Perservering Faith __ Luke 18:1-8

→ Timothy Keller, A gifted apologist and pastor wrote in his book on prayer, “In the fall of 1999, I taught a Bible study course on the Psalms. It became clear to me that I was barely scratching the surface of what the Bible commanded and promised regarding prayer. Then came the dark weeks in New York after 9/11, when our whole city sank into a kind of corporate clinical depression, even as it rallied. For my family the shadow was intensified as my wife, Kathy, struggled with the effects of Crohn’s disease. Finally, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. At one point during all this, my wife urged me to do something with her we had never been able to muster the self-discipline to do regularly. She asked me to pray with her every night. Every night. She used an illustration that crystallized her feelings very well. As we remember it, she said something like this: Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don’t pray together to God, we’re not going to make it because of all we are facing. I’m certainly not. We have to pray, we can’t let it just slip our minds. Keller, Timothy. Prayer (pp. 9-10). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Jesus certainly had this perspective!

Jesus was and is a man of prayer. I say it in the present tense because he is currently interceding for His bride before the Father. And during His earthly ministry He frequently was found devoting himself to prayer. Before anyone got up, at times all through the night, and more…

And Jesus knew the days ahead were going to be tough for the disciples. He said back in chapter 17:​​25 that “first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.”

And the temptation to lose heart and forsake communion with God would be easier than ever before. So he gives a parable to teach a lesson on how and why to live for God in the face of discouraging times and in the face of injustice…

If you are here today and are Discouraged… Wondering where God is in the midst of your trials… Or maybe you are wondering where God is in the midst of the injustices in the world… Jesus has a word for you…

Or maybe you are here and the sun is shining on you right now… This message is for you as well… Because there are days ahead that will not be so bright… And Jesus is here by His Spirit and Word to equip and prepare you as well…

Before we go any further let’s pray together.

Look with me at Luke 18:1-8 → (READ TEXT)

These are the very words of our God for us!

Jesus gives another parable to teach his disciples, to teach us how to deal with the inevitable injustices of living in a fallen world prior to the full eradication of sin. There are times ahead that the disciples are going to be tempted to think that God is absent… that justice isn’t coming… That evil is winning… So Jesus insightfully and graciously prepares them…

Most immediately He is preparing them for His crucifixion… But this lesson will prove helpful in their future ministries and eventual deaths as well…

And as I stated before , Jesus’ instruction here will also serve us as we wade into the days ahead, knowing either present difficulties or anticipating future difficulties…

What’s interesting, is Jesus' first line of defense against times of injustice, against the temptation to give up… is prayer…

God’s book on proper and effective activism begins, ends and is carried by prayer…

And in these few verses we are going to see three expectations of the Lord as it relates to prayer in the face of trials… We are going to see that in the face of trials God calls us to pray and not lose heart, he calls us to pray with persistence, and he calls us to pray with confidence…

→ Let’s look at the first truth in our text,

In the face of trials God calls us to Pray and Not Lose Heart….

Luke 18:1, “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”

Did you notice that Luke tells us right away the aim of the parable before Jesus speaks it? Normally, if there is an explanation, it comes after… But here, Luke conveniently places the explanation at the beginning, leaving no room for misunderstanding.

Jesus gives them instructions on what to do with the alarming fact that dark days are ahead… And He could have said a lot of different things but he zeroes in on urging them to pray and not lose heart…

He knew that his boys were about to go through the hardest days of their lives… They were not only about to witness extreme injustice, and their Rabbi’s torture and death, they were about to come face to face with the agonizing reality of their own cowardice in the face of adversity…

Jesus knows that prayer is one of the first means of grace that we abandon during prolonged trials … So he graciously directs his disciples to remember to pray…

Don Whitney said it well in his book Spiritual Disciplines,

“To abandon prayer is to fight the battle with our own resources at best, and to lose interest in the battle at worst.”

If Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, devoted himself to prayer… How much more should we?

