Hello and welcome to the Women’s Weekly Bible Challenge! I’m Lisa Ann Spencer.
Today we jump into part 5 of When God Speaks to Women,
by continuing our study in the book of Luke. I remind you that some of the occurrences of
Jesus speaking to women in Luke have already been covered in previous studies
of Matthew and Mark. We will only
consider those that are unique to Luke’s gospel account.
Last week we only looked at one passage in Luke, where Jesus
speaks to His mother and Joseph, correcting His mother’s false words and
useless sorrow as they searched for Jesus.
JESUS RAISES THE DEAD
CONTEXT: The City of
Nain has no other reference in the Bible, but Jesus had just left Capernaum the
day before, so we know He is still ministering in northern Israel around the
Sea of Galilee.
We come to a dead, young man; which the scripture points out
to us that he is the only son of a
widow. If we read ahead in Luke 9:38,
Jesus casts a devil out of a young boy, who is also an only child. This would merit another study entirely. Perhaps you can study that for yourself by
searching for the phrases ‘only son’ and ‘only child’ in a concordance.
Unlike the 12-year-old daughter that Jesus raised from the
dead, there is no doubt about this
young man being dead. Much of the city of Nain is with the widow during the funeral
procession.
Jesus Speaks to the Widow
Luke 7:13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on
her, and said unto her, Weep not.
It is almost certain that she had already heard of the fame of Jesus:
- Luke 4:33-37,
Jesus had cast out a devil in a man in the synagogue in Capernaum. Verse 37 says “the fame of him went out into every place of the country round
about”.
- Luke 5:12-15, Jesus healed a man of leprosy. Verse 15 says, “so much the more went there a fame abroad of him:”
When Jesus said for her to ‘Weep not’, the Bible does not
tell us if she believed Jesus and stopped crying.
Jesus says to the widow's son, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.”
Isaiah prophesies of the dead rising: Isaiah 26:19 Thy dead men shall live, Together with my dead body shall
they arise. Awake and sing, ye that swell in dust: For thy dew is as the
dew of herbs, And the earth shall cast out the dead.
Our Apostle Paul quotes a portion of this passage, but he
says,
Ephesians 5:14
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give the light.
One of the differences in the two scriptures is that Jesus
literally told a dead man from the nation of Israel to rise, and he did. Paul
is speaking to saved people in the Body of Christ, who are not dead, but are
living in sin. To arise from the dead in
Ephesians means to stop walking in the old man, who is dead in sin.
We saw last week, that the 12-year-old daughter arose
and walked when Jesus spoke to her; this young man sat up and began to speak.
Again, this topic of the dead arising, then walking and talking is significant
to Israel.
The widow in this account represents the nation of
Israel. She is a widow and desolate
because she has no husband. Israel is in
a condition described by the prophet Jeremiah (3:8) as divorced from God, having no husband. God said to Israel in Hosea chapter 1, “Ye are not my people”. When Jesus came to Israel, like the 12 year
old daughter she was lying at death’s door.
She in fact died while Jesus was ministering to Israel because
they failed to believe His word.
God sent Jesus to speak to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:6; 15:24) to give them life
from the dead.
Raising the dead is a
sign that the prophesied kingdom was upon them. It was a call to
repentance: for Israel to turn back to the Law of Moses that they had forsaken.
Notice verse 17,
this “rumour” of him went forth…
Webster’s 1828
dictionary (By the way, the website has been taken down, but you can download a
free Ap, and I encourage you to do so.), defines rumour as a report of a
fact; a story well authorized. We normally think of a rumor as a false
report. This is why it is good to use an
old dictionary such as the Webster’s 1828 to help us define Bible words.
So this “rumour” was true, obviously!
JESUS FORGIVES A SINFUL WOMAN
I already covered this passage in more detail in a study on
Foot Washing. I will link the blogs below.
I will give the highlights of this account.
Simon the Pharisee invited Jesus to eat at his house. A woman, known as a sinner, in the city [the
last city mentioned was Nain, where the young man was raised from the dead]
brought a box of ointment and washed Jesus’s feet with tears and wiped them
with her hair, and she kissed His feet and anointed his feet.
Q: What
does it mean that this woman is a sinner?
Isn’t everyone a sinner?
You probably think she was a harlot, and maybe she was, but
the text does not say that. If we
compare her to Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, we might conclude
that this woman is a sinner because she does not keep all the Law of
Moses.
Luke 1:6 And they [Zacharias
and Elisabeth] were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments
and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
Jesus Speaks to a Woman Known as a
Sinner
Luke 7:48 And he said
unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. 49 And they that sat at meat with him
began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? 50 And he
said to the woman, Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace.
CONTEXT: This chapter begins with Jesus showing proof that
He is the Messiah. Luke 7:19 … “Art thou
he that should come?” Jesus said the
miraculous works and signs that He performed proved that He was Messiah.
Those who believed Him, obeyed Him.
Luke 7:29 And all the
people that HEARD him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with
the baptism of John.
But Luke 7:31-34
describes that most of the children did not believe.
This woman who was a
sinner, like the publicans mentioned in verse 29, was baptized of John.
There is NO DOUBT that this woman believed Jesus was who He said He
was. Her faith in that truth is what
saved her.
This woman was already forgiven! That is the point of Jesus’s conversation
with Simon: The debtor who had been
forgiven much, loved much. This woman
was demonstrating her love for Jesus because she had already been forgiven
much.
Faith believes what God says!
He says different things
to different people in different dispensations. To us Gentiles, He sent the
apostle Paul who speaks to us on God’s behalf, saying, put our trust in what
Jesus did for us on the cross and we shall be saved (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). That is the simplicity of our gospel. That’s
what we need to tell others.
MARY AND MARTHA
I have covered this passage in a session that I taught as
part of The Prudent Woman Retreat in January of 2022. Here is the link to that session on my YouTube channel:
A CERTAIN WOMAN OF THE COMPANY
Luke
11:27 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain
woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the
womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. 28 But he said, Yea
rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep
it.
Once again we see Jesus downplaying the role of
His earthly mother. He agrees with what
the woman says by responding ‘Yea’.
However, the word ‘But’ at the beginning of the
sentence combined with ‘rather’ shows us a contrast. He is
more pleased by people who ‘hear’, which means to ‘believe’, the word of God
than with reflections of His mother.
Q: I wonder if Jesus
thinking of his mother Mary at all? Or was He rather thinking of God and the
pure religion that God had given unto the nation of Israel?
A: I would encourage you to copy down this
passage and study it: Isaiah 66:10-13.
Isaiah prophesies about God and the new Jerusalem
as a nursing mother to the believing remnant of Israel. Compare it with Proverbs 5:19 to understand that the wife in question is the
prophesied City of New Jerusalem.
We will continue next week in Luke chapter 13 with a very important
parable and God healing a woman on the Sabbath day.
I hope you’ll join me!
The material covered in the Blog can be viewed
here:
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