The Theology of Persistent Prayer, Part 1 | Keep Praying!

Luke 18:6-8

You can turn back to Luke 18 in your Bibles, and see what our Lord wants us to learn from the parable of the widow who prevailed against an unjust judge. We know what this parable is about because Luke told us in Luke 18:1 that Jesus told the parable “that we ought to always pray and not lose heart,” mindful of our Lord’s imminent return, whether it’s for us as the church as he comes to rapture the church, or as he’s speaking of here in this context, speaking of the Parousia, the second coming of Christ, that’s in view here.

The disciples of the Lord, at any time, in any age, in whatever situation, they should always keep on praying, in all circumstances, at all times, in all situations, in every season of life, when facing any trial and in response to any joy or any sorrow. Why must this point be made? Why must we hear this instruction from our Lord? Well, because there are certain circumstances, and there are certain situations, and various kinds of trials, and particular forms of opposition that can tempt Christians to give up hope, to become discouraged, to shrink back from doing our duty.

In a word, we’re tempted, and in many and various ways, tempted to lose heart, as is the verb there, to lose heart, to become discouraged. When we lose heart, when we relax our efforts, when we fail to be watchful, fail to be prayerful, more sin is sure to follow. David chose not to go to war with his troops, and while relaxing at the palace, he was not prayerful, but he became lustful, committed adultery with the wife of a war hero, Uriah, whom he later had murdered.

Elijah, having won great, amazing victory on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal, and praying fervently at that time, but hearing the threats of the wicked Queen Jezebel, he was not prayerful, but fearful, and he fled for his life. Peter, he failed to watch and pray, even though the Lord told him on the night of his betrayal, “Watch and pray that you do not enter into temptation.” Peter failed to do that, and sure enough, within a few hours he denied even knowing his Lord and Savior.

If you see a lot of sin in your life, look back to your heart and whether or not it’s become discouraged, whether or not you have lost heart in fighting for the faith. Think about whether you have become enamored with the world, which is another form of a Christian losing heart. This world that God saved you from, the sin that God saved you from, why would that ever have any attraction to you?

Remember back when you were saved from it? Remember how much you rejoiced to be delivered from sin, delivered from the penalty of sin and the power of sin, and to have a hope at one day being delivered from the very presence of sin? Remember that time? Why is it that your heart has been adrift? Could it not be because you’ve become discouraged, because you’ve grown tired of waiting?

Some today, they’re having to live through the consequences of a culture that is shedding its Judeo-Christian heritage as fast as possible, and many today are willing to treat Christians unjustly. Some of our own church members have experienced that very thing, whether in family situations or in the workplace or both. And in that moment when the conflict that they face because of their Christian beliefs, when that conflict is acute, when it’s focused, prayer is natural. Prayer comes easily to cry out to God in that moment. But when that trial continues, year after year after year, when the ostracizing, when the rejection, when the injustice have become normalized, that’s the test of prayerfulness. That’s the test of discouragement and losing heart. Will you remain steadfast and always prayerful even when the heat’s not on?

And that’s why Jesus gives this parable, because he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. He knows that his extended physical absence means a trial for his people, for us, as we long to see just one of the days of the Son of Man and we don’t see it. And so he tells us a parable to the effect that we ought always to pray and not to lose heart. Look at the verses again, starting in verse 2. “Jesus said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, “Give me justice against my adversary.” And for a while he refused. But afterward he said to himself, “Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.”’”

That’s the story; we looked at that last time. We said that Jesus has really told the ultimate David-and-Goliath story. This is the widow who beat the judge. Against all odds the tables were turned. This is a man who epitomizes self-sufficiency. Perched above everyone else in this unteachable seat of authority, with power at his disposal, there’s no sense of duty in his heart. There are no qualms of conscience about his perverting justice.

This man, inflexible and immovable as he is, he is overcome by the persistent pleas of the weakest member of that society, a helpless widow. And he admits defeat, there, in verse 5. She’s really getting to me. She is getting to me, this, this widow, and I fear that in the near future she’s going to beat me down by her continual persistence. I’m going to change my mind. She won.

As we come to verse 6, Luke steps in as narrator, and he creates a very brief break in the story to remind us who it is who’s speaking. “And the Lord said.” Kurios. This is not just like a reminder in the sense that we the readers, he assumes that we’ve forgotten that fact. This is a reminder in the sense that he wants to call it to our attention, to raise it to our consciousness in this moment, to remind us of the stature of Jesus, the stature of this person to whom we are listening, that he is the Lord. And this, what follows, this is our Master’s summons to us.

