There's a lot of garage sales signs always up around Secret
Harbour and the devil decided to have a garage sale and it was
advertised that he was putting a lot of these old tools up for
sale. On the date of the sale, the two
tools were placed out on tables for public inspection, prices
next to them, each marked with its sale price as I said, And
there was a treacherous lot of implements for sale.
You could buy hatred, envy, jealousy was for sale, doubt,
lying, pride and so on all Satan's tools.
But laid apart from the rest of the pile was a harmless looking
tool, well worn, priced extremely high.
The name of the tool wasn't on there.
So one of the buyers said, what's what's that one over
there and why is it so pricey and what is the name of that
tool? Or said the adversary saying he
says that's discouragement. Why have you priced it so high?
The buyer said well, he said, because it's more useful to me
than than the others. I can pray open and get inside a
person's heart with that one when I cannot get near him with
other tools. Now once I get inside, I can
make him or her do what I choose.
It's a deadly word tool because I use it on almost everyone.
Very few people know that it belongs to me.
I want to ask you tonight, have you ever felt like giving up?
And you got to that place and went, Nah, I'm just done.
Some have gone to church with the thought of giving up on
their marriage. Some have sat in a church
concerned about their son or daughter that's just gone one
too many times. And I thought of giving up on
their son or daughter. And others have come to church
and gone. You know, this is the last time
I'm coming. I'm giving up on you, God.
I've tried everything. I've tried this, tried that.
I'm giving up on you, God. Well, tonight in our series on
the parables of Jesus here in Luke's Gospel, we see the
amazing power of prayer not spoken so much by humanity.
Not many people got the shops gone.
You know, I was at prayer meeting the other day.
I was praying for this. I just think that what I will
fix everything but the Bible. The Holy Scriptures repeatedly
proclaim the power of prayer to us and the Bible repeatedly
proclaims the importance to God and ourselves of prayer.
I'm reading just finished first Chronicles and now I'm going
through second Chronicles. And you know, every bad king
never sought the Lord. Every good king sought the Lord.
When they didn't seek the Lord, they lost in the battle.
And actually first and second Chronicles could be called
called the books, books of wars and mass deaths.
Soldiers here hundreds and thousands just battle after
battle dying when they haven't sought the Lord.
In this parable, the aim of Jesus.
And remember parable has one point.
It's a earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
The parable, the aim of Jesus, the whole thrust of this one
parable, just 8 verses, is God proclaiming to us tonight and
you're at a prayer meeting. So it's amazing the willingness
of God, our loving heavenly Father.
Remember those words. He is our loving heavenly
Father, urging us, calling us to come to him in prayer and to
seek his help. Isn't that what parents do with
their kids when they what don't you tell me when you ask why
don't you come to me? You know I would have God's the
same when you come and seek his help.
Why don't you come and ask for my strength?
Why don't you come and ask for my power in the situation?
Why don't you come when you're when you were in pain, when
you're frail, when you were teetering on the edge, on the
precipice of giving up? Let's read the text.
Luke 18 one. Then he spoke a parable to them
that men. Now notice this.
This is what Jesus says. Notice the first verse.
If you don't get any of the other verses, look at the first
verse and it's a memory verse for you to learn.
Then Jesus spoke a parable to them.
What? That men always ought to pray
and not lose heart? I'm going to read that again.
Men always ought to pray and what not lose heart.
And the old King James, I like it better and not fight saying
here's the story. There wasn't a certain city, a
judge or a magistrate who did not fear God nor regard men.
So he wasn't really interested in anyone, just that he did his
job. Now there was a widow in that
city, and she came to him saying, get justice for me from
my adversary. And the judge would not for a
while. But afterward he said within
himself, though I do not fear God nor regard man, so he's an
atheist, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her,
lest by her continual coming she weary me.
Then Jesus said, hear what the unjust judge said.
There's your focus. Focus on what?
The unjudge unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge his own
elect, who cry out day and night to him?
