The Kings People: At the Gate: Luke 7:11-17 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

Well, I want to welcome you into MetaCurch wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here physically, if you're at our Holotus venue, man, I'm so glad you showed up today.

If you're with us online, I'm just grateful for that ministry.

There are a lot of people behind the scenes that make our online ministry possible.

Thankful for them as well.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and we are on a journey that we've called fulfilled.

We are walking through the gospel of Luke.

This is one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

Now, Luke is a pretty long document, and we're going very slow.

So we've broken it down into seven sections.

We just finished the second of those, and now we are in our third section.

We've called this the King's People.

Let me give you a quick recap.

In section one, we saw the birth of Jesus.

In section two, we saw the ministry of Jesus, which concluded with Jesus inviting all of us to start living as a part of and building the kingdom of God, not someday when we die and go to heaven, but right here, right now, as we follow Jesus and start living in ways where we start seeing evidence of heaven right here on the earth.

Amen?

Now we are in section three.

We called it the King's People because we're going through a series of stories where we're running into different people that demonstrate the kind of people that Jesus is looking for.

Last week, Jesus' original audience would have been shocked that the very first person after Jesus invites us into the kingdom, the very first person that he runs into is a Roman soldier.

Rome had occupied Jesus and his people, the Israelites.

Rome was the enemy.

He wasn't just Roman, he was a Roman soldier who terrorized the Jewish people.

He wasn't just a Roman soldier, he was a centurion, which means that he was in charge of a hundred other men.

He was a capital L big-time leader.

And this guy had such extraordinary faith, faith like Jesus hadn't even seen among his own people because he understood the authority of Christ.

Today we are looking at a story that comes right after this.

Luke is a world-class historian.

He always lets us know where we're at and what's going on.

We are in Luke chapter 7, if you have your Bible, or if you want to open it on your Bible app and put it on Do Not Disturb so TikTok doesn't interrupt me today and take all of your attention away from what we're doing here.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

If you want to open it up to Luke chapter 7, we're starting in verse 11.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

It says this afterward, right?

This is Luke giving us chronological placing.

Afterward, Jesus was on his way to a town called Nain, his disciples, and a large crowd were traveling with him.

Now, there is a large crowd because Jesus has been already doing incredible miracles.

He's been preaching and teaching, and people have never seen anything like this.

They've never seen this kind of power, this kind of miraculous power, this kind of authority, heard this kind of teaching and preaching.

And so Word of Jesus is traveling, the presence of Jesus is growing.

He has a large crowd.

And following Jesus at this point in his ministry would have been like the most unique and special thing that you can imagine.

Maybe you've had a moment in your life where it felt like you and a group of people had kind of caught lightning in a bottle.

You know what I'm saying?

Like there were some of us who lived through the Spurs building the greatest dynasty in all sports ever, right?

And it just felt kind of special to live here in San Antonio and be a part of that.

Maybe you were on a sports team at some point, it could have been middle school, I don't care, but like no one could touch y'all and you knew it and you felt it.

Maybe you've built something in your career, you were on a team, and there was so much progress.

Every time you got together, it felt really special.

Maybe you have a friend group.

I've got college buddies.

We get together once a year.

And when we get together, I'm gonna be honest, nobody knows what's gonna happen once we get together.

You know what I'm saying?

It's just special.

It's like lightning in a bottle, and you can feel that excitement.

That's what it was like.

This large crowd is following Jesus.

They would have been hyped, man.

They would have been singing and laughing, there would have been constant chatter.

Everyone's pumped.

Wherever Jesus wants to go, they will go, and that's evidenced by the fact that a large crowd is following him to a village called Nain.

Most of you know Jesus was from Nazareth.

We talked a lot about this in the section we called the Chosen King.

And the reason it matters is because the person who would be the Messiah, the savior of the world, the most important figure in all of human history, you just would imagine they would come from the big city, that they would be known as they were coming up.

But we learned that Nazareth is a small town.

It is seen as nowhere, and nobody of importance comes from Nazareth.

Any small town people.

Anybody grew up in a small town?

You guys know this.

I grew up in a small town.

Nazareth, I've compared to Lampasas.

That's where I grew up.

Nothing comes out of Lampassas.

