The Ministry of Prayer: Teaching us to pray Part 1 Luke 11:1-13
Notes
Transcript
Opening prayer - Father, we come before you this morning to give you honor, glory, and praise. We thank you for this opportunity that you have provided for us to gather together. Lord we pray that as we spend this time worshipping you, that you would continue to build your kingdom here in this place. We thank you for sending your son Jesus, that we might have this relationship with you. That we can come before you, that we can approach your throne of grace with confidence. Father as we come before you now, let us take a moment to prepare our hearts, to cast the sin that plagues us before you. We are thankful that when we have trusted in Jesus as Lord and savior that those sins have already been forgiven. Father we ask now for your work in each of us. That you would strengthen us, embolden us, grow in us a desire for you and for your word. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen
Intro
Intro
When you think of your spiritual life, what is one of, if not the easiest thing to accomplish, but also most easily pushed aside tasks?
Prayer.
It requires to additional materials.
Simply you speaking to God.
Even though it is one of the most important things we can do, it is also one of the first things that gets pushed aside in our daily lives.
Prayer, one of the easiest and the hardest of things to do;
one of the simplest and the most theologically mysterious and complex of things.
Andrew Murray, a pastor and writer int he late 1800’s said about prayer,
‘Though in its beginnings prayer is so simple that the feeblest child can pray.
Yet it is at the same time the highest and holiest work to which man can rise.
It is fellowship with the Unseen and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed at its disposal.
It is the very essence of true religion, the channel of all blessings, the secret of power and life.
Not only for ourselves, but for others, for the church, for the world, it is to prayer that God has given the right to take hold of Him and His strength.
It is on prayer that promises wait for their fulfilment, the kingdom for its coming, the glory of God for its full revelation.’
As we continue in Luke’s gospel, we are in the middle of a section where Jesus is intensively discipling His disciples.
He has taught them about loving your neighbour,
He has taught them about the priority of sitting at Jesus feet and hearing His teaching,
Now we see another pillar of our discipleship is prayer.
Luke 11:1-13 is all about prayer.
In v1-4 we have teaching on how to pray;
in v5-8 a parable to encourage us to prayer;
in v9- 10 we have a memorable statement encouraging us to pray;
and in v11-13 an illustration to motivate us to pray.
1 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.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” 5 And he 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, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and 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’? 8 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 give him whatever he needs. 9 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. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 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!”
Luke's Gospel has more emphasis on prayer than any other Gospel.
Luke has been called the "Gospel of Prayer" because of his emphasis, not only on our need to pray, but also on Jesus’ prayer life.
Nine times Luke tells of prayers that Jesus offered in the crises of His life, and seven of these are unique to Luke.
If we look just at what we have seen thus far, we see the importance Jesus placed on prayer.
Jesus is praying when He is baptized and receives the Spirit.
In chapter 5 we learned that it was Jesus custom to withdraw to desolate places to pray in the midst of busy ministry.
He prayed all night before choosing the 12.
He was praying after the feeding of the 5000 and before the first announcement of His death.
He was praying on the mount of transfiguration.
He had told the 72 as he sent them out that their role was first to pray.
And when they returned he rejoiced in the Spirit giving thanks to the Father.
Usually when we think of Jesus life and the story of his time on earth we think of it as a series of miracles, parables, and personal conversations with others that are occasionally interrupted by prayer.
But we really ought to think of it the other ways around.
Jesus life was a series of payer times surrounded by ordinary events of his daily life and ministry.
Prayer was key for Jesus.
Now in chapter 11, we once again see Jesus praying once again.
English Standard Version Chapter 11
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place
With these words, we are reminded of all the times that Jesus went to pray, and of everything we learn from this example.
We learn the necessity of regular prayer. If Jesus took the time to talk things over with his Father, how much more are we in need of time away with God in prayer?
If we want to follow God in the way of obedience and fulfill our true mission in life, as Jesus did, we need to lead lives of prayer.
The disciples, of course were watching Jesus, trying to learn from him.
and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
It was common practice in those days for rabbis to teach their followers a specific form of prayer.
Apparently, John the Baptist had done this for his disciples, although his prayer is not recorded in Scripture.
Now the disciples wanted Jesus to do the same thing for them.
They were in awe of his prayer life, and they wanted to know the secret of closer communion with God.
So they asked Jesus how to pray.
Jesus answers the question with a statement that many today are very familiar with.