We would never say that the Bible teaches that God doesn’t hear our prayers or that God doesn’t care about our prayers… But functionally, when times get tough, when waiting becomes long… when dryness of soul lingers…. when times of tragedy hit… when times of unfulfilled desires persist… when times of want become common… when injustice gets personal… the easiest belief in the world to grab ahold of, it seems, is unbelief…

Praying no longer is treated as necessary… No longer treated as a means of grace… No longer seen as desirable… It is seen as merely work… Or simply talking to a wall…And at our worst it is seen as futile…

If difficult times don’t drive us to a deeper reliance on God, we will distract ourselves by busying ourselves or believing lies… We will chase after idols to soothe our sorrows, even if that means seeking our comfort in our religious discipline rather than our savior… Only to find more emptiness…

I have even found that reading my Bible is easier than prolonged consistent prayer… Because with reading, you are at least taking in something tangible… You can still feed your ego when reading the bible… But private prayer… Not so much… Public prayer, sure. You can definitely pat yourself on the back after you pray privately, but that only reveals that that time was likely more about communing with yourself than it was God.

So when we feel extra needy and we aren’t getting the response we are seeking, it is easy to turn away from the Lord… And ultimately depend on ourselves… Even if that looks like running after idols…

Abraham and Sarah when they were tired of waiting on God to deliver a son

Listen to the people of Israel in Exodus 32, “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

This has been going on since the fall… A spirit of discontentment, an overestimation of ourselves… And underestimating and undervaluing God in Christ…

True prayer is a primary means of relying on and finding our satisfaction in the Lord… It is a posture of dependence and ultimate delight… It is a recognition that God is on the throne and we are not… It is a pouring out of ourselves acknowledging our own limitations and His infinite power… That we are not our own… But the creator’s… That He must act if there be justice… That because of our sin, we deserve only His just wrath…

I absolutely love what John Starke writes in his book The Possibility of Prayer

Prayer is the regular practice of lowering ourselves to better views of his work. It’s a strange irony that prayer is the strengthening of an inner muscle that does nothing more than boast in weakness. Prayer gives us ears to hear, knowing we do not listen well, and eyes to see, knowing we are blind to much of what we ought to see. But along the way God transforms our anxious reactions into loving responses, and our fearful hearts into hearts that are not afraid of bad news.

So let us not turn away from our God in prayer and not lose heart…

→ The next truth that we see in our text is found in the parable verse 2-7.

In the face of trials God calls us to Pray with Persistence…

2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?

Remember, a parable is a realistic fictional story given to convey a biblical lesson…

In the parable, there is a lowly woman who does the right thing… She refuses to leave the judge alone until she gets justice…

Now the judge is a low life in the parable… verse 4 says that he neither feared God or respected men… the judge even recognizes this.

Oftentimes people are unaware of how selfish and arrogant they are… But this judge fully owned his wickedness… The man was careless about justice unless it served his agenda… Sounds like politics and social media today…

That aside, the only reason this woman gets justice in the end, is because of her persistence. The judge wanted to get rid of the nagging woman. The text indicates that he felt beat down by her persistence… So in the end, the judge tapped out giving the widow the victory…

You may be wondering at this point, Is the main idea, nag God until he gives you what you want… or at least justice…?

Jesus certainly wants us to receive instruction on HOW to pray in His kingdom… I’m not too sure God can be nagged into action…. But let’s look at the how we are commanded to pray…

First, How might we get prayer wrong?

We could pray with tenacity at first and then assume that if God wants to answer us He will but no need to keep praying…

We could also be tempted to think that we don’t have to pray for justice because God already knows about the situation… He even knows our thoughts…

Yet Jesus here indicates that there is grace to be discovered in persistence…

The woman in the end of this parabolic lesson receives justice because of her persistence…

It would seem that our persistent expectant prayers are a tool that God uses to affect change… This doesn’t contradict God’s control and predestined plan… It simply informs us how His predestined plan works… God works through the prayers of His people…

Do you see injustice happening in the world? Before you lay your hands to a task, Jesus calls you to pray!

When Nehemiah caught wind of how the walls of Jerusalem were broken, the gate burned and the locals in trouble and shame… Before he did anything, he fell to his knees, prayed and fasted for a time…

Why? Because we can labor all day long and effect no change… But we can pray and never lift a finger and watch the hand of God’s justice come rushing in like a title wave…

God is a God who delights in justice… He never calls his people to turn a blind eye toward injustice… The Bible would say that if we are not praying for the observable injustices, we are indeed turning a blind eye to the source of true and lasting justice..