Small town people, you know the mentality.

You survive and then you try to get out.

A lot of times you can't, but you survive and you try to get out.

That was Lampasus, this was Nazareth.

Jesus is going to Nain.

Nain is south of Nazareth.

It's on the side of a mountain called Mount Moreh.

Nain is significantly smaller than Nazareth, which is so small and insignificant, there was actually a saying in Israel can anything good come from Nazareth?

Lampasas is a small town, but 15 miles away we have Lomeda.

Lampasas has 5,000 people, Lomeda has like five.

Lomeda people get mad when Lampassas calls it a small town.

They're like, you have no idea what a small town is.

If Lampasas is Nazareth, Lomeda is Nain.

Are you bringing the connection together?

This is a tiny, insignificant town.

So small, so secluded, so remote, even though the popularity of Jesus is growing, there's a chance they haven't even heard of him.

They don't know about the miracles, they don't know about the whispers that he might be the Messiah.

And it begs a question: why did Jesus go to Nain?

Why not go to one of the big towns?

Why not go to Damascus?

Why not go to Jerusalem?

Well, Jesus, we believe, is God.

We have to be careful.

Sometimes Christians say Jesus was God.

Uh-uh.

Jesus is God right now.

Jesus put on human flesh for a time.

He is still corporeal.

He ascended back to heaven wearing his flesh.

He sits on the throne of heaven, ruling the universe.

He is God.

He was God.

He forever will be God.

Amen?

Jesus, who is God, is on earth, and everything he does is on purpose.

And this is one of those stories you could read by really quickly, and you shouldn't.

Because while this story on its surface just seems like another one of the many miracles that Jesus does, this miracle is pointing to the greatest miracle, the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let's keep walking through it.

In verse 12, it says this just as he neared the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out.

He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow.

And look, a large crowd from the town was also with her.

This is why if you actually have a Bible in front of you, you're just at some level of advantage.

We put our verses on screens and everyone stopped carrying their Bible.

But if you have the scriptures in front of you, you can look in verse 12 and you can see these three words, a large crowd, and you can look up in verse 11 and you can say the exact same three words, a large crowd.

We have to slow down when we read scripture.

Have you ever heard that advice before?

Yes, from me six times every Sunday.

You have to slow down.

Because number one, Luke is a world-class historian.

He's not winging it, he's writing with incredible intention.

And if you aren't a believer, we do actually believe that every word of this book is inspired by God Himself, breathed out by God.

So nothing's happening by accident.

And when there are repeated words and repeated phrases, it's like every time you open scripture, God is grabbing you by the shoulders, trying to get your attention.

But so often we have this religious mindset, which is like, I gotta check the box and read a chapter of my Bible this morning so that God can be happy with me.

It's like God doesn't want you to be more religious, He wants a relationship with you.

And in a relationship, oh, I'm gonna help some husbands real quick.

In a relationship, you gotta listen carefully to the words that your wife is saying to you.

There might even be a pop quiz within minutes of what she is saying to you, where you're expected to recall what she just said to you.

So you have to slow yourself down and get past distraction and go, oh wow, there's two groups.

The two groups are in very different head spaces.

One large crowd is rejoicing, being led by Jesus.

One large crowd is mourning, being led by a widow.

Two large crowds coming to an intersection.

Maybe something's happening here, maybe I should pay attention.

Luke also wants you to know where these two crowds are about to collide.

They are about to collide at the gate.

Now, this doesn't mean a lot to us because in the modern world we bid build cities with lots of access points.

One of the things that I love about living in San Antonio is if you want to get somewhere, there are 45 different routes to get there, and there are 45 people who will fight to the death that their route is the best way.

You could go on the small loop or the big loop or the even bigger loop.

You could go on 10, 281, 35, 90, 151.

It's like you can get places a million different ways.

In the ancient Near East, when you built a village, you built a wall around it, and for security purposes, you had one access point.

That access point is called the gate.

One way in, one way out.

Now there is so much I could say about the gates of the cities that I don't have time to.

You have no idea.

I have to leave so much on the cutting room floor when I get these sermons together, but that's okay because you can put a Bible in your own hand and you can go from Genesis to Revelation and read about all the significant things that happen at the gate of the city.

