Luke 18:1-8 1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Have you ever been in a room full of people where you found yourself unsure of yourself? Did you feel intimidated or like you didn’t belong? Were you hesitant to ask a question about what was being discussed because you just weren’t sure you would even be asking the right question? Did you feel UNWORTHY in the moment to make your question or request known?
When we first moved to WV, I was encouraged to join the Rotary Club. Some of you remember Bill Ellis. He has been in Heaven for several years now, but he strongly encouraged me to get into Rotary which basically means he escorted me to the Rotary Club. I was going whether I wanted to or not. I remember those early meetings. I was sitting among very accomplished business professionals who were well-respected in the community. I remember thinking to myself, “What can I really contribute to this organization? I am JUST a preacher.” I had gifts to contribute, but I didn’t make my abilities and resources known for a while. I had questions, but I didn’t ask them, not during meetings anyway. I had requests of the organization, but I didn’t make them; not for a long time. A sense of unworthiness kept me from asking for the help for our church while others were asking for help for their businesses and their community projects. I want you to remember that word, “unworthy.” Will you say it with me? (unworthy)
The woman in our story likely dealt with feelings of unworthiness. Being female, she didn’t have much standing before the law, and she found herself going repeatedly to try to talk to a judge. At the time during which Jesus told this story, women didn’t go to court. They didn’t plead their case. They didn’t have a hearing with a judge. The judge in the story refused to listen to the woman’s plea for help time after time. She wasn’t worthy of a judgment, worthy of an answer, worthy of his time, worthy to be in the presence of this unjust judge.
However, tucked inside this parable, a parable that is really about persisting in prayer, we see a beautiful truth that flows from our relationship with Jesus who is the Righteous Judge. He stands in contrast to the unjust judge in the story. Not only does Jesus stand in contrast to the unjust judge, but we stand in contrast to the widow woman. We are no longer unworthy to stand in God’s presence. Here is a truth I want God to deposit deep into your spirit: You have been made worthy by the blood of Christ to be in God’s presence.
Hebrews 4:16 tells us we can go to God’s throne in prayer boldly and with great confidence. The Blood of the Lamb has qualified us. We can stand in God’s presence and be confident that we belong there and that our request is important to Him. He will not resist us. He will welcome us before Him. We are not out of place in God’s presence because the Blood of Jesus has put us in our rightful place with God. We can be sure that when we go to the Lord seeking mercy and grace (Hebrews 4:16) we will find the help we need at just the right time. He wants us to come. He has made a way for us to come. We don’t need to be shy about coming into His presence. We are not out of place when we are on our face before our Heavenly Father in prayer. Doesn’t that give you a sense of security?
Remember how I was in those early Rotary meetings? I was afraid to ask a question for fear of being judged or labeled. I didn’t want anyone’s look to reinforce the thoughts I had that I didn’t belong there. Jesus said in John 14:13, “Ask whatever you will in my name, and I will do it.” There are no dumb questions at the throne of grace. Jesus has made us worthy to take every issue to God in prayer.
Do you feel like an outsider this morning? Do you feel like you don’t really belong or aren’t worthy to ask anything of the Lord? Jude 1:24 tells us through the blood of Jesus we stand blameless and worthy in the presence of God and with great joy. You are worthy in the place of prayer to get close to your Heavenly father. Jesus has made you good enough. For when God sees you, He doesn’t see your inconsistencies and your imperfections, He only sees the perfection of Jesus Christ, His Son. Oh, the amazing grace of God that not only forgives us of our sin, but also welcomes us into His presence without restriction.
Have you ever had the experience where you felt as if some great responsibility was all on your shoulders? If the company was going to succeed, you had to make it happen. If the bill was going to be paid, you had to find a way. If the kids were going to keep up with their commitments and activities, you were going to have to get them where they needed to be and remind them to have everything prepared in order to take what was needed with them and make sure all was washed from the last time they had a game to be ready for the next time. Have you been the one for whom failure just wasn’t an option? You couldn’t hand off the baton. You couldn’t take a break. You had to do whatever it took all by yourself to accomplish something?
