Please take your Bibles and open them to Luke 18. Or should I say, please take your Bibles and open them to Luke 18. I'm trying, I'm trying. I told the Sunday school people this morning that after having Dr. Ellen's smooth voice for two days, I said, he sounds like he should be a DJ at midnight, you know, for our next passage. I can't do it. You're going to be stuck with this shrill thing. Let's read together. You read silently. Once again, as I read out loud the New Testament reading. This is the word of God. And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversary. For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And the Lord said here what the unrighteous judge says, And will not God give justice to His elect who cry to Him day and night? Will He delay long over them? I tell you, He will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? Let's pray. Father, to the reading of your word, we ask that you would add your blessing. We pray that you would be glorified in what we do here. We ask, Father, that as you have promised that when the word of God goes from your mouth, that it would accomplish its purpose and not return void, that you would fulfill that promise this morning in the midst of us, that your word would accomplish your purpose for it. Whatever purpose we have for your word, Father, that is divergent from what you have purposed, we ask, would not be accomplished. We pray above all and central to all is that in what we read today, Christ would be exalted and your excellence would be made known. Teach us of You, teach us of Your Son, and may Your Spirit do His work in our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Cakes, can you grab that water for me, please? Thank you. The context of the passage that we read this morning really goes back and hearkens back to the previous chapter, Luke chapter 17, verses 21 through 37, what we looked at last week. And the reason we know that is because when you look at verse one, it doesn't give to us a new audience. Rather, what it says is, and he told them a parable. Well, who's them? You look back at chapter 17, verse 22, we find out who them is. Because he turns his attention away from the Pharisees who have asked the question in verse 20. And he turns his attention to the disciples. Verse 22 says, and he said to the disciples. So what we have here is an address that is continued from the previous address. It really should be a part of the same sermon that Jesus is giving, or the same lesson that Jesus is giving to them. And the theme of all of this is the end of days. The Pharisees ask about the kingdom of God. Jesus says to his disciples, and he uses the phrase, the days of the Son of Man, Both of these phrases refer to the end times and the days of Messiah. Jesus says in verse 22 that you'll desire to see me or you desire to see the Son of Man or Messiah, the Christ, but he's going to be gone and he's going to be gone for a while. The question then is, what do you mean, Jesus? You say you're gonna go away, or we're gonna long to see you, but you're right here, and Jesus tells him in verse 25 that he has to suffer and be rejected by this generation. So the summation of that is this, that Jesus is going to be rejected then what they're going to see is a long time, excuse me, then what they're gonna see is a period of time after he's rejected where they long to see him. And so it seems there what we have is a space of time in an interval where he is not here. And his servants and his disciples long for him to be here. Then he returns. He returns. Some will be taken in judgment, as we looked at last week. But the return of Jesus is going to precipitate all of this. Whatever else is going to happen, it's the return of Jesus that's going to precipitate what the kingdom is, and it's going to precipitate what is going to happen in judgment. Okay, so verse 30 says, the day when the Son of Man is revealed, that means that's when Jesus returns. And what we have then in verse 33 is a reversal of the current world order. Finally, Jesus tells them that all of this is gonna be demonstrated by a sign. And verse 37 is where he leaves that rather enigmatic sign where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. At the very least, we said last week, it means that it's going to be obvious when the Son of Man returns. The sign will be so clear, it'll be as clear as vultures circling a dead body. The other possibility then here is that he's talking specifically about Gentiles hovering over the corpse of the battered and dead body of Israel. And when you see that happening, then the Son of Man is about to return. Either way, whatever that sign is, whatever it is, it's going to be an obvious sign. The question then is, if there's going to be some kind of interval, then what do we do until then? Jesus isn't given any indication of the length of time, other than it's gonna be long enough that they will be longing for him to return. but he doesn't indicate the length of time between his current mission on earth, when he's speaking, and his future return. However, when we get to chapter 18, verse one, he does express the possibility or the idea that some could, because of the length of time, actually lose heart