Bothering God

This week we unpack Luke 18:1–8 and why Jesus commands us to “pray always and not lose heart,” moving from Eden’s communion to a practical “Bother List” you can start today. We’ll also explore team-prayer—Moses’ raised hands—and how the Spirit and the Son intercede for you right now.

Transcript

Gospel of Luke. Yes, Gospel of Luke. Excellent. Now, Luke 18, by the way. Now realize we only have a few more weeks in Luke.

I mean, it's coming to an end. Christ the King Sunday, you may remember, is the end of the church calendar year, okay? So the liturgical calendar ends with Christ the King Sunday, which is the Sunday again before the first Sunday of Advent. And so we're going to be celebrating that in a big way. You'll hear more about that later.

But that'll be the end of our venturing into the Gospel of Luke. And then things will reset to year A, where we'll be in Matthew. And so if you found Luke 18, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of God's word this morning as found in Luke 18. And we'll just pick up right there at verse one. Notice these words.

This is the word of God. Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city, there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, grant me justice against my opponent. For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.

And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Jesus, thank you for these words. We pray now that you would send your Holy Spirit to us to help us to look up to you for help. And, Lord, would you teach us? Would you rebuke us? Would you correct us and put us on the right path?

We pray in your name. Amen. And you can be seated.

Well, we finally come. Wouldn't you agree to a parable of Jesus that's pretty easy to understand? Wouldn't you say, like, finally, he's not trying to pull any hard ones on us and make it difficult, as I'm sure the apostles often thought. Like, man, he's just trying to make it difficult. No, in fact, in this parable, thanks be to God on Team Sunday, Great Sunday, we get an easy one, or so we think.

You see, the problem with this parable and this teaching today of Jesus is not the understanding of it, but the doing of it. Wouldn't you agree?

We often want to complicate prayer, but at the end of the day, it's not complicated. It's talking to God. The problem is we don't do it. That's why Jesus here, at the very beginning, Jesus told them this parable notice. Because they needed to pray always and not lose heart.

Isn't that us? Shouldn't we hear that as if we were his disciples too? We need to pray always and never lose heart. Amen.

So today I want to kind of meander through the readings, but with more of a topical approach as to what is prayer, the how to of praying, and then finally draw just a clear application, I think, right from the text here today. You know, I looked it up, and I guess I'd never done this before, but I looked up, like, what is the first time that prayer is mentioned? Like, where in the Bible is the first time prayer is mentioned? And it's kind of interesting. The first time the word is used pray is actually to do with Abraham and abimelech in Genesis 20.

And you remember, this is one of those instances where Abraham knew that his wife was very beautiful. And. And he said, hey, she's just my sister. Well, then Abimelech is like, well, great. That means, you know, she's on the market and I would like to be with her.

So he takes her in, and all of a sudden a plague breaks out. Nobody's able to have babies anymore. Things are going poorly for Abimelech. And God comes to Abimelech and says, by the way, you're doing the right thing by trying to be just. And you, you know, he had not mistreated Sarah here.

And yet he says, but here's the thing. That woman belongs to somebody. And that somebody is one of my prophets. And unless he prays for you, you're gonna be in bad shape, bud. So you need to return her and ask for Abraham to pray for you.

That's the first time prayer is mentioned. And it's just intercess. And of course, you know, she's returned. And Abraham's like, yeah, well, you know, Abraham's an interesting character, so you just have to go in there. But he says, listen, because sometimes he's a man of faith, right?

And other times, well, not so much. And he says. He said, I'll pray for you when he does, everything returns copaseutic, right? And so this is the first time explicitly that pray or prayer is mentioned. But if we intuit calling out to God as prayer well, we actually have a few more.

We can back it up actually to Genesis 4, verse 26, where it talks about this. People began calling on the name of the Lord. So you know, Genesis is a book of beginnings. And so you would imagine that prayer is going to be found in the beginning, right? And it says people began, it was a Genesis to call on the name of, of the Lord.

And you know what? That's what prayer is. If you ever found yourself saying, lord, help me, then that's a form of prayer. You're calling on the name, the character of God. And this is why we're actually told not to misuse his name, not to profane it or to, or to act like it's just a common name.

