The Humble Prayer of Faith

In our passage Jesus is describing various characteristics of God’s elect (Chosen). In v.7 Jesus applies that parable to “his elect.” That is, there are some people that have been chosen by God. Chosen for what? To belong to the Kingdom of God (v.16). Salvation is not about you. If you believe you did not believe because you were just smarter and more holy than other people. It is because God chose you and worked in your heart.

Having said that, we are not fatalists; Humans have the free will to choose or reject God, and there are several characteristics of the saved. They persevere, meaning they do not give up on God but they continue to ask for deliverance from the mess that is our present evil age. They humbly recognize their moral backruptcy before God instead of self-righteously condemning others. And they are prepared to practice the faith Jesus commands like a little child. Our passage urges everyone to choose God. No one who truly chooses God and his Kingdom will find it impossible to believe. Instead, those who believe find they have already been chosen. The characteristic of the chosen is prayer from a humble position of faith. Today we will see two parables and an event that show this humble prayer of faith.

Pray Always, Don’t Give Up

Most parables don’t announce the intent before it is told, but this one does. Luke tells us that the point of this parable was “always pray, and don’t lose heart.” Notice that the opposite of praying always isn’t praying less; it is “losing heart,” meaning giving up on your request. Constant prayer isn’t about how often you pray, but about continuing to believe God will help you.

Now the setting of the parable is an “unjust judge” (v.6). This judge does not fear either God or man. What does it mean to fear God? It means that you recognize you are accountable to Him for your actions. The Fear of God is a prerequisite to judging justly.

2 Chronicles 19:4–7 NKJV

So Jehoshaphat dwelt at Jerusalem; and he went out again among the people from Beersheba to the mountains of Ephraim, and brought them back to the Lord God of their fathers. Then he set judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges, “Take heed to what you are doing, for you do not judge for man but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Now therefore, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes.”

But Jesus’ judge here does not fear God, so he has no problem with partiality or taking bribes.

The other thing Jesus mentions is “respect man.” Now the fear of man is not really a good thing, as proverbs states

Proverbs 29:25 NKJV

The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.

John 12:42–43 NKJV

Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

In other words, the fear of man means that you fear reprisals from people. It can even keep you from believing in Jesus. However, society has some demands that are good. The fear of Man is a pretty poor substitute for fearing God, for if society starts demanding evil then you’ll just do evil because you are afraid of what people will think of you. But imagine a judge that does not care if people think he is crooked, what then? Then he’ll not even try to hide the fact that he is crooked, and you can’t threaten him into doing the right thing, since there is nothing you can tell him that will change his behavior. In other words, if you have a court case and your judge does not fear either God or man, you’re screwed.

The other character in our parable is a widow. Now widows were particularly vulnerable. They had no political power, and little means of earning money, so they could be easily taken advantage of. This widow had been cheated out of something, maybe her home, and needed a judge to put things right. Unfortunately for her, the only judge she could go to was this guy who did not fear God and did not care if you knew it.

But our widow was made of really tough stuff. She just kept coming and demanding justice; and at first, the judge just dismissed her because she didn’t have anything to bribe him with. He knew what that looked like, but he does not care, so he just dismisses her case without even hearing it. But she just kept coming.

Eventually this judge gets so fed up with her persistence that he finally says to himself that he’d better give her, just to get rid of her.

The whole point of this unjust judge is that God is not like the unjust judge. He is not reluctant to listen to you, so you don’t have to try to get his attention, and you can’t wear him down. Jesus’ point is that if persistence works for unrighteous judges, it will work with the perfectly just God who loves you.

The common ground between the unjust judge and God is that in both cases you’ll need to wait to receive the justice you are looking for. The assumption is that you’ll suffer injustice in this present life, and it will not be immediately fixed. The difference is the motives. The unjust judge did not fix the widow’s problem because he just did not care. God waits to bring justice because he is merciful and wants unrighteous sinners to repent. When Jesus says he “delays long over them” that word delay (μακροθυμέω) can mean longsuffering, but here Jesus means that God won’t dilly-dally longer than necessary to accomplish his will. He is eager to answer your prayers, so long as you pray according to the will of God, but time is needed to work out the full extent of his plan first.

