Transcript
In your Bibles, will you turn with me to the Gospel of Luke chapter 18? Luke chapter 18. We begin reading at verse 1 of Luke chapter 18.
An examination of chapter 17 suggests to us that the people who are addressed by Jesus in this passage are His disciples. Let’s read Luke 18 and verse 1.
Then He spoke a parable to them
that is, the disciples,
that men ought always to pray and not lose heart, saying, ‘There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city, and she came to him, saying, “Get justice for me from my adversary.” And he would not for a while. But after a while he said within himself, “Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”’
Then the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, 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 on the earth?’”
Perhaps last week as you watched television or as you read your newspapers, you learned about the horrifying experience that happened to Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein, of course, is a sixty-eight-year-old New Yorker. He is also the chief executive officer of a company called World Wide Formal Wear. But twelve days ago last Monday, Harvey Weinstein was kidnapped by two men. One of them was an employee of his who had operated a sewing machine for eight years at the Weinstein establishment. The other man was a brother of the sewing machine operator.
They took Weinstein to a secluded rail yard in upper Manhattan, and they dumped him into a pit eight or nine feet deep. The pit was hardly much more than five feet wide. It was lined with plastic bubble wrap. Over the top of the pit, which was a pear-shaped type of pit, the kidnappers laid a plywood board. On top of the plank they laid a steel door, and on top of the steel door they laid cinder blocks. No way that Weinstein could push himself free.
For the next twelve days Weinstein existed on the fruit and water that his captors brought him from time to time. Meanwhile the kidnappers demanded a ransom. And last Monday a three-million-dollar ransom was paid. But when the kidnappers backed out of their agreement to tell where Weinstein was, the police moved in. Apparently they arrested them on board a jet liner at JFK International Airport, a minor that was to be heading for the Dominican Republic but which had been grounded and delayed because of a tropical storm out in that country.
They also arrested before the day was over a third suspect, a woman who they thought had made some of the telephone calls demanding a ransom. Acting on a tip, the police went to the secluded rail yard in upper Manhattan. They looked around for Weinstein but could not find him at first. Finally they called his name, and they heard a voice saying, “I’m here. I’m here.” They located him. They pulled him out of his pit. Briefly he was admitted to the hospital, but he was quickly released. He had come through this ordeal in amazingly good condition, and that was attributed by some people to the fact that he had had Marine training years ago and spent a lot of time in foxholes.
The entire ransom was recovered in two eighty-pound duffel bags. And oddly enough, when the kidnapper who worked for Weinstein was asked if he had anything against Weinstein, the kidnapper said, “No, he’s a nice man.” So the whole incident revolved around greed and money.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly made this interesting remark about the whole incident. He said, “It’s a story that makes the movies sound tame.” And I have to agree with Commissioner Kelly. It is a story that makes the movies sound tame. But I also want to suggest that all over this country today there are literally hundreds and thousands of stories that make the movies sound tame. And that if some of these stories were actually written up into movie scripts, they might be rejected by producers as too far-fetched, too far beyond the possibility of reality.
And yet many of these amazing stories happen to people who still know how to say, “I’m here. I’m here.” And the question that I want to discuss with you this morning is simply this: Can God still hear you saying, “I’m here. I’m here”? And that leads directly to the title of my message to you today, which is this: Never stop saying, “I’m here.” Can I repeat that just to fasten it on your minds? Never stop saying, “I’m here.”
I suspect that some of you in the audience may be surprised to discover that I spent two of the best of my college years living in Grant’s Tomb. Yeah, you heard me right. I lived two years in Grant’s Tomb. You see, after my first year in the dormitory, a friend and I decided to become roommates and to rent a room in a house off of campus. As I recall, two other college students did exactly the same thing. There may have been other boarders, but I cannot remember for sure.
But surprisingly, the landlady at that house was a little old gray-haired woman named Mrs. Grant. And there was one thing that Mrs. Grant always insisted on: peace and quiet. We said the silence of the tomb. And because everybody knew about Mrs. Grant, everybody who knew about her rooming house always referred to it as Grant’s Tomb.
Now do you have any idea how tough it is to get four college men to stay quiet every night of the week? And I am going to confess to you that there were times that we transgressed the rules of the house and we got kind of noisy. And when that would happen, the next thing we would hear was, “Boys!” And the first thought that went through all our minds was, “She’s here. She’s here.” And sure enough, when we opened the door, there was Mrs. Grant insisting that we quiet the whole thing down to a dull roar. That was Grant’s Tomb.
And I kind of think that my experience in Grant’s Tomb has prepared me to be at least a little sympathetic with the judge that Jesus talked about in the parable that we read just a few moments ago. Now I will admit this was not by any means a model judge. He was not the kind of judge who pulled down a triple-A rating from the local bar association every year. As a matter of fact, this judge was the very opposite of the kind of judge you want to have. He had no reverence for God. God’s words did not matter to him one bit. And he had no regard, no concern, no compassion for people. And when he dispensed justice, he did it his way. He did it his way.
