, arise.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak.

And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Fear sees them all.

And they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has arisen

among us, and God has visited his people.

And this report about him spread

through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

I think

there are some stories in the Gospels about Jesus that,

strike me as being almost comically brief.

What I mean is that Jesus raises

somebody from the dead, and and Luke gives it all of seven verses.

I just think if, if sometime in my career, I stopped a funeral procession

and I raised somebody from the dead, and you were writing a biography about me,

I think that event would merit at least a whole chapter.

Hey, can I just say that?

And the reason I want to point out a couple of things.

One is, in the Gospel of John, John at the very end says, Jesus

did a lot of things, and of all the things that Jesus did were all written down.

He said, I suppose all the books in the world could not contain it.

That's why some stories are so brief.

But when you take such an amazing event and you make it so brief,

we should probably pay attention to the details.

So in this story, in verse 11, we're told that Jesus

was coming into this little town of Nain and there was a great crowd with him.

I don't know when the last time you were in a big crowd was,

but whenever I'm in a big crowd, there are a couple things that are happening.

I'm I'm looking at the person in front of me.

Usually I'm looking down because I don't want to hit their feet.

I'm trying to stay at the same speed of the rest of the crowd,

because I don't want somebody coming up and hitting me in the back, right?

I'm trying to get where I'm going so I can stop being,

you know, in the midst of a crowd.

That's the kind of crowd that Jesus is in.

And then he looks up

and he sees a funeral procession.

And, verse 12 actually gives us

a lot of details about that funeral procession.

We know that, that the, the main mourner,

the only real mourner was a woman.

And the man who was being buried,

who had died was her only son, and she had already lost her husband

because it says she was a widow.

Now, you're probably like me.

You've seen a lot of funeral processions.

You come up to a traffic light, there's a police car that's turned

kind of diagonally with the lights on, and you see a long row of cars,

each with their headlights on. And that's how you know.

And when I've seen that, you know, I wonder who the person might be,

particularly if there are signs that it might have been

a really important person here.

Jesus finds out the details.

I don't know what my guess is.

He asked somebody

and they told him, all right, so so he knows

that this is a mom

who's lost her only son, who's a widow,

which of course, put her in a terrible place

because by losing her husband and now losing her only son,

she has lost all of her support

and all of her security.

She is now completely alone in the world.

And Jesus sees

hard son.

Do you know how wonderful

those three words are to that woman,

to you?

That Jesus, in the midst of a crowd,

looks over and sees this woman

who is in the worst place, who

who has lost her husband, lost her son,

and he sees her

because sometimes in the midst of a crowd

and she's in a crowd, two you can feel the most alone.

And that could be you.

Like, right here in this crowd.

And if you are here and

you feel alone or in pain,

can I tell you something wonderful,

something amazing?

Jesus sees.

He sees you.

And not just that he sees the detail, the unique details

of your particular situation,

of your pain, of your in aloneness.

That's the first thing.

That's what Jesus sees.

But he doesn't just stop at sin.

The second point is what Jesus feels.

You know, when I was doing my doctoral studies,

I remember writing a paper on comparative religions.

And so I did do some research into Buddhism.

And Buddhism began with a man named Siddartha.

He became known as Siddartha Buddha.

But when he was a young man, he was very sheltered.

His father was very, very wealthy.

His father decided

that he didn't want his son exposed to any pain or suffering or death.

So he raised him in a bubble.

And instead Martha, when he was a young man, ventured

outside the bubble and was stunned by what he saw

and all the suffering and all the pain and the death.

And Buddhism was really developed

by Siddartha to to deal with the pain and suffering of the world.

And the way he did it was that he he felt like your pain and your suffering

was connected to whatever your desires were, your attachment was.

And so what he would say is, what you don't want to get attached to anything.

Because of course, if you're not attached to anything,

it won't hurt so badly when you lose everything.

And of course, that makes sense.

It's a little bit like cutting the nerve endings,

but as a philosophy to deal with pain and suffering,

it could not be further away from Christianity and Jesus,

because in verse 13, what this says is when Jesus saw this woman

who was mourning, he had compassion on her.

That's a very, very strong word in the original language.

It means to feel pain to such an extent

that it implies attacks you physically.

And that's what Jesus did.

And when I say Buddhism couldn't be further away from Christianity,

or Buddha further away from Jesus, what I mean is that if

if Siddartha Buddha could sit with that woman,

he would have sat in complete serenity

and peace and told her she was in agony

because she was too attached to her son

and probably too attached to her late husband.

But Jesus

would sit with that woman

and he would feel her pain.

He would experience pain with her

and for her. You.

Whenever I'm talking to somebody who is struggling with Christianity

or with God,

because of all the pain and the suffering in the world, I always

try to see them first, because that's never just a philosophical question.

If somebody says, I just can't believe that God exists

when there's so much pain and suffering, that's a personal thing.

They've been through pain and suffering,

but I always end up telling him that Christianity is different

than all the other religions in the world,

because there's no other religion in the world that even remotely suggest

that God cares so much about the pain and suffering of this world

that he was willing to enter into it

and actually feel it.

But that's what Jesus does.

If you've ever been in pain, you know the difference between sympathy

and compassion.

Sympathy is something somebody can feel from a distance.

But compassion, you have to be up close because the word itself

means to to feel with someone.

And that's what Jesus does here.

In many ways, this story is a

harbinger of what is to come, right?

That Jesus here is feeling

the pain of this woman.

He's feeling the pain for this woman.

This is chapter seven.

In Luke chapter 23, Jesus will be hanging

Luke 23 · chapter mention

on a cross experiencing pain.

