Prayers for Christ's Disciples Luke 11:1-13

Good morning to all of you this morning, welcome to the visitors that are here today, we hope we make you feel welcome and we look forward to honoring the

Lord in song as well as listening to the word. If you have a bulletin, just going over the things for the week.

We have our prayer time tonight at 6 p .m. as usual, join us with that.

We have a leadership board meeting this coming Wednesday at 6 p .m.

in the fellowship hall. And the summer Bible study continues

Friday, October the 13th at 5 .30,

so that would be this Friday once again. And come and join any there, they're going through the book of Hebrews.

And the biblical counseling course continues, and they have that the second and fourth

Saturday of each month. So the next one is October the 14th at 11 a .m.

We are starting the ladies Bible study again, October the 21st.

That's not this coming Saturday, but I think the following Saturday at 10 a .m.

there in the book of First Kings chapter 20. And if you ladies do not have the questions, the study questions, you see

Barbara, then she'll give you or make sure you have a copy of the study questions.

Also our missionary of the month this month is Jack and Bev McMahon, and they serve in New Zealand.

They're with under biblical ministries worldwide. They will be here at Faith Bible Church with us on November the 12th, bringing us an update of their ministry.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for your blessings.

We thank you, Heavenly Father, that you have brought us together this morning to worship you. You've given us life and health, and we thank you,

Lord, that you are the giver of life. And all that we have, we attribute to you,

Lord, and we thank you. Pray that you would be with the services today, that we might glorify you in all that is said and done.

And as we raise our voices, may we honor and glorify you and be with pastor as he brings your word to us and give him the things that you have laid on his heart to share with us,

Lord, and help us to apply to our heart the things that we learn today. We think even of the land of Israel as we hear in the news and all the war that has started there.

We hardly know how to pray, Lord, but we just uphold this whole situation before you and thank you that you are the creator and that you are one who controls, but we realize that Satan desires to destroy constantly.

We would just uphold the people there in Israel, even both sides, Lord, that you would protect the innocents from all of this carnage, and we would thank you.

Be with our missionaries, and we pray especially for Jack and Bev McMahon this month in their ministry there in New Zealand.

We would pray that you'd continue to help them in their ministry, encourage their hearts, and we would thank you and pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Stand together with me, if you would, as we sing. We are holy.

Our schedule reading for this morning is Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 13.

Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 13. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be sealed men, for I say to you, they have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray unto thy

Father, which is in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathens do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye are need of, before ye ask him.

After this manner, therefore pray ye, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power and glory forever.

Amen. My father, as most of you know, was a pastor. My mother played the piano a lot, and we had a piano in our living room, and she would sit down and play the piano and sing.

And when she would be starting to sing in this song that we have for you here, my brother and I knew it was time to get out of the house.

When she said, I have to tell Jesus all my troubles, we said, my brother, let's go to the river. But when

I say all of that, we do thank the Lord that we can tell the Lord all of our troubles.

We were talking in Sunday school a couple of weeks ago about a psalm that was just complaining to the

Lord. And this is really what this song is. Luke chapter 11, verses 1 through 13.

Luke chapter 11, verses 1 through 13. Now it came to pass, as he was praying in a certain place, when he sees 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 is 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 opened 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 a bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?

Or if he asks for 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? This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that we can approach you in prayer, and we can stand before the very presence of God through your son,

Jesus, who died for our sin so that we may be forgiven and be adopted into your family.

Father, we do pray, as Victor prayed for Israel, we pray for those who are suffering, and we pray that you would protect those who are really not in any part of this.

Father, we most importantly pray that those who do not know you through Jesus Christ would come to a saving faith in Jesus and what he's done on the cross.

Father, we pray that the Jews would come to worship the true Messiah, and also even the people of Hamas and the other regions, that they may hear their gospel, and that they also would be saved, because we know that only lasting peace comes from Jesus Christ.

We ask that your Spirit would work in all of our hearts to transform us through your word, in Jesus' name, amen.

As you may know from the songs we've sang just now, the theme of this message is on prayer.

And prayer is one of the most either misunderstood or least practiced parts of Christianity.

The first thing we need to know about prayer is when we do pray, we do commune with our

Heavenly Father. We get to enter into his throne room in a spiritual sense, that he hears us.

