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Sunnyside Baptist Church Michael Dirrim
Luke chapter 11. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for our time together tonight. What a joy it is to gather together as a church family to spend time together around a meal. Lord, we thank you for the Browns and their labor in procuring and preparing for us.
Lord, I thank you for your word and how you never fail in presenting before us a wonderful meal of life-giving truth concerning your Son Jesus Christ, your word unfailingly delivered to us by your Holy Spirit.
We pray that you would help us tonight as we read and ponder your words so that we would be nourished, so that we would be encouraged, that we would be changed for our good and for your glory. We pray these things in Jesus' name.
Amen. So in Luke 11, we're learning about prayer. We're hearing Jesus give instruction about prayer. And last time we looked at this passage, we considered the model prayer itself in verses 1 through 4.
But now we're going to move beyond that to some additional instructions from Jesus on how to pray. So I'm going to read verses 1 through 13 of Luke chapter 11. Now it came to pass as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, that one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John also taught his disciples.
So he said to them, when you pray, say, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who was indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. 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 open 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? And so Jesus gives a model of how to pray. Every stanza of the model prayer gives us fruitful meditation on the ways in which we may pray, the content, the actual content of our prayers, what we should be talking to God about, how we should be praising him, expressing our trust in him, seeking sustenance from him, asking him for protection, and so on.
Now there are there are a great many supplications that we may offer, many requests that we may make known to God. And clearly we are to do so, praising him with thanksgiving, trusting in him, acknowledging that he has everything in hand, and considering his character and his power, and so on.
Now Jesus knows our frame. He knows what we need in prayer. He knows where the pitfalls are for us when it comes to prayer. So he has a lot of instruction to us about how to pray, how to approach the whole thing.
Back in Matthew chapter 6, there are other instructions that are also given concerning prayer. Very helpful to keep us on track, to divert us away from improper ways of praying. In this context, we have a story that Jesus makes central to our approach to prayer.
We've considered the content of our praying, these model lines that give us thoughts about how to pray, but what about the manner in which we approach prayer? How we should consider what prayer is, and what we should expect.
So he tells the story, and it really is an odd story, I think, to our ears. First of all, some of you think it's odd that people are asleep at midnight. Got a couple hours left in the day here. Why are you in bed?
Maybe that's what's kind of strange to you. But there is just this whole dynamic of someone's showing up. And notice, Jesus makes it personal to them. Out of the three different people in the story, you could have the guy who's at home sleeping, everything tucked away just fine, in bed at a reasonable hour.
Obviously a responsible person, given that he actually has bread in his pantry. Jesus does not liken his hearers to that man. There's another man who went on a journey, and possibly thought to himself, well I could stop here for the night, but just down the road is my destination.
I want to get to my friend's house, so I'll just go ahead and travel on through the evening hours, and he shows up at midnight. And he's like, I'm so sorry I'm late, but you know, I wanted to go ahead and make it here to spend more time with you.
Jesus does not liken his hearers to that man. The man who made no plans for his friend to arrive, had no idea when his friend was coming, that would probably be okay and somewhat expected in the ancient world.
But he has no bread in the house. He's got nothing to give to his weary friend, and so he goes to one of his friends at midnight. I know my responsible friend. Yeah, he'll have some bread. He's probably asleep.
So he goes, and he starts pounding on the door. And Jesus makes the association, the connection of his audience with this guy. So he's pounding on the door. Friend, lend me three loaves. Just, you know, give me some, give me three loaves.
I've got this, I'm gonna give some food to some. Now, why does the man have no food in his house? Remember Jesus's audience. In the context of Matthew chapter 6, he warned them against worrying about certain things.
What were they not to worry about? Anybody remember? What you're gonna eat or drink tomorrow, what you're gonna wear tomorrow. This was a genuine concern for most of Jesus's audience. They didn't have vast reservoirs of foodstuffs ready to go.
They could survive for a month off of the food that they had stored up. They just didn't have that. They were often concerned whether they would ever be able to afford a replacement set of clothing. This was, this was very much their in-and-out daily concern.
So this man had had enough food probably for his family, but he didn't have any food left over for guests. Imagine them living in a small village, you know, like one of the ones that Jesus would travel to and teach in, and there's no 7-Eleven on the corner.
