Most televised sporting events now feature some pre-game analysis by the commentators. That analysis usually includes some "keys to victory" segment. The different broadcasts have their own catchy names — sometimes even corporate-sponsored names — for those segments, but they are all essentially the same. Namely, the commentators identify what are the two or three things each team needs to do in order to win the game.

Meanwhile, just as the commentators evaluate beforehand what it takes to win a game, any good coach will analyze and evaluate afterward why his team lost the game. Too many turnovers? Too few rebounds? Chasing balls out of the strike zone? Too many penalties? Missed gap assignments on defense?

Whatever the case, the coach wants to minimize his team's losses, and so he is obliged to evaluate the reasons for those losses. If the coach can identify the two or three things most responsible for his team's losses, he can work to improve those areas of the team's performance and that translates into winning.

Perhaps we, as Christians, should be equally deliberate and purposeful in spiritual matters. Perhaps we should recognize both the wins and losses of our Christian lives and be a bit more analytical about those losses.

Of course, in the world of sports, there is one key to victory that is seldom mentioned in the pregame analysis. It's a huge key — essential, really — but it's almost never mentioned because it's too obvious. Yet, when it comes to the wins and losses of the Christian life, it may account for a majority of our defeats.

It is the easiest way to lose. Giving up.

It is axiomatic: You can't win if you give up. The sports team can't. The individual athlete can't. The candidate for political office can't. And the Christian can't.

Yet giving up may be the most common cause of defeat in the Christian life. One man gives up in a battle with temptation. This woman gives up in her praying for her disappointing marriage. This teenager gives up in his efforts to share his faith with his unbelieving friend.

In our two New Testament passages this week, we will be encouraged not to give up. And that is a message worth proclaiming — and worth hearing — because any coach, player, or analyst will tell you that you can't win if you don't keep trying.

Jeremiah 31:27-34
I had a friend years ago whose standard greeting was, "What's new?" Not "Hi" or "Hello." Not "How are you?" But "What's new?"

Perhaps I took the greeting too literally, but I found it something of a struggle to respond. If we had seen each other less regularly, it would not have been such a challenge to me. But our schedules were such that we saw each other several times a week, and frankly I didn't have that much newness to report.

Well, the prophet Jeremiah has an answer to that question. In our selected Old Testament lection, Jeremiah is here to tell us exactly what's new.

The newness described in this famous passage might be divided — and preached — in three parts. First, there is a new covenant. Second, there are new people. Third, there is a new reality.

All of the newness is a promise from God: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord." The phrase is characteristic of the prophet Jeremiah, appearing eleven different times in his book (including two times in this passage alone). It is used in Jeremiah to guarantee both coming judgment and future restoration.

Another theme in Jeremiah that recurs here in our passage is God's statement that he has "watched over" and "will watch over" the people. The reader whose memory can go back thirty chapters will recall this theme being introduced at the very beginning of Jeremiah's message. God puts his words in Jeremiah's mouth, and then appoints him "over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10). Then, using a brief and simple vision, God assures Jeremiah, "I am watching over my word to perform it" (Jeremiah 1:12).

That image is revisited here but with a favorable twist. Typical of the judgment prophets, God's message for his people is not exclusively bad news. The near future features judgment, to be sure, but judgment will not be the final word. Just as God had "watched over them" to destroy, so now "I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord."

Meanwhile, "the days are surely coming" and "watching over" are phrases characteristic of the book of Jeremiah, the promise of newness is characteristic of God. He is the one who gives new names (Genesis 32:28), who does new things (Isaiah 43:19), whose mercies are ever new (Lamentations 3:22-23), and who in the end will make all things new (Revelation 21:5).

The first particular of this promised newness is the new covenant. If the promise did not come from God himself, of course, it would have been a blasphemous proposition. After all, the covenant between God and Israel was his initiation and to propose a new covenant would not have been within Israel's scope or authority. So it is God who proposes a new one.

Interestingly, God proposes this new covenant in the context of his people having failed to comply faithfully with the original covenant, like a cuckolded husband suggesting that the couple renew their vows. That's why the other two elements of newness are necessary: new people and a new reality.

The people are new here, not in the sense that God has traded in one group for another, but in the sense that he will make them new. That, at least, is the implication of the new covenant's focus on an inner work by God. While the first covenant was written on stone, this new covenant will be written upon the human heart. Interestingly, the covenant is still expressed in terms of law, but now it is not portrayed as a thing imposed from outside, but rather as a thing that lives within.

That, in turn, suggests a larger new reality. The whole situation will be different, for "no longer shall they teach one another," but rather "they shall all know me."

