So we'll be beginning chapter
18 of Luke in our continuing Bible study. We'll be looking
at verses 1-8 today in this section. And contextually, this is kind
of rooted back to the previous chapter where to the right place here. Remember
the Pharisees demanded of Him when the kingdom of God should
come, and the kingdom of God cometh not without observation. So it's kind of linked to that. So He's speaking to them in this
mixed multitude of people, and Pharisees and disciples, crowd
that's always around him. So, beginning in verse 1 of Luke
chapter 18, And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men
ought always to pray and not to faint, saying, There was a
city, in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded
man. And there was a widow in that
city, and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while,
but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God,
nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge
her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said,
Hear what the unjust judge saith, and shall not God avenge his
own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear
long with them? I tell you that He will avenge
them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of
Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" So, again, this
is related directly back to the question of when is the Kingdom
of God coming? And he says, well, it's really
here right now, but it cometh not with observation. It's a
spiritual thing. So this widow, she's kind of a metaphor
for the church and people in the world that are going to the
worldly judges and things for relief. And it's about persistence. You know, if we think about the
people at the time, they were under control of the Roman Empire,
and the Roman Empire placed rulers over them in accordance with
their desired outcomes, which was keeping them from rebellion
and collecting money from them. And the judges in this case,
if it was a judge, it would have been a Roman judge. It would
have been a ruler appointed by the Romans. And the Jews had
their elders that took care of business in their religious capacity,
but in civil matters they would have went to a judge, and that
would have been a Roman-appointed judge. So they were under the
control of those Romans, and they hated them, and they were
abused by them. So the situation here is one
that was shared by all in this mixed multitude. They were all
under this yoke, and they were all looking for a Messiah to
come and physically change, alter all those circumstances, and
usher in what they considered would be a just and a kingdom
more in their own expectations. And they all had their expectations
rooted in their understanding of the world. and not spiritually
most of them. And it's kind of a result of
the fall. Our expectations and our view
of things was altered because of sin and the fall. And we can
only see things through that prism until we're redeemed. things change. When we're born
again, then we can see things as they truly are. We can see
things from a spiritual standpoint. And again, we refer to John 3
where he said, unless a man be born again, he can't see the
kingdom of God. Can't see it. Might be right
in front of him as Jesus was, But all they see is a physical
person that's bringing them some moral things to do and behavioral
situations and not what they wanted or expected. I was looking
at this verse in Ecclesiastes 3, verse 11. He wrote, he hath made everything
that be God, hath made everything beautiful in his time. And that's
God's time as we perceive this. And also he has set the world
in their heart. so that no man can find out the
work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." Isn't
that an interesting scripture there about how we're impacted
by that? You know, before the fall, we
don't have very much recorded about how things were before
the fall, but we know that God made everything and it was good.
He had made everything beautiful in his time. And yet, because
of the fall, the world becomes our main focal point. The world
is in our heart, and we see everything from a worldview, from a world
aspect, and we're concerned with the things that we can see in
that world. We lose track of the fact that
sin impacted every atom of everything. Even the ground is cursed. And
we'll look at a verse in Romans that kind of emphasizes this
very fact. And because of sin and the impact
of it, it removed from man any spiritual relationship with God.
The atom hid from God. And he blamed Him. We didn't
like Him because He was guilty before Him. And we didn't have
any ability to come to Him in any capacity other than sin. And so, thus He set the world
in their hearts so that no man can find out the work that God
maketh from the beginning to the end. You know, Adam, I think Norm has pointed out
in a couple of his lessons that Eve thought she was going to
bear the Messiah. I've gotten a man from God. So
her view was very limited in scope because the world was set
in her heart. If she could have only known
then, we look in Matthew and we look at the lineage of the
Lord, so-and-so begot, so-and-so begot, so-and-so begot, so-and-so,
and it comes down to Jesse begat, Obed, and so on, and then we
find the lineage of the Lord through all these people, some
good, some bad. aware of all those things. And
even today, we don't know. who the last sheep might be,
and what lineage they might, what family they might come from,
families that have no religious connection really, or families
that might be in another country that are brought to here, or
from here to there. There's just an infinite amount
of things that could go on, and so we don't know the work of
God from the beginning to the end. We just don't know. And
so we have to trust in Him for that. And that's very crucial
for our understanding of today's lesson because they're saying,
when are you going to come back? When are you going to come back
and set up the kingdom? And He's trying to point out to them the
spiritual truth. His face is set like a flint
to go to Jerusalem to lay down His life for the sheep. Some
of them had not been born yet. Some of them were in the religious
other camp, like Paul. He was against him, vehemently
against him, as we all are, actually. So we have this delineation between
the world as we know it in our physical existence and the world
or kingdom of God. You know, Jesus said in John
18, my kingdom is not of this world. And for us to try to look
at it from that aspect, from a physical aspect, always leads
us down the wrong road. And he points that out time after
time after time after time in the Scriptures. If my kingdom was of this world,
then things would be a lot different. But it's not of this world, and
it's going according to the will of my Father. And in the covenant
of grace, there lies the purpose and will of God, who in His complete
sovereignty chose a people from before the foundation of the
world. And it's kind of valuable for us to keep that in mind as
we read this Scripture. This widow troubles me a bit.
