Now please turn in your copies of God's Word to the Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Luke chapter 18, and we will read together verses one to eight. Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse one. 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? So ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray and ask his blessing upon the preaching of his word. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that Your purpose and your will for us, even through this particular passage, might be known and might have its intended effect in our lives. We ask that through this passage we would be encouraged to persist in prayer, to persist in faith, that we might be those counted among the faithful when the Son of Man returns. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. I think it's fair to say that in our day and age, patience and perseverance are not popular, sought-after virtues. Our society typically values that which is quick and instant. Most of the time, we don't like to have to wait for things. Or if we do wait, we don't want to wait very long. Just think of how our consumer culture has the expectation that we will have our desires met immediately. If we want to buy something, we can go on our phones or go on our computers and with a quick browse and a quick click of a button, we can have what we want delivered right to us. We hardly have to wait long at all. With internet on our phones, we don't have to do the hard work of searching for answers for our questions anymore. We can simply ask Google, or now AI, and simply have our questions answered instantly. Of course, technologies like internet search engines and microwaves are good things. It would almost be hard to live without those things now. And yet they also, I think, are a reflection of our impatience and our tendency to want things to happen quickly and our tendency to give up if they don't happen as quickly as we'd like. Well, in light of this observation, I think our Lord's teaching in this passage is very relevant. Right before the parable, Luke explains its purpose. As Matthew Henry says, this is a parable that has its key hanging at the door. Some parables are notoriously difficult to understand. This one, not so much. Luke writes in verse one, the reason for Jesus' parable is that Christians ought always to pray and not lose heart. So in this parable, our Lord calls us to a prayer that's patient, one that perseveres even through difficulty and injustice without losing hope. We all know that prayer, even at the best of times, can be quite difficult, can't it? At times we may feel unmotivated to pray for any number of reasons. Perhaps you feel you don't need to pray that much if you're not in a trial and so you don't really feel the need to pray. Or perhaps you are suffering in some kind of particular way and you have cried out to God but it feels like your prayers are going unanswered and so for that reason you lose motivation to pray because you feel that you're not being heard. In those moments we can feel alone maybe even neglected by God. Those times it can feel like God is distant from us. Well, if you've ever felt this way or if you're feeling this way now, well then this parable is a great encouragement to your soul. It is a wonderful motivation to you to persist in prayer. You see, Christ is compassionate towards his saints. He knows the ways that we struggle. He knows that this side of glory, are weak, we are pilgrims, often faltering, and especially so when it comes to prayer. And so he gives us this parable to motivate us to a kind of prayer that is steadfast in hope, that perseveres in faith, and is an expression of our love to God. This passage assures us that God hears our cries. And it calls us to remain faithful even as we await Christ's return on the last day. Well, today we'll explore three key points in this parable, this passage. First, we'll examine the characters of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. And then this will inform the following two points where secondly, we'll see the point that we ought to pray and not lose heart because God is just and merciful. And then third, that we ought to pray and not lose heart because God will certainly answer the cries of his elect. So first we'll examine the parable that's recorded for us in verses two to five. We look at the characters and see the drama that unfolds between them. Now within this parable there are of course two characters, a widow and a judge. And we ought to consider both of these characters as main characters. Neither one is merely a supporting actor. Both are main leads in this drama. Both characters teach us something about God and about ourselves. Jesus begins in his parable in verse two. He says, in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. Well, the first character we're introduced to is the judge, and we're told that he neither fears God nor respects man. This is a very significant comment. Now, maybe for many of us today, if you were to say that about some judge even sitting on the Supreme Court, you'd shrug your shoulders and say, well, that's probably