Reading: Luke 18:1-8.
The common interpretation of this parable is that it is
a lesson in, or an exhortation to, importunity in prayer,
and it has been generally used in that connection. While
undoubtedly there is that element in it, that is altogether
too limited an interpretation. If you look at the setting of
the parable, you will see that it has a much larger
connection than that.
You
know that the division of the books of the Bible
into chapters is something much more recent than the
writing of the Gospel. It has nothing to do whatever
with the original narrative. So, looking back into
chapter 17 you find there is quite a lot about the Lord's
coming.
"There shall be two women grinding together the one
shall be taken, and the other shall be left. And they
answering say unto him, Where, Lord? And he said
unto them, Where the body is, thither will the eagles
also be gathered together." And earlier, you see the
chapter is grouped around the day of the coming of the
Son of Man; and then you go on into this parable itself.
The last verse of the parable is this, "When the Son of
man cometh, shall he find faith (or, the faith) on the
earth?"
Thus the parable is set right into the coming of
the Lord and must be interpreted in the light
thereof, not merely and only as a lesson in
importunity in
personal prayer. It cannot be that, because the elect is
in view. "Shall not
God
avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?".
"The elect" is only the eternal designation of the Church.
The word "Church" brings us into time as the called-out
company but "the elect" takes you back before time - "chosen in him before the foundation of the world"
(Eph. 1:4). It is the Church, therefore, which is in view
here, and the Church as related to the coming of the
Lord.
Then, again, the avengement of the Church can only
take place when the Lord comes. The Church will not
be avenged until He appears. We know that, and much
Scripture could be cited to support that. He will avenge
His Church at His coming.
The Increasing Pressure and the Deepening Cry
Thus it becomes perfectly clear as to what the
Lord was really saying. There is an adversary,
and that adversary is here set forth as the adversary of the elect, the adversary of the
Church, and that adversary is seen to be engaged in a persistent pressure upon the Church,
a persistent and growing pressure, which is
bringing the Church more and more to the place
of crying to be avenged. Now here we have
two things, namely, the growing pressure and
the deepening cry, and I do not think it necessary
beloved, to try to prove that the pressure
is intensifying. It is another sign that the coming
of
the
Lord is drawing near. All truly spiritual
children of God are well aware of the intensification of
pressure, spiritual pressure, from the adversary. We
see it and we feel it in many directions. Things are
closing in on the Church, pressing the Church in.
We see it in the political situation today, the
international situation; that in that realm, no sooner does
God begin to do something in a living way than the enemy
himself begins to do something. There was a great spiritual movement beginning in China. Many were
seeking, inquiring, coming to the Lord; and then came the
war in China, to scatter, to arrest, to break up, to hinder.
Blessed be God, He is sovereign, and sovereignly takes
hold of those counter movements of the enemy and turns
them to serve His own end. Nevertheless, it is marked. In
Norway again, there was something of the Lord, a real
movement of the Spirit; and now, in the very places
marked by the twos and threes who were keys to that
country for something more of the Lord, the very heat of
things is raging today, to scatter, to paralyse. What is
true in these two, is true over a much larger area. We
have seen it again and again, pressing in.
We recognize it in a spiritual way, apart from
anything outside; spiritual pressure, naked
pressure from the enemy upon the spirit and the mind of the child of God. It is
indeed intensification.
And what shall we say about this which
is becoming such an obvious thing, this spreading of physical pressure upon the children of
God? We have to take account of these things,
and that is the point now. Beloved, a very great
deal, an immense amount, of the physical suffering today
of the children of God, of the servants
of the Lord, is pressure from the enemy. It cannot be, in the last issue, accounted for on merely
natural grounds, for so often the assault is related to some spiritual interest, is bound up
with something that God is doing or is going to
do. There is the crippling and paralysing
attempt of the enemy in the physical, the bodily,
realm of the saints. We could almost say you
will
hardly find one who is a key to spiritual
things who is not assailed in that way at some
time or other. Pressure in every way is intensifying upon
the Church. I am sure you are alive
to that, the fact of it, at any rate; and it is going
to intensify, and true spiritual work, the thing
that is heavenly and that really counts in relation to God's ultimate and full purpose, is
going to find itself under increasing pressure from the
adversary.
