http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15899956/on-whom-will-vengeance-fall
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How Do I Persist in Prayer?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back. On Monday we took a question from Rose, a woman who has emailed us several times over the years. She emailed us the same brief question: “How do I pray for my husband to be saved?” It’s a question from desperation, and maybe from weariness too. So how does a woman like Rose not lose heart in praying for her husband over years — maybe even over decades? Pastor John ended his answer with a brief mention of Luke 18:1–8 — a great parable for those who need motivation to endure in prayer. But it is also a very odd parable. It has sometimes been called “The Parable of the Unjust Judge,” which is where one of the problems rests. How and why is God likened to a godless, unjust judge? Because of this, we often just prefer to call it “The Parable of the Persistent Widow.” That’s cleaner. But no matter what we call it, this remains perhaps the oddest parable Jesus ever told. Odd because of how many false correlations we need to untangle to understand it. That’s what we do today, in a clip from a sermon preached on January 9, at the end of the first week of 1983. Here’s a very young Pastor John, preaching during a pretty intense season of focused prayer for himself and for his church. Here’s what he said.
It’s one of the few parables to be interpreted right at the outset, lest we miss the point. Verse 1 of chapter 18 of Luke is the interpretation of the parable. “He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Jesus’s answer to the question “How can you endure to the end and be saved?” is “Pray, pray, pray, and don’t lose heart in your praying.”
Peculiar Parable
The parable goes like this:
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.” (Luke 18:2–5)
Now, don’t be offended that Jesus compares God the Father to an unjust judge. That happens several times in the Bible. For example, the most familiar one is that Jesus’s coming is called the coming of a what in the night? Thief, which is not very complimentary to Jesus. But clearly, when the New Testament talks like that, it doesn’t mean Jesus is the thief. It means that the point of comparison is suddenness, unexpectedness. So here, the point of comparison is not that God is unjust, but that he gives in to prevailing prayer.
Verse 7 draws out the lesson very clearly, which was stated in verse 1. “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?” The answer, of course, is obviously God will vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night — that is, who always pray. Therefore, the point of the parable is cry to God day and night. Show yourself to be the elect by acting the way the elect always act — cry to God day and night. Or to use the words of verse 1, pray always and don’t lose heart. And if you do that, you will not become like Lot’s wife — in love with the world — and turn back into a pillar of salt. You will not be left in judgment as one is snatched away from your home. You will endure in faith and love, and God will vindicate you when the Son of Man flashes from one horizon to the other. So, always pray and don’t lose heart.
Pray, Pray, Pray
Now, what’s driving me this morning in this sermon is that this is the last day of a week of concerted prayer. So, we’re at the end of prayer week. That’s a dangerous place to be, according to this parable. “Don’t end” is what this parable is saying. If we end praying, we’re in trouble — deep trouble. Some of us this week have had a great time. I’ve prayed more hours in the first week of 1983 than any week in my life. And many of you have too. Now what? The word of Jesus to us this morning is, “Don’t stop praying. Don’t peter out. Don’t be fickle. Always, always, always pray. Cry to God day and night.”
“Jesus’s answer to the question ‘How can you endure to the end and be saved?’ is ‘Pray, pray, pray.’”
Here’s the way Peter put it in his first letter: “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers” (1 Peter 4:7). The closer the end draws near, the more threat against the warmth of the faith of the church and the greater the need for persevering prayer. The pressures of worldliness will be so great as the end draws near that only a few will make it. After all, Jesus said, “The love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). I hope we’re among the number.
Now, how does this parable help us and encourage us to pray continually? The widow comes to an unjust judge, and she pleads for help. Evidently, she’s being oppressed by some rascal, and she’s helpless. And she asks the judge, “Vindicate me. Help me. Tell him to stop that.” And that’s us, right? The widow — weak, poor, no husband to stand up for her. Her only recourse is the judge, even though he is unjust, and our only recourse is God.
