SERMON TITLE: Jesus, the Lord of Life
SCRIPTURE: Luke 7:11-17 (ESV)
SPEAKER: Josh Hanson
DATE: 8-9-26
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As always, it’s a joy to be with all of you this weekend at Gateway Church. And there’s one thing I want you to know — and this is true if you’re worshiping with us for the first time or if you’re joining us at our North Main Campus — I want you to know that God loves you and that I love you too.
We’re continuing our Gospel Project series this weekend. During the summer, we’re syncing up our sermons with our Kidway ministry curriculum, which is called the Gospel Project. We thought this would be a good way for those of us without kids in our Kidway ministry to understand what the kids are being taught each week. And they happened to be in the gospels learning about Jesus this summer, which is a great place in the Bible for all of us adults to be — because the whole Bible is ultimately about Jesus. So what better way to spend our summer than to get to know him better? And today, we’re going to see a side of Jesus that should leave all of us in awe and wonder.
We’re going to be in the gospel of Luke today. We’ll be in chapter seven — looking at verses eleven through seventeen. Again, that’s Luke chapter seven — beginning in verse eleven. There we read…
Luke 7:11–17 ESV
11 Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 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. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
Each week, the kids learn a big idea during the Bible lesson. Today I want to read the big idea they’re learning to you. Here’s the big idea from our kids’ curriculum:
Jesus has the power to bring the dead to life. We are all dead in our sins, but Jesus will give us new life in him if we repent and trust in his life, death, and resurrection.
Here it is again: Jesus has the power to bring the dead to life. We’re all dead in our sins, but Jesus will give us new life in him if we repent and trust in his life, death, and resurrection.
This moment in Jesus’ life — when he raises a widow’s dead son to life — is meant to point us to a spiritual reality. We’ll get to that spiritual reality by the end of this sermon, but first, I don’t want us to miss the beauty of what we see in this widow’s encounter with Jesus. But even before we get to her encounter with Jesus, I want to say something about resurrection stories in the Bible. And here’s what I want to say about them: They’re pretty rare.
Do you know how many resurrection accounts — these are stories of people being raised from the dead — how many resurrection accounts are there in the Bible? Seven.
In the Old Testament, there are two. The prophets Elijah and Elisha are both used by God to resurrect a dead child. And in the New Testament, Jesus raises three people from the dead — the son in our story, the daughter of a man named Jairus, and Lazarus — the brother of Mary and Martha. In the book of Acts, Peter is used to raise a woman named Dorcas from the dead. And then there’s Jesus’s resurrection.
That’s not many resurrection stories when you think of all that’s found in the Bible. And our story — the resurrection of this widow’s son — is only found in Luke’s gospel. And in this moment from Jesus’ life, we discover that Jesus is our hope in death because he’s our resurrection hope. Jesus is our hope in death because he’s the one who fulfills the eternal promise that this — and all biblical resurrection stories point us to.
Let’s begin by seeing how Jesus is our hope in death. We’re back in verse eleven of our chapter.
Luke 7:11–13 ESV
11 Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 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. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”
Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I attended two funerals in one day. The first was for one of our neighbors and the second was for a Gateway member. No death of a loved one is easy — especially for the family members and friends who are left behind to grieve — but for the mother in our verses — a mother who’s experienced the death of her child — well, that’s a different kind of hard.
One person has said, “The death of a child is certainly one of the greatest agonies possible in this life — a burying of a part of oneself, a period before the end of a sentence, the death of a future. It’s a burden that all parents fear.”
The first funeral I ever did was for a stillborn birth. It was so hard. The grief of the parents was so heavy. The church I was serving in had two stillborn births that week. Parents and family members were suddenly devastated.
Though no death of a loved one is easy, there’s something extra shattering about the death of a child. And it’s at this moment in a woman’s life — in this moment of pain and hopelessness — that Jesus enters into her life. And he — along with this crowd that’s been following him around — he meets this mother just outside the city gate with the funeral procession behind her, carrying her son on a bier — that was sort of an open casket or cot that the body would be carried on. And the funeral procession was walking to the tomb where the son’s body would be buried.
This is when Jesus meets her.
And when Jesus saw the woman, he had compassion on her.
Did you notice that nobody sought after Jesus? No one was sent to try and find him so he could come help this woman. Nobody was praying and asking God to show up in some miraculous way. None of that happens, according to what we have in the Bible. Instead, according to Luke, Jesus just so happened to be in the right place at the right time — we call that the providence of God — and he saw what was going on and invited himself into the woman’s life. And he said to her, “Don’t weep.”
