Luke 11:1-13
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel chapter 11. Our reading for the next
several weeks will be verses one to 13. Today in particular,
we’ll be looking at verses five to 13. And then in the coming
weeks, we’ll make our way through the petitions that you find in
verses one through four. And so we’ll consider the subject
of prayer. Let’s hear God’s word together.
Luke’s gospel, beginning at verse one of chapter 11, it says this.
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished,
one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as
John taught his disciples. And Jesus said to them, when
you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come,
give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we
ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us
not into temptation. And he also said to them, which
of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say
to him, friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has
arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him. He
will answer from within. Do not bother me. The door is
now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get
up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not
get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet
because of his impudence, he will rise and he will give him
whatever he needs. And I tell 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 the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, it will
be opened. What father among you, if his
son asked for a fish, will instead give him a serpent? Or if he
asked for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who
are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him? Let us pray together. Lord, this
is your word. We want to sit under its authority
this day. We want it to shape our lives
and conform us, our habits, our thinking, our way of living into
the way of Jesus. So help us to see, hear, believe,
to understand and help us to be willing to obey what it says
in it. We make our prayer in the name
of Jesus, who this day teaches us to pray in his great name.
Amen. No doubt you have watched others
pray. My wife’s mother has a rocking
chair in her room and in this corner of the room where there’s
a rocking chair. She has taped to the side of her dresser, taped
to the wall, all the names and all the requests that she makes
before the Lord. Maybe some of you grew up in
prayer meetings. I can remember growing up on
Wednesday nights going to, we called it group prayer. Sometimes
it was called intercessory prayer, but every Wednesday night in
church growing up, At 7 o’clock our family made our way to the
fellowship hall and 70, 80 people would gather after work, after
dinner, after all their busy days and they would sit in circles
or groups and pray. We had these Danish cookie tins
which To my sadness did not contain cookies, but they had what we
called missionary prayer cards. And after we went around the
circle and prayed for the needs of the church, the needs of one
another, we would finally pray for the missionaries who are
taking the gospel to faraway lands. Maybe you’ve watched prayer
and family as you sit around the table. Some of you hold hands.
Some of you pray for the blessings of the day and the evening. You’ve
seen prayer in all kinds of ways. But I would also imagine that,
like me, you’ve seen prayer disappear from the lives of many. Somewhere
in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the church got it in its head
that it no longer needed to have Wednesday night prayer. As times
were getting modern, people got pretty sure of themselves. They
went to work, they got busy, and there was no time for Wednesday
prayer with the church. And so you’ve seen The disappearance
of prayer meetings. We’ve seen the disappearance
of family meals and so there’s no prayer at dinnertime. We’ve
seen the disappearance of rocking chairs in the corners of bedrooms. Because quite frankly, we’ve
got the world by the tail. And we don’t necessarily need
prayer. And I want to remind you this day that prayer is one
of the greatest gifts that God has given us. It’s one of the
greatest weapons that God has given his church for our enemies. We are up against Satan and his
wiles. We are up against the world.
We are up against our own hearts. And we for sure need to be people
of God’s word, people of the church, but we need to be people
of prayer. And as Jesus went along the way
with his disciples, they saw that prayer was of great importance
to him. Remember many weeks back in our
study of Luke’s gospel that before Jesus called disciples, he spent
an entire night on the mountain in prayer. And the next day when
he came down from that mountain, he called his disciples that
God had revealed to him would be of great benefit to the kingdom. We’ve seen Jesus pray over the
sick. We’ve seen Jesus pray and ask
for God’s blessings in ministry. And, you know, sometimes in this
day and age, in 2020, that’s what it’ll be in a few months,
isn’t it? We wonder what’s the magic bullet
for people in America to become Christians? What’s the magic
bullet to get our church to grow? What’s the magic bullet to see
my children and grandchildren know Jesus? Well, prayer. Prayer that is Persistent, prayer
that is shameless, prayer that is expectant, that God will and
do mighty things. That’s what we want to consider
from today’s passage. We want to consider what Jesus
teaches about prayer that is shameless, prayer that is persistent. but also prayer that is expectant,
that God will hear and answer. Before we look at these things,
I want to give you a definition of prayer. This comes straight
out of our larger and shorter catechism. Prayer is the offering
up unto God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit
Our desires for things agreeable to his will. Catch that last
phrase. We offer up unto God through
Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit the desires of
our heart. for things agreeable to the will
of Almighty God. God is not some magic candy machine.
