Luke #27: Learning to Pray (11:1-13)
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B: Luke 11:1-13
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Welcome
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Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here with Eastern Hills, and I’m blessed to be here this morning as the church gathers together to worship the Lord and to reflect on His Word. I pray that this time is a blessing to you as well, but more than anything, I pray that our joining together today brings honor and glory to God, and points us to Him. I wanted to take a moment this morning and say thanks to our school board and all of our staff and teachers at Eastern Hills Christian Academy. I know several of the teachers have been here this week getting things ready for the school year, and we really appreciate their ministry. If you have questions about the school, or if you are perhaps looking to work in a school, you should contact the school during the week.
If you’re visiting with us for the first time today, I hope that you’ve already discovered that Eastern Hills is loving, friendly, supportive, and encouraging church body. We invite you, if you are a guest with us today, to fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Then you can drop that in the offering boxes by the doors on your way out after service, or you can bring them down to me at the front following our benediction at the end, as I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit with us today. If you’re online, and visiting with us today, feel free to head over to our website ehbc.org, and fill out the communication card on the “I’m New” page. Whether you’re here in the room or online, we just want to be able to send you a note thanking you for your visit today, and to see if we can pray for you or minister to you in some way.
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Opening
Opening
In his Gospel, John supposed that Jesus did so much (probably including what He said as well) that if all of it were written down, then the whole world couldn’t have contained the books that would be written about them. And when we think about this, we often think about His miracles, His large group teaching, His conflicts with the Pharisees. But there are places in the Gospels where we just see Jesus and His disciples, and we get to have a moment of insight into what they got to experience as they were taught by Jesus in their own smaller, intimate setting. Today’s focal passage in Luke is one of those times. It’s just Jesus and his disciples, and we get to listen in on His teaching.
So as you are able, please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word as we open our Bibles or Bible apps to Luke chapter 11, where I will read the first 13 verses:
1 He was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “Whenever you pray, say, Father, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not bring us into temptation.” 5 He also said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I don’t have anything to offer him.’ 7 Then he will answer from inside and say, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his friend’s shameless boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. 9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? 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?”
PRAYER (High schoolers on their mission trip)
People around my age and older (maybe those a little younger) remember the invention of something that we now take completely for granted. Those of you who are younger than I am, especially all of you who are 30 or younger: there used to be a time when if someone called you on the phone, you had NO IDEA who it was before you answered. Not a clue. Not that their number was blocked or anything like that: the technology for Caller ID simply didn’t exist.
Every call was a mystery: Is it a friend or family member? A telemarketer? A wrong number? THE PRESIDENT? No way to know, so you just answered the phone and said, “Hello?”
Aren’t you glad we have caller ID now?
Today, our phones live in our pockets. We screen every call. Declining a marketing pitch is just a quick thumb-tap away. Now, what would you do if your phone rang, and the caller ID said that it was God calling you? I know, I know, some of you are thinking, “I don’t have His contact info in my phone.” Humor me: God’s calling, and wanting to talk with you. Would you decline it? Send Him to voicemail, like, “If it’s really important, He’ll leave a message?” Or would you answer? Do we desire to talk with God? And if we do desire to talk to God, do we know how to do so?
This is what Jesus taught His disciples in our passage today. But before we get to the lesson He taught them, there are a couple of things for us to notice in the first verse of chapter 11:
1 He was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.”
First, this passage isn’t just about the model prayer that Jesus gave His disciples. It first shows that Jesus was the model pray-er. We’ve noted several times during our walk through Luke just how important prayer was to Jesus, and obviously His disciples saw this also.
We also see here that the disciples actually wanted to learn to pray well. Maybe they just heard Jesus’s prayers and were like, “My prayers sound nothing like His.” But I’m guessing that they didn’t think that because of the vocabulary Jesus used, but the intimacy with which He prayed, the priorities that He had while He was praying, and the confidence that Jesus displayed in His Father’s answers when He prayed.
We can sometimes feel kind of awkward about prayer. But just as we can learn conversation and develop skill in speaking to other people, we can learn to pray and develop our skill in it as well, and I’m not even talking about praying out loud.
So today, we will see three points in Jesus’s teaching of His disciples about prayer: We should pray theologically, we should pray persistently, and we should pray expectantly.
1: Pray theologically (we’re going to spend most of our time this morning here)
1: Pray theologically (we’re going to spend most of our time this morning here)
This point might sound heady, but I need you to not check out just because I used the word “theologically”. The word “theology” is a mashup of the Greek word theos, or “God,” and the Greek word, “logia,” which means “word, thought, or speech.” So, if you have any words or thoughts about God, then by definition, those are theological. The truth is that everyone is a theologian. Yes, even you. So let’s confess this truth together for just a moment: Everyone repeat after me and say “I”… “am a theologian.” Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the word doesn’t sound quite so scary, does it? Let’s look at verses 2-4, and I’ll explain further what I mean by saying that we should “pray theologically:”
2 He said to them, “Whenever you pray, say, Father, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not bring us into temptation.”