and be discouraged. And really that's what chapter 18 verses one through eight is all about. It's about that possibility. It's about the possibility of discouragement. Jesus is going to tell a disturbing story about a rather unsavory individual. The whole story is to encourage them not to lose heart. Why? Why would they lose heart? They would lose heart because they're waiting for the return of Jesus. They're waiting for the return of the Messiah. And waiting for the return of the Messiah? Well, it could be a while. And hasn't it? Proverbs 13, verse 12. It's a passage I know that many of you are familiar with. but it says that hope deferred makes the heart what? Makes the heart sick. And folks, perhaps you have experienced that when hope has been deferred, when something that you know is gonna happen or you expect to happen doesn't happen in the time that you expect it to happen and it is deferred and you have to wait and it's a disappointment and it is as if your heart is sick. So what are the disciples supposed to do? The disciples of Jesus are supposed to do as their hope is deferred, as the return of their Lord which they expect seems to be delayed and their hope then is deferred. And what Jesus says very clearly and very emphatically is that while your hope as a disciple of Jesus is deferred, you are to pray. In fact, verse 18, when you look at verse 18, it says that he told a parable to the effect, he says that they ought always to pray. They ought always to pray. That word ought implies a moral imperative. It is your moral duty to pray. As a follower of Jesus Christ, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, whatever else your responsibilities may be, it is your moral obligation to pray. And then he says to pray always. Now the idea of praying always doesn't mean that you are engaged in one constant long prayer. It means that you pray. And then you pray again, and then you pray again, and you pray again, and again, and again, and again, and again until He returns. Pray always. It is, folks, listen to me, it is your moral obligation if you are not engaged in over and over and over and over again prayer, you have failed in your moral obligation to the one whom you claim to be his disciple. If that's the case, that we're supposed to pray, While our hope is deferred, while we wait for the return of the Messiah that we are to pray over and over and over again, what is it that we are to pray for? Well, I think because of the context that we just looked at at the end of chapter 17, that the thing specifically that we're supposed to pray for is the return of Christ. It's the time when Jesus returns, he punishes sin, and he sets everything right. The world that lies and wallows in unrighteousness is going to be set back in order, and everything that is wrong with the world is going to be right. That's what we pray for. We pray for righteousness. We pray for justice. We pray for the return of the Lord. Now as Jesus uses this as an illustration, he once again goes to that, that Jewish technique of telling stories called Kal-Va-Komer, Kal-Va-Komer, which is the idea that you argue from the lesser to the greater or sometimes from the greater to the lesser. It's often marked off by the phrase, how much more? If this is true, how much more this? If it's true of the weaker, then it's true of the stronger. If we say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is stronger than Shucks now I got to think of somebody me say me. Let's say me. I'll throw anybody under the bus here If Arnold Schwarzenegger is stronger than me if I can lift a hundred pounds over my head How much? More would Arnold Schwarzenegger be able to lift over his head. Do you see we argue from the lesser? to the greater In the same way, it would be reverse if we say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a little bit handsome. How much more? Well, I won't finish that. But you get the point that this is how Jesus argues. And what he does is he argues that if it's true for the weaker, then even more so it's true for the greater. And what he does in this then is that he looks at five different points along this story, five different points of comparison. The first point is the character of the judge. The second point is the relationship with the subject or the widow. The third is the nature of the dispute. The fourth is the persistence of the petition. And the fifth is the resolution of the problem. So we have the character of the judge, the relationship with the subject, which is the widow, the nature of the dispute and the persistence of the petition, and then the resolution of the problem. Let's look at that first. that first issue, the character of the judge. Verse two says, he said in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. Right off the bat, we see that this judge is not a good person. He is deficient in character, it says, he has no fear of God and he has no regard or respect for man. I want you to note four things about this description of the judge. The first thing to note about this description is that it has a Jewish background. According to the Jews, the Torah was the center of life. The law was the center of life. They called it, in fact, and it's written