It's not a voicemail, that you do experience God's presence when you pray in Jesus' name through the power of the

Holy Spirit. The prayer that we read here is actually that of a communal prayer.

This is the type of prayer that we rarely talk about. This is not an individual prayer, and the reason why we know this is because of all the first -person plural pronouns.

Teach us how to pray. Forgive us our sins.

Our and we. This type of prayer, this prayer is meant to be prayed together as disciples of Christ, as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now, this is not to say we don't pray individually. Individual prayers are really all throughout the

Bible. Many of the psalms that we've read together are individual prayers. When you see I, I, here we have a communal prayer.

And this is how we commune, connect with the God of Heaven, our

Father in Heaven through the Holy Spirit, because Jesus has reconciled us through his sacrifice on the cross.

The only reason why we can approach God as our Father is because he, Jesus, made us his children.

We are blood -bought children of God. And, in fact, this church does pray communally, too.

So if you do want to join us, it's every Sunday at 6 p .m. in the Fellowship Hall, Fellowship Room.

And we do try to follow the model of the Lord's Prayer that we see, right?

We start with hallowing God's name, setting apart

God's name, making sure it's honored and that what we say reflect his glory.

And then we do petition for what we do need daily. Now, for some of you who might be reading a different version of the

Bible than KJV or NKJV, there are textual differences in the passage of Luke.

That's mainly because some of the earlier manuscripts don't contain certain words that KJV or the

NKJV used, the manuscripts. They use different manuscripts to translate. However, I do want to point out that the meaning does not change, really.

Sure, there are a few words missing here and there, but the meaning does not change. Jesus' disciples are to pray very

God -centered prayer. And they're always petitioning, right?

All of these points of each verse in the prayer, it's a petition.

It's a request to God. Also, Matthew and Luke's versions, there are some differences too, and that's because both

Matthew and Luke give us their angle of Jesus' prayer.

Matthew and Luke are different authors. And think of them as really different documentaries.

You get the same story, but you get different angles. In fact, it's totally possible that Jesus taught on prayer more than just on one occasion.

And it didn't have to be all the same word for word. In fact, all the

New Testament Gospels, right, they show different angles, and they do pick and choose what they want to portray because that's what authors do when they write biographies.

Now, I do want to point out a danger of praying. There is a danger of praying.

There's a danger of praying and using it as a magic spell, right? It's as if because you said these particular words in a particular order, we expect

God to answer the prayers, right? It's kind of like I followed the formula, therefore,

I expect this result. That is not how we pray.

When we pray as brothers and sisters in Christ, we pray to our Father through the

Son by the Holy Spirit. And the reason why we do that is because we have a relationship with the

Father. Prayer is one of the main ways in which we experience

God's love and relationship. So it cannot be a formula.

The moment we make it a formula, it becomes idolatry. It becomes the means by which we try to control

God, right? God, because I prayed this at this hour, this long, however long, an hour, this many times throughout the week, you have to answer it.

God cannot be controlled or manipulated by His creator, created beings.

That's why I do want to warn us, we have to look at prayer in terms of how we connect with God, how we experience

His presence, how we encounter God. And this lesson on prayer is really important this morning because our culture happens to be really self -sufficient.

And prayer requires us to actually humble ourselves. Prayer, when we go to God with petitions, we have to first acknowledge that we can't do it ourselves.

We can't do this on our own strength. And that also means we need to learn from Jesus what it looks like to pray, not in a self -centered way, but in a

God -centered way. So the main point of this text is that we can boldly pray to the

Father by depending on Him because He generously gives

His Spirit to His own. We can boldly pray to the Father by depending on Him because He generously gives

His Spirit to His own. First, we pray together with proper

God -dependent petitions. We pray together with proper God -dependent petitions.

So similar to the last two passages, Jesus' instruction on how

His disciples commune with God occurs in an unknown location at an unknown time.

Last two passages was about, first, how to love your neighbor as Jesus' disciples.

The second one, which directly followed, was how to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And Mary showed that to us, right, by choosing to stand, choosing to sit before Jesus' feet to learn and hear from Him.

Now, we get another lesson on discipleship. Now, it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when

He sees that one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

The context here is that Jesus finished praying, and at that moment, one of His disciples requests that He teach them,

He teaches them how to pray as well. Now, remember, prayer is actually a theme in the gospel according to Luke.

