Persistent Prayer

I'm going to turn with me to the passage that was read earlier in the service, Luke chapter 18, continuing our study in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

We will be examining this morning verses 1 through 8.

If you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a shelf located in front of you and a black Bible there, a black covered Bible, and encourage you to look on.

You can find the scripture passage on page 877.

And if you don't own a Bible of your own, please take that Bible with you when you leave following the service this morning.

It's our privilege and joy to be able to give that to you.

Let me share a little story.

Johnny, a very bright five-year-old, told his daddy he'd like to have a baby brother.

And along with his request, offered to do whatever he could to help.

His dad, a very bright 35-year-old, paused for a moment and then replied, I'll tell you what, Johnny, if you pray every day for two months for a baby brother, I guarantee that God will give you one.

Johnny responded eagerly to his dad's challenge and went to his bedroom early that night to start praying for a baby brother.

He prayed every night for a whole month.

But after that time, he began to get skeptical.

He checked around the neighborhood and found out that what he thought was going to happen had never occurred in the history of the neighborhood.

You just don't pray for two months and then whammo, a new baby brother.

So Johnny quit praying.

After another month, Johnny's mother went to the hospital.

When she came back home, Johnny's parents called him into the bedroom.

He cautiously walked into the room, not expecting to find anything.

And there was a little bundle lying right next to his mother.

His dad pulled back the blanket, and there was not one baby brother, but two.

His mother had twins.

Johnny's dad looked down at him and said, Now aren't you glad you prayed?

Johnny hesitated a little and then looked up at his dad and said, Yes, but aren't you glad I quit when I did?

Jesus here, that's a very humorous story to talk about a very serious challenge here.

Jesus is talking about prayer.

And he is teaching them to pray and not lose heart.

In fact, uh Jesus up front tells us what the point of this passage is.

If you look in verse 1, it says, and he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

So right here at the beginning, Jesus tells us exactly what it is that this parable is teaching us.

It's teaching us to always pray and not lose heart.

It's a lesson in persistence, in perseverance, in not losing heart, in continuing to trust God and to believe Him for what He has said He's going to do, both now and at His return in bringing justice.

Well, why do we give up praying?

What are some of the reasons that we give up, that we lose heart?

I think a lot of things go through our minds.

I think sometimes we think God doesn't hear us.

We pray and we pray and we pray, and after a time we feel like our prayers are going nowhere, and in our hearts we become discouraged and we begin to wonder if God's really listening.

Does God really hear us?

Or maybe sometimes we believe the lie that God doesn't want to answer us.

That God doesn't want to answer us, that there is something that is causing God to turn away from us, that he doesn't want to answer our prayers.

And so we become discouraged.

Or maybe we think that God isn't paying attention.

You know, that God is so busy that he's distracted from us.

And we wouldn't think this in our heads, but in our hearts we feel as if God is so busy that uh that he's distracted, that he's not paying attention, uh, that he's disinterested in us, that he's aloof, that he's distant, and so that's why uh we don't have the answers to our prayer.

Or maybe we lose heart because we don't believe that prayer is important, uh, that we get into this fatalistic mindset and we don't understand that God works through prayers, that that is the instrumental means for accomplishing his purpose, and so we begin to have this fatalistic mindset to say, well, prayer doesn't matter.

You know, what's going to be is going to be, and so what does it matter?

And so we begin to lose heart because we don't believe that prayer is vital and important and central to what God is doing and the unworking, the outworking of his plan.

Or maybe we get discouraged because we don't know how to pray.

We uh are uh uncertain about talking to God, and so we don't know what it is that we're supposed to do, and so uh rather than just having a conversational uh dialogue with God, we think there's some certain prescribed way to talk to God, and so we don't know what the formula is, and so we don't pray.

Or maybe we, as we said before, that not only is prayer, we don't believe it's important, that it doesn't make a difference, but honestly, prayer is hard work.

It's hard work to pray.

It isn't easy to carve out time in our day to set aside.

It isn't easy for us to quiet ourselves down from the busyness of life, and uh so often we don't see the productivity and sitting there and in our minds doing nothing, and so we find it hard work to pray.

We're so distracted by other things, uh, the incessant beeping of our phones and uh of the television and the internet and the radio and other people that it's hard work to pray.

There's so much evil in the world as well that we get discouraged.

We look around and we read the newspaper, we see all of the violence, all of the injustice, all of the evil that's around us.

We turn on the TV and our senses are bombarded with all of the evil in this world and wars and famine and things going on in Washington and Bismarck and Grand Forks, and we get discouraged.