about, and it's called the law of God. The Torah and the law of God was the infrastructure of their entire civilization. They could have a lot of other things and roads and buildings and kings and everything like that, but the one thing that united and held everything else together, that substructure of the entire civilization, was the Torah. It was the law. The law that came down to Moses. When this passage says that he does not fear God, essentially what it's saying is that he has no reverence for that infrastructure that has been laid down by God Himself. The order that has been put into Jewish society through adherence to the law, he has no regard for that. So he does not fear God. No reverence. The second thing to note is that this is a shame and honor based culture. Many of the ancient Near East cultures were shame and honor based. The idea is that your goal was to not bring shame on your family, but rather to bring honor to your family. Your deeds were always a reflection of your family. It's very different than the modern West, it seems. I think the West used to be this way, and it's not so much anymore. What your goal was in life as you grew up was to simply not bring shame on your family. My dad used to say this to me all the time. I said, Dad, can I go with my friends and do this or that? And he would say, yeah, but you just remember, everything you do reflects on me. And I kept that in mind. Everything I did was a reflection of how he raised me. And if I did something wrong, he was telling me that that was a direct reflection on how he raised me and that he was a failure as a father. So don't shame our family. Do all that you can not to bring shame And that's why the phrase here is that he did not fear God, nor did he respect man. He had no regard for the shame that would be brought. In fact, the phrase, when it says nor respected man, actually has the idea of having no sense of shame. Have you heard that used before? Have you no shame? It's very difficult in our day and age, in our TikTok society, where the best thing you can do is go viral, right? You go viral even if it brings shame on your family. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you get likes and clicks and all that kind of stuff. No, what mattered here, what mattered in this society was whether or not you were bringing honor or shame to your family. This means that the things, the law of God, the shame that would be brought to his family, the things that ought to regulate this judge's behavior, both of those two regulators in this man's brain and this man's soul are in the off position. There is absolutely nothing regulating his behavior other than his own sense of who he is and his own selfish desires. That's a terrible, terrible description of a judge, isn't it? He's not concerned with God's law and he has no shame. The third thing I want you to note about this description of the judge relates to Matthew chapter 22. If you were to look, I'm not gonna ask you to turn there, but if you were to turn to Matthew 22, you remember that the lawyers and the Pharisees were trying to trip Jesus up with very difficult questions. And as they asked the difficult questions, one of the questions they proposed to him was that he would rank all of the commandments of God and to tell them which was the greatest. And the reason that they brought this question before him is because this was a subject of the rabbinic debates at the time. They wanted to know what the greatest commandment was. And really it was a technical question. It could have been a technical question because according to Jewish culture, the thing that is the greatest is the thing that encompasses everything else. So if this encompasses everything else, then it's the greatest because everything else that you have to do is subsumed in this commandment. And so Jesus, when asked about the greatest commandment, you remember his response, he says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind. And then he said, this is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now think about that, the two commandments that Jesus refers to as the greatest two commandments, because in these commandments are subsumed all of the other commandments, love God, love your neighbor. And these are the exact two commandments that this judge has no regard for. In fact, Jesus goes on to say that on these two commandments, the entire law and the prophets rests. What does that mean? He's saying that the entire Old Testament is about loving God and loving your neighbor. And that's it. That's the summation of the Old Testament. Love God, love your neighbor. So these two things, loving God and loving your neighbor, is the totality of the Torah. The Torah that the judge is supposed to be upholding in his judgments. And yet what do we find? It's the very thing that he has no regard for. This judge completely disregards loving God. He completely disregards loving your neighbor. He doesn't fear God. He doesn't regard men. and he's as low as you can be. The fourth thing I want you to note about this description of the judge's character is that he was not unaware of this in himself. He was so low that he had embraced his identity as a person who did not