Before any significant or major development in Jesus' earthly ministry, we see

Him praying. We see Him depending on God. We see

Him spending time with God. We see Him encountering His Father.

Right, Jesus prayed before His baptism. Jesus prayed before choosing the 12 apostles.

Jesus prayed before Peter's messianic confession. Jesus prayed before the mountain of transfiguration.

All these major themes are developed around the context of prayer.

And today, as the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, we see that Jesus Himself is praying.

And the reason here is that the John the Baptist, John the

Baptist's disciples, also taught His disciples how to pray. So, therefore,

Jesus' disciples would like to know, how do we pray as your disciple? Now, it may be odd for us to pray communally.

It may be odd to hear other people pray out loud in front of others.

Yet, the disciples desired to learn a communal prayer that would group them as Jesus' followers, right, that would set them apart as Jesus' disciples.

And this common prayer would have given Jesus' disciples a sense of identity and community, a distinct sense as disciples of Christ.

And from verses 2 to 4, Jesus teaches them how to pray. And what's surprising is, this prayer is composed of mainly petitions, requests.

They're all requests toward God the Father. And second, the structure of the prayer starts with the person we're addressing,

God, our Heavenly Father. And our focus will be on Him, first and foremost, and His nature, who

He is. Then it actually eventually branches out to us. But this prayer starts with the most important person, the

Father. Now, first and foremost, Jesus' prayer addresses God the Father.

Father here means, right, the first person of the Trinity, God. And when we pray, we're talking about God the

Father. And it is important to note that in the Bible, we do see and hear about many of the divine titles, right?

Jesus, however, chose the most familial and intimate of the titles,

Father. As followers of Christ, when we pray, we approach the

King of all creation, the Creator God, the God Almighty, the Lord of hosts.

However, Jesus chooses the most intimate title of all, our

Father, His Father. And what that means is, as children of the

Father, no reservation is required. No appointments are made.

You can approach God because you are His child. Your privilege of standing before God's presence does not depend on what you do, but who you are because of who

He is, and ultimately because of what Jesus has done to make you

His. You can approach God because you are His children.

And in Christ, God has become utterly accessible to you because you've been adopted into His family.

It's not because you are good enough. It's not because of your merits, your awards, rewards.

It's that you are His children, sons and daughters of God because Jesus died for your sin and rose from the dead.

That's it. And you have the privilege of going before the

Father at any time, anywhere, with anyone who belonged to His because you are first and foremost

His children. Now, the rest of verse 2 focuses on that God, our

Father. It starts with who

God is and expands to His plan and His will for the whole created realm.

Hallowed be Your name sounds very old -fashioned, but not many words can fully grasp this meaning, right?

This weightiness and seriousness. A wooden translation would be,

Holy be Your name, right? Holy be Your name. May God's name be holy, lest we can disrespect

God because we call Him our Father because it is very familial. Our first petition is that God's name be holy.

God's name is who He is. It's His nature. It's His character.

And what this means is, may His name be set apart. Let His name be set apart.

Let His name be treated with greater honor and fear and reverence than any other name.

Let Him be treated as utterly other. After all, when we approach the

Father, we are, in fact, approaching the holy God. He is not like us.

His glory is unmatched by anything in all creation. Now, this request is crucial because our tendency is to often deify non -gods and de -god the true

God by making God in our own image, which both are called idolatry.

The first prayer request prevents such a tendency. When we truly see

God as holy, we cannot dare to view or treat

God as anything else. With this prayer, we approach the true

God, not a figment of our imagination, not the God we hope exists, but the

God who actually exists. It's to treat

God as God. We live in a culture where God's name is just used in vain.

Used in vain means as nothing. It's treated as nothing. We use it as an exclamation if something goes wrong.

But for Jesus' disciples, we treat God's name as holy. We represent

Him as holy. Now, after reminding ourselves of God's identity and nature,

Jesus tells us we ought to pray for God's rule and authority. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

First thing to notice is it's not my kingdom and my will be done. The priority here is

God's authority and God's plan of history. It is the request for the full culmination and realization of the holy

God's righteousness and rule over all things. Because we do live in this state of His kingdom is here, but not yet.

It's not fully realized. And some of you might have woken up this morning with that longing.

