Luke 18:1-8 | Parables in Practice

Listen to this week’s sermon, Parables In Practice preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Luke 18:1-8

Transcript

Welcome And Sermon Audio Intro

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Scripture Reading Luke 18:1-8

Gina Fickett 0:20

Please join me in the prayer of illumination. God of mercy, the covenant promises and your eternal word do not change. Holy Spirit, enable us to respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Today's scripture reading is taken from Luke 18, beginning in verse 1. And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He 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. 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. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge says, 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. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? This is God's word.

The Fight To Not Lose Heart

The Widow’s Desperation And Our Own

Your Adversary And Spiritual Resistance

When Humans Refuse To Respond

God’s Character Changes How We Pray

God’s Timing And The Slow Work

Persistent Prayer As The Shape Of Faith

Jesus Our Advocate In The Courtroom

Final Prayer And Amen

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 1:59

My life is one long hourly record of answered prayer. That's not my words. I wish it was. That's the words of Mary Slesser from her journal. She was a Presbyterian missionary who brought the gospel to Nigeria. And while she was there, she fought, advocated for the rights of women and children. She says elsewhere in her prayer journal, I can testify with a full and often wonder-stricken awe that I believe God answers prayer. I want to be able to say that. I want you to be able to say that. And so as we take up this text this morning, I want to start by telling you some answered prayers from 2025 in my life. Three to be exact. The first one is, you know, in Seek prayer, which was every Wednesday we gather for uh from noon to two and we pray. And in Seek Prayer in 2025, we we prayed that God would bring 25 not yet disciples to Jesus in 2025. And a friend of mine was in that prayer meeting and she reached out to my wife, Alana and I, and she said, Hey, will you pray? I've got a meeting with a friend who's not yet a disciple of Jesus. And at the end of that conversation, after we prayed, she texted us and she said that the woman indicated, she said she wanted to begin a relationship with God. Her exact quote was this This is years of waiting and praying. The Holy Spirit is at work. I felt encouraged and empowered from our Wednesday prayer time. I want her to be one of the 25. God is on the move. I followed up with her actually last month to say, hey, how's it going? She said, quote, we've continued to meet weekly to study God's Word and pray together. We've read through Romans, Ruth, John, and now we're reading Acts. She's so hungry for the Word and for the Holy Spirit. She overflows with thanks each time we meet. I see God's goodness on display through her so often, and my faith has been so fueled by this experience. That's the first answered prayer. The second one is in December of 2024, I had a friend who is same-sex attracted text me, and he's a follower of Jesus. And in that text, he said, basically, I'm giving up. It's too much. Celibacy doesn't work. I don't think it's possible for me. He said he was loosely deconstructing his faith. So I prayed. And about six months later, he texted me and he says, This, so I'm hopping back on the celibacy train. I tried the relationship thing and I'm not comfortable with it. I cannot reconcile it with my faith. Third, I have a friend who is a not yet disciple of Jesus, and I was praying all of 2025. I was in the Wednesday Seek prayer meeting saying, Lord, would you just bring him in here? I want to pray with him in this prayer meeting before the end of this year. Before the end of 2025, Lord, please, every Wednesday. That was my prayer. And on December 31st, at an event we have called Seek First, he came. And he stayed with us for two hours and he prayed with my friend Ryan, and he met a bunch of you all. And one of the guys in my circle heard this answered prayer and he said, That's called a buzzer beater. And I agreed. Listen, that's just three answered prayers, not to mention the countless requests I've had for to give me daily bread or to forgive me daily sins and for power in preaching, for patience in parenting, for peacemaking meetings, on and on and on. I think from this angle, I can agree with Mary Slesser and say, I can testify with a full and often wonder stricken awe that I believe God answers prayer. Why do I tell you all this? Well, because verse one, Jesus told them this parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. But listen, I know as soon as somebody starts talking about God answering prayer, what happens is all of our unanswered prayers flood to the front of our minds. I get that. And Jesus gets that. Why else would he need to tell them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart if that wasn't a temptation? If it wasn't a real lived experience for people to not pray and to become disheartened. And so I want to just take Jesus' stated purpose here as the two points of this sermon. I want us to resist losing heart and I want us to pursue persistent prayer. Those are two sides of the same coin. If you have a Bible or a device, let's look at don't lose heart, verses two through five, together. Luke 18, verse 2. Jesus said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. Those are the two proper motives for justice: a a fear of God and a concern for our fellow