Discipleship - Part 4

Introduction

Jesus said: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23)
 
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Christian discipleship, using David Watson's book Discipleship as our starting point and guide. After the more theoretical chapters at the beginning of the book, from this point on Watson turns to more practical aspects of discipleship. Today we look at chapters 6 and 7 of the book on the crucial Christian disciplines of prayer and reading the Bible.

Prayer

Watson begins his chapter on prayer by reminding us of how central prayer was in the everyday lives of Christ and his apostles. He also mentions some Christian "giants" like Whitefield, Wesley, Luther and Wilberforce and how they would normally spend 2-3 hours daily in prayer. Watson then goes on to say that it is not hard for us to feel real failures in prayer by comparison. I have to confess that I am not the best "pray-er" in the world. Stories of Christians spending hours each day in prayer make my paltry 5-10 minutes most days look terrible. Prayer is definitely something I know I could do better in.

Does prayer work? Watson - along with the biblical writers to be fair - doesn't spend a lot of time answering this. It is just assumed that prayer does work and is something we should do.  There is a good quote from William Temple on this: "When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don't, they don't." Many Christians would testify to this truth: prayer is effective. But more than that, we have a clear assurance from God's word that this is the case: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16).

Yet the real reason to pray is not because it works as such but because of what it is: it is meeting with and speaking with almighty God. Watson says that prayer is a sign of living in complete and constant dependence upon God. It is spending time with our Father, not just "talking to God".

So how do we go about prayer? Watson gives some useful guidelines here. First, he begins by pointing out the need for the Holy Spirit to help us if we are to pray as we ought. Even if we can only pray with groans and sighs, the Holy Spirit can take that and interpret it, taking our innermost thoughts and feelings and turning them into prayers before the throne of God in heaven. Second, he stresses the need for times of silence and reflection in prayer. Our prayer life needs to be a two-way conversation, not a monologue from us. In silence we need to listen to God. Third, he briefly discusses posture and correctly points out that we can pray in any position, but suggests sitting comfortably and relaxed in a chair may be the best "normal" position. Fourth, he mentions the need for prayer to begin and end with worship and thanksgiving towards God, and not just be a "shopping list" of things we want God to do. Fifth, Watson discusses when we should pray and makes a number of suggestions on this including: morning and evening, before making big decisions, when busy in life, when concerned for others, when tempted, when in pain and when facing death.

Interestingly, Watson does not just look at all these "how to" aspects of prayer. He also focuses attention on the right character of those who come in prayer to God. Here he mentions nine character traits: humility, surrender, realism, honesty, sympathy, expectancy, persistence, forgiveness and unity (when praying with others). There was a lovely quotation from Michel Quoist regarding our need to surrender to God and come to him like little children: "You must surrender yourself to me. You must realise that you are neither big enough nor strong enough...But you must be very, very little, for the Father carries only little children."

The importance of prayer is summed up Watson's words near the end of the chapter:

Ideally, of course, our whole life should become a life of prayer. When we wake, eat, walk, work, rest, chat or retire for the night, we should cultivate enjoying the Father's presence: rejoicing in him, praising him, thanking him, talking to him, listening to him, saying sorry, keeping silent.

Seeing prayer almost as an attitude we carry through the day rather than a special activity we do has certainly challenged and encouraged me to pray.

The Word of God
 
In the next chapter, Watson turns to the absolutely central place of the Word of God in the life of the Christian disciple. He quotes Jesus' words (himself quoting the Old Testament): "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4, NKJV).

The Word of God is the most important thing in the world, Watson says. But what is the Word of God? Many evangelicals simply believe that the Word of God is the Bible. But Watson defines God's Word in a wider way as "God's total revelation of himself, God speaking to man[kind] in words - ways that make sense." (p.140).

Watson therefore regards the Word of God as something including but wider than the text of the Bible. In fact as he makes clear later in the chapter.

To begin with, Watson looks at what he calls hindrances to God's Word, or to the effectiveness of God's Word in the believer's life. Among those hindrances mentioned are: materialism (putting trust in material things), activism (being so busy doing that we cannot hear God) and humanism (thinking that human beings are the centre of the universe).