Now specifically, we want to get really clear with that and say the name of Jesus is the highest name that could ever come off of our lips. And now the Jews did something where, you know, because they revered the name of the Lord so much, they never said the name of God. They didn't feel like they were worthy of doing it. That's why we don't even know how to really pronounce Yahweh is because the pronunciation was lost. They never said it.

And in fact, even if you read a Jewish author today, when they spell out God, they will put G dash D because they don't even want to write it. It's so holy. Now here's the good news is Jesus clarifies for us that yes, God's name is holy, absolutely holy, and we better not misuse it, better not profane it. But here's the thing. We are told, even commanded, to call on the name of the Lord Jesus.

In other words, for us Christians, it's not. We revere him. We're never going to say your name. No, no, no, no, no. We speak his holy name.

And what a privilege, brothers and sisters, what a privilege. The thing is, it's like calling out for help. And you know somebody's going to help when you use his name, he's going to act. And that's why we don't just throw around the name of Jesus is because there is a real personal God behind that name, a living God that can hear every time his name is mentioned. Which is good news for us, isn't it?

Because even in the darkest of night, even in the storm, just like we just sang about, when we call his name, he will come to help. The scripture says this. He is an ever present help in our time of need. Thanks be to God. But let's back it up a little bit more.

I love this because it's kind of like a little journey here. We find the word pray in the Bible, but back it up to what prayer really is, which is calling out on the name of God. But then notice really then what's happening even in the garden, right, Is a type of praying because God comes to what, fellowship and communicate with them in the cool of the day, doesn't he? In other words, being in communion or conversation with God is what we mean when we talk about praying to God. We're using words.

We're communicating with the divine. And this happens in Genesis before the fall. So prayer then is not something in response to the fall of mankind, but rather is something set up as good. And it's a good work for us. It really is what salvation is all about.

If you really want to get down to it, it's communing with God and ultimately communicating with God, not hiding. You remember what happens with the fall, right? They go and hide. No, no, that's not communication. That's not communion, you know?

And if when a little kid does something bad and they feel bad, but you ever notice how they just kind of messed up again, you know, they look down, they want to hide, they don't want to look at you. Nobody confesses, I did it. You know, that's not the way we confess. It's normally hard to get out. And yet that word goes out and is still echoing through time.

Where are you? Where are you? Of course God knows. Why is he asking the question? So they can know where are.

Oh, goodness, we're covered now and we're hiding.

No, prayer opens up, you see, Prayer exposes us. We must confess in prayer. Confess the real me.

I must be honest and come to the light. That's what prayer is. And that's what we find with them, walking with God before sin. But let's back it up one more step. Say, where would we go from there?

There's nothing before the beginning except the triune God and the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit communicates with one another, person to person. Yes, this is what we believe. The Father loves the Son. The Son, we're told, is the word of God and the Spirit the breath of God. And they are in an eternal holy communion of love.

Which means prayer doesn't begin with us, but with God himself. And that God prays, you say, pastor, that sounds weird. I get it. But you've read the gospels, right? Jesus, who does he pray to?

Not just I pray to myself. No, he prays to his Father, doesn't he? And he teaches us to pray Our Father. Which means what? He invites us into the very relationship.

From all eternity, never created, uncreated communion. He invites us and says, you can call God your Father, Our Father who art in heaven. You see, he makes this possible because of his work, because of his work, because of his work of returning to the Father.

And then here's the cool thing. He sends His Holy Spirit, right, to actually pray for us. And guess what? Paul's going to say. It's crazy in Romans.

I mean, I love this. Paul says, listen, you know what happens when you pray? When you get to a point where you don't even know what to pray? Here's what happens. He diagrams it for us.

He says, the Spirit knows your heart. And the Spirit, think about this. Knows the heart of God. Who's God the Father? And he says, then what does he do?

He takes what we can't even utter and communicates it to the Father on our behalf. In other words, the Spirit intercedes for us. What is the picture of Jesus that we have? He's the King of Kings, seated at the Father's right hand, doing what? Sleepily, kind of just waiting.

No, what is he doing? Interceding for us constantly to the Father on our behalf. That means we have two divine persons, the Son and the Spirit, who intercede on our behalf. Now, can you just stop real quick? Even if you've had a bad day or a crazy day or a crazy past week and now this week.

Listen, God, your name is on his lips as he intercedes for us.

