Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 7:11-17, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 17
- Date: Sunday, May 18, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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When a Funeral Is Interrupted
No matter how well you prepare, something unexpected can happen in a service, and you have to respond on the fly. That happened this morning. There’s a miscommunication about who was doing the children’s lesson.
The worst possible time for that to happen is during a funeral. One of the first funerals I ever officiated was for a relative. I had always liked him and gotten along with him well, and when he passed away, the family asked me to officiate the service. I was glad to do it.
We held the service at the funeral home. They provided a pianist but had forgotten to arrange for anyone to lead the music. And so they asked me, would I lead singing a few hymns at the beginning of the service? And I said, yeah, that’d be no problem.
At the beginning of the funeral—and I am fairly sure it was the first one I had ever conducted— At the very beginning, we’re singing Amazing Grace. And you would think, what could be easier?
We all know that one. It’s not a hard song. We’re singing Amazing Grace, and the piano player is playing about half the speed that I’m trying to lead it.
There is funeral slow, and then there is beyond-funeral slow. So she’s playing at half speed, so I start trying to slow us down to match her tempo, and then she slows down even more. So I try to slow us down even more.
You can already see the train wreck developing. I try to slow us down even more to match her, and she suddenly wakes up and goes back to the original tempo, and I’m 20, 21 years old. I don’t know what to do.
And in all fairness, maybe I was wrong. In fairness, she may have been old enough to have heard John Newton play the song himself, so perhaps she knew better than I did how it should be played. But we ended up doing four verses of Amazing Grace, two different speeds.
She seemed to finish about three weeks before the rest of us. It was painful. And I thought that’s as bad as it gets.
That is not as bad as it gets. Funerals can be ruined in other ways. I’ve officiated funerals where, as I’m trying to get the family where they’re supposed to be, we’re also dealing with somebody has tried to crash the funeral, and now we’re dealing with the police department out in the parking lot.
Or someone becomes so overwhelmed by grief that they throw themselves on the casket and cry, “Take me with you.” You never know what is going to happen. And I didn’t even think about this.
Lee, you’ve probably seen worse stories than this. I should have interviewed Lee for this introduction. He’s probably seen even crazier things.
You can put great effort into planning a service, and it can still be interrupted in an instant. This morning, we’re going to look at an instance where Jesus interrupted a funeral. He did not ruin it—unless someone was absolutely determined that the funeral had to continue no matter what.
I suspect everyone was glad Jesus interrupted this funeral. We’re going to look at probably the best instance in all of history of a funeral service getting interrupted as we continue our study through the book of Luke. We’re in Luke chapter 7 and we’re going to start this morning at verse 11 and read through verse 17.
Luke records: soon afterwards, he went into a city called Nain. The town’s name has been pronounced several ways. I believe the likely pronunciation is Nain, though others pronounce it differently.
He went to a city called Nain, and his disciples were going along with him, accompanied by a large crowd. Now, as he approached the gate of the city, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a sizable crowd from the city was with her.
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. Fear gripped them all and they began glorifying God saying, a great prophet has arisen among us and God has visited His people.
And this report concerning him went out all over Judea and in the surrounding district. While looking into the town’s pronunciation and background, I discovered that its ruins still exist today.
It’s a tiny little place today. It was a tiny little place in Jesus’ day. It lay on the fringes of Galilee in northern Israel, near the edge of the mountains.
And there was one way in and one way out of this town. It was perched on the edge of a hillside. And so you’d have to go down this one winding road through the mountains to get there.
I picture one of those narrow mountain roads shown in documentaries, though perhaps not quite so dramatic. Maybe not that dramatic, but they were, what you see in this story is this crowd coming out down this mountain road to go and bury this dead man outside the city, Another crowd was approaching with Jesus from Capernaum. The two groups met on that mountain road with little opportunity to avoid one another. And so they happened to meet each other.
One other detail is important: the translation I read uses the word coffin. That is not an exact description, but English does not have a familiar word for what they used. The Greek word is soros, something like a stretcher designed specifically to carry a dead person.
Older English uses the word bier, but many readers may not recognize it. But they would carry him down on this basically platform. And the reason why that’s important is because when Jesus goes through the miracle of healing this man, of raising him from the dead, he’s not locked inside a coffin.
He sits right up. Everybody around could see this dead body wrapped up on top of this stretcher-like device. When Jesus speaks to him, he sits up in full view of everyone.
So that’s important for us to note that we’re not talking about a coffin in the way that we would understand it. But as we start into this story, we see immediately, as we’ve seen all throughout the book of Luke, that Jesus specializes in doing the unexpected. He specializes in doing things that we don’t expect.