I don't have time for it.

But one thing I do need you to know is that when somebody dies, they must be buried outside the gate.

In the Jewish custom in the Jewish law, as soon as a body dies, it must be buried.

As soon as a body dies, it cannot be touched.

It is very delicately transferred without touching to scripture's gonna call it a casket.

That's uh an anachronism.

That's we say casket.

Really, this was a deathbed.

It was like a stretcher.

Once the body's on the deathbed, the deathbed cannot be touched.

You touch the body, you are ceremonially unclean.

You touch the bed, you are ceremonially unclean.

That there are no chemicals they can pump them full so that they can stay alive and have a funeral.

Once they're dead, like within minutes, you start preparing to go bury them.

It happens and it happens very quickly.

The way that this was organized is the stretcher, the deathbed, in the ancient world, it was called a beer, B-I-E-R, not a couer's light, a B-I-E-R.

And you would put them on there and it had loops, and you would run poles alongside very carefully because you cannot touch the deathbed.

And then the pole bearers, they would carry the poles and they would lift the body very carefully and at the same time so it stayed level, so nobody would have to touch the body, no one would have to touch the bed, and they would head to the gate.

And and she has a large crowd, which likely meant the entire village.

There were maybe 200 people who lived in Maine.

The entire town, everyone knows everyone, small town people, we know this, everyone knows everyone.

The whole town comes.

They are in a procession and they haven't had a week.

Our funerals, we might have two weeks of processing and grieving and mourning and celebrating.

We come up to a casket.

If it's open, we touch the body.

If we love them, we kiss them on the forehead.

This is not, we got to get out of that mindset.

That's not how it worked.

She lost her son maybe an hour ago.

Maybe.

And they're headed towards the gate.

Now, this isn't just kind of a bad moment.

Jesus, who's in like the highs of life, everyone's rejoicing.

They're not walking into just something bad.

Like someone died.

We've all lost someone, we know that pain.

Jesus goes to Nain to contrast true rejoicing with truly the worst scenario you could find in the ancient world.

Let me show it to you.

In verse 12, as he neared the gate of the town, there was a dead man.

That's bad enough.

The loss of life is tragic.

We mourn it, we grieve it.

But listen, he was his mother's only son.

Now, in the ancient world, the oldest son was the most important member of a family.

There are some oldest brothers in the room right now who are like, I knew it, bro.

I knew I was the most important person in this family.

That was the ancient world, okay?

In the ancient world, the oldest brother gets a double portion of inheritance.

The oldest brother is duty bound to protect legacy, to protect lineage, and if anything happens to dad, the oldest brother is duty bound to take care of the family, take care of mom, take care of the siblings.

I know we're all not good at math.

Let me help you.

An only son is the oldest son.

Okay?

Some logic there.

An only son is the oldest son.

And if the only son dies, there is no one to take his place.

As a matter of fact.

In the prophets of the Old Testament, they would use the loss of an only son as a metaphor for saying the deepest grief you can possibly experience.

Not only is there a death, it is the worst death in the ancient world, the death of an only son, and somehow it gets worse.

Because then we find out she's also a widow.

There's a reason the oldest son is duty bound to take care of his mom and his siblings.

Specifically because as a woman in the ancient Near East, it was nearly impossible for you to earn income, and it was nearly impossible for you to own property.

And so if the father dies, then the mom is moved in with the oldest son.

The oldest son provides for her, protects her, takes care of her.

She has nothing.

She has already walked out of that gate carrying her husband.

She knows this path.

She knows this pain.

At least she had her son.

At least she wouldn't be on the street.

At least someone could provide, and now all of that is gone.

The plight of this woman is as bad as it gets in the ancient world.

Luke tells us that there is a collision coming.

One large crowd led by a mourning mother.

One large crowd led by Jesus, the savior of the world, a literal procession of death coming head to head with the author of life.

Luke needs you to understand the scene.

I need you to understand that tension so that you can understand the application into your own life.

Listen, we all come to our own gates.

Some of these are positive.

A gate is just a moment or an event that once you go through it, your life changes.

Usually permanently.

We all go through gates.

Some of these positive, some of them negative.

I don't know what those are for you, but I know one that we all share in common.

We all eventually will come up to the gate called death.

