Luke 18:1-8

Most people really don't believe that prayer does anything. Some people say, "I prayed for something in the past and I didn't get it." We have all had that happen. Despite a genuine and deeply felt belief that God would grant what seemed like a reasonable request, it never happened. I remember when I was little I used to pray for snow every night. It never snowed, and I began to wonder if God really did hear and answer prayers. Of course many of us have learned that like a loving parent God does not grant requests that would harm us or someone else. If God granted all our requests God would be stuck doing some very ungodly things. God only gives the best to us. Yet we have all had experiences that made us question if not reject the power of prayer.

Some people have more theologically based reasons for believing that prayer doesn't do anything. I mean after all who are we to tell God what to do anyway. God is the Almighty, and we are just pesky little humans. And what are my requests in the face of the huge universal problems that God faces.

Some think that the universe is on automatic pilot and that God doesn't really interact with it. They argue that praying only serves to ease the conscience of the one praying. God has given us the ability to right the wrongs and heal the diseases if we will only do it. They argue that praying to God to do it is only a waste of time. Some think that God will do what is best no matter what we do. God is good, right. Then why should I bother to ask God to save the lost and feed the hungry and heal the sick. God will do it anyway! At best prayer can only effect my resolve to be part of God's solution.

There are a lot of reasons to believe that prayer is ineffective, but there is one very good reason to believe that it is effective. That one reason is: Jesus taught his disciples to pray always and not to lose hearts. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, believed in prayer. He taught his disciples to pray always. Not just to pray when it seemed right, but always. Not just when the chips were down of nothing else worked, but always. Not just when the problem was big enough or important enough to warrant divine assistance, but in every situation. And Jesus told them not to lose heart. That means that the answer may be delayed enough that some would lose heart. But Jesus said, "Don't give up."

To bring the point home he told a story about an unjust judge. This judge was probably not a Jewish judge. He was probably one who had been appointed by the Roman officials. These judges were famous for taking bribes. If you had money you could get them to give you the judgment you wanted no matter what the facts were in the case.

In the town where this judge presided there was a widow. This widow had no money or wealth. She had no man to speak up for her in an age when only men's voices were respected. But she sought justice. Well the judge, had nothing to gain from her. She couldn't pay him anything. She couldn't influence powerful people to bless him. So he refused to listen to her.

The climax of the story is that the widow finally pestered the judge into hearing her case and giving her justice.

We are like that woman, but God is not like that judge. Like that woman we are powerless and in need of help. Good people, God's people, demand justice in this world. We yearn to be free from the injustices of life that hold us down. Alone, we are unable to change these things. Like the widow we do not have the means of righting these wrongs. We cannot save ourselves either from our own sin or from the sins of others.

But unlike the judge in Jesus' story, God is good! That judge cared nothing for the woman. But God cares for each of us. God cares enough to send his son to die for us. The unjust judge may not have listened, but our Most Just Judge, God Almighty, will listen and respond with mercy and justice.

Don't misunderstand the point of Jesus' parable! Jesus is not saying we can or should badger God into giving us what we want. He is saying that because of our faith in God's goodness we should call on God without ceasing. He is also saying that when we faithfully pray God hears and responds. If the unjust judge would respond to the widow then certainly the Most Just Judge will respond when the faithful call.

God hears our prayers, but the truth is that sometimes it seems to take a long time for God to say something back. In those times praying is an act of faith. It is a visible action that demonstrates faith. Praying puts into action the belief that there is a God. It demonstrates the faith that God is good and just. Praying is an act of faith that says, "God hears and responds to my needs." Prayer also proclaims, "God is my hope and my source of salvation."

Sometimes God's response is long in coming because the time is not right. And the world tells us, "Oh, no one is up there listening to you. Just give up." But Christ tells us to not lose heart and to persist in prayer.

Sometimes persistence in prayer leads us to God's will. In the beginning, we may be praying for what we think is right but in God's eyes it is not. By constantly bringing that need before God, we allow the Holy Spirit to work on us. Through those times of prayer God can purify our motivations for bringing those prayers. In the end the result is not only an answer to our deeper needs but an understanding of God's true will.

Christians have often prayed persistently in the face of adversity. From the earliest years Christians prayed those familiar words, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." And yet year after year the kingdom didn't come, and the world ridiculed the persistent Christians. When ridicule didn't stop the prayers, they tried persecution. And from the catacombs the Christians cried, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Through the centuries in unnumbered languages, Christians have continued to pray for the kingdom and God's will to be realized. They did this even though the kingdom was delayed so long. They persisted even though most people didn't even care what God's will was much less do it.