Now, I know that Jesus telling her not to weep doesn’t sound very compassionate, but that’s because we misunderstand what he meant. He’s not saying don’t grieve the death of your son — that’d be cruel — and Jesus isn’t cruel. Instead, he’s telling her that — even now — there’s reason for hope. It’s as if he’s saying, “Don’t worry. I’m here. The giver of life — the one who can raise the dead — is here. So have hope.”
In one of the other resurrection stories in the Bible — the one I’m referring to now is Lazarus’s resurrection story — after Jesus arrived in Bethany — the town where Lazarus had died — and after having met with Martha — one of Lazarus’s sisters — Mary — Lazarus’s other sister — came to Jesus. And look at how John describes what happened.
John 11:32–33 ESV
32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
When Jesus saw Mary weeping — grieving the death of her brother — he was deeply moved in his spirit. This shows us something about Jesus. It shows us that he’s deeply moved by our sorrows, pains, and grief. Not only does he move toward us — as he did with the mother in our passage, or like he did with Lazarus’s sisters — not only does Jesus move toward us in our sorrows, pains, and grief — but he’s moved deeply in his spirit and is compassionate toward us. And — as you probably know — if you’re familiar with Lazarus’s resurrection story, after asking where they had buried Lazarus, the next words recorded by the apostle John are…
John 11:35 ESV
35 Jesus wept.
So why did Jesus — who wept at the death of his friend — why did he tell this mother not to weep over the death of her son?
To answer this question, we come to the next part of the story. We’re in verse fourteen.
Luke 7:14–17 ESV
14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
He tells the mother not to weep because Jesus knew he was about to give her her son back.
And there are some details about this resurrection that I don’t want you to miss. First, did you notice that Jesus touched the bier? Now this may not seem like a big deal to us, but in the Jewish religion of the day — to touch a bier was to make oneself ritually unclean. And, to be unclean was the same as being unholy. But Jesus is the holy one of God who — when he touches the unclean — well — he makes the unclean clean by the power of his holy touch.
Second, when he touched the bier — those carrying it stood still. Jesus didn’t tell them to stop moving, but something about the situation told them to stand still. It’s as if they could sense that something was about to happen. I’m sure they had no idea what — again, resurrections weren’t a common thing in their day — but their spidey sense was tingling — something was going to happen.
Next, Jesus told the dead son to arise. No big show. No theatrics. Just a few words — but they were words of power that demanded a response — a response even from a corpse.
Then, and I can’t help but smile at how Luke wrote these next words — but in verse fifteen Luke writes…
Luke 7:15 ESV
15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Did you notice anything interesting about this verse? It’s so easy to miss details like this — I missed it the first few times I read the passage. Luke says, “The dead man sat up and began to speak.” The dead man did what? Isn’t he the formerly dead man? The no longer dead man? The alive again man? But that’s not what Luke says — he says, “The dead man sat up and began to speak.”
As one person has said, “Notice that when Jesus spoke to the boy’s cold corpse, the boy heard him. The young man was dead in body, but he was fully alive somewhere! For we humans, death is only death of the body. The human spirit lives on.”
You see, the dead son heard the voice of Christ call out to him, “Arise,” and he lived. Similarly, all who hear God’s voice commanding us to “arise” in faith, to believe in his Son, to turn from our sin and turn to the Lord of life — do so. For God takes the dead — both the physically and spiritually dead — and raises us up from the grave.
Next, Jesus gives the mother back her son. She’s had Jesus’s attention from the beginning. You’ve gotta love that about Jesus as well. Though there’s a crowd of people, he often focuses on individuals who need his loving attention.
And, finally, there’s the response of the crowd: Fear seized them all. Think of this fear as great awe and wonder — and yes, regular old fear. And why were they afraid? Because who has the power to raise the dead? Someone powerful. And, if they’re that powerful…well…it’s kind of scary.
And who did the crowd praise with their words? Did they praise Jesus? No! They glorified God. And, yes, I know that Jesus is God, but this crowd of witnesses hasn’t figured that out yet, and Jesus didn’t find it necessary to make this fact known to them. But they do call Jesus a great prophet. A prophet who has — and I love this — “arisen” among us. Jesus told the boy to arise, and the people echoed Jesus’s words as they praised God.