And when you pass through that gate, everything changes forever.

What you need to know is long before that last and final gate, you go through many others.

Some are positive.

Like when you walk that stage and you're given your diploma and you move your tassel over, that's a gate.

You have walked through a moment, you've walked through an event, and your life is now changed.

Like when you sign for that big boy job that you've been wanting, and now you have a career, or when you start that business, that's a gate.

When you stand at an altar and you say, I do, and then you stand there and you sweat, hoping they also say, I do, and they say I do.

And you walked in and now you are walking out different forever.

You have walked through that gate.

These happen all of the time.

There are many positive gates, and you will encounter many negative gates, moments or events that once you walk through them, your life changes, possibly forever.

When you sit down in the office of the divorce attorney and you sign your name on that last piece of paper, that is a gate.

Your life has changed and maybe forever.

When the doctor calls and you get the diagnosis, that's a gate.

Your life has changed.

When what you think is a casual habit takes control and is now a lifelong addiction, that's a gate.

When the words of anger leave your lips, and the relationship will never be the same.

That's a gate.

Financial ruin.

Prodigal children.

We come to these gates all the time.

Some of you have recently gone through a gate and you know it.

You're like, my life is now different.

Some of you are coming up to one.

You can feel it in the distance.

You can sense it in the brokenness of your marriage.

You can feel it in your physical health.

You can tell as the debt continues to mount and your finances get more and more out of control.

You can tell in the relationships that seem to be fracturing.

Some of you are waiting every day to be called into the boss's office, not for a promotion.

It's a gate.

It's on its way.

The widow in Nain is about to go through the gate.

She's at the head of a large crowd, carrying her son.

As long as she's inside that gate, she has a son.

As soon as she gets to the other side, they will bury him and she will never see him again.

And her life will change forever.

And she knows this because the path of that gate is already stained with that same woman's tears as she walked her husband out, buried him, and her life changed forever.

It's already happened.

She knows what's coming.

But she doesn't know that as she comes up to the gate on the other side, Jesus is coming her way.

Now we have to understand this would have been a massive interruption.

Imagine the saddest funeral you've ever been to.

I've been to some of the heaviest funerals that you can imagine.

And imagine being in that setting with like a blanket of grief just draped over the room, and all of a sudden a side door bursts open, and in comes a huge 30th birthday party.

A DJ is spinning.

Everybody is dressed to the nines.

Everybody's excited.

You'd be furious.

How dare you?

Turn that off.

Get out of here.

Have some respect.

This is the tension.

This is the collision.

There's a chance that people in Maine don't really know who Jesus is.

He's obviously a rabbi.

He's got people following him and learning from him, but they might not know he does miracles.

They might not know that he's the Messiah.

What they do know is he's interrupting maybe the saddest moment this village has ever had.

Surely the saddest moment of this woman's life.

I want you to pay attention in verse 13.

It says this When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

And he said, Do not weep.

I point out this first part that Jesus is the one who sees.

Jesus is the one who speaks.

We've already read it.

Jesus is the one who moves.

Jesus is the one who engages.

I point that out because if you were here last week, or maybe if you go online and get caught up with last week, we see the first of the king's people, the Roman centurion.

The Roman centurion is the active participant in all of the story.

He hears about Jesus.

He decides to take a step of faith.

He gets together the Jewish elders.

He sends the message.

Today's not like that.

In this passage, Jesus is the active participant throughout the entire story.

Jesus sees her.

And it's worth stopping right here because this is the part for some of You that has kept you away from God.

I want you to think about who this woman is.

Because if Jesus doesn't intentionally head towards the tiny remote village of Nain, see her and heal her son, she is lost to history.

I don't mean to be rude, but she's a nobody.

Remember what we said about Nazareth in Luke chapter 1, 2, and 3?

Luke 1 · chapter mention

It's like if you're from Nazareth, you are a nobody from nowhere.

You don't affect anything.

You don't affect the economy.

You don't affect the politics.

You don't shape the culture.

Nobody knows about you.

Nobody cares about you.

You're just isolated out in the sticks.

Dude, Main is that on steroids.

And I wonder if you've ever been there.

I wonder if you're there right now.

You feel like a nobody.

