Wrestling with God in Prayer

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, the 18th chapter.

Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared

God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him saying, give me justice against my adversary.

For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me,

I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And the

Lord said, hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night?

Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? This is the gospel of the

Lord. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord, in the power of the

Spirit. You may be seated. What a text this gospel text is, and what an interesting parting shot it has.

Consider these words here, the last sentence of our pericope. Nevertheless, when the

Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Now we're going to talk about prayer today, but we're going to talk about prayer in the context of faith.

Now back in the day when I used to subject myself to legalistic preaching, over and again

I was told, God demands, He wills, He commands that you pray, so you had better be praying.

And so prayer went on to the checklist of things to do in a day, and always and again

I found that when I have a checklist of things to do in a day, my heart's usually not involved.

You know, I'm just not all that excited about doing, because everything is just a drudgery and an obligation.

Paint the fence, clean the dishes, do this, fix that thing, oh and don't forget to pray.

Right? And so what happens is when you approach things as obligation in that sense, you often have a tendency to, well

I don't know about you guys, but I like to procrastinate. My mind wanders into strange places, and I love just living, doing nothing, but dreaming and thinking about other things.

And then that list starts to collect dust, and well, my prayers never seem to happen when it's all an obligation.

That's kind of an awful way to think about it. Have you considered a different approach then?

Prayer in light of faith. Faith. Hmm. Seem to know something about that.

Faith is that wonderful gift that God gives us, where we can trust the promises of God.

Have you ever considered that when the disciples come to Jesus, and they say to Jesus, Lord teach us to pray.

Jesus says, all right, when you pray, and listen to these words, say, our

Father who art in heaven. Do not those very words demand faith?

I mean confident faith. Confident faith that, well, despite your sins of that day, the past week, the past month, your entire life piled up, despite all of that, you can confidently come to God and say,

God, you are my Father. Although I was born in the dominion of darkness, dead in trespasses and sins, you have made me alive together with Christ.

You have sent His blood, your Son, and shed His blood so that I can be forgiven and reconciled to you, that I may be called a child of heaven.

I know it's audacious, it's almost outrageous, that I could pray, our

Father who art in heaven. But see, that takes faith. Faith in the promises.

And then you'll note, when you look through the Psalter, when you look through the book of Psalms, there are some just outrageously raw prayers.

Now I don't know if you've noticed this, that there's this thing that happens. You are in great desperate need.

You are suffering. You are in pain. Things in your life have gone haywire, it seems to be the way of things here.

Does it not? And so what do you do? You pray to God and all of a sudden it feels like your prayers have become that like fourth quarter, nine seconds left on the clock,

Hail Mary pass, please God, let the guy catch it and get into the end zone because we need the touchdown.

That's what it feels like, right? But you'll notice something about nine seconds in an NFL football game. They seem to last for minutes.

Have you ever noticed that? It's the weirdest thing. But same thing with when we are in need.

And consider this prayer of King David. Notice how raw it is. This is from Psalm 13. How long,

O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my

God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him.

Lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken. Have you ever felt like just when you need them most,

God seems to go AWOL? Seems to be missing. What's going on here,

God? But note the resolve in verse five. He says, but yeah, I've trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Now that's a raw prayer. And so then consider what Christ tells us about prayer in our gospel text.

And there's a wonderful point to all of this. So Jesus told them this parable to the effect, and listen to what he says, that we, his disciples, ought always to pray and to not lose heart.

Keep praying. Don't lose heart. Keep trusting in the promises. God has never promised something and not delivered.

He has never said, I will care for you, and then not done so. So you keep praying and don't lose heart.

And so this is a wonderful little parable because it's a parable of contrast. The contrast then is between this worthless judge.

I mean, who is this guy? He doesn't fear God, and he doesn't respect man. I mean, why are you a judge then?

Because they have a good retirement plan? What's the deal here? Your job is to dispense justice. You're actually to care that there's justice in the land, and you don't fear

God, which means you're gonna do things on your own standard, and you don't care or respect man.

Well, this worthless judge, a widow comes to him, and she kept coming to him saying, give me justice against my adversary.

In the Greek word for adversary, there could be translated my accuser, could be translated my slanderer.

Funny enough, the context allows for either one of those translations of the word.

