Well, good morning, Valley View. It’s great to be with you today. As I’ve been hinting at for weeks now we have a guest speaker today. I want to comment just a little bit about that. I wrote in the midweek update about what a rich season of growth for me and for the church it was in the late 90s when we were without a pastor, and we had a series of interim pastors come in and I was talking about that this week with Larry Peercy. He and I were sitting at an event here at church, and he started to share with me more of the background of that. He said, John, our pastor had left. Our church was struggling. We had no staff. And him and Randy Fluhr went to Al Mohler, the president of Southern Seminary, and sat down with him and said, we need help. We’ve got nobody that can preach. We don’t know what to do. Would you help us? And so Al connected him with a guy who was the interim. And then that guy connected us with Hershael York, who came. And that led to what I believe was a foundational moment for our church that laid the foundation for years of growth and joy and excitement to come. So if you would, would you welcome up Hershael York to speak with us now? Thank you, brother. Thank you. I can’t tell you what a delight and a joy it is for me and my wife, Tanya, to be with you today. I have never been one to struggle with decisions. I’m not making this up. Tanya and I went out on our first date, and 13 days later, bought the rings. So I’ve never been one to struggle with decisions. I make a decision and then live with the decision and implement the decision, and and, Jesus said, if you put your hand to the plow and look back you’re not fit for the kingdom of God. So I’ve never been one to look back. But in 1996, I struggled with a decision. And that was I was pastoring really, the church that the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky was my family’s home church. My mom and dad had been saved in that church. My dad had been ordained in that church. My grandfather was a deacon in that church. So much of my family was there, and I had been trained there myself. I was on staff for seven years. They called me back as pastor, and we had bought 47 acres for a complete relocation. I mean, the things were hopping and Al Mohler and I started talking about the possibility of me coming to Southern Seminary, and I struggled with that. It was like, man, I’m a pastor. And he was asking me to come teach pastors, teach preachers. And it took months. Finally, March of 1997, I accepted, but I feared. I cannot tell you. The fear I felt of the first Sunday not standing in a pulpit preaching. And it was like three weeks before my time had actually ended, Carroll Hatcher called me. And he said, hey, I’m on the committee, Valley View Baptist Church, and our interim pastor is leaving, and he recommended we talk to you and we’d like you to come maybe talk to us about being our interim. And my first Sunday as interim here was my first Sunday out of the pulpit at Ashland Avenue. You have no idea. You have no idea. What a difference it made in my life. It’s hard for people to understand this now. 1997, I was persona non grata, at Southern Seminary. I mean, Southern Seminary had come out of a really very different time. I couldn’t– I would not have been asked to lead in silent prayer at the Kentucky Baptist Convention in 1997. Now, the Lord changed all that. By his grace. You know, I ended up. I could not feel more loved and affirmed and respected by my tribe than I do in the Kentucky Baptist Convention today. But my point is, Valley View took an incredible leap of faith on a guy named Hershael York. And you allowed me to come here when I desperately needed you. And it just turned out that in the providence of God, you desperately needed me at the same time. Isn’t God wonderful? And isn’t it incredible the way in his sovereignty, he’s weaving together all these different threads of our lives with his beautiful sovereign grace and making a tapestry that he is weaving, that ultimately is going to picture Jesus. What is our destiny? To be conformed to the image of His son? He’s making us look like his son. Now, along the way, he wants us to take as many people with us as we can take, doesn’t he? I wonder if you have people in your life that you are praying for. Now let me say, if today you’re here and you’ve never put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, oh, I want to plead with you to do so. I’m telling you, as your friend, it is the absolute best thing in the world that can ever happen to you to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. And, I want to point you to him, but I suspect most of you have already done that. And maybe your great concern is that there are people in your life that, you know they’ve never trusted Christ. Maybe they’re family members, people you work with, maybe your children, somebody you’re married to, but you’ve got a burden. I want to encourage you this morning from Luke chapter 11, that Jesus said something to us about interceding for those around us. Let me put it like this. We’re asking for a friend, aren’t we? Jesus wanted his disciples to get this, so read with me, beginning in verse one of Luke 11. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, okay, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who’s indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he’ll answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut. My children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask. And it might be given you. Did I read that right? Ask and it will be given. You seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you for some people… Is that what it says? …for everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. For what father among you, if he has a son ask for a fish, will instead of a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. Now if you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? I think the most frightening sound you’ll ever hear is somebody banging on your door in the middle of the night. Yeah, I’m old enough, like many of you, that I can remember when we used to have landlines and, you know, you couldn’t really turn them off at night. If somebody called you the middle of the night, they woke you up. But anymore, man, we all got cell phones, and it’s got Do Not Disturb. In fact, mine just automatically a certain time of night, it goes on sleep and then comes back on 7:00 the next morning, you call me during the night. Guess what? I don’t even hear it. So if you really need me, if you really want me, you call me in the middle of the night I don’t answer. You’re going to have to show up at my door. And that would be very disconcerting. Nobody shows up at your door at 3:00 in the morning to tell you they got a raise. They’re not coming with good news. I mean, if they’re there in the middle of the night, there’s an urgency, and they need you to do something. Well, this is precisely what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus, you know that the disciples, Jesus has taught them how to pray. If you read the Sermon on the Mount, there Jesus teaches them how to pray. He gives them what we call the Lord’s Prayer, a model of prayer. But here again, you know, they keep hearing John the Baptist. He’s teaching his disciples a lot about prayer, and we don’t think we know enough about it. Jesus, teach us how to pray. Jesus says, okay, I’m happy to teach you how to pray. And so he gives them here another version of the model prayer. But notice the model prayer is largely about asking God to do stuff for us. Now, it’s not wrong to ask God to bless you, to meet your daily needs. I mean, Jesus teaches us that, that’s a good thing, but notice he does not stop there this time. Now he wants to go beyond the give us this day our daily bread. He wants to talk to you about the other people who need bread. And so he says, now which of you who has a friend and, you know, somebody comes to you in the middle of the night and they’re asking, you know, they come to you, by the way, you know, you’ve got to set something before them. Now, understand, in a middle eastern context, over there in the middle East, they take hospitality to a whole nother level. I mean, I cannot describe it to you. Tonya and I have eaten with families on the West Bank. Arab families who I’m talking cooked a lamb and like the way Hawaiians do a pig in a luau, they do that with a lamb. They bury it underground, with hot coals, and cook it all day. And we sat there. I mean, the the father of this family just ripped that meat off the bone and put it on our plate. I’m talking pounds of this stuff, and you’re shoveling it in, and the mom is going, eat Hershael, you’re not eating. Why are you not eating? Is it not good? And you know, I’m eating, I’m eating. Oh, please. Oh, do you need me to make something else? Is this not good for you? I mean, you’re shoveling it in as fast as you can, and they’re like, oh, bring this, bring that. I mean, there’s food all over the table and they’re big about it. And they take great pride and delight in feeding you. So it would be a shameful thing for somebody to come to you in the middle of the night. Some family member stops in, someone from, let’s say, up north in Galilee, coming down to Jerusalem to worship at the temple. They arrive at 10:00 at night. Hey, I’m here. Man, it’s your duty to give them food. But you’ve not been to the grocery store. You don’t have anything. And so what do you do? Man, I got a friend down the street. They’ve always got something. I’ll go there. And you go there. Now you bang on the door. It’s a shame you can’t turn away this person who’s come to you in the middle of the night. And so what are you doing? You’re asking someone to give you bread to give to another person. Now right there. Jesus. In that one three way triangle, as all triangles are. Right there. That’s what intercession is. It’s one person going to another person to get bread for a third person. And Jesus obviously wants us to get this. Now, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Jesus himself is an intercessor. The Bible talks about Jesus interceding for us in the Gospel of Luke. Luke will give us several times. Jesus intercedes, most famously when he’s on the cross. What does he pray? Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Man, I love that. I love everything about that plea of Jesus. It’s just such a beautiful prayer. He’s not. He doesn’t say, father, forgive the soldiers, though he certainly means them. He doesn’t say, father, forgive my murderers. He’s… there’s no word of accusation in his prayer. And yet he certainly includes them. He doesn’t say, father, forgive these these Jewish leaders who have abandoned Moses in order to attack and kill me. Though his prayer is big enough to embrace them, he simply says, father, forgive them. Now that that’s a pronoun I can crawl into, can you get in there? Can you see that Jesus prayed for you when he said, father, forgive them? They don’t know what they do. He interceded on the cross the night before his crucifixion. You remember, see, Simon Peter is saying, I’ll never deny you. And Jesus said, Simon, Simon. Now I’ll put it in in Southern English, so you understand exactly what’s going on. He said, Satan has desired y’all to have y’all to sift y’all as wheat. He uses all plurals there. But then he says, but I have prayed concerning you. Singular that your faith fail not. And when you have returned, strengthen your brothers. And I love that prayer. That when Jesus says that to Peter, he’s not saying, notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, if you return because Jesus knows if he has interceded for Peter, will God hear and answer that prayer? If Jesus intercedes for us, will God the Father answer the prayer of his precious son? It is unthinkable that God would ever hear Jesus pray for anything and say no to it. So when Jesus says, Simon, I’ve interceded for you, I’ve pleaded for you. I’ve prayed that your faith won’t fail. Your courage is going to fail you. Your good sense is going to fail you. But I’m praying that your faith won’t fail. And when, not if, but when you’ve returned. You strengthen your brothers. And that’s precisely what happened. Simon. He denies Jesus, but because Jesus has interceded for him, Jesus doesn’t let him go. He returns. And man, just 40 days later, you know, on the day of Pentecost or 50 days later, he’s preaching and God uses him, and 3000 people are saved. And Peter’s never the same again, because when he returned, he strengthened his brothers. Why? Because Jesus prayed that his faith wouldn’t fail. Now here’s Jesus, the great intercessor, teaching us a lesson about intercession. He wants us to see that we’re one person, but we we don’t have anything. We go to the one who has the bread in order for us to share it with the third person. Now, if there’s anything this this parable teaches us about intercession, it’s how we ought to do it. First of all, you need to intercede by praying boldly. Pray boldly. I mean, look how bold, audacious, daring this guy is. He goes in the middle of the night and bangs on the door. I mean, he is … he doesn’t care that the lights are flipping on and neighbors dogs are barking and and the guy inside is denying him. He’s just going to keep praying. You know, you might remember those of you who had children when they were little, and man, you’d have those nights where you just couldn’t get them to sleep, and you did everything in the world to get them to sleep. You, you know, trot them on your knee and you’d sing to them and pat on them and do everything you could. And just when you get them to sleep, then something happens. It wakes them up and you just feel all that. Can you imagine? Here’s the guy in bed. You know, back then they didn’t have multiple bedrooms and all. They had sort of one family bed. And and he’s got his kids there tucked the baby and the toddlers and the, the little older children, they’re all in there around him in bed and he’s just got them asleep. And then here’s this guy, hey, I need bread. He’s like, man, I… go away. I just got the kids asleep. Man, this guy didn’t care. He’s bold. He just keeps asking. Keeps pleading. You look at the great, the great intercessors in the Bible. They all have this characteristic. They plead boldly. Think about Abraham in the book of Genesis. When Abraham, when learns that God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, what does he do? Listen to what he says to God. Will you destroy the righteous with the with the unrighteous? Will not the judge of all the earth do right? Oh, I hear that. And I go, Abraham, do you know who you’re talking to there? I mean, it sounds almost disrespectful, but does God rebuke Abraham? No. Abraham says, will you destroy it if there are 50 righteous people in there? And God says, no, I won’t. He says, Will you destroy it if there are 45? No, for 45 I will spare it. How about 40? Will you spare it if there are 40? I mean, Abraham keeps pressing God to show grace and mercy to Sodom. He gets goes down to ten. Now Abraham himself stops at ten because then he’s going to get down into the number of his own family that are in there. And I think he’s afraid of the answer to that. But God never says, don’t talk to me that way. God is pushing Abraham. He’s testing Abraham. Do you really want me to spare Sodom? And Abraham boldly pleads for Sodom. How about Moses? In Exodus, I think it’s 32 where, Moses is up on Sinai and God, says he tells him, he says, get out of my way. My people down in the valley, they’re they’re in sin. The Bible euphemistically says, the people sat down to eat and rose up to play. They’re engaging in all kinds of sexual sin and idolatry. They’ve they’ve erected a golden calf. And God says, get out of my way. Your people who you brought up out of