AT 4
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August 4
Luke 18:1-8. The parable of the unjust judge.
This parable has been a great comfort to Christians while waiting for the second coming of the Son of man. The Lord had told his disciples that he would soon be absent from them. Eighteen hundred years have rolled away, and still the church is as a widow, and still Satan, her great adversary, is permitted to harass her. But has God been like an unjust judge? No, but he has appeared as if he did not hear his people's prayers for deliverance from their enemies. His widowed church has cried day and night to him, saying, "Avenge me of my adversary," but God has not yet answered this prayer. He has not yet bound Satan with a great chain, and shut him up in the bottomless pit. Still our adversary goes about seeking whom he may devour; still he endeavours by various wiles and devices to destroy the people of God. And shall he always be permitted to do this? No! the day appointed for deliverance shall come. God will not say, like this unjust judge, "My church troubles me; I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me." The Lord is never wearied by the supplications of his people, for he has said, "The prayer of the upright is his delight." He will say, "I will now avenge my own elect, which cry day and night unto me, though I have borne long with them." Then He will send his Son from heaven to deliver his people, and to consume their enemies.
"Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?" Shall he find that his people have believed that he was coming? Will it not be as it was in the day of the resurrection, that even those who loved the Lord remembered no this promise? The angels said to the woman, "He is risen, as he said." Then, and not until then, those women remembered his words. Before Christ comes again many will be inclined to say, (like the two disciples going to Emmaus,) "We trusted it had been he which should have redeemed Israel."
While waiting for that day, we may go to our God in every hour of distress. He can bring to nothing (as it is expressed in the Liturgy) all the devices which the craft or subtlety of the devil or man works against us. We always shall find that in the end He will say, "Shall I not hear my afflicted child who cries day and night unto me?" This is one of the comforts of his children, that they have a God to whom they can go in time of trouble. He is on their side; He takes their part. Whether it is disease or death that threatens them, or whether it is the persecutions of wicked men, or the temptations of Satan that harass them, the Lord is greater than their enemies, and is able to subdue them. He would hear his children at first, only he knows that waiting will exercise their faith. Therefore he bears long with them. Why did he return answers that appeared severe to the woman of Canaan? Why did he not heed the first summons of the sisters of Lazarus? Why did he permit Job to pine with long sickness and sorrow? Was it not that he designed to teach his beloved this hard lesson, even that he hears them when he seems to disregard?
This is a lesson that is not understood by the little ones in Christ's school; they cannot bear delays, and think they are denials; but as their love increases, they can bear apparent neglect, and even repulses, without suspecting the loving-kindness of their heavenly Father. They know that God is love, and they can reason upon his love, and say, "He who spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not with him also freely give us all things?"