I went through three seasons of caregiving for elderly parents while working full-time. During one of those seasons, our kids were still young. My dad was in a nursing home here in Teays Valley during the last four and a half years of his life. I was his primary support. My siblings lived in other states. I was in charge of receiving the phone calls from the nursing home whenever his condition would change. I answered medical questions and made decisions about his care. I went to doctor appointments with him. I purchased what he needed. I paid his bills. I met with his care team. Someone had to be the one, and I was that one, but I gotta tell you it was hard. And at times I felt ALONE. Will you say that word with me?
Supporting my mother-in-law through an illness required some personal care that only I could give. Helping my mom deal with a life-ending diagnosis followed my mother-in-law’s homegoing. I didn’t feel up to the tasks for sure, and in some respects, due to what was needed, I was the only one who could provide certain facets of the help required. There were times, it was a lonely road.
Have you ever walked a lonely road? Even if there was help from others, as I certainly had, but a road where you just felt alone in your personal experience? Have you been there when you felt as if the weight of the burden was on your shoulders? Maybe you have felt alone in the decision making. Alone in the work. Alone in the parenting. Alone in the relationship. Alone in the care taking. Alone in your grief. Alone in the project.
A second beautiful truth that flows from our relationship with Jesus the Righteous Judge is that we are never alone.
We get the sense from the story about the persistent widow that she was alone. No one went with her to the court to try to gain an audience with the judge. She went by herself. Being a widow-woman, she had no husband to speak on her behalf. She either hadn’t had children or wasn’t in a relationship with her children or they didn’t live close enough to help her. No one volunteered to help her by going with her. She was alone in her quest for justice.
Someone was messing with her. Someone was bothering her. Someone was making her life miserable, and she needed help to get away from the situation. There is an air of desperation to her efforts. She is threatened by what is happening to her, but she is alone. No one is corroborating her story. No one is standing as a witness to her suffering.
Listen, you may feel alone in your circumstance this morning, but I have good news for you. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of your life, you are never alone. Hebrews 13:5 tells us we are never alone. Jesus will never leave us.
When we pray, we have an Advocate, Jesus our Savior (I John 2:1). He goes into the Courtroom of God with us. He understands what we are going through. He will vouch for us before the Heavenly Father. He constantly represents us before the throne of God as He is praying with us and for us! (Romans 8:34)
In John 14:18 Jesus promised His disciples He would not leave them as orphans. He would send His Holy Spirit to live in them, to do life with them, and even to pray with them. (Romans 8:26)
I found the whole Covid situation very difficult to navigate as a leader of an organization made up of people who come together for worship and instruction. How we would open, when we would open, what it would look like, how we could mitigate risk, whose advice to take, how ministry would change, all of it was a lot. There were times I felt alone, but I knew God was with me. I knew God would help me navigate the way forward.
You are not alone in your stress. You are not alone in your season. God will give you wisdom, strength, compassion and resources. Let Him be your supply. Do you believe God’s Word is truth? Lean into the Word of God.
In Isaiah 43:2, God says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
No matter how difficult and no matter how dark the season you find yourself walking through, God is with you. He promises to meet you in your pain and to help you, saying, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
God will walk you through every tear and sorrow. You are not alone and if you walk with Him, you will never be alone.
Unworthy. Alone. How about this word? “INSUFFICIENT.” You can put it in front of a lot of other words. Insufficient knowledge. Insufficient training. Insufficient talent. Insufficient funds. Can you relate? You know you don’t have what it takes. You know your need is greater than your supply. I have known that feeling.
I want you to remember that word, “insufficient.” Will you say it with me?