Just when we think we have Him figured out and know what He will or will not do, He surprises us. He cannot sin or lie because those things are contrary to His nature, but nothing within His holy nature limits His power. Once we think we know exactly what He will do in a particular situation, He often surprises us.
He frequently surprises. I think that’s part of the reason why he did not seem to heal in the same way over and over. Sometimes he’d touch them, sometimes he’d speak to them from a distance, sometimes he’d spit in the dirt and put it on them.
Different methods every time. That kept people from placing faith in a method rather than asking what Jesus Himself would do. But he does some things here that are unexpected to them.
A large crowd had begun following Jesus wherever He went, and they came with Him from Capernaum along the isolated mountain path toward this small town. They were following Jesus. And some of this crowd was there because they wanted to learn.
They wanted to hear his teachings. They were interested in what he taught and maybe growing closer to God through that. Others were there simply for the spectacle.
They were there because he would do unexpected things, and they wanted to see what he was going to do next. And sometimes he fed them. That’s a great way to draw a crowd.
Some of them just wanted to see what he was going to do. And the people of this small town would not have expected him to bring his crowd there. You know, it’s like if we said that there was some major celebrity that was going to visit some little town near here.
Cookietown. How many of you have ever been to Cookie Town? Okay.
Not even everybody in this room has been to Cookie Town, but quite a few of you. How many people you think live in Cookietown now? And I picked that name because it was the first one that came to mind.
It’s just a fun name to say. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, it’s out south of here, off to the side of I-44. Not many people live there.
You think the people of that town would be shocked if we said the president is coming and bringing his entire entourage and having a major event in Cookietown, Oklahoma? You think they’d be shocked? Or if we said Taylor Swift is going to be in concert in Cookietown, Oklahoma, I’m assuming they don’t have a venue for either of those events.
We would be shocked. And so here is this rabbi that everybody in Galilee has heard about, his teachings and his miracles, and he’s drawn a massive crowd. And now he’s coming up the road to Nain.
That would have been unexpected to those people. Nobody expected to encounter Jesus. And the crowd from Nain was heading out to bury this dead young man.
They would have prepared the body quickly. When somebody died, they would wrap them up. They would prepare them quickly.
And then they would usually bury them by the end of that day. So they’re taking him out to the burial ground outside the city, carrying him on this stretcher-type device. And they certainly didn’t expect anyone to interfere with their plans.
They’re heading out. They’re going to put him in the tomb. They would then return and continue the customary mourning activities. And that was going to be the end of it. That’s what they expected the day to entail.
They didn’t expect Jesus to crash the funeral. They didn’t expect a teacher like Jesus to come and touch this stretcher that he was on. Touching a dead body, or something on which a dead body lay, made a person ritually unclean. Now, in order to get the dead out of the city, somebody had to do that.
It wasn’t sinful to be ceremonially unclean, but it’s just not something you would expect a respected teacher, a respected rabbi, religious leader, somebody like that to come and say, I’m going to touch the thing that he’s being carried on there in verse 14. They just wouldn’t have wanted to be ritually unclean. But Jesus did all of these things that they didn’t expect.
Jesus did that all throughout his ministry, did things that people wouldn’t expect. Even today, Jesus does things that we don’t expect. We have access to more of Jesus’ story than they did. We see the end of His earthly ministry, His work through the early church, and Revelation’s picture of history’s culmination.
We know more about Jesus than they did, but even today he still surprises us. And not because he does things that are out of character, but he just does things we don’t expect. Sometimes we don’t expect the changes that he makes in our hearts and in our lives.
We don’t expect that person to get saved and get radically transformed. We don’t expect always the things that Jesus does or can do. But this is what Jesus specializes in.
Power and Compassion in Perfect Balance
Luke records a real event, but he also uses it to give his readers a glimpse of what Jesus is like. And there are a couple of characteristics of Jesus that are particularly emphasized in this story, His power and His compassion. And we see that His power and His compassion are unmatched if we look at verses 13 through 15.
By His actions, Jesus demonstrated both power and compassion. Those two qualities do not always go together. There’s a lot of powerful people in the world who don’t have a whole lot of compassion.
I’m not saying there’s nobody, but it can be an unusual combination. And Jesus demonstrated them both, not just in this instance, but throughout his ministry, he demonstrated both of them, and he demonstrated them both in a perfect balance. He shows His compassion.
We do not have to guess what motivated Jesus as He approached the funeral, because Luke tells us in verse 13, he says, when the Lord saw her, he felt compassion for her. She was heartbroken over her loss, and Jesus empathized with her. Jesus took pity on her.