Now, this is a slightly shortened version of the more well-known record of the model prayer from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. However, the difference tells us something important: this wasn’t a script. Jesus wasn’t telling His disciples to pray these exact words in either Matthew or Luke. He was giving them a pattern to use as they prayed, and the pattern remains even in Luke’s shortened form.
This isn’t to say that it would be wrong for us to pray these precise words to God, because certainly it would not be—this is Scripture, after all. However, if we are merely reciting by rote the words that Jesus gave to His disciples and not actually communicating with God, then we’ve missed the point—because the point is communication with God, not saying the “magic” words.
Jesus taught His disciples to pray theologically because He taught that our priorities in prayer should reflect a right theological structure: God is more important than we are, but God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us and meet our needs. So the model prayer has two sections: The “You’s” and the “we’s”.
Let’s briefly break down this prayer line phrase by phrase so we can see this. First, Jesus models that we should pray the “You’s:” speaking to God about Him and His kingdom purposes. These are recorded in verse 2.
Father
First, Jesus teaches the disciples to refer to God as “Father.” Jesus often did this… something like 166 times in the Gospels (about 100 of them in John alone). Being God the Son, it makes sense that He would refer to God the Father in this way. But He teaches us to do that as well. In the Jewish mind of the day, this was a very “familiar” way to refer to God Almighty.
Yes, God is altogether greater than us in every sense, and so He is decidedly “other.” But the Scriptures tell us that because Jesus came and died in our place, trading His perfection for our sin, then if we believe in Him, we are adopted into the family of God.
4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
Thus, God is our Father. We are God’s children. Everyone is God’s creation, but only those adopted into His family are His children. That’s how we come to Him when we pray, and so we can come in confidence that He loves us and wants the very best for us, because He is our Father.
Your name be honored as holy
“Your name be honored as holy,” is a request that the name of God, which would include His character, His reputation, and His glory, would be honored as it should be in the world: as holy, set apart, special, and unique. We, as those who actually bear the name of Christ, are to be those who do this first and do this best.
And in an ultimate sense, those who do not belong to Christ are not going to honor His holy name, because they either do not know or do not care about His character, His reputation, and His glory. So in a very real sense, when we pray that God’s name be honored as holy, we are praying that people would come to know Jesus and surrender to Him by faith, so they would know the Father, and thus revere Him as they should. The next request is related:
Your kingdom come
When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we aren’t asking for something that isn’t going to happen. It’s us confirming that we WANT what’s been promised to come. We want God’s righteous and rule and reign on the earth. But as believers in Jesus, we should make this request as a declaration of submission as well. When we pray that God’s kingdom would come, we are thus saying that we want OUR kingdoms to be ruled by Him. In this sense, we should have the same attitude as John the Baptist:
30 He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease.”
In this way, we submit our own personal kingdoms to His coming perfect kingdom, so that we might be subjects that anticipate and live for His kingdom, no longer battling for our own power, position, or prestige, because we know that His glory is all that matters.
So having set the priorities of our heart and prayer on God and His concerns first and foremost, we can then approach God about our concerns. In verses 3 and 4, Jesus moves into teaching about the “we’s:” speaking to God about us and our needs and requests. Each of these requests comes from the same posture of the heart: humility. Spending time focusing on who God is, how great He is, and aligning our priorities with His helps foster a humble attitude.
Give us each day our daily bread
The request to “give us each day our daily bread,” is an example of synecdoche, where the part (“bread”) stands for the whole (“needs”). Here, we humbly ask of God that He would meet the true needs that we have this day, and every day. Jesus’s prayer models an ongoing, constant dependence upon God for His provision for everything we need. One of the dangers that we have in our society with blessed conveniences like refrigeration, clean running water, and bank accounts, is that we might be tempted to think that WE provide for all of our needs, because we sometimes don’t have to give a lot of thought to where our day-to-day provision comes from. We should adopt the attitude of Agur in Proverbs:
8 Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor wealth; feed me with the food I need. 9 Otherwise, I might have too much and deny you, saying, “Who is the Lord?” or I might have nothing and steal, profaning the name of my God.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us
Asking the Lord to “forgive us our sins” is, in one sense, extremely bold: we have no standing to demand forgiveness, no innate holiness or righteousness that would allow us to be justified before our holy and righteous God. God’s grace is proven in Jesus’s perfect life, sacrificial death, and powerful resurrection on our behalf. Faith in Jesus’s atoning work is the only means of salvation, the only way to have eternal life.
