Third in a Series of Five Sermons – “Sayings of Mature Christians”
Genesis 32: 22-30, II Timothy 3:14 – 4:5, Luke 18:1-8 Week#1 – Humility – “I’ve Only Done My Duty.” Week #2 – Gratefulness – “God has been good to me.” Today – (Confidence) – “God Answers My Prayers.” Dear Friends in Christ, A few of you might remember that in the fall of 1960, John F Kennedy and Richard Milhouse Nixon were duking it out for the right to be President of the United States. I was praying hard in those October days, but it wasn’t for our nation. I was Praying for a (new bike) in 1960. You see, my 6th birthday was coming up and my two sisters had bikes and my brother Curtis had a brand new bike and my friends and cousins were riding bikes, and so I prayed. I prayed often and I prayed hard for a new bike, and in fact God answered my prayers. Yes, he did. But not exactly the way I wanted him to answer. You see, instead of getting a shiny new boys bike, I received my sister Judy’s hand me down bike. It wasn’t shiny or new and the worst part of it all was that it wasn’t even a boys bike. Horror of horrors, it was a girls bike, and while I don’t remember necessarily questioning God’s fairness, I do remember thinking that the neighborhood bully Billy Heitkamp was going to have a field day with this one! Already then, I was starting to learn what it means to pray with confidence and boldness, as dear children pray to dear moms and dads. What it means to trust in God with all of our hearts and souls and minds and not just portions of our hearts and souls and minds. What it means to rest in the truth that God knows us better than we know us, that God will in fact give us what is good for us in the long run instead of giving us what are pretty sure is good for us here and now. Three lessons we want to learn again today, one from each of our three appointed lessons for this 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. First, God answers our prayers even on those days when life feels like a (wrestling match). When I speak to you about wrestling, I speak as one who wrestled at the college level without having wrestled at the high school level. I want that to sink in a little bit. You see our high school dropped the wrestling program about the time I got to be of age, and then when I showed up at little Concordia College in 1972, there were only about 6 or 7 guys on the team, one one of my good friends was a wrestler, he told me that I could make the team, and he was right. Suffice it to say that I worked pretty hard at it, and it didn’t go well. I spent most of my time flat on my back, looking at the rafters in gymnasiums at Hamline University, Bethel University, McAlaster University,even Pillsbury Baptist in Owatonna where we lost 60-0. I remember praying a) that I wouldn’t get hurt, and b) that I could make it into the second period without getting pinned. In today’s Old Testament lesson, Jacob found himself wrestling with a mysterious kind of a man who turned out to be the Son of God himself. The context of this wrestling match is that 20 years before, he and his mom had connived for him to get the blessing of the firstborn, a blessing that belonged to his twin brother Esau. Esau figured it out and came after Jacob to kill him, Jacob ran away to Haran, married Leah and then her sister Rachel, they were blessed with all kinds of sons and daughters, and now he was going home to try and make peace with his brother. They wrestled and they wrestled and just as Jacob was about to prevail, this man who was the Son of God pulled rank, threw Jacob’s hip out of joint, and pleaded with Jacob to let him go! At which time Jacob prayed for a blessing. His prayer was a bit unorthodox, it went like this, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” God answered Jacob’s prayer by blessing him with a new name and teaching him a new lesson. His name would now be Israel, which means “He struggles with God.” He would have a hard time forgetting what his name meant, from that day forward he walked with a limp. The lesson he would learn was that God would always be faithful to His promise, that God could always be trusted, that God always answers prayers and that He absolutely knows what He is doing. The kingdom of God is like a single mom who is struggling to raise up her always lively and sometimes rebellious three children, she is struggling to pay her bills, she is struggling to forgive the folks who have let her down in life, she is struggling to overcome her own bad decisions in life. But at the end of the day and especially on the first day of the week, she comes again and again to the foot of her Savior’s cross, she hears that she is a precious and a valuable and a forgiven child of her God, she believes that God has a plan to heal and to prosper, she takes a deep breath and she prays, Lord, I’m not going to leave here until you bless me, and every time, without exception, He blesses her! Secondly, God answers our prayers every day in the same way that He answered the prayers of our (mothers and grandmothers). Next to my office computer are all