There's no 24-hour anything to go buy some food. They didn't have the money to do that anyway. And the friend is not going to stay at a hotel. Those were few and far between, and hospitality was expected to be offered in the village.
After all, he knew his friend lived there. If you ever had to travel anywhere, you would have friends along the way that you knew you could stay at anytime you showed up. That was just the way they did hospitality.
But you welcome someone into your home, you're responsible for their care. You're responsible to feed them. This man has nothing to feed him. He's failing as a host. He's got nothing to feed his friend, and so he is desperate.
And so he goes to his responsible friend and starts pounding on the door. Now Jesus tells the story and says, the man within says, do not trouble me. The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed.
I cannot rise and give to you. So, basic structure, the suburban home in this time usually had two rooms. There was the regular room and then there was the inner room. Remember Jesus' instructions about prayer?
Go into your inner room. That's because they had two rooms. They had their regular room and then they had their inner room. The inner room was where you would stick all your valuables. Maybe you would dig a pit and put your valuables down there.
You would keep your foodstuffs in your inner room. When Jesus talked about thieves who would break in and steal, the words are actually dig through and steal. Because these houses are made out of an adobe type structure.
And then they would spend a lot of their time down on the roof in the evening cooling off. Where were they sleep? They would all sleep in the big room. They would all lay down together in the big room.
They may have a little raised platform at one side of the house where they would all lay down. They probably had a few of the animals in there with them too. Not up on the platform, they may sleep on the floor.
But in any case, this man is the defender of his home and he is laying in bed going to sleep. He's asleep with his family and his friend. Whether he remains his friend, we don't know. But his friend comes pounding on the door at midnight and says, I need food.
He's like, if I get up, the whole household gets up. If I get up, everybody wakes up. If I get up, I have to kick the animals out of the way. If I get up, I've got to go. This is going to disturb my entire household.
Well, this is the angle that his friend needs. I'll give you disturbance. Jesus says, 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.
Just go. Just take it and go. You go to bed. So, what's Jesus's point? It's a really beautiful point. He just told his disciples how to pray. He just said, who are you talking to? What does the model prayer say?
Who are you addressing when you pray? Who is it? Father. A heavenly father. A heavenly father with all power and authority and goodness. And the first petition after, well, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us, give us day by day our daily bread. That's part of that model prayer. Give us what we need. Who are they asking? They're not asking a friend who sleeps. They're asking a heavenly father who never sleeps.
They're not asking a friend who is annoyed and bothered and troubled by the request. They're asking an all-powerful, fully sovereign heavenly father who is no trouble for him at all. And when they ask and they seek, and we're supposed to seek what we need from our heavenly father, he doesn't give because he's annoyed, but he gives because of who he is and because of our relationship to him.
So, Jesus is saying, now if you would do this, I mean, if your friend showed up at midnight, you had nothing to give to him, and your only resort was to get food from your other friend, you'd do it. You'd do it because you need to give him what you can.
Now, is that my son? It's okay. I was making sure it was mine. What is important to see is the lesser to the greater. If you would do this and your friend, out of annoyance, would give you bread, how much more should we expect our heavenly father to give what it is that we need, that we're asking of him?
So that should be the expectation. That should be the whole approach. You know, sometimes when we go ask somebody for help, does anybody have like a standard opening line when you ask somebody for help?
Anybody want to try one on right now? I hate to ask. I'm so sorry about this. I have a favor to ask. If it wouldn't be too much trouble. Do you remember me? Yeah. We usually start things off with the apology, with the deflection, with some kind of excuse or so on.
Now, this is a normal way of us approaching one another. I hate to wake you up, but how do we approach our heavenly father? In this, we should see that our expectation, the nature of the relationship, the reason why God would answer the prayer, is all completely different than the way that we would approach one another and seek things from each other.
So let us not... Jesus knows our pitfalls. We would import our relationships with one another onto the way we pray to our heavenly father, and Jesus does not want us to do that. He wants us to pray to our heavenly father according to our relationship with him through Christ.
Why can we call God our father? It's because Jesus Christ is his son, and we're with him. Our adoption is in him. We are brought to the Father through the Son. And so we have to keep that in mind when we're when we're praying.
