[Machine transcription]
The unrighteous judge says,
though I neither fear God nor respect man,
yet because this widow keeps bothering me,
I will give her justice.
Amen.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Rose, you are baptized.
And baptism comes with a lot of promises,
Baptism, the Bible says, saves us, 1 Peter 3.21.
Paul says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into His death, Romans 6.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, Galatians 3.
Jesus promises whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, Mark 16.
In our baptism, our sins are forgiven.
Saint Peter preached in the book of Acts, repent and let every one of you be baptized
in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the promise
of the Holy Spirit, Acts chapter 2.
Arise and be baptized, says Saint Paul in Acts 22.
Arise and be baptized and wash away all your sins.
According to His mercy He saved us, Paul writes to Titus 3, 5, through the
washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. And it is our Lord
Jesus Himself who does this washing, Rose. Christ loved the church and gave
Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the
water by the word Ephesians 5. So rose to you and to all of you baptized the
Lord has put his name on you the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit which means that all that he has is yours and one of the great gifts
that the Lord Jesus gives to the baptized is the great gift of
prayer.
And that’s what we want to put our attention on today because Jesus has for us a little
sermon to encourage us to not grow weary in prayer.
Now we’ll begin with a couple of reflections on the importance of prayer.
It’s all over the Scriptures.
But this occurred to me a couple of years back when I was visiting with a theologian,
John Kleinig is a teacher in Australia and perhaps one of the busiest and most productive
pastors I’ve ever met.
If you don’t know his name, you’ll hear it.
I talk about him all the time, but he’s written numbers of books.
He’s written Old Testament and New Testament commentaries.
He’s written texts on practical theology and spiritual warfare.
He’s lectured all over the world.
He’s been a pastor, a pastor at a school, a Lutheran boarding school, and trained a
generation and a half of pastors in Australia.
And Dr. Kleinig said to us one time, he said, my most important work has been my prayer.
Now, that is really quite something.
It shocked me, but I think he’s right.
But the most important work that the Lord has given us to do is the work of prayer.
I want to give you a Luther quote.
We have Reformation Sunday next week, and you know, if you were to ask what is the Reformation
or what caused the Reformation, we might say the preaching of the gospel or this or that,
the posting of the 95 Theses, we might point to the history, or there’s a lot of things
that we might think about.
But here’s what Luther says about the whole thing, about why the gospel has stood, about
why the church has stood, about why the Reformation was a success, about why the earth even stands
to this day.
He says this, “‘For this we must know, that all our shelter and protection rest in
prayer alone, for we are far too feeble to cope with the devil and all his power and
adherents that set themselves against us, and they might easily crush us under their
feet.
Therefore, we must consider and take up those weapons which the Christians must be armed
with in order to stand against the devil.
For what do you think has hitherto accomplished such great things?
Has checked or quelled the counsels, purposes, murder, and riot of our enemies, whereby
the devil thought to crush us together with the gospel?
No, except that the prayer of a few godly men intervened, like a wall of iron on our
side.
We should have witnessed a far different tragedy, namely how the devil would have destroyed
all of Germany in its own blood, but now they may confidently deride it and make a mockery
of it.
Lord, we shall nevertheless be a match both for themselves and the devil by prayer alone,
if we only persevere diligently and do not become slack.
For wherever, Luther concludes, for wherever a godly Christian prays, dear Father, let
thy will be done, God speaks from on high and says, yes, dear child, it shall be so
in spite of the devil and all the world.
Dear saints, the most important work that the Lord has given to you and to me is the
work of prayer, that we intercede for the world and the church, that the Lord’s will
would be done, that His Word would come, that His kingdom would be found, and that His will
would flourish.
Now, as an aside, this is an especially important thing to realize whenever we start to get
old and all of the questions of old age start to crop up.
Now, I’m going to preach a little bit to the elderly.
You have to decide if that counts as you or not.
But oftentimes what happens when we get older is we start to ask the question, you’ve
asked me this question, Pastor, what good am I?
What am I good for?
We see our own culture prizes youth so highly, and the energy and the vigor of youth, that
when that vigor and strength starts to fade, we start to see ourselves as useless.
I can’t go to work, I can’t accomplish anything, I can’t contribute to whatever, this and that.
I used to be busy all the time, doing things all the time, and now I can’t do anything.
Even the things I want to do, it takes me all morning just to put my shoes on, or whatever.
And we say, what good am I in this life?
But if we understand â now listen â if we understand the importance of prayer, and
we understand things from the Lord’s perspective, then we should see age and even weakness and
frailty as a gift, that finally we’re useful.
I mean, just think about it practically.
You know the difference between being old and being young.
You have time, you have your priorities straightened out, you know that the most important thing
in life is your family, you know the Bible, you’ve studied it your whole life and you
have some sense of right and wrong, you’re able to see with perspective and the way that
the culture is going and to rise above it, and you have authority in your families.
Now I don’t quite understand this, but I know that prayer and the offices that the
Lord gives us are connected, so that there is an effectiveness, a spiritual effectiveness
of the prayers of the parents for their children, and especially of the grandparents for their
children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren.
When we understand this, that we understand that the Lord basically our whole life was
preparing us to be old so that we could finally do the thing that matters and spend time
in prayer.
In fact, look, I’ll tell you, if you just were to think about this in the church, if
we were putting together the church softball team versus putting together the church prayer
team, you’re using very different priorities.
In other words, if you were out there picking those who are the spiritually fittest, those
Those who are prepared to be spiritual athletes, those who are ready to go out to engage in
spiritual warfare, you’re picking the grandfathers and the grandmothers in the Christian church.