most judges. But in the ancient world, and well, even more particularly to Jewish ears, this would have been shocking. the minds of the listeners would have gone back to the law which required judges to fear God. In fact, 2 Chronicles 19 lays out one of the requirements for judges being that they must execute their office in the fear of the Lord. So this fear of God was a vital qualification for one to be a judge over Israel. The fact that this man does not fear God demonstrates he has no right to hold this position of authority. And in fact, this was not merely a Jewish principle. The historian Josephus writes how in the Greek world in the first century, judges were bound by the principle, quote, honor God and honor fellow man. So even Greeks and Romans who were pagans, even they had at least some standard that judges were not a law unto themselves, judges were not a God unto themselves, they were subordinate to some higher law above them. But not so with this man. And Jesus is deliberately presenting this character as the epitome of everything a judge shouldn't be. And so the question that is raised is, if this is the case, how can anyone expect justice from a man like this? Hopefully you've never been in a situation like this, but maybe you have. At the very least, you can imagine it. Imagine you're in a very tricky legal situation. Imagine your entire livelihood is at stake. You're innocent, maybe you've been framed for a crime, or you've been wrongly accused, or maybe you've been wronged financially, and you're the one seeking recompense. But the consequences are huge. You could lose your job, lose your family, your house, your savings. Maybe you could face jail time. And your case is complex. The opposition has built a compelling case against you. Well, in that kind of situation, you'd at least hope for a just judge, a judge who'll be able to kind of just brush away all the smokescreen of the opposition and look through and clearly weigh the evidence, cross-question the witnesses and such, and come to a just and unbiased judgment. That's what you'd hope, but instead imagine that you get this guy, this judge who rules in favor of the big corporations against the little guy, this judge who makes rulings in order to line his own pockets, the judge who goes along with the good old boys, the kind of man who takes a bribe from those who can afford to pay it. You get this man who embodies everything that a judge shouldn't be. Well, how would you feel? Well, I'm sure as your day in court drew nearer, you'd be dreading it. You'd ask yourself, is it even worth showing up on my court date? Well, that's the first character. The second character that Jesus introduces is a widow. This widow is living under the jurisdiction of the judge. Now this widow may not necessarily have been an older woman. She could have been quite a young woman. She could have even been in her teens and lost her husband at a very early age at that time. But what we do know is that she's a widow and her husband is dead. Now in the Old Testament, widows and orphans served as types for the vulnerable and the defenseless. And that's because to be a widow at this time was very, very difficult. She would have been very poor. She would have lived on the outskirts of society. And not only being a widow, but also being a woman was also another difficulty. Women played a very minor role in public life. Jewish women were not qualified to appear as witnesses in court. So if a married woman had some kind of court dealing she had to deal with, her husband would stand in her place. If her husband was dead, well then maybe a male relative would stand and defend her interests in court. So the fact that this woman is representing herself in court only tells us how much more desperate her situation is. She has no husband, she's a widow, and apparently she has no male relative either able or willing to take up her case for justice. So with all of these factors combined, being a woman, a widowed woman, no one to stand for her, she has no leverage in society. And against this obstinate judge, she seems to have no hope. of obtaining justice whatsoever. Well, already as we're listening, the whole scene is set up to fail. There's no way she can receive justice. Now, of course, we've read this before and we know how it ends, but that's not how we're supposed to read it. We're supposed to read it as the people are hearing it. And in the minds of the hearers, there's no hope for this woman. How in the world is she gonna receive justice? Both characters are on the opposite ends. of the social scale. The judge holds the highest position and he is corrupt. She, on the other hand, holds the lowest position and she needs justice. And yet we see in verse three that this woman goes to him saying, give me justice against my adversary. So some terrible injustice has befallen this poor woman. Maybe someone took advantage of her in her widowed state, knowing that she had no one to defend her. But whatever her problem is, it's significant enough that she goes against the societal norms and she storms into the courtroom to stand in front of the judge