He’s not a divine vending machine, but he is seeking people to pray
the prayers of our hearts for things agreeable to his will
with great expectation that he can and will and does answer
them according to his time. Our passage teaches us a little
bit about how we should continue in our prayers. We’ll look in
the weeks to come about the petitions. We’ll look at the content of
our prayers, but I want us to consider a couple of things from
this passage. And the first is that we should
be shameless in our prayers. Some of you are wondering what
in the world is he saying, but look, if you will, at verse five,
Jesus said to them, which of you who has a friend, will go
to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves.
For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing
to set before him. He will answer me from within.
Do not bother me, the door is now shut. My children are in
bed with me and I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell
you, though he will not get up to give him anything because
of his friendship, yet because of his impudence, he will rise
and give him whatever he needs. When you all go to bed, it’s
about midnight, I would guess. But in the ancient Near East,
you went to bed way before midnight. Midnight was midnight. Say you
went to bed at eight and got up at four. You got up with the
sun, you went to bed with the sun. Midnight was midnight. You
had been asleep for four or five hours. You all know how it is
when you’re good and asleep. Just harken back to the memories
of having babies. And you were good and asleep,
and you thought they were too, but they woke you up in the night.
And you jabbed your wife, or she jabbed you, and you tried
to draw straws, who was going to go take care of business?
And you just remember being droggy, Really useless in the middle
of the night. That’s the picture Jesus gives here. But the picture
here is a little different than ours. We sleep in our king sized
beds under our Egyptian sheets. You know, they’re advertising.
We sleep on our my pillow because it’s the best. We have our own
bedroom, the master bedroom. The kids are each in their own
bedrooms. But that was not the case in the ancient Near East.
They all slept in one room. And so when there was a knocking
at the door, a pounding at the door, the owner of the house,
the father of the home did not want to risk everyone waking
up. And so through the seams of the door, who is it? Go away, we’re asleep. Don’t care who you are. You’re
my best friend, but just not at midnight. Go away, leave us
alone. Don’t want to wake the house.
And Jesus says, this friend will not give this other friend bread
just because of the friendship. But why? Because of his impudence. Impudence is related to a word
that means shame. And so one who is Impudent is
shameless. They will ask for anything. I
have a friend in ministry who is a church planter. And I remember
some years ago, his wife said of her husband, he’ll ask anybody
for anything. He’ll walk up and say, hey, I’m
planting a church. I need money. Hey, I’m planting
a church. Will you give us this building
rent free for a couple of years? Hey, I’m planting a church. Will
you donate that piano? She said he was shameless. He
would ask for anything. That’s usually what we think
of. The word shameless, we have no gall, we have no filter. But really what it means in this
passage is I am going to beat down the door of this house until
I get bread. Now, something else you have
to understand in this passage is that in the ancient Near East,
hospitality was huge. In the South, we go to someone’s
house and they let us in and they offer us a cup of sweet
tea. Well, go to the ancient Near East at this time, the custom
was a spread had to be laid before any house guests, whether they
were announced or not. And so this man has these friends
who come stay with him in the night and they’ve arrived from
a journey and he has nothing to give them. Friends, that’s
horrifying. That’s a shameful position for
this man to be in. And so you can imagine he goes
from house to house. Who has bread? And I can get
it. And Jesus is teaching his disciples,
he’s teaching us. You bang on the door, you knock,
you wait, and you don’t take no for an answer. That’s one
of the ways we pray. We are shameless in our prayers. All modesty gone, all rules of
social engagement we lay down until we get what we want in
prayer. So our prayers ought to be shameless.
Our prayers also ought to be persistent. Notice, if you will,
what Jesus teaches us in this passage. If you pick up at verse
nine, Jesus says to his disciples, and I tell you, ask and it will
be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock
and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives
and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks, it will be
opened. We need to be persistent in our
prayers. We give up too easily, don’t we? Sometimes we are out
in public and maybe we don’t get the customer service we wish
for. And if you’re like me, you try
to be a nice guy and you don’t wanna hassle the employees. They’ve
had a rough day, you can tell it. And so you say, well, it’s
okay, I’ll move on. Oh, but others of you, you’re
more assertive. You’re gonna see the manager. Right. Somebody
is going to hear about it. You’re going to get what you
feel that you deserve. And so you’re persistent. You
don’t stop until you get what you are asking for, what you’re
seeking. And Jesus says, ask and it will be given. Seek and
you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. What does that look like in our
prayer life? Do we continue to ask God? Do
we continue to seek his will? Do we knock and we pursue God
until he answers our prayers? I would imagine a lot of us are
too busy to pray. I would imagine a lot of us have
forgotten how to pray. I would imagine a lot of us are
swept up in the busyness of this world. Your gadget in your hand,
it dings and it buzzes and you pay more attention to that And
you are cruising through life. And it may be that until you
come to church each week, you haven’t prayed for a whole week.