Egypt. He said, they they have fallen into sin. And I’m going to destroy them and listen to the way Moses pleads for them. Moses says, Oh, God, turn from your fierce wrath. Relent from the harm to your people. Now if you catch that God called them your people to Moses. Moses reminds God, oh no, they’re your people, they’re yours. And in his intercession, Moses. Moses makes two really bold statements. He tells God, if you destroy them, it will ruin your reputation. The Egyptians will say, you could get them out of Egypt, but you couldn’t get them through the mountains. And then he says, you’ll be breaking your own promise and violating your own word. He says, Remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom you swore by your own self that they would inherit the land forever. Wow! Moses, don’t forget who you’re talking to, man. Does God rebuke him and say, don’t talk to me like that. No. Why? Because. Listen. Now get this Moses isn’t asking for a new Mercedes. He’s not asking for fame or fortune. What’s he pleading for? He’s pleading for God to spare sinners. He’s pleading with God based on two things just like Abraham does: God’s Word and God’s character. God never gets upset with you when you plead his character, who He is and His word, what he has said. And in both cases, Abraham and Moses are praying based on that. And this is exactly what Jesus is teaching us to do, because the character of that guy is, first of all, he’s his friend. And secondly, his word is he has bread. And this guy knows he’s got bread. He goes to him and he’s pleading his character, Hey friend, give me three loaves. I know you’ve got it, I need it, give it to me. He prays boldly, but it’s not only bold. Secondly, when you intercede, you got to pray stubbornly, stubbornly. The most critical part of Luke 11 is verse eight. He says, I say to you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend. Yet because of his impudence, his persistence, the old King James word is his importunity. What it simply means this guy won’t quit. He won’t stop because he is stubborn, that guy will finally rise and he won’t just give him three. He’ll give him as many as he needs. Now, I got to tell you, Luke’s gospel is different from the other gospels in that he gives us certain parables that are strange to us. They’re parables that sometimes it makes it sound like Jesus is comparing God to a bad person. He’ll say like, here’s an unjust judge. He won’t he won’t give justice to this widow because he doesn’t care about God or man. He’s he doesn’t care about justice. Yet because of her persistence, he’ll give it to him. Or here’s a steward. He’s a bad guy. He steals from his master. But when he learns there’s going to be an accounting, what does he do? He calls all the guys that owe his master money, said, hey, how much you owe? We’ll cut that in half. And Jesus tells parables like that in Luke and we go, Is Jesus glorifying bad behavior? And no, the point he’s always making is, look, if a bad guy, an evil guy, has enough sense to do this kind of a thing, how much more like, if a bad guy knows there’s going to be a day of accounting, there’s going to be a reckoning. How much more should the Children of Light prepare for the accounting we’re going to have? If a bad father, an evil father, knows how to give good gifts to his kid, how much more will your good Heavenly Father know to give you the Holy Spirit? And this is what he does here. If this guy won’t get up and give him something because he’s his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will if your heavenly father and he’s like, if this guy will reward persistence, how much more will your heavenly Father who loves you and wants you to have exactly what you need for your friends to have the Bread of Life? How much more will he? But make no mistake about it, Jesus is telling us we need to be bold and stubborn in our praying, isn’t he? Because not only does he do it here, he does it in Luke 18 when he tells that story of the unjust judge and he says that widow just she’s persistent. She just won’t stop asking for justice. How much more will your heavenly father give justice? So here she’s determined to get bread and she’s he’s persistent until he’s answered. Yeah, this word, translated impudence. It means a lack of shame, a shamelessness. Most of us, you know, we went knocked on the door. Hey, hey, we we’d be, you know, I mean, how would you knock on the door in the middle of the night asking for bread? Most of us would be Billy Bob. Hey, Billy Bob, are you in there? And Billy Bob said, man, my kids just went to sleep. Come back in the morning. What would we do? We’d slink off a little bit embarrassed that we disturbed him. Not this guy. Right. Go away. Man. My kids just got to sleep. They’re in bed with me. He’s like, I don’t care. I need bread. And the the whole picture here, the story Jesus gives us is two stubborn guys, one determined to get bread, one determined not to give it to him. And it is a battle of wills. And the guy on the outside is not going to leave without it. And he just he just stubbornly asked. That is precisely the way Jesus wants us to pray. Sort of like Jacob wrestling with, really who is Jesus in the in the Old Testament in Genesis 32. Remember when Jacob wrestles with God all night