"WILL HE FIND FAITH?"

• The judge he spoke about was a common entity in those days.
• These men were crooked and often held back from helping people in hopes they would be bribed.
• The widow woman in those days was also the most helpless of people.
• Her husband was dead and women depended upon their husbands for their well-being.
• In India, widows are veritably outcasts of society to this day.

• She moved him to help her.
• He knew she was determined and that she would never give him rest until he helped her.

• His elect are those whom He has chosen.
• He will avenge them speedily.

• The reason prayers are not answered is not due to his disregard for us.
• Among other reasons, some prayers are not answered the way we want them to be answered because when we pray we ask amiss that we might consume the answers we seek upon our lusts.
• But there is a problem we might have in seeing prayers answered despite God's love and care for us.

It takes faith towards God when you pray for your prayers to be answered.

• Many people never get prayers answered because they beg when they pray.
• They tell God all the reasons He should answer their prayers and they beg and beg Him to do it, even weeping.
• But God cannot help such prayers because without FAITH it is impossible to please God.

• Jesus warned us this would happen by asking if He would find faith in the earth when he comes.

• There are two comings of Christ.
• He already came the first time 2,000 years ago.
• And He is coming again.

• When He left in Acts 1, the disciples saw Him leave and saw a cloud receive Him out of their sight.
• While they watched, an angel told them He will come in just the same manner as they saw Him go.
• Visibly, and in clouds.

• As the lightning shines from east to west, so shall He come again.

• Before Jesus came the first time, look at how the "unjust judges" treated Israel during Old Testament times.

Ezek 22:6  Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood.
Ezek 22:7  In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.
Ezek 22:8  Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths.

Mica 3:1-3  And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; [Is it] not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones; Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.

Regarded not man nor widow

Prov 29:7  The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: [but] the wicked regardeth not to know [it].

Deut 27:19  Cursed [be] he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.

God rebuked leaders of Israel over and over again for being so cruel to the people.

• The unjust judge represents those Israelite rulers.
• God delivered them from Egypt, not to go into tyranny from their own leaders raised up to guide Israel.
• Israel grew into an Egypt within itself.
• Tyrant leaders.

And when Jesus was about to come the first time, John the Baptist's father prophesied and referred to the freedom that the Messiah would bring and avenge Israel's enemies.

Luke 1:67-75  And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed [be] the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy [promised] to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.
 

Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would deliver Israel from her enemies. within.

• Serve God without fear.
• Be in holiness and righteousness before God.
• Jesus came to give this salvation.
• The Messiah came to deliver them all from that.
• But Jesus said when the Son of man comes will he find faith on the earth.
• There is nothing as sad as people who can be delivered for the Messiah is now here, but they simply do not believe.

• But when He comes again will people have faith in that?
• When He first came, so many did not have faith in Him and He was unable to help Israel.
• Many, many were delivered from their oppressors, such as the adulterous woman thrown at the feet of Jesus by accusers demanding her death.
• But Jesus came not to condemn and told her to sin no more.
• But how many others never received help from Him?
• Mary Magdalene walked into Simon the Pharisees house and washed Jesus feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.
• She became forgiven and followed Christ so much that she was the first to enter the empty tomb to see Him after He resurrected.

• He delivered us through His death on the cross.

John was on the isle of Patmos.

• Patmos means MY KILLING
• When John saw a revelation of Jesus he saw that he was dead with Christ.
• He saw a vision of the lamb of God as if it had been slain, walk to the throne and take the book of redemption and redeem people from every kindred nation and tongue.
• He saw the Lord Jesus risen triumphant over death hell and the grave.
• He saw him enter what the Garden of Eden represented.
• He saw the lamb go into Heaven itself for us!

• John's death.
• We need to get a revelation of Jesus and see that His death was our death.
• His burial was our burial.

• Strengthen your spirit.
• Get a spirit of revelation.
• All you have to do is believe the Word.

The word of God feeds our spirits and strengthens them.

• You will get a spirit of faith and love and power and a sound mind by feeding on the promises God has given to you.

Israel had the Messiah come to them, but most of them simply did not believe.

• When Jesus comes again, will there be faith?
• We pray for needs, but do we believe in the things that makes our prayers answerable?
• We need to have faith that He loves us.
• We need to have faith that we are His elect and chosen.
• We need to not beg.
• We need to clear out our consciences.
• We've been whipped so badly underneath sin that we still have an enslavement complex.
• The bear has been so long in the 100 square feet of floor space in a cage that now that he's out he walks around in a 100 square foot plot of ground in the middle of an endless field.

• But Christ set people free all over the land.

• Remain strong in faith.

• We cannot stop that nor control it.
• Billboards showing scantily clad women.
• Radio commercials.
• Materialism, materialism.
• You do not ask for it, but it simply bombards you just driving down the road.

• We're in a world where it does not remind us of the promises of God.
• The multimillion dollar campaigns to bombard you with materialism to fill their pockets with ten times as much money as they spent on commercialization, is not funded to tell you about the grace of God.
• So it is very hard for you to stand in a world of materialism and believe the promises of God.
• Those who barely make it to church four times a month have no chance.
• You need to find a place where you can come and have your faith increased.

Luke 17:5  And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

• Chapter 18 is part of that.

• John got a revelation of Jesus when he was on an island called MY KILLING.
• What is God trying to show us about the book of Revelation?
• He is trying to show us that a revelation of Jesus Christ is a revelation that you are dead with Him in His death.

• Hosea is a form of the Name Jesus.
• Gomer means COMPLETE
• How can a harlot be complete?
• She is complete and perfect.
• Hosea marries her and she is in union with Hosea.
• Like us when we were filthy and defiled, Jesus came for us.
• He became one with us on the cross.
• He married humanity on the cross.
• And they have a child named Jezreel - PLANTED.
• Out of that union with Christ we are planted with Christ.
• We are one people with Him.

• When He comes again, how many will have strong faith in this great Lord and our deaths with Him?