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| The old time gospel |
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.
