- Oct 19
- 6 min read
[Luke 18:1-8]
Always Pray and Don’t Lose Heart
“Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” [Luke 18:1]
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Those who ask receive [Matthew 7:8]. Jesus told you a parable today to the effect that He wants you to be the squeaky wheel in His ear. To always pray and not lose heart. When I pray, will God answer in my favor?
I.
Jesus 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.’” [Luke 18:2-3]
The judge was unjust, and the plaintiff was a widow. In those days, a widow might have no one in life to turn to. And she might not expect her testimony to carry much weight in court. Nevertheless, she went to the judge continually, crying for help against an adversary who was doing her some wrong – we don’t know what.
We don’t know what evil she suffered, but we do know who our adversary is: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” [1 Peter 5:8].
The devil plots a hundred plans daily to bring evil against you. The devil is the tempter who makes plans daily to get you to lose trust in God. To doubt God’s good heart toward you. To convince you He’s angry.
The devil, as tempter, provokes your flesh to bring your mind and imagination down evil paths – paths of lust; or of anger and retribution toward others; or of money-centered daydreams.
The devil, your adversary, is the slanderer – plotting and putting stumbling blocks in your path for you to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, that will sully your reputation. The devil doesn’t want God’s name to be holy in this world through your good life but to be profaned in this world by your failures.
The devil is your adversary in this world who roars and roars, but can be resisted by mere men, women, and children and loses his battles – his plots are foiled – because he is already defeated, and you have a powerful hero who hears you.
All the devil can do is try to get you to stop calling upon God in prayer, for some reason. Doubt. Indifference. Busy-ness. Because he can’t win against God in your life.
The woman in the parable keeps that judge in her life. She continually calls out to him, showing up at his courtroom everyday, I’m sure. If she has to annoy that judge into helping her, she’ll do it. It’s the judge's job to help, so she is bold and confident in her asking for it.
II.
“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.’” [Luke 18:4-5]
Whether it’s a courtroom or customer service, you know the power of continuing to ask, continuing to insist. The point of the Lord’s parable is this: If even unjust and indifferent judges on earth will help because of your much asking, how much more will the just Judge of all the earth come to your aid when you ask?
“Hear what the unrighteous judge says,” Jesus says, “And will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” [Luke 18:6-7]
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” [Matthew 7:11]
For this reason, we wrestle with God. We say with Jacob, who wrestled with God all night for the very blessing God had already before promised him, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” [Genesis 32:26]
Like with Jacob, it is God’s will to work His promises in our life through our wrestling with Him in prayer. God came down and had Jacob wrestle with Him as if in a ring. God’s will is for you to engage Him in the same way, wrestling those things out of Him which He has long promised.
God’s desire is that you hold Him to His promises in your fervent prayers: “You have promised, Lord. I will not let You go until You bless me, until You do what You have promised.” This wrestling is for your benefit. It sharpens and strengthens your faith. It draws you closer to His face.
You are God’s elect – He has chosen you in Baptism. You are His. You have His name on you. “Will not God”, who is good and always keeps His promises, give an answer “to His elect.”
God will “give justice”, which is a reference, here, not to His judgement but to His saving work on the cross of Christ. That’s God’s promise. All that saving work which Jesus did for you – and He did it for you – by His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead – He will apply that saving work to you, in every small way and new struggle, and in the ultimate way.
“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?” [Romans 8:32]
III.
“Will He delay long over them? I tell you, He will give justice to them – He will deliver them – speedily.” [Luke 18:7-8]
Nothing in all creation can stop God from answering your prayers. And your sins are forgiven. Forgiven by the death of His very Son. You are declared “His” by the living, risen Savior who is even now your intercessor, speaking to God for you in heaven. The very one who carried your sin and died in your place now lives and speaks for you.
God will hear you as your prayers come to Him through the name of your Savior. But the adversary would have you doubt because of length of time. But hear what God’s Word says:
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you” [2 Peter 3:9]. “Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” [2 Peter 3:8]. God is not slow, but always answers at the right time. And once He does answer, then we see that the wait was short.
IV.
The squeaky wheel does get the grease. And your Savior Jesus has told you this parable so that you would always pray to Him and not lose heart. Now, lastly, let’s hear our Savior’s final verse:
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”
Jesus’ final answer to our prayers is that He returns. But between now and then, “the time is coming” – and now is – “when people will not endure sound teaching” – the world never did, but now even those who claim His name and the name of “Church”, increasingly, will have “itching ears.”
“They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” – picking the messengers that will agree with them, instead of hearing the Scriptures as “breathed out by God” [2 Timothy 3:16] – “and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” [2 Timothy 4:3-4]
When Jesus returns, will He find any who still hear His life-giving Word of Scripture – all that He has commanded [Matthew 28:20] and all that He has promised?
And will there still be on earth those calling out to Him as their Savior when He comes again “to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him”? [Hebrews 9:28]
The answer is, He will. Yes. Few or many, He will answer all who are His with His coming. New life. New you and me. No longer sick. No longer sinners. New heaven and new earth. He will lose none of His own, and if there were just one left, He would come for them. He finishes this race for us all. He returns.
