Christ's Object Lessons - Chapter 14: "Shall Not God Avenge His Own?"

Pastor David Asscherick discusses Chapter 14 of Ellen White's Christ's Object Lessons, which examines the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge from Luke 18. David explores how Ellen White unpacks this parable about prayer and justice, emphasizing that unlike the unjust judge who reluctantly grants justice, God delights to hear and answer the cries of His people. The chapter weaves together themes of persistent prayer, the Great Controversy context through Zechariah 3, and the reality that while earthly justice is elusive and often corrupted by unaccountable power, believers can cry out to God with confidence, knowing He will bring final and complete justice speedily when Christ returns.

Scripture References: Luke 18:1-8
Covers: Chapter 14: Shall Not God Avenge His Own?
Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCMjGC3oqHk
Light Bearers

Transcript

Prayer

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Father in heaven, we pause here just to be mindful that our study, our insights are not going to get the traction that we want them to get. We're not going to have the ability to not just look at the text, but look into the text unless your spirit shows up in a really powerful and meaningful way. Father, we're asking that the inspiring spirit will now become the instructing spirit. That is the spirit that inspired the text and inspired the men who wrote the text would now show up and, according to the promise of Jesus, guide us into all truth. And so, Father, may we have some really great insights. This is an important chapter, another chapter about prayer and the importance of perseverance in prayer. And so be with us tonight, and I want to pray for every person that's tuning in. Father, you know the specific circumstances, situations, the needs, and Father, you know the cry of our heart, and we look to you tonight. We're we're hoping and believing that you're gonna show up in a big way. Lord, I know that you've already showed up in this with the A challenge in my life in very specific and timely ways with these chapters and parables. I've had others tell me that certain parables and chapters were just what they needed at a certain time. Even my own son Landon said that right here. And so, Father, I pray that once again that this parable would land in different situations, circumstances, and the lives of the people that are tuning in, whether now live or later, in just the right way, in just the right time. And

