Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 18:1-8, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 63
- Date: Sunday, October 4, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Persistence Pays Off
It’s a pretty frequent occurrence that my kids will have to ask me something multiple times, which I don’t feel bad about because I have to tell them multiple times to do things, too. So I guess it’s fair. Like Miss Janie said, Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But they’ll have to ask me things multiple times just because I’ll forget, or my initial thought is, “No, you can’t do that. No, that wouldn’t work. That just wouldn’t be a good idea.”
But persistence pays off for them. When I say persistence, I don’t mean that they keep asking over and over the same way, and I certainly don’t mean whining. I’ve tried to teach them that if you whine, the answer is automatically going to be no, even if I wanted to give you whatever it was. But I am a sucker for a rational discussion.
There are times I may say no, and my kids will come back and say, “Here are the reasons for my request.” We’ll sit down and discuss those reasons, and sometimes my mind can be changed to where I’ll say yes. Not on everything. There are some things you just have to say no to, but there are other things where I can be persuaded.
For example, they might ask, “Can I go for a walk?” I know when a lot of us were growing up, that was fine, but these days it can feel like a crazy idea. But they might say, “Here’s where I had in mind to go. I’ll take the phone with me.” I can be persuaded. Sometimes persistence pays off.
Jesus gives us an example of where our persistence pays off with God, but not for the same reasons. Not because God is forgetful like this dad and has to be reminded. Not because God’s mind has to be changed and we’ve got to convince Him. But sometimes the way earthly persistence pays off with our requests serves as an example to us of the fact that we need to persist in prayer. That’s what we’re going to look at as we continue our study of Luke, here in chapter 18. Jesus gives an example to teach the disciples about persistence in prayer.
The Parable of the Unjust Judge
In Luke 18, starting in verse 1, Jesus begins to teach them about prayer. We’re going to look at the first eight verses of this chapter. Here’s what it says:
Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not become discouraged, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect any person. Now there was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he was unwilling. But later he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect any person, yet because this widow is bothering me, I will give her justice. Otherwise, by continually coming, she will wear me out.'” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge said. Now will God not bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day and night, and will He delay long for them? I tell you that He will bring justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
One of the most common mistakes made in understanding, interpreting, and applying this passage is to see it as a comparison between God and the unjust judge. If we take away from this, “Well, the old lady had to bother the unjust judge so she could get what she wanted, and so we just have to keep pestering God until He says yes,” that’s not the takeaway. Jesus is working from the idea of a lesser to a greater. By putting both of these on display, He’s showing us a contrast.
The point is that the judge is nothing like the Father, and we’re going to explore some of those contrasts. When we look at this, we don’t want to take away that God is just like this judge. Jesus is showing us the opposite. We need to understand what He’s talking about when He compares the two so that we don’t come away with a skewed vision of God, a skewed understanding of God.
Knowing What God Is Like
We don’t ever want to walk away from the Scriptures with an understanding that God is just looking to get us. God is just, and God will judge, as we studied last week at the end of chapter 17, but that’s not all of who He is. I know at times, especially when I was younger, I had that kind of mindset where I had to be very specific and very careful in how I prayed.
It’s almost like a movie where there’s a genie character, and he twists the wish so there’s some kind of unintended consequence. You’ve got to be very careful and very specific about what you are and are not asking for. At times, I’ve had that picture of God in my mind, that I have to ask just this way because He might twist it. If I pray for—well, you don’t pray for patience—but if I pray for faith, He’s going to put me in a life-or-death situation where I have to trust Him.
You get the idea that God is going to work it out the most inconvenient way possible for me, the most damaging way possible for me, the most perilous way possible. We don’t want to come away with a skewed idea of who God is and how our prayers to Him work. Jesus is teaching us that He’s so much better. He’s so much better than this unjust judge.
If the woman could get what she needed from the unjust judge, Jesus’ point is, how much more does our Father want to give us what we need? When we look at this passage, especially if we’ve read it on its own or heard it taught on its own, we may think we’re just talking about daily things we need. We’re thinking about our regular, everyday prayers. But don’t miss the fact that He’s teaching them this right after what we studied in chapter 17.
He was talking about judgment, about times when they would suffer, about the desire to see Jesus come back. We talked a little bit last week about the fact that the longer you go on as a believer in this world, the more understandable it becomes to think, “I wish Jesus would just come back and put a stop to all of this.” When you’re young, you don’t feel that way. But in my experience—and I’m not calling myself old—the older you get, the more life experience you get, and the more things you have to see, the more comfortable you get with the idea, “Why doesn’t Jesus just come back and knock all of this off? Set people straight and fix it.”