Then he mentions something that he calls "textualism" which is a fault that evangelical Christians who value the Bible are particularly susceptible to. It is being so concerned with the Bible that we actually lose sight of God! It is what A. W. Tozer called "orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost." According to Watson, the Bible in a sense becomes the Word of God when read in the power of the Holy Spirit. So in a sense we don't have God's Word "until the Holy Spirit illumines our dull minds and warms our cold hearts." (p.143). It is only when the Holy Spirit activates the biblical text that we receive God's revealed truth. As I wrote in a hymn:

With the Holy Spirit's help,
The ancient words are dead,
But spring to life when he is there:
The Word and Spirit wed.

The text, great though it is, is not enough. We need more than the text, the God the text points towards.

Another hindrance Watson examines is literalism (the view that the biblical text needs to be taken absolutely literally), and then he talks about "intellectualism" (where we become over concerned with approaching Scripture as an intellectual discipline rather than a spiritual one). Watson comments:

In the West we have often embraced the Greek concepts of truth and knowledge to the exclusion of the Hebrew concepts. The Greeks saw truth in terms of propositions, statements and words; whereas in Hebrew thought, truth was seen in terms of deep personal relationships.

Equally, "anti-intellectualism" is also a potential problem, where scholarship is denigrated and wild and fanciful interpretations of Scripture are taught merely on the basis of mystical "promptings of the Holy Spirit."

After the section on hindrances to God's Word, Watson talks about actually hearing the Word of God. Here he comes back to the notion of God's Word as being a wider category than merely the Bible. He talks about the Word of God in three senses:

1. The Personal Word - Jesus
2. The Written Word - The Bible
3. The Spoken Word - Preaching, teaching, witnessing and prophecy

It is important for Watson for Christians to recognise the inter-relatedness of all three senses of the Word of God. He says, "The spoken Word, to be authentic, must be in accordance with the written Word, and glorify the personal Word." (p.149).

Watson's charismatic views are evident here, for he views New Testament prophecy as a continuing gift to the Church, but he also marks out a number of scriptural tests and boundaries for it. But the spoken Word specifically explained and applied to a particular group of the Lord's people in preaching or in another medium, is a valid way of considering God's Word, though it is always derivative from the first two senses.

The final section in the chapter on the Word of God looks at understanding God's Word. Watson stresses the importance of correctly interpreting the Bible. It is a vital link between the Word outside us and the Word of God actually living in our hearts. Two key questions need to be asked whenever we come to the Bible to understand it. First, what did it mean to the first audience? Second, what does it mean for us today? To answer these two questions correctly we need to look at a number of aspects within and surrounding the text itself including the meaning of the words used (and here a good, accurate translation, or more than one, is indispensable to most of us), the context, the literary form of the passage, and the culture in which it was first written.

It is hard to overemphasise the importance of the Word of God to living as a Christian disciple. Our whole lives are to be steeped in the Word of God and we need to orientate our lives around the Word, and not the other way round. We need to constantly and faithfully apply ourselves in three key actions towards the Word of God: listening to God's Word, studying God's word and obeying God's word. When we do that, week-in-week-out, we will surely grow not only in knowledge but in faith and love as we are transformed by God's holy Word.

Next time we will look at the important subject of spiritual warfare, which is discussed in chapter 8 of Watson's book.

A Prayer for 2012 (Adapted from Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions)

A Prayer for 2012 (Adapted from Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions)

Found this on Trevin Wax's blog and thought it was great and worth sharing.

Providence and Prayer

Providence and Prayer: How Does God Work in the World?
Terrance Tiessen
Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois 2000

This book on providence and prayer is great. It is one of the best Christian books I have read this year. In it, Tiessen explores various models of God's providence and how the various views have an impact on how we might view intercessory prayer.

Tiessen presents a total of eleven different models of providence. The first ten models he presents with meticulous fairness, presenting each model in as positive a light as possible (as if being presented by a proponent of the view) without negative criticism. The models presented range in a spectrum from "semi-deism" at the one extreme through to "fatalism" on the other extreme. The viewpoints explored include:

• The Semi-Deist Model
• The Process Model
• The Openness Model
• The Church Dominion Model
• The Redemptive Intervention Model
• The Molinist Model
• The Thomist Model
• The Barthian Model
• The Calvinist Model
• The Fatalist Model

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that Tiessen presents a fictional scenario to begin with in which a man's son who is a missionary has been kidnapped with two others and is being held for ransom in a foreign country. The father then goes to his church prayer meeting and people pray for the men who have been kidnapped. Each chapter ends with how a person holding to each of the models of providence might pray in the circumstances in line with what each model teaches.