love God and did not love man, had no fear of the law, and had no fear of shaming mankind. He embraced these things. This was his identity. This is what happens when you make sin your identity. In verse 4 it says, He says, in his inner dialogue, he says, I neither fear God nor respect man. He himself knew this about himself. Now folks, it's one thing if you are a person who doesn't fear God and you just don't know it. You're so blinded by yourself that you forget or you just don't think about him. But it's a whole other thing if you understand who you are and you just embrace that identity. I am a guy, I am a judge that doesn't fear God and I have no regard for man. So this is the person, this is the judge, the character of the judge that Jesus puts before us in this story. Number two then is the relationship, his relationship with the subject, in this case it's the widow, The subject or the plaintiff in this case in his court is the widow. Now the fact that the passage says in verse three, and there was a certain widow in the city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversaries. The fact that he specifically identifies her as a widow, he doesn't say a specific person or a certain person or a certain woman or even a certain man. The fact that he said it is the widow herself that comes to the judge looking for redress in this case, in this situation, is culturally significant. Because in their day and age, while women had some standing in court, usually they had very little or no standing in court. If a woman was offended or if a woman was harmed in any way, if she wanted to bring a case to court, she had to bring the case through her male guardian, which would have been her father, her husband, or one of her sons usually, or another close relative. The fact that the woman is representing herself indicates that she's not merely a widow, someone who's lost her husband, but that she's in the situation and the case of what Paul refers to as a widow indeed. And that is a widow who has absolutely no recourse in anything. She has no means of support. She has no means of protection. She's a widow indeed. She has no one to bring her case to court. She has to bring it to the judge herself. Now folks, this would make absolutely no difference if the judge were a righteous judge. But as we've already noted, he is someone who doesn't regard God, he doesn't fear God, and he doesn't regard man. If he feared God, he would have known that Exodus 22 says, you shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child orphan. If you do mistreat them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath will burn and I will kill you with the sword and your wives shall become widows and your children shall become fatherless. You see, if he feared God, he would have read that verse, and he would have thought twice about disregarding the request made by this widow, but she has no recourse. Rather than that, she is helpless. She has no advocate. She has no relation to the judge. She's just some anonymous, helpless widow. So number three, what's the nature of the dispute? What's the nature of the dispute? Jesus doesn't reveal the exact details of the conflict because I don't think it was germane to the story. He doesn't reveal the exact details of the conflict, but he does indicate that it is an issue of righteousness and it's an issue of justice. Look at verse 3, it says, and there was a widow in the city who kept coming to him saying, give me justice. Give me justice. Now it does say in verse four that for a while he refuses to give her justice. She's not asking for something extra, she's acting, asking for justice. Verse four says, for a while he refused, but afterwards he said to himself, though I don't fear God or respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I'm going to give her what she wants. Is that what it says? No, it says I'm going to give her justice. And that's an important word in here because the word justice comes from the same root as the word righteousness. So all she wanted was for things to be done the way they're supposed to be done, the way the law demanded that they're done. In fact, the idea of righteousness is the idea of fulfilling of obligation. If I owe you $10 and I give you $9.50, I have not been righteous. I have not fulfilled my obligation to you. If the law calls for obedience and I'm disobedient, I have not been righteous. And so what we have here is both the widow asking and the judge admitting that if he were to adjudicate the situation according to the Torah, according to the law, that what would be done would be righteous. It would be justice. He would fulfill the obligation to the law, but he has no concern for the law. However, the nature of the dispute is not really in question here. All she's asking for is for righteousness to prevail. That everything to be set the way it's supposed to be set. She just wanted what the obligation was. She just wanted righteousness. So what does she do? She pesters the judge. That's the fourth. The fourth feature of this is she pesters the judge, the persistent petition. Very graphic description in here. Verse three says that she kept coming to him, asking to give me justice. Verse four says