Perhaps one of the most telling signatures of shallow,
superficial living in our modern sound bite culture is a series of books that
are very popular and cover the how to of almost every conceivable subject. I’m sure you have seen them and perhaps
even used them on occasion. They
are known as the Dummies series of books.
You’re probably familiar with some of the titles such as Microsoft Word
for Dummies, Photoshop for Dummies, Photography for Dummies, …you name it,
there is a how to reference book for it in the Dummy series.
Believe it or not, there is even a book called Christian
Prayer for Dummies. I had to resist the urge to make that the title of my
message. But I was afraid that
some of you might be offended by that.
However, while I think it may be perfectly acceptable to desire a dumbed
down version of computer basics, as I may only want enough information about
computers to just get by, I find
some real problems in incorporating that kind of mindset in regards to
Christianity. But unfortunately,
that type of thinking has pervaded the Christian attitude in a lot of areas,
but particularly in the doctrine of prayer. Far too often a lot of teaching in
the church today falls into a similar type of pattern found in those books, a
how to reference for getting results in our Christianity. Twenty first century
Christians, particularly American Christians, love to boil everything down and reduce it to a simple step
by step process by which we can guarantee ourselves success in the shortest
amount of time possible and then presumably get back to our normal agenda. And unfortunately, our doctrine and
practice of prayer has suffered under this type of thinking.
Today’s passage in Luke can easily be subjected to that kind
of shallow, superficial rendering if you aren’t careful. That kind of results oriented attitude
has given birth to a false doctrine of prayer known as “name it and claim it,”
by which Christians have seized on the word “faith” and attempt to use it as an
instrument by which they hope to manipulate circumstances to their
benefit. But what really happens
is that they end up trying to manipulate God by a formulaic method of prayer to
grant them their wishes.
So as we approach this passage today, we have to first of
all ask the Holy Spirit to undo any false programming on the subject of prayer that
we may have been seduced by at some point in our life, and ask God for the
wisdom to discern what Jesus is really teaching here, and how we are to apply
it.
First of all, to fully understand what Jesus is saying, vs.
5-13 must be considered as part of the greater teaching that Jesus gave in
response to the disciples request in verse one. One of the disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray just as
John also taught his disciples.”
And so Jesus gave them a four part teaching on the subject of prayer
that we began looking at last week.
The first part that Jesus taught was the instruction of a
model prayer commonly referred to as the Lord’s prayer. We looked at that last week, so I don’t
want to spend too much time again today except to point out that this prayer is
not intended to be something that we just recite by rote and in so doing
accomplish God’s purpose for prayer.
Jesus gave us this instruction to provide us with an outline for prayer,
as an example of prayer.
But perhaps the most important point taught in Jesus’ example is that our God to whom
we are praying may be invoked as our Father. This is a tremendous principle in light of the fact that in
the same example, Jesus also presents God as hallowed, which means Holy,
Exalted, and Righteous, the Sovereign King of His Kingdom. We enjoy the immense privilege of being
sons and daughters of God Almighty.
As an illustration of that, just consider for a moment the
exalted position of the President of the United States. Regardless of what your political views
may be towards the sitting president, there is a great deal of respect and
power that is afforded to his position.
A lot of people all over the world would give anything to gain access to
him to present their case or their agenda in hopes of gaining his favor. But very few are given that privilege. Yet I want you to think about his
daughters for a moment. They
have a tremendous privilege due to their relationship with their father that
enables them to get past every security detail in the White House. They have an
immense privilege that no one else can possibly obtain due to their
relationship with their father.
But added to that they have an even greater benefit because their father
loves them. And because he loves
them he is not only willing to hear them and to accept them but he naturally
desires to do good things for them.
I really think that this is the overarching principle that
Jesus is trying to teach in this passage; not necessarily a formula for prayer,
but that we have this unbelievable privilege of going directly and boldly into
the throne of grace, and not just as a subject of the King, but also as a child
of the King. And so Jesus teaches
this by first giving us this instruction, then an illustration, an application
and a contemplation.
So in addition to the instruction found in the example of
the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gives us an illustration. In this illustration Jesus
tells a parable of a man who came to his friend at midnight to ask him for 3
loaves of bread. Now the man had a
legitimate need but at an illegitimate hour. It’s important to understand that in the Middle East, there
is an understanding of hospitality that is quite a bit more advanced than in
our society. Being from the South,
I am quite proud of the heritage of Southern Hospitality that Southerners are
known for. However, I can tell you
that our idea of hospitality pales in comparison to that commonly found in the
Middle East. In that area, not
only do you invite someone to come under your roof and eat with you, but there
is an understanding that if you do that, then you must protect them even if it
means having to risk your life to defend them against an enemy. So this guy wasn’t just having a desire
for a late night snack with his long lost friend and so runs out to the neighbor to borrow some bread, like we
would run to the 7-11. There
was a strict tradition of hospitality that demanded taking care of his
visitor’s need that his neighbor would appreciate, even though it was late at
night. So it’s a legitimate need.
