Intro
We’re continuing on in our series on prayer. We’ve talked about the missional purpose of prayer, the biblical posture of prayer, and the right requests in prayer. Today we’re talking about something that I find personally really challenging. We’re talking about the necessity of perseverance in prayer. We’re talking about continuing on in prayer even when we’re not seeing the fruit of it, even when we’re not getting the answer we’re looking for.
I have to admit, the idea of asking repeatedly for something and not seeing it come is difficult for me. I find this so difficult partly because of my personality. I’m naturally a bit more impulsive, wanting to see change right away. However, it’s also difficult partly because of the world in which I live. I’ve grown up in a world that has taught me to get what I want and get it now. It’s taught me that I can buy something with one click and get it delivered to my door the next day. It’s taught me to be a consumer and to move on if my needs aren’t being met. That means if a church isn’t everything I want it to be, I can move on to the next cool, young church down the street. It means if my spouse isn’t making me happy, I can leave her and find someone else. If my job isn’t advancing me as quickly as I’d like, I’ll start looking for other opportunities. Patience, waiting, endurance- these are not words that characterize life in the 21st century.
Our environment also hinders our ability to deal with non-ideal circumstances. You know how every year people go, “wow, 2016 was such a bad year”. And then the next year happens, and we go “wow, how could it get worse than 2017”. And then 2020 happens, we have a pandemic, locusts, social unrest, and Kobe dies in a helicopter crash, and we just can’t even! These are serious things, but they are not uncharacteristic in the world. Thing about World War I and the Spanish flu happening at one time a century ago. I’ve talked before about the 3rd century in the Roman Empire. In addition to a ton of other calamities, a pandemic swept through and killed off a quarter of the entire population- a quarter! And you had guys like Dionysius saying that in the midst of all that, Christians were still experiencing joy and viewing everything that was happening as schooling and testing for eternity. Whoa!
David Brooks, a New York Times journalist and author, wrote a book a few years ago called Road to Character, where he looks at how people’s character was formed differently in former eras. Basically, “they don’t make them how they used to”. He talks about how prevalent premature death and sickness was and says “if a single slip could produce disaster, with little in the way of a social safety net to cushion the fall; if death, or drought, or disease, or betrayal could come crushingly at any moment; then character and discipline were paramount requirements” (Brooks, 51). And throughout the book, he connects much of this, at least in the Western world, with the underlying presence and impact of a Judeo-Christian worldview.
Could it be that one reason prayer is so desperately needed is because, contrary to the instant gratification patterns and habits of this world, prayer develops resilience? Is it so needed because prayer actually forms patience in us, it forms an ability to deal with the disappointments of the world? I mean, prayer is desperately needed for all kinds of reasons, ones we’ve looked at throughout the series. But could it also be for this, because it forms us in ways that our culture otherwise deteriorates? Let’s pray and dig into this more from the Scriptures.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Luke 18:1-8
1. The widow
The parable on its own is pretty straightforward. There’s a judge who is pretty terrible at what he does. He’s apathetic about the quality of his work, and we’ve all known or experienced people like that. Maybe you had a teacher in high school or college who showed movies every class and made no effort to actually teach you anything. That was a bit like this judge: going through the motions. And then there’s a widow who has been wronged in some undefined way, looking for justice against the person who wronged her. A widow, as you would imagine, is someone who occupied a low rung on the social ladder of the day. This widow in particular seems to have lacked people in her life who would otherwise take care of her since she’s defending and representing herself. Numerous commentators point out that she also seems to have had little money to her name. Otherwise she could have issued a bribe and had the judge settle matters quickly. The scene is set: a socially powerful male vs. a socially weak female. The odds are way against the widow. In the end, though, she gets her justice because of her persistence. She keeps bothering the judge until he relents and declares in her favour. He actually says in verse 5 that she’s giving him a black eye- not that she’s a black belt martial artist, but that the strain he’s experiencing at her hands has become unbearable.
The candidates
One of the things we’ll often try to do when reading a parable is to identify with someone in the parable. We are naturally eager to identify with the protagonist, which in this case is the widow. Some of us will see our own experience in her life. Maybe we’ve been wronged, we’ve been the victim, we’ve been misjudged. Someone put us in a box, they dismissed us or made assumptions about us without really getting to know us, they made certain associations about us based on our social position rather than who we actually are. Most of us have been there in one way or another. I have too. It’s not fun. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Others of us feel this way because we’ve dealt with structures that seemed inherently against us. Maybe it was an actual law court, maybe it was a culture in an organization we’re a part of, maybe it was society as a whole. Like the widow, we’ve tried making things right and it seems like there’s a ton of inertia working against us.
