Today we are looking at what appears from a superficial reading to be a fairly typical miracle of Jesus. But as we look at it more thoroughly, I am hopeful that you will come to realize that it is illustrating some important doctrines concerning the kingdom of heaven which Jesus came to proclaim.
Last week, we looked at the preceding passage concerning the healing of the centurion’s slave in the town of Capernaum. In today’s text, it says in vs. 7 that soon after that event in Capernaum, the next day or within a couple of days, Jesus decided to travel to a city called Nain. He was followed by his disciples and a large crowd. Now Nain is in Galilee and lies about 20 miles south of what would have been Capernaum. Today it is a small town of about 200 people. There probably wasn’t much more to the town then that there is today.
So the question arises, why did Jesus leave Capernaum, where He had just completed this miracle, where He lived, and travel to this non descript town 20 miles away? This is the only place in scripture that this town is mentioned. There was nothing there that would have compelled Him to make that decision. It was a full day’s journey by foot, especially considering the hilly terrain, and considering the fact that he had a large crowd following Him.
As we look at the story, we see nothing to indicate why Jesus would have chosen to go specifically to this town. But I believe there is a couple of clues to Jesus purpose that can be found in the text. I don’t believe that there are any accidents with God. God knows the future and the past. Psalms 139 says that before there is a word on my tongue, God knows what I am going to say. It says that God knows the number of my days when as yet there weren’t any of them. God doesn’t do anything without a purpose. I don’t believe that Jesus just randomly decided to walk a day’s journey through the wilderness and drag a whole crowd of people along with him just because he thought it might be fun to go hiking. I believe that Jesus went to Nain that day on purpose, and that purpose had been predetermined before time eternal. Isaiah 45:22 says, “For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’.
I believe further evidence for Christ’s purpose is revealed as well with the woman in the story, and also by Luke placing it in just this place in scripture, directly following the story of the Centurion’s request for Christ to come heal his servant. Note first that the woman whom the story is centered upon was a widow. Her husband had died some time before. For a first century Jewish woman, that was a dreadful predicament to find herself in. She lost her source of income, she lost her ability to own property, and there were very little resources for her other than the pity of family or friends to support her.
Her only hope in this world was in her only child, a son. When he became old enough, he would be able to work and take over her support. He would provide for her old age. There was no other social mechanism, no social security, no retirement plan. All of her future depended upon this boy. And of course, not only was he her hope for the future, but I am sure that like any mother, she loved her son. There is no love like a mother’s love for her children. And she only has the one child, and no husband. We can be confident that she loved her soon with all her heart.
But one night perhaps, the boy begins to get sick. And maybe the illness quickly accelerates, suddenly he has a high fever and his health quickly deteriorates. I am not one to usually add to scripture what scripture does not say. But I cannot help but believe that as she saw her son wasting away that this poor widow cried out to God to heal her son. I am confident that any Jewish mother, trained since childhood to believe in the one true God of Israel, would call out to God in prayer for the life of her son. And especially since this woman is a widow, then I am even more sure of it.
I also believe that is why Luke joined this miracle to the last one featuring the centurion. He may have placed it after the other because they may happened soon after one another, but as we see in vs. 21, there were many other miracles that Jesus was doing which were unrecorded in the Gospels. But I think Luke coupled this to the one in Capernaum because they were both the result of an impassioned plea first on the part of the centurion and now the widow.
But I believe the primary evidence for my theory that Jesus came in response to the widow’s prayer is that in order to arrive there at the time of the funeral Jesus would have had to start out 8 hours or more earlier, possibly even before the boy had died. In that day, partly due to the climate and their lack of embalming skills, funerals were held on the same day that a person died. There wasn’t the means of preserving a body for a later burial. I can imagine that the widow was praying the day before as her son grew sicker by the hour, and by the evening he was worse. And Jesus heard her prayer to God and had already purposed in His heart that He would answer her prayer by leaving in the morning. He knew that the boy would be dead by the time He arrived, but He also knew that He would raise Him from the dead.
Remember the similar story of Jesus friends Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus in John 11? Mary and Martha sent word that Lazarus was sick and for Jesus to hurry and come? And Jesus told the disciples, Lazarus is already dead. By the time He got the word, Lazarus had already died. And then Jesus waited even longer before leaving for their house. He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, and that in so doing He would accomplish not only Lazarus’ healing, but also teach some important things concerning His power over death. Jesus said, “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe." Jesus came to Nain on purpose to meet this funeral procession, so that they might believe that He had the power over death and life which only God has.
You know, as great as a miracle raising the dead may seem to be, there is another miracle here that often goes unnoticed. And that is the miracle of divine providence. A miracle is often the means by which God stops the normal events of life, and interjects a supernatural event. But an act of providence is when God constructs a miracle within the context of timing and the normal order of life, and weaves together many, many disparate circumstances to bring about His will. And I believe that oftentimes the greater miracle is that of providence.