Maybe you're even somewhat successful.

Maybe you have had some success.

Maybe you have some money, maybe you have some influence.

But if people could see inside of your mind what you actually think about yourself, the narratives running in your mind day and night.

You're convinced that nobody really sees you.

Nobody really cares.

Maybe you've even had some of the darker thoughts of like, would anybody miss me?

Would it really matter?

I mean, if that's you, number one, I'm glad you're here.

You're in the right place.

You hang out here long enough, and you're gonna realize there are people here on earth who see you and love you and embrace you, that you belong to a group of people, that you matter, that God created you on purpose and with purpose.

But you need to know this first before you find acceptance from the people around you.

If that's how you feel, you're the woman from Maine.

And Jesus could have gone anywhere, but he didn't.

He went and he found her at the moment of her greatest pain.

He met her at the most painful gate of her life.

And he saw her, and he sees you too.

I want to show you something in the text.

When the Lord saw her, I'm gonna point something out.

I gotta, man, I have to cut so much out because they only give me 45 minutes and I preach 55 minutes anyway, but I gotta cut.

This is the first time that Luke calls Jesus the Lord.

We're seven chapters in.

And it's connected with his compassion.

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion.

We don't know what compassion is.

We think compassion is like sympathy.

It's like, oh, I kind of feel bad, you know.

Dang it, that's what we think compassion is.

Oh, dang it.

We think compassion is like sad dogs and Sarah McLaughlin.

That's what we think compassion is.

This is this is me for 10 years with that.

You're in the arms of click.

I would just change it.

Judge me if you want.

I'm like, dude, Sarah McLaughlin's not ruining my afternoon.

If I watch that commercial to the end, I'm done.

We think compassion is just like, oh man, that stinks.

Change the channel.

Uh I became hyper focused on this word, compassion, specifically the the Greek word behind it that Luke and other authors used.

It's a very hard word.

I don't actually know how to say it, but I'm gonna do my best.

It's the word splugchinzomai.

Splugchinzomai, it means compassion.

Some of you are pregnant, that name's available.

Splugchinzomai.

It means compassion.

When they're bullied, you can tell them it means compassion.

This was a word that referred to when a sacrifice was given, an animal sacrifice, the priests would gut the animal.

And sometimes they would eat the inner organs.

What's it saying?

Compassion is when something eats you up.

The idea of spluckinzomai compassion is not, oh dang it, that stinks, and you move on.

True compassion hurts you.

Have you ever been so moved, so grieved, it physically hurts you.

Here's what you need to know: compassion is not passive.

Compassion forces action.

If you experience Jesus's kind of compassion, you have no choice.

You will do something about it.

Here's something that is just so critical for us to understand that a funeral is coming to a head with the kingdom of heaven, that death is coming to a collision with the author of life.

And Jesus shows up and he sees the woman that no one else sees.

And he is moved to the point it hurts him.

You're gonna come to many gates in your life, and a lot of these gates will be very painful, and they were caused by you.

It's like your deepest regret, your worst moment, your biggest mistake, your most significant sin will bring you to another one of these gates.

And you might be wondering, where is Jesus?

And the answer is he's there coming to interrupt you at the gate.

You need to know how he feels about you.

Some of you still have this version of God you were raised with where God's pissed off all the time, where he cannot wait to smite you for all the things that you've done.

And Jesus came to reveal our Father to us.

And he sees you.

He cares about you.

You might be a nobody to everyone in your life.

You are someone to Jesus Christ.

He sees you.

And in your pain and at your gates, he is so moved.

It hurts him.

It eats him up.

It moves him to action.

Jesus doesn't see you suffering through the pain and grief and frustration of life and go, oh, dang it, and change the channel.

Jesus is moved to action on your behalf.

Let me show you.

In verse 14, then Jesus came up and he touched the open coffin.

And the pallbearers stopped.

Now it's translated coffin.

That's translating into something we can understand.

What I need you to understand is this is a stretcher that has poles running through it.

And the entire surface of the stretcher is the deathbed.

And if you touch a dead body, you are ceremonially unclean, and the law is very strict in the consequence.

And if you touch the deathbed, you are ceremonially unclean according to the culture and the law, and it has very strict consequence.