And of course, a lot of us will recognize in the widow a symbol of people who are oppressed in our world because of their status in a wider sense. We’ll think about the conversations around racism, and the plight of people in countries around the world where one’s skin color isn’t deemed as favorable as another’s skin color. Historically in North America, that has often meant skin colors other than white. And we’ll be reminded of how God, in the Bible, has a special care and consideration for those who are needy. He looks out for those who are oppressed, those who find themselves on the low end of the socio-economic ladder. And we wouldn’t be wrong to do that.
The unexpected reality
However, there’s another group that I think is an even more likely identification, in terms of the emphasis in the New Testament. I’m talking about the church. And that might strike some of you, because the more common image in our culture is that the church is the oppressor. It is the institution of influence and power, predominantly white and western. And of course, the church has, in Western history, occupied that place at times. It has served as a tool of oppression, and sometimes as the oppressor itself. This is tragic. It needs to be acknowledged and repented of. But it is not an accurate picture of the church today globally. If you look at a list of countries with the most Christians in them today, you’ll find the United States at the top, but after that you have a list that includes two Latin American countries, three African countries, and three Asian countries (taking Russia as Asian). When you look at the list of countries with the most Evangelical Christians (which is not a term not referring to a political leaning but to Christians who believe in the authority of the Bible, in the importance of preaching the Gospel, in the necessity of a personal relationship with God through Jesus and so on)- it’s even more clear. You have the US, followed by China, Nigeria, Brazil, India, and Kenya.
Many of those Christians, in fact, live in places where they are systemically and structurally discriminated against. Around the world, around 260 million Christians live in countries where there is some level of persecution directed against them. Christians are by far the most persecuted religious group in the world, with one British study saying that 80% of all religious persecution in the world is against Christians. Every year, thousands of Christians are killed for their faith, thousands of pastors are jailed because they preach the Gospel, and thousands of church buildings are destroyed or shut down. You won’t hear about this in our culture, where the narrative is that the church is the oppressor. But it’s the reality worldwide. I would also argue it is increasingly going to become the reality here in our city and country. Christians will more and more become the target of discrimination in various ways. As I’ve often said, none of this should be surprising or alarming. Jesus said it would happen. He said his people would be hated because of him, and historically I believe Christians have been more spiritually strong and faithful in positions of social weakness than strength anyway.
You see this in the New Testament. Besides what Jesus says about people hating his followers, we see that the church was especially made up of marginalized people from the beginning. Paul, in his letter to the Christians in Corinth, says that not many of them were wise, or influential, or of noble birth compared to others (1 Corinthians 1:26). There are many references in the New Testament letters to the persecution and opposition Christians faced in the first century, as well as in the book of Revelation. Revelation 6 is a great example. John has a vision of martyrs, those who had been slain because of their testimony about Jesus. He hears them asking God, “how long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (Revelation 6:10) This, right here, is the cry of the widow from Luke 18. They’re calling on God to judge, and they’re asking for justice. In the original Greek, the word for “avenge” in Revelation 6 is the same word as the “justice” the widow asks for in Luke 18. It is the cry for the vindication of those who have been faithful to God and who have suffered for it. We can read all kinds of things into this parable, but to be faithful to the New Testament, I believe this is our primary application. The socially weak, oppressed widow who has experienced injustice is a picture of the people of Jesus who suffer because of their faithfulness to Him.
2. The judge
So what’s God’s response to that? Go back for a second to Revelation 6. Again, Christian martyrs are crying out to God to judge and bring about justice. How does He respond? 6:11: “then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been.” God tells them to wait. To wait until. As in, a time is coming, is assuredly coming, when that waiting will end. When justice will come, when God will vindicate them. But that time is not yet. He has other things He wants to do. He has a purpose in not bringing everything to an end yet and so He tells His people to wait.
I believe that’s the same thing we see in Luke 18. However, there’s a bit of a translation issue we need to address. I think what I’m going to say is consistent with the Bible even if I’m not right about the translation thing, but let’s see if you track with me on this. In Greek, the language the New Testament was first written in, punctuation is not part of the original text. Question marks, exclamation marks, periods, and commas are all translation decisions. They are things translators necessarily put in an English version to make sense of the text. In verse 7, there’s a question in the English version I read: will he keep putting them off? It’s a question, with the implied answer being no. He will not. But that question mark is a translation decision. It is not there in the original Greek text. Older translators and commentators believed this segment was a statement, not a question. For example, the King James version reads, “And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?” Do you see the difference? Though he bears long with them. Not, “will he put them off?” But, “he bears long with them.”