There's so much that's going on, so much evil, even that we see around us, maybe even evil that has happened to us, injustice that we have endured.

And we get discouraged.

So Jesus tells us here that we ought to always pray and not lose heart.

To always pray in every way at every time, that prayer ought to be the natural ongoing response of our hearts towards God.

That there ought to be a constant attitude of communion with God.

That, you know, I think about it and I don't use it quite as much as I used to, but I have a Bluetooth earpiece.

Some of you have seen it in, some of you have have given me a hard time about it.

Uh kind of look like a cyborg, it's always attached, and um and and it's it's uh Bluetooth attached to my phone.

And uh, you know, the great thing about it is you can talk hands-free.

You know, I see here in North Dakota everyone driving like this, and you know, at least I have both hands on my steering wheel when I'm not paying attention.

Um but the great thing is that you can constantly uh be in conversation.

And uh when it when it first came out, I remember the first time I saw one, I thought the guy was crazy.

I was in a I remember being in an airport, and I saw this guy, he was in a bookstore and he's bending down, he's just talking to himself.

And I was in California at the time, so I was used to people talking to themselves, but usually out in the streets, not you know, not nicely dressed in an airport bookstore.

Uh but then he turned and I realized that he had this Bluetooth earpiece in and that he was on the phone, that it was uh wirelessly attached to his phone and he was in conversation.

And I thought, that's cool, I have to buy one of those.

And the great thing is, is wherever I was going, when I was out in the especially grocery shopping, you know, I would have Jen on the line all the time.

She'd send me and I'd have no idea what to buy.

But I could be walking along and in constant conversation with her.

I could be listening to her and talking to her and asking questions.

As I went about my day, as I went about my grocery shopping, I had this open line of communication with Jen in order to know what it is that she wanted, and I could ask her questions and talk to her and carry on a conversation.

And that's how our prayer life ought to be.

That's how our relationship with God ought to be.

To constantly be in communication with God.

We ought to pray always, it says.

Always to pray.

And sometimes it's just in our hearts as we're going throughout our day, and sometimes it's a time set aside to actually talk to God and listen to God and read his word, but we ought to always pray and not lose heart.

Well, Jesus gives a parable secondly now.

He he tells us to persevere, but now we have a lesson in contrast in these next verses.

First of all, he says that there's a judge.

There's a certain judge, this self-serving judge.

Look at what he says in verse 2.

He says, In a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.

This judge was corrupt.

He had no concern for people, he had no sense of justice, he had no sense of responsibility, he was beholden to nobody, he didn't fear God, and he didn't care for people.

He was an unjust judge, he was a corrupt politician, and the only thing that he cared about was himself.

He had no concern for anybody else.

It didn't matter justice.

He had no sense of responsibility or ownership to what he was called to do.

He was a man of the world.

Uh, typical of a local Gentile judge known throughout the Hellenistic world, this is what one commentator said.

This was typical.

This was common.

That you would go to a judge and you wouldn't expect justice.

In fact, a judge, and this is true around the world in many places today, uh this judge lived off a bribe.

Uh, there were only two ways to get a judgment for that you wanted with a judge like this.

Either you had to be a person of influence, you had to be somebody prominent or in a position of power and influence, and then the judge would notice you because ultimately it was going to be in his best interest.

If he uh showed you favor, then you would be obligated to show him favor at some time in the future, and so he would do it in order to uh to get something from you later, or else he would get something from you now.

He would expect a bribe.

So either you had to be a person of influence or you had to give give the judge a bribe.

And the wit the widow had neither.

She had neither.

Uh, she had nothing.

He he didn't fear God or respect man.

Now, how unlike God's call to a judge.

Uh this is what God said about a judge.

He says, Consider what you're doing, for you do not judge for man, but for the Lord who is with you when you render judgment.

Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you.

Be very careful what you do, for the Lord our God will have no part in unrighteousness or partiality or the taking of a bribe.

That's what God says in 2 Chronicles 19, verses 6 and 7.

2 Chronicles 19:6

And this man is the exact opposite of what God calls a judge to be.

And then you have the widow.

It says, And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Give me justice against my adversary.

Most likely this widow was helpless and friendless.

One author said, A widow in that time may not necessarily be old, since a young woman often got married in her early to mid-teens, and the life expectancy for men who reach adulthood often did not exceed 30 something.

Men died early then.

The life expectancy was around 40, maybe a little bit less, depending on the circumstances.

She was helpless and she was friendless.

She was powerless.

Widows were among the most defenseless of Hebrew society.

In fact, the Old Testament referred to them being oppressed and taking advantage of.

They were often legal victims.

And this was the case for this poor woman, said another author.