Not Like That Judge
Now, the argument of the parable is not, “Well, if you can get on the case of the judge long enough, he’ll try to get you off his back by vindicating you. Therefore, if you get on God’s case long enough, then to get you off his back, he will vindicate you.” You could interpret the parable that way, but there are two reasons why you shouldn’t.
The first is that that would contradict clearly Luke 12:32, where it says, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He’s not reneging on any promises. He’s eager to give you the kingdom. But the main reason why we shouldn’t construe the parable that way is that there are two clues right here in the parable for the fact that God isn’t like that judge.
Notice in verse 2 that this judge neither feared God nor regarded man. And those two things are repeated in verse 4. “Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet . . . I will give her justice.” Now when it says, “Yet I will give her justice,” that must mean that not fearing God and not regarding men are big obstacles to helping the widow, right? If you don’t fear God, it’s an obstacle to get over to help her. He gets over it by ulterior motives. But notice first, he doesn’t fear God. And if fearing God is an obstacle to helping the widow, then presumably, if you did fear God, you would incline naturally to help the widow, right?
That must mean that God isn’t at all like this judge because, if he inclines the people who fear him to give to the widow liberally and quickly, he must be that kind of God. And so, by saying that this judge doesn’t fear God and, therefore, doesn’t answer her readily, he shows that God isn’t at all like the unjust judge. And so, the argument of the parable is an argument from lesser to greater. If, by knocking on the door of the judge who doesn’t have an ounce of justice in his body, you can still get your answer, how much more, by knocking on God’s door continually, will you most certainly be answered, because he’s not like that judge at all?
Voices God Knows
The second thing it says about the judge is that he has no regard for man. Now we need to ask, Since he doesn’t know this widow and, therefore, doesn’t care about her at all — has no regard to her — is God like that when we approach him and pray to him? Verse 7 makes it very, very clear that that’s not the case, because it says, “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?”
“In Jesus’s mind, prayer and faith stand and fall together.”
See that word elect? That’s a dynamite word. That means, when we come to God and pray to him, we’re not coming like a stranger, a widow whom he doesn’t know or care about. He has chosen us, elected us, set his favor upon us, adopted us into his family, made us his children. When we knock on the door and say, “It’s me,” it’s very different than when a strange widow knocks on an unjust judge’s door and says, “It’s me” — and he answered, “Who?”
God knows our voice. We’re his children. We’re the chosen. We’re the elect. And therefore, Jesus argues from lesser to greater: if an unjust judge who has a stranger, whom he doesn’t care about at all, knocking on his door will give in to her, how much more will God, who not only knows us but chose us, loves us, adopts us, readily and lovingly answer our request?
So, the parable is intended to encourage us to get on with the business of praying because we have such a hopeful prospect of being answered. When Jesus asks at the end of the parable in verse 8, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” that could be also phrased like this: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find that we have kept praying, or not?” Evidently, in Jesus’s mind, prayer and faith stand and fall together.
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Is Motherhood Real Work?
“When are you going back to work?”
Before our son came, people asked. After he arrived, they asked even more. It didn’t matter to whom I spoke: friend, stranger, student, retiree, believer, nonbeliever. No one wondered, “Will you go back to work?” People assumed I would. No need to ask about if, just when. A cultural assumption emerged: new moms keep old, pre-baby careers.
Why do we expect women to take maternity leave rather than stay home when their first child is born? Maybe cost of living is to blame. Maybe it’s the belief that two incomes are always better than one. Maybe only a closed-minded thinker would dare to ask, “Will you stay home now?” Whatever the reason, we tend to assume new moms will return to old jobs.
But I was a new mom who left an old job. When am I going back to work? How could I answer that question? I felt awkward, even embarrassed, as I responded, “Oh, I’m not going back to work.” Both in what I said and in how I felt as I said it, another underlying belief bubbled up. This time, it was personal: stay-at-home moms don’t have real, meaningful jobs.