Discussion

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so, Father, be with us now, is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I hope everyone had a good day, a productive day. I had an outstanding day today. No rock climbing today because I climbed yesterday and climbed pretty hard and my body needed a rest, but I did get a good workout in today, and I also spent some time sitting in the sun. I I just I said to Violetta today because we're already in early February. We're almost literally not going to get a winter here in Colorado. And I'm gonna be in Australia, teaching at Arise Australia in March, and uh we leave in like three weeks. So I I guess I'm not gonna get a winter this year. I mean, I was sunbathing today in my shorts, and I already told you that a couple days ago I got sunburned, and today I got sun on my back and further contributed to my sun. If I lifted up my shirt right now, you would see I'm red like a lobster. And it's February in Colorado. Uh it was incredible. So sat in the sun today, highly productive, booked a bunch of tickets, had some important phone conversations, responded to a bunch of emails, did a workout, sent a bunch of texts, had a couple meetings, studied for the chapter, and I think that's it. Big day, productive day. And I I hope you all had a very productive day as well. I feel a little bad because this morning I said to Violetta, hey, babe, we should go into town and look at some things. But the day turned out that we didn't have the time to go into town and look at some things. And so I apologize to her, and I know she's listening right now. Sorry, babe, sorry that didn't work out. Um, but we're gonna do it next week, God willing. By the way, tomorrow night, pizza. Pizza. So I I'm looking forward to that very much. It's been it's been almost a week since I have had pizza. I'm going through pizza withdrawals. All right, so let's get to Luke chapter 18, and as per our custom, or at least recent custom, I'm gonna read it in both the NIV that I've got here and in NT Wright's excellent translation called the Kingdom New Testament. All right, we're in Luke chapter 18, and Luke chapter 18 comes right after Luke chapter 17, to state the obvious. And in Luke chapter 17, you have Jesus speaking about the second coming, about the end of the age. And then just after that, Luke chapter 17, Jesus tells these two consecutive parables, the parable of the persistent widow, and then the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Now, we actually looked at the second one first, and now we're gonna look at the first one today. So the we're doing that because that's the order that they are addressed in Christ's object lessons. But there are a lot of similarities in these parables. Um, most obviously they're both about prayer, right? Yesterday the Pharisee and the tax collector went to the temple to pray, and here we're gonna find out that this parable, the parable of the persistent widow, is also about prayer. And I'll highlight some additional similarities, but first let's just read these through. Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 1. It says, Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, Grant me justice against my adversary. For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so she won't eventually come and attack me. Verse 6. And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? And then in answer to that question, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth, is very interestingly the parable that we looked at last night, which is quite a fascinating sequence. Look at verse 9. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked out on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. That's what we talked about last night. So it's interesting that the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee is almost an answer to the question when Jesus returns, will he find faith? Or we might say that this way: when the Son of Man returns, will he find the right kind of faith? Not faith in oneself, self-confidence, self-dependence, self-sufficiency that we talked about last night, but faith in God, right? Like the publican, the tax collector, beating his breast, barely able to look up to heaven and saying, God have mercy on me, a sinner. Okay, now let's read it from Wright's translation. Also, Luke chapter 18, going back to verse 1, Jesus told them a parable about how they should always pray and not give up. There was once a judge in a certain town, he said, who didn't fear God and didn't have any respect for people. There was a widow in that town, and she came to him and said, Judge my case, vindicate me against my enemy. For a long time he refused, but in the end he said to himself, It's true that I don't fear God and I don't have any respect for people, but because this widow is causing me a lot of trouble, I will put her case right and vindicate her, so that she doesn't end up coming and giving me a black eye, a literal black eye, not just a reputational black eye. Well, said the master, did you hear what the unjust judge says? And don't you think that God will see justice done for his chosen ones who shout to him day and night? Do you suppose that he is deliberately delaying? Let me tell you, he will vindicate them very quickly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? All right, once again, I like the similarities and the contrasts between both of these translations. And let's highlight a few things just quickly and obviously. First of all, this is not only a parable about prayer, which it is, because it literally says at the beginning, Jesus told them a parable to say that they should always pray and don't give up, don't faint, as some translations say. So it's not only a prayer uh parable about prayer, but it's obviously a parable about justice. Right? Four times the word justice occurs. Look at verse three. Grant me justice. Look at verse five. Uh I will see that she gets justice. Look at verse seven. Uh God will bring justice. And then finally, verse eight, I tell you that they will get justice and get it quickly. So it's also a parable about justice, and we're going to talk a lot about justice in tonight's presentation. Okay? So it's a parable about prayer, it's a parable about justice. It's also, as we've seen, a parable by way of contrast, right? A parable not by way of, and we've seen this before, not by way of comparison, but by way of contrast. This is what God is not like. God is not like this. Remember, we talked about the friend who was unwilling in Luke chapter 11 to get up and help his friend. That was a parable by contrast, not by consonants and comparison, and we get the very same thing here. Okay, now a couple other similarities I want you to see here. First of all, notice that the two parables, the parable of the persistent widow and yesterday's parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, they kind of have the same basic structure. Okay, first of all, number one, they're both about prayer. So that's a similarity. You might want to write these down in your notes if you haven't already done so. So, number one, both are about prayer. Number two, they both open with a kind of moral statement about what the parable is about, right? So look at Luke chapter 18, verse 1. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show that they should always pray and not give up. We might say today, this is the moral of the parable, or the moral of the story, because a lot of stories, especially historically, had a lesson or a moral lesson that was designed to be learned. And Jesus lets you know up front, hey, this is what this parable is about. He didn't always do that, as we know. Now go down to verse 9, the parable that we looked at just yesterday. To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. So here again, he introduces it with the moral of the story. So we don't have to wonder what the parable is about, right? We talked about that yesterday with Kenneth. It's like some of the parables are a little tricky. You have to sort of, they're mysterious, they're enigmatic, you've got to think about them, you've got to penetrate them. But these two parables, especially yesterday's parable, does not require much penetration. It's so straightforward. And in both cases, number one, they're about prayer, and number two, Jesus introduces the parable with the moral of the story. Okay, then number three, and I wrote this down here, both of them close with definitive conclusions, and they these definitive conclusions both have the same introduction. I tell you. I tell you. So look at um verse eight. Look at verse eight of Luke 18. I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. Okay, so that's kind of the punchline. Yes, there will be justice, and yes, it will come quickly. Unlike the unjust judge who was slow and delayed justice, and only when he was finally worried about the black guy, we'll talk about that in just a second, did he finally reluctantly administer justice? But Jesus says, I tell you, justice will come and it will come quickly. Now jump down to verse 14 in yesterday's parable. I tell you that this man rather than the other went home justified before God, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And so there's a similar structure here, similar structure and similar theme. The theme is prayer in both cases. Now, not just prayer, because as we talked about yesterday, it's also about self-righteousness and self-confidence and trusting to the all-sufficiency of Christ. Right? We talked about that, but it's about prayer. And then you have the same structure. You have an introduction where there's a moral statement about the purpose of the parable, and then you have this kind of summary. So these are really hard parables to misunderstand. Jesus tells you in advance what it's gonna be about, and then at the end, he tells you what he told you. I tell you, I tell you in both parables. Now, I'm gonna just pause right here, and I want to talk about something that was actually in yesterday's lesson with Kenneth that I did not mention and I wanted to mention. And I'm gonna do this now because it's actually, I think, gonna come up. I'm gonna have an opportunity to mention this later. So I think this is probably the best time to do it. So it's on page 184. There's just a single sentence there, 184, it's page 156 of the original pagination. And the paragraph begins, and the same compassion. See if you can find that. Yesterday's parable, page 184, 156 of the original, and the same compassion. And I want to highlight a single sentence here. I'm gonna read that first bit. This is not the sentence I want to highlight, but I'm just gonna set it up. And the same compassion that reached out to rescue Peter is extended to every soul who has fallen under temptation. We talked a lot about Peter yesterday. Right? And then this sentence, and we didn't mention this yesterday with Kenneth. We talked about a lot with Kenneth, but we left this off. And it's too important to leave off because I think it's one of the most important sentences in all of yesterday's chapter. And here it is. It is Satan's special device to lead man, by which she means people, to lead people into sin, and then leave them helpless and trembling, fearing to seek for pardon. Okay, this is incredible. She's saying that it is the special device or the special way that Satan works to lead a man to sin, present almost irresistible temptations, though no temptation is truly irresistible, but but enticing temptations, and then the moment that you succumb, he leaves the sinner there helpless, trembling, and thinking