Just let that sink in for just a second. It's like one of my professors, Dr. Oswald, he says. He says, you know, if God has a refrigerator in heaven, your picture's on it.

And isn't it true, though he comes after us, he's concerned for us. He makes the first move always. And our prayer then is always a response to his goodness, to His Word, never the other way around. So if you ever feel like. Man, I just.

God's not saying anything. Listen, God has already spoken.

Our response is always a response to him, that eternal communion extended to each and every one of us. He loves us more than we could ever imagine.

And signs like the cross remind us of just how far he'll go for us, to rescue us, to be in communion with us. Okay, so got to sum this part up. Prayer is talking to God. Prayer is responding to God. Prayer, lifting our gaze to the one who is high and lifted up.

Not always just Looking at our circumstances. Because trust me, if you live in your circumstances or the circumstances of America or the world situation, you're going to be depressed. You're going to be torn this way and that. We've got to look higher than that. We got to look up.

Which is why the psalmist, right, he's like, where does my help come from? It's beyond the hill. I look up to the hills. Yeah. And it's beyond the hill.

The hills are not my answer. It's the one who is beyond the mountains, the one high and lifted up.

So that means then. And I really appreciate this about God, because, like, some of us just aren't talkers, you know what I mean? Now some of us are, you know, like, I'm married to a talker, you know, Like, Jessica loves to talk. You know, like given a situation, if you like talking, you would rather talk to her than me. It's just the way it works.

And she really. It's a gift for her, you know, if you ask about my day, it's summed up in a phrase, not even a sentence. Whereas if you ask about her day, it's gonna be a little. It's a paragraph at least, you know, and that's fine. Listen, God made us different, didn't he?

Mark writes a shorter gospel, doesn't he, Luke? A longer one. Hey, God uses all kinds, and the variety is awesome. You already know that.

Here's the point, though. We do not have to just sit around and verbally talk to pray. And I love this. We can pray anytime, anywhere, under any circumstance. In other words, if you're driving down the road, you can pray.

And it doesn't have to be out loud. If you're in a waiting room, you can pray to God. You can lift your heart and your mind, tilt it up to the highest one, the greatest good, even if your current situation isn't good.

And this is one thing the martyrs of the church have found out is you can pray in the shadow of the scaffold. You can pray all the way to the end. And when you awake in new life, you'll be still talking to the same one you left off talking to.

You know, it hit me one day that Jessica and I are in, like, this continual conversation. You know what I mean? If you're married or if you even have a best friend, you'll get what I'm saying. This. You're able just to pick up right where you left off.

You know what I mean? And when the Bible tells us, start praying and don't Stop. That's exactly what it means. You say, pastor, are you praying even now? I mean, kind of a little bit, yeah.

Because sometimes, like, lord, where do we go next? In my head now, I don't sit here and get on my knees and do all that. That's how we typically envision praying and listen, getting down and kneeling and doing this in a posture of prayer. That matters, too. Sometimes.

Sometimes you just need to get low. And sometimes you need to get loud, cry out to the. Remember, they were crying out to the Lord. You know, when our second son, Baylor, was being born, we came to a place, you know, we're still kind of new to this. Just our second child.

You know, by the time we got to five, we were good, but the second one, we didn't really know all of what was going on still. And all of a sudden, all his vitals just crash. Like, there's no heartbeat. There's. Everything on the screen is just flatlined, you know, and the nurse is in there with us, and she, you know, moving instruments around, trying to find a heartbeat.

And Jessica is, you know, like, is my baby all right? And she's not answering. My baby. Okay? She's not answering.

Looking around. She's starting to get a little frantic. And the next thing you know, she's like, yelling down the hallway for somebody to come in. Well, I'm not a medical professional. I don't know what to do except pray.

And you know what I did? I literally. It was like muscle memory. I literally dropped to my knees right beside her bed because I knew she was terrified. I didn't know what was going on.

I thought we were about to lose our little man. Dropped to my knees and out loud, just started praying, jesus, please help us right now. We need your help. God save our little man. And of course, the nurses run in, they do all the thing, and then boom, boom, boom.

You know, everything gets back. And we were able to praise God that Baylor is here with us sitting today, when you don't know what to do, pray. Like, why do we go searching online? Why do we try to find other answers? Let's first pray.