Towards the end of the book, Tiessen changes approach from a neutral presentation of facts to a more polemical approach favouring an eleventh model of providence which is his own preferred choice. Tiessen calls this view "Middle Knowledge Calvinism" (hereafter "MKC"). MKC is an attractive model somewhere between Molinism and Calvinism.

MKC differs sharply from Molinism because it rejects libertarian free will and accepts compatibilist free will - that we have a free will to make choices voluntarily, but not independently of our own desires, characteristics, circumstances, etc. Because God can influence these things, he is able to achieve his plans and purposes through the free choices of human beings without using anything like force or coercion. In effect, God has an infallible ability to influence us to do what he wants through doing what we want.

MKC is basically a form of infralapsarian Calvinism. The only difference being that in Tiessen's MKC, God does not need to positively foreordain everything in order to foreknow it will happen. Because he has middle knowledge of everything a free creature would do in any set of circumstances in any one of an infinite number of possible worlds, God merely has to choose to realise or "actualise" the particular world in which what human beings do what he wants to fulfil his purposes. God's will is then perfectly carried out while human beings act perfectly freely in the world God chose to actualise. The difference in Tiessen's view from standard Calvinist models is that MKC gives a much greater place to God's permission of events to achieve his purposes. If God knows what creatures would do in particular circumstances, all God has to do is create this particular world in which those circumstances arise to render certain future events without having to directly control them or even cause them. Due to middle knowledge, much of what happens in history only has to be left to happen because it is foreknown, though God is still free to intervene or display his power in direct action whenever he wishes to do so.

It seems to me that MKC is an excellent model of God's providence that preserves the biblical teachings on God's sovereignty and on human responsibility and freedom. Tiessen's view combines the sound aspects of several different models of providence. Although basically Calvinist, it also incorporates the key idea of middle knowledge from Molinism, and the concept from Open Theism that God's emotional responses to events are real and not merely anthropomorphisms.

Tiessen's book concludes with a chapter on how MKC offers a useful background to a sound doctrine of prayer.

Though not an easy read in that it deals with some of the most complex issues in theology, Providence and Prayer is not a technically difficult book. The chapters are all well-written and clearly explain the ideas involved in each model presented. It deserves to be better known that it is. It is a classic treatment of the doctrines of providence and prayer.

Our Covenant God

The following was the sermon at the evening service at Bridgeton on 10 January 2010. It has been lightly edited for internet use. The Bible reading was 1 Kings 8:22-30.

Did you hear about the latest Bible to be released in the shops? It only costs £1.00 and it’s called the New Year’s Resolution Bible. It only has the first three chapters of Genesis in it.

New Year resolutions are promises we make to ourselves, aren’t they? But like the joke suggests, they aren’t promises we tend to stick to all that well. I’m going to suggest a new year’s resolution for you that I hope you will be able to keep, and that’s to grow as a Christian this year. That’s not just a good idea; as Christians, it’s what’s expected of us. 1 Peter 2:2-3 says:

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

One of the best ways we can grow as Christians is just to spend time getting to know God better through reading a portion of his word regularly. The Bible is full of passages that help us understand better what God is like. And as we get to know him better and love him more, so this shapes our lives, not only in what we believe, but in how we live. This is what Paul teaches in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Our passage tonight is not particularly well-known. But it’s a passage that tells us many important things about God. So let’s look at this passage we have in front of us and see what God has to teach us about himself tonight because if we really grasped and lived in the knowledge of these truths, I think all of us would grow as Christians this year.

To begin with, just a brief word of background to the passage. One of King David’s unfulfilled dreams was to build a temple for the Lord to honour him and so that David's God didn’t have to 'live in a tent.' When David died, his son, Solomon, was his successor. And at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, there was a period of peace and prosperity in Israel. And Solomon decided that this was the right time to finally build a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. The temple took seven years to build, although we learn something about Solomon’s attitude from the fact it took 13 years to build his palace in Jerusalem and the palace was nearly double the size of the temple! But that’s an aside. When it was finished, Solomon ordered that the Ark of the Covenant be brought from the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and be placed in the inner chamber of the new temple, the holy of holies. And as the priests left the Ark there, 1 Kings 8:10-11 says:

‘When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple.’

