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"Prayer
and Parable" February
3, 2002 Rev. Dr. John Ward Then Jesus told them a parable about their need
to pray always and not to lose heart. He
said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had
respect for people. In that city
there was a widow who kept coming to him saying, 'Grant me justice against my
opponent.' For a while he refused;
but later said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for
anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so
that she may not wear me out by continually coming.' " The Lord said,
"Listen to what the unjust judge say.
And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and
night? Will he delay long in
helping them? I tell you, he will
quickly grant justice to them. And
yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Luke 18:1-8 I want to remind you that we're on page 81 in the pew Bibles, and I
invite you to look along as we use this parable on prayer as the outline for the
sermon this morning. We'll also
look at a couple verses out of Matthew. I'll
direct you to that in a little bit. In our adult nurture courses, both in the evening and in the
morning in January--this is in a sense a summary of what I had the opportunity
to teach. I co-taught a class on
prayer during our January Discipleship Seminars Sunday evenings and at the same
time on Sunday mornings had the opportunity to teach our adult nurture classes
on the parables. So in a sense for
me it was dear to my heart to choose this particular passage because it's a
parable on prayer, and for me it's a chance to kind of wrap up what's been on my
mind and my heart to teach the members of our church. And I get a chance to do
that with you now. As Joel read for us, we have what is called, "The parable . .
."--it says in the subheading of our Bibles, "The parable of the widow
and the unjust judge." It's a
parable specifically on prayer. Now,
I want to go over once again what a parable is and what prayer is so we have the
proper paradigm in which to understand this passage.
A parable again, for those of you who were part of the class and those of
you who were not, we identified a parable in its most basic form as a small
story with a rather large point. A
small story with a rather large point. That's
our beginning statement. Then we go
deep theologically to understand what these parables are about, and here's one
of the definitions we came up with: Jesus'
parables are not nice stories with a simple moral end.
In other words, they're not like an allegory, or an illustration, or like
metaphor, or a simile. They're
something different. They're
something more powerful. And
they're not just, as I said, nice stories with a simple moral end.
They summon us to a decision. They
summon us to a decision, and the decision relates not only to the truth of the
parable itself, but to the Person who is teaching by this means.
In other words, we're to understand our relationship with God
through Christ Jesus as He teaches these parables. We really saw this come to play as we were dealing with the
particular Kingdom parables in the gospels.
This isn't particularly a "Kingdom parable," although the very
last question has to do with the coming of the Kingdom.
And because of that, I'd like to give you a bit of a definition of a
Kingdom parable as well, and this is what we learned:
The great redemptive act of God realized in the Person, ministry, and
teaching of Jesus Christ, is what these parables are about.
Parables of the Kingdom of God, as Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God
is at hand," is about the great redemptive act of God in the Person, life,
work, death, resurrection, and sending of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.
In Christ, the Kingdom of God had come, has come, was here, is
still here. It's not something
we're looking forward to only at the end. Although
its final summation will occur when Christ comes again, He proclaimed that the
Kingdom of God is here and now, calling us to participation in it, for Christ
brought His Kingdom business--God's Kingdom business--to earth upon His act of
reconciliation. The parables are to
be understood in the setting of the Kingdom now realized.
So that's the definition of parable. Now for a definition of prayer.
Quite often we think, "Well, prayer ought to be easily
defined," but quite often we have problems with understanding just what
prayer is and how it works. Prayer
is simply--in our first, simple definition--is communication with God.
Prayer is simply communication with God.
Yet our better definition--our most theological definition--in fact, it's
the definition that we use in our Alpha course is this:
Prayer is relationship, not ritual.
Relationship, not ritual. Understand
who God is and who God wishes to be known as.
He wishes to be known as our Heavenly Father.
That indicates a relationship. Not
God Almighty, far away in heaven, but our Heavenly Father.
Jesus told us to call upon Him as "Abba," which in Aramaic
means "Daddy." In other words, we're to see our God as a Heavenly Parent and
ourselves as a child in need of such a God, desiring of such a relationship with
this God, and a God who is indeed willing to give it in perfect form,
hyper-parental form. As we
understand our own relationship with our parents, some of us might have had good
relationships, some of us had less than that.