that they've gone too far. Thinking that there is no hope, that that was it for them, that was their last draw, that was their last moment. And the reason this is important is that we're going to be talking about Satan and his accusation, right? His accusatory posture toward the children of God here. And this is this really captures it. So the idea that Satan leads us to sin, tempts us to sin, and then once we've sinned, he says, Well, you've gone too far now. There is no pardon, there is no forgiveness, that was it. And I can't tell you how many people in the course of my ministry, pastoral ministry, over the years, I've had people say to me, I think I committed the unpardonable sin. I think that was it. I think I sinned for the last time. And I I've made the point here before that people will sometimes say to say this to me when they're like, you know, 18, 19, 20, and you have to remind them that they are not such extraordinary sinners, that they have exhausted the infinite capacity of God to forgive at the age of 19, 20, 25, right? That that that God's infinitely broad shoulders can handle their sins. Even though our sins are overwhelming to us and despair-inducing to us, God can handle it. And we've talked about this before. The only sin that will be unforgiven is the sin that is not repented of and confessed. So it's not a lack of capacity, it's our unwillingness to communicate to God that we are sorry and to repent of that sin. Okay, now let's go back to today's parable because this is gonna, this is going to show up. Our chapter is titled, Shall Not God Avenge His Own? Shall not God Avenge His Own? And as per usual, I spent just a moment kind of creating a little structure. In some of these paragraphs, or some of these chapters, excuse me, Evelyn White gives a structure. Like she tells us the structure. In other times, we're left to figure out the structure ourselves. And for me, this one was pretty easy. I divided it into five sections. So you might want to write these down. Five sections. Number one is the parable itself and kind of a further elucidation and explanation of the parable, right? Putting some meat on the skeleton of the parable. Okay? So that's pages 196 to 198 in the types and symbols. So just the first couple pages. She describes the parable, she recounts the parable, and then she further elucidates on the parable. Number one. Number two, then she goes into a fairly lengthy section about Zechariah chapter three, the vision of Joshua the high priest and Satan the accuser. Zechariah chapter three, and then she uses Zechariah chapter three to launch into, and this is still part of section two, Satan and the kind of larger great controversy. Okay? So number one, the parable itself and the introduction. Number two, Zechariah three, Satan and the Great Controversy. Number three, she then gets into other agencies, in addition to satanic agencies that are working against God and his people, right? And she's talking about rulers, politicians, judges, like in this day and age, not just satanic, demonic, spiritual entities, but flesh and blood entities that are working against God's people and against justice, against justice on earth. We'll talk about that as well. Then number four, she has a long section. The longest section in the whole chapter, this is quite a long chapter, almost 20 pages, is about the power of prayer and the promises of God. And that's a very long section. I mean, that's like that's like eight pages, seven or eight pages, where she just goes on and on and on about the power of prayer, the efficacy of prayer, the importance of prayer, and she just lists a number of powerful divine biblical promises. So prayer and promises. And then finally, predictably, this will come as no surprise to anybody. She closes on the second coming of Jesus and eschatology. So those are the five sections that I identified, and I found it really helpful to kind of I identified that on the second reading through. As I mentioned before, I just generally read it through the first time, just get a feel for the shape of the chapter. Then I was like, wow, there's a lot in here. I want to try to see if if there are some easily defined sections. And for me, it was pretty obvious those are the five sections. And then I read it through two more times and it really consolidated in my mind that this is what she's doing. She's introducing the prayer, number one. Number two, she talks about uh Zechariah three, Satan and the Great Controversy. Number three, she talks about other human and governmental agencies that are working against God's people and against justice. Number four, she then gives a long list of prayers and promises. Um, she talks about prayer and gives promises, and then she finally closes on eschatology. Great chapter. And it's a chapter that really is a, for me, a gospel buffet. There's a there's a lot of beautiful gospel ideas and principles in here that's not going to come as a surprise to anybody who's been with us on this journey. Now, just a quick word about did you notice this in the NIV? It says, um, I'm in verse five, yet because this widow, this is the unjust judge speaking, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, that she won't eventually come and attack me. It's like, that's kind of a an unusual thing to picture, right? That a widow, right, a a disenfranchised widow is gonna somehow attack a judge, but then listen to it again in Wright's translation. You might remember this. It says, uh, I will put her case right and vindicate her so that she doesn't end up coming and giving me a black eye. What's going on here? Well, I was curious about that in Reich's translation, so I looked it up, and curiously, what is going on here is that in verse five, you have this very interesting Greek word, hupo piazzo. Hupo piazzo. And the word actually only occurs two times in the New Testament, right? So, so depending on your translation, she'll attack me or she'll weary me. You can look up your specific translation in in uh verse five. And so I looked it up, and this word here, hupo piazzo, is quite interesting. Listen to the definition here: to beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and spots, like a boxer. It's a term used for boxing, for fighting. It's a pugilistic term. Like a boxer, one buffets his body, handles it roughly, and disciplines it by hardships. Paul actually, the other place that this word occurs is in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 27, where Paul says that he does this to his body. He whoopo piazzos his body, he beats it, he brings it into subjection and into submission. And so this is quite interesting because this appears to be a kind of idiom, like an idiom that goes something like this. That the unjust judge is basically saying, right, this is the words that Jesus has put in the mouth of the unjust judge. I had better attend to this woman's case, or she's gonna bludgeon me with her continued insistence. She's not gonna leave me alone. Not literally bludging, but just she just coming and coming and coming and coming and coming and tuming. There's no respite, there's no rest, no relief. She's going to come and You know, as it says in anti-Rice translation, give me a black eye. Not a literal black eye, but a figurative black eye because she's so persistent. And the lesson here for us is persistence, persistence, persistence. Which we don't have to wonder about the lesson because that's literally what Jesus tells us the point of the parable is. Look at verse one again. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. Keep fighting, keep boxing, keep asking. Now, as we're going to see, unlike the unjust judge, we don't have to continue to ask Jesus, wondering if he hears us, because we know he does. He delights to hear us and he delights to answer our prayers. Now, a couple more quick things here. In fact, let me just read a little bit and then we'll get into a few more details about the parable itself. So I'm going to read now page 196. I'm just going to start reading Ellen White's fleshing out of this very fascinating parable. Right? It's a little bit like the man that did not want to be woken out of sleep. In our uh, what was that, chapter 12, asking to give? Is that right? Let me just check here. Yeah, chapter 12, asking to give. It's got that same by way of contrast, not by way of comparison feel to it. So here we go. I'm in paragraph one, page 196, 164. Christ had been speaking of the period just before his second coming. That's in Luke 17, eschatology. So interestingly, this chapter opens with a mention of eschatology and then closes with like two and a half pages of, or maybe more, of just eschatology, right? The end times, last days, justice on earth, Jesus showing up. So Christ had been speaking of the period just before his second coming and of the perils through which his followers must pass. With special reference to that time, he related the parable that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. She then quotes the parable, and I'm not going to do it because I've already done it. Go to the third paragraph. The judge who is here picture had no regard for right nor pity for suffering. The widow who pressed her case before him was persistently repulsed. Right? The unjust judge appears to be a match for her persistence. He imagines that she'll eventually go away, but she doesn't go away. She keeps hoopo piazzo, she keeps coming and beating and insisting, right? But at first she was persistently repulsed. Again and again she came to him, only to be treated with contempt and to be driven from the judgment seat. The judge knew that her cause was righteous, and he could have relieved her at once, but he would not. He wanted to show, says Ellen White, his arbitrary power. And it gratified him to let her ask and plead and entreat in vain. In other words, he was a sicko. He's a crazy person, right? It like brought him joy that she kept coming until it didn't bring him joy, and then he's like, okay, this is a bit too much, even for me. Right? He occupies a position of what she calls arbitrary power. And it's right at this point that I want to pause. We'll come back to that in a second and make a point. And I wrote it down here in my types and journals, uh, types and journals, types and symbols journal, right? Which you all hopefully have. It's a great journal. You can obviously just use any notebook, but I really like the journals here. They're beautiful. And uh I wrote down this here. This parable at one level is about unaccountable power, right? Power without accountability. I don't fear man, I don't fear God, and I have no regard for man. In other words, there's no accountability here. He's a rogue judge. He is he is not governed by what's right, by the rule of law. He is unaccountable. Right? No, unaccountable power. He has the perverse prerogative to just say no to a woman who has a just case because he can. He's a bad person. Jesus paints this person, and by the way, as Jesus is telling this story, probably there are people in his hearing that are like, yeah, I know a judge like that, or my brother-in-law knows a judge like that, or my sister one time had to plead her case before a judge just like that. I mean, justice is elusive, and that's one of the things that's on offer in this chapter. Justice is elusive, and it is particularly elusive if we look to earthly rulers, earthly politicians, princes, and judges to bring us true and lasting justice. Jesus is clearly playing into that, right? This judge is not the exception. Not to say that there aren't good judges out there. Of course there are, but the idea that there are