Imagine the scene. The new temple has been built – seven years in the making – and now God himself gives the work his seal of approval as it were by actually taking up residence and dwelling in the temple itself, symbolised by the shekinah glory cloud.

At which point, Solomon first addresses the assembled Israelites and tells them that he has built this temple in accordance with his father’s wishes and in accordance with God’s promise to David. He then stood before the altar in the temple and began to pray. And the passage we’re looking at is the first couple of paragraphs really of what is a long and mighty prayer that Solomon spoke that day.

We’re going to have a look at five things this prayer of Solomon’s teaches us about God:

• God is faithful
• God is loving
• God speaks to us
• God listens to us
• God is mighty and can answer prayer.

So, let’s have a look at the first of these five things this passage appeared to me to be teaching us. And it’s that the LORD is a faithful God. The very name of God speaks of his faithfulness. As you’ll know, when the Bible has the word LORD in capital letters, this is the personal, covenant name of God, that the Jews thought was so holy they wouldn’t write it all out, but just the consonants YHWH. This is God’s personal name, Yahweh, the name he revealed to Moses at the burning bush, the name that means I AM THAT I AM. And this was the name that God revealed only to his own people, Israel. It is a name that speaks of God’s commitment and love for his own people – and that includes you and me – everyone Christian is part of God’s special covenant people through Jesus Christ.

But it’s not just in his name that the passage speaks of God’s faithfulness to his people. The passage is full of the idea. Verse 23 is the key verse in the passage:

O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or in earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants…

The covenant relationship that God has with people speaks of faithfulness. A covenant is a solemn promise, a total commitment between two parties. A covenant resembles a marriage, which is a specific kind of covenant. God’s covenant with his people is little different. It’s not a bond between two equals entering into a commitment to love each other and share their lives; it’s a bond between the sovereign king of the universe and unworthy sinners, and so it is often called a covenant of grace. But like a marriage, it is nevertheless a bond of love between God and his people. The covenant of grace is also a sign of his faithfulness and commitment to his people.

Verse 24 also speaks of commitment and faithfulness. Solomon points out that God kept his promises to Solomon’s father, King David. ‘You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’

Now when you stop and think about it, God’s faithfulness to his people is actually an amazing thing. It truly is amazing grace. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows that the Israelites were anything but faithful to their God. Scarcely were they delivered from Egypt before they turned their backs on the invisible God to build themselves a golden calf. During their 40 years in the wilderness they continually grumbled and complained and turned away from God. During the time of the judges, the Bible says that ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ and sin was rampant. Later they chose for themselves a human king to be like the other nations, even though God told them that he was their king. And so it went on and on through the time of the prophets and eventual exile in Babylon. God’s covenant people were anything but faithful to God. And the same is just as true of us. Rarely in Christian history has the church lived up to its calling and mission. If it were a matter of merit, how could God be faithful to people like us? People who sin in thought, word and deed every single day?

But thanks be to God that he is faithful, not because of anything in us, but because of his own grace and mercy. And this means God can be trusted and relied on by us all the time. He never plays us false. He never changes. He never gets fed up with us. And that’s really foundational for our relationship with him, isn’t it? All around us might fail and fall away, but God will stand by us, no matter what. He is faithful forever.

The second thing this passage teaches is that Yahweh is a loving God. Indeed, it is from God’s love that his faithfulness and grace to his people flows. He abides with us, because he loves us. Again, verse 23 brings this out:

O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you…keeping covenant and showing steadfast love…

The Hebrew word translated ‘steadfast love’ is ‘chesed’ and it’s a very rich word that occurs some 275 times in 27 out of the 39 books of the Old Testament. It is the word used to describe God’s covenant love. It means all of the following: a great, steadfast, unfailing, constant love, mercy, grace and lovingkindness. It the love that God has for his own people, his children and so it is a deep and special love, a love that is sure and steadfast, a love that sought us and saves us.

That’s the kind of God we know and worship, a God of love. In the New Testament, we even find the apostle John teaching that ‘God is love.’ Love is at the very centre of God’s being and personality. Love is the very reason God created the universe, the reason God is working to save the human race, and the reason why he will one day renew the whole universe at the end of the age.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).

