Scripture Introduction
Jesus teaches us today by parable, “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Our English word derives from the Greek, para-bolae,, which itself consists of two words, para- meaning “beside” and -ballo meaning “throw or cast.” A parable is, literally, a story thrown or cast beside real life to explain it.
C. H. Dodd (Oxford Professor), The Parables of the Kingdom, 1935: “At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.”
I believe Professor Dodd is correct — Jesus is not giving a simplistic answer for our bumper stickers. He is teasing out deeper reflection on prayer and perseverance.
I would make one further preliminary observation before reading our text. Sometimes people wonder about the propriety of illustrations and stories in sermons. There may be the feeling that a “mature” congregation should want preaching and teaching which is detailed and doctrinal, more like an academic lecture than an appeal to the heart. There is even a clever slogan to illustrate the danger of illustrating sermons — they are called, “skyscraper sermons,” one story on top of another.
There is, definitely, the danger of telling stories instead of teaching the Bible. But, I believe it is imperative to illustrate in order to preach biblically, to preach as Jesus did. Madeleine L’Engle once observed: “Jesus was not a theologian; he was God who told stories.”
Three Proverbs confirm to me the wisdom of carefully illustrating my teaching.
Proverbs 16.21: “…sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.”
Proverbs 16.23: “The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips.”
Proverbs 25.15: “…a soft tongue will break a bone.”
Once upon a time, Truth went about the streets as naked as the day he was born. As a result, no one would let him in their homes. When people saw him, they fled.
One day as Truth wandered sadly about town, he came upon Parable, dressed in splendid clothes of beautiful colors.
Parable, seeing Truth, said, “Tell me, neighbor, what makes you look so sad?” Truth replied bitterly, “Ah, brother, things are bad. I am old and so no one wants to know me.”
Parable responded, “People don’t run away from you because you are old. I, too, am old. Very old. But the older I get, the better I am liked. I’ll tell you a secret: everyone likes things disguised and prettied up a bit. Let me lend you some of my clothes, and the very people who pushed you aside will invite you into their homes and be glad of your company.”
Truth dressed in clothing borrowed from Parable. And from that time on, Truth and Parable have gone hand in hand together and everyone loves them.” (From Yiddish Folktales, edited by Beatrice Silverinan Weinreich.)
Jesus’ parables and wise use of sermon illustrations do not discount the necessity of the Holy Spirit as the principle cause of a sinner believing truth. Instead, just as God uses truth to convict and convert, so he is pleased to use a soft tongue, sweetness of speech and judicious words to clothe truth with persuasiveness. May he give me grace to do so for your sake, and the sake of the Gospel. [Read Luke 18.1-8. Pray.]
Introduction
What prevents losing heart? What holds us steadfast in a world of sin where sorrow would wash us away in a flood of pain and suffering? Last week, disappointment, discouragement and fear debilitated Jesus’ disciples. After the murder of their Master, they hide behind locked doors. Then Christ appears, resurrected, and the disciples are astonished. Jesus next spends forty days educating them on the work of his Kingdom and his plan for establishing the church and discipling the world.
But suddenly, he disappears, ascends into heaven. They stand, stunned, staring at the sky. Two angels must revive them with this word, “Men, why do you stand looking into heaven? He will come back.” This rebuke is a “kick in the complacency,” and the disciples are changed by new confidence in Jesus’ coming back. The remainder of Acts (then) chronicles the effect of this faith. When we truly believe Jesus will return and reward, we behave differently.
So one answer to remaining faithful to the end is confident hope in his appearing. Do you believe?
But, apparently, not all who “believe” persevere — Jesus is concerned that we will “lose heart.” We are in danger of forgetting that he will come back. How do we stir up faith and remember that Jesus will return and reward so that we will endure to the end?
It turns out that two pressures tempt us to forget and fall away: satisfaction and suffering. Jesus addresses both in this parable. To see the first, please notice the context. Beginning in Luke 17.26, Jesus warns his disciples of a spiritual disease which will spread before he returns. Luke 17.26-33: “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot — they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all — so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.”
Note well where Jesus focuses attention when describing life before Noah’s flood and Lot’s fire. Not on their sin, but their complacency. They were completely satisfied with the good things in life. They were driving their cars, then I-35 collapsed. They went to work, and the mine fell in. They were shopping downtown, and the plane hit the tower. They had no idea that their need was great, until it was too late. Life lulled them to carelessness. The distractions themselves were not bad — but they will destroy us if we think they are all there is. When eating and marrying and building careers and a new iPhone satisfy us, we are in dreadful danger of not persevering.
That is the context, the warning leading to Jesus’ telling “them a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18.1, NET Bible). We learn, first…
1. We Must Persevere In Prayer Even If God is Bad (Luke 18.1-6)
A simple story with only two characters: a corrupt judge and an oppressed widow. The woman is powerless, she has neither authority to enforce a righting of the wrong, nor ability to act on her own behalf. She is desperate and knows perfectly well her own impotency. She also knows who can deliver — but he is a tough case. He neither fears God nor respects old women. She cannot appeal on the basis of his character — he is a rascal who cares only for himself. But she must have his intervention.
So she meets him when he opens his front door. She wails from below the window while he works. She appears in the courtroom during other cases. So compelling is her cause and so necessary the relief that she must act.
And her story answers both of the hindrances to prayer and perseverance which threaten us.
First, it speaks to complacency, to satisfaction with life here. Noah’s and Lot’s friends were too busy to pray before the flood came and the fire fell. Unaware of the risks, they skipped the prayer meetings.