Is it fully here yet? Is Jesus coming back today? And that's because right now the world is constantly rebelling against God's sovereign rule.

It calls good evil and evil good. It wants to decide for itself what's good or what's been said.

It wants to redefine truth. It tries to even redefine genders. But we, when we pray this, we pray that God's rule would be over all the earth, not human ideologies.

And this is, in fact, a prayer of the complete eradication of evil. Again, it's not dependent on us, but it's dependent on who

God is and what He is capable of doing, His authority and His rule.

And positively, it is a request that every tongue confesses and every knee bows before the

Lord Jesus Christ. And these two requests really calibrate our minds and hearts to focus on God's rule and God's redemptive plan, not my rule and my plan.

It is not about what's desirable for me, but what

God has planned for His world. It's about His kingdom, not my kingdom.

And only after viewing God as holy and submitting to His perfect will and authority, we are then to pray for our daily bread.

Give us day by day our daily bread. And this is important because we need to note that we did not start out our prayer with the daily bread, but only after renewing our minds to see the one true

God who is holy and ruling over all things. And when our will is aligned with His will, we ask for the daily bread.

Our daily bread is our daily provision, right? This is our daily need, what we need for the day.

It doesn't have to be specifically bread. It's what we need, what we need

God to provide for us that we can live without. This is not our daily desire, although God is gracious to provide us with more than what we need so often.

And that's because bread was the staple food in the ancient Middle East. They baked bread ahead of time to have for the day.

And when we can clearly see who God is, we can correctly and in a faithful manner ask for His daily provisions.

Because oftentimes when we don't get to see who God truly is and what He is truly capable of doing, we're hesitant to ask for what we truly need.

But the opposite is also true when our minds are not centered on God's will. We ask for unnecessary things, even sinful things.

We must focus on who God is and what He's capable of doing before asking for what we need.

Now, after we pray for our personal needs, we branch out to the restoration of relationships and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Now, when God forgives our sins, He judicially, right?

It's a court term. Judicially does not hold it against us. He does not keep a record of your sin for the future day.

He does not bring it up to you, remind you when He's angry at you, right?

He does not silently hold any grudges against you. Because Christ has fully suffered

His wrath, God's wrath on the cross, God mercifully and justly forgives you in every way possible.

As I might have said before, there is no leftover wrath for you because He poured it out on Christ already.

When life is going hard, when things seem to be just going wrong, that's not karma, but that's also not punishment from God because God has no leftover punishment for you.

God might use your suffering as a way to disciple you, discipline you, but it's not a punishment because that's all been poured out on Christ.

God's forgiveness is complete, it's whole, it's permanent. Now, for those of you who have experienced

Christ's forgiveness, we forgive those who wrong us.

Our restored relationship with God, the Father, organically affects our other relationships with other people.

And this is why you can't have true peace. Among nations, among people, without Christ.

True, lasting peace only comes through Christ. Now, I would like to note something important about forgiveness that's often misunderstood.

It's important to note that forgiveness does not always lead to reconciliation with the other person. It takes one to forgive, but two to reconcile.

If the other person cannot honestly face the truth, cannot honestly confess the wrong done, reconciliation is not possible.

Yet, forgiveness is possible for those who have been forgiven by God through Christ.

First, forgiveness does not mean forgive and forget. But rather forgive and surrender the person and the outcome to God.

When we forgive, it is not our endorsement of evil done to us. So it's not, oh, it's okay that you beat me up.

It's okay that you stole my retirement fund. That's not what it is.

Forgiveness is actually forfeiting the right to personal vengeance so that God would take care of them, whether the offender is saved in which his sin is paid for by Christ on the cross or the offender will have a very torturous exit interview with Jesus.

That's forgiveness. Forgiveness is you don't hold on to it. That's not your job.

Let God handle it. When I first started pastoring here, there was an unexpected guest who came, and he was deeply troubled.

And he came, and he actually said, I don't usually go to church.

I've never been to this church. But the reason why I came was something in me really said,

I need to come here. And during Sunday school, we were talking about suffering and how a good

God and powerful God could allow suffering. And after the Sunday school, he came up to me and shared, that lesson was so relevant to my life.