The challenge for us to somehow catch a glimpse of the greatness of God’s love. It is so great that to glimpse it, to recognise it, is like staring into a blinding light. It is dazzling and awesome and inspiring and life-changing.

The love of God is like a comforting presence with us all the time. No matter what we go through, we have this knowledge with us: God loves us and wants the best for us. And he’s in control of our lives, even when we’re not, even when bad things are happening to us. As Romans 8:28 says:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

That’s why we could sing earlier that he or she ‘who trusts in God unchanging love / builds on the rock that none can move.’

The third thing the passage tells us about God is that he is a speaking God. He is a God who communicates with us, a God who reveals himself to human beings. This truth is sprinkled throughout the passage in different verses.

Verse 24, ‘Who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him. You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’

Verse 25, ‘Keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him, saying…’

Verse 26, ‘Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken…’

As Christians we’re so used to this concept that we can almost take it for granted that God speaks to us. But consider all the pagan gods in the world, all the gods of wood, stone and metal that men worship. They are dumb idols. They do not speak. They do not communicate. Consider all the imaginary gods of other religions. People might think they are hearing from their god, but they aren’t because they are not real. There is only one god – Yahweh, the God of Israel.

So how does God speak to us? Well, I think we have to say that there are several different ways. God can speak to us in any way he chooses. Sometimes, he speaks to us by putting thoughts into our heads. Sometimes, he speaks to us through what other people say to us. Sometimes, he speaks to us through events, through things that happen in our lives. Sometimes, he even speaks to people in visions or dreams. But the most important and authoritative way God reveals himself is through his Word, through his written Word the Bible, and through the eternal Word, Jesus Christ himself. As Hebrews 1 says:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

The fact that God speaks to us, flows from the fact that he loves us, and leads on to the fact that he is faithful. Do you see what I mean? Because he cares about us, he wants to talk to us. He wants to tell us about himself. He wants to tell us the truth about himself, and about us and about life. He wants to warn us so we won’t make mistakes and do wrong things. He wants to promise us good things to come in order to encourage us. His words to us flow from his loving character. But they also form the basis of his faithfulness. God makes promises. He tells us how things are going to be. And God keeps his word. A promise from God is more certain than seeing something with our own eyes.

The fourth thing to note from the passage is that God is a listening God. It’s one thing to consider that the sovereign Lord of the universe might communicate with tiny little specks of humanity like us. After all, the 'great' sometimes communicate with ordinary people. Kings issue proclamations. Prime Ministers make speeches. Parliaments pass laws. Judges hand down judgements. These days, every famous person seems to write a blog or have a website to reach their fans. So it’s one thing to consider that God might speak to us.

But it’s simply astonishing that the creator of the universe might actually want to listen to us as well! Yet the passage tells us that it’s true. God listens to us. He hears our prayers and answers them. Solomon speaks to God in this passage and petitions him with requests in the belief that the Lord will hear and answer him. The very fact that he prays at all testifies to this, never mind praying in public before all the people.

Verse 28: ‘Have regard,’ he says (pay attention, listen to), ‘the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house…Listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.’

Does it sometimes feel as if we’re only talking to ourselves or to each other when we pray? Well it isn’t like that you know. God is listening and watching everything that happens in the world of course. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about. All our conversations are known to God. But our prayers are not heard in that way, like divine omniscient CCTV. Our prayers are heard in a special way because they are addressed to him.

Prayer is such a huge subject, I can’t go into it in much detail tonight, but taken together with the other things we know from this passage about God: that he loves us, that he speaks to us, and that he’s faithful to us and to what he’s promised, this should encourage us to pray. When we pray, we are not addressing some cold, remote deity. We are speaking to our heavenly Father, who loves us. God tells us in his Word that he wants us to pray to him and he wants to give us what we ask for in His name. So our prayers are neither falling on deaf ears, nor is he reluctant to give us what we ask for. There’s nothing he likes better. The only time God won’t give us what we ask is when it isn’t the best thing for us. And when we ask for something that isn’t the best for us, we are not really asking for it in his name, because his name is Yahweh, and that means that is the covenant God who always and only does good to his people.

Our fifth and final point is that the LORD is a mighty God. As a modern worship song puts it:

Our God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love,
Our God is an awesome God.

Obviously that’s linked to the fact that God listens to us and wants us to pray. After all, what’s the point of asking God if he can do things in this world if lacks the power or ability to carry it out?