And nobody would do this on purpose because it's so severe if you touch a dead body or the deathbed.

It's so severe.

You're ostracized.

There's a huge process you have to go through.

So there's a collision, mourning and rejoicing.

Jesus at the front, the widow at the front.

Jesus comes and sees her.

He says, Do not cry.

He leaves her, he walks through the crowd.

He goes right up to the young man and he grabs the deathbed.

And silence falls over both crowds.

Because no one would touch the deathbed.

Much less a Jewish rabbi, someone who knows the law so well they teach it to others, no one touches the deathbed.

But Jesus walks up and intentionally puts himself in a position to be impure, unclean.

And the only way he avoids this is if the deathbed stops being a deathbed.

Some of you, you understand that you can't find hope in this world, but you haven't come to Jesus yet because you're just like, as much as I might be interested in Jesus, I can guarantee you Jesus is not interested in me.

You don't know how much death I have on me.

You don't know where I've been.

You don't know the people I've hurt, and I mean seriously hurt.

You don't know the decisions I've made.

You don't know the lies that I'm hiding right now.

And if Jesus really knows who I am, he's not coming anywhere near me.

Jesus didn't have to go to name, but he did.

And maybe it was so someone sitting under the sound of my voice today, someone sitting out in hello to someone watching online, someone in this room today who has convinced yourself that although you might be interested in God, that God would have no interest in you, you are too dirty, too impure, too worldly, too much of the flesh, too much death on you, too much stink on you.

You could watch Jesus cut through the crowd, go right up to a deathbed and touch death itself, take on death itself, a picture of what is surely to come.

He came up, he touched the deathbed.

The pallbearer stopped.

And he said, Young man, I tell you, get up.

And the dead man sat up and he began to speak.

And Jesus gave him to his mother.

We see the compassion of Jesus.

Now we see the authority of Jesus.

We've already seen that he has authority over sickness and disease and demonic possession.

Now, Jesus even has authority over death itself.

It's amazing, Luke says the young man sits up, he's alive, he's mobile, and he speaks.

If you do the research, there's volumes, arguments over what the young man said.

Did he start praising God?

Did he start confessing his?

It's like we don't know, and we don't know because Luke doesn't tell us because what he said isn't the point.

Luke is showing you by him sitting up and speaking, he wasn't just resuscitated into a coma, he was fully restored.

I keep saying this in Luke, but Jesus's miracles don't usually produce something new, they restore what is meant to be.

And he hands them back to his mother.

This incredible, incredible moment sets up a truth that will change your life if you'll let it.

The truth is, Jesus meets us at the gate.

You're gonna go through a lot of gates in your life, and Jesus always meets us at the gate, positive gates.

Like when you make it to the altar and you say I do, and she says I do, and you start this new life, career advancement, financial opportunity, new relationship, like those are gates, and Jesus is at those gates.

Do not forget.

And so every good thing in your life has been authored by Jesus Christ, and he is worthy of our praise for it.

Amen.

You will go through a lot of difficult gates, many of them of your own doing.

Trust me, those have been most of my gates.

Sometimes it's things that happen to you.

It's not fair, but it happens.

And Jesus is at every gate, every time.

The question is whether or not we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Jesus has given us free will.

I want to paint a picture.

It's not what happened, it's what could have happened.

Imagine you're at the lowest moment in your life, you just lost the most important person in your life, you're trying to have a funeral, and all of a sudden a party breaks in.

I don't know how you would react, but I'm pretty confident how I would react.

I'd be furious.

Imagine the leader of the party comes up to you in your moment of deepest grief and says, Hey, don't cry.

I think I would say something like, I will cry if I want to.

You don't know what I'm going through.

Get out of here with some colorful language added in.

She could have done that.

But she didn't.

That's the story.

That's what Luke told us.

She allowed Jesus to interrupt the funeral.

And because of it, Jesus interrupted the funeral.

I say all of that because the conviction I had when I was studying to preach this message was how many times has Jesus tried to meet me at the gates of my life?

And instead of seeing it as a divine intervention, I saw it as a frustrating interruption.

How many times as I go through the gates of grief and sin and loss and confusion and frustration and addiction?

How many times as I've navigated a painful life and a painful world and go through gate after gate?