corrupt judges is not going to be a surprise to anybody, right? Power tends to corrupt, said Lord Acton, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So just as there are corrupt police officers and corrupt politicians, there are corrupt judges. As soon as somebody can come into a position of power, any kind of power, executive power, legislative power, law enforcement power, the temptation for corruption is there and will not be resisted by some. And this is a corrupt and unjust judge. So already we should kind of feel a dissatisfaction with the justice that this world offers. And remember, this is a parable not only about prayer, but about justice. In the NIV, the word justice occurring four times: justice, justice, justice, justice. Okay, so this is a parable also about unaccountable power and precarious and unfortunate circumstantial vulnerability. This woman is in a very vulnerable position. And once again, I was reading from James Edwards' commentary on this passage on the Gospel of Luke, and I want to read you what he says here. He does a really good job of capturing this, and this is a point that I've made in other sermons that I've preached, including recently I've been preaching, I've preached two or three times recently on the book of Ruth. And I talked about how an unattached woman, right, like you have with Ruth and Naomi, right, an unattached woman in the ancient world was in a bad way. Right? There's not social services, there's not a social safety net. If it wasn't for the goodwill of her community or just of uh, you know, people that were just being benevolent and kind, an unattached woman was really in a very heightened, precarious, vulnerable position. So what you have here in this parable is an extremely powerful, unaccountable man, and an extremely vulnerable woman. Now let me read you what Edward says. He says, in an age when social services were almost exclusively dependent on human goodwill, widows, orphans, and the sick and needy were exposed to a precarious social existence. In Israel, a woman's link to the outside community depended largely on a male family member, a father in the case of a daughter, a husband in the case of a wife, a son in the case of a widow. Okay, which is exactly what we see in the story of Ruth, right? The widow of verse three has no male to plead her case. In a patriarchal context, in a patriarchal society, if an injustice has been done, the woman would send her husband, and the man would, by just the force of his masculinity, insist on a hearing, on an opportunity, and the man would have to take him seriously, or he might be literally bludgeoned, right? Because this is what can happen. People can take justice into their own hands if they feel like the courts are not giving them real justice. But if you're a woman, that's not really an opportunity available to you. But what the woman does have, what she lacks in sort of actual bodily physical strength, she makes up for in persistence. The widow of verse 3 has no male to plead her case, leaving her especially defenseless and vulnerable. So hear this parable against the backdrop of extreme, unaccountable power, an unjust judge who regards neither God nor man, and an extremely vulnerable woman who, as Ellen White tells the story, has lost access to her inheritance, to her fortune with the passing of her husband. There's an adversary, she's been cheated, she's been hard done by, her case is fair and just. She has an actual legal complaint. And she's appealing to the law because she believes in the rule of law. She believes in justice. But as we've mentioned, justice in this world is ephemeral. Justice in this world is hard to come by. We long for it, we hope for it, but we don't always get it. Edwards continues The Old Testament repeatedly upholds the cause of such, especially widows, and abounds in denunciations of those who oppress widows. Jesus would have told this story, knowing that any Jewish hearer would immediately know that the judge is acting entirely out of harmony with Torah, where the cause and the plight of the widow is elevated, the vulnerable is elevated, the orphan is elevated. James chapter 1, verse 27, Ellen White quotes a lot from James in this chapter. James chapter 1, verse 27 says, Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction. So the Old Testament, God in Torah takes a high view of the community's care and attention to the needs of widows. We see this in the New Testament church as well, with Acts chapter 6. The early church was caring for the needs of widows and of orphans and of others that were marginalized. Okay, one more thing here. The obstinacy of the judge and the defenselessness of the widow would seem to doom the widow's prospects of success, but there is a surprise in store. And the surprise, of course, is the woman's insistence and persistence. Her hipo piazzo, right? Her hupo piazzo. Now let me just say this quickly. When I was just recently in Loma Linda, many of you know I was just there doing not only a week of prayer in the evenings for the Loma Linda University Church, but Ty and I did a week of prayer for the students. For the students, five-part week of prayer. Uh Ty did number one, I did number two, Ty did number three, I did number four, then we jointly did number five. And those are available, by the way, in uh on the Loma Linda University Church uh YouTube channel. And I've already mentioned that Ty's in particular were excellent. I thought mine were pretty good, but I thought his were outstanding. The first talk that I gave, and the series was called I'd Recommend Jesus. I'd recommend Jesus. And the first talk I gave was titled When You Crave Justice or When You Long for Justice, I'd Recommend Jesus. And I gave a talk about the nature of justice. And you can go listen to it. And I talked about how we all have an inbuilt desire, an inbuilt sense for fairness, for justice. This doesn't have to be taught. Even a young child at the age of three or four or five will just know instinctively to say, that's not fair, that's not right, or is that true? Right? They don't have to be taught this. It's inbuilt to us, it's a part of us. And I I talked about, for example, one of my favorite quotations about justice from Martin Luther King Jr., where he said, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. In other words, he's saying, you're not going to get justice in the here and now. Sometimes, yes. But justice is elusive, it's ephemeral. We don't always get it. And we're supposed to feel a frustration, a dissatisfaction, and also we can relate to this. We're like, yeah, yeah. The widows don't always get treated fairly. They don't always get a fair hearing. An unjust, obstinate, unaccountable judge can thwart justice. So this is not only a parable about persistence prayer, it's a parable about justice. And I talk a lot about how my own ideas of justice were profoundly shaped by reading a book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, a book I read as a teenager. If you want to listen to that sermon, uh you can go listen to it. I was really trying to, we were trying to make Ty and I the strong impression on the university students there that look, you need Jesus. I'd recommend Jesus, I'd recommend Jesus, I'd recommend Jesus. At the end of each presentation, we would say, I'd highly, enthusiastically recommend Jesus. So when you want justice, when you long for justice, when you crave justice, friends, I'd recommend Jesus. Okay, so Jesus tells this parable, and uh Ellen White here is talking about how he wanted to show his arbitrary power. Let's keep reading. Uh I'm still there in that same paragraph. Notwithstanding his indifference and hard-heartedness, she pressed her petition. Hupo piazzo. She beat him with her insistence. She pressed her petition until the judge consented to attend to her case. Though I do not fear God nor regard man, he said, Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. That's the hipo piazzo. Right? She give me a black eye in rights translation. Or she, uh, what is it in the NIV? She attacks me. She eventually comes and attacks me. Uh to save his reputation and avoid giving publicity to his partial one-sided judgment, he avend the person he avenged the persevering woman. So he doesn't do it because it's the right thing to do. He does it out of an act of kind of self-preservation. Right? Okay, next paragraph. Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust just hear what the unjust judge said. And shall not God avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears lawn with them, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. So then Jesus returns to the idea of justice. People are crying out, they're longing for justice, and this is the cry of the Old Testament. And to some degree, of course, the New Testament as well. Right? The longing for justice, and in this the uh what are the great two-word phrases in the Old Testament that really capture the prophetic call and longing for justice is how long, how long, O Lord, right? This this crying out for justice, for fairness, for God's justice to reign on earth. And so Ellen White does a great job of kind of threading the needle in this chapter. It's about perseverance in prayer, and it's also about justice. Justice that we do not get in the here and now, and justice that we will get in the hereafter. Yes, we get little glimmers of it, and there are times where judges get it right and attorneys get it right, and juries get it right. But do they always get it perfectly right? No, they do not. Do they often get it wrong? Yes. And are there corrupt people in powers, in uh judicial and legislative positions that purposefully pervert justice to their own benefit? Yes. Yes. And she talks about that in this chapter. She says, Christ here draws a sharp contrast between the unjust judge and God. The judge yielded to the widow's request merely through selfishness that he might be relieved of her importunity. We've talked about that word before. He felt for her no pity or compassion. Her misery was nothing to him. And then she says, and you should underline this phrase, how different. How different, underline it. How different is the attitude of God toward those who seek him? The appeals of the needy and the distressed are considered by him with infinite compassion. Oh, and I missed that infinite. I was writing down all of the infinites, and I missed that one because we've got infinite love, infinite God, infinite wisdom, infinite price, and here it is. Infinite compassion. Let me just write that down here so I don't forget. Page 198. Okay, again, we've got a number of infinites here. Infinite compassion, infinite love, the infinite God, infinite in wisdom, and Jesus paid an infinite price. I Ellen White loves the modifier infinite, and I like it too because what it does is it captures the ineffability when we're talking about God's love. We we just say it's infinite. And the the sacrifice of Jesus. There's an ineffability to it. It's incommunicable at some level, so we just say infinite. And when we're talking about the compassion of Jesus, the compassion of God, it's you can't quantify it. So you just throw the word infinite at it. And I like that. Ellen White uses this as a kind of catch-all for the fact that there are limits to human comprehension and language. She loves the modifier infinite, and I love it as well. Especially we've already had twice, twice in this book, infinite grace. I mean, come on, ladies and gentlemen. Infinite grace, thank you, Jesus. Infinite love, thank you, Jesus. Infinite wisdom, thank you, Jesus. Infinite compassion, thank you, Jesus.