She had nobody there.

She didn't have an advocate.

She didn't have somebody there on her behalf who was going to stand in the gap, who was going to defend her, who was going to argue her case, who was going to make sure that justice came to bear in this unjust situation.

She had been taken advantage of in some way.

Some adversary had taken advantage of her, and she was looking for and asking for justice.

And the two options that she would have had, either to be a person of influence or else to offer a bribe, they weren't open to her.

She could do neither.

Neither of those options she could do.

So what does she do?

Well, she did have one other option.

She could be an egg.

She could be a pest.

Look at what it says.

It says, for a while he refused, but so she, this widow, she kept coming to him and saying, Give me justice against her adversary.

She kept coming to him.

For a while he refused.

It says she continually came to him.

And the language here for continually came to him wasn't just while he was in his official position as judge.

What it says here is this woman just kept nagging him.

She kept hounding him.

Whenever she saw him, she went up to him and said, Give me justice.

If he was in the marketplace and she saw him, she said, give me justice.

If he was walking down the street and she saw him, she said, give me justice.

This man had no rest from her.

She was following him and seeking justice, no matter where he was, throughout the day, every day, continually, over and over and over again, to the point where he gets so frustrated, he says, Fine.

You know, after a while he says, fine.

He says to himself, though neither I fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, because she keeps pestering me, because she keeps nagging me, I will give her justice.

So then she will not beat me down by her continual coming.

She gets justice not because the judge wanted justice, not because of the righteousness of his heart, or because the case was a valid case.

She pestered him into giving her what he didn't want to do in the first place.

In fact, the only reason he does it is because she was wearing him out.

He was just getting tired of it.

And the phrase here literally means to give, uh, to blacken my eye.

And possibly what it's saying here is she was so adamant about it and so insistent about it that people were starting to see and people were starting to talk.

It was starting to affect his reputation.

He wasn't worried that she was going to attack him physically, but perhaps he was worried that his reputation was becoming even more tarnished, and suddenly there was justice.

And how often do we see this in real life?

Um, you know, it's funny watching the local news and both here and in San Diego and Chicago, and and I remember watching, it wasn't too many months ago down in Fargo.

I was watching the uh the news from Fargo, and and uh they had a story about an apartment building that was just uh filled with with mold.

I don't know, some of you may remember it, they they but it was just filled with mold, and they and uh finally they they kept going to the landlord, kept going to the landlord.

Nothing would be done, nobody would do anything about this.

It was in a poorer section of town and in uh low-cost apartments, and and so finally, after nobody would do anything, they called the news.

And and the news came with cameras and began to tour the apartments and uh began to show pictures of the mold that was that was growing up the walls and the and the holes that were starting to fall in where the drywall was so rotted because of all of the moisture.

And it was amazing how quickly the landlord responded.

Suddenly, suddenly, his interest uh is on this situation.

And it wasn't because there there was this movement in the landlord's heart that, you know, I really need to have compassion on these tenants, and and this is my responsibility.

No, he realized that he was going to be publicly shamed for his lack of attention.

And so he finally responded.

So, what does this passage teach us about prayer?

Well, it teaches us that we need to nag and pester God incessantly to relent and give us what he doesn't want to do.

No, that's not it.

Um of course that isn't what this passage teaches.

It's a lesson in contrast.

But you know, you know, honestly, I think we fall into that mindset sometimes.

I think sometimes we think that persistence in prayer is nagging.

You know, that God really doesn't want to answer our prayers.

And of course, we would never say this.

You know, a lot of times, you know, we have we have perfect theology in our heads, but then how our heart really responds is so different.

And we would never say it, we would never verbalize it, but in our hearts we think, God, do you really want to, are you really paying attention?

Do you really want to answer?

Do you really care?

Are you interested in me?

Do you see what's going on?

And sometimes we think that, well, the only way that we're gonna get what we want is if we pray and pray and pray, and we're gonna neg God, and eventually he's gonna give us what he doesn't want to give us.

That somehow our prayers over time are going to hit a critical mass.

And we have odd, we have odd ideas about prayers in our in our hearts and our minds.

Sometimes we think that, well, it's a it's the volume of prayer.

Or maybe it's who prays.

You know, like a pastor's prayer counts for twice as much as just a person in the congregation, and the senior pastor's is four times as much.

So if you can get him to pray for you, you're golden.

Um, you know, we have these weird ideas about prayer.

Or if we, you know, if we get 10 people to pray, then God may not hear, but if we get 20 people, now we've had critical mass, and now God needs to answer our prayers.