We understand that she was heartbroken, but the passage helps us see the full depth of her anxiety, fear, and vulnerability. This was her only son. And in that day, it wasn’t uncommon to lose a child when they were small.
I’ve seen some translations or some tellings of this story say that, you know, this was a boy. Probably not. When Jesus in verse 14 talks to him, you see there where it says, young man, I say to you, arise.
When Jesus talks to him, he uses a Greek word there, neaniskos, which indicates somebody that was between puberty and marrying age. This young man was probably somewhere between his early and late teenage years. You say, well, that’s still just a kid.
In their culture, that was a young man who was building his life. He was strong. He was probably agile, had learned a trade.
This is who was going to take care of his mother because he was the only son, and she was a widow. He was her expected means of support. With him dead, she likely lost her claim to her husband’s inheritance and property.
All the rights to her husband’s property, all of that was going to go to some more distant male relative who may or may not take care of her. She had few legitimate options for earning money. Her economic options were severely limited, and she had few legitimate ways to earn an income. And so she would depend on charity from extended relatives. Like I said, they may or may not help her.
I have seen families begin fighting over inheritance after funerals, because money can make people behave irrationally. So she may or may not have been able to count on her extended relatives. It was either that or the hope that the religious leaders took pity on her and showed charity.
But Jesus said those people were devouring widows’ houses. They weren’t necessarily people you could trust. So she was in a vulnerable position, and Jesus looked at her in her position, in her fear, in her anxiety, in addition to her grief, and he had compassion on her. And tHis compassion was not just a feeling.
I think we’ve all felt compassion where we feel something for somebody in their plight. But this was compassion that says, I have to do something. This was a feeling with a willingness and a compulsion to act.
And so he offers her some genuine comfort here, not only in his words in verse 13 where he says, do not weep, but in what he goes and does next. He shows her compassion. And the way he shows her compassion is by using His power.
When Jesus Stood in the Way
So Jesus walks up and he touches this stretcher. The wording suggests that Jesus stepped into the way and physically stopped the stretcher from continuing toward the cemetery, as though saying, “We are not finished here.” He stopped the men who were carrying it.
The man was literally on his way to burial until Jesus intervened and declared that the story was not over. Jesus steps into the situation and takes control and stood in the way. He brings this funeral procession to a halt, Then He did something that only God could do.
He speaks to this dead man and says, I’m telling you, rise up. Young man, I say to you, arise. You and I cannot command a dead person to rise.
If I could have willed people back from the dead, I would have done it. I think we’ve all lost people that if we could raise them back, I know we think they’re in heaven, and so they’d be mad at us if we brought them back. We would want them back.
You know, I would have done it. But that’s not something we have the power to do. And if we think we do, we’re crazy.
But he wasn’t crazy. He was God. He commanded the dead man to rise.
And to everybody’s astonishment, verse 15 tells us, he sat up. He sat up and began to speak. The Bible does not tell us what he said, though I wish it did. I kind of picture it as he struggles to sit up because they would wrap a body in linen. He’s struggling to sit up and say, get the things off me, but he speaks.
And that was an audible and visible piece of evidence to everybody who was watching. This was not, oh, there was a story. He healed a guy.
“I know someone who knows someone who says Jesus raised a man from the dead.” This took place in full view of both of these crowds, that this man who was dead at Jesus’ command actually sits up and begins talking. This wasn’t something, this wasn’t some hoax that somebody else perpetrated.
The man was dead. Jesus commanded him to live, and he visibly obeyed.
It was undeniable public proof of the miracle that Jesus had just performed. Then, in verse 15, Jesus gave him back to his mother. Now, I think that may be where some people get the idea that he was a little boy.
Here you go, giving him back to his mother, but I think the act of telling him, stop being dead, and then here, let’s get you down off of this stretcher. “Here you are.” This young man that she was so heartbroken over, he gives her back her son.
No one in history could have done what Jesus did. No one in history had the power to do what Jesus did, and Jesus, with all of that power, with all the power at his disposal that created heaven and earth, he had enough compassion to care about that woman, that vulnerable widow from a town nobody had ever heard of. He cared about her and where she was and what she needed.
Authority That Could Not Be Ignored
Jesus’ actions demonstrated His power and His compassion. They also demonstrate His authority. So when we get to verses 16 and 17, what Jesus did was shocking to these people.
It says in verse 16, fear gripped them all. We may read statements like that too quickly. If you’ve read the Bible for very long, you’re used to that.
The angel of the Lord shows up, do not be afraid. Jesus does something, everybody’s afraid. I think we miss the gravity of what actually happened here.
