Always Pray. Never Lose Heart
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
What happens when God doesn’t do what he promised he would do in the time-frame in which you think he should? Or even could? There was the perfect opportunity for him to act. Everything was in place and he did not do as you had hoped, he did not do as you expected, he did not answer his own promise. What happens in moments like that?
What happens when you can’t do what God says you will do? When you can’t do what God says you must do? What happens in those moments? What happens when you have been praying and struggling with a sin that so easily besets you but God doesn’t take away the temptation and he doesn’t seem to give you the strength to withstand?
What happens when you have been praying for X to happen and you’ve been praying for weeks, maybe even months or years and God has not responded? As far as you can see and as far as you have read in his Word, there is nothing wrong with your prayer. It seems like this would be a prayer that fits under the category of his will, done in his name, and seems even to be led by the Spirit. But there is radio silence from heaven? What happens in those moments?
I will tell you what can happen. A person who doesn’t see God do as he has promised or God not granting you the ability to do, the strength to withstand, or does not answer the prayer that is so naturally a part of God’s will, that person can lose heart easily and quickly. That person can simply give up on God, and one of the first evidences of giving up is a lack of prayer. While having a robust prayer-life does not necessarily indicate faith, the lack of prayer does indicate a lack of faith.
This morning, we are looking at a passage that is familiar to many Christians; it’s the parable of the persistent widow. Luke tells us from the very beginning that this parable is being told so that Jesus’s disciples do not lose heart. And as we study this passage, I want us to see three propositions to consider as we seek to pray always and never lose heart. The first proposition for us to consider is that we need to understand the Person to whom we pray. The second is that we need need to understand the purpose for why we pray. And the final proposition is that we need to understand the patience after we pray.
We need to understand:
The Person to whom we pray
The purpose for why we pray
The patience after we pray
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.
He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.
And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’
For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man,
yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ”
And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.
And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?
I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
We need to understand the Person to whom we pray.
We need to understand the Person to whom we pray.
The first proposition that we should consider is the we need to understand the Person to whom we pray. And the way that Jesus presents this person is to do so by contrasting an unrighteous judge and The Righteous Judge.
How does Jesus describe this unrighteous judge? He points out four characteristics about this man.
He doesn’t care about God.
In verse 2, Jesus said that this man did not fear God. In other words, he didn’t care if he offended God or not. God basically did not come into his thought process. None of his decisions in life were based on what God would think of him or what God would do to him. So there was no use in trying to confront him about the judgment that was to come.
He doesn’t care about people.
Again in verse 2, Jesus said that he does not respect man. The word that Jesus used actually means that he could not be shamed. Unlike the friend in Luke 11 that gave his neighbor bread because he feared being shamed by the community, this judge has no such fear. These are different words being used, but the essence is the same, except to say that this unrighteous judge did not care what other people thought about him.
He doesn’t care about justice.
Imagine that: a judge not caring about justice. It was only after the woman kept pestering him that he decided to give her justice. If she had not pestered him, justice very likely would never have come.
He only cares about himself.
The only reason this man answered the request of the widow is because she pestered him. I want us to read what this judge said because later Jesus told his disciples to listen to his words.
For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man,
yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ”
He only cares about himself. She is bothering him and so he will do what he has to to get her off his back. His fear was not God’s judgment, not man’s accusations, but physical violence. The reason he gives justice is “so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.” Literally, Jesus said, “so that in the end, she will not give me a black eye.” We ought not think of this scene in the courtroom and we ought not think of this judge as sitting behind a bench with a long black robe. Instead, this was an everyday Joe. He would make his living like everyone else. Being a judge was his second job and he didn’t even get paid for it. Sessions would be held at the town’s gate, not in a courtroom.
So when Jesus states that this widow would come to him, he probably doesn’t mean just at the gate. She’d come to his business. She’d confront him on the streets. She was desperate, and he didn’t care, until he had to care. He was bothered into caring. She pestered him until he ruled on her case.
And Jesus’s point is: THAT IS NOT TO WHOM WE PRAY! That is an unrighteous judge who couldn’t care less about God or man or justice. That’s not God!
What does Jesus say about God?
I want us to notice two characteristics about God:
God is just.
Jesus asks a question in verse 7. “Will not God give justice to his elect?” In the Greek, there are ways that questions can be asked that infer a certain response. We do the same thing in English, “You do want a cookie, don’t you?” “You don’t want a cookie, do you?” I used the exact same words in each sentence, and yet we know that certain answers are expected by how I asked them. The same was in Greek. So when Jesus asked the question, the affirmative was the expected answer. It would be like saying, “God will give justice to his elect, won’t he?” Yes. Yes he will.
