As we have looked at and discussed before, the tension between reverently praying to God in abject humility and going boldly to the throne of grace is a tension that we will constantly strive to balance and understand. As we looked at two weeks ago, we are to go to God with intimate familiarity, as a child would go to his father. We are instructed by Jesus to call God “Father” or even “daddy.” And, in so going, we are to declare “Hallowed be Your name.” The tension is right there. We have words like these found in Ecclesiastes 5:1-2, “Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil. Do not be rash with your mouth, And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; Therefore let your words be few.” And then we have words like these found in Philippians 4:6, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;...” And again in Ephesians 6:18, “...praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—...” This tension is here.
It is apparent here in the passage before us this morning. As the Lord Jesus continues to elaborate upon and answer the question of His disciple in Luke 11:1, “Lord, teach us to pray,...”, He gives to us two parables wrapped around a strong admonition to be consistently praying about God's kingdom and our needs. So lets look at the passage before us and learn some more about what it means to follow Jesus Christ in prayer. The passage we are looking at is Luke 11:5-13:
And He said to them, “Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’? I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs. “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
What the Lord would have us learn from this passage is...
Because Jesus directs us and invites us to be persistent and confident in our prayers, we should diligently be praying about God's glory and our needs.
Message: When we pray...
1. We should pray with persistence ~ vv. 5-10
In verses 5 through 8, we have another one of those rather shocking statements from the Lord. In the normal way of thinking, one wouldn't draw these types of stories out to demonstrate our need to be persistent in prayer. As we look at various titles for this story, we find things like “The Persistent Friend” or “Perseverance in Prayer”. Those are nice and accurate, but I think “The Parable of the Rude, Irritating Friend” is most appropriate. And the fact that Jesus uses such an account to encourage persistence and perseverance in prayer is, again, kind of shocking. This is somewhat along the lines of the account of Jonah who hated those God called him to bless. It is similar to the parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18:1-8 who does “not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” Jesus uses that parable to encourage persistent prayer. The use of these rather shocking accounts or parables to convey spiritual truth, to me, is very strong support for the inspiration of the Bible and the deity of the Lord Jesus. If a man was trying to establish a false religion, I don't know that he would use such accounts to advocate for it's promotion.
But this is exactly what Jesus does in this admonition to be persistent in prayer. In our day, it is hard for us to draw a connection to such an account. In my neighborhood, there is a Safeway five minutes away and a Wal-Mart ten minutes away. If I have friend show up at midnight needing a bite to eat, I jump in the car and go to the 24-hour McDonalds' drive-thru which is between the Safeway and Wal-mart. But not only that, how many of you ever have had a friend show up at midnight unannounced and wanting a meal? I would assume that in our day this will be a very rare occurrence.
But in that day, the days that the Lord was walking the earth, and in that culture, this type of event was not unexpected. In fact, it was rather common. People traveling from place to place would stop at whatever village they happened upon in the late afternoon and evening. They would go to the town square and often times villagers would offer to host them and provide a meal as well as food for the donkey. If you were traveling, a village where you had friends or family would be your natural stopping locales. In fact, the reason this friend shows up at midnight might very well be because he was counting on staying in this particular village with this particular friend and probably pushed himself to get there. Not only that, the emphasis on hospitality in the Middle-Eastern culture was, and still is, great. Recall how James and John wanted to destroy the Samaritan village, in Luke 9, for not being hospitable to the Lord and His disciples. Presenting a welcoming home or tent and a good meal is the way you say “Hello” in that part of the world.
Again, these are things that we just don't emphasize in our day and culture. In Paige's and my first home, in Arkansas, the master bedroom was three times the size of any other room in the house. Our living room was tiny and we called it “the foyer”. We hosted Bible studies and people literally had to sit on the front porch and listen through the windows. The home was not designed for hospitality. Based on that experience, we have been very intentional, in purchasing our last two homes, to find a house that has decent-sized living room so that we can host a large group of people. Our culture is very different than the one before us in this passage.