The point is that you must rely on Him, not on yourself. “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand” [John 10:27-28] – To the very end, the sheep are safe with their Shepherd.
So, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” [Psalm 27:14]. Pray always, and you don’t ever need to lose heart. Amen.
- Oct 12
- 5 min read
A Community by Faith
I’m not sure what the experts would say, but much of what creates relationships and a community is this: What one person lacks and another has.
One man’s lack of property ownership, paired with another man’s apartment-building-ownership, creates a relationship. He has, you rent. Eventually, there’s a whole apartment community.
You lack a car; the dealer has many. You skipped biology class; your physician studied for many years. You need roads; the governor has the ability to tax – and thereby provide.
Your need paired with what another has creates a certain kind of unity – and then a whole community because others have the same need. (Though, there may not be love and thanksgiving. There may even be bitterness and resentment.)
I.
The book of Ruth, in the Old Testament, takes place after the days of Moses and Joshua but before the days of King Saul and King David, in a time period when Israel was ruled by figures called “judges”, or “deliverers”. Israel is in the promised land.
But now there is a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem in Judah named Elimelech and his wife, Naomi, therefore uproot and migrate to a land called Moab with their two sons.
While in Moab, Elimelech dies. Their sons then marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. But then these two sons eventually die. Naomi is left without sons or husband and with her two daughters-in-law.
When Naomi hears the famine in Israel has ended, having been in Moab ten year, she decides to move back home. Though what she will move back to is uncertain. There is an inheritance issue. Only a male family member – a nearest male kin – can inherit her husband’s land. With her two sons deceased, Naomi is desolate even in Israel. Nevertheless, to Israel she is going.
So, she tells her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to return to their own parents’ households. She has nothing to offer them. They should remarry in Moab. They will have nothing on earth if they go with their mother-in-law, Naomi.
Orpah, in tears, returns to her own mother’s household. But Ruth will not. Ruth insists on going with her mother-in-law Naomi. Naomi has no earthly security to offer, yet Ruth recognizes that her mother-in-law does in fact have what she needs. What does Naomi have that Ruth clings to?
“Where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” God and a people. God’s people, and the true God.
Naomi had told Ruth and Orpah, “Go back to your people and your gods.” Ruth says, “No, I want to have your God – the God who actually is God – and be one of His people.”
What Naomi has Ruth never wants to lack again – a covenant relationship with the one true God. For that, Ruth would leave behind earthly security with her family in Moab to live as a beggar woman with her mother-in-law Naomi.
In Israel, Ruth and Naomi do live as beggars. Under Old Testament Law, the farmers of Israel were not allowed to harvest their entire field. They had to leave behind the corners of the field and anything their harvesters dropped – for the poor and for the wildlife. The poor were allowed to glean the fields for sustenance. Ruth supports herself and her mother-in-law by gleaning in the fields.
What will happen in the rest of the book of Ruth? God will provide what Ruth and Naomi lack. He will give them Boaz, a relative, a kinsman redeemer, who owns the fields in which Ruth picks grain.
Boaz, as a close enough relative to Naomi, marries Ruth, the foreigner, and their marriage brings the inheritance back to Naomi. And, in fact, the marriage of Boaz and Ruth brings Ruth into the lineage of the Messiah. From their son Obed comes the line of King David and, therefore, King Jesus, the Christ.
II.
So, now let’s fast forward to Jesus in the today’s Gospel. Jesus is met by ten men with the same need: cleansing from their leprosy. These ten men have a contagious skin disease that, like sin itself, made them unclean to God and man. They must keep their distance and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” so that no one approaches.
But this time, they keep their distance and cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Jesus tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests” – for proof of their cleansing so they can re-enter society and go back to their families.
As they are walking along the way, to do as Jesus said, all ten are healed, cleansed of their disease. Undoubtedly, all are happy. But just one of them, “when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.”
This one out of the ten joined that growing community of those who received, not earthly benefits, but his truest needs met in His Savior Jesus Christ. Not one and done, but he stuck with Jesus for all that Jesus gives in a lifetime.
III.
What’s the point?
Here it is: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me… For when I am weak, then I am strong [2 Corinthians 12:9-10]. “We rejoice in our sufferings” [Romans 5:3].
What I lack joins me to the One who has. My weaknesses join me to Christ who is strong. My afflictions join me to Christ in whom I find consolation, healing, and an answer. My need joins me to His abundance.
The same is true, we can boldly say, of righteousness. My lack of it joins me to His supply. I don’t rejoice in my lack of righteousness, but I do rejoice in the freeness of His grace, the fullness of His forgiveness, and His abundant patience in helping me do better. Forgiving me seven times seventy times a day as He helps me grow. [Luke 17:4; Matthew 18:22]
You belong to a whole community of Moabite beggars and thankful lepers. Fed and cleansed, here together, gathered to the One who has and gives.
Jesus, God’s Son, is here as your Boaz. Jesus became your Kinsman Redeemer on the cross who bought for you the inheritance of heaven’s kingdom at His great cost – to give it to you.