But he had a problem. And his problem was a little old widow. Okay, I confess the Bible does not really say she was little. For that matter, it does not even say she was old. But you know us preachers. We have to have a little elbow room to use our imagination. So bear with me. I am going to say that this was a little old lady. And who knows? Maybe she looked a whole lot like Mrs. Grant of Grant’s Tomb.
And over and over and over again she came to this judge, and she sounded like a broken record. Because every time she did, she said to him, “Get me justice from my adversary.” Apparently she had an enemy. What that enemy was trying to do to her we do not know. Maybe he was trying to take her property, and she had come to the judge to get justice.
Now before I go a step further, let me remind you that we know exactly why Jesus told this parable. The reason we know is that we are told precisely in the very first verse of our passage. He spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. That was His purpose, to teach us that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.
And right now I want to direct your attention to the little word “ought.” Do you know what crazy idea goes through our heads sometimes? We face a problem. We fix the difficulty. And for some dumb reason we say to ourselves, “I ought not to pray about that. I ought not to bother God about that. That is not something that I should pray about.” But we are wrong.
Should this woman have come to this judge? Of course she should. She had an enemy who was trying to treat her unfairly. And that is what a judge was for. She should have come to him. She ought to have come to him. And she did. She did.
Many years ago there was a godless seaman who was on board a ship, and his companions were other ungodly seamen. And a storm came up, and the storm threatened to sink the ship. So his companions urged him to offer a prayer. And at first he resisted, and he told them, “I have not said a prayer for years. I have not even been in a church for years.” But they kept insisting. And finally he gave in. And what do you suppose he prayed? His prayer went like this: “Lord, I have not asked You for anything for fifteen years. And if You help us and get us to shore, I promise You that I will not bother You for another fifteen years.”
Well, you say, “It does not get that bad, does it?” Well, maybe it gets a lot closer to that than we think. May I describe the prayer life of some Christians to you? Hopefully nobody at Victor is free. They are lying in their bed at night. Sleep is stealing across their bodies. Their eyes are getting heavier and heavier. And they decide to shoot off a few lines to God. And they pray, “Lord, bless my husband or wife, bless my kids, and bless all the good people at church, Jesus.” And sometimes it is even worse. “Lord, bless my wife and my sisters.” This is his physicist. And I bet you that in lots of these cases it has been fifteen years or more since they got down on their knees in the presence of God to offer to God a real and meaningful prayer.
I was in a car years ago with a seminary student, and the student informed me that he had not prayed for a long time. I forget how long it was. It was something like three weeks, a month, two months. And I was kind of shocked, and I wondered why it was that he had not prayed. And here is what he told me, folks. I kid you not. He said, “I have not felt like it. I have not felt like it.” Can you believe it? I bet he felt like eating every day. I bet he felt like going to sleep every day. But prayer is more important than our food and our sleep. Prayer is not an option, friends. God expects us to pray. We need to pray. We should pray. Men always ought to pray.
So this judge had a problem, did he not? There is a little old lady. You know, I do not know whether she came to his house every day and knocked at his door. But if she did, I am sure he got very used to her knock. Or maybe she sought him out in a public place like the marketplace where he might have been holding court. And if she did, he got real used to seeing her tiny, slender little form making its way through the crowd. And I am betting that he got to the place that every time he heard her knock, every time he saw her making her way through the crowd to him, he said to himself, “She is here. She is here again for what must be the ten thousand five hundred and ninety-first time. She is here.”
You know what this little widow never said to herself? “Why am I doing this? I mean, I have been to this guy twenty-five times, and he does not even give me the time of day. And everybody knows what kind of a judge he is. He is as crooked as the day is long. He has no fear of God. He has no compassion for me. What am I doing? Best I am going to stop. I am not going to go to him anymore.”
And here is something she never did. She never went to his door and knocked. And when he came and opened it, she said, “I just want you to know that I am here for the last time. And you are the worst excuse for a judge that I have ever met. And if you think I am going to keep coming here and groveling at your feet while you kick dirt into my face, you have got another thing coming, Judge. Goodbye and goodbye forever.” And then she walked off.
I say she never did that. And if she had done that, you know what the judge would have done? He would have stood there watching her retreat into the distance. And a big old smile would have come across his face. And he might have said, “Bye-bye, lady. Bye-bye. You have just made my day.”
And dear friends, not only is it true that men ought to pray, it is also true that men always, always ought to pray. Be honest with me this morning. Maybe there has been a problem that you have prayed about for what you considered a long time, six months, even a whole year. Nothing happened. Did the thought ever go through your mind, “I am going to give up. I am not going to pray about this anymore”? Do not tell me that has never happened to you. That has happened to all of us. Of course that happens to all of us.