All of us inside, I think, know what we would have wanted from our
parents, no matter what they gave us. We
have to begin to understand, then, the perfectness of God as our Heavenly
Parent, who desires to care for us and calls us to call upon Him in a
relationship form. Jesus Christ came to earth. Christ
came down to reconcile us. He came
in relationship. And so He also
promises the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, available to every person who claims
Christ as Lord. And the Holy Spirit
is that which is the giver of truth. Jesus
called Him the "Comforter." He resides inside us, that is, in relationship as well.
And so prayer is an act of communication to build the ongoing
relationship between God and us. I want you think about those two things--about what a parable is
and about what prayer is--and use those as our paradigms for understanding this
particular statement by Jesus, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge.
This is probably one of the most misunderstood parables in Scripture because too
often people want to make an allegory out of it and they want to say,
"Let's see . . . the widow must be who we are, and the unjust judge must be
who God is." But nothing could
be further from the truth! In fact,
this is an "anti-allegory"! This
is a parable about who God is for us. Let's
look through this once again: Jesus told them a parable about their need to
pray always and not to lose heart. So here we have a brief explanation as to what this parable is
going to be about. Jesus has not
specifically explained that, but Luke does.
Luke sees it and he explains it ahead of time, and begins to tell it,
probably because it's so easily misunderstood.
He said: In a certain city there was a judge who neither
feared God nor respected people. Here was a man who earned his way in, but he was a judge to the
Hebrews, yet he really did not care for God.
He cared more for his own relationships and his own prestige.
He didn't really care for people. He
was in it for the money. If he had
a license plate on the back of his car, it would have said "KICKBACK."
That would have been his personalized plate! In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him saying,
"Grant me justice against my opponent." Remember that the people with the least amount of rights in those
days were women, and children, and aliens, or strangers in the land.
This is why God, being such a righteous God, way in the beginning of
Levitical law, as He was preparing for the Hebrew people to go to the promised
land, said that we are to love God, and we are also to make sure, even though
they have no property rights (no legal rights) we were to care for the orphan,
the widow, and the alien in the land. That's
old Levitical law that Christ Himself was wanting to continue to tell us--that
we are to continue to love those who are without, the least.
So as Jesus told this parable and He used the story of a widow.
The hearers understood that here was a person who was powerless.
She was a widow. She had no
rights, and she had no husband who would be the head of the household for her.
Apparently she did not have children because they would have taken care
of her, so she's coming to a judge. All
she has is her own power, her own ability to come and pester this judge.
All she has is a judge who doesn't care for her or for anyone, and does
not even have the care of God so that she cannot even say to him, "Remember
the Levitical law, judge. You're to
care for me." He cares neither
for man nor for God, he says. We
continue on here. Verse 4. For a while, the judge refused; but later he said to himself [I
love this! It's stated secondly, as
Jesus tells it] "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone.
[Isn't that proud? "Though
I really shouldn't grant your wish because I really don't want to . . ."] Yet because this widow keeps bothering me I will grant her
justice so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.
[In other words, she pestered him until he finally got sick of it and
finally yelled outside his chambers said, "Somebody do something for this
woman! She is tiring me out.
Though I am a man of great pride in my position, I don't care for anyone.
She's bugging me. Let's just get it over with."] Now, if this was an allegory, you wouldn't want it to be one about
a relationship and praying, which was the introduction to this particular
passage! We are not like the widow,
and God is not like the judge. Let's
continue on. Verse 6: And the Lord said, "Listen
to what the unjust judge says ." [And
maybe for us it would be better to understand the word "yet" rather
than the word "and."] Yet
will not God grant justice to His chosen ones who cry out day and night?
Will he delay long in helping them?
I tell you, He will quickly grant justice to them.
And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? We'll put that last verse aside for a moment.
That's our indication of this being a Kingdom parable.
We are not like the widow, because Jesus said, "Will not God grant
justice to His chosen ones?" You
and I, as we believe in Christ as Lord and Savior--we are taking on Christ, we
are becoming like His brothers and sisters.
We are then, as Paul writes, adopted children of the Kingdom.