When Jesus returns will he find such faith? Will he find people faithfully praying for the realization of God's will and the full revelation of Christ's kingdom. When ancient Christians prayed the Lord's prayer they really meant, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." When we pray for the kingdom, we are praying for a lot of things. We are praying for Peace on earth; both spiritual and political. We are praying for an end to all hunger and suffering and illness. We are praying for an end to all oppression and sin. When Christ returns will he find people earnestly and persistently asking God for these things? Or will he find a people who have lost heart and only mouth prayers that they do not really believe in?

I don't know what you have been praying for. It might have been something as big or something small It might have been world peace or peace in your family. It might have been food for the hungry or the health to eat what you have. It might have been for whole nations to find Christ of for one person to be saved. Whatever it is; keep praying. God hears and God answers. God's word, not Alex's word, but God's word for you today is "Pray always and do not lose heart."(Luke 18:1) "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you he will quickly grant justice!"(Luke 18:6-8)

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Jeremiah 31:31-34

"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant." A "new covenant?" What's a "new covenant?" According to the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible a covenant is "a solemn promise made binding by an oath." It is a contract or agreement. Another word for covenant is "testament." Hence, the old contract between God and humanity was the Old Testament. And the new agreement is the New Testament.

There are covenants throughout the Bible. God said to Abraham, "Walk before me and be blameless for I will make you a great nation."(Genesis 17) In Noah's day, God promised never to flood the world again. At Mount Sinai God said, "Keep my commandments and I will be your God."(Exodus 20)

Most often these covenants were sealed with a sacrifice. When the Hebrew describes people making a covenant it literally says they "cut" a covenant. The reference is probably to cutting a sacrificial animal, usually in half. It was a way of saying, "If I didn't keep the deal let what happened to this animal happen to me." Hence we get the expression to "cut a deal." But when the deal was with God, the animal sacrifice also served as a means of worship.

So here in Jeremiah, God is saying, "Look out, because I am about to cut a new deal with the human race."

But to understand the significance of this new covenant we have to know what the Old Covenant was all about. It is called the covenant of law. It was the covenant made at Sinai when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments carved in stone. God gave the people the commandments and said, "Keep these and be my holy people."

This covenant was rather straight forward. The people would keep themselves holy, set apart unto God by keeping the ten commandments. Ten rather simple rules. And God would bless them and protect them and live in their midst.

But people would break these rules from time to time. Sometimes it was by accident, that was understandable. Even the most diligent and faithful follower of God can make mistakes. So God also gave them rites and rituals to make up for these human breaches of the contract. An important part of this was the sacrifice of lambs and goats and other animals as a way of renewing the covenant and asking for forgiveness for times the covenant was broken.

The problem with this covenant is it just didn't work. Apparently it simply asked too much of humanity to keep ten simple rules. People are just too evil and hard hearted. Many didn't even try to keep the laws. They just ran around doing what they wanted to. Cheating, stealing, having sexual relations with whoever and what ever. They even bowed to and worshipped idols. Much like people today, they just did whatever made them feel good for the moment and disregarded their agreement with God.

As if the hardness of people's hearts was not enough there was another problem. Even when people tried to keep the law they perverted it to their own use not God's They would define the law in the way that suited their purpose. It said you shall not have other gods before me. So some rationalized and thought they could have other gods as long as they didn't put them before God Almighty. It said, "Thou shall not kill." But if you hire someone else to do the killing then you are not guilty of breaking the law. They found ways to keep the letter of the contract while they violated its spirit.

The best example of this was the way they used the Sabbath laws to persecute Jesus. Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and people were mad. By the power of God he performed a miracle and relieved a man of this suffering in the name of God. But people were upset because they said he broke the law. But the Sabbath law was supposed to help people glorify God. What better way to glorify God then to relieve the suffering of one of God's children. The Sabbath law was meant to glorify God, but the religious folk used it to persecute God's Son.

This Old Testament simple was not working. People were either blatantly disregarding the laws or they were perverting them in subtle ways. God's commandments were designed to relieve human suffering and produce righteous living, yet just the opposite was happening. But the problem wasn't with God's law. They were fine. They were a perfect creation of God which, if followed, would produce righteousness and mercy. The problem was with humanity. We are just so morally twisted that we can't keep God's laws. Even when we try we become legalistic and twist them to serve ourselves and not God.