Here it Luke it is stated as
English Standard Version Chapter 11
Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
Anyone who knows the Lord’s Prayer will notice immediately that there seems to be something wrong with this prayer.
It does not sound quite right. The prayer is similar to what we have heard before, but its cadence is different.
This is because there are two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer—one in Matthew and one in Luke.
Since the one from Matthew is much more familiar, I want to look at some of the differences.
Matthew’s version begins with “Our Father in heaven,” whereas in Luke Jesus simply says, “Father.”
Both prayers continue with “hallowed be your name” and “your kingdom come,” but then Matthew includes a petition that Luke does not: “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).
What the prayer says about daily bread is the same in both Gospels, but the wording of the confession is slightly different.
In Matthew Jesus says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12), but in Luke he says, “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4).
The sense is similar, but the wording is different.
Then, after the petition about temptation, Matthew adds a line we do not find in Luke: “but deliver us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13).
There is one final point of agreement between the two prayers, but this too may come as a surprise.
Neither prayer ends with the famous doxology of the early church, which was largely taken from one of David’s ancient prayers:
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen”
This is another part of the reason that I believe that the sermon on the mount in Matthew, and the sermon that we looked at similarly in Luke were different sermons with similar content.
We should be troubled by these differences.
To pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven is another way of praying for his kingdom to come.
And it is in temptation most of all that we need God to deliver us from evil.
The Bible may give us two different versions, but they are different versions of the same prayer.
The Bible may give us two different versions, but they are different versions of the same prayer.
As Christians at times we recite the Lord’s prayer, normally the version from Matthew, word for word.
It is good for us to use scripture, and Jesus words when we pray.
When we think about it, what prayer might have greater power with the Father than the words that came from the son.
The variations in Matthew and Luke though show us that it is not meant to always be a word for word prayer to recite.
The Lord’s prayer is a model to follow, not wrote words to recite.
It is not so much important to use the exact words that Jesus spoke, to to follow the structure he provided, using the same themes in our own prayer lives.
As such I would like to break down the Lord’s prayer as we find it here in Luke this morning.
Luke’s recounting of this prayer helps to teach us to pray in the fewest, yet most direct words possible.
The prayer moves in two directions.
The first is a vertical one - we think of God being above.
The second is a horizontal one - God’s work in our lives on Earth.
The Lord’s prayer is very familiar to us so we don’t see the wonderfully full way in which it teaches us.
It teaches us about our relationship with God. ‘Father and child (“Our Father”),
Holy One and worshiper (“hallowed be Your name”),
Ruler and subject (“Your kingdom come”),
Master and servant (“Your will be done”),
Savior and sinner (“forgive us our debts”),
and Guide and pilgrim (“do not lead us into temptation”).
It also defines the proper attitudes for prayer:
unselfishness (“our”),
intimacy (“Father”),
reverence (“hallowed be Your name”),
loyalty (“Your kingdom come”),
submissiveness (“Your will be done”),
dependence (“give us this day our daily bread”),
repentance/remorse (“forgive us our debts”),
humility (“do not lead us into temptation”),
and confident, triumphant joy (“Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever”).
The Lord’s Prayer teaches us so much about God.
All of the petitions affirm the supremacy of God.
“Father” acknowledges Him as the source of all blessing;
“hallowed be Your name” as sacred;
“Your kingdom come” as sovereign;
“Your will be done” as superior,
“give us each day our daily bread” as provider;
“forgive us our sins” as savior,
and “lead us not into temptation” as shelter.
All of this is included in this prayer that Jesus offers as a template for us to follow!
Amazing right!
First we pick up with the address.
Jesus simply uses the word Father.
We are so used to praying this way today that we don’t realize that this was a radical new way to pray in Jesus day.
Luke, Volumes 1 & 2 God Our Father
The people of the Old Testament had many names and titles for God, but rarely addressed him directly as “Father” when they prayed
Even though he was the Father of his people Israel, the Israelites did not address God in personal terms, or speak to him the way that children speak to their father.
This was a revolutionary new development in the history of prayer.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray this way because it was the way that he prayed. Every time Jesus spoke to God in heaven, he called him “Father.”
The only exception proves the rule.
As Jesus endured the agonies of the cross, there was a time when he suffered the full weight of God’s wrath against our sin.
At the time when he knew that he was separated from the Father by the curse of our sin, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).
