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+--- Thread: NT Doctrine -- Luke 7:11-35 (/thread-929.html)
NT Doctrine -- Luke 7:11-35 - Ed Hurst - 11-20-2021
Given that Jesus and His crew often traveled by boat, it's hard to estimate the location of some of the events we've covered so far. We know that He mostly stayed in Galilee, but that's a pretty large area. We cannot guess where the Sermon on the Mount was, but that it was followed by the encounter with the Centurion's faith back in Capernaum meant it was likely somewhere near there.
Luke says it was the next day that Jesus was now on the southwestern side of Galilee, a good ways inland from the shore. Nain is a village nestled on the northwestern edge of Mount Moreh, which puts it in the slender finger of the Plain of Esdraelon that reaches out between Mounts Tabor and Moreh.
So the trip out this way by boat must have included a whole flotilla, because there was an unusually large crowd of people following Him as He approached the gate of the Nain. He was confronted by the tragedy of a funeral bearing the body of a widow's only son. He died early in his adult years, and the funeral train was a substantial part of the city's population. For her, this meant her last hope of support was gone, and she would soon be in dire poverty and alone. This is not how things were supposed to go under the Covenant. How soon before the Pharisees came to pick over the carcass of her remaining property?
As the two crowds met on the road just outside the city gate, the first thing Jesus did was ask the mourners to stop the wailing. He needed for everyone to hear what He was about to say. Stepping to the litter (they didn't use coffins), the procession stopped and Jesus spoke to the wrapped body loudly enough for all to hear, ordering him to arise. The young man sat up and began to speak, probably complaining about the wrappings. From the context, we can assume that Jesus had His disciples help Him unwind the fellow from the embalming wraps and turn him back over to his mother.
Nobody had ever seen anything like that. The funeral was abruptly called off and mourning of the people turned into joyfully glorifying God quite loudly. In the following days, the news of this spread all around the whole region.
Meanwhile, among the crowd that followed Jesus were a handful of His cousin John's disciples. Some of them no doubt had been following Jesus around since John's arrest. At this resurrection, they hurried back and reported to John in prison. We need to keep in mind that John didn't suffer much rabbinical training, so his understanding of Scripture was far closer to the ancient Hebrew mysticism. While he no doubt believed at least a part of his prophetic message was literal, he would have been one of the first to recognize it was not entirely so. The matter of the ax laid at the root of the unrepentant tree of Israel that failed to bring forth fruit in keeping with the Covenant was not as simple as Pharisaical legalism would suggest.
And John was fatalistic enough to realize that, when His cousin's ministry took off, his own was ended. So we should not read this as some kind of tormenting doubt when he sent two messengers back to Jesus to inquire about His ministry. We could get the idea that John was partly concerned that his own disciples would get the message and stick with Jesus. But we can also see that John was seeking some final confirmation that his mission was complete, that the Messiah had taken over. He knew he was close to execution; could he now depart in peace?
So, they returned and found Jesus somewhere not too far from Nain, since raising the dead was probably just the start of His work there. He had these two disciples of John watch as He healed and delivered a large number of people. Then He turned to them and quoted Isaiah 61:1-3, a messianic passage He used often in His teaching. It was like saying, "Yep, I'm the Messiah."
Then He raised the question: Who could be offended or tripped up by this kind of blessed ministry?
This led to an involved discussion about His cousin, John the Baptist. Down by the Jordan where Jesus went to be baptized, the tall reeds would wave in the wind. That's not what brought the people down to the river. It wasn't a pleasant picnic trip. They didn't expect a prophet dressed like the ones sponsored by the Scribes and Pharisees, either, with all their highly educated speech. Those kind of men dressed up nice so they could hang out in the courts of the powerful. That's not the kind of prophet John was. They knew what to expect when they went down there. He was notorious for having lived a wholly uncivilized life out in the wilderness.
They knew to expect a blunt and harsh message out in the open air. Yes, John was surely the forerunner of the Messiah prophesied by Malachi. And what did that make Jesus? He further told the people that John the Baptist was the greatest prophet to have lived up that point. And yet, those who followed Jesus as the Messiah into the Kingdom of Heaven would be senior to John the Baptist. That's because they would get to see that Kingdom born and find all the power and authority Israel had discarded by abandoning the Covenant. The prophecies and miracles were all about the Kingdom that was about to come upon them.
Within the crowd who heard this message were plenty of folks who had been baptized under John's message, repenting in preparation for the Messiah. To them, it was just one step closer to the promises they believed. To the Scribes and Pharisees, who had uniformly rejected John's baptism, because they rejected the message, it all went right over their heads, because it was not in their hearts.
The final moment of this event was Jesus offering a parable about children playing in the streets. In Jesus' day, petulant arrogance had become the mark of Judah's leadership. It's like children who can't be pleased. The normal kids ask them to come play, but the arrogant fools were never pleased with any of the games or ideas. So when John came in the austerity of self-denial, the leaders said he was crazy, demanding too much. And when Jesus came along and celebrated the joy of the Covenant, the same leaders said you couldn't take Him seriously because He was undisciplined.
Both the austerity and celebrations reflected something of God's nature. But the Scribes and Pharisees rejected it all because they never understood God's nature. They were clearly not children of divine wisdom. The children of wisdom were obvious by their wise choices.
RE: NT Doctrine -- Luke 7:11-35 - jaybreak - 11-23-2021
It would've been shocking to see a rabbi like Jesus approach a dead body, too, even though He just touched the bier.