long and he keeps going, and Jesus, in this pre incarnate existence, he says to Jacob, let me go, let me go. And Jacob goes, no, I’m not going to let you go till you bless me. Now let me ask you something. If Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe, is wrestling with Jacob, is that a fair fight? Do you really think Jesus wants him to let him go when he says, do you think Jesus needs him to let go? Is Jesus pleading with him like, oh, I hope you let me go? No, you see this frequently in Scripture. God tests us, doesn’t he? Do you really want this? Do you really want that person to be saved? Do you? Do you really want me to act on your behalf? Are you willing to wrestle through? And finally, toward the morning, the this, this unknown man who, as the story unfolds again, we know it’s God. Jacob learns. He figures out. I’ve been wrestling with God all night. He touches the I don’t remember the King James Version, the hollow of his thigh, and he walks with a limp the rest of his life. But he walks better than he’s ever walked. Why? Because now he knows he has an utter dependance on God. And he’s he’s received a blessing. See, you and I have to do like that. Sometimes it feels like God’s not answering, but God is. God is answering. He’s just strengthening us along the way. He just making us see how desperately we are. Because it’s not merely praying boldly and stubbornly, it’s praying desperately. Only desperate men and women, propelled by a sense of urgency, truly intercede. I mean, a cry of desperation sounds throughout this parable. It would have been easy to convince a casual host to wait for a more practical hour to go banging on his neighbor’s door. Unconcern always finds an excuse. Deep concern always finds a way. And this guy is deeply concerned. Only desperate men and women take desperate actions and prevail. The problem is the situation is desperate and we are not. I mean, people in our life that don’t know Jesus are truly lost. They have no hope. And when we realize how desperate that situation is, it changes the way we pray, changes the way we think. I mean, this this parable teaches our inescapable responsibility. A friend of mine has come to me on my journey. A lot of Baptists, you know, man, they they their idea of evangelism is memorizing the pastor’s phone number, saying, hey, preacher, I got this a friend, I’d really like you to talk to him. You know, I think maybe he’s open to the gospel. Would you. Would you talk to my friend? Hey, that person didn’t come to the pastor on their journey. They came to you. You sit by him at school or at work. You live by them in your neighborhood. They’re in your family. God, had you born in that family to reach that person. It’s not your pastor’s family, it’s yours. And he gave you the knowledge that he has the bread. It’s our inescapable responsibility. It also teaches our inadequate resources. I mean, they’ve come to us, but we just need to admit I don’t have bread for them. I’ve never argued anybody into salvation. I’ve never saved anybody. I’ve never so intellectually dominated them that they just said, oh, you’re just so much smarter than I, I know now I need Jesus. That’s not how it happened. You know how it happens? We plead with God. We plead with God. We plead with God until he gives the good gift that only the father can give, which is the Holy Spirit. Amen. And it’s the Holy Spirit that opens their heart and their mind. We have inadequate resources. Lord, this man who sits beside me at work came in. He’s lost and I don’t have anything to give him. Lord, my teenage daughter is facing such great temptation and I don’t have anything to give her. Lord, my my, my uncle, he’s lost and I don’t have anything to give him. Yeah, but you know who does. And when you begin to just, man, the ramparts of heaven, I’m… I’m going to just assault heaven with my prayers. I’m going to plead, and I’m going to plead, and I’m going to plead. Then it brings you to the very last thing in this parable, and that’s our inevitable reward. Jesus says, though he won’t give him because he’s his friend. Yet because of his persistence, his stubbornness, he’ll arise and give him how much? As many. And I mean, once the guy is up, why stop at three? Here. Take four, take five, take six. Take everything. Just go. When God responds to our prayers, he always responds in abundance. My whole life. My whole adult life. I told you, Tanya and I met… we met in 19… 1980 And we were both PKS. I was a preacher’s kid, and she was a pagans kid. I mean, you talk about two radically different lifestyles, backgrounds. We had it, man. Her dad– how do I say this delicately?