The laws didn't need to be changed; the people needed to be changed. So God proposed a new covenant, a new testament. Under this New Deal, God would write the laws on people's hearts. In other words God would alter His people's hearts to conform to the law. It was their evil hearts that were causing the disobedience and perversion of the law to begin with.

This changed the way things were done entirely. The old covenant was a covenant of law, but this one would be a covenant of grace. Under the Old Testament the focus was on keeping the law. Under the New Covenant the emphasis was on God's gracious gift of salvation. Salvation was no longer a matter of a person changing their own behavior to conform to God. Now salvation was just a matter of letting God change their hearts and as a result their behavior. All that God required of people now was that they accept the gift of salvation.

But to cut this deal God had to do something else that was new and different. God wanted to make the laws, and their spirit of love and righteousness, a part of our beings. But to make them a part of us God first had to make the Law flesh and blood so it could be grafted to us. So God's word became human flesh. We called him Jesus and he lived love and righteousness. He was God's law in the flesh and his life was a living example of that law put into practice.

All that was required was that people believe in Him. But even that was too hard for many. Instead of accepting the gift many rejected Him. And out of our ignorance and evil we killed Him. And God wrote a new contract with humanity with the blood of his only begotten Son.

Jesus became the sacrifice for our sins replacing the innocent lambs of the Old Covenant. He was the one cut down to cut this deal. And now because of his sacrifice, all who come to God for salvation are offered a new deal. Simply accept Jesus and God will change you. No longer would God's law be written on stones they would become part of God's children. No longer will people need to study the law to come to God. Instead God would come to them and bring the law to life.

This new Testament written in the Blood of Christ is wonderful! The problem is there are still a lot of people trying to live by the Old Testament. I am not talking about Jews. I mean Christians. They are trying to keep the laws to save themselves. They are trying to be righteous by their own means.

It's impossible. It can't be done. Humanity is too twisted and perverted to be righteous on its own. The history of God's people under the Old Testament demonstrates that. More importantly being righteous by our own means is unnecessary.

God does not require that we make ourselves holy to be saved. All God required is that we let Jesus into our hearts. Then he will make us righteous by writing his law on our hearts. Salvation us not something we earn. It is a gift of grace.

Stop trying to save yourselves. Just let Jesus in. Let him change you. Let him save you.

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Jeremiah 31:31-34

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new." Sometimes this phrase is hard to swallow. We dearly want to believe it, but it just doesn't seem to fit with what we see in real life. Just look at the way Christians act. Christians are capable of some very unchristian things. If they are a new creation and the old has passed away why do they continue acting like the old creature. Others who claim to know Christ act un-Christ like, but so do we. Are we really something new, has the old sinful self really passed away? This verse holds out hope for us, but sometimes those hopes seem to be dashed on the shoals of reality. We want to be have control of our tempers. We want to love others like Jesus. We want to stand up for the weak. But we still do the old things. We yearn for people to be changed by the Gospel, but sometimes it doesn't seem to occur. Christians do not always appear to be a new creation wrought in God's love and grace. What makes this reality so hard to accept is that we so dearly want to be new creatures. The Bible is right. Paul was not lying. We are a new creation. That yearning and hope to be loving as Christ is loving is the sign of that change. It is the beginning point and the proof that the change is real.

How are we saved? Two sundays ago I told you about God's Prevenient Grace. The good news of Prevenient Grace was that God takes the first step. God comes to us and calls us to repentance and salvation. Last week I talked about justification. By the blood of Christ God cleanses our souls and makes us right with our Heavenly Father. But God's saving act doesn't stop there. Justification cleanses us of our past acts of evil. Regeneration is the other side of the coin. It is the process by which God prepares us for good works in the future. It is the flip side of Justification. When I was a child I used to love to ride my bicycle. One day I took the back fender off thinking that if would make me faster. It did, but if I rode through the mud it splattered mud all up and down my back. I could go wash my shirt but then it would do it again. Just cleaning the shirt didn't do the job. I had to change the bike and put the fender back on. In the same way when we are justified God cleanses our soul of the sins of our past. But if something is not done to change what we are, we will just get our souls dirty again. Regeneration is the changing. Justification cleanses our souls, but the tendency to sin is still there. God must also change our wills and modify our desires. God must give us the desire to do good. When God created humanity, we were created in the image of God. The image of God doesn't refer to the outward form of a person. People come in many different forms. White, black, red, yellow, tall, short, and on and on. Genesis says that both male and female were created in God's image. All are created in God's image. The image of God is our spiritual likeness. God created us for Good works; we were like Christ. But we were misused for evil deeds and our former likeness was distorted. Like that bike, someone tore off a very important part of us; our desire to do good. Sin altered us so that we perform evil deeds not good deeds. The sinful world into which we were born has made us look like it instead of like our Creator. It turns us away from God and teaches us to think about ourselves instead of others. God has to reorient us to do good. Through grace God regenerates or rebuilds what the world has distorted and makes us into what we were intended to be.