and she musters up the courage to request justice. And yet even after that triumphant and courageous effort as she bursts through the courtroom doors and makes her case before the judge, he says, no, no, he denies her justice. We read that in verse four. For a while he refused. The judge was unwilling to grant her justice. This of course fits with his character as one who neither fears God nor respects man. And the tragedy is that really this widow is one to whom mercy should be shown, not merely justice, but mercy. And yet all she's asking for is justice, but even justice is denied to her. Such a corrupt judge might be willing to take a sneaky bribe, but clearly she doesn't have the money for that. And so what does she do? Well, she resorts to the only weapon she has left, her persistence. And so she goes again. And again, he denies her justice. But that won't keep her away. She will not give up until she has justice. And so she goes again and again and again to him. She keeps going. She keeps being turned away until finally the judge gives in. Other verses 4 and 5. For a while, he refused. 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. So finally, because of her persistence, because she doesn't give up and she keeps asking, he gives in. He didn't change his mind. He didn't kind of turn over a new leaf. He didn't have a kind of a Scrooge moment where he realized he needed to mend his ways. No, he simply gave in because he was sick and tired of her constant coming. He was worn out by her persistence. Well, having examined the characters and the drama that unfolds, we'll now consider what this parable teaches us about God and the Christian. So secondly then, we'll consider how we ought to pray and not lose heart because God is just and merciful. In this parable, Jesus uses the wicked judge as a negative analogy for God. In other words, the judge is everything that God is not. The judge epitomizes injustice. He's distant, he's uncaring, he's lazy arguably. Eventually he grants the widow justice, again not because he changed his mind or because he suddenly decided to be benevolent, no, simply because he was tired of her persistence. As he says in verse five, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. The Greek word there for beating down literally means to give someone a black eye. Maybe you know a widow or two like that who could be willing to give someone a black eye. But probably this is best to be taken metaphorically and not that she actually gave the judge a black eye. Maybe to put it more colloquially, it's like saying, she's killing me, you're killing me here. Fine, I'll give you justice. Well, the purpose of this parable, given in verse one, is to teach us that we ought always to pray and not lose heart. How is a story about a wicked and unsympathetic judge supposed to motivate us to pray to God? Well, after giving the parable, Jesus asks us to consider the words of the judge, and then he contrasts the judge with God. Look at verse six and seven. 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? So Jesus is setting up the judge as an opposite of who God is. Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. The judge shows neither justice nor mercy to the widow. The thought of such a judge should provoke us to pity, sorrow, maybe anger. In this way, the wicked judge serves to show how privileged we are in that we have a God who is just, and merciful. If you go to a jeweler's, it's been a long time since I've been to a jeweler's, I'll admit. But if you go to a jeweler's and you look at the rings, oftentimes they'll be displayed on this dark backdrop. The rings, the diamonds, the jewels, whatever it is, the gold and silver, it might be displayed on this black, dark backdrop. And the purpose of that, of course, is to serve as a contrast. so that against the darkness of the backdrop, the beauty of the rings and the diamonds sparkle and shine all the more. In the same way, Jesus hangs this wicked judge like a dark backdrop for the same purpose, to display and showcase in an even more fantastic way and glorious way the wonderful character of our God. Next to this judge, God's justice and mercy shines even brighter for us to see. So Jesus' argument essentially is, if even a wicked judge will eventually grant justice, how much more will your heavenly father answer your prayers? The judge is perhaps like God in that he hears petitions and he has it within his power to grant justice, but the judge is unlike God, that he is wicked and uncaring, whereas God delights in hearing the prayers of his saints. Unlike the judge, there is no reluctance on God's part to hear, to answer, to show justice or mercy for those who cry out to him. Beloved, do you ever feel at times that God is distant from you? Do you ever perceive him to be like this wicked judge? When you go to him in prayer, do you expect the kind of response of the judge? That maybe he'll half listen, but ultimately he'll say no because maybe it's not part of his plan. Is that how you go to God? Do you see him like this judge, holding back? The wicked judge drives the poor and the oppressed from his court. He doesn't want to be bothered by their pleas. What does our God say to us? He tenderly reaches out to each one of us. He says, come, not go, but come, come to me. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. See, God is gentle. God is gracious. God is compassionate to the orphan and the widow, to the suffering believer. And our God is not burdened by our prayers. He welcomes them. The widow had to fight her way into the judge's presence. But we are invited, beckoned into God's presence, into his very throne room of grace. And there, before our God, we do not have to wonder whether or not our case will be heard. You know, as 1 John 5, 14 assures us, we go before God with a certain confidence. John writes, and this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Christian, that's your confidence, that he hears you. You see, God hears our prayers. Even today, God has heard the prayers that we have offered to him in worship. But when we are prayerless and when we're hopeless, perhaps we unwittingly, whether we realize it or not, we are treating God as if he were like that unjust judge. uncaring, unsympathetic. But at those times, dear believer, remember that he's not like that. At those times, pray and don't lose heart because God is just, and he is merciful, and he's nothing like that judge. He delights to hear the prayers of the weak who come to him in faith. He's never burdened by your prayers. He's never bothered by your prayers. If even the wicked judge answered the pleas of a persistent widow, how much more will God give How much more will God answer those who cry out to him day and night? So beloved, let us pray and not lose heart because God is not like that wicked judge. God is just, God is merciful, God is compassionate. Well, having considered the judge as a negative analogy for God to showcase how much greater our God is, We now turn to consider the widow and how the widow is an analogy in some ways for the elect. And so third, we ought to pray and not lose heart because God will certainly answer the cries of his elect. So just like with the judge, within the character of the widow, we find that there are ways that the widow is like the believer and ways that she's unlike the believer. We might say the widow is different from the believer in terms of her standing before the judge. She went before the judge as a stranger. We are unlike the widow in that we don't approach God as strangers, but how? We approach God as his beloved children. If the wicked judge will eventually grant justice to a stranger he doesn't know, how much more will God answer his elect children? As his elect, we are precious to him. He purposed in eternity our salvation. The triune God worked all things for your salvation. He sent Christ to be your Redeemer, to purchase you, that we as a body might be the people of God's pasture. So unlike the widow, we have a special standing before God, and we are invited to enter his throne room of grace. That's perhaps how we're unlike the widow. And yet, in her persistence, the widow does serve as a model and an example of the elect who continually cry out to God day and night. You'll notice this language that Jesus uses of crying out in verse 7. That's very deliberate language. In particular, it is wording that echoes the cries of distress that run throughout the Psalms. You, of course, will remember it even from our scripture reading as you think of the martyrs before the throne of God crying out for justice day and night. Like the widow, we suffer unjustly in this world and we cry out for deliverance. The time, of course, that Luke is writing in and the time that we're living in now is a time of persecution. It's a time of suffering. Remember the previous passage where Jesus described these days, the days before the Son of Man, the days we're living in, as days of what? As days of desire, as days of longing, as days of groaning. In these days, you will desire the day. You will desire the day when Christ returns and makes all things right. But until that day, you are in these days. And these days are days of desire and longing. And as Jesus has told us, they are days of suffering, just as Christ had to suffer before his glory. So our glory is preceded by our suffering. So Christians are like the widow in that we are oppressed. We are considered outsiders by the world. You know, if we consider the world to love us, we're mistaken. Just three chapters after this parable, Jesus will tell his disciples how many of them will be brought before authorities and they will be martyred. Children, do you know what that word martyr means? And martyrdom refers to how Christians may be and have been killed for the faith. Killed not because they've done something wrong, not because they die accidentally, but were killed by others because of their Christian faith. Christians will be martyred. Christ's disciples standing before them will be martyred. Jesus says, you will be hated by all for my name's sake. And so we as Christ's disciples must expect to be hated by the world. And we certainly don't wish it upon ourselves. If we don't feel particularly hated right