Notice what does a Christian do? Cry out how often, day and
night, though he bears long with them, I tell you that he will
avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of
Man comes, will he really find faith that is US trusting in Him
on the earth? Doctor Luke teaches often
stories about widows. As a matter of fact, he mentions
widows more than any other gospel writer.
In fact, he mentions more of them than all the other gospels
combined. He talks about widows.
Widows in that day had a most difficult time simply surviving.
We read in the book of Acts that the early church was very
serious about the care of a genuine widow.
Paul even wrote in his pastoral epistles how and what sort of
capacity we need to look at caring for widow who is a widow.
Indeed, the background, the culture, the aroma to this, the
setting of our text is important for us to know.
This is Eastern culture. We need to understand that the
courtroom was in fact a tent that was moved from place to
place around Israel. As the magistrate, as the judge
moved from town to town and people brought their cases to
him, anybody could watch the proceedings.
They were open to the public, but only those who were approved
and accepted could have their cases officially tried.
So not everyone, but you had to be except like, I'll deal with
your situation. This usually meant in these
times, as we sing about the character of the judge here,
because he didn't care about anybody.
He usually meant a bribe to the judge's assistant.
So he he would call the judges attention to the case judge.
I've got a great the lady she's giving me, be good to hear it.
No worries. Bring her in.
So the widow, assistant widow had three obstacles to overcome
at this time, however. One, she was a woman.
Therefore, she had little standing before the Lord, Law,
the law, because in those times women and what they said was not
received or allowed in court. They didn't go to court.
Two, since she was a widow, her husband had died, she had no
husband to stand with her in court.
She went in alone. Three, finally, she was poor,
could not pay a bribe even if she wanted to.
Now Jesus teaches us beautifully tonight in this parable, 3
things we need to know about why God wants so, wants us to seek
him in prayer, and why it matters so much to God that he
would, that we would or should come to him and pray it.
It matters to God. Firstly, if we don't pray, we'll
fight the old King James, you King James, we lose heart.
He spoke a parable unto them. Men ought, always ought to pray
and not lose heart and not faint.
The word faint or lose heart means to be utterly spiritless.
No gas in the tank, just deflated.
It means to be wearied out. It means to be exhausted.
Aren't we living in a world today that is absolutely gassed?
One thing you want to do one day, and I do it.
Helen often goes into the shop where there's no chair.
So the shop, it's not been designed by a man and I'll find
a chair to sit down and I'll watch people in and out walking
through a shopping centre and everyone's yawning, they're all
yawning, they're gassed. But also have you ever fainted?
You know, actually the blood pressure drops, you feel
yourself going and there is nothing you can do about it
today. I believe because the church
doesn't pray, much of the church doesn't pray today.
The church has lost its heart. The church is is this case.
People coming to church on a Sunday, many of them and they
are spiritless. They are wearied out.
They just trying to make it from day to day, week to week and
they're exhausted. People coming to church and
often they'll just sit. They're exhausted.
You and I live in a world that is totally opposed to the things
of Christ. Totally.
Paul warned us not to be conformed to this world.
Don't be like the world. Don't be moulded by the way of
the world, moulded by its power. Don't be moulded into its
philosophies, into its fashions. Paul taught us in Romans one a
12 verse one. I beg you, therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable or
logical service. And do not be conformed.
Don't be like the world to this world, but be transformed.
How? By the renewing of your mind,
the reading of the Scriptures that you may prove that would
prove in the in the Greek means test whether genuine or not.
What is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
He says live in God's will and show the world this is the right
way to live because look what at what God does in my life.
Look at how I can live in a fallen world.
Living in this world will affect you, and it's just like our
breathing in polluted air. When we pray and believe, God
hears our prayer and answers our prayer.
It is like us filling our lungs with the pure air direct from
heaven, and this in fact keeps us from fainting.
Pray God energises us. He strengthens us.
He breathes into us. We're not going to faint now.