How does God change us? First of all the Holy Spirit gives us the desire to do good. People would always choose evil if it were not for the grace of God. We are so lost that without God's guidance we didn't really know the difference between good and bad. When we give our lives to Christ, God altars our will. Our desire becomes for Christ not for the material world. We are born anew of the goodness of God and we seek after those things. Sometimes this alteration takes a while but by the holy Spirit God does it. The Spirit gives us a new identity. Before we were born again we were children of the world. But now we are children of God. Before we had no power over sin, it had power over us. Now we have been given power to conquer all evil by our Heavenly Father. God gives us a calling and a mission. God doesn't save us so that we can just come to church and sit on our justification. God saved us so that we can spread his good news. We all have a calling. Now before you go and apply for spring classes at Erskine listen up. Not all are called to be preachers. We are each called to serve God's Kingdom in a different way. God gives us that mission not to be a burden to us, but to be a joyous way that we live out the new life we have in Christ.

I want to share with you a story that I believe illustrates and demonstrates the truth that God is tuning us into new creatures. It is from the 1991 Annual Report of the General Board of Global Ministries. In August 1991, as tanks surrounded the Russian Parliament building in Moscow, Russian settlers in Estonia who were members of The United Methodist Church held urgent meetings with their pastors. "We must do something to keep Russians from killing one another," they agreed. "We must take the Gospel of love and peace to them." They packed a large supply of Russian Bibles and chose several of their number to hasten from Tallinn to Moscow. Once in the Russian city, the peacemakers went straight to the circle of tanks with their menacing guns pointed at the Parliament house. Going from tank to tank, the United Methodists climbed to the turrets, greeted the soldiers, handed them Bibles, and implored them, "Please do not shoot. God does not want us to kill one another." Not one of the Bibles was refused. Many of the soldiers wept as they received them. The guns remained silent, and a few days later the tanks rolled away.(p. 6) These were not trained ministers. These were everyday United methodists like yourselves. And God had changed them. God had given them the desire to do good. The world around them was seeking with to kill or to protect itself. These people were different. The risked their lives, not to kill, but to tell people God loves them. They hade a new identity. They were no longer just Russians of Estonians they were sons and daughters of the God of Peace. And they had a mission from God to make peace. They were new creatures wrought in the love and peace of God Almighty made ready for God's good works.

Regeneration is a gift, but we must accept it. Like forgiveness it is a gift that already has your name on it. But you must claim it. God never forces anything on us. God simply offers it to us. Just being forgiven is not the entirety of the Christian life. Forgiveness and new birth are the beginning. But there is a whole lifetime that comes after that. The new life we have in Christ is a life of rejoicing in God's grace. It is a life of walking through heaven on earth with your creator. Many Christians don't know this and they fail to claim the power and the abundant life that Christ is offering them. They figure they have gotten themselves into heaven and that is all. That is like getting into Disney world and then not riding any of the rides or seeing any of the shows. You miss the point. In Galatians Paul wrote for freedom you have been set free. We have been set free to enjoy the full glory of God's graces. "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new." This is a promise from God. Christ has already made you a new creation. But you must claim that newness. Claim your identity as a child of God. Claim your calling as a co-worker with Christ. Pray to God to help you accept the newness of life that Christ has given to you. Brothers and sister in Christ, this is the glory and the joy for which you were born again, claim it!

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Psalm 119:105

A few year back there was a movie. It was about a man who learned almost in the same day that he was going to become a father and that he was going to die. The doctors only gave him 6 months to live. He might never see his first child. But more importantly he would never be able to pass on to this child the wisdom he had gained.

So he set out to video all that he could think of. He made videos in which he gave his unborn son advice on everything from dating to shaving. His son might never see him except in these pictures. So he diligently went about recording all he could.

The Bible is like those videos. We have a Heavenly Father who we cannot see. So God has given us a record of who he is and of the direction he wants to give us. A book of guidance and support. That book is the Bible.

