Verses 1-43
Chapter 18
18:1-8 Jesus spoke a
parable to them to show that it is necessary always to pray and not to
lose heart. "There was a judge," he said, "in a town who neither feared
God nor respected man. There was a widow in the same town who kept
coming to him and saying, 'Vindicate me against my adversary.' For some
time he refused. But afterwards he said to himself, 'Even though I
neither fear God nor respect man, because she bothers me, I will
vindicate this widow, lest by her constant coming she exhausts me.'" The
Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And shall God not
vindicate his own chosen ones who cry to him day and night, even though
he seem to wait for long? But when the Son of Man comes will he find
faith on earth?"
This parable tells of the kind of thing which could, and often did, happen. There are two characters in it.
(i) The judge was clearly not a Jewish judge. All ordinary
Jewish disputes were taken before the elders, and not into the public
courts at all. If, under Jewish law, a matter was taken to arbitration,
one man could not constitute a court. There were always three judges,
one chosen by the plaintiff, one by the defendant, and one independently
appointed.
This judge was one of the paid magistrates appointed either by
Herod or by the Romans. Such judges were notorious. Unless a plaintiff
had influence and money to bribe his way to a verdict he had no hope of
ever getting his case settled. These judges were said to pervert justice
for a dish of meat. People even punned on their title. Officially they
were called Dayyaneh Gezeroth, which means judges of prohibitions or
punishments. Popularly they were called Dayyaneh Gezeloth, which means
robber judges.
(ii) The widow was the symbol of all who were poor and
defenceless. It was obvious that she, without resource of any kind, had
no hope of ever extracting justice from such a judge. But she had one
weapon--persistence. It is possible that what the judge in the end
feared was actual physical violence. The word translated, lest she
exhausts me, can mean, lest she give me a black eye. It is possible to
close a person's eye in two ways--either by sleep or by assault and
battery! In either event, in the end her persistence won the day.
This parable is like the parable of the Friend at Midnight. It
does not liken God to an unjust judge; it contrasts him to such a
person. Jesus was saying, "If, in the end, an unjust and rapacious judge
can be wearied into giving a widow woman justice, how much more will
God, who is a loving Father, give his children what they need?"
That is true, but it is no reason why we should expect to get
whatever we pray for. Often a father has to refuse the request of a
child, because he knows that what the child asks would hurt rather than
help. God is like that. We do not know what is to happen in the next
hour, let alone the next week, or month, or year. Only God sees time
whole, and, therefore, only God knows what is good for us in the long
run. That is why Jesus said we must never be discouraged in prayer. That
is why he wondered if men's faith would stand the long delays before
the Son of Man should come. We will never grow weary in prayer and our
faith will never falter if, after we have offered to God our prayers and
requests, we add the perfect prayer, Thy will be done.
18:9-14 Jesus spoke
this parable to some who were self-confidently sure that they were
righteous and who despised others. "Two men went up to the Temple to
pray. The one was a Pharisee, the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee
stood and prayed thus with himself, 'O God, I thank thee that I am not
as the rest of men, thieves, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax
collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all that I get.' The
tax-collector stood afar off, and would not lift even his eyes to
heaven, and kept beating his breast and said, 'O God, be merciful, to
me--the sinner.' I tell you, this man went down to his house accepted
with God rather than the other, because everyone who exalts himself will
be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The devout observed three prayer times daily--9 a.m., 12 midday
and 3 p.m. Prayer was held to be specially efficacious if it was
offered in the Temple and so at these hours many went up to the Temple
courts to pray. Jesus told of two men who went.
(i) There was a Pharisee. He did not really go to pray to God.
He prayed with himself. True prayer is always offered to God and to God
alone. A certain American cynically described a preacher's prayer as
"the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience." The
Pharisee was really giving himself a testimonial before God.
The Jewish law prescribed only one absolutely obligatory
fast--that on the day of Atonement. But those who wished to gain special
merit fasted also on Mondays and Thursdays. It is noteworthy that these
were the market days when Jerusalem was full of country people. Those
who fasted whitened their faces and appeared in dishevelled clothes, and
those days gave their piety the biggest possible audience. The Levites
were to receive a tithe of all a man's produce (Numbers 18:21; Deuteronomy 14:22). But this Pharisee tithed everything, even things which there was no obligation to tithe.
His whole attitude was not untypical of the worst in Pharisaism.
There is a recorded prayer of a certain Rabbi which runs like this, "I
thank, Thee, O Lord my God, that thou hast put my part with those who
sit in the Academy, and not with those who sit at the street-corners.
For I rise early, and they rise early; I rise early to the words of the
law, and they to vain things. I labour, and they labour; I labour and
receive a reward, and they labour and receive no reward. I run, and they
run; I run to the life of the world to come, and they to the pit of
destruction." It is on record that Rabbi Simeon ben Jocai once said, "If
there are only two righteous men in the world, I and my son are these
two; if there is only one, I am he!"
