How Do I Persist in Prayer?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:05.760 | On Monday, we took a question from Rose,
00:00:09.120 | a woman who has emailed us several times over the years.
00:00:12.000 | She's emailed us the same brief question,
00:00:14.680 | how do I pray for my husband to be saved?
00:00:17.420 | It's a question from desperation
00:00:20.240 | and maybe from weariness too.
00:00:22.200 | So how does a woman, how does a wife like Rose
00:00:25.320 | not lose heart in praying for her husband over years?
00:00:28.960 | And maybe even over decades?
00:00:31.760 | Pastor John there ended his answer
00:00:33.840 | with a brief mention of Luke 18 verses one to eight,
00:00:37.800 | a parable, a great parable for those
00:00:40.000 | who need motivation to endure in prayer.
00:00:43.500 | But it's also a very odd parable.
00:00:45.560 | It has sometimes been called the parable
00:00:48.160 | of the unjust judge,
00:00:50.560 | which is where one of the problems rests.
00:00:53.280 | How and why is God likened to a godless, unjust judge?
00:00:59.280 | Because of this, we often just skirt that problem
00:01:02.880 | and we just call it preferably
00:01:05.560 | the parable of the persistent widow.
00:01:08.080 | That's cleaner.
00:01:09.280 | But no matter what we call it,
00:01:10.640 | this remains perhaps the oddest parable
00:01:13.360 | that Jesus ever told.
00:01:14.960 | Odd because of how many false correlations
00:01:17.880 | we need to untangle to understand it.
00:01:21.080 | And that's what we do today in a clip
00:01:22.660 | from a sermon preached on January 9th
00:01:25.680 | at the end of the first week of 1983.
00:01:29.320 | So way back the first week of 1983.
00:01:32.000 | Here's a very young Pastor John
00:01:34.520 | preaching during a pretty intense season
00:01:36.960 | of focused prayer for himself and for his church.
00:01:41.960 | Here's what he said.
00:01:42.920 | - It's one of the few parables to be interpreted
00:01:47.760 | right at the outset, lest we miss the point.
00:01:51.220 | Verse one of chapter 18 of Luke
00:01:53.300 | is the interpretation to the parable.
00:01:55.840 | He said, "Tell them a parable to the effect
00:01:59.520 | "that they ought always to pray and not lose heart."
00:02:04.520 | Jesus' answer to the question,
00:02:07.000 | "How can you endure to the end and be saved?"
00:02:11.120 | is pray, pray, pray,
00:02:15.960 | and don't lose heart in your praying.
00:02:18.600 | The parable goes like this.
00:02:23.200 | In a certain city, there was a judge
00:02:25.080 | who neither feared God nor regarded man,
00:02:28.020 | and there was a widow in that city
00:02:30.180 | who kept coming to him and saying,
00:02:31.720 | "Vindicate me against my adversary."
00:02:34.180 | For a while, he refused, and afterward he said,
00:02:37.940 | "Although I neither fear God nor regard man,
00:02:41.200 | "yet because this widow bothers me,
00:02:43.080 | "I'll vindicate her, or she'll wear me out
00:02:45.600 | "by this continual coming."
00:02:47.920 | Now, don't be offended that Jesus
00:02:52.400 | compares God, the Father, to an unjust judge.
00:02:57.400 | That happens several times in the Bible.
00:02:59.680 | For example, the most familiar one,
00:03:01.780 | Jesus' coming is called the coming of what in the night?
00:03:05.880 | A thief, which is not very complimentary to Jesus.
00:03:09.560 | But clearly, when the New Testament talks like that,
00:03:13.040 | it doesn't mean Jesus is a thief.
00:03:14.880 | It means that the point of comparison
00:03:16.400 | is suddenness, unexpectedness.
00:03:19.760 | So here, the point of comparison is not that God is unjust,
00:03:24.760 | but that he gives in to prevailing prayer.
00:03:30.480 | Verse seven draws out the lesson very clearly,
00:03:34.560 | which was stated in verse one,
00:03:36.480 | "And will not God vindicate his elect
00:03:39.880 | "who cry to him day and night?"
00:03:42.560 | The answer, of course, is obviously God will vindicate
00:03:46.500 | his elect who cry to him day and night,
00:03:48.800 | that is, who always pray.
00:03:51.480 | Therefore, the point of the parable is,
00:03:53.280 | cry to God day and night.