And I naturally asked, why? What happened? And he shared that that week he lost his wife because a gunman, a lunatic, just got into the bus that his wife and two kids were on and shot his wife.

And the wife was protecting the kids. And one of his kids, his daughter, got shot in the head, yet lived.

And he had a hard time making a sense of that. How could this happen?

And he was holding onto this anger. And apparently, people have been saying, forgive and forgive and forgive.

Just let it go. But I told him, forgiveness is not letting go.

It's not forgetting. Forgiveness is you surrendering that right to personal vengeance to God.

Let God handle that. He's much better at it. He has the full capacity.

And he does it rightly. He does it justly. I don't know what happened to this guy.

I've never seen him ever again, ever after that day. But that's what forgiveness is. For some of you who might have experienced a tremendous pain caused by another human being, forgiveness is not a stamp of approval.

Forgiveness is letting God handle that person and the outcome. It's that God would take care of them.

And now, because the Holy God is your Father, you surrender the person and the outcome to God.

We give up the right to judge that person, even in our minds. Don't even let that person take up any space in your mind.

You know that your Heavenly Father knows. You know that the

Holy God does not approve of the person's sin and wickedness done to you.

You have to view it in terms of how God views that sin. And He is not okay with it.

He hates sin more than you. You can be assured that God will handle this.

You know that the Holy God missed none of it because no sin just slips by.

He's omniscient. He knows all things. In fact, the most loving thing to do to an abuser is to stop letting them sin against God by continuing to abuse you.

For Christians, I recommend keep the distance. Until there's solid evidence to show that there's a heart transformation, do not trust them.

If it takes years, so be it. If it takes decades, so be it.

The most loving thing to do for Christians after forgiving, and reconciliation might not be possible, the most loving thing to do is don't be a doormat.

And in fact, you may never find closure on Earth. For some reason, we desire closure, desire some resolution.

But it may not happen on Earth. But you are guaranteed one on the

Judgment Day. So surrender the outcome to God. Surrender the person to God.

Surrender any right, any expectation of reconciliation to God. He can handle it.

And lastly, we ask God for future protection. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Now, after we go to God, acknowledge who

He is, how holy He is, and how He's capable of providing, and how

He is capable of restoring, we finally go to how

He is capable of protecting. We fully depend on God for protection.

We lean on God's strength to deliver us from sin and temptation, and even

Satan. God is the one who rescues us from the overwhelming temptations and trials.

He is the one who lifts our heads up when our flesh is weak. It is not on our own strength.

We're not saved just so that you walk the path of sanctification by yourself.

When we're saved, we constantly rely and trust in God's redeeming and gracious deliverance.

Now, from beginning to end of this communal prayer, the focus really is on God. For Christ's disciples, our prayers are centered around who

God is and what He does. Now, this is not to say that you don't pray for nice things, but when we do pray, let the focus be on God.

And when the focus is on God, those nice things that we thought we needed don't seem so necessary, but rather you're just so overwhelmingly grateful for God who is in your life, whom you can talk to, you can go to, and you can fellowship with at any time through Jesus Christ.

Now, in what manner do we approach our Heavenly Father? When we boldly pray to the

Father, He will generously give us what we need through the Spirit. When we boldly pray to the

Father, He will generously give us what we need through the Spirit. Lest we think that our

Father is unapproachable because of His holiness, Jesus shares two parables to depict how we approach the

Father in Heaven and how we are received by Him, how He answers the prayers. The first parable is from verses 5 to 8.

Verse 5 to 6 set the background for the parable. Which of you shall have a friend and go to him at midnight and say to him,

Friend, lend me three loaves? Now, in the first century Israel, it was common to prepare food, daily food in advance because there was no really grocery store where you could just go at any time.

And food was scarcer, right? It wasn't that you could just buy in bulk. And even storing the food was a problem too if you had a lot.

Hence, the figure in the parable has to go to his friend to borrow three loaves. Whatever he had was not enough to host the guest.

Now, the reason for this untimely visit is introduced in verse 6. For a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

Another thing to note in the Middle Eastern culture, even today, is that hospitality is crucial.

It was key. It was unthinkable to turn your guests away hungry.

If you have Middle Eastern friends, if they ever invite you to a meal, you will go home filled.

They will provide for you. Now, because of this cultural reason, it was unthinkable to turn away his friend.