He said in chapter 17 that there was going to come a time when His followers were going to long for that day because of the evil and wickedness going on around them. They were going to long to see His coming, but it was still a ways away. It’s in that context that we come to chapter 18, where He says we ought to always pray and not become discouraged.
Prayer Keeps Us from Discouragement
Prayer keeps us from discouragement. This applies to our everyday circumstances and situations, but it goes so far beyond that. We’re not just talking about the minor inconveniences, the times I’ve prayed, “God, help me work out this difficult, challenging situation with another person. Father, help me navigate this financial issue. Lord, help me with this situation at work,” whatever it is. Those are things that are very real for us, but they’re also very mundane concerns.
This applies to those things, but it’s not limited to those. He’s talking about moments that are so fraught, so discouraging, that we’re left saying, “God, why am I here? Why is this happening? God, why don’t You step in?” Those situations where we would say, “Jesus, now would be a good time to come back and fix this.” Even with something as big as that, He tells us to pray and not grow discouraged.
Verse 1 says, “He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not become discouraged.” If memory serves, my King James Bible that I grew up on says, “not to faint.” Some of you may have that wording, that we ought always to pray and not faint. Both words are correct. I like the word _discouraged_ here because it tells us very clearly what we’re talking about, but the idea of fainting preserves the drama of it. We come to those moments where we feel like we just cannot go on.
Prayer keeps us from discouragement. This speaks to our purpose in prayer. When He says they ought to pray and not become discouraged, Jesus is treating these as incompatible states. If we’re continuing in prayer the way we’re supposed to, we cannot pray properly and remain in discouragement.
Now hear how I worded that: we cannot pray properly and remain in discouragement. I’m not saying that you’ll never have moments when you’re discouraged if you’re praying. If you have a time here and there when you feel down and discouraged, I’m not saying, “Well, you’re just not praying properly.” We’re human, and discouragement can get to us. But if we’re praying the way we’re supposed to, we’re not going to be able to stay there.
I’ve talked to people in this room in the last year who’ve gone through some trials, and I would check in and say, “How are you doing?” And I’d hear, “I’ve been really discouraged, but I just kept praying, and God has brought me through it.” In those times when we feel discouraged and feel like we can’t go on, when we wonder, “Is God paying attention? Why hasn’t God fixed this?” those are the times we need to buckle down and continue in prayer even harder. Because prayer is there to keep us from discouragement.
We take those cares, we take those burdens, and we cast them on Him. I tell you, God doesn’t always change our circumstances in the way we want Him to, and He doesn’t always change them in the timing that we want Him to. But He’s really good at changing our heart in those circumstances.
Pray Persistently
Jesus taught His disciples to pray and not become discouraged, and part of that is that we should pray persistently. This speaks to our practice in prayer. He says that at all times they ought to pray, and this is similar to what the Apostle Paul writes when he says to pray without ceasing. Does that mean you can do literally nothing else but pray? That’s not what it means.
But at all times, that ought to be our default setting. We ought to be quick to pray. The phrase has been used a lot in the office the last couple of weeks: “I’m just going to talk to the Lord about it.” That should not be a novel concept. That should not be something somebody has to remind the pastor about. That should just be how we are.
Something comes up—a situation, a circumstance, something that makes us think, “How am I supposed to handle this?”—and we go to the Lord about it. That should be the lifestyle we cultivate in all of our lives, that we ought always to pray and not grow discouraged. Part of what makes prayer effective in addressing our circumstances and our condition in those circumstances is that, as we pray, our own hearts have to be committed to remain in touch with God.
When we immediately run to, “I need to handle this. I need to figure this out,” we’re wrapped up in us. Our heart needs to go to God first and be in communion with Him. And then I understand that however He works those things out, the real need is met because our hearts are in communion with Him.
The story He tells us is designed to show us that this kind of persistence pays off. It pays off because our persistence in prayer is not about nagging God until He does what we want Him to do. Our persistence in prayer is about staying connected with Him so we are who we need to be in the midst of those circumstances, and trusting that He’s going to do right by us whether it meets our definitions or not. If persistence pays off and makes the circumstances better even with an unjust judge, we can be assured that with a loving God, He’s going to hear us and He’s going to answer us.
Pray Knowing Who God Is
That brings us to verses 2 through 8. We should pray knowing who God is. This is where we really get into the meat of the passage. This is about the basis for our prayer. Why would we pray at all? Why would we continue in prayer?
