Luke 18:1 - 8
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. Will God give justice to His elect quickly because they pray day and night? What if they don't?
2. Will Jesus find faith? Are we capable?
3. Does it require faith for God to give us justice, or answer our prayers?
https://hartmangroupdevotionsmark.blogspot.com/2018/05/mark-61-6-jesus-left-there-and-went-to.html says:
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, Christ’s reticence to do many mighty works, in the face of such stubbornness (though he did some — Mk. 6:5), was an act of benevolence, because sustained rejection of the evidence hardens all the more (cf. Jn. 12:37-40).
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My 2 cents:
When we think of omnipotence, we think that God can do anything - such as create a rock heavier than He can lift.
Omnipotence doesn't mean that. It means that one can do anything that can be done.
One thing that can't be done, is that God does something against His own nature. Doing miracles in a place that lacks faith goes against God's nature. God cannot do something that goes against His nature. That means that God is both omnipotent, and limited by His own nature.
Is that an oxymoron? Not if you keep the proper definition of omnipotence in mind.
https://lukeanalysis.blogspot.com/2021/09/luke-111-13.html continued:
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Steven Cole writes "Whatever our needs, our greatest need is to be filled continually with God’s Spirit (Eph 5:18-note). So Jesus instructs us to come as needy children and ask the Father to pour out His Spirit upon us.
The whole idea is come and ask for whatever’s on your heart and rush into God’s presence whenever you want. When you go to ask God for whatever you ask God for, whatever it is, God gives you the Holy Spirit. You ask for comfort, He gave you the Comforter, right? You ask for help, He gave you the Helper. You ask for truth, He gave you the Truth teacher. You ask for power, He gave you the Spirit of power. You ask for wisdom, He gave you the Spirit of wisdom. You ask for guidance, He gave you the Guide. You ask for love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control and He gave you the Spirit whose fruit were released in your life.You see, this is the generosity of God. You ask for the gift, He gives the giver. You ask for the effect, He gives the cause. You ask for the product, He gives the source. Is that generosity? He gives you according to His riches, not out of His riches. You ask God, as it were, going to the bank, you ask for some money, He gives you the bank. That’s the point. I’ll just give you the Holy Spirit, then you’ve got it all because out of the Holy Spirit comes power. Out of the Holy Spirit comes the anointing which teaches you all things. Out of the Holy Spirit comes the giftedness, out of the Holy Spirit comes the fruit, out of the Holy Spirit comes the direction and the guidance. From the work of the Holy Spirit comes everything. Out of the Holy Spirit comes intercession on your behalf so that all things work together for good. I’ll just give you the Spirit....Giving us the Holy Spirit specifically is not something less than good gifts, it is something more than good gifts. The Lord is taking it a step further. He said, “I’ll give you that which is good.” And now He says, “I’ll just give you the good One, the third member of the Trinity, God of very Gods, God the Spirit to come and live in your life...In summary, when the Lord gave you the Holy Spirit, He gave you everything, absolutely everything. By His presence, by His power, by His grace we are permanently the possessors of everything we need and so much more that “He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we can - ” what? “ - ask or think.”
https://lukeanalysis.blogspot.com/2021/09/luke-111-13.html continued:
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8. Is Jesus telling us to be impudent?
Jesus is telling us to be bold when entering God's throne room in prayer. Yes, He is holy and we are not (on our own). Yes, He is big and we are small. But, we badly need His help. He wants us before Him, talking to Him, asking for His help all the time. It's where we belong. It's what Jesus gave us by dying for us. We need to not be held back by any reluctance or confidence in ourselves and barge into His throneroom day or night - even though we do not deserve to be there.
9. Is there any conditions on ask and it will be given to you, etc.?
Let's back up a little. God already gives us all things. Why do we need to even ask for anything? Here's other questions: Do all believers have everything they could possibly want and need? Why not? Why aren't we all rich in material possessions? Why does prayer for requests do anything? Why does God want us to make them?