I also think that Jesus intentionally presents a parallel in
this parable to the model prayer. In the prayer we have the line; “give us this
day our daily bread”. So it’s interesting that in this parable
the issue is a need for bread, which is, as I said, a legitimate need. It’s not a frivolous request but a
necessity.
Now most
commentators view of this parable is that Jesus emphasized the need for
persistence. Jesus says that
though the neighbor doesn’t want to wake up his family and come to the door,
yet because of the man’s persistence he will get up and give him what they
need. And so many theologians tend
to latch on to that word and the principle found in vs. 9 and teach that
Christians need to come in prayer to God in determined persistence, that we
must keep banging away at the door until we get what we need or even what we
want. That’s the common
interpretation.
But the implication in such teaching is that God is a
reluctant provider. And somehow,
by our persistence we can overcome God’s reluctance and win over God to our
desire. Obviously, such thinking
is contrary to the scripture’s depiction of God as a loving Father. The principle Jesus is teaching here is
that due to the man’s boldness in his relationship as a friend, he will give
him all that he needs. The word in
the Greek is anaideia (ah knee day ah).
It’s a word that means shamelessness. And while it does have the connotation of boldness, I think
that it is used in reference to the neighbor’s relationship as a friend. Now you can only really come to that
interpretation by looking at the context of the passage. The common rendering of the verse would
make it seem that he wasn’t going to help him even though he was his friend,
but because he was annoying, he would help him eventually.
But I think that the context shown in the later verses
emphasizing the father’s relationship to his son indicates that we would be
better to think of it in terms that the man shamed his neighbor because he was
his friend. That’s the logical sense of the story. Wouldn’t you do something like that if you had a sincere need
and you came to a friend and asked him to borrow a tool or something that you
desperately needed and he refused you?
Wouldn’t you say, “Hey man, you say you are my friend and yet you won’t
loan me your hammer? What kind of
friend is that?” Isn’t that the way we would handle it? I think that what Jesus is saying is
that because he shames him, the man finally gives him all that he needs. He shames him by appealing to his
friendship, his relationship. The
obvious correlation then is that we have a greater relationship because we go
to our Father. The rabbis had a
distinctly Jewish practice of arguing from the lesser to the greater. And so Jesus is using that kind of
rabbinical style of instruction to show the relationship of a friend in order
to contrast with the greater
relationship of a father.
So next comes the application in vs. 9; “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.” Now once again, I
have to warn you that this verse is ripe for taking out of context and
providing fuel for those who teach that Jesus is promising a blank check for anything our heart desires. And that misunderstanding is compounded
by some translations renderings of the verbs, ask, seek and knock. They will
argue the need for persistence again by saying that those words are better
interpreted as “keep on asking, keep on seeking and keep on knocking.”
I am not a Greek scholar. But I will tell you that there are 67 verses in the Greek
concordance for the word translated as “ask” for instance, and in almost all of
those cases it is translated as just to simply ask. To request. Singular.
And notice that in the NASB, to use my translation, they do not apply the same idea
of continuance in verse 10. The
statement of Jesus in response is simply that they that ask, receives, they
that seek, will find and they that knock it will be opened. Vs.10 doesn’t imply a requirement for
persistence in order to get the answer.
But the point Jesus is teaching is simply this; that a good
Father will not deny His children what is necessary. If you are God’s child and you ask Him, He will answer. If you seek Him, you will find Him, and
if you knock, He will open. But
the prerequisite for understanding this statement is found in the principle of
a good Father who wants what is good for His children. That’s the principle. Not an inference
that God is lazy, or reluctant, or doesn’t want to be bothered with our petty needs.
Not a suggestion that we need to develop persistence in order to manipulate God
to do our will. That kind of teaching is incompatible with the scripture’s
teaching about the character of God.
That is incompatible with Jesus teaching that we can call God Father,
and expect the response of a loving Father and hallow all the attributes of
love, compassion and goodness His holy name conveys.
And so Jesus wraps up this teaching with what we can call the
contemplation. Here is the core
principle that Jesus is teaching that we need to understand. God is our Father, and He is a good
Father, and He wants what is good for us.