Other stay-at-home moms in my church say they often feel the same. One told me that when people ask “what she does,” she starts by saying, “Well I would work, but . . .” Another, who works part-time from home while caring for two kids, said, “I find myself thinking that the only ‘productive’ parts of my day are the ones I spend engaging with my paid work.” Rather than “missus” teacher or “doctor” so and so, we have all chosen to be “mom” from nine to five (and 24/7). Even so, it’s hard for us to see the payoff. Do we really work? Is our work meaningful?
The God who spoke both women and work into existence answers with a resounding yes. He wrote Genesis 1–3 into the Bibles of new moms like me, in part, to convince us not only that we do work, but that it’s rich, rich work. Not salaried work, but valuable, vital work. I have only just begun this work, but already I have realized that there is no stay-at-home mom. There are only work-at-home moms.
Entrusted with His Image
After all, God gave the very first woman he created the job of being a mother. When God made Eve from Adam, he made her a woman (Genesis 2:21–23). He did not make her a mother. Rather, he entrusted her with the task of becoming a mother.
As soon as God finishes fashioning Adam and Eve “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27), he commands them to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). With what job would the Creator of every subatomic particle in a gargantuan universe employ the first creature in his image he ever made? Making more humans: “Adam and Eve, work together to fill the earth with my glorious likeness. I could form a hundred children for you with a single puff of my breath, but instead I want you to labor to become ‘mom’ and ‘dad,’ to the glory of my name.”
God employs all creation to display his glory, but the first project he charged to the first people was to become the first parents of the first babies — babies whose makeup would showcase God. Sure, they would look like Adam and Eve, but oh, how they would they image God!
“The first project God charged to the first people was to become the first parents of the first babies.”
So through the lens of Genesis, “my” childbearing becomes God’s image-furthering. When we embrace God’s call to love and care for even one child, we are saying to the Holy One, “I love and care for your matchless likeness. I want to see your goodness, beauty, and worth spread to the ends of the earth, and in some mysterious way, you showcase your glory in the five-inch face of this newborn baby. So I will tend to the needs of this little image you have entrusted to me, to the glory of your name.”
Labor Pains
Seen in this way, we can’t but conclude that motherhood is worthwhile work. Even so, if we read further in Genesis, we can better understand why moms, especially young ones, struggle to value motherhood as its Creator and Giver does.
When our first parents sinned, God justly cursed the good work he had given humanity to do. God said to Eve (and as a result to all women), “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). From infertility to miscarriage, from nauseating pregnancies to difficult deliveries, we feel the fall’s physical effects on motherhood. Many never become biological mothers. Some lose children. Where God does grant a child, knees tweak and backs strain under years of constant care for another’s well-being.
But sin ushered in an emotional struggle as well. Becoming a mother is painful; staying a mother is too. Raising children exhausts, frustrates, scares, and sometimes bores us. What we were made to embrace and enjoy — the God-given, precious responsibility to nurture life and so further his image — causes us to worry and sigh. We lose God’s grand vision for motherhood in the pile of dirty diapers we need to toss or (later on) the curfews keeping us awake until they’re home.
Mothers of the Living
We can find it again in the creation story. By God’s grace, we can be mothers who gladly continue the work of creation despite the fall’s effects. But at this point, we would do well to ask, “To what end? Why would God give me the job of nurturing humans made in his image first to biological life and then to physical, mental, and emotional well-being if ultimately the curse ensures everyone will die?”
God settles our angst in an unlikely place: Eve’s name. In Genesis 3:19, God delivers the final words of the curse: to dust you shall return. The first humans God created to enjoy eternal life in his presence — they will die. Any future humans entrusted to them — they will die too. With this news we would expect the garden to fall shamefully, despairingly silent. But it was not so. In the very next verse, we read, “The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20).
The mother of all living? Why would Adam give Eve this name? Didn’t God just say that Eve’s body, and all the bodies that come from hers, and all the bodies that come from theirs, would dissolve into dust?