I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming to me she weary
me. And the Lord said, Hear what
the unjust saith. Shall not God avenge his own
elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long
with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless,
when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth."
There's a lot of spiritual food in there for the church. There
is just a lot of meaning and depth in there. We'd think that, well, just a
casual, I had this guy that used to work for me, he says, we'd
look at some crazy directions on how to put something together,
and he says, well, it's pretty simple to the most casual observer,
we'd say. And we'd say, well, let's throw
these out and just wing it. So it's interesting that this Get back to my note here. These people, they had expectations
that were rooted in their understanding of the world, and yet they lacked,
most of them, a spiritual understanding of what he was talking about.
It's just another example of a parable. Unto you it's given
to know the mysteries, but to them it's not given. And he gives
some explanations at the end of this parable. It says, "...shall
not God avenge His own elect?" So we need to kind of keep that
in perspective as we look to these. And try to keep in mind the purpose
and will of God, who again in His complete sovereignty chose
a people from before the foundation of the world. He says, His own
elect is what He tells them. And in spite of our sinful nature
and enmity to Him, He also chose a Savior. He calls Him as the
elect also. He's a daisman, one who could
lay a hand on us both, as we find from Job, and one who could
satisfy the righteousness of God and the needs of the sinful
people whom He had elected in eternity. So we look at a few
key verses here. in verse 7 of chapter 18, "...shall
not God avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto
Him, though He bear long with them?" He's very patient with
them, even though many times we're crying for the wrong thing.
We're crying for what we what we look at in our own, we're
like this woman, avenge me of my adversary, he cheated me,
he robbed me, or he mistreated me, or abused me, or annoyed
me, or something like that. Anybody in here have that issue
this week? Anybody annoy you, or treat you
bad, or rob you, or cheat you, or abuse you in some way? So there's nothing new under
the sun, as Solomon said, just everything's the same. So this widow, she comes at this
judge that fears not God nor man. Isn't that just a typical
description of the rulers that we have in every generation?
For the most part, they don't fear God or man, and especially
true today. So we're all in that boat. And we're taking our case, like
this woman, We plead our case to someone that doesn't know
anything about God, and he doesn't really respect men. He's just
in it for himself. The point here, as I wanted to
bring out, is that there's really a connection here to a previous
lesson that we had on the unrighteous mammon. And Jesus said, you know
what? The children of this world, they're
a lot more diligent in taking care of their business than the
children of life. They spend a lot more time trying
to achieve their ends then the children alike seem to be slacking
at the point of it. And so this woman, she's persistent
in her approach to this man, this judge, that fears not God
and respects not man. And the only reason that he is
altering his path is because she is persistent in approaching
him and saying, avenge me of my adversary, avenge me of my
adversary, over and over. So she's continually coming to
Him, and we ought to be continually coming to God in prayer, not
so much trying to change His his approach or his will or purpose,
but to, he said, we're supposed to let him know our needs and
our issues and things that trouble us and everything. But our will
is supposed to be, in our prayers, supposed to be aligned with his
will and purpose. I was telling Norm this morning,
you know, I bet you there was a lot of people in Damascus that
was praying, I wish lightning would strike Paul before he gets
here and hauls us off to jail. He's my adversary. That's how
they looked at him, Saul of Tarsus. He was coming there to arrest
them and throw them in jail back in Jerusalem and have them maltreated
in many ways. So you just don't have any idea
of God's works from the beginning to the end. So we always have
to keep that in the back of our mind. So this widow in her persistent
and continual plea for justice, she's eventually successful because
she's persistent. And this is contrasted to the
children of God who in continual prayer come to Him saying, when,
Lord, when? When are you going to come back? avenge me of my adversary." We
all have that same thought. And these are called the elect. In verse 7, he says, shall not
God avenge His own elect? And it's not just the elect,
it's His own elect. That is what they call, I guess,
Possessive pronoun. He's talking about somebody that
belongs to him. And the somebody that belongs
to him are his through election. He chose them. So we have many scriptures that
discuss that. And we used to kid about that
in the assembly where we once were when we were trying to teach
about the sovereignty of God. And they were kind of vehemently
opposed to that. And we used to call Elek, one
of the classified document words. That's classified because they
would never, that was like marked top secret in their Bible, they
would never read that or talk about it or predestination or
any of those terms were all, we called them all classified.