It may be that in this place, when we pray together, your mind
is even wandering then. And so, dear friends, let me
encourage you to tune up your prayer life. You know, the preacher
goes to meddling usually when he preaches on marriage, when
he preaches on tithing and when he preaches on Maybe keeping
the Sabbath day holy, but the preacher can go to meddling when
it comes to praying. And I would imagine that each
and every one of us need a tune up in our prayer life. Do we
offer up unto God through Jesus Christ with the help of the Holy
Spirit the desires of our heart for things agreeable to his will?
with expectation that he’ll answer shamelessly until we get something
from him and persistently until we get what we’re seeking for.
Dear friends, that’s the tune up of our prayer life that Jesus
is asking us to consider this day. Are we shameless in our
prayers? Are we persistent in our prayers? Do we have a set time? Do we
keep a list? Do we pray with and for others? Do we pray with the congregation
when it gathers? Do we have a set time in our
own daily private worship that we pray? It’s a good question,
isn’t it? A good test for us. Do we pray
shamelessly? Do we pray persistently? But
finally, do we pray expectantly? Jesus says in this passage, if
you pick up in verse 11, what father among you, if his son
asked for a fish, will instead give a fish, instead of a fish,
a serpent? Or if he asked for an egg, will
give him a scorpion? If you then who are evil know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask
him, do we expect God to answer our prayers? I bet we do. But I bet we do in the wrong
way. You know, it’s what, 10 weeks till Christmas, something
like that. And we’ve turned God into Santa
Claus, haven’t we? He’s there when we need him,
about once a year. And he gives us, we hope he does
at least, what’s on our wish list. And so as some of you young
ones are making your Christmas list, Maybe some of you big ones
to still have fun in this life. You’re making your Christmas
list. Let me encourage you, don’t treat God like a Santa Claus.
He is not there to make you happy. He is not there as a divine vending
machine. God, the sovereign of the universe,
who in eternity past foreordained whatsoever comes to pass as our
confession teaches us. He has determined the lot and
the plot of your life. And he gets you to praying when
he wants to bring his blessings to you. And so if you sense God
is encouraging you to tune up your prayer life, just wait and
see how he’ll bless you. Dear friends, God always answers
prayers. Now he doesn’t always answer
them the way you want them. No, he’s no divine Santa. He’s
not a vending machine. You put in your request, you
mash the button and out comes what you asked for. He answers
his prayers according to his time. According to his holy will,
according to his holy purpose, what will bring him the most
glory and the most good for your life? And so as you begin to
pray to Almighty God, pray shamelessly, pray with a persistence. But
pray expectantly that God can and will do for you all that
he has planned to do that will bring him glory and you earthly
good. Dear friends, we can pray this
way. because Jesus teaches us this.
We can also pray this way because Jesus has given us access to
the Father. I would imagine if you wanted
to leave this place today and say, I’m going to go to the White
House and I’m going to go in the Oval Office. That would be
a great plan, wouldn’t it? But I bet you wouldn’t get in.
But we have access 24 hours a day, all of our lives to the throne
room of heaven. We have access through faith
in Jesus to the throne of grace. And there is never a moment.
There is never a time. It doesn’t matter if you’re on
your bed in the middle of the night and can’t sleep. It doesn’t
matter if you’ve awakened early in the morning or crying out
to God. There is not a time where you do not have access to the
throne of glory and you do not have access to the king of the
universe. through faith in Jesus. It’s one of the great gifts of
salvation. When we come to faith in Jesus and repent of our sins
and trust in him alone for our salvation, we have a high priest
who ever lives above to make intercession for us. We share
lots of prayer requests around here, don’t we? We come to Sunday
school and we hear of the news of the church of the week. We
hear who’s sick, who’s received bad news this week. We know who’s
moving, who’s traveling. We know whose loved ones are
struggling. We know who’s looking for work.
And we we put out these prayer requests. But dear friends, through
faith in Jesus, with our great access we have to the throne
of grace, are we shamelessly and persistently and expectantly
taking these prayers before God in hopes that he will answer
them in his time and make all things beautiful? Think on these
things. Let us pray together. Our great
God, we bless you for the gift of prayer that we weak human
beings, we weak sinners, who falter in our faith, who often
find ourselves not trusting as we ought. We can boldly approach
your throne of grace. We can put our cares before you. Not only do you hear us, but
you mix these prayers right into your divine plan and you get
to work on our behalf as you have determined to do before
the foundation of the world. We thank you for these great
truths and we pray that our faith would be strong and that our
prayer life would be persistent. It would be shameless and that
it would be expectant knowing that you will answer and make
all things beautiful. Hear us as we make our prayer
in our great high priest name, even Jesus. Amen.