Luke 18:1-8
Grace to you and peace…
If there’s anything that seems to stick out in this parable as something that particularly applies to our contemporary situation, it’s this widow’s cry for justice. “Give me justice against my adversary!”. Put the cheaters in jail. Catch the identity thieves. Hunt down the sexual predators, lock them up and throw away the key. Everybody wants justice and the news is full of such cries.
Much of this desire is for very good reason, but there’s also seems to be a “dark side to this thirst for “justice”. That is, you can’t help but think that in a few of the cases we’ve seen, both the judges that are supposedly “administering justice” and the people that bringing forth their complaint, obviously have no fear of God and obviously, they have no respect for man either. Both are simply pursuing what they think is “right in their own eyes” and sometimes you can’t help but watch the media circus and not end up feeling a little “jaded”.
I. It’s in this context that we hear the Lord speak these words to us today.
A. Jesus is not teaching us about social justice.
The widow, as many parallels as there might be to her in our society is neither the main point nor the main character of this parable. For that matter, neither is the judge.
B. The main point of this parable is that our God is the “righteous judge”.
He is the anti-thesis of the judge in the parable. Where the judge neither fears God nor respects man, God, our Heavenly Father, does not grudgingly grant us an answer to our prayers. He does not get “beat down” by our continual coming before Him.
To Him, we are His beloved; His elect. We are His chosen ones and the apple of His eye (as He says). We are those to whom He indeed gives justice – even, “speedily”. In fact, we are those for whom He has already sent His Son to die that God might deal with Him according to the legal demands of justice, that in turn, He might deal with us (in Christ) according to His mercy. He tells us this that, in the face of life’s adversities, we not lose heart.
IN CHRIST, ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS HAS BEEN FULFILLED. JUSTICE HAS BEEN ADMINISTERED AND ON ACCOUNT OF JESUS, GOD NOW HEARS YOUR PRAYERS, INTERVENES IN YOUR TRIALS, AND DEALS WITH YOU ACCORDING TO HIS COMPASSION AND ACCORDING TO HIS MERCY.
II. But He asks today, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find such faith on earth?
A. What do you do with this question?
Particularly in the context of our day, when the pursuit of “justice” is the “word of the day”…when God’s word that “vengeance is mine says the Lord, I will repay” aren’t even an “after-thought”…when people aren’t trusting that God has a handle on the situation and instead, have taken every matter into their own hands to accomplish their own purposes? How should you understand what Jesus is saying?
“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” In other words, will the Son of man find His elect, his chosen, still hoping; still praying; still coming to Him for all their needs of body and life or…will the world’s infatuation with temporal concerns and temporal forms of justice have prevailed? Will His elect have failed to “persevere”? Will His elect have “lost heart”?
B. Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable so that we would always pray and not lose heart.
And this reminds us of the sixth petition where we pray “lead us not into temptation”. Temptation is more than the temptation to be lazy or lustful. It’s more than the temptation to covet or to gossip. It is all these things but, if you remember the Small Catechism’s explanation of the sixth petition, then you remember that “we pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the Devil, the world, and our own sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, or other great shame and vice”.
If you’re like most people, when you think of “temptation”, you probably think of things that would, if caught, cause you “great shame and vice”. And while those temptations are real, Jesus seems to be giving us this parable in the hopes that we might not fall into despair. Despair, after all, is what it means to “lose heart”…and it’s a form of sin that we fall into when we stop believing that God hears and will answer our prayers – not only according to His justice, but while ever looking upon us out of His compassion and mercy.
III. It’s ironic that a world so enraptured with justice would also be so burdened with despair
A. However, if you read what’s going on in society, that’s exactly what’s happening.
The Attorney General gave a speech a couple of weeks ago at Notre Dame University in which he decried the rise of secularism, attributing to it “a moral upheaval in all parts of society and the rise of a number of social ills including: the wreckage of the family; record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence, and a deadly drug epidemic that has led to the death of over 70,000 people in a year”.
B. God’s Saints are not immune to these trends.
Mental illness and despair do not discriminate. The same fallen flesh that would tantalize one person with the glories promised by false doctrine, will tantalize another person with all sorts of shameful vices. The same flesh, for some people, will predispose them to despair. God’s answer? Trust and put your hope in God the Righteous Judge.
God has taken the burdens of the world, our sinful nature and of even the Devil upon Himself, nailing the judgement against them in His body on a tree, that He might deal with us according to His mercy.
Conclusion: So hear what the righteous judge then says: “I will not delay long over you. I will answer when you cry and will do so speedily. In fact, I promise that I am coming soon! Don’t lose heart! I’ve already come to your aid. Righteousness has already prevailed. Death has lost it’s sting. The adversary is crushed and I am restoring all good things”. Don’t despair and lose faith. As I’ve dealt with you in mercy, I will remember you by the same.
Christ is living and will come again. Grace to all who call upon His Name. In the Name +