humans. This judge had neither of them. He had no vertical accountability, he had no horizontal responsibility, which means as a judge, a man with authority, he was dictated by his own inclinations and feelings, which makes him unpredictable. Jesus goes on in verse 3, and there was a widow in that city. Now listen, no one was more powerless and alone than what one commentator calls the quartet of the vulnerable, which is made up of the orphan, the immigrant, the poor, and the widow. No one is more likely to lose heart than a widow. This widow is a symbol of helplessness in her society. But what about being a widow in our society? Well, I happen to know we have two women in our congregation who've experienced widowhood. And so I reached out to them. I sent them a text, said, Hey, I'm preaching on Luke 18, 1 through 8. Would you read it and tell me how you identify with the widow in this passage? And I actually had half a mind just to read their responses, say amen and sit down and shut up. But I'm not going to do that, but I will quote at length from the responses that I got. The first woman said this with a widow, the need, if you're paying attention, is evident. The widow is the one left behind. No partner, no protection, no companion. I think as a widow specifically, when you don't have your person to discuss and process, you come to the realization that prayer is the only avenue. If you've been married and it's taken away, there is a loneliness and emptiness that defines the singularity of your prayer life. There's a tangible realization that there's nowhere else to turn. I also think that as a woman, when the one who protects you is no longer with you, you experience the desperation of realizing it's all on you. There's a profound awareness of not being sure where you belong, no longer having a family in the earthly sense, so you feel a desperation in the vertical level that is profound. Wow. What makes the widow persistent is her desperation. It's not her strength, it's not her tenacity, it's not her ability. When every other earthly support disappears, prayer stops feeling theoretical and it becomes, quote, the only avenue. You see, if we're left to ourselves, we are all desperate. The widow just feels it acutely and publicly, what is true for all of the rest of us. Eugene Peterson in his fantastic book called Answering God says it like this: the human condition teeters on the edge of disaster. Human beings are in trouble most of the time. Those who don't know they are in trouble are in the worst trouble. Prayer is the language of the people who are in trouble and know it and who believe or hope that God can get them out. This is interesting to me. Said differently, the only way that you will pray is when you realize how precarious your life really is. An author named Isaac Singer says it like this I only pray when I'm in trouble, but I'm in trouble all the time, so I pray all the time. That gets it right. Look at verse 3. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him. You see, the widow was powerless. She was in no position to bribe the judge, and the widow was alone. She had no advocate to put pressure on the judge. And so she kept coming because she was hopeless unless she prevailed on the judge. But listen, I know some of you are exhausted in your desperation. Like you are losing heart like a slow leak in attire. You find yourself in this place where desperation is becoming despair in the face of unanswered prayer. And I know, I know my own experiences of unanswered prayers that I'm about ready to give up on. Prayers for my own character, like asking God, take away the desire that I have for more than enough. The desire I have for more than what I have right now. Deal with my tongue, the sins of my tongue. James says, if you don't sin with your tongue, you're perfect. Congrats. I'm not there yet. I asked the Lord, would you repair marriages of the people around me? Some people I love deeply, not seeing it happen. I have beloved friends and family members who struggle with chronic pain, mental illness, cancer, not healed. I've got a desire to parent out of gentleness, and yet I find myself irritable and disciplining in anger. Lord help me. There I go again. Listen, I know the experience of unanswered prayer, and I know we all have the experience of unanswered prayer. For some of you, it's singleness, childlessness, underemployment, chronic unhealth, wayward children, dysfunctional parents, on and on and on. And listen, every faithful widow knows at least one unanswered prayer. God, don't take my husband. So why? I don't know why. I don't know why God doesn't answer prayer sometimes, but I do know that we have some insights in our text. So look with me at verse 3. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Give me justice against my adversary. This word adversary, the Greek word only shows up three times in the New Testament. This is one of them. Another one is in 1 Peter chapter 5. And let me just make this plain. We don't know anything about the widow's adversary, but we know something about ours. 1 Peter 5 8 says it like this: Your adversary, same word, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Listen, the biblical worldview understands that there is an adversary who is hell-bent on destroying anything that represents God in this world. That begins with you, image bearer. I love this story in Daniel 10. Daniel is fasting and praying for three weeks straight because he sees that there are promises of God that are not yet realized in his time. And in the 24th day of fasting and praying, an angel, some people think it was Gabriel, comes and says to him, O Daniel, man greatly loved, stand upright, for now I have been sent to you. Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard. And I have come because of your words. So why the three-week delay? If God heard on the first day, why three weeks later? Well, he goes on to say that there was some sort of a battle in the spiritual realm between the angel Gabriel and another spiritual being just called the Prince of Persia. And it wasn't until the archangel Michael comes in, like air support wreck shop, that Gabriel is able to be released to finish his mission. This is in the Bible, it's an amazing book. Read it. But listen, if you don't have a category for malevolent spiritual beings that resist God and want to destroy you, you'll find yourself having to blame everything, either on people or on God. There is an enemy. You have an adversary that prowls around seeking someone to devour. But I love the language in Daniel 10 because it deals with not just the adversary's works, but the adversary's words, the accusations we hear. We hear things in unanswered prayer like God doesn't care. To which Daniel 10, the angel says, From the first day that you humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard. Or we think to ourselves, I must not matter. I love the address here. Oh Daniel, greatly loved, the beloved of God. Or we think sometimes, I'm I must not be worth listening to, to which the angel replies, I have come because of your words. Listen, some unanswered prayers are because of our adversary. But some unanswered prayers are because of unwilling humanity. Look at verse 4. For a while the judge refused. The judge's refusal delays her request. Elizabeth Elliott tells this story of a conversation with a friend of hers named Gladys Aylward. And Gladys was a missionary in China for several years before she found a desire for a husband. And it was stirred up in the way that I'm sure it is for plenty of other people. It was stirred up because she saw a couple that came to work nearby her in China, and she saw their marriage, and there was something wonderful and beautiful about it, and she desired it for herself. So being a woman of prayer, she just made a straightforward request to God. She said, God, call a man from England, send him straight to China, and have him propose. Elizabeth Elliott telling the story says she leaned toward me on the sofa and she pointed her finger at me and she said, Elizabeth, I believe God answers prayer. He called him. And then in a whisper of keen intensity, she says, But he never came. God called the man, but he never came. You see, maybe God is answering prayer, but maybe someone's not answering God. Maybe that's part of what's going on here. Notice Gladys doesn't accuse God. She believed that God cares about her longings. So then why does God allow this? Well, one of the other women in our congregation who knows the experience of widowhood said it like this. When suffering forces this upon us, there's a unique ministry of desperation. The experience of desperation gives you permission to be persistent. You have no other option. Almost like a survival instinct, you cling to God, you cry out to Him. It's to the lifeboat of God's love or drowning, and drowning's not an option because then darkness wins. This desperation-fueled persistence forges a unique depth in us, a capacity to feel not just suffering, but also hope. And once you've been stretched to this greater capacity, your heart is able to hold more of both the hard and the good. She goes on community becomes richer, relationships are more honest, and even more our relationship with God is purer and more intimate. We release our efforts to bring anything to the table because desperation forces our hand. And we find that God's hands were more than enough to hold us all along. So ultimately, what I've said and believe, God trusts us with suffering. It's ultimately a gift He extends to those He's inviting into a level of intimacy that cannot be obtained any other way. It is a form of waking us up to live for the things that truly matter. The frivolity and pretenses are forced to the wayside. Surrender becomes survival until it becomes a habit. And once you've tested the love of God to these depths and found him proved faithful and true and good, life, all of life is transformed. We are transformed. It comes from this desperation-induced persistence. End quote. For a while the judge refused. But afterward he said to himself, Though I never fear God nor respect man, three cheers for self-aware politicians, right? I mean, anybody? Okay. 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. Notice this, he finally says, I will give. Why? Why? Because she didn't lose heart even when he refused for a while. She didn't lose heart but keeps bothering the judge. She didn't lose heart but nearly beat him down by her continual coming. Even the judge is astonished at the widow's desperation-induced persistence. That's the parable. Now, this is the most important part. What does Jesus have to say about the parable? How does he interpret it? Well, point one was don't lose heart. Point two is always pray. Look with me at verse six. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge says. Notice this that Jesus draws our attention to the judge at this point, not the widow, interestingly. And it's important to see what Jesus is doing here, and maybe more importantly, what he's not doing here. And we're gonna we're gonna look at that because Jesus asks three questions in the remainder of the text, which is very on brand for Jesus. And the point is, is he's helping us to always pray. And so these three questions draw attention to three principles, three details that really matter for us to always pray. First, God's character, second, God's timing, and third, our own faith. Those are the three questions. Let's look at God's character. This first question here in verse 6. And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge says, and will not God give? If the unrighteous judge gives, will not God give? This is key. He's not comparing the judge and God, he's contrasting them. That's of utmost importance. If you miss this, you miss everything Jesus is trying to teach here. Jesus says, essentially, there's nothing good in this judge inclining him to do good for this woman, yet still she got what she asked. There's nothing but good in God inclining him to do good for you. Will not God give? That's the point he's making. The judge acts despite his character. God acts because of his character. In verse 7, it says this, and will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Why use the word elect here? That's interesting. Slow down. Pause where scripture gives you pause. That's a that's a fascinating term. Well, because I think Jesus isn't just contrasting the judge and God. He's contrasting the widow and his elect. He's showing us God's elect in scripture are his chosen people, his chosen people that he has invited in to share his purposes for the world. That's what it means to be God's elect. The elect are those who join God in what he's up to in the world. That's begun began in Genesis 12 with his call of Abraham. And so the primary way that we join God's work in the world is through prayer. And so listen, if the widow who had no claim on the judge through sheer tenacity got what she wanted in the end, how much more shall God's elect his chosen co-conspirators against the regime of darkness? How much more will they have their prayers answered by a God who's willing to vindicate them? That's the argument of the text here. The widow pleads as an outsider, the elect cry as beloved insiders. The widow is alone, begging from isolated desperation. The his elect, quote, is plural here. His elect is plural because we are a praying people who share dependence. The widow wants justice for a wrong done. Her prayers are defensive. The elect want the kingdom to come. Our prayers are on the offense. We are pushing back the domain of darkness wherever we can with our prayers. We don't cry to him day and night because he does not listen, but precisely because he does listen. Now, remember Jesus' aim here is to get us to always pray. And you will always pray when you know God and you know yourself in relation to God. When you know that he is your father and you are his chosen people. But here's the thing you need that. You also need you need to understand the delay. Why does God delay? That's the second question. God's timing is the second question. Look at verse 7. Will he delay long over them? Jesus says of the judge, for a while he refused. But of God, will he delay? No, there's an obvious answer to this rhetorical question. Of course not. Of course he won't delay. To which I wonder, really? Like I wrestle with this. Pastor Eric Mason helps me a little bit. He says, slow doesn't mean no. Okay? I hear you. But Jesus doubles down. Look at verse 8. I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Speedily? Really? Here we are, still waiting, 2,000 years later. Speedily? How do we make sense of the fact that there's so much injustice in the world? How do we make sense of the fact that Jesus says that God will answer those cries and bring justice speedily? What do we do with God's seeming delay? Well, we have to notice in the text that Jesus is talking here about his second coming. Verse 8, look at it again. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, I've learned by practice from praying day in and day out that all of my prayers, answered and unanswered, kind of come tied together into this culminative moment called the coming of Jesus. Everything I ache for, God gives us four tastes of justice now, but full justice will come when Christ returns. And listen, the New Testament authors, they predicted that we would wrestle with this seeming slowness of God. Second Peter chapter 3, verse 8 says this. This is a long quote, but bear with me because I think it's pertinent. Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, in a thousand years as one day. With that time scale, it's been a couple days. That's decently speedily, I guess. Verse 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord, that's when Jesus comes back, the day of the Lord will come like a thief. In other words, speedily. And then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness? Waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. See, the judge delays because he does not care. God delays because he's patient, redeeming, gathering, saving, preparing final justice. Don't interpret divine delay as divine indifference. There's a Jesuit priest named Tear Deshardon, and he says it like this above all, trust in the slow work of God. Above all, trust in the slow work of God. All of that, though, takes faith. And that's the third thing Jesus addresses: our faith with this final question. Look at verse 8. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Nevertheless, basically, Jesus is saying, despite everything that I've just said, even though God will answer his people, the question still remains: will his people answer God? Will they continue trusting him while they wait? Will he find faith? You wonder here, why doesn't Jesus say, Will the Son of Man find prayer on earth? Well, because persistent prayer is what faith looks like in the delay. John Calvin taught us that prayer is the chief exercise of faith, which means if you want to know how strong or weak your faith is, look at your prayer life. It's the best indicator of your faith. Now, what is faith? Well, notice that Jesus teaches us to pray, to not lose heart, by telling us a parable about the character of God fundamentally. Jesus goes to tell us about who God is rather than giving us prayer techniques or endurance tactics. Those are fine, but it's just not what he does here. Because when Jesus wants to encourage you, strengthen your heart so you don't lose heart, he wants to tell you a story about what God is like, or better yet, actually, what God is not like. Because the reason we lose heart, the reason we don't always pray, it always fundamentally comes down to this we compare God to the judge rather than contrast them. We think he's indifferent. We think we gotta twist his arm. We think we've got to do enough, beg enough, be enough for God to listen. And Jesus is saying, your father is not like that judge at all. You see, notice it says, when the Son of Man comes, what is Jesus, who is the Son of Man, what is he doing in the meantime? Like what's he up to? Well, he's doing something for us that would have made all the difference for the widow. Jesus is our advocate. Let me tell you a quick story. There's a guy named Jamie Winship who tells this story of uh when he was serving as a professor in Indonesia, and Jamie offended some Muslim students by making a disparaging remark about the Quran, which in Indonesia violated a local law and exposed him to a punishment of 10 years in prison. Now, Jamie worried. He was like, I don't know what's gonna happen to my wife and kids. They can't go back to the U.S., they're gonna be stuck here for 10 years while I'm in prison. He struggled before God with this. Will God be enough to care for him? Is God enough to protect his family? There's this beautiful moment where he told his son, hey buddy, you remember how Jesus brought us here to teach? Well, you know, I think Jesus wants dad to do prison ministry now. But he felt completely powerless and alone. And so he goes to court, he stands there, clearly guilty of the charges. He had actually violated a real law. But since only Muslims were permitted to speak in court, he had no leverage and he had no one and no ability to defend himself. So he knew he was fine, he was going to be found guilty and sentenced to 10 years. But then in the middle of the proceedings, a respected Western educated Muslim professor walks into the courtroom. Jamie had never seen this man before. And the man asks permission to speak on Jamie's behalf. Now, listen, he tells his own story autobiographically. He says, Listen, I was years earlier studying at Arizona State University, and while I was there, my wife and I were really struggling. We were poor international students, we barely knew English, we were struggling just to survive. But two American Christians, they took him in, they fed him regular meals, they invited him to a Bible study, and they helped him finish grad school. In fact, he says he finished higher than them because of how much effort they put in to making him succeed. And so now he's standing in this courtroom in Indonesia and he told the judge, listen, if the Christians in America treated me so well, are we Muslims going to do less than them? Are we going to treat one of them worse than they treated me? I think we should let this man go. And he walked out of the courtroom. The court listened to him, and all the charges were dropped. Jamie Winship said he was convinced that this man was an angel until he walked out and found him smoking a cigarette. Apparently, that's where his angelology just like doesn't work. And so he talked to this man and he said, Hey, um, who are you? And the man told him how he was just appointed the head of a major Islamic association in Indonesia. And the reason why he was just appointed the head is because the day before, the previous head was killed in a car accident. And when he heard about Jamie's case, he flew the equivalent of LA to New York to make it to where this court was just in time to advocate on his behalf because he wanted to make sure that he could do for Jamie what those American Christians did for him. Listen, the widow had no advocate, but we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. It is such good news that when the widow stood alone before an unjust judge, the elect cry out to a just God through his righteous son. Jesus is not, this is really important, Jesus is not continually kind of reconvincing God to go easy on us. That's not what he's doing. Jesus is continually presenting his once for all work for us. Said differently, the widow needed a mediator because of the evil of the judge. She was in the right and he was in the wrong. We need a mediator because of the evil in ourselves. God is in the right and we are in the wrong. But Jesus' scars are enough. His scars are enough evidence. He stands there embodied in human form as our advocate, bearing scars in the courtroom of heaven on our behalf, pleading for us. When the Son of Man comes, until then, what is Jesus doing? Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, is praying for his chosen ones. Do you believe that? Will the Son of Man find faith on earth? Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. Not only that you are our advocate to the Father, but that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Spirit of God intercede for us with groanings too deep for words. Help us in our weakness. We don't know how to pray as we ought, but you do. You search hearts and minds, you know the will of God, you call out on our behalf. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.