Think about yourself in that position, that you’re going to a funeral, and somebody shows up and tells the guest of honor at the funeral, stop being dead, and they sit up. Would that feel like an ordinary day? There’s probably going to be some panic that breaks out.
Without making light of the event, it reminds me of the old Ray Stevens song “Sittin’ Up with the Dead.” If you’ve seen that, everybody panics when they think the man has come back to life. That’s probably, you know, there’s probably some similarity there with the way people reacted because we don’t expect it.
We don’t expect the dead to sit up and start talking. And so not only are you thinking about what you’re just seeing and is this really happening and this is crazy, but you also start thinking about the power of this person who’s standing next to you who just made it happen. And I think that would be a little terrifying as well.
“Who is this man, and how did He do that?” Everybody was afraid, but they realized in that fear that it meant God was working in their midst. It meant at the very least they recognized that God the Father had sent Jesus because in their fear, as that fear calmed down eventually, verse 16 says they began glorifying God. They’re not looking at this and saying, what kind of sorcery is this?
These are not the people later on who accuse him of doing things by the power of Satan. These people realize that God is at work. They began glorifying God, and they said a great prophet has arisen among us.
We may wonder how they concluded that He was a prophet. Elijah had done something almost line for line like this in raising a widow’s son back in 1 Kings 17.
The event clearly parallels that story, which helps explain why Luke included it. I think that’s why the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to write it down, because he’s drawing a parallel here between the power of Jesus and the power of Elijah. So we understand that Jesus Christ was sent by God, just like Elijah was sent by God.
And verse 16 says, God has visited His people. And we could read that a couple of ways. We could see that as a recognition from them that he’s not just sent by God, he is God.
We could see this as a recognition by them that God was visiting His people by sending a prophet. Whichever of those meanings they intended, it’s still clear they’re acknowledging that there’s something about Jesus that what he just did shows that he was sent by God. They understood that He was not acting merely on human authority.
He’s not a crazy person walking around claiming to do miracles. This person really was sent by God, and they were convinced of that, that this man has authority that comes from God. Now, we might look at it and say, well, why did they just think he was a prophet?
Again, we see more of the story than they did. I think it’s admirable that unlike the Pharisees, they would see a miracle like this and say, he’s a prophet of God, instead of just saying, oh, he’s, that can’t be true. But as far as them stopping at just, he’s a prophet, they didn’t yet see the rest of the story.
A similar miracle at the end of Luke clarifies exactly who Jesus is. He’s not just sent by God, but he is God. Because while some of the other prophets of God were able to raise people from the dead, only Jesus predicted and accomplished his own resurrection.
But wherever we see that miracle take place of raising somebody from the dead, it shows that God’s authority is in that person who spoke. For us, we just get to see more of it than they did because we get to look back at it. As we close this morning, I want to leave you with one additional point as we go back to verse 13.
And in His compassion, Jesus looks at this woman and says, do not weep. And the reason he could tell her not to weep is because of what he was about to do. Jesus’ presence was the only hope this woman had.
Jesus’ presence gives us hope today because he’s demonstrated that he has power over life and death. He has authority over everything that plagues us and ails us. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to work out exactly the way we want it to, but he has authority, he has power, he has compassion, and we can trust him, and His presence in our lives gives us hope.
We’ve all been in circumstances like that woman. Maybe not as dire, but we’ve all been in circumstances like that woman. I was thinking about it yesterday.
I have been close to all my grandparents. One is still living, but I was especially close to one of my grandfathers.
My grandfather has been gone nine and a half years, and every day I think of that man. Every day I still want to pick up the phone and call him. Sometimes I start to call him before remembering, and the realization leaves a void and sadness.
I have three children who are waiting for me in heaven. And that brings tremendous sadness and tremendous pain to think about. To think about what happened and what could have been.
We’ve all been in those circumstances. Our circumstances are not identical, but all of us have experienced loss, pain, and moments of hopelessness. But just like this woman, the presence of Jesus gives us hope.
Only Jesus can look at us and tell us, do not weep, and give us a reason not to weep. Because we know there’s a day coming when he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And there’ll be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more crying.
The former things have all passed away. This woman got a taste of that in this life. But today, because Jesus is here, we have hope.
And if you’ve never experienced that hope, it begins with knowing that you’ll be with him for eternity. That begins with acknowledging that you’ve sinned against God as we all have. That sin separates us from God.
But Jesus Christ paid for our sin in full so that we could be forgiven and rose again to prove it. To have that hope, eternal life, the knowledge that we will be reunited one day with our loved ones who believed in Christ, and the assurance that we will stand rightly before the God who made and loved us, we must believe that Jesus died to pay for our sins in full and ask Him for forgiveness.