00:03:56.080 | Show yourself to be the elect
00:03:59.080 | by acting like the way the elect always act,
00:04:03.000 | cry to God day and night,
00:04:04.320 | or to use the words of verse one,
00:04:06.440 | pray always.
00:04:09.720 | Don't lose heart.
00:04:10.880 | And if you do that, you will not become like Lot's wife,
00:04:16.120 | in love with the world and turned back
00:04:17.880 | into a pillar of salt.
00:04:19.780 | You will not be left in judgment
00:04:21.960 | as one is snatched away from your home.
00:04:25.120 | You will endure in faith and love,
00:04:27.540 | and God will vindicate you when the Son of Man
00:04:30.080 | flashes from one horizon to the other.
00:04:33.560 | So always pray, and don't lose heart.
00:04:36.840 | Now, what's driving me this morning in this sermon
00:04:40.280 | is that this is the last day of a week of concerted prayer.
00:04:44.920 | So we're at the end, right?
00:04:46.240 | The end of prayer week.
00:04:48.160 | That's a dangerous place to be,
00:04:50.320 | according to this parable.
00:04:52.080 | Don't end, is what this parable is saying.
00:04:55.560 | If we end praying, we're in trouble, deep trouble.
00:05:00.000 | Some of us this week have had a great time.
00:05:02.240 | I've prayed more hours in the first week of 83
00:05:05.260 | than any week in my life, and many of you have too.
00:05:09.640 | Now what?
00:05:12.360 | The word of Jesus to us this morning is don't stop praying.
00:05:17.200 | Don't peter out.
00:05:18.600 | Don't be fickle.
00:05:19.840 | Always, always, always pray.
00:05:23.160 | Cry to God day and night.
00:05:26.080 | Here's the way Peter put it in his first letter.
00:05:29.680 | The end of all things as at hand.
00:05:33.480 | Therefore, be sane and sober for your prayers.
00:05:41.100 | The closer the end draws near,
00:05:43.200 | the more threat against the warmth of the faith
00:05:46.160 | of the church, and the greater the need
00:05:48.240 | for persevering prayer.
00:05:50.560 | The pressures of worldliness will be so great
00:05:52.960 | as the end draws near that only a few,
00:05:56.240 | Jesus said, most men's love will grow cold.
00:05:59.840 | Only a few will make it.
00:06:03.360 | I hope we're among the number.
00:06:05.620 | Now how does this parable, how does this parable
00:06:09.440 | help us and encourage us to pray continually?
00:06:13.500 | The widow comes to an unjust judge
00:06:16.120 | and she pleads for help.
00:06:17.400 | Evidently, she's being oppressed by some rascal
00:06:21.680 | and she's helpless, and she asks the judge,
00:06:24.860 | vindicate me, help me, tell him to stop that.
00:06:28.620 | And that's us, right?
00:06:31.600 | The widow, weak, poor, no husband to stand up for her.
00:06:35.420 | Her only recourse, the judge, even though he's unjust,
00:06:38.260 | and our only recourse, God.
00:06:42.260 | Now the argument of the parable is not,
00:06:45.700 | well, if you can get on the case of the judge long enough,
00:06:50.660 | he'll try to get you off his back by vindicating you.
00:06:54.340 | Therefore, if you get on God's case long enough,
00:06:58.500 | then to get you off his back, he will vindicate you.
00:07:02.340 | You could interpret the parable that way,
00:07:04.660 | but there are two reasons why you shouldn't.
00:07:08.020 | The first is that that would contradict clearly Luke 12,
00:07:11.740 | 32, where it says, "It is your father's good pleasure
00:07:15.980 | to give you the kingdom."
00:07:17.700 | He's not reneging on any promises.
00:07:20.780 | He's just eager to give you the kingdom.
00:07:23.620 | But the main reason why we shouldn't construe the parable
00:07:27.780 | that way is that there are two clues right here
00:07:30.660 | in the parable for the fact that God isn't like that judge.
00:07:35.740 | Notice in verse 2, "This judge neither feared God
00:07:40.580 | nor regarded man."
00:07:42.860 | And those two things are repeated in verse 4,
00:07:46.180 | "Though I neither fear God nor regard man,
00:07:50.300 | yet I will vindicate her."
00:07:53.860 | Now, when it says, "Yet I will vindicate her,"
00:07:58.220 | that must mean that fearing God or not fearing God
00:08:03.260 | and not regarding men are big obstacles to helping the widow.
00:08:09.260 | Right?
