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Dear Emma, the baptized, and all the baptized saints of the Lord, and Delvin, Lisa, and all those who have made the confirmation vow of the martyrs, our Lord Jesus today in the gospel text is just, well, apparently rude.
He doesn’t move out of the way of the funeral. It’s one of the things that I’ve noticed as a pastor, being in so many funeral processions and traveling from here to the cemetery, that there used to be better manners where people would kind of get out of the way now the the cops are always you know trying to make the way and in fact i’ve been in a funeral procession a number of times where the police escort has had to get people out of the escort out of the funeral procession because they were using it to cut through the traffic it used to be and this is still the case that a lot of people will actually stop and it’s beautiful to see they’ll stop and they’ll they’ll wait on the sidewalk while the funeral procession goes by. They’ll take off their hats to honor the dead, but it’s less and less.
But Jesus today, he doesn’t step aside. He doesn’t do what he’s supposed to. He’s coming into Nain with his great group of disciples, and a great funeral is walking out of the city, and they get congealed there. They get stuck right there in the gate where they can’t get past each other. And instead of stepping aside to let the funeral pass, Jesus stands right in the middle and he stops it.
This is the point that we want to reflect on and what that means for the curse of death and for the fear of death and for the grip of death. But to start, I always like, at least from my own imagination, to put myself in the story. And I just am torn between two spots this morning. I don’t know where we should start. If it’s either at the back of the crowd that’s with Jesus or the back of the crowd that’s with the woman.
So maybe let’s start, let’s put ourselves in the back of the crowd with Jesus. This is the disciples. And the text tells us that it was a great crowd. It was a mega group. There was a lot of people that were following Jesus.
No doubt those who were up front were the disciples who had been with him for some time and those who had been traveling with him for a while. And then the farther you get to the back, the more the people are new and joining into the crowd and trying to figure out what’s going on until you get back to where we are, the people that have maybe heard about Jesus, that are interested in hearing a sermon, that maybe heard about a miracle and a little bit of his preaching, but are excited for more.
And can you imagine this? What have you seen Jesus do as they’re walking along the road? Well, did you see Jesus walking on the water? No, but I heard about it from the disciples. It must have been amazing.
Or were you there when they fed the 5,000? No, someone was, a friend of mine, and he brought home some bread that they collected with him. And, you know, it’s kind of at a distance, and they’re excited that they’re coming to this town named because no doubt Jesus would go into the town and be preaching so that they could hear him, maybe for the first time, to hear what he was preaching or see him perform a miracle and wonder at that.
And at the back of that crowd, you have to think as they’re getting into town, and they stop, and they’re trying to figure out what is going on up there. Why are we stopped? They’re checking their Google traffic maps to figure out why it turned red. What’s in the way? Don’t they know that Jesus is there? Why don’t they let him through?
I think the same sort of thing had to be happening at the back of the other crowd, the funeral procession. You know, the people who were up close would have been the family and the friends, the friends of this boy, the friends of this widow, and those who were acquaintances. And then maybe where we are standing at the back of that crowd, we remember, I mean, we might have gone to the funeral of this woman’s husband when he died, and we thought, what a tragedy that is, that he died so young to leave his wife with a young child, one baby. And then we heard the terrible news, no doubt it spread throughout the whole town, that did you hear that this woman’s dear son died now all of a sudden? And maybe you didn’t know him that well and you’d never met him and maybe you’d only are acquaintance with this woman, but you better you know, you’re going to close up shop and you’re going to join this funeral procession as well to honor the dead and to pray for this dear lady. And no doubt as they’re singing the hymns of mourning on the way out from the synagogue into the cemetery that’s outside of the town.
You’re talking with the guy next to you about what a tragedy it is that here this woman has had to now bury not only her husband but her son, and then all of a sudden it comes to a stop. What’s going on up there? Don’t they know that this is a funeral? Tell them to get out of the way. We’re on our way to the cemetery.
But Jesus has stood there and he’s stood there on purpose. He, Jesus, in his life and in his death is standing in the way of death like no one else ever has, like no one else ever could. Jesus stops death in its tracks. And dear saints, he’s doing that not for himself but for you. He undoes the curse of death. He undoes the fear of death. And he’s undoing the grip of death. I think the curse first we have to think about.
Remember that death is not natural. No matter how much the world tries to convince itself otherwise, we and they know better. We were never supposed to die. You were never supposed to die. When God created Adam and Eve in the garden, he created them to live forever with him. He put that tree in the middle of the garden, the knowledge of good and evil, so that Adam could go to that tree and worship by faith, not by sight. Believe the promise on the day that you eat of it, surely you will die, and believing have life. If they believed those words, they would never taste that fruit. They would never taste death.
But Adam and Eve, tempted by the devil, disobey God, break the commandment, and that eating of the fruit is the introduction of sin and corruption and death into the entirety of the cosmos. We die, Adam and Eve die, and everyone between us and them die because of what was done then.
Death came into the world through Adam. This is how Paul says it in Romans. Death came into the world through Adam, and death spread to all men because Adam sinned, and all sinned, and we too are tasting that death as the punishment for sins. Paul says it maybe as clearly as ever when he writes in Romans chapter 6, the wages of sin is death. And that means that we’re dying not because death is a natural part of life, we’re dying because we are sinners.