Jesus, as a member of the Godhead, was able by divine providence to coordinate time and earthly events in such a manner as to make sure that He appears on the scene just as the widow is leading the funeral procession out of town past the gate on the way to the cemetery. To the average person, it seemed like a lucky circumstance. But in divine providence, God had planned it all eons before, and all the events were being brought together as part of the plan. A plan that included, in my opinion, the desperate prayers of this widow who was losing her only son.
Listen, some of you folks here today are wondering if God hears your prayers. Maybe you have been praying for years about someone you love that is lost, or someone that you know that is away from God. God does not promise to give us every request we ask God for. But God does promise to hear every request. And He promises that He will work everything according to His will. His purposes will not be thwarted. He said in Isaiah 55:11 “So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
We don’t know the spiritual condition of this widow when she prayed to God. All we know is she was a Jewish woman. But we know that God heard her petition and decided even before there was a word on her lips to answer her prayer. Some of you folks here today, you know you are a child of God. You accepted Jesus as your Savior and you were adopted into the family of God. And because God is your Father, you have every right to believe that not only does God hear your prayer, but He wants to answer the prayers of those who pray according to His will.
Jesus said in Matt. 7:9 "Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”
I say all of that to say to those mothers and fathers and others that are praying for a loved one today. Don’t stop praying. Keep on praying. God hears your prayers. The Bible says God keeps our tears in a bottle. He knows the pain in your heart, even as He knew the anguish in this widow’s heart. And if Jesus walked 20 miles in the desert sun to answer this widows cry, then I believe that God can providentially work in our lives to bring about His will as well. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. So we can pray with confidence that God hears our prayer and will work out His will.
There is another aspect about this miracle that I want to point out. Notice in vs.13, “When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, " Do not weep."
And He came up and touched the coffin; and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, "Young man, I say to you, arise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Imagine walking up to a funeral and going over to the woman that is grieving for her son and saying, “Don’t cry.” That would be a foolish thing to do. It’s natural to cry for the loss of a loved one. The only reason that Jesus was able to say that to this widow was that He knew what He had come to do. It says He had compassion on her. He was moved with compassion so He came to help her, to restore her son. He knew that the time for weeping was passing away, and the time for rejoicing was beginning.
But then think about how strange and seemingly foolish the next thing Jesus says is. First He tells the widow, stop crying, and then He starts talking to the dead boy on the stretcher. “Young man, I say to you arise!” Listen, I don’t have a lot of time to develop this doctrine completely today, but I think it is important to ask ourselves the question, where was this boy when Jesus issued that command to arise?
I don’t put a lot of stock in 99.9% of the near death or after death experiences that you hear about all the time. I’m not going to try to explain them, but I will say first of all, that if they do not agree completely with what scripture says about death, and heaven and hell, then I don’t care how sensational the story, or how marvelous the experience, or how many books have been sold, I don’t believe them. I believe what the scripture says, and I believe that experiences can be deceiving. Every experience must be verified by scripture or it is suspect.
But what I will say I accept about all of them, and there must be thousands of recorded near death experiences today, is that everyone who had a near death experience felt themselves separate from their body. That much we can agree upon. In Genesis 2:7 it says that when God created man from the dust of the ground He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. There are three parts to the human being; body, soul and spirit. And though the body will die according to the curse, the soul and the spirit of man will live forever, because we have received the life breath from God who lives forever.
At the point of death, the Bible teaches us that the body dies, but the soul lives on. Jesus said to the thief on the cross as they were dying, “today you will be with Me in Paradise.” And that day, when Jesus gave up His Spirit, though His body was put in the tomb, His spirit went to Paradise. Now where is Paradise? Well, Jesus gave us a story in Luke 16, not a parable, but an actual event featuring a real man by the name of Lazarus, who was lame and a beggar living at the gate of a rich man. And Jesus tells us that Lazarus died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom and the rich man also died and was buried and he lifted up his eyes being in torment in Hades and he saw Lazarus far away being comforted in Abraham’s bosom. Jesus goes on to say that there was a great chasm between the two, so that none could cross over. So we can understand that Jesus and the thief on the cross went immediately upon death to Paradise, or Abraham’s bosom, which is adjacent to Hades across a great chasm.
Folks, it is important that we understand that death brings the spirit of a man to either Paradise or Hades, either a place of rest and comforting, or a place of torment. 1Peter 3:18 confirms this saying, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, (that is Hades, or Hell) who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.”
