You are listening to Heed the Word with our pastor and teacher Ken Davis. Pastor Ken is the senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Southwest Metro in Burleson, Texas. Please join us as we study the Gospel of Luke verse by verse.

We do not appear as strangers before God, but literally as his children, and what's more, we appear not as a widow, but we appear before him as the very bride of Christ. Now, a widow is someone who is alone. But the bride of Christ is not alone, and so when we come before God, we are not isolated and by ourselves, but we are accompanied by an advocate, aren't we?

The Gospel of Luke is the third account in the Gospels of the life and teachings of our Savior, Jesus Christ. As believers, there are few studies that will benefit us more spiritually than studying the life and teachings of the Master. As believers in God, we who are the bride of Christ wait with such anticipation for the day when we will be united with our bridegroom, Jesus. Until that day, we must remain faithful to him and his word. Let's not become lazy in our walk with God. Continue to seek his kingdom first in all you do, and he will bless you for your obedience. Don't forget to stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Heed the Word, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, please open your Bibles to the book of 2 Chronicles, chapter 19, verse 4, as we join Pastor Kent.

As you turn to Luke 18, I want to read to you from 2 Chronicles 19, verses 4 through 7, where the writer of Chronicles tells us, so Jehoshaphat, who was the king of Judah at that time, dwelt at Jerusalem and went out again among the people from Beersheba to the mountains of Ephraim, and brought them back to the Lord God of their fathers. You see, Judah was more blessed than Israel during the time that the kingdom was divided, because every single one of the kings of Israel was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now, some more so than others, but there wasn't really one good king among the whole lot of the kings of Israel. But Judah was a different story. Judah had some kings who were righteous and loved the Lord and who were good kings, and then they had others who were horrible, who were just as evil as you could ask for. And sometimes they would be so evil that they would compare them to the evil kings of Israel. Well, Jehoshaphat was one of the good kings, not necessarily the best, but certainly one of the better ones. And Jehosaphat, it says here, dwelt at Jerusalem and went out again among the people from Beersheba to the mountains of Ephraim, and brought them back to the Lord God of their fathers. And then he did something very interesting and very important. Then he set judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and he said to the judges, Take heed to what you are doing, for you do not judge for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Now therefore let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes. So there was a standard that was being set even here in the book of Second Chronicles, that basically said that the judges who would judge in the land of Israel would judge righteously, and that they would judge being mindful of the fact that they did not judge for men, but for God. You see, when someone judges for men, then he has the values and the standards of man in mind. And he might judge in such a way as to take into account the treatment that he might receive from those for whom he was making the decision. But if he judges from God, he realizes that he can add nothing to God nor take anything away from God, and that he will give an account to God for how he judges, and so the judge, who is judging between men, is held to a standard that is set by God in the integrity of the decisions that he makes. Now, when you remove God from the equation, and the judges begin to make decisions based on their opinion or based upon what they believe to be right, apart from that divine guidance, then what results is not justice, but injustice. And we see some incredible examples of that today, don't we? Well, we have a situation here in Luke chapter 18 that really reminds me of many situations that we have in the courts in our land today. In verse 1, Luke writes, Then he spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying, There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. How true is that in our society today? Now there are some good judges out there, I want to tell you that, but there are also some judges out there who are making decisions based not on morality or on what is right and wrong, but upon mores, upon their general ideas of what they think ought to be done. It's gotten to the situation now in the United States where it's so bad that we have judges in the higher courts of our land that are making decisions based not on God's law, based not even on our own laws or on our own constitution, but based on international law, which was never meant to be a precedent for decisions made within our nation. You see, the founding documents of our nation all reflect back the fact that we are a nation founded in God. It's as though the United States were a house that has been built, and that house has been built upon the firm foundation of faith. Any carpenter will tell you, any builder will tell you that when you're building a structure or a house of any kind, the most important thing you have to do is lay a firm foundation. Because no matter how good the work is that follows, if that firm foundation has not been lain, then the structure is suspect and subject to destruction. Well, what has happened in our nation, and what was happening, I believe, in Israel at this time is there is in many ways a great turning away from true faith in God. And they have come and they've begun to dig out from under the house that firm foundation that had been lain. And when you destroy the foundation of the home, what begins to happen to that home? It begins to crumble. We see the same thing in marriage, don't we? When two people come together in the Lord and they have a mutual relationship with Jesus Christ and they love the Lord with all of their heart and all of their mind and all of their soul and all of their strength, then that house that they're building, that family, is founded upon a firm foundation and it can stand strong. But as time passes, if one or both of the members of that relationship begin to wander from God and begin to walk away from the precepts that He has set out for them and begin to disobey Him and walk out of fellowship with Him, then what begins to happen to that marriage? It begins to crumble. It begins to fall apart. And so here we are in the United