Luke 7:11-14 // Jesus raises the boy at Nain from the dead.
You live in a busy world. All kinds of stuff going on. You can’t lose sight of what’s most important. God don’t lose sight of what’s most important. What’s most important to God is people. Because when you get to the end of your life, be it you go by way of the grave, or if he comes back, all that will matter then, will be people. The world is different now than the world we grew up in. When I grew up as a little boy, life was a play pen. Life was a happy, peaceful time. But now, you’re in a war. It’s all around you. You’re in a consumer culture now. Everything’s about you, everything’s about what you want, your ambitions, you’re desires. Jesus is going along here and when He looks at this situation, this woman has lost her husband, and her only son, and when Jesus looks and surveys the situation, He sees the woman. The person.
“…. and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.”
Compassion - To twist the gut, to cause the bowels to yearn. It’s not human pity. It’s not feeling sorry for someone. Many of us went to funerals before and we say, “I’m so sorry.” This is not that. It’s not wrong to have human sorrow, it’s honorable in that situation. But the reality is this, human sorrow and human pity can’t change the situation. It can do some things which we’re grateful for, but this is the love of God in action.
Jesus didn’t raise the son from the dead because he was God. Jesus laid aside his divine privileges. Everything Jesus done on the earth he did as a man. He didn’t do it to bring glory to God - Although it did bring glory to God. He didn’t do it to be seen. He did it for one reason and one reason only, and that was to stop that mothers’ hurting. That’s what love does. This compassion was the love of God in manifestation.
God clearly was able to express his yearning, his eagerness to help and bless people. In other words, God had a vessel that he could flow through to fix the problem at hand. Everything in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the picture of Jesus, it’s an image that God provided us with, that every born-again person is to be conformed into. You will never, I don’t care who you are, touch God’s divinity.
Romans 5:1-5
Every person that has been justified (just as if you had never sinned) at that moment when you were born again, the love came into you. The Love of God. The love of god is not like human love, it’s not even in the same category. We’re talking about divine love. When you got born again, God put his love in you. The love that was shown through compassion in the situation of raising the boy at Nain, is the same love that’s in you. When Adam fell in the garden he died spiritually. He lost the capacity to love, but when you got born again, God put his love in you, and you have the capacity in you to love just like God loves. And compassion is a fruit of the love of God. And fruit has to be developed.
God is Love. You can’t confuse it with human love. He raised that boy from the dead because of his Love for the mother and for the boy. He wanted to stop the suffering. Can you imagine? She’s lost her husband and all she’s got is her son. God is known by his love. What are you known for? There would be no greater honor than for people to remember you by Love. If you’re going to be a person whose known by love, you’re going to have to be intentional about it. You live in a world and a culture where everyone lives for themselves. Humankind is selfish. You live in a culture and time right now where demons are ministering hate to people. I’m talking about vicious hate! We as gods people, we are to be known as a people of Love.
Ephesians 1:3 “Blessed be the GOD + FATHER of your Lord Jesus Christ…”
People know God as God. Very few know him as Father. Father is his nature. We know a lot about God, but we don’t really know God. There’s a difference. You don’t know about someone because you hear about them. You know someone because you talk to them personally. You can go to church and hear them tell you about God and you never really know him like he wants you know him. He wants you to know him as your own personal Father. Jesus came presenting the father. The religious culture in that day knew him as God. The church in America know a God. But how many of us know a father that cares about us personally. To the degree that I can trust him and believe what he says TO me and ABOUT me. There is a difference. Every person can live and die, be born again, have the capacity to love in them, and die an angry, bitter, unforgiving, full of malice, person. That was NEVER the will of God for them. They will never be a benefit to humankind nor themselves and those around them because of what they’ve allowed to go on in their hearts. Love is a choice. You can be a person of love or you can be a person of hate. You can be any kind of person you want to be.
2 Timothy 1: 12
It’s the will of God that you know him to the degree that you can trust him. If you could ever find God, you’d be happy. The reason people are not happy in life, is because you’re not happy with yourself. The reason you’re angry and negative about things is because that’s how you are with yourself. The reason you lash out and blame other people is because you’re not happy with yourself. You’ve made choices that made you that way. Or, others have treated you unfairly. But even if people do you wrong, you still have a choice how you respond to it. You can’t play the blame game. That don’t Go over with God. You start running after him and he’ll deal with stuff like that. To be happy you have to be happy with yourself. And to be happy with yourself, you can’t put your happiness in the hand of any other person, or they’ll control you.
God wants you to know him to the degree that you can trust him to take care of you no matter what situation you’re in. One of the things I like about God, Is I can get in trouble and even if it’s my own fault God will rescue me, and he won’t hold it against me. Aren’t you glad God don’t hold things against us? If you’re a Christian and you’re walking in love you won’t hold anything against people either. You won’t label them as “that person” either.
You can know God through the book. But there is a difference between the letter and the spirit. There are people who can quote this book, even some atheists. Isn’t it mind boggling to think you have the capacity to love like God loves? What would change in the church world, or in your world, if you saw everything and everybody through Gods love? If you could see people, the way God sees them? If God could use you to do things for people that he wanted to do? That can only come through love. Love would never hurt a person. It is a big stretch to have you up here raising the dead. Some of you can’t even go there in your thinking. You never know what love could do in you and through you. Because Love knows no impossibilities. It has no limitations. A boy in a coffin is a big one. Love looks at that as nothing. And people go through their whole life hunting love, hunting somebody to love them. And here’s this God who has a love that’s beyond anything you can imagine and his arms are open and he’s inviting you to come and receive all the love that you can handle, and get so full of his love that you spill over onto other people and just wreck their world. I’ve never seen the way people are behaving now. People who should have better sense. That’s the difference between God’s love and human love. Cause human love can turn in a moment. Into this other person. Jesus at the last supper, said “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another the way I have loved you, by this will all men know that you are my disciples. You’re my followers.” God is known by Love. His people should be known by love. The love side is the better side. The love side is the blessing side.
God is love. You are what you choose. If you’re going to Love like God loves and develop that in you, there’s only one way you can get it. You’ve got to go get with him. And when you go get with him, He’ll start melting all that anger and inner agitation out of you. All the inferior feelings and wrong image of yourself, he’ll melt that out of you. That’s why you’re not happy because you have a wrong image of yourself. When that anger starts being purged and that need for someone else to affirm you starts leaving, His peace will start coming into your heart. Fear and torment will leave your life.