And so we have these ideas about prayer that it's the, or maybe we just say, well, it's the amount of times I pray.

If I pray every day, uh three times a day, and then after a while, eventually God's going to give me what he wants because it's the I'll hit critical mass, and then God will have to answer my prayers.

And none of those things reflect the relational reality of what prayer is, and it doesn't take into consideration what God is doing in our lives and what God is doing in the world around us.

But this parable is a lesson in contrast, and this is what Jesus wants us to understand about God, about justice, about us, and about prayer.

Uh the unjust judge is contrasted with the just Father.

Uh Kent Hughes on this passage says this the judge was unloving, evil, ungracious, merciless, and unjust.

But God is loving, good, gracious, merciful, and just.

Moreover, whatever God is, he is infinitely.

He is infinitely loving, infinitely gracious, infinitely merciful, and infinitely just.

When I was in college, one of my professors, he had this great phrase we'd whenever something came up and we were talking about things and something that God did, he would say, Isn't that just like God?

Isn't that just like God?

To move and to work and to and really that ought to be the attitude of our hearts towards God.

Isn't that just like God?

God is infinitely loving and infinitely gracious, infinitely merciful, and infinitely just.

So we look at this judge and we see a lesson in contrast.

We look around in this world and we see the injustice and we know that God is not like that.

God is our loving, gracious, merciful Father, and He cares for you and what you're going through and the circumstances you're facing, and His eye is on you.

He has not forgotten you, He has not abandoned you.

He is watching over you and He cares for you.

And He is so unlike this unjust judge in every way.

But then this widow is contrasted as well.

The insignificant widow is contrasted with God's chosen people.

The widow is, in the eyes of society, an insignificant nobody.

She was helpless and defenseless.

She had no advocate.

She had no helper.

She had nobody to come alongside her.

She was oppressed and taken advantage of.

And in a very real sense, she felt abandoned.

She felt discarded.

She was ignored.

Nobody looked out for her.

Nobody cared for her.

Nobody watched out.

But that isn't who we are.

Look at what he says in verse 7.

Will not God give justice to his elect?

Unlike this widow, we are God's chosen people.

We are the elect of God.

She was an insignificant nobody, but we are children of the king.

We are the objects of God's love and affection.

We are the apple of God's eye.

We were created in the image of God, and we were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb who is our Savior.

God has placed his love and affection upon you.

You are his child.

We have an advocate.

We have one who comes alongside.

We have a loving Savior.

We have a loving Father who's looking out for us.

We have a God who cares for us.

And we don't have to nag and pester God incessantly to hear our prayers and answer them.

He cares for us.

And we are his and he is ours.

But Jesus here tells us that prayer is still a lesson in perseverance.

Notice what Jesus says here, and we have to put it in the context of the larger passage that we've been studying already.

But look at what Jesus says here.

He says that, he says, Will he delay long over them?

I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

He will bring justice to them quickly, is what he says in verse 8.

Now, does this mean that God's going to answer our prayers instantly?

Is that what Jesus is saying here?

That he will not delay long over them, that he will give justice to them speedily?

Now we have to step back and keep this in context of what we saw in chapter 17.

Remember, the chapter breaks which aren't in the original text are helpful for us to find our place, but they were added on.

And sometimes they can break our train of thought with what came before.

And remember, what he was talking about before was the coming of the Son of Man.

Well, it was the coming in justice that God was going to bring when Christ returned.

Turn with me to 2 Peter chapter 3.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

In chapter 3, look at what Peter says in verses 8 and 9.

2 Peter chapter 3, beginning in verse 8.

2 Peter 3 · chapter mention

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises.

Some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

God's justice is not instant.

A thousand years is like one day to the Lord, but justice will come quickly.

Literally, what it says here is in haste, they will come speedily.

And when Christ returns, justice will come swiftly.

You know, we need to keep that in mind.

We also need to keep in mind that in light of eternity, what we go through moment by moment, what we go through in this life is only a momentary reality.

Jesus says here that justice will come quickly.

When the Son of Man returns, there will be justice, and every wrong will be made right, every injustice will be addressed, every tear will be dried, will be wiped away, because God will bring justice.

All of the injustice and inequality that we see in this world, when Christ returns, it will be dealt with, it will be met with perfect justice.

But in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 17 and 18, Paul also gives us this reminder.

2 Corinthians 4:17

He says, So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting to where our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

As we look not to what the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

The Bible also tells us that what we go through in this life, in these 30 or 40 or 50 or 70 or 80 or 90 years, is but a moment in comparison to eternity.

And that we need to weigh what we face in this life in comparison to what awaits us in the next.