The first detail is reminiscent of Paul's observations about love in relation to the other gifts of the Spirit. Prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will all come to an end, Paul says, but "love never ends" (1 Corinthians 13:8). Such things as prophecy and teaching are necessarily limited, you see, to a time and place where there is a need for such things but that need will not be eternal. The need for people to "say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' " will not last forever, either.

Instead, "they shall all know me." This newness, obviously, is not an immediate byproduct of what we know as the new covenant of the New Testament. For there remains a need to teach and to encourage one another to know the Lord. Clearly not all people know him. But those days are surely coming and that is good news for us as it was for Jeremiah's generation.

What's new? Virtually everything! A new covenant, a new people, and a whole new reality.

2 Timothy 3:14—4:5
If scripture were music, we would listen for motifs. We'd observe how the composer introduced the motif near the beginning, and then how he wove it through the piece with artistic twists and creative interpretations.

If this New Testament reading were a musical composition, we would recognize immediately the motif Paul introduces with his very first verb: "continue." Therein lies the great recurring theme and message of this counsel to Timothy: continue.

Listen through the passage and hear the composer's variations on that motif. "Continue in what you have learned." "Be persistent." "With the utmost patience." "Always." "Endure." "Carry out." "Fully." These belong together. They are images of perseverance, and Paul is persistent in presenting them.

We remember Joseph's word to Pharaoh about his twin dreams: "The doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God" (Genesis 41:32). So here, the repetition makes the message an emphatic one.

On a time line, we are presented with a kind of relay race image, and Timothy is running a middle leg. The baton — in this case might broadly be called the message — neither begins with him nor ends with him. (We resemble Timothy, in this regard.) He is to continue in what he has learned and believed, bearing in mind "from whom you learned it." So it is that Timothy has been the recipient of a message from someone who ran before him and now he is to pass it along to those who follow him: proclaiming at all times, patiently teaching, and carrying out his ministry fully. This middle leg he runs requires persistence and perseverance.

Another theme — a secondary motif, if you will — is the matter of correction. This is perhaps a lost virtue in American Christianity. We are so much the products of a mind-your-own-business culture, and so fearful of the "holier-than-thou" moniker, that we resist all correction. We resist being corrected, for that seems to us insulting and judgmental. We resist correcting, for that seems unsolicited and intrusive.

Yet, Paul is very concerned about the importance of correction. "All scripture," after all, "is useful" for it. Furthermore, Timothy is called, among other things, to rebuke. The imminent context in which he will fulfill his ministry will be marked by a rejection of sound doctrine and truth in favor of more convenient teachings and myths. In such a setting, correction is necessary — albeit unwelcome.

In our day, our knee-jerk response to correction is one of defiance. It is the ego's reflex: we don't like to be told that we're wrong. The person who never allows himself to be corrected never learns. Set aside the relativism that has poisoned theology, philosophy, and ethics and consider instead virtually any other field of endeavor. Correction is assumed; indeed, welcomed. If I do not accept correction from my math instructor, I shall never calculate properly. If I do not accept correction from the craftsman, I shall never learn the craft. If I do not accept correction from God's word or spokesperson, then I shall be left to wander in some amalgam of incomplete knowledge, unfiltered exposure, and personal opinion. Plus, according to the writer of Proverbs, I shall be on the short end of wisdom (Proverbs 9:8; 12:1).

Luke 18:1-8
The older members of our congregations will remember very dignified portraits of prayer from their younger years. There is the classic painting of praying hands that hung in so many churches. Perhaps a familiar picture of a staid Christ praying in Gethsemane. Or a widespread portrait of an old, bearded man quietly praying at his table over a loaf of bread.

Meanwhile, many of us were also taught to pray with a certain dignity. Whether by tacit example or by explicit instruction, it became clear to us that the posture, the tone, and even the language of prayer should be marked by a certain reserve, a quietness, and above all reverence.

Into the midst of all that orthodoxy and propriety, comes Jesus. Here in our gospel lection, he presents us with a most unsettling picture of prayer. So far removed from those sober and still praying hands; so different from the serene face of Christ in the Garden, Jesus paints us a new picture to hang on the walls of our parlors, hallways, and Sunday school rooms. It is a picture of a woman who will not take no for an answer.

Perhaps her first appearance before this notorious judge was marked by the kind of decorum and deference that we traditionally associate with prayer. Perhaps the first time she appealed her case to him, she did so with a posture and tone that would make her a conventional model for prayer. By the end, she is no portrait of quietness and reserve. Quite the contrary: She has become a conspicuous pest.

Take down the picture of the praying hands and the gentle old man at the table. Replace them with pictures of this woman: knocking at the door, calling out, pressing her face against the windows, refusing to go away. That, according to Jesus, is how we should pray.