Please give me justice against my slanderer. Please give me justice against my accuser.

It still works. So, you know, think of adversary in that way, and a little bit of a note here.

Have you figured it out yet, that you have an adversary? And I'm not talking about anyone here on planet

Earth that lives in the flesh. By the way, there's not a single human being on this planet that I consider to be my enemy.

There are some who consider themselves to be mine, but I don't consider myself to be theirs. Our battle isn't against flesh and blood.

Our battle is against the principalities, the powers, the devil himself. And so you'll note then that we have an adversary.

Scripture says that he prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he can devour.

I kind of think of him now as, well, a guy who's in prison because he has been bound now that Christ has been raised from the dead and ascended into heaven.

But like any good prisoner, he's really litigious. He likes filing lawsuits from prison, and it's the strangest thing.

And he is Johnny on the spot. He's the energizer bunny of evil litigation, and he is constantly taking his litigation to God and saying things like, listen, that Roseboro guy,

I'm sick and tired of him preaching the gospel. I'm confident that he's gonna despise you, God, and curse your name, and just storm out of the pastoral office if you just let me make his life a little bit more miserable, right?

And God, for whatever reason, kind of like Job, goes, all right, you're on. Now while this litigation has been filed, where have

I been? Procrastinating off somewhere, not doing my to -do list, and so apparently

I missed the court date. Yeah, and so since the devil was the only one who showed up for the court date with the litigation that he filed against me,

I'm now finding myself in a odd situation. You see, do you believe what

Scripture says about your adversary? Do you believe it? Do you believe what Scripture says about your

Father who cares for you? And so lately, my prayers have been reduced to some kind of like outrageous statements, kind of like this, listen

God, I know I missed the court date, but I'm here now, and there's no place I can go where you're not, so I'm in your presence presently, and how dare you pick him over me?

He's the devil, he's your adversary, I'm your blood -bought son, so I'm asking for justice against that evil, maniacal, sick and twisted puppy of a devil who keeps filing lawsuits against me from prison.

Sounds a little ornery as prayers go, but you're gonna note something here. Scripture teaches us to pray kind of in that tone, and so consider that for a second.

So give me justice against my adversary, and that's my prayer, and I hope it's yours too, against your adversary the devil, and keep praying, don't lose heart.

I know that he sends things your way in order to make you suffer, to cause you to fall into great sin, and even cause you to despair of the forgiveness of sins itself, but don't worry, you're baptized.

God meant it when he united you with Christ in his death and his resurrection, he meant it when he washed away your sins, he meant it when he gave you the

Holy Spirit. As a friend, a peer of mine told me this week, the devil does these things in vain, he will not win.

So consider that. So note then, this widow, woman of no standing, no money, she keeps coming back to this unjust judge, give me justice against my adversary, and for a while he refused.

Afterwards he said to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, notice that everything's about him,

I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.

The Greek phrase is a little weird here, you could almost, and it doesn't quite work, you could almost translate if she's gonna keep beating me down and give me a black eye, that's kind of the effect here, you know, by her continual beating.

So then note what Christ says, hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not

God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? The answer is obvious, of course

God will, because God is nothing like this unjust judge, nothing like it.

In fact, God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for our sins.

Scripture says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God's Word says that through the gospel you have been adopted as a son, as a daughter in his kingdom, and he, you, the relationship that you have is actually amazing and special all because of what

Christ has done for you on the cross. So do you believe that? Do you believe it?

So will he delay long over his elect, over you? No. He says, I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? And see, there's the nubbins.

Do you really trust and believe that you are forgiven, that you're standing with God as reconciled, that you're covered in the righteousness of Christ?

If so, when you believe that, it radically changes prayer from an obligation to something that's quite easy, if you think about it.

It's a child talking to his or her father. That's what it is.

Our Father who art in heaven. This isn't an obligation. This is that I have a real

Father in heaven. Consider then what is revealed to us in our

Old Testament text, and I'm going to back up just a little bit into the context, because Jacob, the heel grabber, the deceiver, you remember this guy?

You know, the guy who was able to secure his brother's birthright for a bowl of soup?