All of the verses concerning prayer in this chapter must be understood
in relation to that goodness of the Father and His desire for what is good for
us. And so Jesus uses an earthly
father again to illustrate this principle. He is arguing again from the lesser
to the greater, from an earthly father to our Heavenly Father. He says starting
in vs. 11; “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he
will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an
egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 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?”
See, there is the point of the whole passage. The point is our Heavenly Father is
good and He wants what is good for us.
If human fathers, who are inherently evil, give good things to their
children, then how much more so will our heavenly Father who is supremely good,
give good things to us?
Jesus asks a rhetorical question to enforce that point; If
you ask your earthly father for food, he will not give you something to hurt
you, will he? If you ask him for
some fish, he isn’t going to give you a snake that might kill you, will he? If you ask him for an egg, he isn’t
going to give you a scorpion which might sting you, will he? Obviously not. Even the worst fathers are going to
give food when their child is hungry and not deliberately harm them.
But consider another aspect to that point Jesus is making here. God is going to give good things to His
children, but a good Father is not going to give bad things to His
children. And that is a key
principle to a correct understanding of verse 10. We don’t always know what is good for us, do we? For example, we may think that that
girlfriend may be exactly what we need, but maybe God knows she is not going to
be good for you. And so God
doesn’t give us what will be harmful.
Even though you ask Him for that girlfriend, God is not going to give
you a woman that will hurt you or destroy your life.
If we were to take vs. 10 out of context and hold God to a
promise to answer in the affirmative every prayer we pray according to a
formula, then most of us would very soon have completely messed up lives. Because we don’t know what is good for
us. When my kids were little, they
wanted to eat whipped cream for breakfast. They would have eaten candy for dinner. They asked for things that weren’t
always good for them. But being a good father, I did not always let them have
what they wanted. And if I being
evil, know how to do good for my kids, then how much more does our heavenly
Father know what is good for us? The
worst thing God could do for us is to let us manipulate Him into being some
kind of genie that we can pop out of our prayer lamp anytime we want by a
formula of praying in just the right way, making sure we believe it, are persistent in asking for it, tack on
“in Jesus name, Amen” and abracadabra, we get exactly what we asked for. That would be catastrophic for most of
us. Thank the Lord we have a good
Father who gives us what we need, and what is good for us, and doesn’t always
get us what we want or we think we need.
There is one more little principle here that can almost be overlooked. I wonder if you noticed it. It’s found in vs. 13. And that is the promise that God gives
the Holy Spirit to those that ask Him.
Now Jesus was talking about food, and giving good things, so how did the
Holy Spirit get in there? What
does that mean?
Well, this is the best thing of all. Jesus said earthly fathers give good
gifts, but the heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit. God not only gives us what is good, and gives us good gifts,
but He goes so far beyond that- He gives us the Holy Spirit who is the source
of every good and perfect gift to indwell His children. He gives us the Giver,
not just the gift.
The Holy Spirit is the giver of life. And according to Galatians 5:22, the
Holy Spirit is the giver of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and
faithfulness. I mean, that’s a
little better than the new trinket we were praying for, isn’t it? A new car kind of pales in comparison
to receiving the indwelling of the Spirit of God Himself, doesn’t it? Would you rather have the joy of a pay
raise in your job or the joy of the Holy Spirit that never fades away, that is
a deposit of the eternal joy of your salvation? I’d take the Holy Spirit, wouldn’t you? Would you rather
have peace in the Middle East, or would you rather have a peace that passes all
understanding? Would you rather have a particular person love you, or would you
rather know the love of God that nothing on earth can separate you from?
Listen, the bottom line is that God our Father knows what we
need. And God knows what is good
for us. He wants what is best for
us. We don’t always know what is
good for us. But we can rest in
the fact that we have an all knowing Father in heaven who loves us and wants to
bless us with what is good for us.
Romans 8:28 says that “we know that God causes all things to work
together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to
His purpose.” We need to rest in
that promise folks. We need to
stop trying to manipulate God, stop trying to twist His arm and get Him to do
what we want Him to do. But
rather, as Jesus said in His example of prayer, say “Your Kingdom come, Your
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we understand who our heavenly Father is, when we come
to appreciate His character and His goodness, then we can trust our heavenly
Father to take care of us, and to give us what is good, because He is a good
Father. And He knows our needs,
because He knows our beginning and our end, He knows our thoughts from afar, He
knew us when we were still in our mother’s womb, He has numbered our days and
even the hairs on our head. And if
we are His children then He is intimately acquainted with us, because His
Spirit lives inside us. Let us
pray with that kind of confidence in our heavenly Father.
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