While Jesus is not proposing that God resembles the unjust judge, he is confirming that our experience may resemble the woman's experience. For example, we can imagine the discouragement she must have felt when "for a while he refused." We know all about the "while" of an unanswered prayer. We have walked — or shall we say waited — in that woman's shoes.

That is the point at which we may part company from the woman: namely, how we respond to disappointment and refusal. Do we resign ourselves? Walk away from the altar with our tail between our legs? Wave the white flag and surrender hope?

Here is where the woman in Jesus' parable becomes exemplary, if not obnoxious. She does not let delay or disappointment deter her from her destination. Instead, she pursues — indeed, bothers — this judge until he gives her what she seeks.

So it is that Jesus himself encourages us to persevere in prayer, even when that persistence seems to turn prayer into something quite far from our traditionally reverent pictures. So be it. If prayer looks like a bowed head and folded hands, then that's lovely. But prayer can also look like determination, like perseverance, and even like nagging.

Lest we still recoil a bit from such an unorthodox picture of prayer, we may remind ourselves of this truth about nagging in our human relationships. If my wife persists in asking me to complete some project around the house, and I still delay, she may become discouraged. But if she stops pestering me about it, then that suggests she has not only given up on the project; she has also, in that particular matter, given up on me.

I do not want to be the person who gives up on God. So let me knock, pester, and nag — for those are, at their core, acts of faith.

Application
If Moses had given up after that initial, disheartening encounter with Pharaoh, the Hebrews would not have been freed. If the people had given up marching around Jericho after five days, the walls would not have fallen. If the Canaanite woman had given up when she received no response — or a negative one — her daughter would not have been healed. If the apostles in Jerusalem had given up at the first sign of opposition, the church there would have floundered while they cowered. If Paul had given up his missionary efforts as soon as he encountered difficulty, untold numbers of individuals and communities would not have heard the good news.

In short, giving up is the easiest, quickest way to lose. And not giving up is a basic key to victory.

It is worth pondering what losses we have suffered — individually or as a church — simply because we have given up in some of the areas where Paul urged perseverance: in sound doctrine, in the proclamation of the gospel, in patient teaching, in the experience of suffering, or in some particular calling or ministry. Perhaps more sobering still, how many losses have we suffered because we have, unlike the importunate widow, given up in prayer?

This Sunday, we play the part of coaches. Setting aside all the nuances of strategy, all the details of individual plays, we simply remind the team that the single greatest key to victory is, simply, not to give up.

An Alternative Application
2 Timothy 3:14—4:5. "The Neglected Testament." In my years of ministry, I have observed a common and sometimes deeply ingrained prejudice against the Old Testament. In some cases, the dislike is rather innocuous: "It's boring" or "I don't understand it." In other cases, though, the objections are quite insidious, for they undermine our basic affirmations about scripture as canon, as God's word, and as authoritative.

The prejudice displays itself in dismissive remarks, like, "but that's in the Old Testament" and in the sloppy hermeneutic that draws a sharp distinction between the revelation of God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. To assume wholesale differences in God's nature, actions, and will from one Testament to the other is either to suggest that God changed or that one whole section of scripture is unreliable. Either assertion cuts deeply and carelessly into one of the legs on the stool of our faith.

In response to the modern-day Marcionism, and in affirmation of that two thirds of our Bible that we call the Old Testament, we might do well to preach about Paul's remarkable statements in the passage from 2 Timothy.

The key question is this: When the apostle Paul refers to "the sacred writings" and "all scripture," what does he have in mind? Was there, at the time of this letter, any sense yet of a new corpus of writings that he would have referred to so deferentially? Or are these simply references to the writings that were recognized as canonical in first-century Judaism and that we know as the Old Testament?

If we assume the latter, then Paul is saying two things that some contemporary Christians might choke on. First, the Old Testament is "able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." And, second, the Old Testament is "useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

There is nothing in that second affirmation about the Old Testament that would have been anything other than standard orthodoxy for Paul the Pharisee. For him, it was not at all a remarkable thing to say, even though many in our churches might find it hard to say about the Old Testament.

Meanwhile, the first statement — that the Old Testament is sufficient to lead a person to salvation through faith in Christ — may seem oxymoronic to the uninformed, but this is clearly supported elsewhere in the New Testament. It is supported in the ministry of Jesus (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47) and in the preaching of the early church (Acts 17:2-3; 18:24-28).

Preaching the relevance and significance of the Old Testament is not glamorous stuff, but it may be the first step in some of our people recovering and rediscovering the neglected part of their Bible.