God’s Touch of Life

I Kings 17:17-24

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I Kings 17:24  Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is true.”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  The Bible teaches us that God is a God of life.  Both our Old Testament lesson and the Gospel lesson remind us that God in Christ can and does repair and restore human life as He touches death with new life.  When faced with sin and death, as we are every day of our lives, we need always to turn to our good and gracious God to fix our frail lives, to forgive our sins, and to strengthen us for the days, weeks, months, and years that we may have left.

In our text Elijah stretches himself out three times on the widow’s son and calls upon Yahweh.  The result is that life returns to the boy’s body.  In the Gospel Jesus touches the coffin of the young man from Nain and says, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”  And the result is that the dead man sits up and begins to speak – he comes back to life!  When Jesus touches death, He repairs it with new life.

In Holy Baptism, the dead are raised; a heathen comes to the font, and leaves a Christian, a Child of God.  In Holy Baptism the triune God touches us and brings us back to life by forgiving our sins, rescuing us from death and the devil, and giving us eternal salvation.  In Holy Baptism, our eternal fellowship with God is secure.  Like the widows’ sons in I Kings 17 and Luke 7, when no one else is able to restore us, God can and He does.  No longer are we dead in our trespasses and sins; we are forgiven and have new life.  No longer do we live in fear and despondency; we have new life.  And this life we have through Jesus Christ who died and rose for us.

But the question is asked: If indeed God is a God of life, why does death have to happen?  How many of us have asked, when it does happen, “Why?”

In our text, the woman who had lost her son says to Elijah, “What have I to do with you, O man of God?  Have you come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to kill my son?”  It is true enough that Elijah is God’s man at that time and place; it is he who speaks and acts on God’s behalf, for he had been sent to do so.  The widow is feeling guilty; she knows that death is the result of sin that has infected all of humanity.  And yet, she tried to transfer the blame for her son’s death to God.

It is that way with us too.  When death strikes in and around our lives it sometimes makes us wonder about God.  It hurts so much that it sometimes makes us ask, “Why, God?  Why did my wife, my husband, my friend, my baby have to die?  Why did that have to happen?”  I remember attending a funeral visitation many years ago where the grieving husband was beating on his wife’s closed casket, crying out, “Why did you do this to me, God?”  It is a question many people ask, especially out of grief and pain.

Holy Scripture reminds us that life is fragile.  Psalm 103:15-16: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place is remembered no more.”  We never know when death will come to us or to any of our loved ones.  It may happen to one of us today or this week or this month or this year.  Life is fragile and fleeting.

For the boy in our lesson today, death seemed to come so unexpectedly, so unnaturally, so early in life.  One day he is healthy, eating from the flour and oil that God had multiplied through the prophet Elijah, then suddenly he becomes very ill and dies.  This is all the more disheartening to the woman because she had already lost her husband.  No wonder she feels punished because of her sins.  In her grief that’s all she could think about.

St Paul calls death “the last enemy to be destroyed” (I Cor. 15:26).  Even for the Christian, death remains an enemy that we all must face.  But the death of the body and the emotional pain is only part of the story.  St. Paul also writes, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor 5:10), and, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (I Cor 15:56).  Physical death, therefore, is the result of the fact that we have a sinful human nature, and that “the soul that sins shall die” (Ez 18:4).
Elderly men needs proper prescription as they are the one who gets affected cialis 20mg tadalafil bought this due to the following issue. If https://unica-web.com/documents/statut/UNICA-competition-regulations-from-1-1-2017.pdf get viagra online something like this occurs, then the person faces problems in his erection. In a perfect world, a tablet of tadalafil online pharmacy comprises of Sildenafil citrate. Remedy for Erectile Dysfunction The case of buy cialis line , the story starts with the penis.
But popular opinion today does not want to include a place for sin or hell or Satan; those things are rarely spoken of in the secular realm.  And if they are spoken of at all, it is in the most degrading and derogatory of terms.  What’s worse, they are not even spoken of in some churches!  If sin is not spoken of, and if sinners are not called to repentance, there can be no reason for the Gospel of Christ which frees the soul from eternal damnation.  Sure, it is a bit scary, for we are naturally afraid to face the hereafter on our own.

But God touches the scary; He touches the unknown in a way that only He can.  He touches death with new life; He replaces death with life.  He destroys death and gives life.  If the town of Zarephath had a local newspaper, the local headline might have read, DEAD BOY COMES BACK TO LIFE!  The prophet Elijah lifted the boy’s lifeless body from his mother’s arms, carried it to an upper room of the house, laid the body on the bed, and cried out to Yahweh for help.  He stretched himself out over the lifeless body three times and begged Yahweh to touch it with life.  And Yahweh heard Elijah’s cry; life was restored to the boy, and he lived!

Now, what was it that brought life to the boy?  Simply and profoundly, the Word of a gracious of God.  Even though the woman and her son were not members of God’s chosen people Israel, and in spite of their sinfulness (which the woman acknowledged in v. 18), God still loved them.  He cared so very much that He brought new life and hope to the woman and her son.  And then the woman responded, “Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is true.”  God’s Word is truth!  His Word is life!

And God and His Word still work the same way today.  The miracles in today’s readings remind us vividly that there is One – and only One – who touches death and replaces it with life.  God does not delight in death; of that you can be certain.  That is why He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to conquer sin and death by suffering death for us.  And this miracle of life in Zaraphath – as well as the miracle of life in today’s Gospel – serves to give us a preview of the greatest miracle of victory over death.  Our Lord Jesus Christ said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

Dear people of God, the death that surrounds you every day of your lives is something that Jesus went through when He suffered and died on the cross for your sins.  Not only did He suffer physical death, but as He carried the sins of the world in His body, He also experienced spiritual death as He was separated from His Father and forsaken on the cross – and all of this because of our sins.

But Christ defeated even death itself!  For as we confessed earlier, on the third day He rose again from the dead.  And God the Father has accepted the sacrifice of His Son in our place so that we may have new life and look beyond this world to the life of the world to come.

And as you hear from this pulpit every single week, the Lord Jesus Christ continues to deliver new life to us in His gifts of Holy Baptism, Holy Gospel, Holy Absolution, and Holy Supper.

In Baptism the name of the triune God is placed upon us and, in a sense, God “stretches Himself out” over us three times, and we rise to new life touched by Jesus who loved us and gave Himself for us.  St. Paul says it very well when he writes, “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life” (Rom 6:4).

While physical death remains a reality for us, the eternal consequences of separation from God have been wiped out, and we HAVE the promise of the resurrection of our own bodies.  Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die”  (Jn 11:25).

Also, the Sacrament of the Altar is another delivery system of God’s forgiveness and love to us.  For in these earthly elements of bread and wine are also the very body and blood of Jesus Christ – the same body and blood of Jesus which was broken and shed for you on the cross.  In this gift we have the sure and certain forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our faith, and the grace to lead a God-pleasing life.

Dear friends, it was God’s Word which touched that boy in Zeraphath with new life, and he lived to see a new day.  But the fact remains that he later died again physically.  And though we will not live forever on this earth, yet through God-given faith and trust in Christ we have the promise that death is merely the gate through which we pass in order to be with our Savior in eternity.  And that is the promise – bought and paid for in the blood of Jesus – that will see us through this life NO MATTER WHAT.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.