But at every other moment of his life on earth, Jesus knew the joy of God’s presence and called him “Father.”
This was even true of his final moments on the cross, when by faith he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”
This is more evidence of the upside down sort of kingdom that Jesus came to proclaim.
As far as the Israelites of the day were concerned, this was not the way to address God.
We think today of the term as one of endearment.
Fatherhood is not a concept that started with human relationships and then we read it back onto God,
It begins within the triune nature of God.
There is only one God, and this one God exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The relationships among the three persons of the Godhead are eternal relationships.
So even when the Second Person of the Trinity became a man, he continued to know the First Person of the Trinity the way that he had always known him, as the Father of the Son.
It was perfectly natural for him to call God his “Father.”
God’s fatherhood begins with who God is,
and continues when He created He made fatherhood to conform to His likeness.
Fatherhood in God does not derive its essence from male reproductive organs or the male hormonal system
for God is Spirit and has no physical body,
rather it speaks of God as the source, as the provider, as the one who loves and who is strong.
It speaks of authority and gentleness; protection and provision.
It speaks of the eternal relationship of love with the eternal Son and God opening up that relationship to include us in its bounty.
Fatherhood when spoken of in God is not an affirmation of having physical descendants.
What is surprising is that Jesus invites us to pray the same way.
When we pray, we repeat the form of address that our Savior used and call God “Father.”
We speak to him “in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would with his father.”
So although there is a sense in which everyone can call God Father by virtue of creation, there is a sense in which only the believer can. This is what John means in
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
The Bible says that when we believe in Jesus Christ, God gives us “the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
There is a pretty clear distinction between the children of God and those who are in the world.
Not everyone in the world is a child of God. It is therefore not the right of everyone to pray the Lord’s Prayer, but only for those who are adopted into his family
To help us know that we really are his children, God sends us the Holy Spirit, and part of the Spirit’s work is to help us pray as children to a Father.
Paul writes in Romans 8,
15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
With the help of the Spirit, and through faith in the Son, we pray to God as our Father, coming to him as loving sons and daughters.
Those who have not received the Holy Spirit do not and cannot cry out with this heart cry, even though the words may come out of their mouths.
If we deny that there is a difference between the unbeliever, and the believer, then we are making nothing of Christ’s death, and saying that he died for nothing.
The question I have for you is this one, do you have the right to call God Father and pray the Lord’s prayer?
As John stated in his gospel, have you received him?
Have you believed in His name.
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Perhaps you learned the Lord’s prayer as a child.
The question I have for you is, have you moved from praying this prayer out of memory and habit into praying it as a believer in Christ?
Praying it as a child of God?
Have you learned to call God your Father through faith in Jesus Christ?
This is hard for some people to do, especially people whose fathers have done them harm.
It can be a source of pain.
One young woman with an abusive father had tremendous difficulty understanding what it meant to know God as her loving Father.
One of her girlfriends pointed to the example of a father they both knew. “Have you ever seen the way his daughter runs into his arms?” she asked. “Yes,” the woman said, “I have seen it; but I can’t even bear to look.”
How can someone with such a background ever learn to call God Father?
Or what about orphans, who never had a father at all?
Fortunately, we do not know God as Father by looking at earthly fathers in all their sin,
although in the best of fathers we may catch an occasional glimpse of the fatherhood of God.
Nor do we know God as Father by viewing him through the lens of our own family experience,
although that always has an influence on our spiritual life.
No, we come to know God as Father by seeing him in the Scriptures.
There we learn that he is the ideal Father,
who cares for his children,
who listens to us,
who understands what we need,
who loves us with an everlasting love,
and who always knows what is truly best for us.
It is on the basis of God’s love for us as our Father that we come to him in prayer.
The opening word of the Lord’s Prayer governs everything that follows.
When we pray for God’s name to be hallowed, we are seeking our Father’s honor.
When we pray for his kingdom to come, we are praying for the establishment of our Father’s authority.
When we pray for our daily bread, we are asking our Father to meet our needs.
When we pray for forgiveness, we are asking our Father to show us mercy.
When we pray against temptation, we are asking our Father to keep us safe.
As we bring each of these petitions before the throne of grace, we are praying to God as our loving Father, who loves to do what we ask in his name.
If you don’t have this relationship with God today, where you have placed your faith and trust in Jesus.
That you can call Him Father, I would love to talk more with you, as would many others in these seats.
It is a relationship you can have today.