Man, this guy's really got some good negotiation skills. And the same guy who deceived his father

Isaac and took his brother's blessing, you know, dressed up like his brother, put goat's hair on his neck and his arms and hands so his father would believe that he was his brother.

This guy. And after he got those things, remember his brother Esau, he was nursing a grudge against him and was comforting himself with the thought that when my parents die,

I'm going to slit this guy's throat while he's sleeping, and I'm going to watch as all the blood drains out.

Maybe it's a little bit of an over -exaggeration, but he was comforting himself with the thought of murdering his brother.

So what did he do? His parents said, listen, your brother is going to kill you. Leave. Leave. And so where does he go?

He heads off to Paddan Aram, to Uncle Laban, and when he gets there, he sees

Rachel. And he makes a bargain with his uncle.

I'll work for you for seven years if you'll give me Rachel in marriage. And the seven years just went by as a day because he was totally la -la lost in love, right?

But then we know what happened to him, you know, on the wedding day, Laban did the old switcheroo, and he woke up the next morning having consummated the marriage, and when the sunlight came out, he went, what?

What? And there was her sister, Leah. He didn't work for her.

And so we know how this all works out. So he leaves alone, he comes back now with two wives, two concubines, and female servants, and eleven children, and a whole lot of flocks and herds, if you want to read it, and you could read the rest of the book of Genesis.

But the thing is, God's the one who told him, it's time for you to go back. It's time for you, I will do good for you when you go back, he says.

And so Jacob obeys the voice and the word of the Lord, and things still haven't been settled with his brother

Esau. And so we read of this account of real distress. Listen to what it says in Genesis 32.

So Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, instructing them, thus you shall say to my lord

Esau, thus says your servant Jacob, notice he's humbling himself before his brother,

I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, female servants,

I have sent to tell my lord in order that I may find favor in your sight. And so the messengers returned to Jacob saying, well we came to your brother

Esau, and well he's coming to meet you, and there's 400 men with him.

Whoops. Okay. And so listen to what it says next. Jacob was greatly afraid.

You ever had one of those moments where like the blood runs literally cold in your body? I thought that was a metaphor.

I really did. And then it happened to me a couple of times, and I went, whoa that's a real thing. You feel like you got ice inside your veins.

So I'm sure this happened to him, the blood drained from his face, and it says he's greatly afraid, he's distressed, so immediately he gets into survival mode.

He divides the people who were with him, and the flocks, and the herds, the camels, and put him into two camps.

He's thinking that well if Esau comes to one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left that will escape.

And so Jacob then prays, and watch this prayer. This is a fantastic prayer. Oh God of my father

Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, oh Yahweh who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good.

Notice he's taking God's words and praying them straight back to God. Okay, but notice he's not doing so defiantly.

He's doing so, listen, I'm in distress. You said, right? What does the psalmist say?

You know, I look to the mountains from where does my help come? I look to the hills.

So he looks to the Lord, he prays back his word. This is a good thing to do. And you'll note by praying back

God's words to him, that actually shows us Jacob believed those words.

God, you said, you said, go back home, go to your country, and that I will do you good.

And then he says this amazing thing, I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown your servant.

For with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. And this is most certainly true.

Note this, that the good that we receive from God, we don't deserve it at all.

We deserve the exact opposite. We really, truly do. God does not give us what we deserve.

And so we note then, we humbly say, thank you Lord, and recognize that we are not worthy of even the good gifts that we have.

And then he says this, please, what a good word, please, please deliver me from the hand of my brother, and from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children.

But you said, I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for a multitude.

And notice again, he comes back to what God said, and he prays it back in faith. Lord, you cannot lie, you do not lie, you said these things,

I'm in distress, this whole situation is your problem, not mine. And it is.

And this takes faith. This isn't obligation, this is absolute trust that God will make good on his word.

And so you'll note that he doesn't pray the way people are taught to so -called pray nowadays.

Notice he doesn't pray to the Virgin Mary, doesn't pray to dead saints, he doesn't sit there and go,

I decree and declare victory, and I'm gonna speak victorious words into the atmosphere, and that my brother shall be defeated and smited by the power and the anointing of God, and oh look, there's gold dust falling from the air conditioning unit.