unknown 39:34

Woo!

SPEAKER_00 39:35

There we go. Okay, so then um we could spend, in fact, it's just a little bit lower on that same page, page 198, where she says, but God loves his children with infinite love. Okay, so I'm not gonna read the rest of that because that's all part one. Part one is the retelling and the fleshing out of the parable itself. Then part two is where she begins to talk about Zechariah three, and we've already actually spent, I'm almost sure, in fact, I know for a fact, we have talked about Zechariah three before. We talked about it in Prophets and Kings, and I'm pretty sure, so that's O T with DA part two, and I'm pretty sure we talked about it in DA with DA as well. And maybe it, I mean, I know because Ellen White loves the story of Zechariah three. She loves it, the vision of Zechariah III with Joshua the high priest clothed in filthy garments and take away his filthy garments and put a turban on his head and clothe. I mean, she loves this story. And of course she should. I mean, it's one of the most clear and unambiguous articulations of righteousness by faith in the Old Testament. It's amazing. And we're not going to spend a lot of time on it, not because it's not important, but because what she does over the next one, two, three, four pages is she does an outstanding job of explaining what's going on with Zechariah chapter three. But what she does is she uses Zechariah chapter three. And why does she go to Zechariah chapter three? Why there from Luke 18? Fair question. Because there is an inj there's an accusation, there's an injustice. And the accusation against Joshua is the accusation being made by Satan, and her tie-in is we have an adversary. We never find out who the nameless, faceless adversary is of the woman that's robbed her of the resources that would rightfully be hers, but she literally says, uh, uh, let me just see if I can find it here quickly. Um here it is grant me justice against my adversary, my enemy.

unknown 41:38

Right?

