Grace and Peace to you from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and may our Lord and Savior sanctify you in
the truth; for His word is truth. Amen
The Twenty-First
Sunday after Pentecost (2010)
Faith
Motivates Persistent Prayer
Luke 18:1-8 (ESV)
And he
told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose
heart. [2] He said, "In a certain
city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. [3] And there was a widow in that city who
kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice against my adversary.' [4] For a while he refused, but afterward he
said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, [5] yet because this widow keeps bothering
me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual
coming.' “[6] And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge
says. [7] And will not God give justice
to his elect, who cry to him day and night?
Will he delay long over them? [8] I tell you, he will give justice to them
speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on
earth?"
In the
prelude to studying the Lord’s Prayer in Luther’s Small Catechism, we are
asked, “What privilege and command does God give to those who believe in Jesus
Christ?” to which the
catechism answers, “God commands and invites believers in Jesus
Christ to pray.” Such is the Gospel Reading for today. In using an extreme
case to make His point, our Lord Jesus lays before us the image of an irreverent
and unrighteous judge who eventually heeds the pleas of a widow who has no
money with which to bribe him nor any prestige from which she can influence
him. However, she does have persistence; a dogged determination not to be
dismissed simply because she lacks what would normally move this unfaithful
judge to action. Thus, Jesus shows us, if then such an unrighteous judge can be
swayed by the persistence of this widow, how much more will our righteous God
give ear to the prayers of those He loves and of whom He has made His elect?
Indeed, would not our loving and merciful God move with the greatest of haste
to vindicate and answer our prayers? Yes, God will keep faith with those who
long and pray for the day of the Son of Man, however, Jesus asks, will you keep
faith? Will you continually pray, night and day, for that which glorifies God,
thanking Him for who He is and for what He has done as well as pray for what
preserves yours and your neighbor’s welfare? If so, then indeed you are a
person of faith. You have the Faith that
Motivates Persistent Prayer.
Faith,
especially Christian faith, is a word that is derided by the secular world, yet
it is a word that is essential to those who follow Jesus. Faith can be defined
as that which believes in the truth of what another has declared, without clear
evidence. However, in theology, faith is the belief in what God has revealed.
Moreover, saving faith, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, is the heart’s assent
to the truth of divine revelation on the authority of God's testimony revealed
in Holy Scripture. It is having complete confidence and trust in the person and
doctrines of Jesus Christ. It is believing that He is the only begotten Son of
God who willing became flesh in order to take man’s sin upon Himself; suffering
and dying so that all men could be saved from the consequence of sin.
Furthermore, it is the complete confidence that sin is forgiven solely because
of the merit of Jesus Christ. In other words, faith is the firm belief of God's
testimony and of the truth of the gospel, which leads to an entire reliance on
Christ for salvation. Such faith comes only from God as
In today’s
Epistle Reading, St. Paul reminds Timothy to remain firm in what he has come to
believe, knowing that “from childhood you have been acquainted
with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus” (v. 15). Moreover, he goes on to remind Timothy
that Holy Scripture is a gift of God’s that is most profitable for teaching,
reproving, correcting and training others in righteousness so that those whom
God has called may be competent and equipped for every good work.
Therefore,
Holy Scripture is absolutely incomparable in bringing a lost soul to faith.
There is no other book, or writing, or pagan scripture in the world that is
able to make a lost sinner wise for salvation, because these all lack the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is no other writing able to grant the
gift of faith in Jesus Christ other than God’s revealed, inspired, and inerrant
Word of Holy Scripture. Oh, but how, since the beginning of time, has man
sought other sources to scratch their itching ears. Reliance on the inspiration
of Holy Scripture alone for the gift of faith seems to be an illusive endeavor
for countless many.
Satan is
very successful in distorting the truth and leading souls away from Christ. He
has been ever since the Creation.
Our Lord
Jesus often taught by contrast, as He does in today’s Gospel Reading. In so
doing, He exposed the attitude of others, their hypocrisy and counterfeit faith
by which they hoped to gain the respect an admiration of others for their
selfish benefit. Against this our Lord’s true love and compassion stood out.
Could it have been any other way? No, our Lord Jesus is who He is, the Son of
God and these false teachers and hypocrites are who they are; tools of Satan.
There was a vast chasm between them, a chasm that could only be breached by
faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is this very chasm that led our Lord and
Savior to tell the parable of the persistent widow.