Jesus is the Priest and Great Physician who, upon the cross, suffered your leprosy of sin to make you clean and declared you washed and righteous in God’s sight.
IV.
What is our response?
Like the one leper, our response is thanksgiving. Returning to Christ every minute to return Him thanks. For all He has done, it our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him – to thank Him with lips and lifestyle.
And to look around us – at each other who are here – and outside of us, at those not yet gathered around Christ. To see need. Not to see faults or remember their wrongs. But to see fellow beggars only gleaning in the field of One who will give them so much more when they come to know Him. So, point each other and others to Him. Amen.
- Sep 28
- 6 min read
[Luke 16:19-31] [Jesus said:] “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ 25But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 27And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”
“One Whom God Helps”
I.
Our Gospel today is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The Rich Man who passes by the poor man at his gate each day – the poor man, “Lazarus”, whose name means “One whom God helps.”
It is not a sin to be either rich or poor. It’s not a virtue either. Instead, the Rich Man’s action, or inaction, shows the condition of his heart. He is callous. He is unmoved by the wounds and the hunger of Lazarus at his gate. The heart of the matter is what the Rich Man believes, or, in fact, does not believe, about himself and the poor man.
The Rich Man is able to say, “What I have is mine and is my right!” because his heart is cold. Jesus tells this parable because when our hands and feet and mouth remain so unmoved in the sight of poverty, those unmoving hands are from an unmoved heart.
What is in the heart comes out through our actions or inaction. How can we know ourselves? What is in, or isn’t in, the heart overflows through our words and deeds. What we do and what we leave undone.
The Rich Man doesn’t believe the poor man is a “Lazarus,” “One whom God helps”, because he doesn’t first know himself as one who needs God’s help. He believes his riches. He doesn’t believe his own natural and spiritual poverty, which the Word of God tells him about —
— That we bring nothing into this world; what we have is from God. And that we bring no merit or worthiness before God but receive His steadfast love and faithfulness as a gift by grace. We are poor, except that He has made us rich.
If I know my own true poverty – sin and death – “a poor, miserable sinner”, in need of mercy – how does this affect how I see the Lazaruses on the sidewalk, or any person who’s in bad shape, maybe because of what he himself did? —
— What have I myself done! Yet God has had mercy on me. “I am one whom God has helped.” That sets my heart right toward the many kinds of Lazaruses in my life who could use my help.
II.
The Rich Man and Lazarus both die. The poor man, Lazarus, is carried by the angels to “Abraham’s side” – perhaps a seat of honor as they rest in heaven’s banquet hall, waiting for the feast which is about to come. (When we get to heaven, we’ll be surprised to see who is sitting at the top. People of such little account in this world that we never knew their names.)
The Rich Man dies, is buried, and his soul is in torment in hades – hell’s jail cell where he waits for trial and verdict. Even in such torment, the Rich Man’s heart is unchanged. He finds it unfair, where he is. “Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue…” He neglected Lazarus on earth, but expects Lazarus to be sent to his aid after death.
The Rich Man does have concern, but only for his own – his five brothers. That gives him no credit. Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” [Luke 6:32; Matthew 5:47].
The Rich Man wants Lazarus to be sent to his brothers, if not down to him, to rise from the dead and warn them: “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent,” he says.
“No,” he is told, for “if they do not hear Moses and the Prophets – if they don’t believe the Scriptures – neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
This final part of the exchange between the Rich Man and Abraham shows that the core issue is faith, believing God’s Word about me and my Savior – and “if they won’t believe the Scriptures, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead”, and someone has.
Scripture says, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” “All have sinned and fall short…” And are “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” [Romans 3:10,23-24]
Believing this about yourself, “no one righteous” – and about what Jesus has done for you – your heart starts changing everyone’s name to Lazarus. People whom Jesus has come to help. There isn’t a person He hasn’t given His life for.
III.
Jesus became the world’s Savior by becoming the ultimate Lazarus on the cross. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.” [2 Corinthians 8:9]
What was happening on that cross? Jesus carried in His flesh and soul all the poverty of this world. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” [Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46]. All sin, all death, all the assaults of the evil one. All wounds and all blows. And the guilt of those who gave them. This whole evil existence.
All falls. All failings. All sickness and death. All the accidents on the road. All mistakes made in the hospital. “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” [Matthew 8:17].
All rejection and loneliness. All mockery and being made fun of – they wagged their heads and mocked Him on the cross. All spitting. All prejudice and bias, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?”
And all the darkest evils of this world. All shootings, all stabbings, all terror. All wars. And all hatred of God and one another. And, all thirst, all hunger, all poverty. And being passed by.
Jesus became all poverty of our sin and death, hung upon a cross – Yet remained God’s Lazarus, THE “One Whom God Has Helped” by raising Him from the dead. “For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the Afflicted, and He has not hidden His face from Him, but has heard, when He cried to Him.” [Psalm 22:24]
You are not overcome by all the poverties of this fallen life because, in Jesus, God is raising you too. God has not passed you by, but has come to you in Jesus, making you also “one whom God has helped.”
Let this determine the heart you have for every other Lazarus whom God is also not passing by. Amen.