It’s not that the passage says that God is mighty in so many words in this passage, but it’s implicit in the whole passage that God is mighty and awesome. For one thing, Solomon speaks to God in the knowledge that he can carry out what is asked of him. After all, who but an almighty God can organise history so that promises to one king are kept years later after his death? Who but an almighty God can ensure that one of King David’s successors would rule on his throne forever? Solomon was a rich and powerful man, but he recognises that God is ‘way out of his league’. Even the great temple that they had constructed in Jerusalem was like a joke compared to God’s majesty and power. Solomon can scarcely believe that God would dwell in a building at all. ‘But will God indeed dwell on earth?’ he asks. ‘Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!’

God is so big that the vast expanse of space cannot hold him.

I was recently at the planetarium at Glasgow Science Centre. There you see how the night sky would look on a clear night in the dark, away from the city lights. There are hundreds of visible stars, and millions of stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is only one of millions of such galaxies in the universe. Millions of galaxies. Billions of stars. Possibly trillions of planets. And yet all that unimaginable expanse of outer space is not big enough to hold God. In fact He created it by his Word.

That means that God is powerful and mighty enough to deal with anything that happens in the whole of space. All the events on earth, all our lives, are just one infinitesimal part of the universe and God is more than able to answer our prayers to change things on earth.

The passage is all good news for us with five aspects of God to comfort us and lead us through this year: his faithfulness, his love, his Word, his listening ear and his might. There’s only one thing for us to do in response and that’s to have faith in this God. To believe in him and follow him in obedience. That’s what that little phrase at the end of verse 23 means where it talks about ‘your servants who walk before you with all their heart.’

God’s servants are people who have faith in him, and our calling is to walk with him with all our heart. In other words to be committed to him wholeheartedly is God wants from us.

So at the start of 2010, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to our God, because there’s no-one else like him. There’s no-one else who deserves our total commitment, because our covenant God is totally committed to us.

The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

The following sermon was recently preached at our morning service in a series on the Parables of Jesus.

Imagine a scene. You’ve got to phone up a big company to make a complaint. It could be about your electric, or your gas, or your phone bill. Or it could be about some bank charges that you just can’t make head nor tail out of. So you get out the bill or the letter, and you phone the number on it. You get yourself all geared up don’t you? You think over what you want to say. You get your story ready. And your call gets answered, and an automated voice says if you want this, press 1, if you want that press 2, and if you want something else press 3, and you try to work out where your call fits into their scheme and then you press 3 and another automated voice tells you you’re in a queue, and then finally, at long last, you get to speak to a person, and 9 times out of 10 they’re in India and they can’t understand you, and you’re getting nowhere, and you can feel your temper rising, and finally you just hang up (or as happened to me once – they hang up on you!) and you decide either to just pay the bill to get some peace, or accept the substandard service you’ve received. Anything for a quiet life. It’s just not worth all the hassle.

Does any of that strike a chord with you? Have you ever tried to get something you want and felt you were getting nowhere? Have you ever felt that there’s a wall of bureaucracy that it is impossible to get past?

Well if you have, you’ll understand the parable of the widow and the judge that we’re looking at today.

You’ll identify with the poor widow in the story, and you’ll sympathise with her overriding sense of frustration that she can’t get her complaint dealt with – she can’t get justice from the system.

Picture if you will the court room scene Jesus paints for us in this story. This is a civil case. A poor widow comes to the court to ask for justice against her adversary. Someone has wronged her. We don’t know if someone’s committed a crime against her, or cheated her out of money, or ignored her rights. But something’s been done against her, and she seeks justice from the court to get it sorted out. And she comes up against the wrong kind of judge, an unjust and corrupt Judge.

The position of a judge in Bible times was in many ways similar to that of judges today. Judges were people who were supposed to command respect. Then, like now, they wielded enormous power over other people’s lives, and of course then, like now, people would look to judges to give them justice and punish evildoers. The judge was supposed to be person of wisdom and righteousness, someone to look up to.

But the judge is this parable is anything but a shining example of justice and righteousness. In fact he is a disgrace. Jesus sums up his character. “He neither feared God, nor respected man.” In other words, he wasn’t interested in doing what God’s law said. He wasn’t interested in doing the right thing. And he wasn’t interested in helping people, or sorting out their problems either. He was in it for himself. Jesus says he was a “corrupt” or “unjust” judge. I don’t think it’s going to far to say “corrupt” probably means this judge could be bought, and he was a man for whom justice had a price-tag. If you could come up with a bribe, a backhander, he would see you all right in court.