So Luke prepares us for the solemnity of the command that’s about to come out of our Lord’s mouth. He calls us here to stop, reflect, pay attention. And then the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge is saying.” That’s a command, not a suggestion. “Hear what the unrighteous judge says,” aorist imperative, which is a tense and mood of a verb that indicates solemnity. There’s a heightened sense of urgency. Jesus wants us to stop what we’re doing, listen carefully, hear what this unrighteous judge is saying. It’s Luke that wants us to be mindful about who it is who’s speaking, and that it’s the Lord who has said this.

Three points in today’s outline. The first and third points are rather short because the weight really is on the Lord’s instruction. But the first point, it has to be, that for us to do exactly what the Lord has commanded us to do, here, right? To go back and listen, to pay close attention to what the unrighteous judge said.

So first point, an acknowledgement of our Lord’s lordship over us, the first point is, number one, the judge’s confession. Number one: the judge’s confession. And we’re familiar with this because we studied this and we looked at verses 4-5 and considered that in detail, but now we’ll consider it just a little bit more carefully with some reflection about the point here, that this is to encourage us to be persistent in prayer.

Here’s what he said, “Though I neither fear God nor respect man.” In other words, though I’m shameless in my own community, I have no sense of shame. I don’t care what people think about me. I have no regard whatsoever for what people think about me. So I’ve got no regard for God or man. I don’t have a sense of any accountability before him. I don’t really care what his laws are, what his will is. It’s my sense of what I want that charts the course of my life, without regard for God and his accountability, without regard for man and their stupid opinions. I don’t care. Guys, you don’t want to face him in court.

Look what follows, though, “And yet, because this widow keeps bothering me, I’ll give her justice.” That just, whimsically flips on his position. “I’ll give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.” What’s he saying? What is he saying, here? Several things, and none of them good, by the way. Not one commendable thought in this guy’s head.

But the point that Jesus is making as we consider the judge’s words, and he’s basically gave the judge his words, right? So he’s the one telling the story. He could say it however he wants to. But as we consider these words, Jesus’ point is just, is that we would see how utterly opposite this judge is to our God. Is that not obvious? That’s what he wants us to see. And Jesus could not have portrayed a starker contrast here.

So first, this judge, by admitting, no, it, stronger than that, isn’t it? He’s boasting here about this, that “I neither fear God nor respect man.” When he says that, when he makes that boast, what he’s really saying is, I love no one. I don’t care what you think about it. I love no one. I have no love at all in my heart for anybody but me, which is why he has such a corrupt view of his role as a judge.

He has failed to see this great privilege that God has conferred upon him, this role that God has given him to dispense justice, to be an advocate for God’s righteousness. He fails to see the honorable stewardship he’s been given to protect an environment that would show mercy in society, that would exercise compassion in society. In order to have compassion in society, you must have justice.

I’m thankful that there are still a few judges in our nation that think this way, but many of them do not. That’s why no social justice effort can ever, ever succeed in showing mercy or compassion in society, because the advocates of justice and compassion understand neither justice nor compassion in our time. Abandoning God’s righteous law, they are ignorant of all true justice, which creates an environment not for compassion and mercy in society, but for rapacious wolves to take advantage of people. That’s exactly what we see happening.

But this judge that Jesus has portrayed for us, this man’s heart, we can see, and he’s boasting about it, his heart is cold, it’s dead, it’s loveless. No goodness comes out of him, no beneficence. There’s no charity, there’s no generosity, there’s no benevolence. Why? Because when love, when goodness are absent, justice is perverted to injustice, and all mercy fails. But when we pray, when we pray, we go to a higher court. When we pray, when we plea for justice, when we cry out to God, we come to the author of justice itself.

Second thing the judge reveals here in verse 5, he reveals what motivated his change of posture toward the widow. It’s because “this widow keeps bothering me.” What happened here? What happened to this guy? I mean, he was hard as granite, and now he melts away. What happened to him? Why was he so firm, so inflexible and so proud about it, and now he just flips?