SPEAKER_00 41:38

How does N.T. Wright say it? Uh again, vindicate me against my enemy. So then she uses that to say, hey, not only did the woman in the parable have an enemy, an adversary that was perverting justice, breaking the law. We all, humanity collectively, we have an adversary. We have a collective adversary, Satan. And then she goes right to Zechariah chapter three, because you also have this kind of law court setting. And she does a great job of teasing it out. I'm just going to make a few observations here along the way. Um, one is one thing that really jumped out at me, and I'm curious if this jumped out to anybody else, is how much she talks about, she uses the word destroy and destruction in describing the kind of end game for Satan when it comes to the people of God. That really jumped out to me. She says he continually is working to misrepresent, accuse, deceive, and destroy the people of God. So he's playing for keeps, is the point. And I suppose by way of comparison, this man, the enemy of the widow, is trying to destroy her. He doesn't care about her. She's going to die. She's unattached, she doesn't have apparently no male to plead her case. She's going to be destroyed, ruined, as it were. Just like that's really the story that we have in uh the story of Ruth, right? With Ruth and Naomi. And that was because the sons both died, and then the the husband had also died. And, you know, you have these unattached women, and then finally they they get attached to Boaz. It's a beautiful story. One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament. So what really jumped out to me here is this idea of destroy. I'm turning the page here. Page 200, right in the middle of the page. This is page 167, it looks like. Paragraph begins The work of Satan as an accuser began in heaven. Let's read that. The work of Satan as an accuser began in heaven. So now she's kind of launching off on kind of a larger question of theodicy, which makes sense. Theodicy is the vindication or the affirmation of the justice of God in the face of evil, right? This question of the fairness of life and where is God in the midst of all this injustice and cruelty and unfairness and oppression, right? This question of theodicy, and if you're gonna if a Christian is going to address themselves to the question of theodicy, you're gonna have To talk about Satan, and you're going to have to talk about his fall, and that's what she does. And we've already mentioned, of course, that Ann Ellen White's thinking, the great controversy, is never far from her frame of reference. So the work of Satan, I'm reading now, as an accuser began in heaven. This has been his work on earth ever since man's fall. And it will be his spe his work in a special sense as we approach nearer to the close of this world, close of this world's history. Again, eschatology. As he sees that his time is short, eschatology, he will work with greater earnestness to deceive and destroy. There it is again. He is angry when he sees a people on earth who, even in their weakness and sinfulness, have respect to the law of Jehovah. He is determined that they shall not obey God. He delights in their unworthiness and has devices prepared for every soul. Devices prepared for every soul, that all may be ensnared and separated from God. He seeks to accuse and condemn God and all who strive to carry out his purposes in this world in mercy and love, in compassion and forgiveness. Well, we talked about one of those devices, didn't we? Let me remind you, just moments ago, page 184, 156 of the original, it is us, it is Satan's special device to lead man into sin and then leave him helpless and trembling, fearing to seek for pardon. So you might want to make a note that she talks here about how he has a device prepared for every soul, page 200, and just 16 pages earlier on page 184, she lets you know, she itemizes what one of his tools is, one of his devices, to lead us into sin, to tempt us to sin, then heaven forbid, if we do sin, to leave us wallowing in our misery, like a dog in its vomit, like a pig in the mire, and then say, Well, look, you've gone too far, right? There's no hope for pardon now, as she says, fearing to even seek for pardon. Okay, so then jump over to the next page, page 201. There's a long paragraph that begins every manifestation. Jump down to the middle of that paragraph. This is uh now page 168, 169. The middle of that paragraph, he points to their filthy garments. So she's talking here about Zechariah 3. Satan points to their filthy garments, their defective characters. He presents their weaknesses and folly, their sins of ingratitude, their unlikeness to Christ, which have dishonored their Redeemer. He's the accuser of the brethren. This is what the Bible says in Revelation 12. And he's presented as an accuser all the way back, all the way back to Genesis 3. He's accusing God of being a withholder. She continues, all this he urges as an argument, proving his right to work his will in their destruction. There it is again. He's playing for keeps. He doesn't just want you deceived, he doesn't just want me deceived, he wants us deceived and destroyed. He longs for our destruction. He is perverse. He is like not just the adversary in the parable, he's like the judge. Unaccountable power, corrupted, no sense of justice at all. He endeavors to affright their souls, which I thought was interesting language, to affright their souls, to scare the death out of them, to affright their souls with the thought that their case is hopeless, that the stain of their defilement can never be washed away. He hopes to destroy their faith that they will yield fully to his temptations. Okay, so she spends quite a little bit of time here talking about Satan and his desire to deceive and to destroy and to misrepresent. And I think she does an excellent job. But now what I want to do is go to page 202, 169 of the original, and there's a great paragraph here that says, notwithstanding, notwithstanding, find that, notwithstanding the defects of the people of God. And I want to show you something very cool. Take out your pen and write this down. Take out your pen and write this down because she itemizes here five things. This is very cool, five things that God does in response to the accusations of Satan. And by the way, we cannot call them baseless accusations. They are genuine accusations. It is true, we have sinned, we have fallen, we have disregarded the law of God. We have given in to lust and gossip and unkindness and cruelty and greed. So these are not unfounded accusations, but look at this. Notwithstanding the defects of the people of God, Christ does not turn away. Underline that phrase. Christ does not turn away. Okay, so that's number one. Christ does not turn away. Make a note of that. Write a number one by that. Christ does not turn away. He has power to change their raiment. Number two, he removes their filthy garments. So Jesus doesn't turn away from us. Just as Adam and Eve had sinned and hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. God went in pursuit of them. He didn't turn away. He wasn't so repulsed and so disgusted by them that he didn't go in pursuit of them. So number one, Jesus does not turn away from you in your sin. Thank you, Jesus. Number two, when we repent, when we confess, when we acknowledge as the tax collector yesterday that we have sinned, God have mercy on me a sinner. Number two, he removes the filthy garments. Number three, he places upon the repenting believing ones the robe of his own righteousness. He gives us his own robe of righteousness. Number three, talk about silencing the accuser. Number four, he then writes pardon against their names on the records in heaven. Whoa. So he doesn't turn away, he removes our filthy garments, he uh places upon the repenting believing ones his own robe of righteousness. Number four, he writes pardon against their names, and then finally, number five, he confesses them as his before the heavenly universe. Itemize all five of those. And if you have ever fallen and you're like, what do I do now? Go to this passage and remind yourself of these five things. Christ does not turn away, he takes off your filthy garments, he gives you the robe of his righteousness, he writes pardon next to your name, and then he says to all the angelic throng, fallen and unfallen, this one is mine, she is mine, he is mine. And this is her unpacking of that Old Testament story vision in Zechariah 3 that she loves so much. Okay? Okay, now we get to part three of this chapter, which is there are not only satanic agencies working against God's people, but there are earthly agencies and powers that are working against God's people and against justice, the cause of justice. And um I'm gonna she quotes here, actually, we need to read this. We've got to read James chapter 5, verses 1 to 6. She quotes it here, uh, all of it, actually. So there's a paragraph here that begins, the scriptures describe, the scriptures describe, so let's read this. The scriptures describe the condition of the world just before Christ's second coming. So again, eschatology. She always has it on her mind. And it makes sense because remember this parable, Luke 18, comes right after Luke 17, which is describing the time just before the return of Jesus. Okay, so eschatology is on her mind biblically and also just as a matter of course. That's the way that Ellen White viewed the world. It's the way I view the world. I'm an Adventist. I believe that Jesus is coming and that he's coming soon. Okay? The scriptures describe the condition of the world just before Christ's second coming. James the Apostle pictures the greed and oppression that will prevail. He says, quoting now from James 5, Come now, you rich. You have heaped up treasures in the last days. There it is, last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out. And the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury, you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter, you have condemned, you have murdered the just. He does not resist you. James chapter 5, verses 1 to 6. She says, This is a picture of what exists today. By every species of oppression and extortion, men are piling up colossal fortunes while the cries of starving humanity are coming up before God. Now I want to say a few words about this. The problem is not, this is my view, and this is what I think she's saying. I think this is, number one, uh, this is empirically true, and number two, I think it's biblically true. Number three, I think it's the point she's making. The problem is not with people accumulating wealth because they are wise businessmen. I can give you parable after parable, story after story, example after example in the New Testament, where Jesus is clearly not uh a governmental communist, right? He he, for example, when he gave talents, you know, to one he gives one and to five and then ten, he has the expectation of a return, right? A return on that investment. I mean, literally, numerous passages could be marshaled to show. I mean, Abraham was a very rich man, for example. The wise men were likely wealthy and brought their gifts of wealth. Nicodemus was a wealthy man. Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man. Wealthy people throughout church history, and going all the way back to Abraham and many other examples, have forwarded the cause of God on earth. Wealth itself is not the problem. That's not what she's talking about. She's talking about wealth that has been unfairly and unjustly acquired and then hoarded for oneself. This is, I think, an important distinction because the reflex here is to go, all wealth is bad and all wealthy people are bad people. That is not true. It is not at all true. And by the way, how about this? Who's wealthier than God? We've already looked at several passages in this book where Ellen White says things like, What are you going to bring to God? Gold and silver? He owns it. He owns the world. So has wealth corrupted God? No. He owns everything. So the problem is not the wealth itself, but wealth, like being a judge or a legislator, is an opportunity for power, and power can tend to corrupt. So is it true that there is a temptation for the wealthy, for the affluent, to use their wealth to unjustly extort uh from the laborer and then to oppress their laborer, of course. There's no question. But we need to make a distinction here. If you read James 5 carefully, the colossal fortunes that he's talking about and that she mentions is not colossal fortunes being bad in and of themselves. I have friends who have extraordinary wealth, especially by the standards that I'm accustomed to. And they happen to be some of the most generous, charitable, magnanimous, hardworking people that employ people, that take good care of their employees, that use those resources for great good. So the problem is not wealth in and of itself, it's wealth acquired in ways that are completely incommensurate with the way that God has revealed wealth should be dealt with. This is very important. It's an important distinction that has to be made here. God is not against people being excellent, wise, industrious business people and making good decisions, but in God's economy, those good decisions have to involve a win-win, a win for the producer and the consumer, a win for the employer and a win for the employee. As soon as we get in a win-lose situation, now we've gone outside of the gospel, we've gone outside of biblical principles, Torah-based principles, and God cannot endorse this. And that's what she's talking about. She's talking about oppression and injustice. So now she then quotes a number of passages. I'm on page 204 still, 171, where she starts talking about justice. Right? Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off. Truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. This is one of the most famous passages about justice, found in Isaiah chapter 59. Truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. She then begins to talk about the laws and traditions of man over and against the teachings of Torah, the teachings of the Old and New Testaments, that are bringing about increasing injustice in the world. And some of the, you know, by the way, you don't have to be wealthy to be an unjust person, right? Any person that takes advantage of another person is unjust. They don't have to have money to do that. Right? Every murderer is behaving unjustly, and you don't have to have any money in your pocket to be a murderer. Every rapist is behaving unjustly, and you don't have to be wealthy to be a rapist. Right? So we should not fall into this trap of thinking that a certain kind of people are categorically unjust people. That doesn't work, friends. It doesn't work financially, it doesn't work educationally, it doesn't work in terms of nationality, it doesn't work in terms of race. No. No. There are good and bad people in every cross section of society. Right? Like that's the point. The point is the action. It's very important to bear this in mind. And injustice can be committed by all different kinds of people. And we should cry out against injustice. We should cry out against injustice. Amen and amen and amen. So then she starts talking about some of the earthly rulers and judges that behave in unjust ways. And I want to look at page 204, bottom of page 204, 171. The character of the judge is how the paragraph begins. The character of the judge in the parable who feared not God nor regarded man was presented by Christ to show the kind of judgment that was then being executed. In other words, in his day. In other words, when Jesus tells a story about an unfair, unjust judge, a lot of the people to whom he's speaking are nodding along. They're like, oh yeah, oh yeah, we know about that. Because power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In fact, in those days, an unjust judge might have been more common than a just judge. Right? Bribes and greasing the wheels, and she talks about this. Look at this. And that would soon be witnessed at his trial. I mean, who got a more unfair trial than Jesus? He was perfect. He was the blessed of heaven. He was the Son of God, and yet he was somehow accused of blasphemy by the high priest in a kangaroo court. So he's anticipating here that, yeah, you long for justice, you hope for justice, you cry out for justice, but you don't always get justice, and the Son of Man himself was a victim of