Here's the deal: God has set up (and is setting up) His kingdom on earth and has given us stewardship over it. Because of that, God (mostly) works through us to establish His kingdom. However, we are powerless to do so unless we totally rely on the Holy Spirit to work through us. Since we don't have the wherewithall, the knowledge and the spiritual power to advance God's kingdom, we need to ask God for those - which He will definitely grant.
Jesus message of ask, seek, knock is to His disciples. Jesus' disciples food and drink is His kingdom. If we are His disciples, our prayers will be for those things that will expand His kingdom. If we need something to expand His kingdom, God will provide it. If God has directed us to pray for someone, God will answer our prayers.
By the way, the above also answers a question about what faith is. We have faith when we are walking in the Spirit. We stop having faith when we walk our own paths. When we are walking His path, all of our requests to God will be in faith, and all of our requests of God will be answered. If we are walking our own path, the only request that will be answered is one of repentance and a desire to get back to walking God's path.
10. Vs 13 says, God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Is this limiting what God will give us to the Holy Spirit (if it is, it's more than enough)?
This is step 1. God will not start answering any of our prayers unless we first have the Holy Spirit in us (which we ask for when we first ask to enter His kingdom).
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/18-8.htm says:
ReplyDeleteI tell you that he will avenge them speedily,.... As he did in a few years after the death of Christ, when God's elect among the Jews were singled out, and gathered in from them, and were delivered from their persecutors, and saved from temporal ruin and destruction, whilst the Roman army made sad havoc of their enemies; and so will he do in the end of the world.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-18-commentary says:
ReplyDeleteNow, I have heard many Bible teachers say that this parable teaches the value of importunate (troublesomely urgent, overly persistent in request or demand) prayer. This is not a parable on the persistency or the pertinacity of prayer—as though somehow God will hear if you hold on long enough. This is a parable by contrast, not by comparison....If this unjust judge would hear a poor widow because she kept coming continually, then (BY WAY OF CONTRAST) why do you get discouraged going to God who is not an unjust judge, but who actually wants to hear and answer prayer?
This parable is not urging us to “pester God” until He acts; it is saying that we do not need to “pester” Him because He is ready and willing to answer our prayers.
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- Do we repeat a request because we think that the quality of a prayer is dependent on the quantity of words?
- Do we repeat a request because we think that God is ignorant and needs to be informed, or if not ignorant at least he is unconcerned and therefore needs to be aroused?
- Do we repeat our prayers because we believe that God is unwilling to answer and we must prevail upon him, somehow transforming a hard-hearted God into a compassionate and loving one?
- Do we repeat a petition because we think that God will be swayed in his decision by our putting on a show of zeal and piety, as if God cannot see through the thin veil of hypocrisy? (Preaching the Word - Luke)
This parable is a clear contrast between the worst of man, and the best of God.
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The purpose of the parable is that they (we) "ought to pray and not lose heart."
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John Piper uses the illustration: Faith is the Furnace in your life. Fuel = Grace; Shovel = Prayer. If you set down your shovel…your burner goes out! Keep shoveling! Shovel without stopping; pray without ceasing.
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Brian Bell - How can we pray always? What is prayer? Not just uttering words. It’s the urge of the life towards God & spiritual things. It’s the setting of the mind on the things above. It’s every detail of every day being mastered by that urge.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-18-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteIf we don’t pray, we will faint; it’s as simple as that! The word faint describes a believer who loses heart and gets so discouraged that he or she wants to quit. If society is like a rotting corpse, then the “atmosphere” in which we live is being slowly polluted, and this is bound to affect our spiritual lives. But when we pray, we draw on the “pure air” of heaven, and this keeps us from fainting.