now, we don't go looking for it to happen. That's certainly not the case. But it should come as no great surprise if we're mistreated in the workplace because of our faith, if family members reject us because of our faith. We must expect some measure of suffering for Christ in this life. And in these times of suffering, we can cry out to God, and we do cry out to God, confident that he hears our cries. And of course, as we cry out to God, what we want is the instant removal of all suffering. That's true whenever we suffer in any kind of way, even if it's something like the flu that many of us have who aren't in this room, hopefully. We cry out, Lord, take this from me. We want it gone in an instant. We don't like to suffer. That's certainly true of greater trials. We'd rather pray and be completely removed from the trial than to have to exercise patience or to have to persevere through great difficulty. We want immediate justice against those who persecute us or slander us. But this is where Christ trains us and teaches us that he does not promise us immediate relief. He does not promise us immediate vindication. This life will be one which will involve patient suffering, and thus we must learn this patience and perseverance, trusting in his promises. However, and this is an important however, although God does not promise us immediate vindication, he does promise his suffering elect certain vindication. Notice Jesus' rhetorical question in verse seven. There he emphasizes the certainty that God will respond to the cries of his elect with justice. Justice will not be denied his saints. The Greek construction there uses a double negative, which is a style of making a statement emphatic. So we can read the sentence this way. And will God not certainly give justice? And of course, it's a rhetorical question. The expected answer is yes. God will certainly grant justice. So there is no question that justice is coming for the elect who cry out to him. The question, of course, is when is that justice? Where is that justice? Maybe you're in a very difficult situation and you've cried for justice. You've cried for the Lord to vindicate. The question is, well, where is that vindication? When is that vindication? God has promised it, I've prayed for it, where is it? Well, that's what Jesus addresses next. Jesus addresses the seeming delay or seeming disconnect between our cry for justice and his promise to deliver justice. In verse seven, he poses the question, will he delay long over them? And then he answers, I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. What does that mean, that God will grant justice to them speedily? Again, maybe you've cried for justice and it hasn't come very speedily. Well, the key to understanding Jesus' answer is found in the next phrase, when he says, nevertheless, When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? This phrase is very important, this phrase, that the coming of the Son of Man, it's an eschatological or end times event. It is, as we considered last week, that final day when Christ returns and gathers his elect and judges the wicked. It is that day of judgment when Christ will return in all his glory to judge the living and the dead. And of course, this flows right out of the verses just preceding. You remember from last week how the Pharisees have just asked Jesus, when will the kingdom come? But instead of telling them when the kingdom will come, Jesus described how it will come. He describes it as a time when the Son of Man will come suddenly and unexpectedly. He compares his coming with the days of Lot and Noah. when what was normal, eating and drinking and getting married and planning weddings, suddenly ended with judgment. For Lot and Noah, judgment came suddenly, just as people were going about their daily lives. There was no precursor, there was no one-week warning. Jesus' explanation that justice will be granted speedily has the very same meaning in our parable. And so it's not so much when justice will be granted but how it will be granted. In other words, it will come suddenly, speedily, unexpectedly. So as the elect cry out day and night to God for justice, they can be certain of the coming of the Son of Man, which will mean vindication for the elect and judgment for the wicked. And this ought to comfort you as you suffer wrong. as you're persecuted by the world or as you suffer injustice from anyone really. The Lord is coming and he will vindicate and he will make right. He will vindicate his righteous who suffer wrongdoing. May this be an encouragement to you when you suffer. Remember this as you suffer and you're tempted to go one of two ways, maybe both ways at the same time, but you're tempted either to despair and lose hope and give up on prayer, or you're tempted to seek vengeance against those who persecute you and have caused you to suffer such injustice. Yes, seek justice in ways that it may be attained. Yes, pray for justice continually, but when you can do no more, then know that God is a just judge, and he will deal with it. Nothing, nothing will go undealt with, no injustice. He will deal with it. And