And this makes sense because the word that is translated as “put them off” is always translated elsewhere in the New Testament along the lines of patience. It’s always seen as a positive, not a negative. It’s about long-suffering, it’s about putting up with something for a long period of time. It’s the same word that’s used in 2 Peter in a verse I’ve found myself quoting often this year: “the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (3:9). He is patient with you. Same word, same idea. Immediately after that verse in 2 Peter is a statement that the day of the Lord is coming. And when it comes, it will come quickly. God will make all things right, He will judge evil, He will bring about total and complete justice. That day is coming, no doubt about it. But in the meantime, God is patient. He is giving people an opportunity to repent and know Him. Same idea as Revelation 6. And again, I would argue, the same idea in Luke 18.
The point in Luke 18 is that God will bring about justice, even if it’s not immediate. In one sense, God is like the unjust judge in that judgment is delayed. But the reason is totally different. The unjust judge delays because he doesn’t really care, he can’t be bothered. God delays because He deeply cares. He delays because He is patient. He delays because, in the context of the rest of the Bible, He desires people to know Him and gives them as much time as possible. He delays, but that delay is temporary, and He will assuredly bring about complete justice for the oppressed, His people who call on His name. That day is coming. Jesus wants us to be confident of that.
That’s consistent with the context of the passage as a whole. The passage right before this parable, in Luke 17, is all about the final coming of the Kingdom of God. It’s about Jesus’ return, it’s about when all things are made right. And Jesus makes the point that there will be delay, and suffering, in the meantime.
So let’s sum up this part: the parable in Luke 18, consistent with the rest of the New Testament, pictures the oppressed, persecuted people of God crying out for justice. The promise is that God will definitely, assuredly, bring this about. He’s good! He’s the holy and true judge of the earth! We can count on Him to do this! But that answer may not come immediately. God is patient, He is long-suffering, He has purposes in delaying that final, full judgment. The question is, what are we to do in the meantime?
3. Our response: faith
Well, here’s what Jesus says at the end of the passage: “when the Son of Man (referring to himself) comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Will he find faith on the earth? Will his people be steadfast to the end? Or will they give up? Will they stop seeking him? Will they compromise their faith for worldly status and comfort? Will they lay down aspects of their faith that don’t fit well with their culture in order to attain acceptance from the people of the world? Will they get into bed with the powers of the day and accommodate to them in order to increase their own comfort? Will they join with the worship of idols, believing that these idols will help them deal with the issues in the world, rather than worshipping God alone? Will they give up hope that God will bring about justice? Or will they be faithful to the end? Will they hold on to faith that God will do what He says?
In the book of Revelation, this is the crucial question. The early chapters are messages from Jesus to a number of late first century churches that probably thought Jesus would have come back already. What was God waiting for? Meanwhile, Christians were experiencing all kinds of pressure to compromise their faith, both internal and external. Some Christians were giving in. They were participating in idolatry so that they could benefit financially. Their love was growing cold, they were becoming apathetic. This is THE challenge Jesus issues: will you hold on? Will you stand firm to the end? (eg. 2:3, 2:10, 2:26) This is the crucial discipleship question for all of us today as well: as pressures mount to compromise, as the cost of faithfulness increases, will we pay it? Will we hold on in faith that God will make all things right, that He will fulfill His promises, and that the only way we can be on the right side of that is by continued trust in Him?
4. Our response: prayer
Going off of that, one of the primary expressions of this faithfulness, one of the primary manifestations of this faithfulness, one of the primary ways we are shaped and formed in this persevering faith is prayer. You’re maybe thinking that this was supposed to be a sermon on prayer, but I’ve barely talked about it. Here it is. What is the point of this parable Jesus tells? On the one hand, it’s faithfulness. But the explicit point is prayer. Luke makes that clear right at the beginning: “then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up”. They should always pray and not give up. That’s the point of the parable, it’s prayer. So given everything we’ve already looked at in regard to this parable, what do we learn about prayer?
Prayer and faith are intimately connected
First, as we just said, prayer and faith are intimately linked. Prayer keeps us awake, it keeps us in the place of faithfulness, it keeps us alert to the dangers to faithfulness around us. Think about the Garden of Gethsemane on the night that Jesus was betrayed. He spent the night in passionate prayer and asked his disciples to do the same. Instead, they fell asleep and failed the test. They scattered and abandoned Jesus when he was arrested. If we are to be faithful to the end, we must be people of prayer.