– was the meanest man I think I ever met. He was, he was, he was harsh. He was abusive. I mean, he had his own code, but, man, if you crossed him, you were on the bad list for forever. And he really had very few boundaries that, I mean, he he didn’t worry about boundaries. Well, when I fell in love with Tanya, you know, men suddenly he’s in my life. And I got to lead Tanya’s mom to the Lord, to baptize her. But her dad, he wanted nothing to do with Jesus. Now I will tell you, he he he grew to love me. And he respected me. When our sons came along, he loved the way we reared them. He was proud of that. And he would say, I’m glad that worked for you all. I’m glad you’re raising my grandsons the way you are. But man, he wanted nothing to do with the Lord. Through the years. We would be, you know, we try to be subtle. That didn’t work. We tried to be absolutely direct. We’d go over to his house and we would just cry and plead with him and try and share the gospel. That didn’t seem to work. We’d have other people stop by the house. I mean, we we schemed for his salvation. We plotted for his redemption. We did everything we knew to do that he might one day trust the Lord. No interest whatsoever. I’m glad it worked for you. I don’t want that. I mean, decades of this. And frankly, the older he got, the more I dreaded having to preach his funeral. Her mom died in 2009. I preached her funeral. And of course, man, I filled it with the gospel because he was there and he had to hear it. And it was, soon after that, her dad was a big fisherman. And, I go to Brazil a lot. My dad was a missionary in Brazil. And I go down there and I fish for peacock bass. They call them tucunaré in Brazil. And we had asked him if he wanted to go to Brazil to go pick up bass fishing. Now, my best friend, pastors a church, a really large church there, Manaus, Brazil. And we thought, we’ll go down and we get if we can get him to Brazil, he can’t talk to anybody but us, right, because he didn’t speak any Portuguese. And we’ll just talk about the gospel the whole time. We’ll get him out there. I’ll get him out there on a boat for three days up the Amazon. He can’t talk to anybody but me and we’ll just pour the gospel into him. And so he he was game. I said, yeah, let’s go to Brazil and go peacock bass fishing. And he’s like, let’s do it. And at 80, I think he was 83 years old. We took him to Brazil and man, we did. We pulled out the the stops. We talked about Jesus around him all the time. We I’m not making this up. We’d be at the table and we talk about the Lord and the gospel with our friends David and Penny Hatcher. He pastored that really large church, and then her dad would break out the most inappropriate story you can imagine. And, you know, we all just went with it. I mean, he you don’t get upset with a lost guy for acting like a lost guy. But we made sure that he heard it. Well, sure enough, we go up. David and I took him fishing up, up north of Manaus, and and we had the best time. And it’s just incredible being in the jungle and seeing God do stuff in nature. And when we talked to him and I just said, I just flat out asked him, I said, Gene, why won’t you trust Jesus? And he said, what kind of a man would I be? What kind of a man would I be to live my whole life for me? And now I’m old and about to die. And now I say, oh, Jesus save me. He said, what kind of a man does that? I said, A saved man. I said, here’s what you’re not getting. It takes as much grace of God to save me as a seven year old boy from all my future sin and even potential sin, as it does to save you as an 83 year old man from all your past sin, it’s still grace we all desperately need. Grace. This is what you’re not getting. Now I will tell you. My wife, his daughter had was probably the only person in his life who just relentlessly showed him grace. He knew what kind of father he’d been to her. He knew the things he had done to her. And yet she just loved him and treated him as though he had been the best dad in the world. And she just showed him that kind of relentless grace. When we came, we came back from, you know, up in the jungle. We came back to announce on Sunday. We took him to church. Now it’s all in Portuguese and I understand anything, but there’s just something powerful about watching about 3500 bouncing Brazilians around you, praising the name of the Lord. And he sat right on the front row watching this, and he looked at Tonya. He said, these people really believe what they’re singing. And she said, they do. And he looked up at the screen and it’s all in Portuguese. But he said, there’s only one word up there I recognize. And she said, what’s that? He said, Jesus. She said, well, daddy, that’s the only word you need to recognize. I’m going to tell you there was something in him on that trip that softened. He didn’t trust the Lord. But when we came back to the States Tonya’s niece met us at the airport and took him back to his house, and she said on the way, he didn’t once mention the fishing, the very thing we’d gone there to do. He talked about our friends David and Penny and the kind of people they were. He talked about the church a lot, what he saw there and these Brazilians and the way they worshiped. And and he talked about that. It was a few months after that working out in his garden. One day, he fell, his legs just gave out on him and he never walked again. We didn’t find him till the next morning. He was out there all night and, something had happened in his body and he required round the clock care. We had to put him in a nursing facility. And so, you know, it was a really big man and really proud man. And to be honest with you, we had always worried if we got to that point that he would have no will to live. I mean, he was just like, if I can’t do it on my terms, I don’t want to do it. And so we went to visit him. Those first few days he was in the nursing home. They couldn’t even get a TV in his room. We