He did, but he also said something else. While cursing the serpent, God declared that one of Eve’s offspring would stamp out this patron saint of sin and death (Genesis 3:15). God would permit Satan to sow evil on earth — but the clock is ticking. The enemy’s time short. For one day, through Adam and Eve’s childbearing, Satan would be overthrown, sin conquered, death vanquished. God promised it, and there and then, Adam believed God’s promise. He believed God enough to name his wife “the mother of all living” in the face of pain and death.
“This side of a tiny manger, a bloody cross, and an empty tomb, no childbearing is an exercise in futility.”
Mothers, do we believe God’s promise? This side of a tiny manger, a bloody cross, and an empty tomb, no childbearing is an exercise in futility. Motherhood is not meaningless, but a mission from God. Jesus Christ, the promised seed, has overthrown Satan, conquered sin, and vanquished death. Because of him, we are not just nurturing little bodies that take in first and last breaths. We are caring for hearts and minds and souls capable of enjoying this Jesus forever — in real, perfect, resurrected bodies, with chests rising and falling in eternal praise.
Job as Old as Eve
When does a new mom go back to work? She never stopped. People will still ask, but by God’s grace she will see motherhood as a job as old as work itself. What is more, she will believe that a mother’s labor matters, eternally so. We are not just nurturing image-bearers who reflect a glorious God. We are nurturing potential Christ-enjoyers and Christ-exalters. We stay home, and we work to this end with all our motherly might.
When rightly captivated by the God-given task of motherhood, then, we will not dread a change in or the loss of career, hobbies, or leisure upon a baby’s birth. Rather, we accept the task as both gift and opportunity to shape life to the glory of God.
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Be Still, My Soul: A Hymn for the Hardest Losses
After nearly two decades, the memory is still vivid: standing in the living room with the phone to my ear, listening as my friend and pastor, Rick, described to me through sobs how one of the young, vibrant couples in our church had just been in a terrible car accident. The husband had survived. But the wife had not. And neither had their unborn son — their first child, whose birth they had been anticipating with so much joy.
I stood stunned, trying to process this new reality. I could see her laughing with a group of people after church the previous Sunday. Now, she was suddenly gone — taken, along with her child, in a violent event that unfolded in a few seconds. Rick asked me, the leader of the worship ministry, to begin thinking and praying over possible music for the funeral that would likely be held the next week.
If my memory is accurate, the first song that came to mind, almost immediately, was one of my favorite hymns: “Be Still, My Soul.”
Song for Deepest Sorrow
I have loved this hymn since my late teens. When sung to a beautiful arrangement of the tune “Finlandia,” it has, to my ear, perfect prosody — that’s the term musicians use to describe how “all elements [of a song] work together to support the central message of the song.” And the central message of “Be Still, My Soul” is the resurrection hope Jesus gives us in the face of the devastating death of a loved one.
The powerful lyrics come from the pen of a German woman named Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel and began appearing in German hymnals in 1752. Little is known about Katharina. Some believe she may have been a “Stiftsfraulein,” a member of a female Lutheran “stift” (convent) in the town of Köthen (one hundred miles southwest of Berlin), and that she had been significantly influenced by a pietistic Christian renewal movement.
No record survives of the specific event(s) that inspired her to compose this deeply moving hymn. But such specifics aren’t necessary since we all experience the kind of devastating losses she writes about. And when they come, we often find ourselves enduring an internal hurricane of disorienting grief, in desperate need of the peaceful shelter of hope. And the gift Katharina has bequeathed to us — in the four verses most English hymnals contain (she wrote six) — is this profound poetic reminder of the one shelter for our sorrowful, storm-tossed souls: the faithfulness of God.