Why is prayer seemingly. And I'm just preaching to myself here for a minute, why is it always the last thing we think about? You know, when you're sitting down, you're looking at your budget. Like, oh, man. Well, I don't know how we're going to do this.

Like, yeah, let's try to figure it out. Let's get mad about it and everything. Why don't we Just take some time to pray.

You get all upset about what's happening in the news, you get bent out of shape and all this kind of, it's time to pray.

What about that? Like, how about that first? Wouldn't that if we put God first, isn't that the first commandment? If we put God first, isn't that the right order? Then we can do all.

It's not that we just pray and we never act and get out in the world and work and so on and so forth. Of course not, but we pray first, man. What if we became a people that when circumstances surprised us or when crisis came, the first thing we did was pray? And I mean out loud in a public place. What if we became the kind of people that if somebody were to ask, like, hey, man, I wish you.

Could you pray for this? Like, my. My grandma is sick or something like that, we just stop right then and said, let me pray for you right now.

I think God would use that. In fact, I read a book on prayer one time. Well, I've read several books on prayer. You know, the thing about reading books on prayer, you can keep reading books on prayer and keep learning about prayer, but the most important thing is you actually just do it. It's actually just that you do it.

It's not even as important to understand what prayer is as that you start calling on the name of the Lord and go from there. Just feel it out, man. It's like learning a card game. You ever try to learn a card game before? Somebody's like, yeah, so, like, you know, the spades are gonna be trump.

And then, like, this happens and then that, you know, you go in this order, and then like, you're like, bro, let's just play. Because, like, I don't know what you're saying, but I can. When I get into it and start playing, I'll get it. You know, like, teach my kids Stratego. It's like, let's just play.

I don't know what else to do here. Let's just play, and then you'll get what I'm talking about. Yeah, as the people of God, we just need to start praying. You say, yeah, but I don't really know exactly how to just start praying. Just start talking to God.

Just start crying out to him from your heart. That's the best kind of prayer you're going to hear in a couple weeks. Or maybe it's next week. The publican and the tax collector. 2.

Two people that pray very differently. One eloquently, the Other, not so much. And guess who went home justified the guy who did it from his heart. Prayer is not meant to impress others or to impress God. You can't do that.

But instead, it's meant to impress upon us our necessity of God. I need him more than breath. I need him more than medical intervention. I need him because at the end of the day, no matter how much medical intervention you're gonna give me, I'm gonna die. It's gonna happen.

And what matters most, one second after you take your last breath here, is if you were in communication with God, if you were in communion with the Holy One.

You know, sometimes prayer is a type of wrestling, isn't it? As we find here with Jacob. And Jacob is by himself, but he's never by himself because we're never by ourself either. That's one of the principles here that we can take. And God wrestles with him as so much richness that comes from this story.

But I just want to say this. He left that prayer meeting not the same as when he entered that tent. When he exited, he had a limp, which a lot of interpreters see as a burden that he had to bear for the rest of his life. A cross that he was asked to carry.

And I wonder, what is your cross that when you meet Christ, he keeps pushing it on you? Like, this is what I've called you to do. I've called you not just to be who you think you are, Jacob, but rather Israel, which means to wrestle with God and man and prevail. Think about that.

What cross is Christ asking you to pick up? What burdens does he want to carry through you? That's another way to put it. Because prayer is not just some gift that comes from above that some people have and others don't. No, it's a work that everybody is called to.

It's a work that every Christian does at base. In fact, it's probably the most basic thing in Christianity that we do is pray. There's been times where people didn't have a Bible and couldn't read the Bible because they were imprisoned or in some other circumstance. But you know what they could do? Pray is something that no one can ever take from you, but that.

And that's why the enemy tries to prevent us from praying, distract us from praying. Because in order to pray, you really kind of have to stop the various things in your life. You can't pray and scroll on instapot. You know, that's what I call it.

You can't pray and be concerned about the things of this world at the same time. Because if you've got God in view, the things of this world fade away. Then we can re enter the world and see things with God's mind, with God's perspective. You see, the reality is this. And you.

You already know this. That prayer doesn't change God per se, but instead it changes us fundamentally. We pick up on what he's doing in the world. We don't twist his arm to make him do something. Instead, he says, I'm going to work my goodwill through the prayers of my people.