Thus when it says that God will answer them “speedily,” (or quickly ταχός), that does not mean you won’t have to pray a long time. It means that God will not wait a moment longer than he has to in order to accomplish everything he is trying to do; one of those things is bringing you the justice you crave. But if you give up, and figure that God has stopped listening because he didn’t answer you immediately, you will not receive what you are praying for.

The biggest danger therefore is not about how many times you pray, it is whether you will continue to believe that God hears and answers your prayers. Jesus asks the rhetorical question, when the Son of Man comes will he find faith in the earth? the implication is first that there will be a delay. After all, the Son of Man was standing right in front of them when he said that - how could he “arrive” any more than he already was? Because while Jesus was there, he is implying that he will first leave before coming to set up his kingdom.

I did the same thing when I came here in october of last year. You had already chosen me as your pastor, and I was working hard to get here as fast as I could. But before I actually moved here, I came up here to try to establish housing. So when I was up here for a housing trip, I talked about when I would get here, even though I was already there - that was because I could not yet function as pastor, because I first had to figure out how to move my stuff and find a place to live up here. I was here, and I was already your pastor, but I wasn’t yet functioning as your pastor because I had to move first.

Jesus is also implying that when he returns, there will be not much faith in God at the time. He can’t be implying that there will be no faith at all, since the Scriptures also promise that (1) the church will not fail, and (2) Jesus will take living believers with him at the Rapture. But the implication is that there will be a great falling away from God before Jesus returns. That said, this does not mean that all progress is gradually secular. The faith on the earth can fluctuate up and down between Jesus’ ascension and the Rapture, it is just that it will not be high when he does return.

For a model of the decline of faith, look to the History of Israel - Israel did decline from the days of Moses to the Exile, but it definitely wasn’t a linear decline. Instead there was repeated cycles of apostacy and revival until Israel got a King, then there were repeated cycles of good kings and bad kings, with the level of faith finally getting so poor that God had enough. I think the progress of the world will be similar. There will be ups and downs, and different places may go up and down at different times and different rates. Eventually, however, God’s patience will run out and Jesus will return. Only God knows how bad things have to get for that to happen. Only God knows if some other movement of the Spirit will revive things without the Rapture/Second Coming or if there is no recourse left. But make no mistake, the trajectory of humanity is not onward and upward, but increasingly secular.

The One who Humbles Himself will be Exalted

Now a second time we are told the point of this parable as well. It was directed to the self-righteous who looked down on others as sinners. That is, Jesus is condemning the behavior that elevates yourself to being better than others.

The Attitudes toward Pharisees and Tax Collectors in the New Testament.

The two people are a Pharisee and a Tax Collector. Now I must remind you that Pharisees today have a very poor reputation because of Jesus’ attacks, but that is not how they appeared to the general populace. Instead the Pharisees were widely respected as the most dedicated, most pure keepers of the Law. They were the ones everyone wanted to be like, but most people didn’t have the time to obsess over the law like they did.

Tax collectors were Jews who worked for the Roman version of the IRS; they were seen as traitors because they worked for the invaders. They were also seen as corrupt, because they were. The Roman system of tax collecting was on the highest bidder - the one who promised to get the most money for them and charge the least. But if that tax collector managed to get more money than he was supposed to get, he could just pocket the rest; so that’s what most tax collectors did. So not only were tax collectors hated, there was good reason to think of them as corrupt.

The Pharisee

But Jesus’ parable reverses their expectations. It is the Pharisee who stands and prays “by himself.” Most Jews did stand to pray with upstretched arms. The point is that this Pharisee was praying publically so everyone could hear him. And his prayer is a self-congratulatory rant that is little more than just a list of all the good things he thinks he has done. And we find out what he thinks righteousness looks like by this prayer.

He first “thanks God” that is he does not commit big sins - extortion, dishonesty, adultery. These are really rather easy things to avoid, and lots of unsaved people also don’t do them.

He then lists the positive good things he does. Fasts twice a week - what is that about? He clearly thinks that this proves his dedication to God, but God does not really think so. Fasting is not wrong; in the right context God can recommend it.

Joel 2:12–13 NKJV

“Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.

