Big Idea: We should pray with confidence that God will respond, but our confidence should be in God’s mercy, not in our own merits.

Understanding the Text

Parables have been a prominent feature in Luke’s narrative of the journey to Jerusalem, especially in chapters 14–16. The two parables in the present section, together with one further one in 19:11–27, will round out the collection before Jesus reaches Jerusalem. The first of these two parables is linked to the preceding section in that it finishes with a comment on the coming of the Son of Man. Its focus, however, is on present discipleship, and in particular on prayer, which has been a recurrent theme in Luke (see especially 11:1–13) and in his frequent mention of Jesus’s own prayers (3:21; 6:12; 9:18, 28–29; 11:1). The second parabl…