He strengthens us, gives us the wisdom to know what to do.
He answers our prayer. That's why Jesus taught in the
same verse that we ought always to pray that word always means
at all times, ever, and not to faint.
Or what does Jesus mean by this? Or Paul picked up the same
thing. He said that we should be
constantly in prayer. He said in One Thessalonians
517, we are to pray without ceasing.
Now people who look at that and it's just individually out of
context, I think, well, I can't do that.
I'm driving a car. I got to do a job, you know.
No, no, no, you're missing the point.
Because Paul says pray without ceasing, it does not mean that
we should constantly be repeating prayers.
You remember Jesus taught against that very kind of
praying back in Matthew 6 when he gave us the Lord's Prayer.
He says verse 7, when you pray, when you pray, that means you do
pray. Not if you pray, but when you
pray. Do not use vain repetitions as
the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for
their many words. So what it does mean is this.
It means to make our praying as natural as our regular
breathing. How does that you don't think
about breathing, but you breathe.
We just breathe. So too, this is how we should
all be about prayer without thinking about it.
That means every moment you as you, maybe even as a scripture
comes to you and you go, Lord, that's the scripture for me.
Help me to help me to get that. Help me to live that way.
That's me as you drive out in the car, Lord, guide me.
It's just be talking to the Lord.
You can do it at work. You can do it while you're doing
your job. Praying should be the ongoing
atmosphere in which we live constantly.
So that say you're in a work meeting, you're sitting there,
no one's coming yet you sit there.
Lord, just give me wisdom to know, help me to, to represent
you, even though it's not a it's got nothing to do with the
church or the gospel or Christ. You're you're in a work meeting
about what we're going to do next week.
Pray. Praying is more than words from
your lips, as important as they are.
It is the desires of your heart, US desiring to please God in
everything to honour him, to be thinking of him.
That's what praying is to be thanking him and to be seeking
him Today I I thank the Lord for for a number of things.
You know, I get up, do Helen made me breakfast.
Lord, thank the Lord, she's a blessing.
I go in the room the bed's made. I thank the Lord.
Praying. Praying is linking your life to
God and everything. It's walking with God.
Abraham did that, Enoch did that.
It means walking. And if you walk with someone,
how do you walk with someone? You walk behind them.
You walk in front of them. You walk with them in step.
It means you're in step with where God is going.
You're always aware of His presence.
Without living in this way that is praying, you will fail.
You will faint. Your work, your job, your
marriage, your kids, your life, everything will cause you to be
exhausted, to be spiritless. Oh, I just quit.
I just can't do this anymore to be wearied out.
Tonight I want to ask you, are you praying or are you more
fainting? This is a matter of choice in
your life. The first point to bring you
back from the edge of giving up is to pray, and then you will
not fight. We see this persistent widow
back to our text. In contrast with God's elect,
God's children, there was a certain city, a judge who did
not fear God nor regard man. There was a persistent there was
a widow, she came to him, she was persistent, asking for
justice. He said Though I don't fear God
nor regard man, I'm just this widow troubles me.
She annoys me our avenger. Let's do by continual coming.
She wears me then in verse 6. Then the Lord said hear what the
unjust judge said. That's the point of the story
and shall not God avenge his own elect who cry out day and night
to him. There's a good point in there.
Vengeance is mine says the Lord. When someone upsets you, it's
not your job to be the sheriff. You give them to the Lord.
Actually, you're to pray for those that are your enemies,
that despitefully use you, see. So you give them to the Lord.
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
Jesus did not say God's people. You and I are like this woman,
this widow. I've heard sermons preach on
this. So say you got to get out there
and you got to just keep going and persisting and acts like
God's. Yeah, come on, more, more.
That's not that's not a loving father.
That's the judge. We're the very opposite.
This is in contrast. That's what this parable is
about. Because we are not like this
persistent widow, Jesus urges us to pray.
