The Compassionate Son of Man

“The Compassionate Son of Man”
Luke 7:11-17
August 17, 2025

Death is something that is often joked about (or not really taken seriously):

• Groucho Marx was frequently asked what he’d like people to be saying about him in a hundred years: “I know what I’d like them to say about me…I’d like them to say, ‘He looks good for his age.’”
• Katherine Hepburn: “Death will be a great relief.…I can’t sit here worrying about religion.  It’s not my business to worry about Heaven and Hell.  I could be dead tomorrow.  Now pass the peanuts.”
• Comedienne Pat Carroll: “Could I leave a wakeup call?”
• Comedienne Joan Rivers: “Wait — can we talk?”
• Artist Salvador Dali: “I do not believe in my death.”
• Actress Carrie Fisher: “I’ve been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn’t look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I’d want someone like me around. And I will be there!”
• British Statesman Winston Churchill: “I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”
• American author Mark Twain: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
• Boxer Joe Louis noted, “Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

Death is something that is often joked about or trivialized, but when the reality is encountered, no one laughs.  No one snickers or laughs at a graveside.  The reality of death always has notes of harshness and bitterness and it always provokes tears, even when it is the death of a godly and aged believer. 

“Death has a voracious, insatiable appetite. Much like a vicious animal, it silently stalks its prey and then strikes with great fury and often little warning. It tears asunder hopes and dreams, and declares that life itself is ‘vanity,’ ‘futility,’ ‘meaninglessness,’ or ‘emptiness’ (lRbRh). Thus death ‘can make a man hate life, not because he wants to die, but because it renders life so futile.’” [Davis, “Death, an Impetus for Life,” Bib Sac (Jul 91): 298.]

No one really laughs at death.  But no one can do anything about death either.  Except the Son of Man. 

In the Gospel of Luke, the author is revealing Christ as the all-powerful Son of Man.  After Luke recorded Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in chapter six, he talks about faith in Christ in chapter seven: Jesus is worthy as an object of our faith (vv. 1-10), explanations about who Jesus is and why He is worthy of believing (vv. 11-35), and the actions and demonstration of faith (vv. 36ff).

In the account before us this morning (7:11-17), Luke doesn’t say anything about whether the people actually believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but he does demonstrate the nature of Christ and why He should be believed (both for salvation and for the everyday affairs of life): 

Trust Christ.  As the Son of Man, Jesus is powerful…and compassionate.

Trust Christ.  Rejoice in Christ.  Worship Christ.  Delight in Christ.  Trust Christ will all your problems (including your largest problems of sin and death), because He is the Son of Man.  And as the Son of Man He is powerful over everything — and as this story demonstrates, everything also includes the great enemy, death.  We often say something like, go to Jesus — run to Jesus — and He will help you. 

But this story also demonstrates that Jesus will also come to you to help you.  That’s His compassion; as He observes our need He delights to care for us.  He is no angry, dispassionate, disconnected, uncaring God.  He is compassionate and kind and loves to care for and love us in our need.  Let’s notice Jesus’ power against and compassion in death in four pictures…

1. Jesus Meets Death (vv. 11-12)
2. Jesus’ Response to Death (vv. 13-14a)
3. Jesus’ Act Against Death (vv. 14b-15)
4. The Response to Jesus and Death (vv. 16-17)

Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 7:11-17.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.