But also please note the seriousness with which the man persists in appealing to his neighbor to provide the three loaves. It was mandatory that he put something before his visiting friend and so he kept after it until the neighbor woke up the entire house and gave him “as many as he needs”. And we must therefore understand that Jesus' hearers would have seen this as a weighty and heavy issue. This would indicate to us that persistence in prayer should involve the weighty issues of our lives...the glory and character of God, the salvation of lost family members and friends, the health and blessedness of God's church, ministry opportunities, the Lord's second coming. Our persistent prayers should be engaged in pursing that which is important to Christ. This doesn't mean that personal issues shouldn't be prayed about persistently, but they do need to keep their proper place in our prayer life and need to be informed and guided by the weighty issues of God and His will.
The man whose house and family is being disturbed here is meant to serve as a foil to God. His attitudes and actions are meant to contrast or set-off against the attitude and actions of God. Here is a man that doesn't want to be bothered and makes all kinds of legitimate excuses as to why he won't get up and help the neighbor. Locking the door meant placing a heavy wooden beam across the door, held in place by large rings. All the family shared one room and slept on mats on the ground. They slept close to one another for warmth. Obviously, he emphasizes the presence of little children who, as we know, sometimes don't like to go to sleep. And then he states, “I cannot rise and give to you.”
Again, all of this is meant to set-off and contrast God's character and nature. Is God separated from His people by a locked door? No, He is with us always and never leaves us or forsakes us. Is God not able to minister to the needs of His entire family at once? No, He is able and willing and is all-powerful to address every issue of all His children at any time. Does God answer our prayers simply to get us off His back? No, He is eager and willing to address our requests in exactly the way that brings glory to Him and blesses us, even if we don't understand it.
In light of this clear foil or contrast with the man in verses 5-8, Jesus tells His children that when they pray to keep on praying until you have the answer. In verses 9 and 10, Jesus tells His children to ask, seek and knock. You will recall from last week's message that the phrase “pray without ceasing” is a two-word phrase made up of a verb (pray) and an adverb (without ceasing). As was emphasized, the verb is a present, active, imperative verb...do it and do it now. These words before us here in Luke 11 are also present, active, imperative verbs. Ask and ask now, seek and seek now, knock and knock now. When Jesus tells the disciple to ask, He is inviting the disciple to pray. By telling the disciple to seek, Jesus is directing the prayer to be thinking and trying to ascertain God's will in the particular situation that is being addressed. And in directing the individual praying to knock, Jesus is stating that the throne room is available, go into it. And in verse 10 Jesus simply states that when you ask, you will receive, when you seek, God's perfect desire in this situation will be made known, and when you knock, the presence of God in His throne room is available to you. Be persistent and go to Him.
There are multiple examples in the Bible of this type of persistence in prayer:
· Jacob wrestling with God at Jabbok in Gen. 32:22-32, “And He said, 'Let Me go, for the day breaks.' But he said, 'I will not let You go unless You bless me!'” What an incredible attitude to take in prayer! I will not stop praying until the Lord blesses.
· Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:14-15, “So Eli said to her, 'How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!' But Hannah answered and said, 'No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.'” Would anyone ever think we are drunk while we are praying because we are so engaged in it?
· Then, of course, our Savior, Jesus, as describe in Hebrews 5:7, “...who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear,...”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones emphasized persistence in prayer with these words, “The importance of this element of persistence cannot be exaggerated. You find it not only in biblical teaching, but also in the lives of all the saints. The most fatal thing in the Christian life is to be content with passing desires. If we really want to be men of God, if we really want to know Him, and walk with Him, and experience those boundless blessings which He has to offer us, we must persist in asking Him for them day by day. We have to feel this hunger and thirst for righteousness, and then we shall be filled. And that does not mean that we are filled once and forever. We go on hungering and thirsting.” (The Sermon on the Mount [Eerdmans], 2:201).