But it's right there in the scripture and just means just what it says
it means. We have an election coming up where we're going to
choose representatives. God had an election where he
chose a people, not because of merit, not they hadn't even been
born yet, not because he foresaw that they would do something
good or not do something good. He chose them merely and completely
because it was His sovereign right to do so. And some He chose
and some He didn't choose. And it was not because of merit,
not because of anything, the children not being born, not
having done any good or evil that the purpose of God according
to election might stand. It tells us in Malachi and Romans. So when it says He's going to
avenge His own elect, They're His. And the Lord our Savior
points that out in John 17 where He's praying for those ones that
God gave Him. He says, Thine they were, and
Thou gavest them to Me in the covenant of grace, They were
the fathers, and in a sinful, ruined condition, He gave them
to the Son to redeem. Thine they were, Thou gavest
them to Me. I've been Nortoned here. So anyway, it's a possessive
pronoun from thine they were, thou gavest them to me. And this will be their persistent
prayer until all the elect are brought to salvation when the
Lord comes again. And we find that documented in Revelation chapter
6. If you want to turn to Revelation
6, 10, and 11. And they cried with a loud voice,
saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge
and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And verse 11, And white robes
were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them
that they should rest yet for a little season, until their
fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed
as they were should be fulfilled." So he's saying there's people
that haven't even been born yet in Revelation. And he's talking
to the people that are already there with him in heaven and
saying, all my sheep haven't even been born yet according
to my purpose and my will and time. Those that should be killed as
they were that should be fulfilled it has yet to be Accomplished
and when that is accomplished then he's going to come I like
what he says and he Shall not he avenged him speedily. Well
that speedily can be kind of considered in two different terms.
It can be considered as Rapidly speedily, or it can be
considered as a short space of time. And you know how the Lord
looks at time a little bit differently than we look at time. There's a nice little article
about our view of time in your church bulletin there, and it
talks about how the elect view time and how the unregenerate
people of the world view time. And so I'd encourage you to read
that. But in God's scope of things,
he says, before Abraham was, I am. I am. It's an eternal, always,
now kind of a word. It's not a, well, I used to be
Abraham's, or a long time ago I was Abraham's father, and in
the future I'll be God to some other people. He says, I am.
It's always, Whenever God is, is I am. It's always now. It's not a concept that we can
think about easily. But he says, I'm not a man as
you are. I can't be approached in that
way. And so he says, I'll avenge them
speedily. And I think that in his scope
of things, it's not a long time. It's according to his eternal.
In eternity, we're just a little bitty dot in a vast expanse of eternity. But
I think it means speedily. When the time comes, it's going
to be fast. It's not gonna be, it's not gonna
be, I was just looking at the news yesterday and some guy that
was arrested back in 2017 is finally coming to trial for some
heinous crime that he committed because he was able to play the
legal system and drag it out for five years. And so he's finally
gonna get his time in court here pretty soon. Then he'll probably
get off. It's not speedily, you know. When the Lord judges everybody,
when he separates the goats on the left and the sheep on the
right, it's just going to be, depart from me, you workers of
iniquity. for I never knew you, and be gone. There's not going
to be no appeal. There's not going to be, well,
let me get some attorney that will postpone this. He is the sovereign king, and
he will deal with it speedily. And so I think it's important
for us to keep that in mind because we're still always saying,
when are you going to come back and avenge me speedily? And again,
we don't know God's work from the end, from
the beginning. And so we have to trust Him. And yet we're to
pray for those things, but we're to pray... that our wills are
aligned with His will, as we mentioned from Luke 22 and John
5 where the Lord prayed, and He says, not My will, but Thine
be done. That's what He said twice. Your will is the will that matters
and what needs to occur. So we need to know that at the
beginning here of this chapter 18, He says we need to to pray
and not to faint. We won't want to give up because
we don't think things are happening in the time frame that we have
allotted or the time frame that we have expectations of or the
time frame that we think is reasonable. We need to think and line our
wills with God's will and say, you know, somehow all this is
for the furtherance of the Gospel, and the last sheep hasn't been
saved yet, and who knows when the next Paul's going to come
along. And we think, boy, that guy is a... My brother used to
say that about me. He'll never be saved. So anyway, we need to have our
prayers to be made in accordance with His will, and that is taken
care of by the Holy Spirit. It tells us that in Romans. If
you turn over to Romans 18, it kind of addresses this very thing. We have all these people, Romans
8, verse 18. These people that are saying,
avenge me of my adversary. And we find that from the beginning
of time, we've had the adversary. Abel, killed by his brother,
the adversary. So if we apply these things that
we read to ourselves in this very day, It kind of makes sense for us,
and it's spiritual, it's scriptural. In Romans 8, 18, it says, waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of god for the creature was made subject to vanity not