Adopted children, being just like the son, receive the inheritance
rights. And so as we trust in God,
we are indeed the chosen ones, not out of anything we've done on our own merit.
We know that. But at the
same time, being justified in Christ, we're not like the widow.
We're not left alone and we're not left to our own means. This widow had nothing left.
All she could do was pull herself up by her own straps.
(I was going to say "bootstraps," but that doesn't work well
with a widow, does it?) She
had to use her own means. And she
said, "The only thing I have is myself and I'm going to go, and I'm going
to keep going." Now, we reward that behavior in our minds, because at least the
woman has the wherewithal not to give up, but I do not want you to get stuck in
rewarding that action alone, because you and I do not have action that we have
to depend upon because we depend upon our Heavenly Father instead, who promises
to be with us so that we do not have to take matters into our own hands.
Too often men and women--every one of us--think that in order for us to
get something done, it depends upon us wholly.
We try to get ahead of God to do what we want.
God loves us enough to pull us back and to say, "Why don't you let
me be God for a while?" There's
a little bit of that right here. Let
God be God of our lives, and let us trust in Him.
Because we are not widows. We
are not orphans. We are not
strangers. We are the children of
God. And we have a God who is not
like the unjust judge here. Quite
the opposite: We have a God who
loves us, we have a God who cares for us, and a God who desires to give us good
things, so that when we pray to God, we're praying in relationship to God. I want to move us over into Matthew's gospel.
I'd like you to turn in your pew Bibles, starting at page 5.
We're going to be talking once again about prayer, and we'll be reading
from Matthew chapter 6, starting at verse 5.
If prayer is communication and beyond that.
Because communication is really a means to an end.
Communication is so that a relationship between God and us may be
developed because God wishes to be known in relationship to us.
We get to call upon Him as our "Abba."
We realize we have a God who cares for us.
He promises that. Think of
yourself as the adopted child of God who cares for you, who sent His Son down to
die that you might live anew and receive that same inheritance.
I want you to remember that. And
then let's learn about prayer. Starting
at verse 5 of chapter 6: Whenever you pray, do not pray like the hypocrites, for they love
to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners so that they may
be seen by others. When we begin to pray, again, it's not communication for our sake,
is it? It's not so we will be known
as great pray-ers. It's so we
develop a relationship with our Father in Heaven. Truly I tell you, they have received their
reward. They've received the credit. They've
been seen as people: "Oooh!
Aren't they great pray-ers?" "Aren't
they wonderful pray-ers?" That's
what God gives them in credit, but that's all they're getting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your
Father who is in secret. And your
Father who sees in secret will reward you. That doesn't mean we don't pray in public, because even Jesus
prayed in public quite often. But
what He's saying here is that we don't pray for the credit.
We pray to the Lord to develop a relationship with Him.
Verse 7: When you're praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles
do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. We don't have pray over and over in such a way that somehow we're
begging God. How many times can you
say the Lord's prayer? How many
times can you repeat a prayer of your particular concern to God? "O,
God, please grant my request . . . O,
God, please grant my request . . . O,
God, please grant my request. . ."--thinking that like the widow if we bug
God enough, perhaps He'll get tired of it and He'll answer us.
That is what the parable says is wrong!
And so you and I have the opportunity to pray to God in relationship to
Him, and to let it go and to let God answer that.
Let's continue on. Verse 8: Do not be like them, for your Father knows what
you need before you ask him. Now, isn't that an interesting statement?
Your Heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
That reminds us of what prayer indeed is:
Building a relationship. I
don't know about you, but it's a lot easier if someone I know--somebody with
whom I work, or serve the Lord, or
perhaps one of my children--asks me for something.
I know them. I want to give
something to them. It's a lot
harder for me to give something to a complete stranger who comes up to me and
asks of me, expecting of me, and I have no idea who they are.
Too often, we expect God to answer us like this cosmic vending machine,
with whom we develop no relationship. You
wouldn't like that. Why would God?