injustice. I'll say it again. Jesus himself was a victim of gross injustice. So if you have been a victim of gross injustice, if you have been a victim of gross injustice, then you have this in common with Jesus. Jesus knows what it is to be the victim of gross and unfair injustice. Amen and amen. Now watch what she does here. He desires his people in all time. Oh my friends, you've got to underline this, especially in this politically polarized world in which we live in 2026. You have got to underline this. And I'm going to resist the temptation to say more about it because it says enough. He desires his people in all time to realize how little dependence underlined it. I'm begging you. I am begging you. How little dependence can be placed on earthly rulers or judges in the day of adversity. In other words, everybody in power. That's not saying that every single person in power at the state level, the federal level, I'm not saying that every single person is a bad person. That's not what she's saying. What she's saying is that the systems themselves are so set up to, in some senses, even though they are ostensibly, they have a checks and balances in place to assure, or at least to to lean toward justice, very often they lean the other way. We know this. Come on, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. And because the systems are rigged, and then you get corrupt people, corrupt politicians, corrupt judges, corrupt lobbyists, and others, corrupt cops. I mean, at every level of governance, there's corruption. Right? She says, Don't put your dependence in them, especially in the day of adversity. Now you might, you might be, I have a I have a good friend. She might be on this call right now. She's a lawyer. And I'm sure that if we could ask her, do you see justice in the courtroom? There's not a doubt in my mind. She would say, Yeah, yeah, we see justice. But if I said, Do you always see justice? She would say no. No, we don't always see justice. And do you sometimes see outright injustice? I imagine she would say yes. Right? So for that reason, our faith has to be in the highest court, the heavenly court, in God Himself's hands. And I talked about this in the sermon that I gave to the students there at Loma Linda. When you really long for justice, when you cry for justice, I'd recommend Jesus. And I'm only going to say this, I'm only going to say this because the temptation is to say a lot more. I am begging you, as followers of Jesus, whose kingdom is in heaven above, to not become so partisan that you are basically persuaded that one political party is all bad and they're the problem, and the other political party is all good and they're the solution. If you have fallen into that kind of simplistic, binary, very modern way of thinking about politics, friends, you have left scripture. You have left what the text of scripture says. Neither political party perfectly captures or embodies the truth as it is in Jesus and in Scripture. Now I'm not saying you can't have a political affiliation and a political opinion. Good for you. I got no problem with that. Right? Some of my closest friends are hardcore Republicans, and I've got close friends that are hardcore Democrats, and happily all of them keep these things in context. Because if I have friends that get too far down the political rabbit hole, I rebuke them. I'm like, no, that's not it. Jesus is it. We should not have any expectation of lasting justice in this world. So I have friends that are on both sides of the aisle, they have opinions, they have perspectives, great. I got no problem with that. But when you find yourself in this black and white, all or nothing, zero-sum political perspective where you think one political party is basically all good and the other political party is basically all bad, man, you have you have drunk the Kool-Aid. It is, I'm not, by the way, I'm not saying they're equally good or equally bad. I have strong opinions about things that especially interface with scripture. Interface with scripture. I'm not saying don't have strong opinions. Knock yourself out. But I'm pleading with you, and I'm just going to read what she says here. Jesus desires his people in all time to realize how little dependence can be placed on earthly rulers or judges in the day of adversity. Often the elect people of God have to stand before men in official positions and capacities who do not make the word of God their guide and counselor, but who follow their own unconsecrated, undisciplined impulses. Correct. She keeps going. In the parable of the unjust judge, Christ has shown what we should do. Shall not God avenge his own elect who excuse me, cry out day and night to him? Christ, our example, did nothing to vindicate or deliver himself. He committed his case to God, so his followers are not to accuse or condemn or to resort to force in order to deliver themselves. She then goes into a great section about how we should react, and then we get to section four. So we've done section one, which is the parable itself, and the fleshing out of the parable. We've done section two, which is Zachariah three, and the great controversy. We talked about the five things. Christ does not turn away, he removes our filthy garments, he clothes us with his robe of righteousness, he writes pardon our names, and he presents us to the heavenly onlookers as his own. Now we get to section four, which is about the power of prayer and God's promises. And a lot could be said here. But what I would simply say is she describes prayer as an act of war. And this is a point that I've made before. Prayer is an act of war. Write that down. Prayer is an act of war. We talked about this book yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, Why We Pray. Why we pray by John Peckham, understanding prayer in the context of The cosmic conflict. Prayer is an act of war. And she says as much. Look at the bottom of page 206, 172. Paragraph begins: The children of God. The children of God are not left alone and defenseless. Prayer moves the arm of omnipotence. Prayer is an act of war. That's what we're on here. Because this parable intertwines these twin themes of persistent prayer and a longing for justice, but not the expectation of justice. We should not have the expectation of lasting, permanent, consistent justice in this world. And I'm sorry if that's, I hope I'm not the first person to break this to you, but it's just not the way it works. And there's all kinds of injustice, as we've talked about. Murder is injustice, rape is injustice. Even getting cancer is like it's not the way it's supposed to be. God didn't design us to get cancers and to get sickness, car accidents. I had two friends that were killed by a drunk driver when they were in their early 20s. Like that's an injustice. And we crave for justice and fairness in the world, and we know we don't get it. But what we can do is we can pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray. And happily for us, we're not dealing with a recalcitrant God who only reluctantly answers our prayers. God answers every prayer that we pray. Not always exactly like we think or we want or we hope, and not always on exactly the timetable that we have. But no prayer, she says it in this chapter, goes unanswered. Or unheard is a better way to say it. No prayer goes unheard. In 303, Syzygy says, death itself is an injustice. Exactly correct. Because we were created to live forever. Death is an alien invader, it's an intrusion in God's otherwise good world. Death itself is an injustice. Okay, so then she has this long, amazing section, which I invite you just to bathe in, promise after promise, prayer after prayer. Um, and she keeps coming back to this line Shall not, shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out to him, night, who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with them, I tell you, he will avenge them speedily. And then finally, she closes on eschatology. She says things like, The world has, I'm on page 212 now, the world has become bold in transgression. The time is near. I'm just quoting here some lines. In this time of prevailing iniquity, the last great crisis is at hand. The time is near. The judgment, and she says, God will cleanse the earth from all moral corruption. And I want to go down to Oh man, there's so much goodness here. I want to go down to the paragraph, the I want to read the last four paragraphs of the whole chapter. So, where it begins, from India, from India, go find that, page 214 or 179, from India, from Africa, from China. I love this section. I'm going to read this whole thing. After she's talked about the last days and justice and how injustice will increase, and we should have the expectation of injustice because corruption abounds, and as Paul said, evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. In other words, corruption and injustice and unfairness and oppression will only increase. I know that the world is totally captivated right now by the Epstein files. And I just want to say a brief word about this. Without going down any rabbit holes and you know conspiratorial thinking about it, because I don't know what the truth is. But would I be surprised or am I surprised that powerful globalist elites are committing heinous acts of cruelty, abuse, and perhaps even satanic ritual? I mean, is that happening? I don't know if it's happening, but the satanic part. The abuse, we know that's happening. That's not a question. Or has happened and is happening now. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein is not the only bad person in the world. There are there are millions of women being trafficked, and young men as well, being trafficked in slavery right now. We don't have to wonder. But I just want to say this, my friends. We have no idea. We have no idea how dark and evil and perverse and grotesque and repulsive the world is. We just do not know. The cries of these children, these infinite infants that have been abused. Hell hath no fury, my friends. We, we, I long for justice. Long for it. One thing about me, and I don't see this as a political opinion, I am very law and order. I believe in law and order. And when people commit heinous crimes, particularly against the most vulnerable, there should be severe and swift punishments for these people. And bad news. There most people are gonna get away with it. Tragically, but they're not gonna get away with it in the final analysis. And that is the thing that we long for. This was what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said the moral the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And I tell you, uh I don't know, you relate to the Epstein files and all that stuff like you want, but for me, when I read some of it, I just get so. I just become so disturbed by it. I don't want to expose my mind to it. I know there's evil out there. I know there is grotesque evil that is so incomprehensible, I don't even want to think about it. I mean, in the Old Testament, they were sacrificing their children. Come on. We live in a world that is so dark, so perverse, so evil, we don't even know what we don't know. We're like fish in water. And only when we see the glories, the bright, beautiful glories of heaven and life as it was intended to be lived will we know just how dark this world has been. And frankly, I don't want to know all the dark stuff. I know what's out there, and I just plead with God to be with the oppressed, with the abused, with the raped, with the trafficked, with the murdered, to be with them in those moments of gross injustice and vulnerability. Like the woman in the parable, she was vulnerable to be with them. And I claim the promise on their behalf that God is a very present help in times of trouble. And only God is going to be able to adjudicate perfectly the injustice and cruelty of this world. Only God, and if there is no God, right, like like some believe, if there is no God, then what are we doing? There is no final and full recompense for injustice and cruelty in the world. I refuse to believe it. Again, go back and listen to that sermon that I preached for the students titled Um, If You Long for Justice, I'd recommend Jesus, because I talk about this. Okay, I want to read this here. I want to read this. From India, from Africa, from China, from the islands of the sea, from the downtrodden millions of so-called Christian lands, the cry of human woe is ascending to God. Every cry, every whisper, every whimper, God hears it all, he sees it all, he is present to it all. That cry will not long be unanswered. Thank you, Jesus. God will cleanse the earth from its moral corruption. Thank you, Jesus. And murderers and abusers and traffickers and rapists and oppressors that have not repented of their sin and have identified with their sin, when sin is destroyed, they too will be destroyed and they will be justly destroyed. They can return, they can excuse me, they can repent, they can be saved. They can't, even anybody that has not committed the unpardonable sin, but for those that do not identify that those that do not identify with Jesus and choose rather to identify with their sin, when the earth is cleansed from its moral corruption, it will be cleansed of those that have refused to give up their sin and give up their cruelty. And that, friends, will be a good thing. It will be a good thing. It's a sad thing that people have identified with sin, but it's a sadder thing for God to permanently tolerate sin and sinners and abuse and corruption and pain and hurt and murder. God is not going to tolerate this forever. Thank you, Jesus. Not by a sea of water as in Noah's day, but by a sea of fire that cannot be quenched by any human devising. There shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found, written in the book, Daniel chapter 12, verse 1. From garrets, from hovels, from dungeons, from scaffolds, from mountains and deserts, from the caves of the earth, and the caverns of the sea, Christ will gather his children to himself. On earth they have been destitute, afflicted, and tormented. Millions have gone down to the grave, loaded with infamy, because they refused to yield to the deceptive claims of Satan. By human tribulations, the children of God have been adjudged the vilest criminals. But the day is near when God Himself is judge. Psalm 50, verse 6. The decisions of the earth shall be reversed. Then the decisions of the earth shall be reversed. The rebuke of his people he will take away, Isaiah 25, 8. White robes will be given to every one of them, Revelation 6, verse 11. And they shall call them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, Isaiah 62.12. Whatever crosses they have been called to bear, whatever losses they have sustained, whatever persecution they have suffered, even to the loss of their temporal life, and I love this line. It's the best line in the whole chapter. The best line in the whole chapter for me, right here, the children of God are amply recompensed. In other words, they will be taken care of in eternity. Pain here, suffering here, injustice here, hardship here. But if they put their faith in Jesus, if they repented and turned to him, even with just a whimper, a longing whimper, as they breathed their last breath, hoping that there would be justice in the world and looking in some simple way to Jesus, and they are saved, the children of God will be amply recompensed. They shall see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Friends, this was a chapter about prayer. It was a chapter about justice and by extension about injustice. And I just want to quote Luke chapter 18, verse 8. I tell you, this is Jesus speaking, I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? I pray that he will. I pray that he'll find it in me, I pray that he'll find it in you, and I pray that he will find it in many, multiplied millions and millions of others. But friends, we long for justice. And justice, of course, has been fully realized and made available to every human being individually, while not yet collectively and corporately, individually in Christ on the cross. Christ is, God is just and the justifier, and we can get true justice in the here and now promised, promised, and then we will have the realization, the actualization of that realization of justice in the hereafter when we spend eternity with the God whose hands bear the marks of injustice, whose side bears the mark of injustice, whose feet bear the marks