Why? Because we have a loving father,
not an unjust judge. Jesus argues from the lesser to
the greater. Jesus is saying if a poor widow
got what she deserved from a selfish judge, And here's the
point. How much more will God's
children receive from what is right, what is needed from their
heavenly loving Father? That's the point of the parable.
Look at the contrast with me in relation to you and I and the
woman's widow, the persistent widow.
In the story. The widow was a stranger to the
unjust judge. He didn't know it from from
Adam. But we are the children of God.
God knows us. 2 The widow had no access to the judge, did she?
But God's children, what do you and I have?
Resurrection death on the cross vile, torn and two open.
Now we may come how boldly that's not arrogantly boldly
because we know what the truth boldly into God's presence when
in Hebrews says when do we come in time of need.
You know I'm always in need. Aren't kids always in need?
Hebrews 416. Let us therefore come boldly to
the throne of grace, that we may obtain.
What mercy? Find grace?
When to help? Oh, that's what I need in time
of need. Thirdly, this widow had no
friend in court to help get her case to the judge.
She just annoyed the dialects out of him.
But God's children, you and I have Jesus Christ.
And what is He? He's our advocate, He's in the
presence of the Father. We pray in his name, We come in
his name. 1 John 21. My little children, these things
are right to you, that you may not sin.
And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous. For when this widow came to
court, she came before a court of law.
It was a court of law. But you and I, as children of
God come before what? Not a court of law, a throne of
grace. What do you get at the throne of
grace? You get what you don't deserve.
Lastly, she pleaded to the judge out of her poverty she had
nothing. But you and I as children of God
have all of God's riches available to us to meet our
every need. Philippians 419 And my God shall
supply all your need according to his riches in glory our by
Christ Jesus. So Jesus is teaching us in this
parable, urging us here tonight in His word.
If we fail to pray, if only people would grasp that our
condition spiritually will be just like that of the poor
widow. He urges us, therefore, to pray
because of who we are, what we have, what He desires to do for
us as His children. The difference between the Judge
and God our Heavenly Father is immense in this passage.
Hear what the unjust Judge said, and God shall not avenge His own
electric. Cry out day and night to him,
though he bears long with Him. The story is not about arguing
with God. That was in church.
As a woman, you know God. You know I'm a King's kid.
I demand. No, you don't.
I never demanded anything of my dad.
Otherwise it was committing suicide.
I demand. Oh, OK.
You don't argue with God. Nor is it bribing.
Oh, God. I've been to church three times.
I'm reading the Bible, man. I'm giving.
Well, my giving is really up. Look Lord look or pestering God
until he does something people think, oh I'm just going to
pester or pastor pester. That is not what this parable is
about in order for almighty God to hear and answer your prayers.
It's not like the persistent widow.
This is a story This is a parable about contrast.
God does not like the judge, for our God is a a loving heavenly
Father. Do you know him?
That's why people don't pray. You know why people don't pray?
They don't know that God is their heavenly Father.
They just know him as God. I think, well, he won't.
Why should I bother praying? Because he loves you.
You don't know him as your heavenly Father.
He hears every, every cry we utter, even though so deep and
so troubling that it's our very soul calling out, crying out
God, He hears them all. Romans 820-1825 But if we hope
for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with
perseverance. Likewise, the Spirit, that is,
the Holy Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses.
For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but
the Spirit Himself, Holy Spirit, makes intercession for us with
groanings which cannot be uttered.
Oh God. Exodus chapter 2, verse 23.
Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt
died. The children of Israel groaned
because of the bondage. No more Joseph.
And they cried out, and they cry came up to God because of their
bondage. Exodus 3, verse 7.
The Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people
who are in Egypt, and heard they cry because of their
taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.
Exodus 2222 You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless
child. Exodus 2223 If you afflict them
in any way, and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their
cry. Psalm 7212 For he will deliver
the needy, when when he cries, the poor also, and him who has
no helper. In the New Living Translation,
verse 7 says it this way. Even this judge rendered a just
decision in the end. So don't you think God will
surely give justice to His chosen people who cry out to Him
day and night? Will he keep putting them off?