But even more than that, Jesus used the aorist tense. The ESV translates this in the future, and that’s fine because typically prayers are answered at some point in the future. But it is in the aorist tense indicating that this is just the way things are. “And God, does he not exercise the giving of justice for his elect?” In essence, this is how God operates. He is a God of justice and he will do justly by his people.
These are his elect, his chosen ones. He cares about them. He loves those whom he has chosen. Unlike the unrighteous judge, the Righteous Judge does care about his people.
God is quick.
Jesus said that when God acts, it will be quick. But don’t take quickness or immediacy. Those are two different concepts. Just because God is quick in doling out justice, doesn’t mean that he will do it immediately. We’ll get more into this later. But for now, let us think back to the last pericope in Luke when Jesus was talking about his second coming. Everyone will be carrying on with life just as always and then suddenly judgment is upon them. No time to go grab our things. No time to turn back. No time to repent and believe. God is quick with his justice., even if he is not immediate.
We need to understand the purpose for why we pray.
We need to understand the purpose for why we pray.
We’ve seen that we need to understand the Person to whom we pray: he is just and he is quick. He cares about his elect and though we don’t see a one to one in the contrast of the unrighteous judge, we know that God cares about his glory. The unrighteous judge didn’t care about God; he had no fear of him, but God does care about himself and his glory. But there is a second proposition that we should consider: we need to understand the purpose for why we pray.
And the answer is simply this: we are needy. We don’t realize how needy we are. The widow in this story understood her neediness; I fear that we don’t.
And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’
Jesus used the imperfect tense when he stated that she kept coming to the judge. The imperfect tense indicates that the action was continuously done in the past (hence “kept coming”). This wasn’t a one time thing. It wasn’t a two time thing. Like I said before, she was hounding this judge. Why? Because she knew there was nothing that she could do. She was a widow. Widows were considered to be some of the most helpless of people. They often had little to live on and much like today, people would take advantage of their estate.
Today, we have those who will call an older man or woman and pretend to be from the IRS or some other institution and say that they owe money. They can pay it off through the phone but only by Amazon gift card numbers. Through trickery, these vulnerable people are out buying $500 worth of Amazon gift cards and giving the caller the numbers.
Another is when a person calls and says, “Hi Grandma, do you know who this is?” And after the grandmother responds, the caller then has some sob story and asks the person to send cash or a gift card to help their supposed grandchild out.
These are pretty sophisticated today, but there were similar ones back in Jesus’s day. Maybe she was scammed, maybe defrauded, maybe harmed or abused. Who knows. She had an adversary and she needed justice. She needed justice. She was needy and not too proud to say it.
Beloved, we do not realize how needy we are. We sing about it. “Lord I need you; oh I need you.” But we don’t believe it. For the most part, we’ve got things handled. It’s a lie that we tell others and it’s a lie that we tell ourselves. I think the biggest difference between the widow and us is simply that the widow remembered she had an adversary. We don’t. Out of sight, out of mind. In fact, we don’t have one adversary, we have three. Paul wrote in
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Did you catch the three enemies? This World, The Prince of the Power of the Air (aka the Devil) and the passions of our flesh. It’s often shortened to “The World, The Devil, and The Flesh.” If one is not attacking us, another one is. And often times they attack all at the same time. We’re being scammed, abused, and harassed nearly every moment of every day and we’re all like “I’m fine! I’m handling it!”
Peter wrote,
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
The lion has our arm in its mouth, up to our elbow, and we keep going, “I got this!” At some point, someone has to say, “You ain’t got this, you idiot. You’ve lost your arm already; what else are you willing to lose?” We don’t see the need for help. We don’t see that our adversary—our adversaries—have us right where they want us. This woman got it and she harassed the judge.
This is why Jesus told us that we can go to God always.
And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?
Day and night. Day and Night. Why day and night? Because that’s how often we are under attack. That’s how much we need God. It’s how much we need to be bringing our petitions to him. In other words, there is no wrong time to pray and there is always time for God to listen.
The purpose of prayer is to show us how needy we are. It is to remind us that we are dependent on God in all of life.
But before moving on, I want us to not only see the purpose of prayer, but prayer on purpose. Notice that the woman was constantly going to the judge. She did not make her request dispassionately (he was afraid it might get violent) nor passively. She was passionate and purposeful. She was determined to find the judge and beg for justice. She woke up determined to see him. She went into town in order to see him. When she found him, she would not let him go until he heard her petition. She was not haphazard about her time with the judge.