And this not only is the curse of death, that death is because of our sin, and our sin leads to our dying, but this also leads to the fear of death because we’re sinners, we know that after death there’s a judgment. That sermon to the Hebrews preaches it like this, it’s appointed for man once to die, and then to be judged, and that is a fearful thing. to fall into the hands of the living God. Can you imagine that there is just one breath, one heartbeat that separates you from the judgment seat of God? That separates me from the judgment seat of God? That is a fearful thing.
And it’s especially fearful when, as we all admit Sunday after Sunday, that we’re sinners that deserve God’s wrath, and eternal punishment. So we have the curse of death and the fear of death. Paul says it like this in Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15. He says, the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. So that this death that hangs over all of humanity and hangs over all of our heads is a reminder of our own sinfulness and the wrath of God towards sin.
But look at your Lord Jesus. when he sees this woman carrying or walking alongside the casket of her dead son the Lord Jesus does not say well he’s a sinner he deserved it he doesn’t say well he had it coming Jesus looks on him and his mother and you and me in the midst of our sin and our dying, and he, the text says, he has compassion on her. He has compassion on you. He knows that you’re a sinner. He knows that you’ve, you’ve, if you were there in the garden, you would have done the same thing that Adam and Eve did, probably quicker. he knows that you’ve deserved his wrath and eternal punishment he knows it and still he comes into into our flesh and blood and and into our uh our mortality and even into the curse of our death so that he can save us it says in deuteronomy cursed are all who hang on a tree and paul quotes that to the Galatians to prove this, that Jesus has become the curse, has taken upon himself the curse of death so that he can rescue you from that curse and rescue you from the fear of death. Because now, because of what Jesus has done and we have to pin this down to our own hearts so that we can hold on to it. Because of what Jesus has done in His suffering and in His dying, in His bleeding and in His cross and resurrection, in His burial, what He has done and accomplished there is take upon Himself all that we have deserved so that He can give us what we don’t, so that He can treat us with mercy and with love and with kindness, so that He can look upon us with compassion, not with anger, that He looks upon us with gentleness, not with rage. He looks upon us with mercy, not with wrath.
He looks upon us with forgiveness and gentleness and peace and love and says, I would rather die than you. I would rather endure the anger of God than you. I would rather have the curse that Adam and Eve brought into the garden. I would rather have it on me rather than on you. And that’s all there in this word that he speaks to the woman.
Don’t weep. I have come to bring life and immortality to light. I have come to overcome death and sin and the grave, and I’ve come to do it for you so that Jesus, by his death and resurrection, sets us free from the curse of death, sets us free from the fear of death, and he will, dear saints, one day soon set us free from the grip of death.
This resurrection and the three resurrections that our Lord Jesus does in his ministry are like little foreshadowings of the last day. We’re talking about it in Bible class, how Jesus, when he came, his ministry is mostly to teach and to suffer and die and be raised, but that he almost can’t help himself by fixing things.
It’s like if you have a good friend who’s a watch repairman and you just don’t leave your broken watches out, He just won’t help it. He’ll have to fix it. In some ways, that’s a bad picture, but you get the idea.
Like Jesus is there, and he’s not there to raise the dead. That’s what he’s going to come back on the last day to do, but he sees the dead man, and he just can’t help it. He’s just going to raise him.
He sees the sick, and he can’t help it. He’s going to heal him. He sees the possessed. He’s going to set him free. He sees the sick, and he’s going to make him well. He just, and so he stops the camp, he stops the funeral, and he says these words, which only Jesus could say.
Boy, I say to you, little boy, I say to you, arise. Wake up from the dead. And the text says that, it says it so beautifully, it says, he who is dead arose only at the voice of Jesus.
Now, that word is coming soon. I mean, here we are in the grip of death, I suppose, and it’ll grab its way and drag us down to the grave if Jesus doesn’t return soon for us. We’ll die. It’s the way of all flesh.
But on the last day, the Lord Jesus will return and speak words very, very similar to these. He’ll say to you and to me and to all those who are resting in the grave, he’ll say, I say to you, arise.
And body and soul will be back together. We’ll be perfected, rescued from the corruption of sin and death that runs through body and soul now and made fit for the new heaven and the new earth where the righteous dwell.
This is happening at the gate of the city of Nain, and it’s happening for us too. Now, I want to just think a little bit about how the Lord Jesus wants us to think about death. He wants you to know that your death is not the punishment for your sins.
His death is the punishment for your sins. So your death now, as a Christian, it comes to you as a gift. For you to live as Christ, to die as gain. When you pass through that door of death, you’re not passing into the judgment seat of God.
for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that your death and the death of those that you love is the way that the Lord Jesus calls you out of this veil of tears to be with himself in heaven.
The curse is broken. It’s gone. Fear is dispelled. And that grip of death that holds on to us all, that’s being broken by the word of God and the power of Christ. and dear saints as we walk through this valley of the shadow of death this is our comfort this is our confidence and this is our peace may god grant it for christ’s sake amen the peace of god which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through jesus christ our lord amen