The Pharisee did not really go to pray; he went to inform God how good he was.
(ii) There was a tax-collector. He stood afar off, and would not
even lift his eyes to God. The King James and Revised Standard Versions
do not even do justice to his humility for he actually prayed, "O God,
be merciful to me--the sinner," as if he was not merely a sinner, but
the sinner par excellence. "And," said Jesus, "it was that heart-broken,
self-despising prayer which won him acceptance before God."
This parable unmistakably tells us certain things about prayer.
(i) No man who is proud can pray. The gate of heaven is so low
that none can enter it save upon his knees. All that a man can say is,
"None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other Hope in heaven or earth or sea,
None other Hiding-place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee."
(ii) No man who despises his fellow-men can pray. In prayer we
do not lift ourselves above our fellow-men. We remember that we are one
of a great army of sinning, suffering, sorrowing humanity, all kneeling
before the throne of God's mercy.
(iii) True prayer comes from setting our lives beside the life
of God. No doubt all that the Pharisee said was true. He did fast; he
did meticulously give tithes; he was not as other men are; still less
was he like that tax-collector. But the question is not, "Am I as good
as my fellow-men?" The question is, "Am I as good as God?" Once I made a
journey by train to England. As we passed through the Yorkshire moors I
saw a little whitewashed cottage and it seemed to me to shine with an
almost radiant whiteness. Some days later I made the journey back to
Scotland. The snow had fallen and was lying deep all around. We came
again to the little white cottage, but this time its whiteness seemed
drab and soiled and almost grey in comparison with the virgin whiteness
of the driven snow.
It all depends what we compare ourselves with. And when we set
our lives beside the life of Jesus and beside the holiness of God, all
that is left to say is, "God be merciful to me--the sinner."
18:15-17 People were
bringing even their babies to Jesus that he might touch them. When the
disciples saw it they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him saying,
"Let the little children come to me, and don't stop them, for of such
is the kingdom of God. This is the truth I tell you--whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter into it."
It was the custom for mothers to bring their children to some
distinguished Rabbi on their first birthday that he might bless them.
That is what the mothers wanted for their children from Jesus. We are
not to think that the disciples were hard and cruel. It was kindness
that made them act as they did. Remember where Jesus was going. He was
on the way to Jerusalem to die upon a cross. The disciples could see
upon his face the inner tension of his heart; and they did not want
Jesus to be bothered. Often at home we may say to a little child, "Don't
bother your Daddy; he's tired and worried tonight." That is exactly how
the disciples felt about Jesus.
It is one of the loveliest things in all the gospel story that
Jesus had time for the children even when he was on the way to Jerusalem
to die.
When Jesus said that it was of the child-like that the kingdom
of God was composed, what did he mean "What are the qualities of which
he was thinking"?
(i) The child has not lost the sense of wonder. Tennyson tells
of going early one morning into the bedroom of his little grandson and
of seeing the child "worshipping the sunbeam playing on the bedpost." As
we grow older we begin to live in a world which has grown grey and
tired. The child lives in a world with a sheen on it and in which God is
always near.
(ii) The child's whole life is founded on trust. When we are
young, we never doubt where the next meal is to come from or where our
clothes will be found. We go to school certain that home will be there
when we return, and all things ready for our comfort. When we go on a
journey we never doubt that the fare will be paid or that our parents
know the way and will take us safely there. The child's trust in his
parents is absolute, as ours should be in our Father--God.
(iii) The child is naturally obedient. True, he often disobeys
and grumbles at his parents' bidding. But his instinct is to obey. He
knows very well that he should obey and is not happy when he has been
disobedient. In his heart of hearts his parents' word is law. So should
it be with us and God.
(iv) The child has an amazing faculty of forgiveness. Almost all
parents are unjust to their children. We demand from them a standard of
obedience, of good manners, of refined language, of diligence which we
seldom satisfy ourselves. Time and again we scold them for doing the
very things we do ourselves. If others treated us in the way we treat
our children in the matter of plain justice, we probably would never
forgive. But the child forgives and forgets, and does not even realize
it when he is very young. It would be so much lovelier a world if we
would forgive as a child forgives.
To keep alive the sense of wonder, to live in unquestioning
trust, instinctively to obey, to forgive and to forget--that is the
childlike spirit, and that is the passport to the kingdom of God.