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The Lord Jesus knew the weakness of our flesh and that we all are prone to lose heart. In light of that, He graciously gave His disciples and us this parable “to show that at all times they [and we] ought to pray and not lose heart.” This instruction fits in with the preceding context where the Lord told the disciples that the days would come when they would long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but they would not see it (Luke 17:22). The church would be much like this widow, left without her heavenly Bridegroom, much maligned and persecuted by the ungodly. During this time of waiting and struggle, how can the saints persevere? Jesus shows that we will persevere as we continue in believing prayer.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-18-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteAs John MacArthur explains "In the time between the first and Second Coming disciples are not to lose heart but rather are to pray. Yes there is the invisible kingdom the Lord is building through salvation as He comes to take up His royal throne in the hearts of those who put their trust in Christ. But the visible kingdom, the kingdom of righteousness, the destruction of the ungodly, the binding of Satan, the end of the reign of Satan and sin, the establishment of the glorious kingdom of righteousness, joy and peace and finally the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth are all associated with His Second Coming. And so He is saying you need to view that event with prayer and not to lose heart. That's the key to unlocking the meaning of the story. The Lord knew then that a long time would go by...and now it has been 2,000 years. We long for that day , but in the intervening time the message is very clear from our Lord: Don't lose heart. Keep praying to that end...at all times, at all times...through all the events and all the seasons and all the eras and all the years that go by, we are to pray and not lose heart. We need to pray that we will have the strength to endure to the end; the end of our life or the end when the Lord Himself comes, should we live until we are gathered to Him (in the Rapture).
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Like a number of OT prophecies that have a dual fulfillment, Habakkuk's words have a near fulfillment with Babylon's invasion but also a far future fulfillment with the King of kings' "invasion," which the prophet did not understand.
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Though you hear nothing, he is speaking. Though you see nothing, he is acting. With God there are no accidents. Every incident is intended to bring us closer to him.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-18-commentary continued:
ReplyDeleteAs Oswald Chambers explained, “Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand. It will be a wonderful moment for some of us when we stand before God and find that the prayers we clamoured for in early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way, and that God’s silence has been the sign of the answer.” Further, sometimes the silence of God is meant to instill dependence upon him. In the case of Paul he was left with his thorn so that he would lean entirely upon God. We are so prone to independence that the granting of certain of our requests would lead us to self-sufficiency, pride, and independence. There can be no better way to cultivate a sense of dependence upon God than the need for persistent or determined prayer. Sometimes the silence is a delay to allow our prayers to mature. If God had answered our prayers according to our schedule, our prayers would not have been honed by the Spirit for our greater good and his glory.
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Will the Son of Man Find Faith on Earth?
This is a hard saying in the sense that no one can be quite sure what it means, especially in relation to its context. When a question is asked in Greek, it is often possible to determine, from the presence of one particle or another, whether the answer expected is yes or no. But no such help is given with this one. Many commentators assume that the answer implied here is no, but in form at least it is a completely open question.
Luke is the only Evangelist who records the question, and he places it at the end of the parable of the persistent widow—the widow who refused to take no for an answer. Jesus told this parable, says Luke, to teach his disciples that “they should always pray and not give up” (Lk 18:1). But what has this purpose to do with the Son of Man finding faith on earth when he comes?
Questions and findings:
ReplyDelete1. Will God give justice to His elect quickly because they pray day and night? What if they don't?
No, God doesn't dispense justice depending on prayers. Thinking this is thinking about it backwards. When we immerse ourselves in God, we start seeing what He is doing and join in. We start having faith in His justice and can walk along with His plan. If we don't, we will not see His plan, lose faith in His justice and lose heart. The example of the widow is a worldly example. God loves us and wants us by His side. We walk by His side by praying. We pray by submitting everything to Him in our minds, by being aware of Him at all moments, by giving every situation of every day to Him.
2. Will Jesus find faith? Are we capable?
We are not capable. There are times that we walk with God in faith (because He has brought us there), and then we invariably let up and walk away. That's just where we are. We don't need to fear though. God is faithful, while we are unfaithful. God will use those brief moments of faith in His children's lives to execute His plan. The rest of the time, He will guide us to our next moment of faith.
3. Does it require faith for God to give us justice, or answer our prayers?
Once again, this is looking at it backwards. It does require faith to be motivated enough to pray constantly. It requires constant prayer to walk with God to see what He is doing. When we see what He's doing and walk in His path, all of our prayers are answered, exactly how God intends. Most of the time, we don't have enough faith, so God spends that intervening time bringing us to our next moment of faith. The real answer to the question is that it requires faith to recognize and believe in God's justice.