This is why Jesus moves into his conclusion, so therefore, okay, because this is the way it is, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Like the guy in the story, but so much more. Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find. Like the guy in the story, he went to go find out his friend. Knock, like the guy in the story, but and it will be open to you. And it's not it's not going to be like it was in the story, where it's stingy and begrudging and a problem.
And now that I've used up all my relational capital, I can't ask you for anything else ever again. No, Heavenly Father, that's not the way we should be thinking about when we pray. He says, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and him who knocks it will be opened.
Because we're approaching our Heavenly Father. Boy, do we have a lot of needs. We are weak. We are needy. There's a lot of things that we need, and there's a lot of burdens that we know of. And who are we supposed to ask?
And are we asked begrudgingly and only only a couple of times. You know, I could, you know, like after the third time I ring the doorbell, I feel like this wave of guilt smashing into me. I could never ring it four times.
No, never. Three's my max. That's an emergency. But what about our praying? What about our praying? God doesn't get tired of our prayers. God isn't bored by repetition. Have you seen the world he's made?
Do you think God gets annoyed with repetition? Have you seen the world he's made? He delights in repetition. He delights in that persistence. Look how he's made everything. So we should not shy away from that.
Now notice, Jesus has hinged everything on the fact that a relationship with a Heavenly Father is a much bigger deal and far greater than a relationship of a friend. You know, a lateral, horizontal, human relationship friend.
Our relationship with God as our Heavenly Father is so much better. Having said that, now he moves into another helpful approach where he starts cracking jokes about fatherhood. Okay? But he's trying to make a point about how we're to think about our praying.
So he says, if a son asks for bread from any father among you, well give him a stone. There's a loaf of bread back then, the kind of loaves they were talking about, about the palm of your hand. They were small loaves.
They weren't like, you know, the big rectangle, you know. This was about the palm of your hand. And they look like stone. Remember Satan's temptation of Jesus? Turn these stones into bread. So, obviously it's like, no.
No one would do that. If he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of the fish? You know, what was the connection there? Right? Well, again, you cast out your nets into the water, and you're hauling in a catch of fish, and oh, there's a snake tangled up over here, maybe an eel or something over there.
You're just taking and throwing it back. You know, that's the stuff you throw back. You wouldn't give that to your kids though, would you? Alright. If somebody asks for an egg, will you offer them a scorpion?
You know, this the scorpion is in its natural shape with its tail curled up ready to go. It's about the same shape as an egg, kind of an oval shape with its pincers coming around. It's kind of an oval.
So Jesus makes a connection with that. He says, you want to do that then? He says, 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?
So he's saying, you know, there's this recognition amongst all fathers that we come up short. You know, no father has batted a thousand, thrown a perfect game. No father has ever done everything right.
We come up short. We have lots of failings, but even with all of that, we know how to give good gifts to our children. I mean, I know how to make sure my kids are fed. Alright, Becca worries sometimes, but she's not around.
But I get them fed, right? I can get them to bed. I know how to give good gifts to my children, even though I have all sorts of problems. And Jesus said, if that's the case, how much more? Your Heavenly Father knows how to give you good gifts.
Now, my kids sometimes ask for things I do not give them, because they don't need that. You know, not what they need. How much more sometimes Heavenly Father gives to us what we need, the exact perfect thing what we need, even though it's not exactly what we're asking for.
Heavenly Father knows that. He's taking care of us. But that doesn't mean we stop asking. My kids don't stop asking. Why should we stop asking, especially since He's our Heavenly Father, and He's perfect, and He's good, and He can handle it.
So when we pray, a model prayer shows us to pray about everything, keeping in mind who God is, and all that we need. And then we have a story of the persistence. Not giving up, praying, expecting good from our Heavenly Father, and recognizing that what He's going to give to us is what is good, is what is best.
And notice how He clarifies it. Jesus clarifies that our Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Every good thing that Christ has won for us in His death and resurrection is brought to us by the Holy Spirit.
And so, when we consider that the Father gives to us the riches of Christ through the Spirit, we pray, as we consider the goodness of God. It is the goodness of God, not our circumstances, the goodness of God, not our experiences.
It is the goodness of God that determines our prayer life. He is our Heavenly Father, and He gives good gifts, and so we should pray accordingly. Any questions or thoughts about our devotional tonight?
Vain babbling, yeah. Not yet, buddy. Oh man. For those of you in my class, I did work up my lesson tonight on our worksheet.