States today, and we have organizations like the ACLU and various other liberal groups who are trying to undermine the religious foundation of our nation, and they're tearing out from under the house of the United States that biblical basis upon which our laws were built. And the result is we are seeing great injustices being done in the land. It is the natural progression. And that's exactly what was happening here. Because here is this judge, this man who is an authority here in Jerusalem or in Israel. We're not told the city, but he's an authority here, and it's his responsibility to provide justice to those who seek it. And it says here in verse 2 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. You see, she comes to him and he says, Listen, I need legal protection from my adversary. There is someone who's coming against me, and I need you, and I need the legal system, and I need the court here to provide protection for me from this person. Well, we see very clearly in Scripture that widows are to be protected, right? God says that he is a husband to the widow. And so who more would be in need of justice than the poor and the downtrodden, those who cannot defend themselves? You know, we have a responsibility to be the defenders of those who cannot defend themselves, don't we? And it was this judge's responsibility as a judge to provide justice, to provide legal protection for this widow. But he wouldn't do it. Why wouldn't he do it? Because he had no fear of God and he had no regard for man. In other words, there was nothing in it for him. And because there was nothing in it for him, he thought, why should I bother? And so for a time it says that he would not provide justice for this widow. Verse 4, and he would not for a while, but afterward 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. So we have this picture of the judge. And each day the widow comes to him and she says, I need justice, I need legal protection. And each day he sends her away, thinking, I'll just get rid of her, right? Just tell her no, eventually she'll give up. But this widow wouldn't give up. She kept coming back again and again and again, and finally it got to the point where the judge had to make a decision, and he looked at the situation and he says, You know, here's the deal. Okay, yeah, I don't fear God, I don't regard man, but the bottom line is this lady isn't going away. She keeps coming back, and she is a pain in my neck. And so he gives her a decision. Not because he was a good judge, not because it was the right thing to do, but because for him it was expedience. Because though he did not regard man, and though he did not fear God, there was something that he was concerned about. We might think, with a casual reading of this verse, that it was simply that she wore him out. But I think there's something deeper here. Weary me. Yet because the widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. What does that mean? Weary me. Well, in the original Greek the word is hypo piazzo, and it means to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots, like a boxer one buffets his body, to handle it roughly, to discipline by hardships. Metaphorically, it means to give one intolerable annoyance, to beat one out, to wear one out by entreaties, but it also means that part of the face that is under the eye. So he is saying, in a sense, lest she weary me, he's also, in a sense, saying, lest she bruise me in that place that is under the eye. Or in other words, I'm gonna give her a decision, because if this keeps up, she's gonna give me a black eye. Now, did he literally mean that this widow was going to physically assault him? I don't think so. Here's what I think. If you're this widow, you're going everywhere you can find this judge. After a while, he won't hear you in his office anymore. You follow him, right? And so everywhere you go, give me justice, give me justice. And so this judge, who has no fear of God and no regard for a man, does value something. And that is his reputation. And what's gonna happen is, is if this widow keeps following him around and keeps asking for justice, if he doesn't give it to her, it's gonna give him a black eye, figuratively speaking. In other words, it's gonna make him look bad. And what politician do you know that wants to be made to look bad? They want to look good, right? And so the judge finally says, you know what, I gotta give this woman justice because man, she's gonna give me a bad name. She's gonna give me a bad reputation. This doesn't look good. We've got to spin this another way. All right, fine, let's give her what she wants. And so to just shut her up, he gives her the justice that she is seeking. Now, how does this relate to God? You know, a parable oftentimes is given by comparison, meaning that the kingdom of heaven is like such and such thing. Okay. But this one is rather a parable by contrast. He's showing us that God is not like this. You see how this judge is, that's not how God is. And how this widow is, really, there are a lot of differences between her and us as well. Let's take a look at it. Then the Lord said, verse six, hear what the unjust judge said. Well, what did the unjust judge say? Verse 4 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. So Jesus said, Hear what the unjust judge said. He said, Now listen, shall not God 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? Jesus is saying, look, God is not an unjust judge. And you are not just some widow to him. There are a number of contrasts within this story that we really need to look at. And I think John Corson in his application commentary of the New Testament does a wonderful job of enumerating them for us. First, we do not appear before an unjust judge, but we appear before a loving father. So the relationship by which we come to God is completely different than the one in which this woman came to the judge. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, our Father which art in heaven, the concept of God as a father was foreign to the Jews. They didn't understand that. And yet we see that Paul would go on to address God as Abba, which means Papa, Daddy God, there in Romans 8:15. And so when we come to God, when we take our supplications and our prayers and our requests to Him, we need to remember that we are not approaching someone who is detached from us, but who is related to us, who cares for us as a father cares for his children. Secondly, we do not appear as strangers before God, but literally as his children. And what's more, we appear not as a widow, but we appear before him as the very bride of Christ. Now, a widow is someone who is alone. But the bride of Christ is not alone. And so when we come before God, we are not isolated and by ourselves, but we are accompanied by an advocate, aren't we? The widow had no one to argue her case. But 1 John 2, 1 and 2 tells us, My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. Lastly, to get help, the widow had to go to the court of law. But as children of God, we don't go to the court of law for help. We come to a throne of grace. Hebrews 4, 14 through 16 tells us this: seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. This parable has often been thought of or taught as being one that teaches persistence in prayer. And I believe that that is true. Where I believe we sometimes make a mistake in interpreting this parable is when we get it into our heads, the idea that it is through our persistence that God will answer, that God is gonna just give us what we want because we bug him and bug him and bug him and bug him, and that we pester him until he answers us, and that's not what Jesus is teaching here at all. That's what this widow had to do to get the response from the judge. But Jesus told us that God would answer us speedily, didn't he? Swiftly, that he wants to answer. You see, this judge was being approached by a woman whom he did not have relationship with, whom he did not care about, and who he really did not want to exert himself to help. By contrast, God, our Father, longs for us to come to him with our requests. It is his pleasure to meet us at our point of need, to do for us those things that we cannot do for ourselves. And so, if that's the case, if it's not saying, hey, keep praying and keep praying and treat praying so you can twist God's arm to give him what you want, well then what do we mean by persistence in prayer? I love the fact that this parable is broken down for us from the very beginning. We don't have to figure out or theorize or research very much to understand what it is Jesus was trying to communicate to us in this parable because Luke has already told us. He told us in verse one what this parable was all about. Let's look back at it again. Verse one, then he spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. Look, regardless of the circumstance in our life, regardless of the situation that we find ourselves in, no matter how bad it looks, nor how long the answer seems in coming, we ought always to pray and not to lose heart. You see, sometimes we begin to pray and we think that God is just not hearing us or just isn't answering when in fact He is hearing us and He is answering us. It's just that the answer may not come in the manner. Or in the time that we expect it. But it does come in the manner and at the time that is most perfect according to God's will for us. And we are to persist in prayer and to continue in prayer, not because we're twisting God's arm, but because in praying, we are meeting God in that place where He wants to bless us. You see, prayer does not change the heart, the mind, or the plans of God, but prayer does change the heart and the mind and the plans of the one who prays. And so as we seek God and as we are coming before God, we are entering into fellowship and entering into relationship with Him. You see, man is a trifled being. We are body, which is our physical person and physical surroundings. We are soul, that is our mind and our emotions, but we're also spiritual. We are spiritual beings and the Spirit of God resides in us. And when we come to God and ask that He meet our physical needs or our emotional needs, we're coming and we're asking very often for a resolution to a situation or at least to walk away from that prayer with a feeling of peace or security. We're looking for some type of a response in either the physical or in the emotional. But very often where God is choosing to work is in our spirit. In that part of us which is so deep that we don't always notice what he's doing. And very often the answer comes in such a way that we don't even realize that God has answered our prayer. And so we persist and we continue. And as we persist and continue in prayer, through time, God reveals to us his answer. And he provides for us that which we need. What is it that we need? We need him. We need Jesus. We need to walk in close fellowship with our Lord and our Savior. And when we pray, be it for physical things, emotional things, or spiritual things, our spirit is in fellowship with his spirit and he ministers to us in those moments. And so men ought always to pray and not to faint. We are to persist, to persist in prayer. Turn to Philippians chapter 4. Starting in verse 4, Paul writes, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What is he saying? He's like, persist in prayer. Rejoice in the fact that God hears you and that God will answer you. And don't worry about it. Worry is sin. Because worry basically says, I don't trust God. And yet he tells us that we can trust him. Be anxious for nothing. But take everything to God in prayer. What weighs on your heart? What weighs on your mind? What is it that keeps you up late at night? Take that thing, whatever it may be, to God in prayer, and he will do marvelous things.

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. You've been listening to Heed the Word, the teaching ministry of Pastor Ken Davis, Calvary Chapel in Burleson, Texas. We are currently making our way through the Gospel of Luke here on Heed the Word. The Gospel of Luke is packed full of insights about Jesus, our Savior. So we encourage you to join us again, same time, same place, for the next study through Luke with Pastor Ken. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, this teaching, as well as many others, are available from the Heed the Word Media Player. You can listen to today's teaching, download today's teaching, subscribe to the Heed the Word podcast, or even get a copy on your mobile phone. Everything's right there. There's even a Bible available for you to follow along in the scriptures as Pastor Ken teaches. So log on to HeedTheWord.org and continue studying with us today. If today's teaching has blessed you, perhaps you'd like to visit us for worship. Calvary Chapel Southwest Metro meets each Sunday morning at 10.30 a.m. and Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. We'd love to have you stop by and join us. For more information and driving directions, log on to www.heedtheword.org. This has been another edition of Heed the Word, the verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book teaching ministry of Ken Davis, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel, Southwest Metro. Place a marker in your Bibles and join us next time for our continuing study through the Gospel of Luke right here on Heed the Word.