That’s the judge in the story. The other character is a poor widow.

When Jesus first told this story, everyone would have realised the signifance of the fact that the woman is a widow. In Bible times, there was no social security, and most jobs were not open to women. So a widow whose husband did not leave enough for her to live on, or who did not have other family to take care of her would be in dire straits financially. Widows were among the most vulnerable of people in Jewish society. That’s why time and time again in the Old Testament special provisions are made, and God’s people, especially the rich, are commanded to look after the needs of widows and orphans, the poor and the fatherless.

But although this was what God demanded, the fact was that a poor widow would not rate much attention from the rich and powerful people who ran her world. A poor widow was a drain on society and didn’t carry much clout.

We don’t know for sure, but I think it’s suggested in the parable that this widow was poor and destitute not so much because her husband didn’t provide for her, but because someone has robbed or swindled her out of property or money. And so she goes to the lawcourt to ask for justice and possibly to recover what she has lost.

But this judge has no time for her. You see, for a corrupt judge, a poor widow really was useless because he knew she wouldn’t have enough money to bribe him into deciding the case in her favour.

The only weapon she has at her disposal is persistence. She keeps on asking him, she harps on at him, she nags him, and pesters him, until finally he gets fed up and gives her what she asks for, not because it’s justice, or because he feels compassion for her, but simply to get rid of her. She’s become a pain in the neck, and his attitude is finally “Oh anything for a quiet life...”

It rings true doesn’t it? We know that keeping on at officials, ‘making their life hell’ to get what we want, isn’t that how we sometimes put it – the constant letters or phone calls in the end usually achieve results. In the end it did for the widow in the story.

It’s a pretty straightforward story. The question is, why did Jesus tell it? What point was he trying to make from it?

We might have expected Jesus at the end of the story to praise the widow for her persistence and condemn the judge as the lesson of the parable, but Jesus was a master story teller. And like all good story tellers, he delivers a twist in the story. Rather than focusing on the widow’s actions, which we might have expected, he actually focuses his attention on the judge, not to condemn him so much as to use him to tell us what God is like.

Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. How can a corrupt, dishonest, sinful judge teach us about God? It is an audacious story. Perhaps no-one but God the Son would dare make the comparison, but Jesus does exactly that. Jesus uses the bad things done by a bad man – in this case an unjust and corrupt judge – to show up the goodness of a good and righteous God.

Many of Jesus’ parables were stories designed to show what God is like. The most famous might be the picture Jesus gives us of a loving Father seeking his lost son in the parable of the Prodigal Son. But this story is different. Here Jesus does the opposite. He contrasts what God is like with what this corrupt judge was like. It’s similar in tone to what Jesus says in Luke 11:

Would any of you who are fathers give your son a snake when he asks for fish? Or would you give him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? As bad as you are, you know how to give good things to your children. How much more, then, will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

You see? In both cases a comparison is being made. In a nutshell, Jesus is saying here, if even a corrupt judge could be talked into doing the right thing by a widow’s persistence, how much more can you be sure your heavenly Father, who loves you and delights in you as his children, will hear and readily answer your prayers to him. God doesn’t have to be nagged into blessing us. He longs to bless us. He is ready, willing and able to hear the prayers, the cries of his chosen ones, his own dear children. That is the lesson Jesus wants us to grasp in this passage. He’s not saying God is like this judge, he’s saying if even this disgrace of a judge will do what someone asks him, how much more will God, the gracious judge and provider, give us what we ask of him.

So the key to this parable is this contrast between the judge and God.

The Puritan, Matthew Henry, used this passage to contrast the many differences between the widow and the judge on the one hand, and God’s people and God on the other hand. He wrote:

She was a stranger to the judge, where we are known completely by our heavenly Father.

She was alone, where we are many – God’s own family.

She was kept at a distance by the judge, where we are welcomed into the very presence of God.

She came to an unjust judge, where we come to a righteous Father.

She had no-one to speak for her, where we have Christ Jesus himself pleading our cause before God.

She got no encouragement from the judge, where we have God’s own promises that he will hear our prayers and give us whatever we ask for in his name.