Prayer and faith are also connected because faith-driven prayer is what is pleasing to God. We pray because we trust that God will answer. The widow persists in seeking justice because she has faith that the judge will eventually rule in her favour, however unlikely it is. The same thing is true of our prayer. Leonard Ravenhill- here’s the obligatory quote from him on prayer- talks about a man who saw a light bulb for the first time and was enthralled by it. He proceeded to purchase a light bulb himself, hung it from a ceiling, and grew profoundly disappointed because it wasn’t doing what he thought it should- shine light. And of course, that was because it wasn’t connected to a power supply. Ravenhill says that prayer is like a light bulb, and God is like the power source, and it is faith that connects the two. You can utter all kinds of fancy, ornate prayers, like chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. You can pray over and over again for the same thing, like filling a room with light bulbs. But if prayer is not driven by faith, your prayer won’t do a thing. It is faith-driven prayer that God is looking for.
Prayer is battle
Second, we learn that prayer is a struggle. It is not, as we said at the beginning, about immediate gratification. The widow comes again and again to the judge for justice. She’s battling for it. That’s the sort of language that’s used. She doesn’t get her answer right away, but the battle reveals her resolve and her determination. That’s New Testament language for prayer too. Paul says of a man named Epaphras in Colossians: he “is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured” (Col. 4:12). Wrestling in prayer. It’s almost as though God wants to see our resolve by the degree to which we persevere in prayer.
Here’s how Samuel Chadwick put it a century ago:
”There is no power like that of prevailing prayer- of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat of blood…always there is the cost of passion unto blood. Such prayer prevails. It turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.”
Samuel Chadwick
Prevailing, passionate prayer. That’s the biblical pattern.
As you might know, God has put this burning passion in me for the revival of the church. I have a deep longing for the church to wake up, to be fully alive, to become fruitful once again. Here in North Vancouver and in our country as a whole, I see so much spiritual dryness, barrenness, and poverty. We live in one of the most affluent and physically abundant places in the world, and yet when it comes to the Gospel, there is dryness. And so I long for us to see the Kingdom of God break through in our city. I pray for this often, I’ve prayed for it for years, many of you have too. And I’ll be honest, I often grow discouraged and disheartened. At times, I even stop praying for it because I’ve lost heart. But one of the things that God has continually pressed on me is the need for perseverance. He has reminded me again and again of the need to keep going. He’s pressed on me that every rejection, every bit of opposition from the inside and outside, every delay in the fulfillment of this prayer, is a test. It is a test of my faithfulness. It is a test of my resolve, my determination. It is a test regarding how much I want to see revival take place. It is a test of whether or not I will continue to trust God to do this or if I will give up.
See, prayer is a battle. As I’ve tried to impart repeatedly through this series, it is not some passive thing. It is active. It is what empowers our mission, you could even say it is the mission. It is how we see the Kingdom break through and God wants us to seek Him in this persistently and boldly. As we said last week, we are storming the gates of hell and shaking the throne of grace. It is this passionate, prevailing prayer that honors him.
God answers prayer
And third, we learn that God does answer prayer. Yes, sometimes that answer is no. We ask for things selfishly, we ask for things that are not good, we ask for things that are not in line with His purposes. Sometimes, the answer is no for reasons that we can’t understand, like when we pray for healing for a loved one and they still die. Other times, He answers yes, but it is a delayed yes. We see that in the parable. We see that in Scripture. At times He delays because, as we just said, He tests our resolve. Other times He delays because there are things that need to happen that we’re not aware of. Since I was 20, I had a desire to lead a church as its pastor. There were things I understood needed to happen first, maturity that needed to be formed. When I was in my late 20s, with a graduate degree, I thought I was ready. But even then, God didn’t answer the prayer. Doors closed. I took a different role in a church than I wanted, my convictions were sharpened, and I was tested in ways that prepared me for the role I have now. God eventually answered my prayer. He fulfilled this desire in His time, not mine. But the point is, God does answer prayer.
Unlike the unjust judge, God is just. He is holy. He is good. As we talked about last week, He is a good father who wants to give us good gifts. So ask for those good gifts. Ask for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Ask for spiritual fruitfulness in your life, ask for the character of Christ to be formed in you, ask for the Kingdom to break through. Ask him repeatedly, full of faith.
He will do it, because He is a God who answers prayer. You can trust Him to do this.