You see, God is our loving Father.
He hears every cry, every prayer you make, the ones that fill
your heart. Even now, the only reason the
judge helped the widow was because he was afraid she would
weary him. Oh, she's a pest this far.
Our Father answers our prayers. Why?
Because He loves us and for His glory and for our blessing, he
wants to bless us and he is never weary to have his children
go to him. Now all of us parents, we fail
sometimes when the kids are Dad, dad, dad can have a look at
that. Mum, Mum and we're I'm too busy
at the moment. You've said that, you know, God
never says that he's never too busy.
He is never weary to have his children go to him.
Well, that's all good, Keith, but I've been praying for so
long and yet God seems to be delaying answering me.
And I read here that he promises to avenge them.
That's justice. Speedily per SE.
Well, listen carefully. God's delays are not delays of
inactivity, but of preparation. God is always answering prayer.
Otherwise, the Scripture found in Romans 828.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who
love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose
is wrong. God works in all things at all
times, causing all things to work together to accomplish his
purpose back. You remember the story of an old
couple in Luke chapter one, verse 5.
The name's Zacharias and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was barren. They were elderly.
Zechariah, he's a husband. They've tried for years and
years to have a child. Never been able to have a child.
Zechariah goes to do his business as a Levite in the
temple and an Angel appeared to him.
Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard.
And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.
You shall call his name John. John the Baptist.
I want to ask you tonight, how long do you think Elizabeth and
Zechariah had prayed? Well, let's just guess she's
1314 when they got married. He's maybe a little bit older
now. They're elderly statesman.
How long have they been praying? But you see, God needed John the
Baptist, God needed this couple who would raise him in the right
way and to to be born at the right time when Jesus was about
to come. That's why the prayer was
delayed. Your prayers are delayed for a
purpose. God is in control.
The moment we pray according to to His will, God begins to work.
We may not see it now, but in God's perfect timing, the answer
will come in Daniel 10. It was 12.
Daniel had prayed. Then the Angel appeared to him
and he said, do not fear Daniel. For from the first day that you
set your heart to understand and to humble yourself before God,
your words were heard, and I have come because of your words.
Winston Churchill was quoted to say never, never, never give up.
Finally, notice with me we close in verse 7.
God's elect are a people who cry out of him day and night.
God's elect. I'm going to say it again.
Christians are a praying people. You know, a few years back on a
Wednesday night, we had a couple of three or four kids riding
bikes out and we were just in here praying on a Wednesday
night like this. And so I went out to talk to
these kids. I said, oh, I got here going, Oh
yeah, what's no, we're just 1314 riding their bikes around out in
the front. And they said, what's what's
what's going on in there? I said, well, it's Chapel 9.
It's Wednesday, and Wednesday is when we, the church gathers to
pray. Here's what this kid said.
I'll never forget it, He said, How come then more people aren't
praying? How come then more people aren't
praying? When the Son of Man comes, Jesus
said, shall he find faith on the earth?
You see, you pray because you have faith to believe that your
Heavenly Father hears your prayer.
You pray because you have faith to believe that your Heavenly
Father will answer your prayer. You pray because you know you
believe undeniably that God will answer your prayer and bring a
resolution, a help, a miracle into your very situation.
Otherwise, you'd fix it yourself.
That's why you pray. You believe God loves you and
wants the very best for you and for His glory.
And that's why you pray tonight. God is speaking to you directly
and urging you to not give up, but to pray.
And if you haven't been praying to start to pray.
Speak to Him as you live and battle through your day.
Ask Him to lead you to guide you, to heal you, to protect
you, to forgive you, to help you.
You are His child, He's your heavenly Father.
From the moment your heart began to beat and he instigated that,
he had an amazing plan for your life.
Psalm 139, an amazing journey, but it's a life lived by faith
and prayer is the heir for that fight.