18:18-30 A ruler asked
Jesus, "Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus
said to him, "Why do you call me good? There is none good except one
God. You know the commandments--do not commit adultery, do not kill, do
not steal, do not bear false witness, honour your father and your
mother." He said, "From my youth I have kept all these." When Jesus
heard that, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything
you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. And come! Follow me!" When he heard these things he was very
sad, because he was exceedingly rich. When Jesus saw him he said, "How
hard it is for those who have riches to enter into the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Those who heard him said, "And
who can be saved?" He said, "The things which are impossible with men
are possible with God." Peter said, "Look you--we have left our private
possessions and have followed you." He said to them, "This is the truth I
tell you--there is no one who has left house, or wife, or brother, or
parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not get
it all back many times over in this time, and, in the age that is
coming, eternal life."
This ruler addressed Jesus in a way which, for a Jew, was
without parallel. In all the religious Jewish literature there is no
record of any Rabbi being addressed as, "Good teacher." The Rabbis
always said "there is nothing that is good but the law." To address
Jesus in such a way savoured of almost fulsome flattery. So Jesus began
by driving him and his thoughts back to God. Jesus was always sure that
his own power and his own message, came to him from God. When the nine
lepers failed to return, his grief was, not that they had forgotten to
come back to say thanks to him, but that they had not come back to
glorify God (Luke 17:18).
It was indisputable that this ruler was a good man, but he felt
within his heart and soul that in his life there was something lacking.
Jesus' command to him was that if he wanted to find all that he was
searching for in life he must sell all his possessions and distribute
them to the poor and follow him. Why did Jesus make this demand
specially from this man? When the man whom Jesus had cured in the
country of the Gerasenes wished to follow him, he told him to stay at
home (Luke 8:38-39). Why this very different advice to this ruler?
There is an apocryphal gospel called the Gospel according to the
Hebrews most of which is lost; in one of the fragments which remain
there is an account of this incident which gives us a clue. "The other
rich man said to Jesus, 'Master, what good thing must I do really to
live?' Jesus said to him, 'Man, obey the law and the prophets.' He said,
'I have done so.' Jesus said to him, 'Go, sell all that you possess,
distribute it among the poor, and come, follow me!' The rich man began
to scratch his head because he did not like this command. The Lord said
to him, 'Why do you say that you have obeyed the law and the prophets?
For it is written in the law, "You must love your neighbour as
yourself," and look you--there are many brothers of yours, sons of
Abraham, who are dying of hunger, and your house is full of many good
things, and not one single thing goes out of it to them.' And he turned
and said to Simon, his disciple, who was sitting beside him, 'Simon, son
of Jonas, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.'"
There we have the secret and the tragedy of this rich ruler. He
was living utterly selfishly. He was rich, and yet he gave nothing away.
His real God was comfort, and what he really worshipped were his own
possessions and his wealth. That is why Jesus told him to give it all
away. Many a man uses such wealth as he has to bring comfort and joy and
good to his fellow-men; but this man used it for nobody but himself. If
a man's god is that to which he gives all his time, his thought, his
energy, his devotion, then wealth was his god. If he was ever to find
happiness he must be done with all that and live for others with the
same intensity as that with which he had so long lived for himself.
Jesus went on to say that it was easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
God. Quite often the rabbis talked of an elephant trying to get through
the eye of a needle as a picture of something fantastically impossible.
But Jesus' picture may have one of two origins.
(i) It is said that beside the great gate into Jerusalem through
which traffic went, there was a little gate just wide and high enough
for a man to get through. It is said that that little gate was called
the needle's eye, and that the picture is of a camel trying to struggle
through it.
(ii) The Greek word for a camel is kamelos (Greek #2574).
In this age of Greek there was a tendency for the vowel sounds to
become very like each other, and there was another word which would
sound almost exactly the same--the word kamilos, which means a ship's
hawser. It may well be that what Jesus said was that it would be easier
to thread a needle with a ship's hawser than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God.
Why should it be so? The whole tendency of possessions is to
shackle a man's thoughts to this world. He has so big a stake in it that
he never wants to leave it, and never thinks of anything else. It is
not a sin to have much wealth--but it is a danger to the soul and a
great responsibility.
Peter pointed out that he and his fellow disciples had left all
to follow Jesus; and Jesus promised that no man would ever give up
anything for the kingdom of God but he would be repaid many times over.
It is the experience of all Christian folk that that is true. Once
someone said to David Livingstone, thinking of the trials he had endured
and the sorrows he had borne, of how he had lost his wife and ruined
his health in Africa, "What sacrifices you have made!" Livingstone
answered, "Sacrifices? I never made a sacrifice in all my life."
For the man who walks the Christian way there may be things the
world calls hard, but, beyond them all and through them all, there is a
peace which the world cannot give and cannot take away, and a joy that
no man takes from him.
18:31-34 Jesus took
the Twelve and said to them, "Look you--we are going up to Jerusalem,
and everything that was written through the prophets about the Son of
Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the gentiles; and he
will be mocked and cruelly treated; and spat upon; and they will scourge
him and kin him; and on the third day he will rise again." But they did
not understand these things; this word was hidden from them; and they
did not grasp what was being said.