for a while he refused, which indicates that she kept coming to him as he was refusing. So she kept coming to him, he refused, and she just kept coming while he was refusing. Verse five, he says, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, she kept pestering him so much that he considered it a bother. I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down. Now that is an appropriate, an appropriate, translation some of them say she she'll irritate me or something like that which doesn't actually capture the nature of the word that word is actually taken from the ancient greek uh sport of boxing and it was a specific blow that was done to a person's face in other words it says i feel like in this that she is just continually punching me in the face And I just need to stop, I just need to give her what she wants so she'll stop punching me in the face. The fifth feature of this then is the resolution of the problem, verses four and five. He says, though I don't fear God and I don't respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I'll give her justice so that she won't punch me in the face by her continual coming. So righteousness in the end was done, right? She got what was due her. The obligation to the law was fulfilled. And it was done, righteousness was accomplished by an openly unrighteous and self-identifying unrighteous judge. Now here's the comparison, right? Because in the story, God is compared to the unrighteous judge. The relationship to the widow is compared to God's relationship to Jesus' disciples, the church. The nature of the dispute is that unrighteousness needs to be done. His demand of us is that we are persistent in petitioning, and the resolution to the problem, he says, is that God's going to fulfill our request. But Jesus is putting this before his disciples not because of the similarities, but because of the differences. Look at the character of the judge. The character of the judge is described as unrighteous, and yet what do we know about God? God is holy. He's pure in righteousness. In fact, it's axiomatic, it's obvious, it doesn't even need to be proved here. Everybody just knows it. Verse seven, he says, if this is how, isn't God going to give justice? I mean, that's what God does. God gives justice. He provides righteousness. Jesus, in essence, is asking his disciples this. Don't you think that God is better than the unjust judge? Don't you think that God is better than the unjust judge? How about the relationship with the widow? In this story, it really is the church that is being described in verse seven. Will not God give justice to his elect, verse seven says? His elect. Now folks, you don't have to have been coming here very long to understand that the word elect there is packed with all kinds of spiritual and theological connotation, right? Just like the widow, the elect have done nothing to be elected, which makes them powerless. They're the helpless ones in this case. Just like the widow had no ability to affect the judicial decision in this case, so the elect have no power. We read this morning in Sunday school from Ephesians where it says that we were dead in our trespasses and sin. But here, remember, this isn't about the comparison, this is about the contrast. Unlike the widow, who has absolutely no relationship to the judge, unlike the widow, these are actually God's elect. In other words, these are the people that God himself has chosen. What does that say about their relationship? These are those whom the Lord actually loves. Now, folks, can you imagine going into court where perhaps your very life is at stake where you have been maligned and you look up and the judge is the father that loves you. That's what we have here. We don't have a judge that is indifferent to the pleas of some random woman that he doesn't even know anything about. You step into God's court and he sees you and recognizes you and says, That's the one that I chose. These are his whom he loves. The unjust judge will do righteousness for the anonymous widow that he does not care about. Don't you think that God is better than the judge? And don't you think that his love for his church and his people, his elect, is greater than the judge's indifference to the widow. Do you see how he's comparing and contrasting the relationship to make a point? If it's true of this nonexistent relationship, how much more will it be true of a relationship that is founded on eternal, unalterable love? Look at the nature of the dispute. Is there injustice perpetuated against the church between the Lord's first coming and second coming? What do you think? Absolutely. The history of the world is the expansion of the gospel, and in the expansion of the gospel, what do we find? Persecution after persecution after persecution. Even the strange thing that happens during the Middle Ages in the Western civilization, where it's this group that claims allegiance to Jesus Christ that actually then starts to fold over on itself and starts to persecute those who are following Jesus Christ. Right now, all over the world, we have brothers and sisters in parts of the world who are being persecuted in very open ways for Jesus Christ. And the fact of the matter, folks, is