Asking God for forgiveness helps us see the depth of our sin, and it also helps us appreciate the breadth of His love. As we constantly submit ourselves to Him for His forgiveness and correction, we then also accurately see that our sins against God are massive when compared to the sins that others have committed against us. And we can then choose (yes, it is a choice) to forgive others as we have been forgiven by Christ:
31 Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. 32 And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.
Forgiveness isn’t optional for the Christian. In his excellent commentary on Luke, Robert H. Stein writes:
“The hand that reaches out to God for forgiveness cannot withhold forgiveness to others.”
— Robert H. Stein, New American Commentary, Volume 24: Luke
And do not bring us into temptation
Finally, asking God not to “bring us into temptation,” isn’t assuming that God is going to intentionally lead us headlong into sin. We know from Scripture that God does not sin (Psalm 92:15), that His eyes are too pure to look on evil (Hab 1:13), that there is absolutely no darkness in Him (1 John 1:5), that He is righteous and true (Deut 32:4), that His way is perfect (Ps. 18:30), and that He is not tempted by evil, and thus He Himself doesn’t tempt anyone to sin (James 1:13). Therefore, this request is more about a provision of protection from sin (and I suppose from ourselves): that God would strengthen us to prevent us from yielding to temptation. Humility can admit that we need God’s strength to stand against it.
13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.
Do you see how theologically rich this model prayer is, and how thinking theologically while we pray can be so enriching to our prayer lives?
Two last thoughts on praying theologically: First, we know that God knows each word before we speak it (Ps 139:4), that He has the hairs on our heads numbered (Mark 10:30), and that He knows what we need before we ask Him (Matt 6:8). Therefore, that also means that we can be completely honest and transparent when we pray, but we don’t have to use flowery language or rigid formality when we pray. God already knows our needs, our issues, our desires, and our sins. Do you have a friend who you can be completely open and honest with? That’s how we should be with God.
Not only that, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings (Rom 8:26). He’s our go-between in prayer between us and the Father, and He knows both our thoughts and the thoughts of God (1 Cor 2:11-16). So remember that prayer is not just talking. It’s also listening to the voice of the Spirit as He speaks. That’s a learning that we need to cultivate over time: We need to reach a point where we know God’s Word and character well enough to distinguish between His voice and other things we hear or think.
Whew! That was all point 1. After teaching them to pray, Jesus taught His disciples two things about what our attitudes should be AS we pray. First, we should pray persistently.
2: Pray persistently
2: Pray persistently
In some ways, persistence is a diminishing virtue today. I think that’s at least in part because as things in life have gotten faster and more convenient, we’ve expected much quicker results. Getting a movie to watch at home used to mean waiting for it to come out on disc or (gasp!) VHS, then a trip to the video store, waiting in line, having to return it... Now, it shows up on some streaming services for purchase or rent before it would have ever been available in stores, and we can buy it from the comfort of our couches and watch it right then. We used to order something online and be happy if we got it within a week. Now, we’re frustrated if it’s not expensive enough to qualify for Amazon’s next- or even SAME-day delivery for free. We’re more likely to give up if things don’t come easily, and more likely to get irritated if things don’t go our way right out of the gate. As a society we have less patience, and so we are weak in the virtue of persistence.
But Jesus took His lesson about priorities in our prayers and expanded it for His disciples to teach them the importance of persistence in prayer:
5 He also said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I don’t have anything to offer him.’ 7 Then he will answer from inside and say, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his friend’s shameless boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
First, we need to remember that parables are earthly stories that illustrate a spiritual truth. They aren’t allegories, so we can’t treat them as such. This one is no different. This parable is not to be read as we are the friend and we go to God and ask for bread, but God’s kind of crabby and already in bed so He doesn’t want to give it to us, so we have to wear Him down by asking until He gives in. If that’s how you have taken this parable in the past, please throw that idea out.
Ancient Israel was really an honor/shame culture. The idea here is that this friend was on a long journey somewhere, and didn’t have time to notify you they were coming, and so they showed up on your doorstep in the middle of the night needing a meal and a place to sleep. It was your cultural duty to provide for them. It was even, in a way, a community responsibility. Thus, the willingness to go bang on your neighbor’s door.
But houses in that time were often just one big room, so kids were normally slept on mats on the floor, or sometimes even all in the same bed. Getting up, getting a light, rummaging around for food… this might wake up the whole family in the middle of the night! In the parable, friendship alone isn’t enough to prompt the neighbor to act. Instead, as the desperate neighbor persists in his request, the friend will choose to act.
So instead of saying that God is like the sleepy friend, God is to be contrasted with the sleepy friend. The point is that we should approach God with shameless boldness in prayer, because how much more likely is God—who WANTS to answer the prayers of His children—to give us what we need over the man who doesn’t want to help his friend (but does anyway)?