Hence, although uncomfortable and even cringey, this person goes to his friend's house at midnight to get some bread.

And some of you might even shudder at this idea of calling someone from this church at 10 o 'clock p .m.

Like, oh, no, he could be sleeping. It's so late. Now, verse 7 shows the friend's inconvenience, 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.

The friend is clearly inconvenienced by this request. In fact, it's not just the friend.

It's the whole family who will be impacted by this. After all, houses back then were much smaller, and a family would actually share the same room with their kids.

And getting out of the bed to open the lock, which would have made a loud sound, it would wake the whole family up.

That's the problem with this friend. It's not that he doesn't have extra bread. He does. It's just it's extremely inconvenient to provide for that.

Now, finally, verse 8 gives us the punchline. When you read a parable, you got to look for the punchline.

What is the point? So what? What is Jesus driving at? 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.

The punchline is that the request is finally answered, not because of the depth of their friendship. Oh, yes, we've grown up together.

Oh, yeah, we've known each other for decades. Of course, anything for a friend. That's not the reason why the first friend receives his three loaves.

Rather, it's the audacity of his friend to ask for bread at midnight. The exhortation for Christ's disciples is that they must approach

God with the same boldness and even almost shamelessness as this friend did.

You get to go to God with all sorts of requests. And what that means in the parable, we are that persistent, shameless neighbor who knocks on the door at midnight for bread.

And that's how we ought to pray. It's with this boldness. And you boldly go to God with all your requests.

Now, of course, one common error in reading this parable is to think that God the Father is that friend behind the door.

Right? As if praying to God is like wringing a few water droplets out of a dry towel.

Right? As if God begrudgingly answers your prayers. Right? He just looks down and sighs and says, ah, it's him again.

However, that is not God's heart at all. The point of a human friend would be answering and giving the bread to the shameless friend is actually to show how much more would

God give because he is more gracious than this person. Right?

In fact, Jesus actually shows God the Father's compassionate disposition toward his children from verses 9 to 13.

Lest we think that's God's posture, God's attitude, his heart when we come to him for prayers, with prayers.

He shows us in the next parable how God truly receives us.

First, Jesus commands us to boldly make your requests known to God. So, I say to 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 he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Note the three actions of requesting are fully met with God's responses.

In fact, these passive verbs, right, will be given to you, will be opened to you, actually signify something called the divine passive.

What that means is when the verbs are passive and the subject is not explicitly said, if the context allows for God being the subject, we read

God as the subject of these passive verbs. So, when it says it will be given to you, it is God who's doing the act of giving.

When it says it will be opened to you, it is God who opens the door. When we knock,

God opens. When we ask, God gives. That's the generous

God that we worship. And this is not to say that God is your personal genie and he is bound to answer whatever you utter with your mouths, right?

But rather, the holy God is the gracious Father who compassionately gives us what we truly need.

God is more than willing to give you what you need. And therefore, Jesus says, go, just ask him.

Don't be timid. Don't be hesitant. He's able to give to you what you truly need.

And to illustrate this truth, Jesus gives us the scenarios in the following two verses.

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? Generally, of course, there are exceptions, sadly, a parent's heart toward the request of his child is loving and tender.

Jesus uses this universal truth to ask these rhetorical questions.

Will you give your kids something useless, like a stone, when he asks for something he needs, like bread?

Or even harmful when they ask for your provision, such as scorpions and snakes?

Bread, fish, and eggs, they're nutritious foods. They're necessities. They're not wants, like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches.

And what Jesus is saying, generally, parents will give their children what they need.

In fact, after becoming a parent, it's even hard to resist giving my son what he wants.

It's like, oh, it's another toy. He wants it. He really wants it. He grabbed it from the store.

I mean, we got it. What do we do? But that's the parent's heart, usually.

Sadly, there are exceptions, but all of you parents might know this.

I mean, all of you would know this, hopefully, from your experience with the parents. Now, the punchline comes in verse 13.

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? The giving of the

Holy Spirit here is more than just salvation. It actually signifies

God providing for His people with guidance, intimacy, and presence, whatever they need.

After all, it is God the Spirit who dwells in us, right? You cannot get closer to God than that.

God Himself dwells in you. And it is through the Holy Spirit, the person of the

Spirit, that we can actually commune with the Father and the Son, right?