But then the crowd says something about Jesus that echoes back to words that we find early on in Luke’s gospel. In a passage often read around Christmas, we find words spoken by a father who’d been unable to speak for months because he needed to learn a lesson about trusting God. The man is Zechariah — he’s the father of John the Baptist — who’s the cousin of Jesus and the one who paved the way for Jesus’ ministry. In some of the first words he spoke after being mute for months, Zechariah said…
Luke 1:68 NLT
68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people.
“Praise God, because he has visited his people.” It’s as if the crowd — who probably had no idea about Zechariah’s words thirty-plus years earlier — quote him.
And what comes of all of this? Reports of the resurrection spread throughout the area because the people couldn’t help but go and tell others about what they had seen.
Now, I want to stay focused on our text, but I can’t help but point out the spiritual implications these resurrection stories force us to face. In all of the resurrection stories — the seven of them we find in the Bible — one thing’s clear: The person is dead. These aren’t cases of misdiagnoses. Luke, if you don’t know, was a medical doctor. So he knows the difference between mostly dead and dead — to quote Miracle Max.
I bring this up because when the Bible describes our spiritual condition because of sin — it doesn’t describe us as being sick, or being mostly dead. The Bible describes us as being dead. Here’s one example.
Ephesians 2:1–3 NLT
1 Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. 2 You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil — the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. 3 All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.
Did you notice Paul’s language? “Once you were dead” and — at the same time — “you used to live in sin…obeying the devil.” So how’s that possible? How can someone be dead — yet be alive at the same time? Well, the kind of deadness that Paul’s referring to is spiritual. Meaning he’s telling these people that they were spiritually dead even though they were physically alive. And the proof of their spiritual deadness was how they were living for sin and obeying the devil.
And this truth — this reality — of being spiritually dead, yet physically alive — is why Paul’s next words are so powerful.
Ephesians 2:4–5 NLT
4 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)
Again, one could ask, “How can a person be given life when it’s clear that they’re already physically alive?” Because the life they’re given isn’t physical life, but is spiritual life.
You see, because of sin — both the sins we commit, but also the sin nature we’re born with because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God — the consequence of being a sinner is spiritual death. And all of us are born with this condition: We’re born spiritually dead, while being physically alive. We’re all born as spiritually dead boys and girls who grow up and become adults who walk around, and live life, celebrating births of children and marriages and job promotions and touchdowns and catching a prize winning fish and electing presidents and doing all sorts of things — while also aborting babies, and cheating on spouses, mistreating employees, celebrating the downfalls of others, and lying, and slandering, and bickering, and doing all sorts of sinful things — and we’re doing all of these kinds of things while being physically alive but spiritually dead.
Until Jesus just so happens to show up in our lives. And, like the mother in our gospel story, he often decides to show up in our lives without ever being asked. And he speaks to us and says, “Arise,” and gives us new life. A resurrection of the spirit. An act of grace. Nothing we deserve; nothing but God’s kindness, mercy, and compassion towards us.
I wonder if you’ve experienced God’s call to you to “Arise, and live”? Have you experienced his loving, merciful, yet powerful call that gives spiritual life? And, if you have, how’s your life showing others that you’ve experienced a spiritual resurrection? For when the dead are raised — physically or spiritually — it can’t go unnoticed. For just like a mother’s dead son sitting up and talking to those who were taking his body to the tomb — just how that can’t go unnoticed — so too a spiritual resurrection in one’s life will surely have a similar, undeniable kind of impact.
Now I’d do us all a disservice if I didn’t broach a subject that none of us want to talk about:
Our own death. Everything you and I’ve been taught is to avoid admitting to ourselves that there’s a shadow that death has cast over all of us. In fact, if you think about it, it’s quite amazing how adept we’ve become at repressing the reality that our death day is coming. But the truth is, no matter how much you learn, no matter the technology you use, no matter how seriously you take your health, one thing’s certain — you’re dying. We’re all dying. For just as we each have a birthday, there’s a day to come for each of us that will be our last.
And the culture we live in doesn't want us to think about this. “Entertain yourself,” we’re told. “Drown out the reality of your mortality with new toys and experiences, but whatever you do — don’t think about your death.” And this is why — when death interrupts our lives — as it did for the mother in our story — it’s disorienting, disrupting, and it disturbs us down to the very core of who we are. And, for many, the experience of death is so devastating that it leaves them hopeless. While for others, though the experience is still devastating — hope remains.