She could only go to the judge at certain times, where we can cry out to God anytime, day or night.

She had to rely on nagging the judge into giving her justice, where we know it is God’s delight to hear our prayers.

How much more then should be willing to persevere in prayer, to “pray without ceasing” as the apostle Paul puts it?

So, all this leads us to ask a natural question. What’s all this got to do with us today? Well, we’re fortunate because Jesus explains the purpose for this parable himself. So we know what he meant to teach with this story. As verse 1 puts it, it was to teach his hearers and us Luke’s readers, that we should “always pray and never become discouraged”.

All summer, I’ve been fighting an ongoing battle of wills with a spider who has taken up residence in the casing of the wing mirror on my car. Each time I get into the car, there’s a spiders web constructed between the mirror and the door or the window. Each time I get a cloth and clean the cobweb away. (There’s never any sign of the spider by the way). The next day, a new web is built in its place. Never fails. I suppose a bit like Robert the Bruce and his encounter with a spider, when I think of that spider, I the word that comes to mind is perseverence. It never gives up in its task.

That’s what we’re called to be like in our prayer lives. People who never give up. Who keep on coming back to God in prayer, every day, no matter what we go through. Sometimes the spider’s web is large and elaborate. Sometimes, it’s smaller and tighter. That’s what our prayers will be like sometimes. Some days longer, more complicated, other days, short and sweet, sometimes not in words at all, just inner thoughts too happy or sad for words. But present and persistent nevertheless.

Just before this parable, Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God would come. And Jesus gave a startling answer. The Kingdom of God is here he said, it is among you. That’s because the Kingdom of God exists wherever people like you and me believe in Christ and follow his teachings. In other words, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God was not some far future event that they would have to wait for. The Kingdom of God was already there in the hearts and lives of ordinary people who followed Jesus. The Kingdom of God is here and now!

It has already started, and yes it will grow and grow until it reaches its eternal fulness and glory, but it has been growing ever since the very beginning of history when God promised Adam and Eve that one of her offspring would crush Satan’s head and destroy him. The kingdom entered a new, decisive and final phase when God himself came to earth to rescue humanity from itself through his Son, Jesus Christ. And the kingdom will come fully and culminate when Jesus Christ comes again to earth in glory and triumph to bring about a new heaven and a new earth. That’s the future, but the change in the world has already began. It happens every time someone becomes a Christian. And yet, he is real with them. His followers will still have problems during this life until he comes again to complete the Kingdom project and make all things new, all things joyous, all things loving, all things perfect, forever. In fact, it’s in the knowledge of what is to come in the future, and what Christ has already achieved for us in the past – in the cross and the resurrection – that he encourages us to face the present. Life here and now. To live as his people, remaining faithful and never giving up, resolutely going forward with him as people of prayer.

I think that helps us understand what might otherwise seem like a curious last line to the story. In verse 8, Jesus ends the story with a cryptic question, “But will the Son of Man find faith when he comes?”

It’s really Jesus answer to the Pharisees question in chapter before this one: “when will the Kingdom of God come?” they asked him. Jesus’ answer is, don’t get caught up in when it will be. Instead, make your focus on whether or not you are prepared for it, are living for it and are praying for it. If he were to come now, would he find you or me faithful? That’s the question we all have to consider, and each must give our own answer to him.

For Jesus there is an inseparable connection between faith and prayer. By faith we enter into the Kingdom of God, by prayer we ask God to make that Kingdom grow. Isn’t that what we pray each week here? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven”?

Jesus calls us to be people who pray. Who pray expecting God to answer. Who pray expecting our prayers to change the world. And we should be persistent in our prayers, just like the widow in the story. Not because we think that we can talk God into doing what we want, but because persistent prayer is simply one of the ways, maybe even the most important way, that God uses to change things. Because persistence in prayer is evidence of a living faith in our hearts. For Jesus faith results in prayer, and prayer shows faith.

But will Christ find us faithful? Will Christ find us praying? Are we ready to put prayer at the top of our priorities? Or is prayer something we pay lip service to in church and then let others get on with. Is prayer important to you? After all it’s simply talking with God. Is talking with God something that matters to you?

Enthroned in heaven Jesus hears our prayers and knows he has a faithful people still here on earth. When he returns, where he hears prayer, there he will find faith on the earth.