‘The Lord Is on Thy Side’
She begins in verse one by reminding us of the unshakable foundation on which we stand by faith:
Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.Leave to thy God to order and provide;In ev’ry change, He faithful will remain.Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly friendThrough thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
The first line is a near quote of Psalm 118:6: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.” But the rationale for why we have any right to make this otherwise audacious claim is gloriously stated in Romans 8:31–32:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
In the swirl of grief, we may wonder, “All things? Then why did God not spare my loved one from death and me from such anguish of separation?” To which the Holy Spirit, through the great apostle, graciously, hopefully, and gently replies,
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37–39)
Soul, be at peace: your faithful Lord is on your side. And he will lead you through this vale of deep darkness to the eternally Son-lit, joyful land of everlasting love (Psalm 23:4, Revelation 21:23).
‘All Now Mysterious Shall Be Bright at Last’
In verse two, Katharina reminds us of the great promise purchased for us when the Father did not spare his own Son for us: freedom from the curse of living with the knowledge of good and evil — the knowledge we insisted on having, while lacking the capacities to comprehend or mange it.
Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertakeTo guide the future, as He has the past.Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;All now mysterious shall be bright at last.Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still knowHis voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.
Now, God’s purposes in allowing evil to wreak such grievous havoc are largely shrouded in mystery, and so can appear senseless. But it will not always be so. For Jesus came to undo all of the effects of curse. First, he came into the world to undo the curse of death (Genesis 3:19). And then, when we finally experience life free from remaining sin and beyond the threat of death, we shall be given knowledge more wonderful than what we sought from the Edenic fruit: we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Soul, be at peace: your faithful Lord will soon make all you now find so mysterious bright at last.
‘Jesus Can Repay All He Takes Away’
In verse three, when the sword of grief has pierced our hearts at the deaths of our dearest ones, Katharina applies the balm of gospel promise to our throbbing wound.
Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,And all is darkened in the vale of tears,Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repayFrom His own fullness all He takes away.
That last line echoes the great faith-filled, worshipful declaration Job made upon the news of the deaths of his dear children: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). But Katharina’s words declare the biblical promise of a greater restoration than Job experienced on earth. For God has promised that even the severest losses will someday seem like “light momentary affliction” compared to the “eternal weight of glory” they produce (2 Corinthians 4:17).
“Your faithful Lord will never depart and will repay from his own fullness far more than all he takes away.”
But this verse also describes a Christian’s paradoxical experience in the very anguish of bereavement. For those who, while grieving, place their trust in their best and heav’nly friend receive a foretaste of the riches of Jesus’s fullness as they come to “better know His love, His heart.” They often experience new dimensions of the reality of what Jesus meant when he said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), and “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
Soul, be at peace: your faithful Lord will never depart and will repay from his own fullness far more than all he takes away.
‘We Shall Be Forever with the Lord’
One week after that tragic car accident, we gathered in the sanctuary to remember the lives and grieve the deaths of that young wife, daughter, sister, friend, and expectant mother, and the baby boy she and her devastated husband had looked forward to bringing into the world. But we did not grieve as those “who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
My clearest memory of the funeral was being so deeply moved and comforted by the way I heard my brothers and sisters sing “Be Still, My Soul,” especially the last verse:
Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning onWhen we shall be forever with the Lord.When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.Be still, my soul: when change and tears are pastAll safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.
“There is coming a day when ‘we will always be with the Lord.’”
Here is every Christian’s “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), the reason Jesus is for us “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Katharina’s words helped us encourage one another in the hope that there is coming a day when “we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17–18). They helped us together preach to our souls,
Soul, be at peace: your faithful Lord will soon gather us all together again, safe and blessed, in his presence — where his full joy will be our full joy, and where all that gives him pleasure will be all that gives us pleasure forever (Psalm 16:11).
Then, having done our best to still our souls through faith in God’s faithfulness, we escorted the earthly remains of our sister and baby brother to the cemetery, where we sowed their perishable, weak, and natural bodies into the ground in the hope that Jesus will raise them with imperishable, powerful, spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). And upon the grave’s marker, the loving husband and father, whose loss had been incalculable, yet who in faith believed Christ had greater gain for the three of them, had this text inscribed:
As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)