So what’s the difference between the two groups? One group has tried to live, repressing the fact that they will die. While the other group decided to face their mortality and — in doing so — discovered a living and eternally lasting hope. The famous Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, went through a crisis and describes it in a way that’s pretty universal to human experience. He writes…
“I enjoyed physical strength. Yet I could not live. My question, which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide, a question seeking an answer without which one cannot live, was this: Is there any meaning in life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? Today or tomorrow, death will come to those I love and then to me. Nothing will remain but stench and worms. But soon not only I will not exist, but eventually no one will exist who will remember anything I have written or done. Why then go on with the effort? What is it all for? What does it all lead to? What difference will it make whether I do this good thing or that bad thing or nothing at all? So I could give no rational meaning to any single action or to my whole life. What was so surprising is how we can fail to see this. For a time it’s possible to live intoxicated with life, but as soon as one is sober, it’s impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud, and a stupid fraud at that. There’s nothing either amusing or witty about it. It’s simply cruel and stupid. How often I have been told, ‘You cannot understand the meaning of life, so don’t think about it; just live.’ But I no longer can do that.”
Tolstoy’s point is that death makes all of life meaningless unless you do one of two things. The first option is to ignore this fact. Just live life as if everything matters — when in reality, what you believe tells you that none of it matters. And this is the option many people choose — as crazy and hypocritical as it sounds — they state that this life is it, death is the end, nothing matters after death, but still live as if things matter. That’s option one, which I don’t recommend.
Then there’s option two: Find the reason to have hope. The reason where you can face death — the death of those you love and even your own death — and do so with hope. Not a “I hope this all works out” hope. But a “this is guaranteed” kind of hope.
So what can give you this kind of hope even in the face of death? Well, that was a trick question. For it’s not a what. It’s a who. The one who is the Lord of life. He who is our living hope. The one who defeated the power of death when he experienced death himself.
Earlier, I mentioned that there are only seven resurrection stories in the Bible. We’ve looked at a few of them today, but I want to return to Lazarus’s resurrection. During funerals, I always bring up Lazarus’s story because it shows how to grieve and still have hope. And I usually say something like this about Lazarus’s resurrection.
Just before Jesus brings Lazarus back to life — he’s standing outside the tomb of his friend — and Jesus weeps. He cries. He sheds tears because of the death of his friend. Yet Jesus grieves with hope because he knows what he’s about to do. In a few moments, his friend will walk out of the tomb alive.
But do you know why Jesus wept? He wept because death isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Even bringing Lazarus back from the dead won’t solve Lazarus’ death problem. Lazarus would die again someday — just like the son of the woman in our gospel passage will die again someday. But Jesus stands by his friend’s tomb, weeping because death is an enemy we weren’t supposed to encounter. Yet — because of our sin — death has become our most fearsome foe.
So Jesus knew that the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead wouldn’t solve his friend’s death problem. Jesus knew that to defeat death, he would have to experience an even greater loss of life than the loss of his friend. He would have to experience the loss of his own life.
For death to be defeated, the Creator and Lord of life would die on a cross. And Jesus gave up his life so that — through faith in him — by believing in him — we might not only find life — but have reason to hope even as we grieve the death of those we love — whether it be a spouse or a friend, a parent or a child. And he died so that — through faith in him — we might even be able to face our own death and do so with hope. For the Lord of life has given us a new life. A resurrection life that death can’t defeat. A life of power. A life of purpose. And a life full of hope that death can’t even take from us. Let’s pray.
Father in Heaven, may many taste and see how good you are to your people and to all of your creation today. For you did not leave us to die in our sins, but sent your Son to make life possible. What undeserved mercy and grace. What kindness and compassion. What goodness and beauty.
Holy Spirit, may you use my words to give life today. May you anoint the words that have been spoken to be words that give hope — eternal, lasting hope to those who came here hopeless. May you use them to raise those who came here spiritually dead to spiritual life. May you use them to comfort those who are suffering, living under the shadow of death — whether it be the death of someone they love or their own. Spirit, take the words I’ve said and use them to magnify the name of Jesus.
And to you, Jesus, the Giver and Lord of life. The one who wept outside of the tomb of his friend. Who approached a mother grieving the death of her only son. Who knew that even those you raised from the dead would still have a death problem, compelling you to give your life on a cross so that death would be defeated — to you — our Savior and God — we now respond to you in praise. In your name we pray. Amen.
May you leave here with hope, having believed in Jesus, the Lord of life. Amen.
God loves you. I love you. You are sent.
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