And he says that there's no comparison to what we look forward to in the eternal state.

But why does God sometimes seem silent when we pray?

Why does God sometimes seem silent when we pray?

I think there are several reasons.

I'll give you a few.

I'm sure there are many more than this, but let me just give you a few to think about.

I think sometimes God seems silent, or God is silent, because his answer is a loving no.

My kids in Walmart, that's a disaster, that's a recipe for disaster, by the way.

I think Walmart intentionally puts everything right at kids' eye level, especially when you check out.

If you think you've made it through, and then you hit the checkout and you have little kids and they put all of the candy at eye level.

And my kids want everything.

I know your kids didn't, but my kids want everything.

And if I gave them everything that they wanted, I would not be a loving father.

If I gave my kids every piece of candy, every toy, every trinket, every novelty item, every piece of clothing that they that their hearts wanted, even if I could afford it, if I gave it to them, I would not be a loving father.

I would be an abusive father.

Because I would be instilling in them a heart that is very much in contrary to what God wants for us.

They would be greedy and selfish and self-centered and covetous and always wanting and never satisfied and never content.

And sometimes God doesn't give us what we ask for because it is the loving answer.

No.

Sometimes silent because his answer is bigger than we ever could have imagined or asked for.

Oswald Chambers said, Perhaps one day we will stand before God and find that our prayers we clamored for in the early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way.

And that God's silent has been the sign of the answer.

And sometimes God is doing more than we can imagine, and we're asking for this small thing, but God says, I have things beyond what you can ask for or imagine, but you don't understand right now what I'm doing.

And so it seems like I'm answering no, but there's something far greater.

Sometimes God is silent to teach us to trust Him more.

You know, if God gave us everything we wanted, uh, as I said, we'd become spoiled.

We would, we would, uh, we wouldn't know how to wait, we wouldn't know the answer, no.

But but imagine if the instant we prayed, we got everything we wanted.

We would be these petulant children that the moment something didn't go our way, we'd stamp our feet and walk away.

And and God doesn't give us what we want because he wants us to learn to trust him when we don't have the answers that we want and we don't understand what he's doing.

It's a matter of trust.

And sometimes God is silent to allow our prayers to deepen and mature.

You know, although God doesn't get, uh we don't get God's attention by nagging, there is a place for fervency and persistency in prayer.

God wants to deepen us and to deepen our trust and our reliance upon Him.

But when we don't get what we want, we can become discouraged.

We can become despondent, we can lose heart.

And sometimes God is doing something that we don't see.

We think that the best way that God could do it is my way.

That if God just understood that I knew better than him and I had a better plan than him, and if he would just take my advice, everything would be so much better in this world.

But God wants us to understand in humility and dependence and trust on him to say, You are my loving father.

I don't understand why you're doing what you're doing.

I don't understand why it happened the way that it did.

I don't understand why this circumstance happened, or my past is this way, or I lost this job, or I this investment went south.

I don't understand what you're doing, God, but I trust you because you are my loving father and you care for me, and you know what is best, and I can only see this moment, and I think I understand what you're doing, but I don't.

And I need to trust you because you care for me.

And God wants to deepen us and strengthen us and build in us a character and a sturdiness.

Because Jesus says, otherwise, what will happen?

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on this earth?

If we are so temporary and momentary and demanding, we don't have faith.

We don't trust God to be God and to believe that he knows what is best and he sees the end from the beginning, and he is working out his plan in your life and in this world, and he is working towards a goal that is unstoppable.

And that even the things that you look at in your life and you don't understand, God has a purpose for.

And that he is your loving father and he cares for you.

And he wants you to trust him, and he wants you to keep asking and keep praying and keep waiting and keep longing, and know that one day that every wrong will be made right, and then in the meantime, in the meantime, trust him that he cares for you.

Let's pray.

Father God, as we are here this morning, Lord, we look at our lives, we look at our past, we look at our struggles, we look at our circumstances, we think of the pain in our lives, the hurt that has happened to us, the things people have done against us, the the things that have been said, the slander, all of the evil that's in this world, all of the injustice that surrounds us.

And a part of us, Lord, cries, how long, oh Lord?

And why don't you do it now?

We don't know.

Oh, but Lord, help us to not lose heart.

Help us to not distort our understanding of who you are in our hearts, that we will trust you and know that you are our heavenly Father and know that you know the end from the beginning, and that you care for us, that your eye is upon us, you're watching over us, and that everything that has happened in our lives, that you have assigned for good, because we are your children.

That we are yours and you are ours.

You have called us to yourself, and that you have called us to this privileged position by your grace.

Help us to trust, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.