"The B I B L E yes that's the book for me. I stand alone on the Word of God the B I B L E," but what is the B I B L E? We see it pictured in three different windows in this church and we place it prominently on the Altar table. It has been called the Book of books. I had a Bible Study teacher who called it "God's love letter to the human race." It has been called "inspired," "inerrant," "infallible" and just plain "true." It has been called "the least read best seller in history."

If you get ten Christians together you will have at least a dozen different opinions on the Bible. For that matter if you get ten Methodists together you will have a dozen different opinions about the Bible. Some will say it is the words of God, or that it is the "Word of God," or that it contains the Word of God, or it is a testimony to the Word of God. The official stance of the United Methodist Church says that the Bible contains all that is sufficient for salvation. It reveals the Word of God, and it is our primary source for knowledge of God.

But at the basis of all these opinions is the idea that it is a communication from God. That somehow and in some way God speaks to us through it. We Christians may disagree on how that happens. Did God pick the very words that were written down or did God pick the message and inspire the messengers to write it? Christians will argue over those finer points, but what remains is that God speaks to us and reveals truth through the Bible.

If God speaks through the Bible then let's see what the Bible says about itself. The Old Testament Psalmist said that the God's Word is a Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. There is a story about a young person who was distraught and confused. This person wisely chose to turn to the Bible. However they chose to do so in a peculiar manner. This young person closed their eyes opened the Bible and pointed to a verse then looked to see what it said. It said, "And he hanged himself."(Matt. 27:5) Deciding that this was not what God wanted, he tried the same process again. He closed his eyes and pointed. Then he looked down. The verse said, "Go and do likewise."

The Bible is a source of guidance from God. This young person had that much right. But it is not magic. Its words are not incantations that conjure things up. The mere presence of a Bible will not ward off evil. And it is not some kind of Divine Ouija board or crystal ball.

For the God's Word to be a lamp it must be read. We need to ponder the Bible and study its meaning. Some people keep their Bible on a shelf gathering dust. You might as well put it in one of those glass cases and with a little hammer and a sign that says "break glass in case of spiritual emergency." The Bible is not a spiritual fire extinguisher it is a heavenly lamppost. And you should try turning it on daily so you can see where you are walking. If you wait until you've fallen and can't get up it is too late to turn on the light. That is what the Psalmist said isn't it, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet." But what good is a lamp if it is never turned on?

While the Old Testament speaks of God's word as a lamp the New Testament gets into more detail. It says, "All scripture is inspired by God." Now at the time that was written the word "scripture" referred to what we call the Old Testament. Some people think the Old Testament is outdated and that only the New Testament has any meaning. I even know a Christian who had a Bible with he Old Testament in the Back and the New Testament in the front. He thought the Old Testament was just an appendix that gave the historical background for the New. But the New Testament says "all scripture is inspired." I also know some Christians who try to pick and choose Scriptures I will be the first to admit that there are some difficult passages in the Bible. I wish I did have the option of just ignoring some parts of the Bible. But if "all" scripture is inspired, then I need to wrestle with those troublesome passage and not write them out.

But what do we mean by "inspired." The word translated inspired in the Greek literally means "God breathed." The word for "breathed" in the Greek is based on the root for "spirit" So there is the connotation that God breathed the Spirit into the Bible. There is the sense not only that it is true, but that through it God's Spirit works. Almost as if the Bible were alive.

But this all seems rather mystical while the rest of the verse is rather practical. After saying the Bible is "God breathed" it says, "and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be equipped for good works." So the Bible is like a training manual for the Christian. It tells us how to live the Christian life. It is useful for correcting our wrongs and directing us in what is right and good. Through it God empowers us to serve him and love our neighbor.

God's Word is truly a lamp just as that window with the lamp on a Bible shows us. And that is so important for the world today. One of the realities of our world today is that people don't know what to believe. You can't believe the government, you can't believe industry, you can't believe the experts. So people are seeking and grasping for some truth. And they have been told by all the professors and experts there is no truth; that all is relative.

But the Bible is the truth. It is a beacon of truth in a world of darkness. In a world where people think they can make up their own morality, it is a voice clearly declaring absolute truth. Truths like "love your neighbor," "seek just and love mercy," "God is love," Jesus is Lord," "As you do so unto the least of these ye do so unto me."

Is God's word a lamp unto your feet? Is it the source of authority you look to to make decisions in your life? Do you read it regularly and meditate on what it says? Don't wait until it gets dark to turn the light on. Turn on the light of God's word now!

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