willingly but by reason of him who has subjected the same in
hope because the creature itself also shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption and to the glorious liberty of the
children of god For we know that the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves
also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves
groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body." So he's talking about since the fall,
the whole world has been impacted by sin and the fall. The whole
creation is not the way it was in the original creation. It's not the way it was when
God created everything and said it is good. Then we have the
big calamity, the big fall. The very ground is cursed. We have people here that are
gardeners and teach gardening. Yvonne picked a tomato the other
day and it had a whole gob of worms And we have weeds. I don't know how many weeds I
pulled this weekend. But everything else that I want
to grow is dying because it's hot and dry here. It's 100 degrees
and hot. But the weeds say, oh, I like
it. And they just go. They just expand
out. And every one of them has a billion
seeds in them. And they all propagate. Every
one of those weed seeds seems to take root. But the good stuff. No matter how you work at it,
it seems like Yvonne had planted 2,000 zinnias seeds and only
eight came up. We all groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth
he yet hope for? But if we hope for that that
we seeth not, then do we with patience wait for it. Likewise,
in the same way, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for
we know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit
itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot
be uttered." So like those people in Damascus were saying, we heard
Paul's coming. I hope he gets ran over by a
train on the way here. They prayed to God. Avenge us
of our adversaries, beatily, and don't let him come here and
kill us. And God appeared to one of them
there in Damascus and said, you know, he's a chosen vessel unto
me, so treat him nice when he gets here, even though he's been
kind of a stinker in his former life, he's changed now. So when
he gets here, you take care of him." And you know what they
said? Okay. If it's coming from you,
then it's okay. And we have to kind of take that
approach that when we pray, we have to be kind of careful, and
we have to trust the Spirit to say, when we're saying, so-and-so
mistreated me, or abuse me, or oppress me, or
the government's oppressing me, or whatever, we have to pray,
not my will, Lord, but Thine be done somehow. That's hard for us though, you
know, because we just look at things like Ecclesiastes. We have the world in our heart,
and we kind of look at things from that viewpoint. It's hard
to remember what he said in John 17. They are not of the world
even as I am not of the world. So we have that duality that
we have to look at things from the spiritual point of view and
trust in Him. That's the main thing. And you
know that's the last, we're going to try and wrap this up pretty
quick here, but that's the last thing. He says in this block
of Scripture here in chapter 18, when the Son of Man does
come, is He going to find faith? Is He going to find people that
have total reliance in Him for salvation? Not only for themselves,
but for all the sheep have yet to be born or that are coming.
Is he going to find faith? Is he going to find that total
reliance? Or are they all going to be saying, avenge me speedily
now? And I mean now, now. So the Spirit, it takes our prayers
and translates them in accordance with God's will and Somehow he takes care of that.
And he that, in Romans 8, he says, And he that searcheth the
hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh
intercession for the saints according to the will of God. So Paul didn't
get run over by a train or struck by lightning. He was struck by
light. And we know that all things then,
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are
the called according to His purpose. So that's in context with the
very thing that we're talking about here. For whom He did foreknow
His own elect, He will avenge His own elect. For whom He did
foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate,
them He also called, and whom He called, He also justified,
and whom He justified, them He also glorified." And so we have
that final verse there in chapter 18, verse 8, when the, I tell
you, He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of
Man cometh, will He find faith on the earth? What an important
question. So based on what we read, what's
been revealed, Will the Lord really find total reliance on
him in all these things for salvation, for his purpose in gathering
all the elect at the time purposed by God in eternity? In this world
we want the avenged speedily part. according to our understanding,
our prayers, then are converted to account for the elect that's
not yet born, for the things that God has purposed that haven't
yet come to pass. As it said in Revelation, these
things need to be fulfilled. They shall come to pass. They
need to be fulfilled. And those elect that are not
yet born, but they will be born, and they will all be at some
point in their life, some sooner, some later, they'll be caused
to hear the gospel, and the Holy Spirit will cause them to believe
according to the working of His mighty power. Something that
they don't even come up with that on their own. that we believe
according to the working of His mighty power. And they'll be
saved in accordance with His sovereign will and purpose at
the time that He is appointed. So therefore, we are supposed
to pray and not to faint. not to give up, not to lose hope.
We're to just have faith and trust in Him, in His will and
purpose. And so the next thing we have
coming up here is almost one of the most famous things that
we ever read in the Bible. The two men went to the temple
to pray. One prayed for things. the world. And the other one
said, have mercy on me a sinner. So till the next time, thank
you for attention and be free.