Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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*Intro* – A doctor comes in and tells his patient, “I have some very bad news for you.”
The man said, “What’s that, Doc?” “Your tests came back and you have only 24 hours to live.
But I have some even worse news.”
The man said, “What could be worse than that?”
The doctor said, “I was supposed to tell you yesterday.”
Of course, at the heart of that funny little story is the universal truth that death is a terrorizing prospect for all of us.
As Shakespeare’s Hamlet contends, “Fear of death makes cowards of us all.”
When Dr. David Powlison was about 20, he saw the darkness of facing death without Christ thru an elderly friend.
Powlison comments: “He was trying to make sense of his life, to find something to hold onto in the approaching disintegration of his existence.
Everything he held up in front of his eyes – accomplishments, family, people he had helped, possessions, experiences, travels – turned to ashes before his eyes even as he talked.
He finally began to weep in bitter desolation.”
Desolation.
That’s what it’s like to meet that bitter enemy without Christ.
But it need not be that way.
Powlison goes on: “That experience helped propel me to Christ five years later, because it taught me to ask of my own experience, "What lasts?"
There is the question!
What lasts?
How about the eternal life in Christ – that lasts!
Facing death without Christ is a hopeless, pointless, terrorizing experience.
But when death meets life in Jesus, it changes everything.
It changes everything.
*I.
Pointlessness is Met With Purpose*
Last week we saw in God’s universe, there are no coincidences.
The happy, entourage following Jesus just happens to arrive in Nain just as the desolate funeral procession is leaving town.
Just a coincidence?
No.
It is a meeting planned in eternity past to illustrate for all time that we need not come to the end of our time on earth only to find that everything, even all that seemed good, is a dead end.
But Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5:24).
Jesus brings meaning and purpose to life – and consequently to death as well.
*II.
Cynicism is Met with Compassion*
At the heart of this funeral procession is a widow who has now lost her only son.
The cynics would have said to her, “Do not weep.
It will do no good.”
But Jesus is no cynic.
He says, “Do not weep” from a heart of compassion.
In Christ, compassion wins over cynicism, because He cares and because He corrects.
Death is a lonely place without Him.
You can hold the hand of your loved ones, but they cannot go with you.
But Jesus can!
As we saw last week, He will be your pastor if you invite Him.
Cynicism dies in His presence.
*III.
Hopelessness is Met With Hopefulness*
V. 13-14: “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.”
This widow is without hope.
Then Jesus says, “Don’t weep.”
Jesus is probably not the first to tell her, “Don’t cry.
Everything will be all right.”
But everything wasn’t all right.
Yet hearing “Don’t cry” from Jesus is very different from hearing it from anyone else.
Jesus doesn’t just empathize; He does something.
It’s interesting, people begged Him for healing – for themselves or others – but no one ever asks for resurrection.
That is beyond human expectation.
Death is hopeless.
Put yourself in the shoes of these 1st century Jews.
To even touch a dead body made one unclean.
That meant 7 days of ritual cleansing during which any contact with others was prohibited.
No defilement was worse than contact with the dead in the ceremonial law.
But Jesus touched that man, thus identifying with the dead man.
And one of two things was going to happen.
Either he was going to be defiled by this touch – or, the corpse was going to be resurrected by His Word.
One or the other.
Jesus’ touch brings hope to a hopeless condition.
Imagine how hearts raced when Jesus said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”
That’s cliff-hanger material, right?
Will he or won’t he?
No one knows, but hope begins to take hold.
The world can’t offer much by way of hope.
It teaches we came from nothing and are going to nothing.
I grew up idolizing certain baseball players – Ted Williams being one – one of the greatest hitters of all time -- the last player to hit over .400
for a season when he hit .406 in 1941.
He was a WWII flying ace who had John Glenn as his wing man in Korea.
But he got old like we all do.
And he died.
And the only hope that the world could offer was that he could be cryogenically frozen in hopes that a cure for his congestive heart failure would lead to some future revival.
And so his body is held today in a bizarre frozen state at a cryogenic facility in Arizona.
I ask you – is that hope?
Is that the best you can do?
I’ll take a resurrected Jesus who exists today in the glorious spiritual body that is the model of the future for all who believe in Him.
Paul says in I Cor 15:20, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
That’s my kind of hope – what Paul calls in Col 1:27 “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
When death meets life for those in Christ, the command will be, “Young man, young woman, I say to you, arise.”
That’s hope you live with!
*IV.
Loss is Met With Life*
So, Jesus says, “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.”
And just like that, searing loss becomes spectacular life!
Imagine the scene.
Jesus orders, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”
The crowd watches with bated breath.
And suddenly, there is movement.
Remember, this guy is wrapped in grave clothes from head to foot, with a napkin-like cloth covering his face.
But he manages to sit himself up, indicating the thoroughness of the miracle.
The napkin falls aside displaying a face that is filled with life!
The spirit is back!
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