00:08:10.700 | If you don't fear God, it's an obstacle
00:08:12.620 | to get over to help her.
00:08:14.180 | He gets over it by ulterior motives.
00:08:17.580 | But notice first, he doesn't fear God.
00:08:21.660 | And if fearing God is an obstacle to helping the widow,
00:08:26.620 | then presumably, if you did fear God,
00:08:29.540 | you would incline naturally to help the widow.
00:08:31.740 | Right?
00:08:32.820 | That must mean that God isn't at all like this judge.
00:08:38.260 | Because if he inclines the people who fear him
00:08:42.340 | to give to the widow liberally and quickly,
00:08:47.140 | he must be that kind of God.
00:08:49.580 | And so by saying that this judge doesn't fear God
00:08:53.020 | and therefore doesn't answer her readily,
00:08:56.100 | he shows that God isn't at all like the unjust judge.
00:08:58.940 | And so the argument of the parable
00:09:00.540 | is an argument from lesser to greater.
00:09:03.500 | If by knocking on the door of the judge who
00:09:07.340 | doesn't have an ounce of justice in his body,
00:09:11.580 | you can still get your answer, how much more by knocking
00:09:16.580 | on God's door continually will you most certainly be answered?
00:09:21.460 | Because he's not like a judge at all.
00:09:24.260 | The second thing it says about the judge
00:09:26.300 | is that he has no regard for man.
00:09:31.540 | Now, we need to ask, since he doesn't know this widow
00:09:37.740 | and therefore doesn't care about her at all, has no regard to her,
00:09:40.900 | is God like that?
00:09:42.660 | When we approach him and pray to him,
00:09:46.100 | verse 7 makes it very, very clear that that's not the case.
00:09:49.940 | Because verse 7 says, Jesus says,
00:09:53.260 | "And will not God vindicate his elect?"
00:10:00.300 | When they cry to him night and day, see that word "elect"?
00:10:05.300 | That's a dynamite word.
00:10:07.820 | That means when we come to God and pray to him,
00:10:12.740 | we're not coming like a stranger, a widow whom
00:10:16.060 | he doesn't know or care about.
00:10:18.700 | He has chosen us, elected us, set his favor upon us,
00:10:24.780 | adopted us into his family, made us his children.
00:10:28.020 | When we knock on the door and say, it's me,
00:10:31.620 | he's very different than when a strange widow knocks
00:10:34.900 | on an unjust judge's door and says, it's me.
00:10:37.940 | Who?
00:10:39.380 | God knows our voice.
00:10:41.180 | We're his children.
00:10:42.380 | We're the chosen.
00:10:43.460 | We're the elect.
00:10:45.140 | And therefore, Jesus argues, same from lesser to greater,
00:10:50.020 | if an unjust judge who has a stranger whom he doesn't care
00:10:54.740 | about at all knocking on his door will give in to her,
00:10:59.420 | how much more will God, who not only knows us but chose us,
00:11:07.060 | loves us, adopts us readily and lovingly answer our request?
00:11:13.700 | So the parable is intended to encourage
00:11:17.500 | us to get on with the business of praying
00:11:21.380 | because we have such a hopeful prospect of being answered.
00:11:25.580 | When Jesus asks at the end of the parable now in verse 8,
00:11:29.740 | "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
00:11:34.260 | Coming at the end of this parable,
00:11:36.340 | that could be also phrased like this.
00:11:40.420 | When the Son of Man comes, will he
00:11:42.300 | find that we have kept praying or not?
00:11:49.060 | Evidently, in Jesus' mind, prayer and faith
00:11:54.140 | stand and fall together.
00:11:57.780 | Yeah, that's a fascinating connection with verse 8
00:12:00.140 | in the parable.
00:12:00.860 | Persistent prayer and enduring faith
00:12:03.860 | are correlated as the same thing.
00:12:06.460 | Persistent prayer and enduring faith
00:12:09.580 | are correlated as basically the same thing.
00:12:14.340 | Such an important parable to understand.
00:12:16.460 | That was from John Piper's sermon
00:12:17.980 | preached on January 9, 1983, titled "Always Pray and Do Not
00:12:24.260 | Lose Heart."
00:12:26.980 | Thanks for listening.
00:12:27.860 | Today, I am your host, Tony Reike,
00:12:29.980 | and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John
00:12:32.540 | when we return on Friday to close out this week.
00:12:36.540 | We'll see you then.
00:12:38.420 | [ Silence ]
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