And this means, you know, when the pastors get together, oftentimes you can find them
lamenting the aging of the church and they say that the church is full of young people.
people, if we had spiritual eyes â the church is full of old people, sorry â if we had
spiritual eyes, we would say, God be praised for that.
Now it’s not though just for the elderly, but for all Christians in all times of their
lives and in all places to be engaged with this work of prayer.
But Jesus knows that it’s hard, that prayer is difficult, and that we are quick to give
up on our prayers, and so He gives us encouragement, and He gives us encouragement today in the
parable in a particularly unexpected way.
Now I would expect, if Jesus were to come and say, okay, I want to give you a parable
to encourage you to pray, I would expect Jesus to give us a parable about an athlete that
finishes the race, or about a soldier who continues fighting, or even about a heavenly
father who’s waiting for the children to cry out to Him.
But Jesus gives us this completely unexpected parable of a godless judge.
It’s really quite a funny picture.
I think it’s meant to be funny by Jesus.
He says, can you imagine a judge who doesn’t fear God and he doesn’t care about men?
He’s not a good judge at all.
He’s a wicked judge.
He’s probably in the office just for himself.
He’s hoping that people will give him bribes.
That’s why he doesn’t want to hear from this widow, because she doesn’t have anything
to give him.
She doesn’t have a way to pay him off, so he wants to put her off.
He doesn’t want to hear what she’s saying.
He’s in it for himself.
He’s not in it for justice.
He’s not in it for righteousness.
He’s not in it for right and wrong.
He’s not even in it to save face.
He has no fear of God.
He has no love for his neighbor.
He’s just a wicked man.
And yet the widow keeps going and keeps showing up every day in court, begging, requesting,
asking for justice.
And, at last, the judge gives her justice, not because he’s good, or decent, or loving,
or anything like that, but just because he’s sick of her.
He can’t be bothered.
And Jesus says, that’s how we should pray.
There’s a similar parable that Jesus tells in Luke chapter 11.
It’s of a man who has a visitor come late at night, and he doesn’t have any food to
give him, and so he goes and he knocks on his neighbor’s door, and he says, hey, could
I have some bread?
Could I have some food?
And he says, no, go away, we’re in bed already, the kids are asleep, I don’t want to get up
and answer.
But he says, he finally gets up and gives the neighbor some bread, not because he loves
him, not because he’s a good neighbor, not because he has any care for him, but just
because he won’t go away.
He keeps knocking.
He’s a pest.
This widow is a pest.
She’s a nuisance.
grace, and Jesus says, that’s how I want you to pray.
I want you to bother me.
I want you to pester me.
I want you to knock and keep knocking and keep knocking.
In fact, when Jesus says that in the parable, in the Sermon of the Mount, excuse me, when
He says, ask, knock, and seek, whoever asks will receive, whoever knocks the door will
be opened, whoever seeks will find.
And this is the sense of the original text, it’s not just ask one time, but to the one
who keeps on asking, to the one who keeps on seeking, to the one who keeps on knocking,
they will receive, and they will find, and the door will be opened.
And this is exactly what the Lord wants, that we would pester Him with our prayers.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this pastor, I think the Lord is getting tired
of hearing from me.
I keep praying, and I keep praying for the same thing.
I mean, I’ve been praying for the same thing for days, for weeks, for months, for decades.
I’ve been praying for the same thing, and I just think the Lord has got to be getting
sick of hearing it.
And to that I say, good.
To that, Jesus says, good.
It’s exactly, exactly what he wants.
Now one of the problems that we have is that it seems to us like God is slow to answer
our prayers.
But we are not alone.
I looked it up.
Do you know that the question, how long, occurs 130 times in the Bible?
130 times.
When you pray that question, when your heart longs for an answer to the Lord, you are in
good company.
Here’s some verses.
I’m not going to read all 130 of them, but here’s a handful.
Psalm 6, verse 3, my soul also is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long?
Psalm 13, verse 1 and 2, how long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever?
Remember, how long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Psalm 79, how long, O Lord?
Will you be angry forever?
Will your jealousy burn like fire?
prayer. Psalm 80 verse 4, O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s
prayers? So look, as you pray and as you wait and as you wonder how long you, dear saints,
are in good company, King David and Moses and the sons of Korah ask the same question.
Elijah, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Job prayed the same prayer.
The Lord always is moving slower than we would like, but there’s maybe a couple of things
to reflect on there.
The first is that every petition, every prayer that we ask of the Lord is at first an unanswered
prayer.
prayer.
If we had it, we wouldn’t be asking for it.
So that every prayer starts as an unanswered prayer, and that’s exactly what the Lord
wants.
He wants us to have a life of waiting, of waiting on Him, of wrestling with Him, of
demanding from Him a blessing.
So, we pray, and we don’t grow weary.
We trust, and we live in a confidence that the Lord who hears our prayers will answer
them.
Now, some of you have been, you know, praying these long prayers and about the things that
matter most to you.
You’ve been praying and asking that the Lord would bring your children back to church or
bring your grandchildren back to church, or that He would give faith to your neighbor,
or He would give relief to your friend or to your parents, and you’ve been praying
this prayer for a long time, and you are tempted to become weary of this prayer.
You are tempted to become tired.
You are tempted to think that the Lord is tired of hearing it, but Jesus says to you
today, keep praying, keep asking, keep knocking, and the Lord who hears will
answer. Here’s the promise, 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9,
the Lord, says St. Peter, the Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some
Some count slowness, but He is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but
that all should reach repentance.
So we pray, and we trust, and we hope, and we know that the Lord answers prayer.
May this confidence be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord, amen.
Please stand.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.
Amen.