How careless we can be with our prayer-lives. How passive we are. We’ll get around to prayer at some point in the day. Much of our prayer-life are quick prayers, quick requests. But needs are rarely fulfilled through quick moments and intimacy is never obtained. The late Jerry Bridges of The Navigator’s wrote, “Unless you plan to pray. . .and set aside a specific time to do it, you will find that you will not carry out your good intentions.” Rarely is that not the case.
So there is the purpose of prayer and prayer on purpose.
We need to understand the patience after we pray.
We need to understand the patience after we pray.
So far we’ve considered the propositions that we need to understand the Person to whom we pray and the purpose for why we pray. Now we consider the patience after we pray. And this is not directly about our patience. Let’s go back to
And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?
That wording, “Will he delay long over them,” is interesting. It literally says “and he is patient over them.” The word used is makrothumeo. It is a combination of two Greek words: makran meaning far away. And Thumeo meaning to make angry. Literally, it means to make angry a long way off. In other words, patient. If this meant, to delay long, it is the only time in the Bible that it would mean this. It always means patient or patience. “Love is patient.” “God is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish.” “Be patient, brothers.”
In this case, we are told that we can come to God day and night. We can hound him a hundred times a day and he will not get rattled. He will not lose patience. He will not be like the unjust judge who was annoyed. He has patience over us. It’s not a question; it’s a statement.
Beloved, this ought to bring delight to our hearts that God is not annoyed by our neediness. I often hear something like, “I feel like I just keep praying about the same thing over and over again.” Great! God isn’t bothered by that. He wants you to come with that request, morning and night.
But it isn’t just that God is patient with us, but it very well could be that God is patient toward others as well—including our enemies. God was patient with the Canaanites for hundreds of years. He told Abraham that his people would be in a foreign land until the time of the Canaanites was up. He was patient with Israel for hundreds of years. God is patient with our enemies, giving them a chance to repent.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
And because God is patient, we too must be patient. We must be patient for God to act.
Moses told the people that if they did not obey the Lord, they would go into exile, but when they repented, God would bring them out, and he would deal with their enemies. He promised them this:
Deut 32:35-36
Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’
For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free.
This is the same promise given to us in Romans 12 and Hebrews 10. We are told not to take vengeance because God is The Righteous Judge who will exercise the giving of justice for his elect. And it was come swiftly—not immediately, but quickly. We need only be patient. Remember the point of the parable? The parable itself is sandwiched between the reason Jesus told it.
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.
Always to pray—day and night, and to not lose heart as we patiently await God’s answer.
And then the other slice of bread is
I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Will he find faith on earth? Or have we lost heart and ceased to pray? That’s what happens when God doesn’t do what he promised he would do in the time-frame in which we think he should or even could. We lose heart.
It’s what happens when we can’t do what God says we will do. It’s what happens when we have been praying and struggling with a sin that so easily besets us but God doesn’t take away the temptation and he doesn’t seem to give us the strength to withstand. We lose heart.
It’s what happens when we have been praying for X to happen and we’ve been praying for weeks, maybe even months or years and God has not responded? We lose heart. And we stop praying because we’ve stopped believing.
We become a prayerless people. And that prayerlessness is telling. It reveals we’ve lost heart and that there is no faith to be found. Are you a prayerless Christian? I doubt any Christian would say yes to that. Prayerless? No. I just don’t pray often. But deep down, we know we are living prayerless lives. Guy Richard said “Persisting in prayerlessness is like persisting in holding our breath under water. If something doesn’t change, we will soon die.”
Conclusion
Conclusion
Certainly every Christian would say, “I don’t pray as often as I should,” and there is certainly some truth to that. Prayer-lives can always improve. But if your life is marked by self-sufficiency and a lack of neediness, or if you’ve lost faith and hope that God hears you, then for all intents and purposes, you’ve stopped praying most likely. Or maybe you’re praying but not really believing God hears you or cares or will ever answer.
Let me encourage you to start praying with what Paul Miller calls “cautious optimism.” He says, “The feel of a praying life is cautious optimism—caution because of the fall, optimism because of redemption.” He goes on to say, “Hope begins with the heart of God. As you grasp what the Father’s heart is like, how he loves to give, then prayer will begin to feel completely natural to you. . . .When you pray, you are touching the hopeful heart of God. When you know that, prayer becomes an adventure.” And if I could I would change that last part to “When you know and believe that, prayer becomes an adventure.”
Prayer
Our heavenly Father,
Make us a praying people. People who understand that you are a God who is righteous and patient. You’re a God who does all things well and desires us to come to you day and night in our neediness. And may we understand that we are more needy than we will ever know. May we humble ourselves into praying and begin this adventure of cautious optimism. Let us be patient with you as you are patient with us.
In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.