Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: Luke 7:11-17

Reading the account of Jesus raising this dead man back to life should take our minds back to Elijah. It certainly did so for the townspeople. Like the young man whom Elijah raised from the dead in Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-24), this man in Nain was the only son of a widow and thus her only source of support. Zarephath was a Gentile town and hence a place no Jew would have expected God to do a miracle. Nain was an utterly nondescript place, mentioned nowhere else in the Bible and about 9km from Nazareth – an equally unexpected place for a miracle. When confronted with the young man’s death, Elijah was utterly calm, saying only, “Give the boy to me.” Jesus, filled with Godly compassion said only, “Do not weep”. Both were filled with complete calm and utter confidence in the powerlessness of death in the face of God’s absolute power and authority to raise the men back to life.

The differences between the two miracles were also not lost on the crowd. Whereas Elijah took the dead boy to a private room, reasoned with God in prayer, and stretched himself out on the boy three times, Jesus simply placed a hand on the funeral bier and said: “Young man, I say to you, arise.” Elijah prayed to the God who had the authority. Jesus is the God who has the authority.

The only witness of the miracle in 1 Kings 17 was the widowed mother, and she concluded that Elijah was a “man of God” who spoke the word of God with truth. But in Luke 7, there was a crowd to witness the miracle and, seeing both the similarities and differences to what they knew about Elijah’s healing miracle (from their Scriptures and their synagogue) their reaction was far more radical: “Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” (v.16a). They could not help but recognise that Jesus was a great prophet. But they saw just as surely that He must be much greater than Elijah if He could heal with a word of command. They saw that this man carried the very authority of God. And so they also said: “and “God has visited his people!” (v.16b) In Jesus they saw God drawing near. While they did not realise the full truth of their words, they could not help but recognise the presence of God in this “great prophet” called Jesus.

May this miracle be a sign to us today, just as it was to the people of Nain. May we discern clearly that in Jesus, death has lost its victory. The man from Nain was raised back to earthly life, one day to die again. But we are promised a greater resurrection – a resurrection to eternal life in a perfected resurrection body that is immortal. While we pray for Jesus to continue to establish His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven and to do the miraculous in our day, we do so with absolute trust that one day all things will be made right and the Kingdom of God will come in all its fullness. Thanks be to God. Amen!