Jesus tells
of a judge who was cold, unconcerned and uninterested in the opinions of
others; including God’s. He respected no one and lacked compassion for all. His
decisions would only be those which would enhance his personal wealth or power,
and he undoubtedly used his position to great advantage in his personal life.
However, there was this one widow who persistently appealed to him; asking him
to right a wrong. She desired justice and she was not to be denied. The judge
had the power and authority to grant her, her plea, but he would not act. The
widow refused to accept his rulings and continued to address the judge, asking
him to; “Give me justice against my adversary” (v. 3). At first the
judge was not moved by her pleas. He didn’t care about her problem. Yet,
because she was persistent, continually bothering him with her plea, he finally
granted her request just so she would stop bothering him.
Sometimes
we pray and when we do not receive a quick answer we get the impression that
God isn’t listening or isn’t interested. Perhaps we’ve prayed for a long time
about something important, but alas, no response. It then becomes easy to
wonder; Has God heard my prayer? Does God really care? Or we ask why hasn’t He
acted? Discouraged, we might simply stop praying, feeling that He doesn’t hear
our prayer or if He does, He doesn’t care. Or we might frantically fear we’ve
done something to prevent Him from answering; sin has cut us off from our
forgiving God. Such thoughts can easily come to those who are not listening to
God’s Word taught in all its truth and purity. Instead of God’s Word they are
listening to the false prattle of men who tell them what their itching ears
desire to hear. Listening to such preachers, they come to believe that they
must save themselves. Then, in a time of crisis, they are faced with the
reality that salvation cannot be earned by their works. Now, unless the Holy
Spirit has compassion on them and they are awakened by the truth of the gospel,
they have no where to turn. In times like these true prayer and the desire to
persistent prayer is stamped out by a distorted faith.
Recently I
was made aware of a book written by a pastor who admitted there was a time in
his life when he was a Christian Atheist. He didn’t really believe what he
preached. He didn’t believe in what Holy Scripture had to say about God and he
led his church like God didn’t exist. Such is Christian Atheism, an ideology in
which the God of Christianity is rejected but the moral teachings of Jesus are
followed. Jesus is not seen as divine, but He is still the central figure in
their teaching. A Christian Atheist thinks of Jesus as a wise and good man and
as such they desire to follow His moral teachings while rejecting His divinity.
Thus, Jesus is not the foundation of their faith, rather He is an example of
what a Christian should be, but they do not see Him as God.
Luther’s
Small Catechism teaches that, “Only those
who believe in Jesus Christ may pray to God and expect to be heard.” This belief
is a true faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the second person of the
Godhead, and the sole propitiation for the sin of all men. True faith belongs
only to those who confess with Jesus that He is the way, the truth, and the
life and no one can go to heaven without faith in Him (John 14:6 ESV).
Moreover, our prayers are to be offered in the name of Jesus; in the complete
faith that He is our Redeemer. They are also to be offered with complete
confidence, trusting that for Jesus’ sake our prayers will be answered.
Moreover, we are to pray according to God’s revealed will, knowing that it is
not our will but God’s will that will be done. This is the Faith that Motivates Persistent Prayer.
The widow
in Jesus’ parable is granted her petition for justice because the unrighteous
judge is overwhelmed by her persistent effort. However, Jesus teaches that the
true believer is blessed because God, unlike the unrighteous judge in the
parable, will grant justice to the faithful who come before Him in prayer. Moreover,
the justice our Lord speaks of is not instant answer to our prayers for
temporal relief, because we must remember, “God
hears the prayers of all Christians and answers in His own way and at His own
time.” No, the justice our Lord Jesus speaks of is the answer to our prayers
for salvation and resurrection to eternal life on the Last Day. This prayer and
all our prayers our heavenly Father answers not because He is bored with
hearing our pleas, but because He loves us and has compassion on us all.
It is our
Lord Jesus’ will that we, “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (v. 1) for prayer is one means
which keeps us connected to Jesus as our intercessor and thus it keeps us
connected to our heavenly Father as long as it is prayer moved by a true faith
in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Prayer
Motivated by a Persistent Faith may provide temporal relief from earthly
trouble, but Faith that Motivates
Persistent Prayer is a faith that saves and leads to eternal life with the
One to whom we pray, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
May the Peace of God which passes all understanding
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.