Dear friends, according to the words of our Savior, we must be persistent in praying.
2. We should pray with confidence ~ vv. 10-13
Not only should we be praying with persistence, we should also be praying with confidence. In verses 11-13, we again have another one of those rather shocking statements made by the Lord in regard to expressing a principle that He wants us to take hold. In this passage, the Lord uses two ludicrous examples from the realm of fatherhood to express why we should have confidence when praying to God.
Please note again that we have another harmonization addition in the NKJV and the KJV. The first part of verse 11, in these two translations, has a third example of bread and stone. Most likely, the original manuscript of Luke did not include this example and a later scribe imported this passage from Matthew 7:9 to harmonize the two accounts. If you look at the Matthew passage, you will note that the scribe didn't take the egg and scorpion example from Luke 11:12 back into Matthew. Again, this doesn't impact the meaning of the text at all, but most scholars are confident that the Matthew account and the Luke account are from two different settings and that Jesus uses different illustrations in each setting to reinforce the point.
Regardless, the Lord again makes two rather absurd, obvious statements to emphasize the confidence we should have when it comes to praying. In order to heighten the point, he moves from the realm of friendship in verses 5-8 to the realm of parenting in verses 11-12. We see in the previous, friendship example that even a good friend might get irritated and not want to help meet a need. This is contrasted with God who is a friend always and will provide. But in these verses, Jesus clearly declares the absurdity of a father abusing his child and thus declaring that God will abundantly provide for His children, thus we should pray with confidence.
In the NKJV, Jesus asks three rhetorical questions, all of them demanding a resounding “no!” answer. Will a father give his son a stone when he asks for bread? No! Will a father give his son a poisonous snake if he asks for a fish? No! Will a father give his son a scorpion if he asks for an egg? No! In these three examples, the request is met with three things that would be dangerous for the child and a father would never do this. Now there are the rare cases, and we could wish that that were rarer than they are, where a parent is exceedingly cruel and hateful to his child. But that is the exception rather than the rule and when such cruelty is discovered, it is met with shock and then intervention. The recent Casey Anthony trial and acquittal is a prime example of the shock and awe the world has when a child is abused. Even the unbelieving world is repulsed by such horrible events. And this is the point that the Lord Jesus is making here. Universally, parental cruelty is rare and horrible and soundly condemned.
And, thus, in verse 13, Jesus slams the point home by stating that if the unbelieving, wicked world understands and honors kind, thoughtful and gentle parenting, how much more so does our perfect, almighty, gracious God know how to take care of His children? We are stained with sin and depravity, we can't see the consequences of our actions because we are limited by time and space. Yet we still strive to give good gifts to our children. God is perfect, knows and controls all things and is unlimited in His abilities and power. How much more so is He equipped and ready to take care of His children and give them good gifts?
But note carefully the gift that God gives. The holy text states that the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. That is sort of a esoteric statement, isn't it? If you are a believer here today, the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is always with us and has been given to us. We can grieve the Holy Spirit but we can't drive Him away and then have Him come back again. 1 Corinthians 3:16 makes this very clear, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” This being the case, what does Jesus mean here when he says that the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?
What the Lord is declaring in this case is that God will answer the request in the way that best brings Him glory and best ministers to the need of His child. In other words, when we are asking, seeking and knocking in our prayer requests to God, this doesn't guarantee that our exact request will be granted. But rather, what it means is that God, in His sovereign knowledge and power, will grant the right and needed answer to the request. Therefore, friends, when you pray and bring your requests to God, the emphasis of your prayer shouldn't so much be on the perceived need for which you are asking, but rather on the gracious and holy Father who will answer the request perfectly according to His glory and your exact need, which He knows far better than you do. This is why, praise the Lord, we sometimes don't get what we want when we pray.