That should be my pain.

Pain that should be your pain.

One of those wonderful things about Jesus is

his teaching is so connected

to how he lived and what he did

right.

So this story is pointing us toward that.

Jesus feels compassion for this woman,

and he is filled with that.

All right.

So, Jesus, you know, in some ways, this story, maybe as much

as any other story in the Bible, is a glimpse into Jesus heart.

Because, you know, for me, the busier I am

are the the less I pay attention to what anybody else is going through.

Maybe you're like that.

I wouldn't want to compare my busiest day

to Jesus average day, but here he's in this huge crowd.

They're all trying to get something from him.

They're pushing him to a place where probably he has to teach them.

And still he sees this woman,

this woman who was once

a wife and is no longer wife, was once a mother,

is no longer a mother.

And his heart breaks for her.

That's what Jesus feels.

So Jesus sees what Jesus feels.

Finally, what Jesus does this is verses 14 through 17.

It says, then he came up and touched

the beer, and the hearers stood still.

The bear stood still.

And he said, young man, I say to you, arise.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak.

And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Fear sees them all.

And they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has risen among us,

and God has visited his people.

And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea

and all the surrounding country.

So Jesus starts to make his way over to the funeral,

and people are craning their necks to see what he's going to do

because they don't know.

And then all of a

sudden there's this there's this wave of fear

that ripples throughout the people when they see this man sit up.

You know that what the Scripture says is that fear sees them.

And even that's an interesting phrase.

It means that there was power that was unleashed,

that made them feel undone,

and that power was unleashed by Jesus.

And that power actually

changed the flow of nature in at least three ways.

The first is the flow from clean to unclean.

Like I told you that

when a story is this brief, you should pay attention to the details.

And in verse 14, right at the beginning it says,

Then he came up and touched the beer.

A beer was up is the plank that the body was laying on.

And it's interesting that Luke would

include the detail that Jesus touched it,

but that's a detail that's included in a lot of stories about Jesus.

And in Luke chapter four, he's in the town of Capernaum.

And it says, this night where the sun was setting, all those

who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him.

And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.

And Luke, chapter five A leper comes up to Jesus and says,

if you're willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus says, I'm willing.

Then Scripture says, he reached out and he touched him.

Reason that's so important is whenever you

you touch someone who's sick,

you risk getting sick yourself

because that's the way things move.

Like if you have multiple children and one of your kids comes home sick,

you can just count on all the rest of the kids getting sick

because that's the way things flow in our world.

It never flows the other way.

I can't be so healthy that when you come up to me and you're

sick, my health overwhelms your sickness and makes you well, right?

Because our world doesn't work like that.

The reason that

Luke includes that detail, that Jesus reached out and touch in that culture,

that everybody would, would have gasped

because that would have made him unclean.

Because uncleanness only goes in one direction.

You have to.

If something unclean touches you,

then you become unclean.

But Jesus touches the funeral, the earth,

the reason that Jesus touches the leper, why he touches all the sick people,

is that he's showing everybody that he has the authority and the power

to change the unclean, to clean

with the touch.

That's the first flow that he changes.

The second flow is from joy to sadness,

from overwhelming joy to the depths of grief.

If you could take human emotion, if it's a 100 point scale

and 100 is the most joy for a human being can be,

and one is the deepest sadness someone can experience,

that woman was very close to a one, and it's there.

It's a very rare thing for somebody to go from 1 to 100 here.

This woman is walking with this,

her deceased only son, and she is thinking

she can never imagine smiling again, let alone laughing again.

And in a moment she is filled with overwhelming joy.

That's the power of a redeemer.

Can you imagine what that must have been like?

You're, talking in Lord of the rings?

Has one of the characters say, well, all sad things come untrue.

It's one of my favorite lines in that whole book.

And here Jesus makes

the saddest thing in this woman's life come untrue.

And she is filled with joy.

And that flow changes because of the Redeemer.

And finally the flow from death to life.

Right?

That Jesus is.

He comes and he is going to undo,

all the damage that sin has wreaked on our world.

And here death is our final enemy and Jesus takes death.

And for this young man makes it nothing more than a peaceful nap.

Right?

This is what I want you to see.

That this is the gospel in seven verses.

Do you see that?

That Jesus comes and he sees you?

Okay, there we go.

We are quick.

It's the gospel in seven verses, right?

Jesus sees you in your particular circumstance.

Whatever is going on with you, your sadness, your brokenness.

But more than that,

your sin, your guilt, your shame,

and instead of being indifferent,

instead of being repulsed, Jesus is filled with compassion.

That's Romans five eight, but God demonstrates his love toward you,

that while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.

And Jesus, filled with compassion and with a single touch,

he he changes your uncleanness

to clean.

Your sin and your guilt.

He takes on himself.

So you are set free.

He promises to take every sad thing, all of it,

and one day make it untrue.

So you are filled

with joy and to take death itself for you

and make it

the most glorious beginning,

not an end, but a beginning.

So great is the power of Jesus, your Redeemer.

Would you pray with me?

Our father in heaven.

I love that there are,

more and more stories that we will one day, here

in heaven about all that Jesus did when he was here on earth.

But I'm so grateful for the stories that you did include.

I'm grateful for this particular story,

that Jesus would see this woman

in the midst of her alone aloneness.

And that means that Jesus sees us

in the midst of being alone and in pain.

I pray for the people who feel that right now.

I pray that they would experience, the love

that Jesus has for them, but not just his love,

his power as a Redeemer.

And we celebrate that we worship

Jesus because he is such a wonderful Savior.

Thank you.

We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.