There are religions that lack the idea of a personal God the way the Bible teaches. They teach that there’s some force out in the universe that’s not personal, that’s not a being, that doesn’t have a will or thoughts. Or, if there is a being, He’s so far above us that He doesn’t care about us. And yet those religions teach that you’re supposed to pray. My question is, why? If there’s nobody out there to talk to, or if there is but He doesn’t care about us, why would we continue on in prayer?
If that’s the concept we have of who God is, then we need to change, and that would probably explain why we’re not so quick to pray. But if our understanding is that the Creator of this universe made us and loved us, and did all of that even knowing in advance what a handful we were going to be, that’s different. He knows and cares so deeply about us that He has the number of hairs on our head counted. Which, for some of you, is a bigger feat than for the rest of us.
But He knows everything about you and loves you anyway, and He wants you to come to Him. There is a God who loves us and cares about us, who is not this unjust judge. That fuels our prayer life. That is the basis for our prayer: the reality that there is a God who knows us, who loves us, and who cares about what it is we’re going to ask.
Even if His plan is to answer the request differently than we would hope for, because He’s got something better than what we’re asking for, He still wants us to be asking. He desires that relationship. It’s what He created us for. He doesn’t need us, and He doesn’t need anything from us, but He desires for us to need Him and to recognize that need. So we go to God in prayer because we know who He is.
Am I saying we know every detail about Him? No. We never could know every detail about Him. But He has revealed to us in His Word and in His Son what we need to know, and so we can know enough to go to Him.
Jesus describes the unjust judge in verses 2 through 5, and then He applies the lesson to God the Father in verses 6 through 8. Where He shifts from the story to the explanation in verse 7, He uses a Greek word that, depending on your translation, may be rendered _and_ or _now_. It’s one of those words that can be translated in a few different ways, but it indicates a contrast. It connects two thoughts while indicating a contrast. The way I would translate it would be _but_, though the others are not wrong. Understand that in verse 7 He’s drawing a contrast between the judge and God. He’s not saying they’re alike; He’s saying they’re different.
The Judge Is Wicked, but God Is Just
One of the ways they’re different is that the judge was wicked and selfish, as we see in verse 2, but God is righteous and just, in verse 7. He says in verse 2, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect any person.” He did not fear God. He had no concern about doing what was right in the eyes of God.
And when it says he didn’t respect any person, it doesn’t mean he was a little rough around the edges. It means he didn’t care about anybody. He didn’t care about God. He didn’t care about the people he was there to serve. Who did he care about? Himself.
We see that all throughout the story when he says, in effect, “I really don’t want to do anything unless it’s going to be more inconvenient for me not to do something than to do something.” He’s really concerned about himself. He’s selfish, and he’s wicked. In contrast, we get to verse 7, and Jesus says, “Will God not bring about justice?”
The way the Greek grammar works there—and I’m not going to get into all the nuts and bolts of it—is that it’s a rhetorical question where we expect a yes answer. That’s important. Will He not bring justice? Yes. Yes, He will.
It’s a rhetorical question, and the way it’s written, we expect the answer to be yes. And not just a yes, but an emphatic yes. You can put an exclamation point behind it: Yes, He will! We can expect justice from God because it’s who He is. He’s not selfish like the judge. He’s not wicked like the judge. He does what’s right because it’s who He is.
The Widow Was Unimportant, but God’s People Are Precious
We see another contrast in how the widow was unimportant to the judge in verses 3 and 4. She had to keep coming to him. She had to keep begging for justice against her opponent. She had been wronged by someone. She had a civil case against somebody. She needed help, and it says he was unwilling.
Part of this may have had something to do with her being a widow. There was nobody there to protect her, the way things were set up. She couldn’t do anything for him, so he didn’t care. The widow was unimportant to the judge, but God’s people are precious to Him.
Verse 7 says He will do these things for His elect who cry out day and night. The word _elect_ sometimes makes us a little nervous. It just means _chosen_, and we don’t have to fear that word. The Bible does call us the elect. I don’t believe it means that He said, “I’m going to let you be saved. I’m going to let you be saved. Not you.” He’s not picking and choosing.
The fact that He chose to have a people redeemed to Himself at all was His choice. He didn’t owe us salvation. He chose to do that. That word means that we are precious to Him. We are someone He has chosen. We are a people He has chosen for Himself.
