Sermon Transcript September 18, Lord, Teach us to Pray. Three Lessons in Prayer Luke 11:1-13

Transcription

1 Sermon Transcript September 18, 2011 Lord, Teach us to Pray Three Lessons in Prayer Luke 11:1-13 This message from the Bible was addressed originally to the people of Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church on September 18, 2011, at 511 Maple Street, Wethersfield, CT, by Dr. Scott W. Solberg. It is a transcription that bears the strength and weaknesses of oral delivery. It is not meant to be a polished essay. An audio copy of the sermon on CD is available by request at (860) An audio/download version of this sermon may also be found on the church web-site at 1

2 SERMON TEXT Luke 11: Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. 2 And he said to them, When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread, 4 and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. 5 And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him ; 7 and he will answer from within, Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! 2

3 INTRODUCTION The request we find at the beginning of our text this morning, is the same request we are making of Jesus over the next several months. Lord, teach us to pray. Do you notice when the question is asked of Jesus? One of the disciples asked this question of Jesus after seeing Jesus spend time in prayer. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray. This was not the first time the disciples saw Jesus pray. When you read through the Gospel of Luke, you get to see what the disciples saw over the span of the three years they spent with Jesus. Here is what you will see. You will find Jesus praying at every major point and turn in His life. Prayer was a way of life to Jesus. If you stand on the banks of the Jordan and witness the baptism of Jesus, you too will see what the disciples saw. In Luke 3:21-22, here is what we see. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove, a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased. When Jesus is choosing the men who will become known as the twelve disciples in Luke 6:12, you will discover that Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. Then He went and called the twelve to follow Him. When Jesus was ready to ask the disciples the big question on which our faith hangs, Who do you say that I am?, He spent the night praying alone; and after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus discloses to them, for the first time, the plan of the cross. Eight days later, Jesus is praying once again, surrounded by Peter, James and John. We read, in Luke 9:29, And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. It is here, on the Mount of Transfiguration, where the disciples hear the voice of God from heaven, telling them that Jesus is indeed the Messiah and they are to listen to Him. Then, as the event of the cross begins to unfold, we find Jesus constantly in prayer. As Peter swears that he will never deny Jesus, Jesus tells Peter, in Luke 22:32, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Later, in that same chapter, we see one of the most vivid expressions of our Lord in prayer as He wrestles with God over the events that are to shortly transpire. We read, in verse 39, that it was his custom to go to the Mount of Olives to pray, and that upon the trial of that moment, He knelt down and prayed what He taught His disciples to pray in the Lord s Prayer, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done. And on the cross itself, Luke records two of the three prayers Jesus made in the midst of 3

4 His own suffering and death. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. So when we come asking Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray, we know that we are coming to the master who knows a thing or two about prayer. We are coming to the master teacher when it comes to living a life of prayer. We know that we are coming to the one who can truly teach us to pray. Like the disciples, our request is born out of the observation that Jesus, the perfect man, the Son of God, was a man of prayer. Philip Ryken says that Jesus makes two observations about His disciples when it comes to prayer. 1 The first observation is this. He assumes that they pray. In Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount, three times Jesus begins His instruction on prayer with this phrase, When you pray.... The word when assumes that you pray. It is not if you pray. It is when you pray. J. C. Ryle puts it this way. He says the habit of prayer is one of the surest marks of a true Christian. All the children of God on earth are alike in this respect. From the moment there is any life and reality about their religion, they pray. 2 Therefore, going into this series on prayer, I think it is fair and right to assume and expect that you have a prayer life. There is no spiritual life apart from a prayer life. This we can assume and this we can expect of the follower of Jesus. Here is the other thing that Ryken says Jesus assumes about our prayer life. He assumes we need to be taught how to pray. 3 On one hand we can say, prayer is as simple as talking to God. But on the other hand we find it to be the most challenging and frustrating and confusing disciplines there is to practice in our faith. Philip Yancey writes this in his opening chapter in his book on prayer, I interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often do you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes well, maybe seven. Do you find prayer satisfying? Not really. Do you sense the presence of God when you pray? Occasionally, not often. Many of those I talked to experienced prayer more as a burden than as a pleasure. They regarded it as important, even paramount, and felt guilty about their failure, blaming themselves. 4 I would imagine that this feeling is rather common place and present here this morning among many of us. And so we look up to Jesus and we say, Lord, teach us to pray. We have much to learn and we really want to learn. So it is with this in mind, I would like you to see how Jesus answers this question posed to Him in Luke 11. As we settle in to take our first piece of instruction from Jesus regarding prayer, Jesus is going to give us three basic lessons that we need to be thinking about when it comes to prayer. He is going to tell us what to pray. He is going to tell us how to pray. He is going to then tell us who to pray. What - How - Who. 4

