Luke chapter 11, and reading
from verse one. And it came to pass that as,
that's the Lord Jesus, he was praying in a certain place, when
he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us
to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto
them, When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily
bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone
that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. And he said unto them, Which
of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight,
and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves? For a friend of mine in his journey
is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from
within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now
shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and
give thee. I say unto you, though he will
not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because
of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. I say unto you, ask and it shall
be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened
unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth,
and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall
be opened. If a son ask bread of any of
you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask
a fish, will he give him a serpent? or if he ask an egg, will he
offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall
your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
him? Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. In these verses, the Lord is
responding to a request from one of his disciples concerning
direction about how to pray. The disciple asks, Lord, teach
us to pray. And the Lord uses the example
of a man calling upon his neighbour for help at midnight. And this is given to us as an
example of being importunate in prayer, importunate in prayer. Now, importunate is not a word
that most of us will have used today, I don't think. It's an
old word and it really isn't used very much. What it means
is persistent. Persistent to the point of being
annoying. So if it's important, it's persistent
to the point of being annoying. It's actually connected with
the word opportune. So we would perhaps use that. We would say, oh, this isn't
an opportune time. Well that isn't a opportune,
is importunate. And it comes from an old word
which has to do with the port. The port in the middle of that
was the harbour. And if you got an opportune wind,
you got a wind that drove you towards the harbour. And an importune
wind would be one that blew you away from the harbour. So that
would be a problem. So that's the word importunate. And if I've been, If you all
knew that, then I apologise, but I looked it up just to make
sure that I was getting it right. Importunate means persistent
to the point of annoyance. So then the Lord gives his church
several illustrations to indicate how willing the father is to
give liberally to his children. And that includes, as we will
see right at the end, and perhaps means especially the gift of
the Holy Spirit. So let's have a wee think about
what the Lord is telling us here in this passage. It might be
worth mentioning just at the very outset that while the Lord's
words and his teaching in this passage is very similar to the
parallel passage in Matthew chapter six. Now you know perhaps that
Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter six, and Matthew chapter
seven is what we call the Lord's Sermon on the Mount. And in Matthew
chapter six, in the middle of that Sermon on the Mount, the
Lord teaches his disciples how to pray. And we find that these
verses, the words are similar, they're not quite exact. and
some people have used that to say that therefore this isn't
necessarily a prayer that has to be repeated word for word
because it isn't given word for word in these two different places
but rather it's a pattern of how we are to approach God in
our prayers. But it does appear that this
incident or this occasion when the Lord speaks these verses
in Luke is a different occasion from the time when the Lord preached
his Sermon on the Mount. That sermon, the Sermon on the
Mount, was given in Galilee and here the Lord is in Judea. And the request, Lord, teach
us to pray, comes after he has been praying himself. So in Matthew
6, it comes in the middle of a sermon. Here in Luke, it comes
after the Lord has himself been praying, and one of his disciples
says to him, Lord, teach us to pray as well. Now it has been
suggested that while this is the request of a single disciple,
it may not have been one of the twelve. The twelve would have
heard this teaching given back in Galilee on the mountain. And
so maybe this was another of Jesus' disciples. For example,
we talk about the 70 disciples that were sent out. So maybe
this is another one of the Lord's followers, not one of the 12,
but really it doesn't matter. The Lord took the opportunity
once again to repeat himself, rehearse this teaching and as
I say it is largely the same as he spoke on that previous
occasion in Galilee. The Lord addresses all who are
present when he is giving this lesson and I think that