This concept of prayer is articulated in some very familiar passages from the Old Testament: Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.” Note that as we delight ourselves in the Lord, the desires of our heart are granted. It is in the delighting that God's perfect will for us is understood and then granted. This is indicated in the command to “seek” in verses 9 and 10. We are to seek out the mind of God and strive to discern His will in a particular situation and, this passages states, He will grant such discernment. In Proverbs 3:5-6 we again see a similar concept, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” Our confidence in prayer isn't to be based in this incorrect idea that God will answer my every whim and wish, but rather as we seek Him, as we delight in Him and as we trust in Him with all our heart, our gracious loving Father will direct our steps and answer our requests perfectly in the way that brings glory to Him and blesses His children. He gives the best answer to our prayers whether we necessarily understand it or not.
My pastoral mentor Steve Cole states the point this way, “Jesus’ specifying the Holy Spirit shows that He is not promising to meet our every whim for material things or for earthly benefits. But He is promising that if something is for our spiritual good and we come as trusting children and ask, the loving Father will give it to us. He may delay the blessing because He knows that I am not ready to receive it yet. He may have purposes of training me in faith and prayer that require His withholding the request for the present time. He may know what I do not know, that my request is not for my ultimate good, and so He will deny my request because He has something better for me. But Jesus is teaching that we should approach God with trust, as a child would come to a loving father, and if my request is for my spiritual good, the Father will give it to me. Andrew Murray puts it, 'Fatherlike giving is the Divine response to childlike living.'” (Sermon on Luke 11:5-13, http://www.fcfonline.org/, 02/28/99)
In light of such understanding of prayer, what should we do? We should come before God with persistence, continually asking, seeking and knocking. And also come before God with confidence, knowing that He will answer the request according to His perfect will, glory and blessing for His child.
Conclusion:
A dad with a three-year-old son had just gone through the bedtime routine of reading a story, listening to his prayers, answering a dozen questions, giving him a hug, and saying good-night four or five times before slipping out of the room. Finally, after a long, hard day, he could relax.
He sat down in his easy chair and it was quiet for about five minutes before he heard, “Daddy, can I have a drink of water?” He said, “No, son, be quiet and go to sleep.” It was quiet for a couple of minutes before, louder than before, he heard, “Daddy, can I have a drink of water?” “Son, I said to be quiet and go to sleep!” There was silence again, but it didn’t last long. “Daddy, please can I have a drink of water?” The dad could see that he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he said, “Son, if I hear one more sound out of that room, I’m going to spank you!” You could hear a pin drop. The silence was thick for about one minute. Then he heard, “Daddy, when you come in here to spank me, would you bring me a drink of water?” Now the dad knew that his son really was thirsty! Why? Because he was boldly persistent in his request. (Sermon on Luke 11:5-13, http://www.fcfonline.org/, 02/28/99).
Dear friends, Jesus Christ, through His death for our sins, His burial and then His resurrection has completed all that is necessary for one to be made right with God. Consider deeply 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,...” And if you have and are believing in Jesus Christ today, you have been brought to God. God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit invites all of us to “come boldly to the throne of grace...” (Heb. 4:16). We should come with worship and dealing with high and holy matters. But we are invited to bring our cares and needs to God anytime we want. Thus, come with persistence and come with confidence. Know that God wouldn't put it on your heart if He didn't want you to pray about it and know that He will answer your request in the way that best brings glory to Him and in the way that is best for you and those involved. Be reverent in your prayers...and also be persistent and confident.
Because Jesus directs us and invites us to be persistent and confident in our prayers, we should diligently be praying about God's glory and our needs.
Discussion Questions:
· Is your prayer life marked by persistence? How long have you prayed for something before it has come about?
· A friend of mine once declared that she was praying for a husband with curly brown hair and God granted her request! How do you feel about prayers like this...wanting a particular car, house, pet, etc? Is it right to address such issues in prayer?
· How can we determine that God does not want us praying for a particular request and, thus, stop praying about it?
· How should we respond when God apparently doesn't answer our request in the way we think would be best, even for His glory?
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