But then there is the other side. What is this to result
in? In what way will the sovereignty of God govern this?
What does the Lord intend to be the issue? The deepening
and strengthening cry of the Church, "Avenge me!" -
the Church as one man, "me"; not us, but "me". "Avenge
me of my adversary!"; and that, according to the way in
which the Lord puts it, is to become a continuous cry at
the end: "which cry day and night unto him".
There are implications in this parable, and one of them
is this, that the coming of the Lord, the avenging of the
Church and the destruction of the work of the adversary
is bound up with this cry, and the cry must be. The Lord
has put the two together. Until there is the cry, there
cannot be avengement, and that means there cannot be
the coming of the Lord in intervention for the Church,
and there cannot be the destruction of the adversary.
The cry is essential.
Present Responsibility
Well now, in the light of that, where are we?
What does it mean for us now immediately. It
means this, that we have to take account of
what lies behind things. We have to take account of what
lies behind this world situation,
what the implications of it are, so far as the
Church is concerned, and we must not just accept this present world conflagration, this international situation, this war, as merely a bit
of the history of this world, the course of things
here on this earth. No, there is something at the
heart of this thing which is eternal and which is
heavenly, and the adversary is prepared to
throw all the nations into conflict and carnage
in order to get that "seed royal", that "man-child", to injure that "elect", to defeat God's
purpose as bound up with the Church. If you
have spiritual eyes open, that is the focal point
of your present observation; not simply the fact
of a war between this nation and that, these and
those, but that which lies behind it, and so in
every other connection. What is behind this
pressure and assault upon the bodies of the
Lord's people, and especially where spiritual
interests are the more bound up, this seeking
to put out of action, to render incapable of
functioning because of physical conditions?
What lies behind the spiritual pressure and the
circumstantial pressure, pressure coming in all
these different ways? Oh, beloved, ask the Lord
to open your eyes to that, to get you engaged
with that, for it
is
in that realm that the Church's
effectiveness is seen to obtain. When you get
back of things to the adversary and bring that
adversary up before the Throne of God and the
Church cries, "Avenge me of mine adversary",
you have touched the realm of spiritual effectiveness, you have got behind things. My longing,
my craving, is to find the Lord's people seeing this and acting accordingly. Oh
that, while not always occupied with the Devil and talking
about the Devil and demons and so on, and
getting that kind of mentality, we were nevertheless alive to this great reality, that back of
things is an adversary, and that we went behind
things and did not just pray for the things themselves. You see, you may pray for the Lord to
heal, for the Lord to raise up, to make better,
and oh! you have not really touched the realm
of effectiveness in prayer. What is there of the
adversary in this? Until you have touched that,
you have not really touched the issue. We have
no real ground for effectual prayer over these
situations in the world until we have got behind
them to the adversary who, in his own interests,
for his own ends, is bringing them about, precipitating them. Oh for the day when our prayer
gatherings will be more characterized by this
seeing, and acting accordingly, in the heavenlies! That is the thing. We shall recognize
what
this pressure is meant to produce; a cry, a
united cry, a one-voiced cry in the saints:
"Avenge me of mine adversary!" The Lord
bring us into that.
All Will Centre at Last in a Cry
Unless I am mistaken, this parable of the Lord is
intended to lead us to one or two other conclusions. In
the first place, that the Church, the spiritual Body, will be
so pressed that it has no other cry than this. It has only
this one cry. I mean that it will be gradually and definitely
centred in this, that all its other praying will be recognized
as of little avail, and its one great heart cry will be this,
perhaps not in these words, but with this significance,
with this meaning - "Avenge me of mine adversary!"
That means that the people of God will be pressed into
recognizing that they are not up against some human
situation, and therefore their cry will be in relation to
this ultimate issue,
being avenged of the adversary - pressed into crying.