What compelled him? It wasn’t his merc, it wasn’t mercy for an unjustly treated, suffering widow. It wasn’t even about principle: the merits of her case or the just nature of her cause. Quite simply, the judge himself, he himself was affected in a negative way, and he didn’t like it. His firmest, most deeply held, even boasted-about convictions, all be it unrighteous convictions, but they were fixed nonetheless, that he doesn’t fear God, that he doesn’t feel shame in the face of other people. He’s willing to abandon his principles in a moment. He’s willing to compromise what he himself has said defines him. This man is willing to act inconsistently with his own core values, you might say. He’s willing to reshape his identity, in a moment, just to make an irritation go away. That’s everybody. That’s every single human being, save one: our Lord and Savior.

Listen, when we pray, when we, God’s people pray, when we cry out for justice, we come to the immutable, never-changing God. That’s good news. We come to the true and living God, the one who is impassable, the one who is not affected. He’s not swayed or moved upon by human emotion, by changing feelings. He is always and perfectly fixed in his posture toward justice because he is righteous.

Third thing we can see here, that when the judge confesses what he hopes to avoid, “I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming,” what he has just admitted, there, is a confession of ultimate human weakness. And he’s not wrong on that count. He’s not wrong. In fact, this is where he’s finally being somewhat honest with himself.

He wanted to think of himself as untouchable, beyond accountability, above all authority. He’s all powerful, almighty, immovable. He’s acted like a god among men, living high above them all, perched on an elevated plane, but in the end he is really only a man. He has to admit and confess that he is finite. He’s come to realize that his strength has a limit. He’s got to acknowledge that he is temporal, time-bound. He’s looking ahead to the future and only a few years left for him and realizing, Do I want to spend it, really, being harangued by this woman?

He’s temporal. He’s subject to time. He’s unable to outlast this woman. Why? Because she’s armed with a righteous cause. She’s not going away. The strength that he thought he possessed to withstand her appeals, limited by human weakness, the strength of the woman’s will has overcome his own strength for his own personal interest.

But God is not a human being. He is not at all a human being. He’s not subject to any limitation. And when we pray, we come to the God whose justice is as immutable as his essence. We come to the God who is without body parts or passions. He doesn’t have a body that changes like ours. He doesn’t have parts. He’s not composed of parts and stitched together by anything. Doesn’t have passions that can be changed or move or wax strong or weak. He can never be moved from his righteousness and his compassion. We come to the God who is all powerful. He’s never compromised by any weakness whatsoever, by any limitation. He’s never susceptible to being overcome, but always able to execute justice and truth. Always. He can make a decision for justice and truth, and he can execute on that decision without hindrance.

So we’ve heard what the unrighteous judge has to say. As we come to our second point in our outline, having heard what that judge has said, let’s now see how our Lord’s instruction promotes and encourages a godly practice of persistence in prayer. Number two, number two, the Lord’s instruction. The Lord’s instruction. This is where we want to spend the bulk of our time. So if you think the point’s going along, and you’re worried about the time, fear not, little flock. Your Lord’s compassion doesn’t change toward you. He will slay this preacher when the time comes.

The Lord’s instruction, number two, the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says,” verse 7, “and will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.” Strong, strong assurance in just a few sentences. It’s amazing, the conciseness of Jesus. I mean, for a preacher who’s long-winded, the concision with which our Lord encourages and strengthens us is just, it’s beyond understanding. It gives us strong assurance here to keep on praying, never to lose heart, never to give way to discouragement, and he grounds his instruction, here, in God.

He grounds the instruction in theology proper, teaching us about the nature of God. What other, how, how firmer of assurance could you ever find than one that’s grounded in the unchanging God? His argument takes the kind of the classic form, arguing from the lesser to the greater. If this, then how much more this? If an intractable, obstinate, unjust human judge is finally persuaded to change, to grant the persistent appeals of a woman he doesn’t know, whom he does not care about, how much more will the unchanging God grant justice to his people, whom he does know, whom, indeed, he has foreknown, those whom he does love?

Let me put it this way, those for whom he could not care about more. Why couldn’t he care more? Because he never changes. His care for us is top-shelf perfect, not able to move in any direction upward because it’s already there. He cares. He loves. It’s already perfect. He couldn’t care more for us than he does.

Pretty simple point that Jesus is making here, impossible to miss. But I want to highlight several ways that Jesus, he’s made this point for us more emphatic here, that we might be greatly, deeply encouraged to keep on praying, never, ever to lose heart, to forsake all sinning and give ourselves wholly and completely to the Lord in prayer and to the Lord’s work.