Jesus has been at every one of them because that's what Jesus does.

He shows up at our gates.

How many times has Jesus tried to bring me conviction, tried to bring me encouragement, tried to put someone in my life, tried to throw up a giant neon sign to keep me from driving off that cliff?

And I've thought, who put this sign here?

Move it out of the way, head on towards destruction.

How many times has Jesus tried to get my attention?

And I didn't have eyes to see it.

Some of you are here right now and you are headed towards a gate.

And being at this service right now is Jesus trying to get your attention.

Luke chapter 7 is Jesus trying to get your attention.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Just one more time going, maybe consider that Jesus is meeting you at this miserable gate that you find yourself, the lowest moment of your life, and if you would let him, he would change your life.

You remember when we were kids, some of you are kids in here, and God like gave you parents.

And every time you were about to do something really stupid, they would meet you at that gate, and you would go, and you have free will, so you would just like your parents aren't perfect, but often they are Jesus meeting you at the gates of your life.

So Jesus meets us at the gate.

Here's the question: Will we recognize him?

Will we have eyes to see and ears to hear?

And when we recognize him, will we surrender?

You want to know who the king's people are?

The king's people are those who can recognize the king and surrender to him no matter what.

You have come to gates in your life, you will come to gates in your life.

Gates of diagnosis, of divorce, of addiction, a prodigal child, the loss of a career, a crisis of confidence, financial disruption.

Jesus will be there.

Will you see him?

Will you surrender to him?

Luke is not just telling us about one funeral that gets interrupted.

He's pointing towards another.

Here's how the passage ends.

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 Jesus went throughout Judea and all the vicinity.

And the news continues to spread and the popularity continues to grow.

At this point in the gospel, no one actually understands who Jesus is.

They don't get it yet.

They will soon, but they don't get it yet.

They think he's another great prophet.

A great prophet, you know, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah.

It's a new prophet like Elijah and Elisha.

And they say, God has visited us.

What do they mean?

They mean that God spoke through a human prophet.

You know what this means?

The people are prophesying words they don't even understand.

A prophet has come and God has visited his people.

Not two separate thoughts, the same thought.

Jesus, who is God in human flesh, prophesying about what is to come.

I don't know how your life will play out.

I don't know what you're going through right now.

I don't know what gates are coming up, what gates you've already been through.

But I do know the one gate we all share in common, and that is death.

And it is inescapable, and it will come for us all.

And Jesus will meet you at that gate.

And either he will know you.

You will be in relationship with him.

And at the moment of your death, he will come and lay hands on your deathbed and say, It's time to get up.

It's time to go home.

Or Jesus will not know you.

Because time after time you were introduced to the offer that Jesus has for you, and you rejected it in your pride.

And Jesus will say, Depart from me.

I never knew you.

John the Baptist told us that Jesus came and he's baptizing with water, spirit, and fire.

Hundreds of years before Jesus stepped foot on earth, the prophet Isaiah prophesied about Jesus and he told us who we will be in the story.

Listen, he prophesied about Jesus, but he told us who we will be in the story.

Here's how he said it all we like sheep have gone astray.

We've turned each of us to our own way.

We are shepherdless sheep trying to navigate life on our own.

Look at what Mark records in his gospel.

It says, when Jesus went ashore, he saw three words a large crowd and had what word?

Compassion on them.

It tore him up, it hurt him.

Why?

Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

This is how Jesus sees you.

He's moved to compassion.

He is not unaware of your pain.

He's not ambivalent about your pain.

Your pain causes him pain.

He hurts for you.

He is eaten up for you.

The story of Jesus interrupting the funeral in Nain sets up the most important death and the most important funeral that the world will ever experience.

Jesus saw her and he was moved with compassion.

He didn't stop.

Last week, Jesus saw someone in need, someone on their deathbed.

He stood at long distance, spoke the words, and they were healed.

Which means the fact that he went up and grabbed that deathbed was on purpose.

He wanted to show you something that he is willing to take on your curse for you.

He will take on death for you because Jesus is the only one who can touch death and death does not contaminate him.

Jesus, the author of life, touches death and death has to flee.

Here's what the New Testament says.

Look at what it says in 2 Corinthians 5.

