You can watch/listen to this on YouTube if you prefer: https://youtu.be/0l5hKwdy2WA
Luke 18:1-8. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2018%3A1-8&version=NLT
In many ways this is really straight forward. Luke starts by explaining that Jesus told a story to illustrate the need to pray without giving up. That’s the lesson. Don’t stop praying. Never surrender. If you need help, don’t give up. Jesus wanted us to know, the judge the widow was dealing with was a jerk. He didn’t respect God and he didn’t care about people! But even though he was an awful judge, he upheld justice because this woman was relentless. When you and I urgently need God’s help, we are praying to a good judge who loves justice, who delights in healing, helping, protecting and causing righteousness to prevail. So when we pray to our judge, we are praying in keeping with what he already wants to do. It will give him joy to answer our prayer and come to our rescue.
But let’s be real for a minute here. I have prayed for justice. I have prayed for rescue. I have asked God to do things that are completely in conformity with his character, and most of them haven’t happened the moment I asked. There are many things for which I’m still waiting for God to say yes. So, what’s up with that?
Let’s look at this again. Jesus wants us to pray and not give up. Jesus understood, and wants us to understand, that not every yes will come the first time we bring it to our judge. Jesus wants us to understand that God is not unjust. He is righteous and he cares about humans. Jesus contrasts our judge with the judge in the story. The implication is clear. If this poor woman’s idiot judge will give her justice, imagine what your judge will do. Your judge loves justice. Your judge cares about your pain.
Yet Jesus still says, “Don’t stop asking.”
I want to pull two things out of this that are consistent with what I see throughout scripture. 1. God is sovereignly working in this broken world, and 2. God wants us to trust him, to learn persistence, and to be faithful.
- God is sovereign. All that means is that he is in control. Throughout the Bible we see people doing all kinds of crazy things. Some people try to live according to his will, some seem to try very deliberately to thwart his purposes and most are just living their lives without giving much thought to him at all. Without fail, what God has decided is going to happen, happens. The prophecies about Jesus, the Messiah are a great example. Hundreds, even thousands of years before Jesus was born, God gave his people information about where he would be born, from whom he would descend, how he would live on this planet and how people would respond to him. His parents weren’t living in the place where he was supposed to be born, but God moved a Roman governor to decree a census which forced them to travel to the right town at the right time. The king of the area tried to have him killed as a baby. That didn’t work. The blind heard that the Messiah was supposed to be able to give them sight, so they came to him. Whether people were for, against or oblivious, God worked his purposes through their free choices. And he is still working that way. He is causing his will to be done without interfering with our God-given ability to freely choose to obey, ignore or defy him. When you and I are praying and asking God to do things that reflect his character and intention for humanity, he is already at work. But he is working through free humans. That takes some master-minding (is that a word?). Working through the free choices of people who often freely make stupid choices can take time. Don’t worry, he’s on it. Which leads me to
- Don’t stop praying. Jesus says, don’t give up. Be faithful in asking God to do what is within his character and plan to do. That is the faith Jesus is looking for and hoping he will find when he returns to establish his kingdom in all its fullness. Jesus wants to find people who keep believing that God wants to redeem humanity and the world. Jesus wants to find people who have faith that God is good and has good purposes and is able to accomplish them. Jesus wants us to have the faith to keep asking when we have no idea how God could find a way to say yes.
And because that is what he wants, he told this story. Be like this widow who wouldn’t stop demanding justice even though the odds were stacked against her. Pray, and pray, and pray again. Don’t stop.
