Sermon Tone Analysis

I’m going to quote a famous football movie scene and I wonder how many of you will recognize it.

Rudy: We're gonna go inside, we're gonna go outside, inside and outside.

We're gonna get 'em on the run boys and once we get 'em on the run we're gonna keep 'em on the run.

And then we're gonna go go go go go go and we're not gonna stop til we get across that goal line.

This is a team they say is... is good, well I think we're better than them.

They can't lick us, so what do you say men?

https://www.facebook.com/danielrudyruettiger/posts/rudy-were-gonna-go-inside-were-gonna-go-outside-inside-and-outside-were-gonna-ge/10157760114724284/

This is from the movie Rudy where he is standing in an empty locker room and quoting Knute Rockne the Notre Dame Football coach from the late 1920s that was popularized by the movie Rudy.

Rudy might be considered the best football movie of all time as you follow Rudy and see his perseverance through discouraging events during his high school and college football career being that he was very small in size and had limited athletic ability.

We all have faced discouragement in just about every area of our lives.

John Wesley theologian from 1700s was an outstanding preacher and thinker of his time.

In his journal there is a single page that reads this way.

A single page from the journal of John Wesley reads:

Sunday A.M., May 5—Preached in St. Ann’s; was asked not to come back anymore.

Sunday P.M., May 5—Preached at St. John’s; deacons said, “Get out and stay out.”

Sunday A.M., May 12—Preached at St. Jude’s; can’t go back there either.

Sunday P.M., May 12—Preached at St. George’s; kicked out again.

Sunday A.M., May 19—Preached at St. Somebody Else’s; deacons called special meeting and said I couldn’t return.

Sunday P.M., May 19—Preached on the street; kicked off the street.

Sunday A.M., May 26—Preached out in a meadow; chased out of meadow when a bull was turned loose during the service.

Sunday A.M., June 2—Preached out at the edge of town; kicked off the highway.

Sunday P.M., June 2—Afternoon service, preached in pasture; 10,000 people came.

We can be certain we will face discouragement in our walk with the Lord and in our day to day, but we are called to persevere.

Today’s parable, we will see how the Christian is to persevere by relying on God constantly through prayer.

I have titled this sermon “The Realities of a Persevering Christian” and I hope to share with you 4 of these realities from our text today.

The Reality of Dutiful Prayer

The Reality of our Fallen World

The Reality of Sincere Persistence

The Reality of Faith and Prayer

Before we begin, let us commit our time to the Lord.

The Reality of Dutiful Prayer

Our passage comes right after Jesus is teaching the Pharisees and disciples about the second coming of Christ.

The judgement that will occur at the coming of the Kingdom.

It is worth noting that in Luke’s Gospel we see Jesus and his disciples being rejected by men over and over.

From the end of chapter 9 through chapter 11 they are rejected by people regularly.

Luke highlights the care and compassion of Jesus for the disciples in teaching them to persevere and preparing them for a life of ministry after he departs.

We see that same care from Jesus in our passage today.

Verse one tells us the purpose of telling this parable to the disciples.

Jesus is preparing the disciples for ministry and he shares with them and exposes them to some harsh realities.

He tells them, “You will not see the kingdom the way you expect it” which was to see freedom from Roman rule.

He tells them the cost of discipleship is to deny self.

He tells them that you must lose your life to keep it.

Not only are these messages hard to swallow, but they were not seeing much success in their ministry either.

I wonder if Jesus was sensing discouragement in his disciples which might have led him to give them (and us) this parable to encourage them to pray and not lose heart/persevere.

The pastor and evangelist Dr. Jesse Hendley preached at a Sword and the Lord Conference in 1952.

I want to read the opening remarks of his sermon to you.

We are living in dark days physically.

War clouds continually hang over our heads.

We are living in dark days mentally.

Never have I seen as much trash, filth, dirt and sin being poured out in booklets, magazines, pamphlets, novels, TV and every way else under the sun that people are goggling up.

Then we wonder why we are out of touch with God!

People are reading and thinking all sorts of evil instead of the things of God’s holy Word.

Then we are living in dark days spiritually.

As I travel around I find there are very few who seem to know definitely that they are right with God.

They are muddled in their thinking and in their spiritual experience.

And to multitudes, God seems to be very, very distant.

We are living in dark days spiritually.

We are living in dark days of terrible sin, with sin abounding as never before.

The greatest and most alarming fact is that we Christians seem not to be concerned about it.

He goes on in his sermon and says,

The greatest sin in America is not homosexuality.

The greatest sin in America is not the dirty, filthy magazines which people are reading.

The greatest sin in America is not the adultery and the fornication and the other awful, terrible sins that are going on.

The greatest sin in America is the sin of prayerlessness committed by Christians.

Dr. Hendley’s remarks were true in 1952, but they are just as true for us today.

I believe we have lost the sense of our duty for prayer.

Our first reality for the persevering Christian to the reality of dutiful prayer

We are to bring our concerns and our failures to the Lord.

This is how we are to persevere, by fulfilling our duty to pray.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 “17 pray without ceasing,”

This is how Christians should characterize themselves as being a person of prayer.

Prayer is simply communication with God.

In our Tuesday prayer meetings we have been looking at scripture before we pray to build our vocabulary in our prayers.

Prayer is a discipline that the Christian should dedicate their life to, it is to our benefit to do so.

It aligns our thoughts toward God.

It also gives us perspective as we think about our circumstances in light of eternity.

Also notice Luke’s comments on the parable, he understands the link between prayer and perseverance.

That is what Jesus was teaching the disciples through the parable and what I hope we walk away with today.

An understanding that our ability to persevere is linked to our prayer life.

I’d like to come back to our duty to pray at the end of our time with some practical advise to build our practice for prayer to fulfill our duty.

The Reality of our Fallen World

Our next reality for the persevering Christian is the reality of our fallen world.

Read with me.

Let’s look at each character closely.

Notice how the judge is described by Luke, “who neither feared God nor respected man.”

This is a terrible description of a person.

Someone who does not fear God views the world very different.

When their ethics do not come from Christian principles you begin to live with a different values.

You become more comfortable with living in such a way where the ends justify the means.

It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters that you get what you set forth to obtain.

This isn’t what you want from a judge who is responsible for seeking justice.

The judge was also not seeking to be respected by man.

There are people who aren’t Christian nor hold to Christian values but who care for the marginalized, or who seek the betterment of a community.

That is not this judge.

This judge is a terrible person kind of person.

300 Illustrations for Preachers (Corrupt Judge Sentenced to 28 Years)

In 2009 news surfaced that Mark Ciavarella, a judge in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, had sentenced around 3,000 children to months of detention after they had committed minor infractions.

This corrupt judge was later sentenced to 28 years in prison for accepting $2.2 million as a “finder’s fee” for the construction of a for-profit facility—the same facility to which he had been sending these so-called delinquents.

When the truth came out, 2,480 of those convictions were reversed and expunged.

Corrupt judges like this one do not fear God or other people.