To all who imagine we are doing OK, we are the widow. Our needs are great; our situation is just that desperate. Unless we feel our condition and call upon God for help, we will find ourselves with Lot’s wife, a pillar of salt when we turn back to the things of this world. Do not be distracted by your satisfaction with the things of earth.
Second, even more poignantly, this parable speaks to the rare and difficult attainment of perseverance. Let God refrain from responding for but a moment, and think him unfair, unfeeling and deaf to our cries. It is a well known fact that when first our requests are unanswered, we tend to throw away hope and abandon prayer, confused that God does not care.
But this strange parable turns our confusion against us—suppose God is not good. Jesus says (in effect): “Suppose he is unjust. If he is, yet your need is great, will you not persevere? If he failed at first to listen, would you not wear him out with importunacy? You do not leave off prayer because God is not good. Instead, you quit praying either because you do not know your need, or you never believed in his power.”
Even a wicked and iron-hearted judge will yield at length. Our war is not against God, but against our own impatience and exhaustion. Those who own their need and believe in his power, persevere in prayer, without regard to the own inability to explain God’s delay in answering.
With that set-up, Jesus then turns the sharp blade of the story around and thrusts it to the heart.
2. We Must Persevere In Prayer Especially Since God is Good (Luke 18.6-8a)
If God were unjust, we would wear him out with pleas. But he is good. His delays only sound like deafness; his failure to intervene only feels unfeeling. God is gracious; he chose a people and rewards them with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He preserves and protects; he causes all things to work together for your good.
John Calvin: “If at any time God winks at the injuries done to us longer than we would wish, let us know that this is done with a fatherly intention — to train us to patience. A temporary overlooking of crimes is very different from allowing them to remain forever unpunished. The promise which Christ makes, that God will speedily avenge them, must be referred to his providence; for our hasty tempers and carnal apprehension lead us to conclude that he does not come quickly enough to grant relief. But if we could penetrate into his design, we would learn that his assistance is always ready and seasonable, as the case demands, and is not delayed for a single moment, but comes at the exact time.”
God would have us pray until we at last draw from him what he appears unwilling to give. Not that we actually gain victory over him as the widow did the unjust judge, but that, “the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1Peter 1.7).
Matthew Henry offers nine reasons these promises guarantee our prayers will prevail with God.
1. This widow was a stranger to the judge; but God’s praying people are his own elect, whom he knows, and loves, whom he delights in, and has given his Son for.
2. She was one alone; the praying people of God are many, and can come together, agreeing in what they need.
3. She bothered the judge by her presence; our Father bids us come boldly and teaches us to cry, “Abba, Father.”
4. She came to an unjust judge; we come to a righteous Lord who especially cares to comfort those in distress.
5. She came purely upon her own account; our God promises to engage himself in the cause we are pleading: “Arise, O God, defend your own cause!”
6. She had no friend to speak for her; we have an Advocate with the Father, his own Son, who ever lives to make intercession for us.
7. She had no encouragement to ask for help; we have the promise that whatever we ask shall be given.
8. She could speak to the judge only at some certain times; but we may cry to God day and night, and at any hour.
9. She had to fear provoking the judge by her importunity; we are assured that our importunity pleases God; the prayer of the upright is his delight, faithful and fervent prayer avails much.
Surely we who are “believers” in God’s goodness will persevere in prayer.
3. We Must Persevere in Prayer Since Endurance Marks Those Who Believe (Luke 18.8b)
This surprise ending connects prayer and perseverance. Augustine: “When faith fails, prayer dies. In order to pray, then, we must have faith. And that our faith fail not, we must pray. Faith pours forth prayer; and the pouring forth of the heart in prayer gives steadfastness to faith.”
Jesus has plainly described for his disciples the delay between his resurrection and his return in glory. We are born again into the kingdom but the final consummation must wait on God’s patience with the lost. That necessarily means that we must meet with some discouragements in our prayers and expectations. God cannot and will not always answer us in the way we would like. He is not forced from a magic lamp by the Biblical words or correct theology. So how will we persevere? How will we remain steadfast in faith while God seems to delay? Pray!
John Piper: “When Jesus asks, ‘When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ he means, ‘Will the Son of man find that his disciples have kept praying, or have lost heart and given up?’ The implication seems to be: prayer and faith stand and fall together. If we lose heart and drift away from prayer, then the Son of man will not find faith in us when he comes. Faith is the furnace of our lives. Its fuel is the grace of God. And the divinely appointed shovel for feeding the burner is prayer. If you lose heart and lay down the shovel, the fire will go out, you will grow cold and hard, and when the lightning flashes from sky to sky and the Son of man appears in glory, he will spew you out of his mouth (Revelation 3.16). And the test will not be whether you once walked an aisle, or prayed a prayer, or made a vow, or were baptized. The test will be whether you continued in prayer and did not lose heart. God’s elect will most surely be saved; and one sign of the elect is that they cry to God day and night.”
4. Conclusion
The story is told of a town in which a saloon was being built. The members of the local church opposed this and the congregation got stirred up for an all-night prayer meeting.
Later in the week lightning struck the saloon and it burned to the ground. The owner of the brought a lawsuit against the church, claiming they were responsible. So the Christians hired a lawyer who claimed they were not.
The judge said, “No matter how I decide this case, one thing to me is clear: the owner of the saloon believes in prayer, but these Christians do not.”
I wonder if we believe in prayer? When you rise from prayer, do you have any sense that the world is now different because you have spoken to the king? If Jesus comes back today, will he find praying and persevering faith in our midst? You think about that. Amen.