teachers to pray is A request we all can identify with. I'm sure that we all pray, whether
we all pray audibly or whether many or most of our prayers are
silent and in our heart. I think that even after a lifetime's
exercise in prayer, there will be few amongst us imagines that
we are more than children in our utterances. And yet, perhaps
that is the point. And perhaps that's what makes
our prayers even more appropriate. Because the examples that the
Lord gives here, he speaks about a son asking for bread and fish
and an egg. These are the simplest, most
basic requests, the most basic needs and requirements that a
child has of a parent. And so there's something appropriate
about us feeling childlike as we come to the Lord with our
requests. And we're encouraged to believe
by the Lord that the Lord our Father, we're encouraged to believe
by the Lord Jesus Christ in this teaching, that the Lord our Father,
to whom our prayers are to be addressed, delights to give good
gifts to his children. So here we are as children, and
we are taught of the Lord how to direct prayers to our Father
in heaven. And I just want to say right
at the start as well, well, no, I'm beyond the start, but I want
to say this. Our reference to our Father in
heaven says a lot because by recognising that we are speaking
to our Father in heaven, we confess that He is our Father because
we are His children. and we're his children by adoption
through the work of Christ on the cross. We are reconciled
to our Father. We are loved by Him. We are dependent on Him. It is a lovely picture here of
the father to his children and the children to his father and
it epitomises, it exemplifies the perfection of God in his
dealings towards us as a father to his children. Our father exemplifies
every quality of a good father. If a good father knows how to
give good gifts to his son, how much more and how much better
will the perfect father give to his children? Our father is
in heaven. It is a place of glory where
he dwells in his majesty. addressing him there in that
place, we acknowledge his glory, we acknowledge his sovereignty,
we acknowledge his authority, we acknowledge his power. Our
Father is in heaven. He is seated upon his throne.
We're not applying here to a king or a president or a governor
on earth. We're not approaching him and
asking for his help. We are going to God in heaven. We are appealing to God in heaven
who is our Father and by hallowing his name or calling him holy,
we are expressing reverence to his majesty and we are acknowledging
humbly our own standing before him. So in hallowing his name,
it is both an expression of reverence and humility. It's like bowing
in his presence. And such an acknowledgement of
his hallowed, his holy person conditions our approach and it
affects what we ask for. Knowing His holiness will moderate
our requests. We cannot ask for sinful things
from a holy God. And then comes our requests.
Our first request in prayer is for the Lord's own glory to be
manifested and the accomplishment of His will. Our Father which
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. And thy kingdom come is a solid
endorsement of sovereign grace. Think about it. What does that
mean? Thy kingdom come. It is asking that the Lord quickly
and comprehensively accomplish His will in salvation for His
people and the deliverance of His Church, which is the Kingdom
of God. So as the Church is the Kingdom
of God, we are asking the Lord, in the very opening of this,
having acknowledged his glory, our Father which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, we are asking that he accomplishes
the sovereign salvation of his Church and people. And then we
go on, thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth. Slight difference there in Matthew,
but it's the same meaning and the same effect. Thy will be
done as in heaven, so in earth. And again, we ask, could there
be a higher acknowledgement of the Lord's power and authority?
do thy will in heaven, do thy will on earth. This is the prayer
of the church when we come into the presence of the Father. This
is what we're asking him before we ever think about our own needs. We're honouring his name and
we are honouring his sovereign purpose in the salvation of his
church and people. It has been well said that even
the most tenacious free willer cannot help profess God's sovereignty
in their prayers. And I think there's some validity
in that comment because Even if that free willer is doing
no more than reciting what is sometimes called, though rather
inappropriately, we're not going to make anything of that, but
what is sometimes called the Lord's Prayer. If a free willer
recites the Lord's Prayer, he is asking for God's sovereign
will to be done in the salvation of the church. And it's only
now having testified to our Father's glory, His holiness, His power,
that we come to ask our petitions. And I'm sure this is all by design. This is what the Lord's giving
us as a pattern here. We plead our union and our relationship. We confess His holiness and honour,
His sovereign will, and then we ask for His help. We ask for
daily bread. We ask for forgiveness of sins.