First assurance, unlike the judge in the parable, we said that justice is a matter of God’s character because justice is an attribute of his being. Justice is an attribute of God’s being. That’s the first assurance.

Jesus, his instruction here in the form of a rhetorical question at the beginning of verse 7, a rhetorical question, meaning he asks, it’s like parents ask these questions all the time. Didn’t I tell you to clean this room? You know, that’s not demanding an answer. It’s demanding action, right? So, rhetorical question, and he uses the grammar here to make this point very strong, emphatic. He’s almost shouting his affirmation: God will grant justice!

God’s not at all like the unjust judge. He’s not a human being for whom justice is flexible. It’s not a, a Gumby figure that can be turned around and stretched and perverted and bent out of shape for the sake of personal gain. God is the very standard of righteousness itself. His law is the perfect rule. His good and loving character is perfect, so he always does what conforms to righteousness, and he does so without any partiality.

So in light of the infinite distance that exists in comparing an unjust judge, the lowest of low human beings, to this infinitely incomparably just Judge of the earth, Jesus puts this in a rhetorical question, and the form of the question expects a negative answer. Will not God vindicate his elect? Will he not give justice to his elect? In other words, God won’t fail to give justice to his elect, will he? By no means! The grammar, here, is emphatic, emphatic negation, in fact. It’s the strong, it’s, here in this sentence, is the absolute strongest way to negate something in the Greek language.

Jesus doesn’t just deny the reality that God might fail to vindicate his elect. It’s the subjunctive mood, so he’s denying the very potentiality of such a thing, that God would fail to vindicate his elect. He rules out even the idea that God would not give justice. It’s an impossibility, so take it out of the realm of, of possibility. It’s up there with unicorns and things like that. Can’t happen.

Why is he so emphatic about this? Why is he so emphatic? Because justice is an act of the divine character. Because righteousness is an attribute of God’s essence, of God’s being. God’s character does not change because his being never changes. If it changes one iota, not only God but everything in existence disappears. His essence cannot change.

And why is he emphatic about this? Because you and I, beloved, forget this all the time. We forget. We are mutable. God is immutable. We change all the time, forget things all the time, need to be reminded of things all the time. That’s why we come to worship every single week, that we might be reminded of the things that we know and have learned to be true. God never changes. He’s immutable. We change all the time, and we forget that, the fact that God is like this, and this is where we need to ground our praying, ground all of our believing, that we might be persistent and keep on, and be faithful in prayer.

So starting out with the strongest of emphatic denials based upon the immutable character of God, it may seem that Jesus couldn’t add anything further, here, to assure us that God will vindicate his people. I mean, if, if this were enough, if he stopped here, that would be enough for us. The essence of God guarantees justice, but Jesus goes on to give further assurance to us, as if he cares for us.

Second, Jesus tells us not only is God’s character immutable and his justice, therefore, is immutable; he tells us that God takes action. God takes action. The way that Jesus has phrased this, he goes further than telling us that God will decide the case in the favor of his elect, which would be the verb krino. Krino, meaning to judge, to decide. Jesus uses the verb poieo, which means to do, to make, to happen, to make happen. So the verb assumes, yes, that there’s been a decision of justice. But it goes further to include the execution of justice, the doing of justice. Yeah, God is going to make a just judgment. You can be guaranteed of that based on his immutability.

You also have to know that his justice doesn’t just mean a decision in the mind; it means the execution in reality. They are combined. As immutable as his decision of justice is, is just as immutable as his behavior of justice. He will carry out the justice that his righteous decision calls for, whether it’s remunerative justice, which is rewarding the righteous, or retributive justice, which means punishing the unrighteous. Whatever justice calls for, that he will do. God is sure to do what justice demands. He must act in perfect accord with his unchanging nature, with the essence of who he is.

Again, this is in contrast to the unjust judge. After every, every single one of this woman’s appeals, and we know that this widow came time and time again, month after month, he was dragging his feet. He’s refusing to hear her case. Even when he’s finally overcome by her persistence, though, all we get from him in his description is the intent to give justice. We don’t actually see it executed, do we? We see the confession that he will give justice, but that’s not the way of God. Jesus assures us that the judge of all the earth, he will see it through. He will give justice; he will do justice. He will execute justice for his elect.