Which is kind of the paradoxical mystery here is that God won't do it without the prayers of his people. And yet we're not changing anything about God's nature. When we pray, he's already good, he's unchanging. And so he chooses. Think about this, chooses to use the prayers of his people to change the world and the world, your world, our world right here, will not be changed without us interceding for them.

Think about Abraham. Remember when he intercedes for Sodom. Think about Moses when they're winning the battle. You remember this. In Exodus, they're winning this battle.

And he lifts up his hands. As long as his hands are lifted, you remember this. They're winning. And he's like, oh, man, I get tired. And now all of a sudden, they're losing.

So what happens? Aaron and Hur, remember, come and hold his hands up. What a beautiful picture of prayerful teamwork. You see what we did just there? Teamwork prayer is not an individual sport.

Now this is cool. You say, I thought, like, I pray, though. Absolutely. But guess who you're praying to, right? It's not just you.

It's not just the ceiling. It's God. God has already spoken. We're responding. Which means there's already two, right?

And then what does the Lord say? Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst. And when we pray, we don't just pray for ourself, but for others. We're told to intercede together. In fact, Acts 2 says they devoted themselves to the prayers.

You say, what are the prayers? Right. You would think it would be like just they devoted themselves to prayer in general. But the prayers were these liturgical prayers, these written prayers that were done in the synagogue but now transformed in Christ because of Christ. So the point is, when you pray, you can use written prayers of the church, you can use the model prayer, the Lord's prayer, right?

But you also at times will be spontaneously praying. You'll be as extemporaneously praying out of yourself, out of your own circumstance, not using just a written prayer. So the written prayers kind of form our praying just like. And you know, if you don't ever know what to pray, you can always pray the Lord's prayer, but then you can always go to the Psalms. They.

Every one of them is a prayer. The one we read, 121. Lord, I don't know what to do. Look up. That's what he said.

Look up. Lord, I lift my eyes into the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from you. So I want to challenge you this morning on this team Sunday to create a bother list.

Maybe you've never heard of that before, but now you have. Here's what it means. Create a list to bother God about. Just like our text. This lady, you know, widow.

The reason widow in the parable is here is widows were powerless in a legal sense. They were like at the bottom, poor. Nobody's concerned with them. This judge, he's not even concerned with wealthy people. He's not concerned with anybody, not even God.

And yet, because this lady just keeps coming back day after day like a drippy sink, you know, will somebody turn that. You ever heard one of my kids, I don't know who it is. I'm gonna find out one of these days. Has this alarm that goes off in the morning. Apparently they can't hear it, but I can hear it okay.

And it's bump, bump, bump, you know? And I'm like, guys, somebody's got to do something about this because it's annoying. It's bothersome. And what Jesus is saying crazily enough in this passage is bother God with your praying.

Because how much more gracious and loving and good is God than this idiot judge? He didn't say idiot, but I did bother God with a list of the lost. Continually bring that name before him.

Your co workers continually bring their. Your family. Think about it. This church and the ministries of this continually bring these things before God. And he says it's the persistent prayer.

James says, this you do not have because you do not ask. Let's ask. Let's get to asking.

Get to asking. You say, I really don't know exactly what. Just start asking for something and then let God shape you because prayer shapes us as we get aligned to him. Guess what? Things are going to start happening.

That's the mystery of prayer. I don't know. Works. After all these years of still I have no clue steal exactly how they. This whole thing of prayer works.

But the point is, prayer works because you're talking to God. Not because of you, not because of me, but because of God. So let's get a bother list. Maybe it's a person who needs salvation. Maybe it's a community, a neighborhood.

Maybe it's justice for someone that you know about. And you keep coming to God with this.

Get a bother list and then get a couple friends to hold you up in prayer. Now, listen, being a pastor, I actually have some of these people in my life. I cannot imagine living my life without constant prayer on my behalf. I'm dead serious. Like, it'd take too long for me to go into.

And we're out of time. Gotta go get the chili. You know, I get it. Too long to mention how many times my life has been saved, how many times tragedy has been averted. Because I have some widows, some ladies, some grandmas, some brothers and sisters that pray for me, a wife that prays for me.

Only when I get to heaven will I really see the impact. You've got to get your own prayer warriors. Get some people that love you and are willing to pray for you, holding up your hands so that we can win the battle.

May it be so of us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.