We ask for deliverance from evil. We're acknowledging our weakness,
our weakness in body, in soul, and in mind. And we're confessing
our complete need of His grace and His mercy and His provision
and His protection. So that in a few short sentences,
the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us how to prepare our own hearts
and attitude as we come before the Lord in prayer. And then the Lord promises that
we shall have what we ask for. The illustration of the man who
seeks loaves from his neighbour for a friend on a journey. It's
short, but it's powerful. And no matter the inconvenience
caused, his importunity, his persistence, even to the point
of annoyance, will be repaid by the receipt
of all that he asks for and more. So how delightfully the Lord
encourages his people to emulate this needy man with large and
persistent requests to our Father. Persistent prayer prevails with
God. And I just want to dwell on that
for a moment. There's a verse in Hebrews that
I'm sure you're all familiar with. It's chapter four, verse
16. Let us therefore come boldly
unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in time of need. I wonder if when we get to heaven,
we shall discover that we didn't even begin to take our father
at his word and to employ all the resources and good gifts
that he would have given us and made available for our disposal.
This verse is given to us in the context of the church of
you and me having Jesus Christ as our high priest who is touched
with the feeling of our infirmities. So that little phrase there that
we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities is the verse before, it's verse 15, therefore Let us come boldly unto the throne
of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time
of need. It is because our saviour took
our flesh, it is because our saviour feels our pain, he knows
our weaknesses, he understands our limitations, that he can
most precisely supply our needs. Now we make a lot, and rightly
so, about the Lord Jesus Christ taking our flesh in order to
represent us in his suffering and death. And great and glorious as that
is, it's not the end. Because he also, because he took
our flesh, sympathises and empathises with us in our troubles and in
our suffering through life. And again, this union is a great
encouragement to us to be exercised in bringing our requests to his
attention, to do so boldly, to do so persistently, even to do
so repeatedly and annoyingly, importunately. The Saviour says
in verse 9, ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall
find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Is this repetition
of verbs not designed to underscore our persistence? Ask He could
have said that, asking that shall be given you, and said no more,
but he didn't. He underscored that with a seek. and ye shall find. And then he
underscored it again with a knock and it will be opened. Ask, seek,
knock. As those who feel the sinfulness
of our souls, we ask forgiveness. We seek salvation. We knock upon
the door that leads to life and leads to life abundant. And we knock and we knock until
the Lord answers us. We take the Saviour at his word
when he says, I am the door and we ask entrance by him. We seek his protection within
the fold and we knock diligently until he who says, For every
one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and
to him that knocketh it shall be opened, goes right ahead,
fulfils his word, and satisfies our Holy Spirit-implanted desires. But that's not the end. by any
means because he continues to bless. He who saves, keeps. He who redeems, possesses. He who liberates, provides for
all our needs. He encourages us then, no, he
instructs us to ask largely, to seek actively, to knock persistently
until the door of his providential goodness swings open to grant
our request according to his will. And that need for importunity
It implies that our prayers will not always be answered speedily. The very fact that we have to
pray persistently, even to the point of annoying, tells us that
persistence is only necessary when immediacy is not forthcoming. So we need to be engaged in these
prayers and be ready to be engaged in them over a period of time. I don't claim to know much about
prayer. No doubt, like you, I wish I
could pray better, ask better, seek better, knock better. But praise the Lord, our petitions
are not granted because of our skill and expertise, but on the
ground of our persistence and on the ground of our Father's
good pleasure. He will give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him. He will give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him. I don't for a moment think that
this means charismatic gifts. It is the fruit of the Spirit
that is in view here, because the church, the kingdom of God
is already indwelt with the Holy Spirit. But it is asking for
fresh experiences, fresh awarenesses, fresh senses of the fruit of
the Spirit in our soul. It's asking for love and joy
and peace, for long-suffering, for gentleness, for goodness,
for faith, for meekness, for temperance. It is this Holy Spirit
who teaches us how to pray aright. We know not what to pray for
as we should. It is these fruits in our heart,
in our soul, in our mind that order our prayers and condition
our requests. Perhaps if we are looking for
some practical application from this passage today, it could
be that we ask for that Holy Spirit and we seek greater portions
of the fruit that he bestows as we carry on our petitions
to the throne of our Father's generosity with that importunity
and persistence. Amen. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us today.