kinds of pictures, including one of my mom’s mom, Grandma Selma, holding me at age 6 months or so. I really was a pretty cute little guy, although I seemed to be pouting in the picture. Next to that picture is one of my mom as a young and beautiful college age lady, next to that is a picture of mom’s hands folded in prayer about two days before she died, and next to that are all kinds of pictures of grandchildren enjoying life. It’s a pretty easy thing to look at all of those pictures and to continue in what I have learned from God’s Word. I know from whom I learned it, as did many of you. I was made wise unto salvation, as were many of you, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in Sunday School classes, and in confirmation instruction. The Holy Spirit has been breathing on me, as he has been breathing on you for a long time now in the preaching and teaching and memorizing and remembering and holding onto these Scriptures. Dear friends in Christ, I don’t know exactly what are your anxieties, your challenges, your heartaches are today, but this we know. We know that there is a way through every bit of trouble, there is a way through every season of suffering, there is a way through every conflict, His Name is Jesus Christ, He has gone on before you, He is walking alongside of you, He will behind you to pick up the pieces. He knows exactly who you are, He knows the bad you have done and the good you have failed to do, and He loves you just the same. Some days he will give you that shiny new bike, other days he will say you don’t need a bicycle at all, and still other days he will say, just wait and we’ll see what happens. The kingdom of God is like a grandma that spends a lot of time listening to news local, national and worldwide. The more she listens, the more she cries, and the more she cries, the more she worries. Some days the worries threaten to do her in, and then she knows what to do. She takes her Bible in hand and she reads it, she takes her prayer book out and she prays it, she takes a photo album out and she look through it, a spirit of confidence sweeps over her soul, a confidence that God will in fact answer the prayers of her descendants in the same way, in the perfect way he has answered the prayers of her ancestors. God answers our prayers even in those chapters of life where we find ourselves questioning God’s (fairness). The key figure in our Gospel lesson parable today is a poor, a down and out and powerless widow who would not be denied justice. The judge was as bad as God is good. He neither feared God nor cared about people. He was for him and himself alone. And yet this woman kept coming back at him, she would not leave him alone, the language indicates that he felt like he was in a boxing match and she was beating him black and blue, and so he gave her justice, not because he was just, not because he wanted to be fair, not because he was good and gentle and caring, just to get some peace and quiet! Dear friends in Christ, how much more caring and gentle and good is our God! If God spared not His only Son, how much more so will he not give us all good things? If not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our father in heaven giving permission, how much more so will the devil have to have God’s permission before he teases and taunts and tests your faith? If even the hairs on your head are numbered, how much more so is it true that you are not just a number in the kingdom of God, each one of you is dear and near to your Savior, each one of you has one or more angels assigned to watch over you, each and every time you cry out for justice, justice is on the way, and even better than that, justice has already arrived. His Name is Jesus, He has already paid the penalty, He has already paid the bill, He has already answered the one prayer that we keep on praying, God be merciful to me……which is in fact our sermon theme for next Sunday. Praying for our (nation) in 2016. The kingdom of God is like a large congregation in a small town traveling through life’s ups and downs together. Often they are tempted to shake their collective and puny little fists at God and wonder if He is really being fair, they wonder why God would permit this and why He would permit that, they wonder often if their nation is in fact going to hell in a hand basket. Even more often than that, they search the sacred writings, they hear that their sins have been forgiven and sent as far away as New York is from California, and they pray. They pray not for shiny new bikes, but for God to have mercy on all the nations. They pray not only for their side to prevail but for the will of God to be done on earth as it is done in heaven. On their bad days, they pray for the strength just to survive the election. On their ok days, they pray for opportunities to witness. And on their good days, they pray with boldness and with confidence for God to give them what His Son has already earned for them on the cross. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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