Back in the day, if you had the means, you could buy “justice.” A bribe would get you a long way in a court of law. But she didn’t have money. Widows didn’t have money. She had insufficient funds to make her trouble disappear. In our own strength we are insufficient. In our own power, we are insufficient. Left to our own intellect, we have limited and insufficient wisdom. Our insufficiencies become a reminder of why we need the Lord! A third beautiful truth that flows from our relationship with Jesus the Righteous Judge is that in Him we are completely sufficient.
The Bible is replete with people who deemed themselves to be insufficient for a God-given task. Moses, a type and shadow of Jesus in the Old Testament, the one tasked with standing up to the Egyptian Pharaoh to demand that the Israelite slaves be released, that guy told God to send someone else. He said, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He went on to tell God he wasn’t a gifted or convincing speaker. Yet, God used him to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, giving him the ability to perform signs, miracles and wonders along the way.
God gave Moses what was needed to accomplish the task.
Later, when the Israelites were suffering under Midianite oppression, God called Gideon to deliver them. Gideon was in hiding, afraid for his life. He was weak. How could he be the mighty warrior the situation called for? He saw himself as the least in his family. His faith was shaky at best. He asked for signs just to make sure that God wasn’t calling the wrong guy. Yet, God used him to miraculously deliver Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Both Moses and Gideon learned who God was and who He could become IN THEM because they accepted their assignments.
A third guy, Jeremiah the Prophet, deemed himself inadequate, insufficient to speak for God. Like Moses, he said he wasn’t an eloquent speaker, but he also said he was too young and inexperienced. Yet still, God sent him as a prophet to the nation of Israel and told him he could depend on God to give him the words whenever they were needed. I could go on with person after person who didn’t feel up to their God-given tasks, people who felt like a nobody, people who felt disqualified because of some limitation or because of their family of origin or how they were raised or a host of excuses.
Your lack of education, your lack of skill, your perceived limitation, your bad past, none of it matters to God. God is our sufficiency in every circumstance. He is always up to the task. You just have to stand on His Word and trust Him.
When we take our insufficiency to God and allow Him to infuse His Word and His power into our circumstance, we have everything we need to endure a circumstance or to experience a change in that circumstance. That is when you get to experience Christ IN YOU in a real and powerful way. When we take our weakness to Him, He gives us strength. We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength, (Philippians 4:13) and the infusion of strength comes as we trust God in prayer. II Corinthians 12:9 tells us God’s grace is sufficient when we are insufficient. Those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10). Christ is your sufficiency.
The Apostle Paul prayed three times for God to take something negative, something oppressive from him. He doesn’t tell us what it was. I don’t know if he was living with pain or dealing with temptation or some kind of addictive pursuit, but he wanted it out of his life. He didn’t get what he prayed for, but he received the sufficient grace of God to be able to deal with his circumstance in II Corinthians 12:9.
God will give us what we need to accomplish the mission He gives us. We just have to stay connected to Him. He is the Vine (John 15) and we are the branches. He will give us sustaining grace as we trust Him. If you don’t know Him this morning, He is what you are lacking. He has what you need and has resources you haven’t even thought to ask for!
Unworthy. Alone. Insufficient. We have probably all had times in our lives when we have experienced each one of those feelings. The woman in our Scripture passage, however, likely dealt with all three as she sought justice and freedom from her adversary.
Unworthy. Alone. Insufficient. Jesus tells His listeners the story is about prayer. It is really about persevering during prayer, right? When we pray and we don’t give up, breakthroughs come. Justice is dispensed. The Righteous Judge delivers an answer. He is the One to whom we should go in prayer.
Persevering in prayer, yes, that was Jesus’ main point. But three underlying truths are also seen. In this story we can be reminded that:
We are made worthy by the Blood of the Lamb.
We never walk through this life alone.
Christ in us makes us more than sufficient.
Persevering in prayer has more benefits than just receiving justice like the widow woman did. When we do, we exercise our awareness of:
Who we are in Christ-WE ARE WORTHY.
Who we are with Christ-WE ARE NEVER ALONE.
Who Christ is in us-ALL-HE IS OUR SUFFICIENCY.
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