Are there needs in your life? Do you desire to see revival? Are there injustices that are directly affecting you or someone you love? There are many things that God may be calling you to… But Jesus clearly puts persistent prayer as one of your cheif assignments…

God’s people are to be people that never grow weary of lifting requests before the throne… even the same requests for many years… ESPECIALLY ones pertaining to justice and mercy…

Prayer doesn’t give us a license to avoid taking other steps… Prayer actually evidences that we are serious and we know the source of true and lasting change…

Marshall Segal writes, “God’s promises are not excuses to relax and pray less, but give us confidence and urgency before the throne.”

→ Which leads me to the final truth in our text

In the face of trials God calls us to Pray with Confidence

6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The foundation of all biblical prayer is confidence or faith in the character, promises, and care of God… Without faith, prayer is merely an exercise in anxious toil…

Prayer is an expression of confidence in God’s character…

Jesus gives this parable NOT to indicate that God is like the unjust judge… Quite the opposite… He uses a teaching technique that moves from lesser to greater. He makes the point that if this despised widow can get justice at the hands of a wicked judge… Then how much more will God’s beloved people receive justice at the hands of their merciful and gracious God…

Jesus is saying in effect, “Dark days are ahead… run to the one who not only has the strength and comfort to hold you, but has the power and love to pour out justice when there is none…”

Prayer is an expression of confidence in God’s promises:

Gary Millar summarized prayer this way , “Prayer is calling on God to come through on his promise.”

Much of our prayer is simply asking God to do what He said he was going to do… So when you are praying for the salvation of a friend, family member, or stranger… You can pray something like this, “Jesus, you said you came to seek and save the lost… This joker is lost! Please save them! Change them from the inside out… And use them to bring many others to saving faith!”

We see a promise here in verse 8… Let’s start at verse 7.

7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Again, there is no room for misunderstanding here… The question posed in verse 7 is answered in verse 8. Will he delay long over them? No! He will give justice swiftly…

To be clear here, the parable calls for persistence in prayer… Which means that speedily doesn’t mean right away…

Which is why there is a temptation to lose heart… Because God isn’t acting as swiftly as we think He should… Not according to our understanding… not according to our timing… But in light of eternity ALL things get put into perspective…

Keller writes in his book on prayer,“In short, God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knew.”

Prayer is an expression of confidence in God’s care for His people

In unpacking the four components of prayer - Praise, Thanksgiving, Confession and Supplication Megan Hill writes this…

What is praise but telling God who he is? What is thanksgiving but savoring aloud the things he has done? What is confession but lamenting to God that we have sinned against him and how far short we fall of being like him—he who is awesome in holiness? And what is supplication but requesting that God would do those things he most delights to do? What joy! We who know our God, we who belong to him just like children belong to a father, love to pray.

7 And will not God give justice to his elect

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Prayer is delighting in the delight of God…

When Jesus calls his disciples to prayer with persistence… It is not to pray hoping to get God’s attention and affection… Jesus is calling his disciples to pray to the God whose attention and affection they already have…

We are called to pray with confidence, NOT because we need to fake it til we make it… Not because confidence is the key to unlocking the universe…

We pray with confidence because we pray to the God who created and sustains the universe… And that same God set His affection on rebellious sinners… And now uses their prayers to accomplish His will on the earth…

How about that… Blaise Pascal said it well when he said, “Man’s sensitivity to little things and insensitivity to the greatest things are marks of a strange disorder.”

May we grow in the practice of persistent confident prayer as we consider the power and privilege of approaching the throne of grace…

A couple ways that you can do that in community is to be quick to pray over others… Don’t just say you will be praying… Pray right there…

Next, we are trying to build into the life of our church more and more opportunities for us to gather and simply pray. Right now, Robert meets and leads a time of prayer the first Sunday of every month. It is from 8:30am to 9:30am. Parents, you can trade off with your spouse or bring the little ones with you to instill the priority of communal prayer. We want to continue leaning into being a community that prays together.

