Praise the Lord, I thank the Lord for giving me this time today.

I will be sharing about the

parable of the widow and the unjust judge. First, I will quickly read out the short parable
so that everyone will know what I’m talking about. Then He spoke a parable to them,
that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: “There was in a certain city a
judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city; and
she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a
while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man,
yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she
weary me.’” Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not
avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with
them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man
comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”
So, the purpose of this parable is to always pray and to not loose heart in our prayer.
The chapter starts with, “men always ought to pray”. Other parts in the bible also
suggests this idea such as when Paul when he mentioned to pray without ceasing
(which is in 1 Thessalonians 5:17). Often, obstacles come in the way of effective and
constant prayer which can come in many forms, so this parable is Jesus teaching and
encouraging us to always pray.
The other main point of this parable is to not lose heart in prayer. Sometimes when we
pray, we often lose heart and become discouraged which results in us no longer praying
as we should. One of the common ways that this happens is that we take prayer too
lightly and more like a ritualist thing. Another common way to lose heart is because we
do not fully grasp the power of prayer, which then results in us only using prayer as a
last resort instead of the first. So, the right thing to do is to pray first and do everything
accordingly instead of trying to do everything first and only praying when we are stuck
or in dire need of help.
Now that we have established a base understanding of the overall meaning of the
parable (mostly what the first verse says), let us now go slightly more in-depth of the
actual parable itself. So, the first thing that is pointed out to us about the characteristic
of the judge is that he did not fear God nor regard men. This means that the judge was
an ungodly both as a man and a judge. He only answered the woman’s request
because she wouldn’t stop bothering him. So, from this alone we can see that the judge
is quite arrogant and is insensitive. Jesus gave this parable to show that God is totally
opposite to this judge. The judge is unfair, but God is fair, the judge had no personal
interest in the widow whereas God loves and cares for us, and the judge answered the
widow’s cry out of pure self-interest whereas God loves to bless His people for their
good also. God loves to answer our prayers, although it might not be immediate. The
woman had to overcome the judge’s unwillingness to help. We often feel that we must
do the same thing, but this mindset is completely wrong. This misses the point of the
parable entirely. Jesus did not say that men always ought to pray and not lose heart
because God is reluctant and unwilling, but because He isn’t like this, and that is our
encouragement to prayer. Also, as I mentioned before, sometimes we feel like God is
reluctant because we do not get answers. However, we must understand that the
delays in prayer are not to change God, but to change us. The last thing point that was
made in this parable is will God avenge his own elect. The next verse down says that
God will avenge them speedily. One important thing we must remember regarding this
is that we must never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is
written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Which is in romans 12:19. So I
hope we all learned something, and I once again thank the Lord for giving me this time.
Praise the Lord.