First, justice is a matter of God’s essence. It’s his very being, which means, second, God will take action. He will do what justice demands because he’s perfectly unchangeable in his righteousness, which brings us to a third assurance from our Lord, here, a third assurance, that God has already taken action and in our favor. He’s taken action already in our favor. He has done justice in our favor.

We see this in the way that Jesus identifies his true disciples, here, as God’s elect. “Will not God give justice to his elect?” This word eklectos, it shows up in Luke’s writing only two times, and both of them in this Gospel. But here in Luke 18:7, the word eklectos designates God’s people as chosen. This is a select group of particular people whom he has decided to call his own from before the foundation of the world.

The elect are, according to Ephesians 4:1, “those whom God has chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world, to be wholly and blameless before him.” The elect are the special possession of the father, and they are chosen specifically to bring praise to his glorious grace, Ephesians 1:6. The father chose to give this elect people to his son as a gift, and Jesus referred to that reality several times in John’s Gospel.

In fact, I think this is something that thrilled the soul of our Lord and Savior almost more than any other thing, is to see the father’s love for him in giving him this people, whom he would then go and redeem and then give back to the father. That entire reality of the whole scope of redemptive history is in his heart and in his mind and fueling him as he is rejected by the world, rejected by his own people, the Jews. As he’s rejected and beaten and tortured and suffers and is crucified on the cross, it’s for that joy that was set before him that he endured the cross, despised the shame, and has now sat down at the right hand of God and is interceding for these very people, the elect.

So the father chose to give this elect people to his son. He gave his son the apostles, and then extending out from them, he gave all who would ever believe through the gospel that the apostles preached. Jesus revealed this. You can turn, here, if you want to, John chapter 17. He revealed these things in his high priestly prayer, oftentimes in his gospel, but certainly in his high priestly prayer. John reveals this. In John 17:6 Jesus says, “I have revealed your name to the men whom you have given me from the world, whom you gave me from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”

John 17:9, “I pray for them. I’m not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, because they are yours.” John 17:20, “I pray not only for these, but also for all those who believe in me through their message.” All those who believe in the gospel, they’re in this group, too. Then John 17:24, “Father, I desire those you have given me,” that is, the elect, “to be with me where I am, and then they will see my glory, which you have given to me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.”

“Jesus said,” John 6:37, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.” Again, unchanging realities from an unchanging God. Immutably certain. You couldn’t guarantee it more strongly than this. John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

The father chose an elect people from before the foundation of the world. He chose to give them to his son as a precious possession, that the son would redeem this people for himself, and then give them back to the father, to the father’s glory, to the praise of his glorious grace. So the elect will come to Christ, not on their own ability, not by their own initiative, not because of their own merit, not because they’re so smart, but because the father acts on his own initiative, and he draws them to Christ that they would believe and be saved.

So God has already acted, big time, for his elect people, whom the father has chosen for himself, whom he has given to his son. These elect have been justified freely by his grace, Romans 3:24, “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” They are justified. Justified. Forgiven of their sins, yes, but more than that, declared righteous in Christ by the Judge himself. “So there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8:1.

Later in that great chapter, Romans chapter 8:29, Paul writes this; he says, “For those whom God foreknew.” These people that he calls his elect, his chosen possession, he foreknew them. That’s a verb that actually talks about strong, intimate familiarity. He doesn’t look down the corridors of time and see who makes a decision for Jesus, who prays a prayer, who walks an aisle, who gets baptized, who goes to church a lot, and say, you know what, those are good, religious people. I’m going to get them on my team.

That is not the way this works. Foreknowledge is to know beforehand and know in an intimate, familiar way. “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” marked out beforehand, their, their whole path circumscribed and set by the father. “Predestined them to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he,” that is, the son, “might be the first-born among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, these ones he also called.”

There’s a calling that comes in time and space for each and every one of us. It’s not the same for all of us. It’s the same gospel. It’s the same ordo salutis, the same order of salvation that happens to each and every one of us. The theology is the same. The truths are the same. The gospel is the same. All of us having different experiences.

It’s one of the things I love about the baptism services we have here, to hear these people say all the same gospel, all the same truths, everything through different backgrounds, different culture, different people, different, different ages, different perspectives. God is so good in how he does this. He calls them. “Those whom he called,” it says there, “he also justified.” He also declared them righteous.