It says he made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

He made the one who had lived eternally to become death, to take on my death, so that I might be able to live.

That day in Maine, the grieving mother grieved no more.

Listen to this.

She never made it outside the gate.

Jesus met her there, interrupted her there.

She allowed the interruption, and instead of burying her son outside the gate, she rejoiced with him inside of it.

Just a matter of months later, there would be another gate, another son, another grieving mother.

This time they would make it outside the gate.

The woman in Nain never left the gate, but Jesus did.

In Hebrews, it says this, therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate, so that he might sanctify us by his own blood.

Jesus was led outside the gate, he was killed outside the gate, he was buried outside the gate.

His mother did not get to walk back in rejoicing.

His mother sat in shambles as Jesus looked at John, his closest friends, and said, I give you my mother.

Hold her in her time of grief.

She doesn't get the luxury of the widow and name.

She will watch her son executed in broad daylight, buried by the enemy.

Jesus died outside the gate and was buried outside the gate so that he could meet you at your gate.

The story of the cross is almost exactly opposite of the story of the widow in Maine, except for one key detail, because Jesus' funeral would get interrupted three days later when the power of God Himself would raise him back from the dead, so he can prove to you and prove to me that he can also give us life after death.

Listen.

You are welcome to come to my funeral, but you don't have to.

I'll be honest.

I don't care.

I won't be there.

I will come to the gate called death someday, and Jesus will meet me at that gate, and Jesus will touch my deathbed, and Jesus will stay.

Stop playing.

It's time to get up, it's time to come home to the kingdom.

I can live with that confidence.

I am not afraid of death.

The more I get to know Jesus, the more I find myself not afraid of much.

Jesus is gonna meet me at the gate every time.

What do I have to fear?

Some of you don't know Jesus.

Some of you aren't convinced, like a God who came to earth and died and magically came back to life, and it it sounds like a fairy tale to you.

Here's my prayer for you is that this message carries weight in your life forever.

Because I can promise you, gates are coming.

And every time you pass through one of the gates of life, the Jesus you don't believe in will be there.

And you have free will, that's a gift from God.

And so you can ignore it and suppress it and close your eyes and plug your ears and push Jesus out of the way.

I think it's gonna be hard for you to do that after today because the next gate and the next gate and the next gate, the Jesus you don't believe in will be there, and I think you'll see him, and you'll realize he's real, and that he could change your life.

Some of you might be ready to experience that life change today.

You can see it.

I've been praying you can see it, that you can think back on the gates you've already walked through, and that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes and you'd recognize, bro, God was there every time.

Jesus loved you so much that even though it's us, like it's me, I'm the one who broke the relationship with God.

God put on human flesh and came down to restore it.

This isn't religion.

This isn't you try to follow some rules and work your way to God.

This is the God of the universe offering you a relationship with himself.

And what he asks for is your faith.

And some of you, today is that day to make a decision to put your faith in Jesus.

As we close service, if you would pray with me across our venues, if you would just bow your head and close your eyes, create a little bit of space.

I'm gonna get right to it.

Listen, if you're under the sound of my voice right now and you know there's never been a moment in your life where you've consciously decided to put your faith in Jesus.

I'm not talking about someone sprinkled you as an infant.

I'm not talking about you grew up in church.

I'm saying a moment in time where you made the decision.

Jesus is your only hope for this life, and Jesus is your only hope for what comes after this life.

It is time to get that right.

Jesus is calling.

Today, you're at a gate called salvation.

Jesus is there.

He's just looking for those who would have faith.

If you're here and you're ready to make that decision for the first time, to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you in this moment of courage, with everyone's eyes closed, to just simply raise up your hand.

Raising your hand's not magic, it's a symbolic gesture.

By raising your hand, you're saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

With hands up all over the room, I want you to know if you raised a hand, God sees your faith right now in this moment.

He accepts it.

Scripture says he forgives all of your sins, past, present, even future sins, right now, covered by what Jesus did for you on the cross.

That means there's nothing that can separate you from your heavenly Father.

And right now you've been given a gift of eternal life with him, a gift that no one and nothing can take away from you.

So all I want to do is help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

If you raised your hand, I want to ask you to pray this with me.

I'm gonna ask believers across venues to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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