Jesus appears by providential design to this widow on the road to the graveyard to bury her son. And moved with compassion He walks up and touches the stretcher and calls this young man to arise, to rise up out of Paradise, and death cannot hold this boy, because the Creator of the universe has spoken and He has the power over life and death. Jesus made a providential trip to a small town in the middle of nowhere, to a widow who had no special credentials other than a desperate prayer to God, and the merciful God in the flesh, Jesus Christ was moved to compassion and comes to the body and summons this boy’s spirit to return. And immediately, the boy sits up and speaks and Jesus gives him back to his mother. And He does so to illustrate that He has the power over life and death. Jesus said at the resurrection of Lazarus; “"I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
Listen, Jesus didn’t come to earth to deliver everyone from physical illness or physical death. During Jesus lifetime, I’m sure thousands and thousands of people died in Judea and Galilee and yet Jesus raised only 3 of them from the dead. There were so many sick people at the pool of Bethesda waiting for the movement upon the water that they couldn’t all get in the pool, but Jesus only healed one of them. However, Jesus did come to earth to deliver man from spiritual death. Jesus came to deliver man from the sickness of sin.
Oftentimes in scripture Jesus referred to death as being asleep. What He is talking about is the body is sleeping but the soul and spirit is alive. And what the Bible often refers to as death is really spiritual death. Rev. 21 says that for the unbelieving and unregenerate sinners, there part will be in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
Notice also that Jesus raised this boy from the dead without the help of anyone’s faith. The fake healers you see on television want to tell you that if you have enough faith you can be healed, that God’s deliverance is dependent upon the size of your faith. Or that the answer to your prayers for a new job, or healing or health, or wealth are all dependent upon the size of your faith. This story doesn’t support that concept does it? There is no mention of the widow’s faith. It certainly wasn’t possible for the young man who was deceased to have any faith. It is evidence of a Sovereign God who works all things after the counsel of His will, who is compassionate and full of mercy.
Please don’t miss the point of this miracle today. The Bible teaches us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It also says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The point that Jesus was illustrating that day, and the point of the gospel, is that every man, woman and child on the planet is under the condemnation of death, we are all spiritually dead, waiting for our physical bodies to expire and if we die without the spiritual life given by God then we will be instantly in hell.
But God has seen our dire situation, and He is a compassionate, merciful God, and so He has sent Jesus to call us back from death into life. Jesus took our death upon himself, that we might receive life. 2 Cor. 5:21 says that God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
Listen, you may think that you just happened by chance to see a sign on the road about our church the other day and decided to check it out. But I am here to tell you that God has brought you here today to hear this message by an act of divine providence. God has compassion towards you and wants to give you the opportunity to escape the judgment upon sin.
But, the choice is yours. Perhaps due to the nature of this venue on the beach and not knowing how much longer I will be allowed to do it, I find myself preaching every message as if it might be my last. And due to the transient nature of this town, some of you here today I will never see again. But right now, today, you have heard the gospel, the good news, that Jesus has come that you might have everlasting life. If you died today, where will you be? Will you be in Paradise, in a place of comfort and rest in the arms of God? Or will you be in torment, in Hades, awaiting the final judgment when God will cast all immoral unbelievers into the Lake of Fire?
You, like the thief on the cross, can be with Jesus in Paradise when you die. The thief on the cross recognized that he was worthy of death, that because of his sins he deserved that punishment. But he also knew that Jesus did not. He confessed his sins, and he believed that Jesus was the Christ the Son of God. He confessed his sinfulness, and he called upon Jesus for mercy. And that is the way to Paradise. That is the way to eternal life. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The righteous shall live by faith and are made righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, He that believes in Me shall never die.
The Bible says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness and he preached to the world the need for repentance for 120 years. But eventually the patience of God came to an end. Noah must have been considered to be one of the great wonders of the world. People must have planned vacations to see this crazy man building a boat in the middle of the wilderness far from any ocean. They must have wondered at the array of strange animals he was assembling that they had never seen before. But Noah preached that God’s judgment was coming and no one repented. In 120 years, no one got saved. But one day, God said, “Noah, get inside,” and He shut the door. And the Bible says the floodgates opened up and the judgment of God came upon the world.
Listen, some of you here today have been in and out of church all your life. You may even believe in an historical Jesus. But you have never been saved. You may be trying to live a moral life, a good life. Or you may have tried a few times and given up. You can’t seem to do it. Maybe you have given up on God. But God has you here today to hear this message of the gospel one more time before He shuts the door. There will come a time when God shuts the door. There will come an end to the patience of God. The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. Please don’t keep pushing God aside. Today is the day of salvation.
Some of you listening today might be offended. You are offended that I would infer that you are sinners in need of salvation. But I would argue that it’s my duty to tell you when your house is on fire and you are sleeping soundly in your bed thinking that everything is ok. It’s my duty to run to the house and bang on the door and warn you that your house is burning down. Only a fool would say, “go away, I’m enjoying my sleep. I’m comfortable in my bed.”
Listen to John 3:16; God so loved the world, that is, He was so compassionate towards us, that He gave His only Son, that is divine providence that provides mercy, that whosoever believes in Him, that is salvation by faith, would not perish, that is would not die a spiritual death in Hell, but have everlasting life. They will be given eternal life with Christ in Paradise. The choice is yours.
Deut. 30:19 says, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days.” Amen.
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