had all kinds of red tape he had to go through and all that, and he just it’s just him and four walls. And when we walked in, we were stunned by how happy he was, cheerfully so, even. And he was doing remarkably better than we anticipated. We talked to him, and when we got up to leave, he looked at me and he said something unlike anything he’d ever said to me in. But at that time, 35 years of knowing him, he said, preach to me, Hershey. I thought, he’s confused. I thought he meant pray for him. But he’d never, ever asked me to do that. So I walked to one side of his bed, Tonya to the other, we took a hand and I began to pray for him. Now I will tell you, I prayed like this guy. I prayed, Lord, I prayed for the Lord to save him. I prayed for the Lord to give him repentance and faith. I said, Lord, he’s had his way long enough. Would you have your way? Jesus deserves praise from his life. Lord, if you would just save him. And and then I prayed for him physically as well. But I prayed. And when I said Amen, he looked up with the biggest smile on his face and he patted my hand and he said, I’ve done that. Though you got more faith. And I had at the moment was I looked at Tonya and I went, I mean, we looked at each other. I was as confused as I could be. Isn’t it a crazy that you plead and you plead and you plead with God? And when he says yes, you go like, what just happened? We looked at each other and I said, Gene, are you telling me you’ve repented of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus alone for eternal life? He said, yes, I’ve done that. I said, now don’t mess with me Gene. I said, I really want to spend eternity with you. He said, well, you will, because I’ve done that. I think they could hear our shouts and our cries three counties over from Fayette County, where he was in the nursing home. We went outside and sat in the car for 30 minutes. We couldn’t drive because I couldn’t see to drive. And I’m going to tell you something, two years, the last two years of his life, he was a remarkably different person. Old hatreds and prejudices and things that were just gone. They were gone. And he had a kindness about it was there was a joy in him. It was a different guy. And when I preached his funeral, it wasn’t it wasn’t one of the saddest moments of my life. It was one of the most glorious moments of my life. Why? Because when God got up and gave me the bread, he gave me as much as I needed. Now look, everything in me wants to back off, what Jesus says here. I wanted to put in caveats, and I want I want to say maybe now, maybe this won’t work for everybody. But I just can’t get away from the words. Everyone. Everyone who asks receives. Now he puts it in that present tense. So the point is, in the context of the parable is you got to ask and you got to do what? Keep on asking. You got to seek and you got to keep on seeking. You got to knock and you got to keep on knocking. But Jesus said, everyone who asks receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks, it will be open to him. Your heavenly father knows the thing you need. And what is the thing you need? What’s the good gift he promises he will give? The Holy Spirit. Are you bold enough? Are you stubborn enough? Are you desperate enough to trust God for what he said? Would you bow your head right now? For whom are you praying? Who’s the person that’s come to you on their journey? That you need to pray, plea for right now? There might be more than one, but there surely ought to be at least one. Who’s the person you’ve been tempted to give up on, and to quit pleading and praying for and asking God to save? Can you be bold and desperate and stubborn? And can you do it for years and years and years if need be? Can you have enough trust that you know your Heavenly Father has what you don’t have, that he can give the Holy Spirit, and that you’re just going to keep on asking and seeking and knocking until he rises and gives you as much as you need? It might be that this morning you realize that you’re the one who needs the bread, not for someone else, but for you. You’ve never put your faith and trust in Christ. And today. You’re ready to put your trust in Jesus, repenting of your sin, accepting what he’s done for you on Calvary’s cross that he alone is the bread of life. And today you’ll trust in him. Whatever your business with God. I know Jesus will answer with all the grace you need. Father, you know the cry and the need of every heart here. You know precisely the name of every person that needs the bread of life that some in this room are praying for right now. You know you know their need. Lord, I’m asking that you give us the kind of stubbornness that made Jacob wrestle all night, the kind of boldness that made Abraham and Moses both plead based on your character and your word, the kind of relentlessness that made that widow keep pleading for justice until the judge gave it. Jesus himself highlighted this. He gave us this story. So, Lord, we want to let it have its full impact on our lives that we will be bold, stubborn, and desperate, knowing our inadequate resources, knowing our inevitable reward. Because you are the one who has the Holy Spirit whom we need. Lord, may your spirit move right now. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.