He does not wish to be known as "the great and powerful Oz," or
some genie from whom we have three wishes, and we have three wishes and that's
it. He wishes to be in a
relationship with us, and this passage right here, this phrase "He knows
what we want even before we ask," sounds a lot like a parent to a child,
doesn't it? We already know,
because of our relationship with these people, what their needs are.
Then we begin to understand that prayer is not just about asking.
It is about a relationship. And then we're given the wonderful words of prayer that we prayed
already. Not, friends, to be taken
as something we continually pray over and over again as some rote prayer to give
up to God and let Him know how much we care for Him, to show our piety to Him,
to try and beg Him or bug Him, is it?
It's a formula for prayer. It
says, "Pray then this way:" I
want you to continue to do that. Think
of what the Lord's prayer means and pray like that to our Heavenly Father. Now let us go to the next page over, to page 7, the right-hand
column. I'm going to be reading
from chapter 7, verse 7. This is
what Jesus says: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock,
and the door will be opened for
you. For everyone who asks
receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door
will be opened. Again, think of it as beyond asking. Think of it as our search for relationship with God.
Yes, asking is a part of it. We're
called to ask. Look at this, verse
9: Is there anyone among you when your child asks
for bread will give him a stone? Or
if the child asks for fish, will give a snake?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask of
Him! Here, clearly, Jesus states, not in parable but in real form
(although He uses a parable story). He
says, "How much does God wish to give to those who ask Him?"
The reminder of that reality as we go back to our particular passage,
back to page 81 and Luke 18. Let's
look at that very last verse. We've now learned what parable is, and what prayer is.
Now once again we remind ourselves of the Kingdom-reality that God
provides for us in Jesus Christ. As
we hear a parable, we ask ourselves, "What does it mean about the Person
telling the parable? What does it
mean about Christ?" Jesus, in
His reconciliation, who takes away the pain of sin and death for all who
believe, removes the barrier of our sin that separates us from God, ushers in
the Kingdom-reality that you and I have the opportunity to be much more than a
widow, and to think of God as much more than just a judge.
Instead, we have a complete flip-side:
We are the adopted children of God!
We are the children who, if we ask God for bread, He will give us bread. If we ask Him for help, He will give us help.
Remember what it says in the top of chapter 18?
"Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and
not lose heart." Are we losing heart in our prayer life? Quite often it is tough to be people who live
Kingdom-realities for Christ in a broken world.
Quite often, bad things continue to happen.
Why? Because we're not in
heaven yet, friends. We should not
be surprised that bad things continue to happen.
But we continue to pray that God be with us. We continue to pray specifically for the things we know we
need (or at least think we need) and we trust God to let us know, either by
"yes," or by "no," or by "wait."
We're not to lose heart in our prayer lives. I had a person who came up to me said, "John, I've been
praying for this for days and God's not answering me."
I said, "Well, come back to me in about a month (or months) and
let's see what happens." I just thought it was quite interesting that "days"
was long enough for this person, and that was the timeline that he gave God. Sometimes God answers us instantaneously.
Sometimes God does not. That
is a part of the relationship we build with God to understand what that means.
Christ Himself tells us not to lose heart. We shall not lose heart, shall we? We will continue to come to God in prayer, won't we?
We don't want or need to think that we're on our own, because we're not
widows, are we? We have a Heavenly
Father who cares for us, do we not? Jesus says at the end, "When the Son of Man comes [the return
of Christ], will He find such people of this faith?" Well, that's the question for you and me.
As Christ returns at any time--perhaps even today--will He find such
people with such faith? Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your Word.
We thank you for the opportunity to hear from a parable about prayer.
I ask, Lord God, that each of us understands just how valued we are to
you. And just how much we are
loved--that you came in Christ to bring us back to you.
Help us to break away, Lord, from any thought that we're on our own.
We are not. Thank you.
You gave judgment to Christ and He, our Judge, became our Redeemer.
We praise you, Lord God, and ask that you, through the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, make this true to us. Make
us alive in it, that we today can walk into this room as people who are not
strangers, are not orphans. We have
a Father who walks ahead of us. In
Christ's name we pray. And all
God's people said, "Amen." The Rev. Dr. John Ward Associate Pastor for Discipleship Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:30 a.m. Worship Service on
February 3, 2002] |
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