I'm not one of those people that says you shouldn't think about your persecution because other people have it worse. The fact of the matter is that today, in Hilo, you can be and probably have been persecuted for your relationship to Jesus Christ. Now, it's not to the extent of shedding blood, perhaps, but certainly, folks, you have been ostracized by people you love. Hasn't that happened? You have been kept out of places You perhaps have been ridiculed. You've been mocked. Your stand for Christ is all of these things. And these are things that I've experienced. I had a group of friends that I hung out with even in high school. And mind you, this was even in a Christian school. It turned out that most of them were not believers and are not doing well in life right now. But I hung out with these guys. And what would happen is that we would go to the beach on the weekend. Oh, we had a great time. Everything was fun. And we'd come back on Monday talking about what a wonderful time we had at the beach. And then we'd go do something else. Oh, it was so much fun. And then on the weekend, I wouldn't hear from them. But it didn't bother me. I didn't think much of it. And then on Monday, everyone would be sitting there quiet. And then I would walk up where they were talking. They would be talking about something they had done over the weekend. And I wasn't included. And the reason I wasn't included is because it was something we weren't supposed to be doing. And it was a place that we weren't supposed to be going. And it was an activity that we were not supposed to be engaging in. And they knew that if they asked me, I was going to shut the whole thing down because I'm like that. And I wasn't going to participate. And even if I didn't do anything to affect them, they were going to be miserable because they knew that I knew And so what? I mean, it's a small thing. It hasn't affected me. I don't ever think about it. No, I'm just kidding. I really don't. But the fact of the matter is it happens and it could be happening to you. Your opinion in the public sphere might be just considered an opinion of one of those wacky right wing Christians. What Jesus says is, and as soon as you say that, or when you say, well, what the Bible says is, and as soon as you say that, people completely tune you out and they take your opinion and they lump it onto a pile of nothing. How about the issue of homosexuality? Say, well, do you agree with homosexuality or not? Well, it depends what you agree. Does it exist? Yes. Is it a sin? Yes. Well, I've just expressed an opinion of a radical right-wing religious fanatic. And therefore, in the public sphere, they can completely disregard what I say. And actually, it's worse than that now. That's probably what happened in the 1980s. Nowadays, because of social media, if you express an opinion like that in public, you'll get doxed and you might even lose a job. Yeah. Between the times of Jesus' ministries here on earth, between the time He ascends, between the time He descends, what do we find? Righteousness prevailing? Not even in the church, folks. You guys remember this little ditty that you learned so that you could pass your history test? 1492. Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I remember listening to a Jewish guy say 1492 when Spain and the church expelled the Jew. That was an entity calling itself the church, pursuing unrighteousness. Unjustice, injustice perpetuated against the true church. Unrighteousness perpetuated against all manner of men, church or not church. It seems we live in an era where unrighteousness prevails. So what do we do about it? We pray. Persistent petition. Jesus says, Luke says that Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought to pray and not to lose heart. Ought, moral obligation. During this time when unrighteousness prevails, you are morally obligated as a disciple of Jesus Christ to pray and pray and pray. The fact is, if you don't pray, You will lose heart. What do I mean by lose heart? You'll stop thinking that God is involved in anything. Folks, how many times have we prayed for something, and prayed for something, and prayed for something, and God has miraculously, supernaturally, superintended an answer to our request, and we, with our hearts, and maybe even our bodies, give Him glory, we praise Him, and then the next time something comes up, we're like, well, it's just prayer. I don't have to pray about it, prayer is nothing. Folks, if you don't pray, you will lose heart. If you're sitting here this morning, and you are looking at the station of the world, and you're looking at the trajectory of where the world is, and you're losing heart, it's probably because you're not praying. I'm not telling you that praying is going to make the world better. I'm telling you exactly what Luke is saying here by relaying the story of Jesus, that praying will make your heart better. What do we pray for? We pray for justice. We pray for the return of Christ. Even in his sample prayer, Jesus says, this is how I want you to pray. Your kingdom come. Pray. Well, why don't we pray? Because we think God's not answering our prayers? Because for some reason the devil has put it in our minds that prayer doesn't