A Word in Season: God's Good Gift (Luke 11:13)

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In Luke chapter 11 our Lord Jesus is exhorting his disciples to pray. He tells them to ask and it will be given to them, to seek and they will find, to knock and it will be opened to them.

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He tells them that everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

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To the exhortation is then added a confirmation, and then he goes on to an illustration.

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If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?

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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?

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Here's a hungry boy, and I don't know many boys who aren't hungry, and he goes to his dad and he says,

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May I have a piece of bread? May I have a fish to eat? May I have an egg? These things are needful and they are profitable.

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And the son, asking from the father, receives from the father, because of love, everything that he really needs and what does him good.

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And then the Lord Jesus moves on to application. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the

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Holy Spirit to those who ask him? He's working from the lesser to the greater.

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Here we are, and we are sinful creatures. We are, he says here, evil.

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We're flawed, failing, sinful men and women. But even so, a father knows how to give good gifts to his children.

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When there's any kind of natural affection, there's an inclination in the heart of the father to bestow upon his children what is necessary and what is helpful.

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And if that's true of us, given the sin that is in our hearts, our

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Lord asks, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

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Now, there's some beautiful parallels here within the text and also with the version of this that Matthew tells.

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If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the

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Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Matthew makes that even a little more explicit. He says, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

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At least, part of the point seems to be that we should not be interpreting this verse too woodenly, as if the gift of the

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Holy Spirit is that once for all pouring out of him upon the church of Jesus Christ at the day of Pentecost.

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I think there's greater breadth here and a richness in the invitation that still applies to us just as much as it ever did to the disciples at that time.

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Because the Holy Spirit is the one who brings to us Christ and makes us to know him and in knowing him to know the father.

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He is the one who applies to us the blessings that have been purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.

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He is the one who works in us so that we become more like the Lord Jesus Christ.

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He is the divine agent who showers these goodnesses upon us, who works within us with regard to prayer and to holiness.

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These are the good gifts. These are the best gifts.

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The father has given us his son. The son with the father has poured out the

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Holy Spirit upon the church. And so it is good and it is right for us to ask

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God to continue giving us the Holy Spirit, not just to send him into our hearts for salvation, but to continue working in us by his divine power so that the third person of the

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Godhead, always and sweetly at work amongst the church, amongst the people who make up the congregation, that they are receiving with him, in him, from him, the good gifts that God has intended.

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If we want to be able to pray, if we want to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, if we want to advance in holiness, if we want to bring forth the fruit of the

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Spirit, what should we be doing? We should be praying to the Heavenly Father to give the

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Holy Spirit to us. As we come to a Lord's Day, that's something that we could be pleading at the throne of grace.

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Heavenly Father, you have given us your son. You have said that with him you will freely give us all things.

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You've poured out your spirit upon your church. Will you now, by him, by his work among us, grant us all good and needful things?