Rubric

SPEAKER_00 1:19:23

of injustice. Okay, let's do our let's do our rubric, shall we? The point, the person, the prayer, the practice, and the promise. The point. I put here, unlike the unjust judge in the parable, God hears and delights to answer our cries to him, especially our cries for justice. Amen. Number two, the person. What do we learn about God in this chapter that is just really like the point, the pulsating point of this chapter? For me, it was obvious. God is not like the unjust judge. God is not like the unjust judge. Thank you, Jesus. How about the prayer? For me, I loved the paragraph on page 206 all about prayer. Top of page 206, 172, paragraph begins, the Lord says, I love this. This is right as she's beginning the section on the power of prayer and the promises of God in response to earthly and satanic agencies that are waging a war against God's people. Our adversaries, our enemies, like the widow, had an adversary, an enemy that was seemingly triumphing. She writes this. He invites us to present to him our perplexities and necessities and our need of divine help. He bids us be instant in prayer. Instant. Boom, just like that. Pray. That's what I do when I'm scrolling on social media. Boom, pray for that. Boom, pray for that. Boom, pray for that, boom, pray for that. Instant in prayer. As soon as difficulties arise, we are to offer to him our sincere, earnest petitions by our importunate prayers, our consistent, persistent. Right? Hupo piazza, prayers. We give evidence of our strong confidence in God. The sense of our need leads us to pray earnestly, and our Heavenly Father is moved by our supplications. Prayer moves the arm of omnipotence. Prayer is an act of war, my friends. That's the prayer. The practice for me, James 1.27, I quoted it right at the beginning: pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the widow and the orphan in their in their affliction. We need to be mindful of the people around us that have it harder than we do. And to the degree that we can help, whether in our local community, in our church, or with our giving, if we are in a position to give, we, real religion is orienting ourselves toward people that need help. Financial help, food, spiritual help, prayer, encouragement, a smile, whatever it is. There's lots of help to be given all around you. And if you make yourself available to be an agent of ministry, an agent of help, a representative, an ambassador of God, God will bring opportunities to you. So you can't change the world, but you can change your world. And then finally, um, the promise. Uh for me, the promise is uh right here. Psalm 72, 12. She quotes it. Here's my promise. God will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him who has no helper. God will deliver him who has no helper. Psalm 72, verse 12, and also Psalm 46, verse 1. God is a very present help in times of trouble. Ladies and gentlemen, what was your word? I'm very curious, because uh my word here, I'm really, really happy with my word. I think it gr very well captures the chapter, but I want to see what everybody else has got here. Okay, we've got justice. Uh Bob says today my wife and I celebrated our 43rd anniversary. Amen. Congratulations. Our word is recompense. Great word. Here we go. Justice, justice, help. Great to see you, Justin Chun. Justice, justice, justice. Wow, I love it. Servant. Oh, there we go. Reiner and Alice. Amply. Yeah, that's it. That's the best line in the whole chapter, in my opinion. Help, advocate, recompensed, avenge, hair. Oh, Avenge is great. I love it. Heritage, just, persevere. Very good, Della. Deliverer, love it, Selena. Or Marie Selena. Um, justice, shield, persistence, recompense. Brent says justice, blessed Chuck. Seven says delivered and recompensed. Look up is another. Reversed, says Gay Main 44. Tanya says recompensed. Prayer. I haven't seen my word yet. Amazingly, I haven't seen my word yet. I thought several people would have it. Uh persistence, justice, persistent, persistent determination. Oh, I like it. Hyphenated, persistence, persistence, war because prayer is an act of war, says Mungbean. I love it. Reversal, justice, justice, almost. Okay, terrible Terry Golden Girl. You and I have the same word. My word is cry. Cry. I'll come back to that in a moment. Justice. Um, wait. Vindicated speedily pray with a bunch of exclamation points, says Laura Campos. Infinite. Just says Pura Vida SLP. Propitiation, says Patrick. Great word. Always a great word. Believe, says Mantis Lee 82. 303 Syzygy says, I have two words. Bugging. Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bugging me. Yeah, that's good. And recompense. Very good. A lot of justices. Like a lot of people had the word justice. Um, destruction of Satan, says Deb. Moves, says Frank, Law and Order, says Deborah, Perseverance, says S D, Country Girl. Love it. Is that South Dakota Country Girl? I hope so. That's where I'm from. Uh Importunate, very good. Yeah, I went with the word cry because she uses the word cry like 16 times, cry or cries or crying. Cry over and over again. And for me, it has two meanings. Number one, when I think of the pain, the suffering, the injustice, the oppression in the world, and I feel helpless, I just think, what can the church do except we cry? Like cry with tears. We we cry. And then also in the sense that we cry out, that's the way that it's used in the parable, right? Uh, they will see, let's see, what it says here. Uh, listen to what the unjust judge judge says, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night. And she uses it. I actually looked it up in the types and symbols version. She uses cry over and over again, way more than any other chapter, and it's not even close. Way more than every other chapter. She says, uh, who cry out to him, who cry out day and night. Um go look for all of these. You can find them. Let me see where's another one here. With confidence, the Lord's children cry to him, cry to him to silence the accusations of Satan. Um, here's another one, uh, quoting from James 5, which you kept back by fraud, who mowed your fields. They cry out, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. Men are piling up colossal fortunes while the cries of starving humanity are coming up before God. Shall God not avenge his own elect, who cry out to him day and night? Then my promise there, Psalm 72, verse 12, He will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also who has no helper. Let all who are afflicted unjustly cry to God, cry out to God. God hears the cries of the weakest human being. He seemed to neglect the cries. Of her tortured heart, speaking of the Syrophoenician woman. We didn't spend any time on that. Shall God not avenge his elect who cry out to him day and night? Of course, she's quoting that passage several times because it's right there in Luke 18. And then this. So for me, cry really captured the essence of the chapter, but all the other words were also great recompense, avenge, justice. Lots of great words. Love you all so much. We will be back tomorrow for chapter 15, which means we will be at the halfway point. The halfway point. And chapter 15, this man receives sinners. And we will have a first-time guest. And it looks like it's a pretty long chapter. And then after that, probably the best known, most loved parable in all of Jesus' parables, the parable of the prodigal son. Right? The parable of the prodigal son. And that is going to be absolutely amazing. Can't wait for that. We'll also have a guest for that. Ladies and gentlemen, we're at the halfway point. It's amazing. God is good. He is a very present help in times of trouble. Let's be praying. Let's be people of prayer. And let's close with prayer right now. Father in heaven, we cry out to you. We cry out for justice. We cry out for grace. We cry out for mercy. And Father, we believe that there will be final and full justice in the world, eternal justice, infinite justice, in fact. And Father, that infinite justice will be adjudicated and perfectly applied by your infinite wisdom while always making available to anyone that will receive it your infinite grace and love and mercy and pity. And so, Father, we receive that here tonight. Thank you for being with us. And may we live in a broken world, in a sad world, in a dysfunctional world, but may we live as lights, as people who stand between God and the broken world as followers, as ambassadors, as representatives, and we cry out to you, not only on our own behalf, but on behalf of a fallen, broken, dying world. We pray all of this in the name of Jesus, who Himself died to save this world. And Father, we just cling to that great promise that God so loved the world. Father, may we love the world like you do, and may we pray for the world like Jesus prays, and may we cry out to you for justice, not just once, not just twice, not just occasionally, but persistently and insistently. And we believe that justice will come, and when it comes, it will come speedily. And we pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.