It’s a very different situation from the widow. She meant nothing to the judge, and she could do nothing for him. But Jesus says that we are God’s chosen. And will He not bring justice for His elect who cry out day and night? Of course He will.
The Judge Delayed, but God Acts Quickly
We see another contrast between the two. The judge acted begrudgingly and only after delay in verses 4 and 5. He didn’t want to do anything for her. “Yet because this widow is bothering me, I’ll do it.” Only because, if he didn’t, she was going to keep coming and bothering him. She was going to wear him out.
He’s got the worst job in the world: people keep coming to him asking him to judge stuff. It’s literally his job. It’s what he signed up for. But finally he acted only because it became more convenient for him to do something than not to do it.
So while the judge acted begrudgingly and only after delay in verses 4 and 5, Jesus teaches us that God will act eagerly and quickly in verses 6 and 7. “Will He delay long for them?” The way that’s set up, the answer is no. We expect the no answer. Will He delay long for them? No.
I’ll insert here the thought that it might feel long to us. The idea is not about the length of time God waits to answer the prayers. The idea is that He’s not unnecessarily delaying things. He’s not delaying things just because He doesn’t feel like doing anything.
As a matter of fact, if our prayer is for justice, if we want to see God right all the wrongs in the world, the fact that the final answer to that prayer is delayed is because of God’s mercy. Peter says He is not slack concerning His promises. He hasn’t just forgotten. He isn’t just being loose with His promises. But He is merciful, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
The reason He doesn’t step in and right all the wrongs today, the reason He doesn’t step in and wipe out all the evil in the world, is because He’s giving the opportunity to repent. I’ve heard the question asked: if God were to come in and eliminate all evil at noon today, which of us would be here at 12:01? So we can be thankful for His grace and His mercy.
He doesn’t delay just because He doesn’t want to do anything. He delays if it’s part of His plan. It may feel like a delay to us, but He’s working all things according to His plan for our good and for His glory. He says, “Will He delay long for them?” No. “I tell you that He will bring justice for them quickly.”
Again, quickly on God’s timetable is not necessarily quickly on ours, but He’s not just waiting to make us wait. God doesn’t delay justice unnecessarily. We see at least these three contrasts between the judge and God: the judge is wicked and selfish, but God is righteous and just. The judge didn’t care about the widow, but God cares about us. The judge took forever to act and only did so begrudgingly—”I guess I’ll give her what she needs”—but God desires to take care of us.
God is eager to take care of us. He’ll do it quickly, as quickly as it can be done while fitting within His plans that we can’t even understand.
Pray Believing God Will Keep His Promises
Knowing all of this, we come to verse 8, where we should pray believing that God will do what He’s promised. This speaks to our confidence in prayer. Jesus said—and this ties back to chapter 17, with His talk about the second coming—”When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Here He’s speaking specifically of the second coming.
The times He has in mind throughout this whole passage may very well be things that nobody in this room will ever experience. But the principles still apply. When He says, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” He’s talking about when Jesus comes back, the second coming. Faith is going to be short in supply.
But it still speaks to the importance He places on faith. Even at that point, when He comes back in judgment, He’s looking for faith. He’s not looking for people who have achieved everything and accomplished everything, who’ve single-handedly beaten back the forces of the Antichrist. He’s not looking for all of that. He’s simply looking for people who still believe that He’s going to do what He said He would do.
The reason faith and prayer are tied together here is that if we believe God, and we believe His promises, and we believe He hasn’t forgotten, we believe He hasn’t changed His mind, we believe He hasn’t become unwilling to do the things He promised, we’re going to persist in prayer. There may be moments of discouragement. There may be moments when we think, “God, why haven’t You done this already?” But if we come back to that understanding of who He is, we’re going to keep praying.
We believe because of who He is, and because of every promise He’s ever kept up to this point, that He’s going to do the things He promised He would do. We’re going to continue praying for it through the discouragement. We’re going to continue looking for Him to fulfill His promises. This is what Jesus is looking for: not that we’ll never have doubts, not that we’ll never have discouragement, but that the overall pattern is that we are confident when we pray and we persist when we pray.
Not because we think our prayers are twisting God’s arm, but because we know who God is. We know that He’s nothing like this judge. If even persistence and confidence could work with that unjust judge, the point of this whole thing is, how much more does God care about you?
He’s not going to give you everything you’ve ever wanted. He never promises that anywhere. But He’ll give us everything that we need. He’ll one day right every wrong in the right way. We don’t always know how those circumstances are going to work out, but we know Him. And that’s why we continue to pray.