do anything? That God doesn't care about us praying? Maybe you think that I pray for lots of stuff, but there are certain things in my life that are just too big for God. I know it's become a trope where people say thoughts and prayers. Well, thoughts, whatever. But if you are truly praying, that is something magnificent. You are beseeching the heart of the all-powerful God. and you're beseeching the heart of the all-powerful God who loves you. My problems are too big. Justice, looking for justice is too big in these situations. God won't hear me. So many would rather pout than pray. Some would rather bad mouth than pray. Pray. Now folks, just a note here that probably needs to be said. I'm not talking about prosperity prayer and the word of faith movement. I'm not talking about the fact that if you pray, God will give you whatever you want. Because he's not telling you to pray just to get whatever you want. He's telling you to pray for his return and to pray for the success of righteousness. In fact, the Bible specifically tells us, Jesus himself specifically tells us that in this world we are going to have affliction. You are living a rough life right now. So what? Pray. Pray. It's not prayer to get whatever I want to fulfill the desires of my heart. It's pray. for Jesus to return. Jesus says here that it is our avenue to hope. Jesus says that it is our moral obligation. Then why don't we do it? Because we don't believe it will work. We don't believe he'll answer. We don't believe it'll make a difference. The bottom line is we don't do it because we don't believe. Do you see that? We don't believe it'll work. We don't believe He'll answer. We don't believe it'll make a difference because we just simply don't believe. And this, folks, is exactly why Jesus closes the passage the way He did. Verse 8 says, however, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? Why is He talking about prayer and all of a sudden He turns to faith? It's because of the fact The reason that we don't pray is because we don't have faith. Will he find us praying? Will he find us believing? The resolution to the problem is that Christ will return and our hope will be fulfilled. Folks, in the New Testament church, this was all the hope. Right? There's once in the entire New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 16.22, where at the end of 16.22, Paul uses an Aramaic word. He switches from Greek to Aramaic. It's in Greek letters, but it's an Aramaic word. And the Aramaic word is the word that means, Lord, come. It's a command to God, really. Lord, come. Maranha, Atha, Maranatha, Lord come. This became a word that was used in the early church to identify one another. You know that the early church went to various persecutions throughout their time. They never knew how from town to town they would be accepted. And so they began a campaign of whispering this Aramaic word. Remember the whole world speaks Greek and Latin. People don't speak Aramaic. But you go from maybe Ephesus and you go to Rome and when you get to Rome you see some people you think that they might be might be Christians and you say Maranatha. you say this Aramaic word and if they look at you and go blah blah blah blah you're like oh whoops sorry not Christians but when you say Maranatha and their eyes light up and they say Maranatha this is how they greeted one another This is how central the return of Christ was to the early church, and this is probably, folks, why they prayed and prayed and prayed, and the cause of the gospel was so impactful, because central even to their identification was Maranatha. We're gonna partake of the Lord's table in a little bit. one of the earliest non-Christian, I mean, non-biblical Christian documents. And so it's a Christian document that isn't in the Bible as a document referred to as the didache, which just means it's the teachings. And it was supposed to tell them how church was supposed to function. And when it comes to the section that talks about the Lord's table, it gives a bit of a liturgy. And it's all out of order, which is one of the reasons that a lot of people don't use it, but it's, At the very end, this is what it said. And this is how they would have concluded by the mid-second century, or maybe even early second century, they would have concluded all of their communion services. It says this, let grace come and let the world pass away. Hosanna to the son of David. If anyone is holy, let him come. If anyone is not holy, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen. The pressures of this life will cause you to lose heart. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray for the Lord's return, for his kingdom to come on earth and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Maranatha. Let's pray. Father, as we now gather around the table that has been left here for us by our Lord, your Son, we ask that you would help us to unite our hearts around these truths. That Christ's body was broken for us. His body was broken in our stead. His blood was shed on our account. And because of that, we have been made holy. We celebrate that in symbol this morning as we long for the return of your son. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.