this is how you can leave vengeance to the Lord, rather than taking it into your own hands. Let us trust the Lord, let us cry to him, and let us leave vengeance to him. Well, having provided this comforting and assuring promise that he hears our prayers and will grant justice, Jesus now turns the tables a little bit on us, and he poses us with a question, asking us, nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Man's most frequent question when it comes to the coming of the Son of Man, the end times, is when will these things take place? The Pharisees asked, when will these things take place? The disciples, even after Jesus' long exposition, asked where will these things take place? There's so much curiosity and speculation around the end times. However, for the believer, the certain promise that Christ will return provides sufficient answer. There's sufficient certainty here. And so it ought to put to rest any idle speculation. Christ's final question, therefore, shifts the focus away from our speculation and our charts and our questions of where and when, and it turns the question back on us. And now we're the one in the dock, as it were, having to give an answer to God. And there are two senses that are communicated through Christ's question. First, as Christ asks this question, there's somewhat of a negative answer expected, such that when Christ returns, it will be as the days of Noah and Lot. In fact, there will be much sin and faithlessness. This reminds us that the days we're living in right now are no exception. Are we living in darker days than our parents? Maybe, but also not really. These are the days of Noah and Lot, days of Sodom. The days before the floods, when people eat and drink and live as if they are gods unto themselves. These are days of sin and faithlessness. That's the first sense. I think Jesus prepares us to know that these are the days that we're living in. But secondly, within the question, there's an implied challenge and a command to his elect to persevere in faithfulness. So it communicates the certainty of wickedness, but also commands and calls the elect to persevere in faithfulness. So the return of Christ is certain. What we are left to consider is how will we live in the interim? The widow exemplifies the kind of faith Christ desires. It's a faith that sees its own need, its own desperation, but then it's a faith that goes and cries out day and night. It persists even when there's a seeming delay. It goes to God again and again. And in this way, as we pray this way, we evidence the kind of faith that God desires to see. Again, beloved, have you lost heart? Have you given up on prayer? Have you become so discouraged that you've lost hope in prayer? Maybe because of the wickedness in our world today. As we mourn injustice, as we see Christians persecuted around the world, as we are conscious of the slaughter of the unborn, as we see abuse by leaders in positions of authority, as we see rebellion against God's truth, we cry, how long, O Lord? How long will this go on unanswered? But know that these cries do not fall on deaf ears, for even now, as Revelation has depicted for us, Martyrs surround the throne of God, crying that same cry, how long, O God? And they do not fall on deaf ears. Justice is certain, and it will come speedily. It will come suddenly. Especially as citizens of heaven, we must remember, as our psalm called us to earlier, that our hope is not in princes. It's not in chariots. We must remember where our true hope lies. Our confidence is not in earthly rulers. our presidents, our nations, our armies, our powers of this world, but our hope is in the king who is coming for his bride. And when the bridegroom returns, he will not allow the blemishes and bruises on his bride's face to go unavenged. He will avenge the wicked done against the righteous. Well, if you have lost heart in prayer, remember the character of God. He is not like the wicked judge, distant and uncaring or reluctant. No, he is near, he is compassionate, and he is eager to hear. What a motivation to bring your prayers, your petitions before his throne. Second, consider your standing before God. If you are in Christ, you are not a stranger to him or he to you, but you are an adopted child invited to call out to him, Abba, Father. Your prayers are not the desperate pleas of an outsider, but the confident petitions of one whom God has chosen and redeemed through Jesus Christ. And Christ is coming to judge, to save, to redeem his elect. And so the question left for you to answer is this, when the son of man comes, will he find face on earth? Let's pray. Our great Heavenly Father, we thank you that even now we have the confidence that you hear our prayers. And we ask that you would instill in each one of us the kind of prayer, the kind of faith that Christ delights in, a faith that persists in prayer and that looks to you longingly, that goes to you in our weakness, appealing to your strength. Lord, help us to remain faithful cause us to persevere even through difficulty, knowing that what awaits us is glory in Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.