Luke 7:11-17

Some more Oak Ridge sermon notes from Luke 7:

The preface to the message was reinforcing that Jesus Christ has eternally existed with God the Father. We understand that creation is a trinitarian work, just as redemption is, and that God speaks things into existence and they exist.

In Luke 7 we read about Jesus raising to life the widows son. In this we see providentially timed "crowd of death" meeting the "crowd of life". To the reader, Christ's instruction to the widow to "stop crying" seems like a strange one, unless it was said by someone with the authority to restore life. From the passage, there is no indication that this woman knew Christ or that she had asked anything of him, but rather He has arrived with a mission to heal.

Luke 7 also touches on the principle of touching the dead/the "unclean", and the idea that touching unclean things makes the clean unclean, but Christ is clean, and when he touches the unclean things (us) we become clean again. In vs. 14, Jesus "went up and touched the coffin", restoring the child to life.

The people here recognized that Christ was similar to the prophets of the Old Testament, and there was excitement that, 400 years following the Old Testament, God was revealing his power again. This passage in Luke is the first account of Christ raising the dead to life again.