Persistence in prayer is a common theme in Scripture. David was certain that God would rescue him, and thus he could pray with persistence:
16 But I call to God, and the Lord will save me. 17 I complain and groan morning, noon, and night, and he hears my voice.
And Paul writes about it in several places:
12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer.
18 Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.
2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving.
And Paul even asks the church at Rome to “strive together with him in prayers to God on his behalf,” in Romans 15:30.
So we are to come before God about things constantly until we get His answer. Why would God hesitate in responding to us, so that we would have to keep praying? Maybe our hearts need adjusting, and having us pray for something over time helps us refine our attitudes or shift our focus to the right place. Sometimes, I’m hard of hearing in a spiritual sense, and so I don’t hear God’s answer this time, but I might next time. Maybe, if we don’t persist in prayer, it’s an indication that what we were praying for wasn’t really that important to us. Perhaps God waits to answer us sometimes so that we begin to long for Him, rather than for His answer or what He can give us.
Since God was to be contrasted with the neighbor in this parable, we know that He wants to answer our prayers. This should give us the drive to persist until He does. Not only that, but since we know that He wants to answer, we can also pray expectantly that He WILL, which brings us to our last point:
3: Pray expectantly
3: Pray expectantly
Abbie loves to read. And she has loved to read her whole life. Even before she could read, she generally wanted to look at books by herself: She had to hold it, turn the pages, etc. Once she could read, she has never been a big fan of being read to. So Mel and I decided that if she loved to read, then we were going to intentionally cultivate that love. It was always easy for me to say no to toys, and now to clothes or shoes, but if we go out shopping and she wants a book? I’m gonna buy it. I don’t know how many books she owns. A LOT. Abbie knows that if she comes to me and asks for a book, she’ll get the book if it’s a reasonable request. She can ask expectantly.
Just as Abbie can ask for a book with confident expectation of receiving it, Jesus illustrates what we should expect as a result when we pray with shameless boldness.
9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? 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?”
“Ask...Seek...Knock...” Each of these verbs is in the present mood and active voice. This means that each of them are an action that we are to do and keep doing… we are to persist in asking, seeking, and knocking. However, each of them is given with a promise not just once, but twice in this passage.
However, if we just take verses 9 and 10 out of context, we might come away from this reading with the idea that God promises to give us anything we ask for, seek after, or knock on the door of. But our life experience tells us that this is not the case. So was Jesus mistaken? Certainly not.
We have to take this all together to understand this passage. As we’ve already said this morning, when we pray, we are to first align our priorities with God’s, then make our requests for ourselves. But we should strive that our requests be humbly in accordance with God’s will, because our His priorities are our priorities. We persist in prayer because we know that God will answer because He wants to do so, but we can also trust that He will do so in His way, in His time, and in His will.
The last three verses illustrate this fact. The child asks the father for what she needs: breakfast, basically. The child asks for a fish or an egg, and no responsible father would give her a snake or a scorpion, respectfully. The responsible father would fulfill the needs that his child has.
Now, we still might want to look at this and say, “See? The father gives whatever the child asks for… those are the ‘good gifts.’” But this is the wrong way to view it. Instead, flip the requests from the child first:
If she asked for a snake for breakfast, would the father do that just because she wanted it? Or if she asked for a scorpion to eat, would the father give in to that request? No. The responsible father would still give his child what she needs, not what she wants that isn’t best for her. When the child asks for the fish and the egg, those requests are in line with the father’s will for his child.
Notice what John wrote in his first epistle:
14 This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.
We need to ask for that which the Lord wants for us. We can trust God, because of the comparison that Jesus gives in verse 13: If we (who sometimes are terrible fathers) know how to give what’s best to our kids, now much MORE will God do so?
But notice the “good gift” Jesus says God will give: Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Our heavenly Father gives His very presence, the best thing He can possibly give us. This is our true hope. This is what we wait expectantly for—not for God to just give us anything and everything we ask for, but for Him to give us Himself, because we are His children and He loves us.
So we can wait for His answer, His voice, with hopeful, expectant patience, because we know that the promise of being with Him because of the sacrifice of Christ is guaranteed:
24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.
Closing
Closing
We see here that Jesus gave a wonderful pattern for prayer that goes beyond rote memorization of a set of words. This pattern can help our prayers to be more focused on who God is and His priorities, more persistent as we submit to God’s timing, and more expectant as we know that He will answer. God doesn’t have to call our cell phones: talking with Him is always available, and He will always answer when we reach out in prayer.
Do you have this kind of confidence in communicating with God because of your faith in Jesus? If you’ve never believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, trusting in His life, death, burial, and resurrection for your salvation, today you’ve heard about one of the incredible blessings that comes from being one of God’s children. God loves you and wants that kind of relationship with you. Will you surrender to Him in faith, believing in what Jesus has done to save you? We’d love to talk with you about that and pray with you.
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11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 You will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.