Okay, none of that nonsense, that's not prayer. And I will note this,

I've made the point before and I'll make it again, where there is apostasy and false doctrine, there will be false teaching regarding prayer, and that is a most dangerous place that a human being can be.

Because God is attentive to the prayers of his saints, and when the devil gets you confused and gets you not praying, then the only person that God is hearing from in your regard is that litigious prisoner, the devil himself.

You know, I always find it fascinating that in my hour of need, whom should I pray to? Well, if I'm off praying in unintelligible babble, or praying to a dead saint, or decreeing and declaring, you know who's not hearing from me?

God. God isn't hearing from me at all. In other words, my faith is misdirected.

But you'll note that he humbly petitions God, humbly raises his supplications, and reminds

God of his word. So, next order of business is that he stayed there that night, and from what he had with him, he comes up with this idea,

I gotta see if we can't soften Esau up a little bit here, he took a present for his brother, and note the amount of things here, 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 milking camels and their calves, 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys, 10 male donkeys, 5 golden rings, 4 calling birds, you get the idea, right?

This is quite the gift. It's almost as if the sheer number, it's like, hey listen, you don't have to kill me for the spoils,

I'll just give it to you, you know, you could share with all your 400 army soldiers there, but so he handed these over to his servants, every drove by itself, and he said to his servants, you pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove, and he instructed the first, when

Esau my brother meets you, and asks you to whom do you belong, where are you going, and whose are these ahead of you, then you shall say, they belong to your servant

Jacob, they are a present sent by my lord Esau, moreover he's behind us. He likewise instructed the second and the third, and all who follow the droves, you shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him, and you shall say, moreover your servant

Jacob is behind us, for he thought, well I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards

I shall see his face, perhaps he will accept me, so that the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp.

It's as if he's paying back that bowl of soup with a lot of interest, right, seeing if it will have some impact, and then what happens next makes no sense.

I mean, have you ever watched a movie that has like a weird twist in it? You know, I think of, you know, one of my favorite movies,

The World's End, you know, it starts off in one complete direction, you know, it's all about a pub crawl in a village in the

United Kingdoms, and it ends up with aliens, you know, it's just, and they come out of nowhere, you know, so this part here is a lot like that, because you think you know which direction this is going, and then aliens, it's like that.

So that same night Jacob arose, took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, he crossed the fort of the

Jabbok, he took them, sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had, and then

Jacob was left alone, and here it is, are you ready? And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

So Andre the Giant shows up, what's going on here, you know, who does this, you know, he's all by himself, and some guy says, hey, let's wrestle, and Jacob says, all right, you're on, let's do this, you know, and the weird thing is, they did it!

Where did this come from? Why this? And I would make an argument here, that as bizarre as this is, this is really to help us understand something.

Remember again, faith believes the promises of God. You are a child of God, blood -bought, forgiven, and God, your

Father in heaven, is truly your Father, and I don't know if you noticed this, but dads and sons, they kind of like to wrestle, you know,

I have memories of wrestling with my own son, and of course every dad is obligated, when you're wrestling with your young son, you have to let him win, you know, this is how this works, right?

You know, so you come on, son, let's wrestle, so you're wrestling, and then you pin him down, and he's like, oh no! And then he has these superpowers, and boom, he breaks free, right?

And then the next thing you know, he's on top of you, and he's got you pinned to the ground, and you're going, I can't move, my arms are stuck, oh no, one, two, three, oh, you win, you beat me, right?

I kind of think that's the picture of prayer here, because the person who

Jacob is wrestling with is none other than God himself. Let's be a little bit more specific. This is probably a pre -incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ.

That's the fellow whom he is wrestling with, and I, you know, kind of think of it, work this out for me here, you know,

I'm not a big WWF fan, a long time since I've watched any of that kind of silliness, but I will say this, that I've noticed that when there's a big fight, okay, they like to build up the fight, you know, and so with the marketing, you know, the fight's gonna be between Hulk Hogan and this person over here, and they always make a big deal about it, and people are betting on it, and all this kind of stuff, but I mean, put this wrestling match into that kind of marketing, all right?

We've got King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the one who conquered

Satan and the grave against, well, Jacob. Who's your money on?

Who's your money on? I'm gonna go with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, right? But again, this really is a picture of prayer itself.

So a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day, when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob.