In other words, Joel wants Israel to repent, and he recommends they do so by fasting. But fasting as a regular practice? God did not command it. The people of Zechariah’s day asked about whether they should fast on the fifth and seventh months, to remember the exile; the reply was that God really did not care since that fast was for them and not for the Lord

Zechariah 7:2–7 NKJV

when the people sent Sherezer, with Regem-Melech and his men, to the house of God, to pray before the Lord, and to ask the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years?” Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, “Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and the South and the Lowland were inhabited?’ ”

The fast that God chooses ought rather to reflect true repentance; then and only then will the fast be acceptable to Him.

Isaiah 58:5–6 NKJV

Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the Lord? “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?

The second thing the Pharisee did was to tithe all he possessed. Now God did command a tithe. That is, a tenth of everything he produced was given to the work of the Lord - that’s not bad, but it is only an external thing. The problem is that it is really easy to do. Just write the check and be done with it. (OK, he didn’t write a check because most people produced food rather than earned money, but you get the idea.)

Deuteronomy 14:22 NKJV

“You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year.

Now this tithe was not like Christian giving. Under the Law the Tithe was rather like a tax, for it is what funded the minimal government that existed prior to the Monarchy. God did promise them blessing if they did it, and cursing if they did not.

God commands Christians to give voluntarily and generously, but he does not tell us exactly how much.

2 Corinthians 9:6–7 NKJV

But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.

Notice that everything that the Pharisee congratulated himself with were easy things to do - not do really bad stuff, and do a few minor, external things that don’t require a real heart for God. If this is his standard of righteousness, it is no wonder he had a big head about how good he was. Anyone could meet this standard without a lot of difficulty.

But God’s standard of righteousness is considerably higher. God commands true goodness from the heart, not merely a show of virtue. If the Pharisee really tried to live as God truly commanded, he’d not be so confident. Because he does not really live according to God’s righteous standard, there is actually quite a lot of sin that is still in his life - not the least of which is pride. This means that if he truly wants to be acceptable to God, he must change his attitude about what God requires, and face the reality of his own shortcomings before God. But that would require a change in his moral worldview. This change would be humiliating, but it is the only path to true righteousness.

The Tax Collector

The other one is the tax collector. This one does not try to pretend he is a good person - and he is a tax collector, so he is certainly not wrong about that. He really has been a pretty despicable person, not just in God’s sight but in man’s sight as well. The difference is his attitude. We see it first in his posture; instead of standing in public and loudly proclaiming his goodness, he stands far away and looks down. That’s not how the Jew usually prayed, so the posture is notable. He looked down because he is deeply ashamed of his behavior. To beat the breast was a universal sign of mourning. This guy is really upset because he has glimpsed just how wicked he really is in God’s sight. The key is that he has recently had a perspective shift. He formerly did not care about whether his corrupt behavior was righteous nor not, but now he realizes just how evil he has been, and it is not a pleasant realization.

His words are really simple. God be merciful to me a sinner. He does not make excuses for his behavior. It’s not a mistake, there are no extenuating circumstances. He does not pretend like he can offer God anything in exchange - he doesn’t say, “God, if you forgive me this once, I’ll give more; I’ll go to the temple more often.” He just calls on the mercy of God. It’s not a pretty prayer, but it reflects true repentance.

The Pharisee focused on justifying himself before men, by using his prayer as an excuse to tell everyone how good he was. He probably went home feeling fantastic, because he was so caught up in how great he was. But he missed out on truly adopting God’s righteous standard as his own, and therefore he did not repent. In a weird way he was trying to justify himself, but he failed to be justified in God’s sight because he failed to repent.

The Tax Collector did not pretend like there was any good reason for his behavior; he probably went home feeling terrible, because he was really upset at his behavior. But because he had truly adopted God’s righteous standard as his own, he did truly repent. Therefore God forgave him whether he knew it or not.

And it is at this point that we get the general principle. The one who exalts himself will be humbled. The Pharisee exalted himself, but someday he would have to stand before God and discover that God was not impressed by his self-congratulatory aggrandizement. He would be ultimately humbled, when it was too late to repent. And the one who humbles himself will be exalted. the Tax collector will someday discover that God had completely forgiven him and given him a place in his Kingdom; his sins would never be brought up again.