But the point of this parable is this: Never give up. It is too soon to quit. Or to put it in the words of Yogi Berra, the humorous and famous catcher of the New York Yankees, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” It is always too soon to quit.
You know, one of my favorite stories about prayer, maybe my number one favorite story, is already a century old. But it is a story told about George Müller, that great man of faith and prayer. And apparently when he was a young man, he made up his mind to pray for the salvation of five men who were close friends of his. And after five years of praying, one of those men got saved. During the next ten years, two of them got saved. After twenty-five years of praying, number four got saved. And Müller continued to pray for the fifth man until the day of Müller’s death, and he was not saved yet. Was it over? No indeed. Within a few months after Müller’s death, the fifth man came to personal faith in Jesus Christ.
And here is the bottom line. Müller had prayed for that man approximately fifty-two years. What is that? You are saying you have been praying something for six years and you are thinking about quitting? Do not kid me. It is too soon to quit. What is that? You say you have been praying about something for twenty years and you are thinking about quitting? Do not kid me. Get real. When it comes to prayer, my friends, it is honestly too soon to quit. It ain’t over until it is over.
And that is why Jesus said men always, always, always ought to pray. So guess what happened? Guess what happened? One day the judge said to himself, “I cannot stand it anymore. This woman is coming to me so often she is driving me out of my gourd. She is sending me up the wall of my house. I have got to get rid of her. How shall I get rid of her? Best way: answer her request.” And that is precisely what he decided to do.
And then Jesus turned to His disciples, and I am going to paraphrase Jesus’ words to them a little bit. Jesus said something like this: “Listen up, men. Listen up. Did you hear what that unjust judge said? And now think about God who is a holy and righteous judge. And when His people are persecuted and they cry to Him day and night for vengeance, do you not think He is going to handle their case? Of course He will handle their case, even though He bears long with them.”
And then He asks this penetrating question. He says, “Nevertheless, when I come back, will I find people on earth who still believe that I am going to answer their prayers?” Would I? Now I know that He is talking mainly about people who will suffer persecution in the Tribulation, and we will not be in the Tribulation. But the principle is obviously intended to apply to all of us.
And here is the sixty-four-dollar question. Suppose the Lord Jesus Christ were to come today for us. Would He discover that you have given up on some of the prayers that you have been presenting to Him? Or would He find faith in your heart, trusting Him to fulfill His word?
Many years ago a British submarine was trapped on the bottom of the ocean. Finally all hope that it could be saved and rise again to the top of the ocean was given up. And the commander, the captain of the submarine, ordered that his crew should sing a hymn which he thought was appropriate for people who were just about to die. The hymn was “Abide with Me.” “Fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, help of the helpless, O abide with me.”
And after they had sung that hymn, the commander addressed the crew. And he explained to them that they did not have long to live, that there was no hope that the searchers on the surface of the ocean would find them because they did not know the position of the submarine. And the commander ordered that sedatives, we might call them tranquilizers today, sedatives should be passed out to all the members of the crew so that they might calm their nerves in their last moments of life.
And one sailor reacted more quickly to the sedative than the rest, and he fainted. And as he fell over, he hit a piece of machinery. And the impact jarred loose the jamming of the surface mechanism and freed it up to operate. What do you know? The sub surfaced, and the sub made it to port safely with all hands on board. They had lost all hope, but they were not lost. They had given up on every helper but God helped them. And even though they did not realize it, that song was a prayer that requested that God should be with them. And He was, and He brought them safely to shore.
And listen to me. When you are submerged under a sea of troubles, when you are trapped in a dark pit of disappointment and despair, that is the time not to lose heart, meaning always to pray and not give up hope and not lose heart. Because that is the time that you need to turn to God and say to Him, “I’m here, Lord. Here I come again. Help me by Your grace.” Men always ought to pray and not and not and not lose heart.
Elijah Hoffman was born in that grand old state of Pennsylvania from which your speaker comes and prejudiced in its favor. And he spent his whole life as a pastor in the state of Pennsylvania. One day he was visiting a woman who had been through some very deep trouble. And as she was unburdening herself to Pastor Hoffman, she said, “Oh, what shall I do? I do not know what to do.” And then suddenly, as if a light had been turned on inside of her, her face brightened. And she said to Pastor Hoffman, “I must tell Jesus.”
And do you know that as he walked home that day, Pastor Hoffman could not get those words out of his mind? And they inspired him to write a song which has become one of the greatest hymns of prayer in the Christian hymnal.
“I must tell Jesus all of my trials. I cannot bear these burdens alone. In my distress He kindly will help me. He only loves and cares for His own. I must tell Jesus. I must tell Jesus. I cannot bear my burdens alone. I must tell Jesus. I must tell Jesus. Jesus can help me. Jesus alone.”
Lord Jesus, I am here. I am here again. And I have something that I must tell You.
Shall we pray?
Teach us that we always ought to pray and not lose heart. And we ask it through Christ’s name. Amen.