There are two kinds of courage. There is the courage of the man
who, suddenly and without warning, is confronted with some emergency or
some crisis, and who unhesitatingly and even recklessly flings himself
into it. There is the courage of the man who sees a terrible situation
looming ahead and knows that nothing short of flight can avoid it, and
who yet goes steadfastly and inflexibly on. There is no question which
is the higher courage. Many a man is capable of the heroic action on the
spur of the moment; it takes a man of supreme courage to go on to face
something which haunts him for days ahead and which, by turning back, he
could escape.
In a novel a writer paints a picture of two children walking
along the road playing their children's games. One said to the other,
"When you're walking along the road, do you ever pretend that there is
something terrible just around the next corner waiting for you; and
you've got to go and face it? It makes it so exciting." With Jesus it
was no game of let's pretend. It was the grim truth that there was
something terrible waiting for him. He knew what crucifixion was like;
he had seen it; and yet he went on. If Jesus was nothing else, he would
still be one of the most heroic figures of all time.
In face of Jesus' frequent warning of what was to happen to him
in Jerusalem, we sometimes wonder why, when the cross came, it was such a
shock and such a shattering blow to his disciples. The truth is that
they simply could not take in what he was saying to them. They were
obsessed with the idea of a conquering king; they still clung to that
hope that he would let loose his power in Jerusalem and blast his
enemies off the face of the earth.
Here is a great warning to every listener. The human mind has a
way of listening only to what it wants to hear. There are none so blind
as those who refuse to see. There is a kind of wishful thinking which
believes that the unpleasant truth cannot really be true, and that the
thing it does not want to happen cannot happen. A man must ever struggle
against the tendency to hear only what he wants to hear.
One thing more we must note. Jesus never foretold the cross
without foretelling the resurrection. He knew that shame lay before him,
but he was equally certain that glory lay before him, too. He knew what
the malice of men could do, but he knew also what the power of God
could do. It was in the certainty of ultimate victory that he faced the
apparent defeat of the cross. He knew that without a cross there can
never be any crown.
18:35-43 When Jesus
was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the wayside begging.
When he heard the crowd passing through he asked what it meant. They
told him, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." He shouted, "Jesus, Son of
David, have pity on me!" Those who were going on in front rebuked him
and told him to be quiet, but he cried all the more, "Son of David, have
pity on me." Jesus stood, and ordered him to be brought to him. When he
had come near he asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" He
said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight." Jesus said to him, "Receive
your sight; your faith has made you well." And immediately he received
his sight and followed him glorifying God, and, when the people saw it,
they all gave praise to God.
The one thing which stands out in this story is the sheer,
desperate persistence of the blind man. Jesus was on his way to
Jerusalem to the Passover. At such a time pilgrims travelled in bands
together. One of the commonest ways for a Rabbi to teach was to
discourse as he walked. That was what Jesus was doing, and the rest of
the pilgrim band were crowding close around him, not to miss anything
that he might say. As such a pilgrim band passed through a village or a
town those who themselves could not go to the feast lined the wayside to
see the pilgrims pass and to bid them godspeed on the way.
It was amongst the wayside crowd that the blind man was sitting.
When he heard the murmur of the approaching throng he asked what was
happening and was told that Jesus was passing by. Immediately he cried
out to Jesus for help and healing. Thereupon everyone tried to silence
him. The people round Jesus were missing what he was saying because of
the clamour of this blind man.
But the man would not be silenced. He shouted again. The word used for shout in Luke 18:39 is quite different from that used in Luke 18:38. In Luke 18:38 it is an ordinary loud shout to attract attention. In Luke 18:39
it is the instinctive shout of ungovernable emotion, a scream, an
almost animal cry. The word well shows the utter desperation of the man.
So Jesus stopped, and the blind man found the healing he so passionately desired.
This story tells us two things.
(i) It tells us something about the blind man. He was determined
to come face to face with Jesus. Nothing would stop him. He refused to
be silent and he refused to be restrained. His sense of need drove him
relentlessly into the presence of Jesus. If a man wants a miracle that
is the spirit he must show. A gentle, sentimental longing never really
taps the power of God; but the passionate, intense desire of the very
depths of the human heart will never be disappointed.
(ii) It tells us something about Jesus. At that moment he was
discoursing to the crowd like any rabbi. But at the blind man's cry of
need he stopped, the discourse forgotten. For Jesus it was always more
important to act than to talk. Words always took second place to deeds.
Here was a human soul in need. Speech must end and action begin. Someone
has said that many teachers are like men throwing chatty remarks to a
man drowning in a tempestuous sea. Jesus was never like that; he leaped
to the rescue of the man. There is many a man who could not put two
sentences together but others love him because he is kind. Men may
respect an orator but they love a man with helping hands. Men admire a
man with a great mind but they love a man with a big heart.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)