The "Cry"
and the "Coming"
Then it seems to me that the Lord intended that we
should take account of this too, that, when the Church
really does reach that point and position where it does cry
like this, that means that the end is just at hand. "He will
avenge them and that speedily." Now the Lord said those
words many centuries ago, and if we reasoned according
to man, we should say, Speedily? Well, of course the
Lord dwells in eternity and there is no time with Him. A
thousand years is as a day with Him. With Him it may be
speedily, but for the poor Church it is two thousand years - we cannot call it speedily. But that is not what the Lord
meant by "speedily". He meant that, when the Church
really cried like that, it would be speedily. Has the Church
done it? When it really becomes one cry from the
Church, you may take it that God's hour synchronizes
with the cry. We have always to recognize that
principle in God's Word, that God's time is always made
to synchronize with something else. He may fix His time, but He fixes it in relation to something else; and the time
of His coming may be fixed, it may be appointed, but it is
a related time, and His appearing to avenge His Church is
bound up
with the Church's cry day and night: "Avenge me!" If
the Lord by the Holy Spirit were to produce that cry in
the Church, we can take it as settled that His coming is
near.
Now, is He working toward that? Is there today an
activity of the sovereign government of God to hedge the
Church up to this cry? Some of us can say that, for our
part, we have no doubt about it. As we look out, we can
see movements in that direction. Yes, inability to do a
very great many things, inability to be occupied with
much that has been occupying the Church; a cutting off,
a shutting in, and this sense of the adversary
withstanding, obstructing, hindering, limiting, and all
efforts to break through seeming to be unavailing, until
almost in despair, the cry which is focused upon the
enemy, the adversary, breaks out of the heart.
Well,
that is what the Lord is doing, I am quite sure. We must
ask the Lord to keep us very much alive to what lies
behind things and to bring us strongly into this cry which
is for the Church's deliverance, the Church's emancipation, the Church to be
avenged of the adversary,
the adversary cast down from his place of accusing the brethren. "Avenge me of mine adversary this adversary which accuseth
the elect before God, day and night".
The Essential Ministry
We should ask the Lord that we may be so much in
the Spirit when we come together for prayer that we are
not found dealing with things on the surface, as they
appear, but touching the throne in relation to the
adversary and what he is doing behind things. Oh, do ask
Him to interpret this to your hearts, to give you the
meaning in every matter. There is no doubt that there is
today much that is locked up, that is hindered, that is
limited, much of the Lord's interests brought well-nigh, if
not altogether, to a standstill by the work of the
adversary. You say, Can that be? Yes, even such a one
as Paul who was not ignorant of his devices and who
knew something about union with the sovereign Lord
said, "...but Satan hindered". "We would fain have
come unto you, I Paul once and again; but Satan
hindered us". You
say, That is a problem: here is a man anointed, laid hold
of by God, and yet that man has to say "but Satan
hindered"! Satan succeeded in stopping something,
preventing something, something of value. Are we to say
that the Lord never intended the Apostle to go? No, not
at all, not in that case. Where, then, are we to find the
solution? There are many servants of the Lord and
many interests of the Lord locked up like that, not able to
function, to fulfil their ministry, by reason of the
hindrances of Satan, because the Church is not prevailing
for that ministry, for those interests. There is not a
company of the Lord's people who know how to take
hold of the throne for the release of those Divine interests. That is borne out
more than once by things that Paul said when he appealed for prayer from the
Church; for example, "...that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel". He appealed
for united prayer, for corporate prayer, that he
might fulfil his ministry; and I say again, there
are many things being limited, held down,
paralysed by Satan, the adversary, the release
of which can only be brought about by this
prayer, this cry; and, if it is true that the Church's final deliverance is coming through its
own cry, the Lord's response to that, it is true in the details of the Church's life. If the whole
thing is an issue like that, then the principles are
the same in every detail.
There is a ministry here. There are multitudes
of the Lord's people who need light, revelation,
spiritual reinforcement, in order to bring them
through to God's full end; but Satan has come
in between them and the resources and the
ministry, the stewardship, and they will not
get it unless there is prevailing over the enemy
on the part of spiritual and enlightened children
of God. It is a Divine way, Divine order. Here
is our responsibility. Do take it to heart. Very
much more could be today if there was a prevailing instrument, a vessel with God's cry, a
vessel that saw through the situation, saw the
adversary, and knew the meaning of touching
the throne to bring Haman's great campaign of
death to an end, to turn it from death to life, for
the children of God. Well, the Word of God is
shot through and through with this truth that,
while God wills,
God's will is brought into
operation by the co-operation of those who are
one with Himself. This is a basic truth. Oh,
may He bring us there, for the large interests
which are at stake today!
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Jul-Aug 1940, Vol 18-4