The other way you can lean in to praying more frequently, is by downloading the echo app and searching for Sovereign Grace Church of Prattville. The app allows you to capture and track all of your own personal prayers as well as your church’s. When you get the app, there are groups and feeds. The church feed is the place where you will get updates on church wide prayer requests. If you are in a group, that is where you can share prayer requests among just that group. When you pray for one of the items in the list, you can notify the group that you prayed for that specific request as an encouragement. You can interact with each request posted, etc.

If you would like to know of any other resources on prayer, including impactful books to read, feel free to see one of the pastors. We would be delighted to point you to giants in the faith that will point you to Jesus and share any nuggets of wisdom they gleaned over the years of following the Lord.

The easiest way to grow in prayer is praying with other people who devote themselves to prayer… Amen?

→ Let us turn now to COMMUNION, where we celebrate together each week the life, death, resurrection and return of our Lord!

Megan Hill said this in Praying Together, “What do our prayers justly deserve? Silence. And yet the God who rejected the prayer of the wrath-bearing Son accepts our prayers because of him.”

Let that sink in for a moment…

In Christ, sinners' prayers are accepted… And they are not only accepted, as if our prayers were like a tax return that the IRS accepts… They are rejoiced over, delighted in… As a father rejoices over his beloved child…

How can this be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood — Died He for me, who caused His pain — For me, who Him to death pursued? — Amazing love! How can it be — That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Did you notice the last part of verse 8? Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

We know that Son of Man came first because there was no faith only rebellion… All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…

We know that when the Son of Man was tried unjustly many of his disciples coward in fear…

Peter out right verbally denied Jesus publicly…

And we know, that the days before His return will be difficult for all who wish to life up the banner of Jesus…

We also know personally that if God had not opened our eyes, we would have no confidence in the character and claims of God…

But for all who are in Christ, the Spirit of God now dwells in us… He has caused us to be born again… Seeing the beauty and wonder of the cross… Experiencing the power of His resurrection…. And we know that there is no power in us apart from Christ… If Christ doesn’t hold us, we are without hope… Yet He calls us to put our hope in Him… He calls us to hold fast… So we do knowing that any strength in us is supplied by His grace and mercy!

If you are in Christ, remember that dark night when Jesus could have lost heart and threw up the white towel… When He said, if there is any other way… But your will be done…

When he was on that cross, forsaken by the father, forsaken by the world… He stayed the course to purchase you and I!

Come to the table celebrating what Christ did on the cross and has done in your life… Commit yourself yet again to depending on Him above all else… And living for His glory until He returns to take you home…

If you are not sure what it means to be born again… And you would like to know what it means to experience salvation… the power and love of God shed abroad in your heart… rescuing you from Satan, sin and death, and freeing you to enjoy God, I would love to speak with you after the service. Just know that as Christians take and eat of these elements, they are receiving ordinary elements that point to Jesus’ body that was broken for them… And his blood that was split to wash them of their blood guilt before God. And the table is a shadow of heaven’s great banquet for the redeemed!

I figured it appropriate to conclude with a prayer from the Valley of Vision entitled “The Second Coming”

O SON OF GOD AND SON OF MAN, You were incarnate, suffered, rose, ascended for our sake;

Your departure was not a token of separation but a pledge of return;

Your Word, your promises, your sacraments, show your death until you come again. And that day is no horror to us, for your death has redeemed us, your Spirit fills us, your love animates me, your Word governs us. We have trusted you and you have not betrayed our trust; waited for you, and not waited in vain. You will come to raise our bodies from the dust, and re-unite them to our souls, by a wonderful work of infinite power and love, greater than that which bounds the oceans’ waters, ebbs and flows the tides, keeps the stars in their courses, and gives life to all creatures. This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal, immortality, this natural body, a spiritual body, this dishonored body, a glorious body, this weak body, a body of power.

Beyond the grave is resurrection, judgment, acquittal, dominion. Every event and circumstance of our lives will be dealt with—the sins of our youth, our secret sins, the sins of abusing you, of disobeying your Word, the sins of neglecting others’ admonitions, the sins of violating our consciences—all will be judged; And after judgment, peace and rest, life and service, employment and enjoyment, for your elect. O God, keep us in this faith, and ever looking for Christ’s return. And this we pray in Jesus name, Amen!