We can approach the Father in the Spirit. You can have a guaranteed access to God whatever time of the day or night because the

Spirit dwells in you. That's what Jesus means. God's not going to hold back.

And so this verse translates to, if even evil people generally give good things to their kids, how much more so the sinless

Holy God, the Father, provide for His own children in every way?

Right? It wretches us up a notch, right? If general parents, and they're sinful, they're evil people, they tend to give, if evil parents tend to give their children what they need, how much more so the

Heavenly Father, right? And if you understand from your earlier prayer how holy and good

God is, would He not willingly and eagerly give to His children what they need when they boldly ask?

Now, for some of us, we are hesitant to go to the Father in prayer because we think our prayers are not that important.

We don't want to distract God with our insignificant requests. After all,

He has the whole world to rule over. Some of these words might ring true to you.

He is too busy for me. The request is not that important. I have not been good enough.

I'm not important. He has other things to do. There are other people who need

His help. When we speak like this, it does not come from reality, but rather an insufficient view of God's nature and character, of His goodness, of His love, of His grace, of His provision, of His protection.

And this can be, of course, distorted by our imperfect earthly fathers who may have represented

God the Father pretty horribly. In fact, a lot of people who have a hard time experiencing and understanding

God's love and presence is because they have not experienced God's love and presence, their earthly fathers, rather, love and presence in their childhood.

Maybe He was stingy. He didn't want to give to you. Maybe your relationship was rather transactional, right?

He only gave when you performed well or behaved well, when

He got something out of it. Or your father was never present, whether physically or relationally.

Jesus shows us, however, that our Heavenly Father is the complete opposite of those deficient dads.

Although He is holy, although He is utterly different,

His access is ample. He is so approachable through the atoning sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross.

Your audience with God does not depend on what you've done or who you are. Your audience with God totally depends on what

Christ has done. If Christ has fulfilled all righteousness on the cross, dying for your sin so that God doesn't hold any sin against you, no record of sin is there for you, you can approach

God because of Christ. You can approach the Father because of Christ. You have a perfectly loving relationship with the

Father because of Christ. That's why you can approach

Him. That's why He has a favor on you. That's why He loves you. That's why He cares for you.

That's why He answers your prayers. It's because of Christ. It doesn't depend on you. It doesn't depend on the good works.

And that's a good thing. If our relationship with the Father depended on our good works, we would not have any relationship with the

Father. No one would. And what a horrifying and frightening experience to live if at any moment you could lose your

Father's love for you. That's not possible. So what

Jesus is saying, if evil people know how to provide well for their children, how much more so the holy

God, the holy perfect Father? If evil people can, in their limited ways, provide well for their children, how much more so the loving, compassionate

Father? I sing one verse from the hymn,

The Love of God, every night to my son because I think it's important for him to know how much

God the Father loves him. And the one verse that I do choose, one other reason why

I sing one verse is I have horrible memory with song lyrics, but I thought it would be good to just memorize this one verse.

And it is from the third verse of The Love of God. The image of God's love for you is so tremendous.

It's abundant. And I want you to listen to it. We've sang this before, but sometimes when we sing, we have the tendency to just go automatic and not think about the words.

So I will read it to you without singing. Could we with ink the ocean fill?

And were the skies a parchment made? Were every stalk on earth a quill?

And every man a scribe by trade? To write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong. It shall forevermore endure the saints' and angels' song.

When you approach the Father in prayer, you can boldly approach him, not because of your goodness, but because of our heavenly

Father's overflowing love and faithfulness and goodness toward you.

That's how we ought to pray. We pray truly knowing who

God is according to the way Jesus showed us to him. Let us pray.

Gracious Father, we're thankful that we do have a relationship with you, not dependent on what we've done or what we do, but what

Jesus has done. And that is enough. That's the assurance that we need.

And thank you that we can intimately talk to you at any time, that we can petition anything to you, knowing that you are the holy

God who is fully capable and fully willing to provide us with everything that we need.

We pray that we as a church would be known as the people who pray, people who know

God, people who talk to God. But most importantly, that we would be known as the children of God and that we would live as children of God, not timidly, but boldly, and not in a shame, but unashamed.

Let us enjoy that identity in you every day as we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. Stand together with me as we close with,