And you go, what? Now he cheats. He touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him, but even with his hip out of joint,

Jacob will not let go. So he said to him, let me go.

The day is broken. Jacob said, I'm not gonna let you go unless you bless me. Isn't that what

Christ is telling us to do? To keep praying day and night. Don't despair.

God isn't anything like the unjust judge. You hang on to him. Don't let him go. Don't let him go until he blesses you, until he answers you.

So he said to him, all right, what's your name? And he says, Yacov. He'll grab her.

That's my name. He said, your name shall no longer be called Yacov, but Yisrael.

It's a great name. For you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed.

What? You can prevail against God? Yeah.

And see, that's the thing. When you read the accounts of prayer throughout the Bible, there are these amazing prayers that show up that are prayed in real faith.

And the best way I can describe it, I've described it this way before, but let me remind you of it. I know that God really does a good job of running the universe, and he's done a perfectly fantastic job doing it before I was here, despite me being here.

And I'm sure after I'm gone, he'll just do an even better job without my input. But you're gonna note here that some of the things that God plans out as he is taking care of his creation,

I'm convinced that some of his plans are in pencil. I'm absolutely convinced of it.

Because God hears our prayers, and sometimes he says, let it be according to your word.

You can prevail over God. And this takes faith.

If you think that God has already got it all covered, he doesn't care, he doesn't hear your prayers, you know, what's the point of praying after all?

I mean, are we not just lousy prayer people in the first place? I mean,

I don't know about you, but while I'm praying, my mind has a tendency to, like, wander.

I'm like that dog from the movie Up. Squirrel! Squirrel! You know, you know, what was

I praying again? And I'm reminded of, you know, in Luther's table talk, you know, where Luther was claiming, basically saying, listen, nobody's capable of praying the

Lord's Prayer without their mind wandering. And some guy who was staying in his home said, I'll take you up on that. And Luther says, all right, fine.

If you can pray one Our Father without your mind wandering, I'll let you pick any horse I have out in my stall, in my stable.

He said, all right, you're on. And he starts praying. Our Father, who art in heaven, could

I get the speckled one? Oops, yeah, made the point.

And then I think about the disciples, the night that Jesus is going to be betrayed. There he is in the

Garden of Gethsemane, praying, sweats, you know, blood, you know, and he's asked his disciples to pray.

And what are they doing? Sleeping. There have been plenty of times when

I've gotten out of my bed in the middle of the night, you know, because I'm anxious about something and I know

I need to pray. And so I decide that I'm gonna really get serious. I'm gonna get out of bed. I'm gonna get on my knees next to my bed.

A couple of times I've done that. I have woken up with my face on the bed, me freezing to death because I'm not covered by anything, and I'm just really uncomfortable.

And then I realized my face is sitting in a pile of drool. What a great prayer guy

I am, right? But you'll note that we are all this way.

We are. And this is because of our sinful weakness. But note that Christ has even bled and died for our little faith.

He's bled and died for being inattentive, not believing, not trusting.

So this calls for faith. So Jacob prevailed against God in wrestling against Him.

And funny enough, your Father in heaven, there are certain things that He wills to hear from you about, and you can prevail over Him in prayer.

That's the kind of Father that He is. And this takes, again, faith.

So He blessed him and said, your name shall be called Israel, because you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed.

So then Jacob asked Him, please tell me your name. He said, why is it that you ask me my name? And so there he blessed him, and listen to what happens next.

So Jacob called the name of the place Pena 'el. Pena 'el, face. El, God. He called it the face of God, saying, for I have seen

God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. And although you have yet to see your

God face to face, you can come to Him in prayer and know, believe, and trust, and be confident that you are in your presence,

His presence, and that He will hear you, and that He will respond. But like any good father,

He knows what is good for you, and He knows what's bad for you. And He knows that some of the trials that you are going through, that He is working good through it.

And He may not relieve you of it. He may alter it. He may make you go through it, but He will never forsake you, and He will always be there, even through the valley of the shadow of death itself.

And the proof of this is that He has bled and died for you. So repent of your little faith.

Repent of your weak prayers. Confidently trust and believe that you are a son, a child, a daughter of God, and wrestle with Him.

You never know. He just might let you win. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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