5 LESSON #1: WHAT TO PRAY When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, the first piece of instruction out of the mouth of Jesus is what we have come to know as the Lord s prayer. The disciple makes the request, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus immediately instructs them with the Lord s Prayer. Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation. The fuller version of the Lord s Prayer is given to us in Matthew 6 where Jesus instructs us to pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. So what is our first lesson in prayer? What is Jesus teaching us when He says, When you pray, say? Through giving us the Lord s Prayer, Jesus is telling us that He is not just interested that we pray, but He is interested in what we pray. By giving us this model of prayer, Jesus is saying to us that these are things He wants to pray about. Through the Lord s Prayer, Jesus is laying out a model for us to use to guide the content of our prayers. William Barclay puts it this way. He likens it to writing a letter. Did you ever sit down to write a letter and you weren t sure what to say? Actually you may know what it is that you wanted to say, but you were not sure how to say it. You knew you wanted to say thanks, but you just weren t sure how to put it into words. So you go and ask someone for help in writing this letter. You say, I have this letter to write and I am not sure what to say, can you help me? There are two ways to help in a situation like this. Your friend could dictate the letter for you and you could write it down word for word. But that may not be the most ideal because the letter would not be expressing your words, but the words of someone else. Perhaps a better way to help would be for your friend to give you a pattern or some outline for you to follow to make sure you hit all the major points and to keep you on the appropriate track. Then you can take the outline and flesh out your thoughts in your own words. 5 That is exactly what Jesus is doing with the Lord s Prayer. He has given us a model, an outline if you will, to focus our prayers around the concerns of God. And that is exactly what we want to do through this series on the Lord s Prayer. We want to take each request and view it as a file folder from which you can build your prayer life around. The Lord s Prayer may seem like a short prayer, but I hope what you 5

6 discover is that it so inclusive and exhaustive, that is contains every proper request that can be made to God. G. Campbell Morgan says it this way, To pray this prayer intelligibly is to have nothing else to pray for. 6 When we pray, we want to concern ourselves with the very things God is concerned for and has instructed us to pray for. This is perhaps where your thinking about the purpose of prayer may need to change. You are going to hear me say this over and over again throughout this series. The Lord s Prayer teaches us that the purpose for prayer is not for us to get God on board with our agenda. Rather, the purpose for prayer is for God to get us on board with His agenda. That is why we are instructed to pray that God s name be hallowed, that God s kingdom would come, that God s will would be done. Morgan says this, Christ, in the form of this prayer, teaches us that our first business in prayer is to seek with God for His victory in the whole world; that the deepest purpose of prayer is not that we obtain what we need, but that God should gain that which glorifies His name. Passion for the kingdom of God is the deepest note in prayer. 7 What motivates you to pray? Is it to coerce God to do what you want God to do for you? Or, is it to fellowship with the living God and align your life under His good rule? By telling us what to pray, Jesus is telling us that prayer is the means by which God conforms our will to His. Soren Kierkegaard put it this way. Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. 8 St. Augustine said it this way. A person prays so that he may be constructed, not that God may be instructed. 9 The Lord s Prayer will change your heart and your mind and align it with God s deepest purposes. The ancient Roman philosopher, Cicero, made this observation about the way a pagan prays. Remember, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, instructs us not to pray like the pagan prays. Cicero said that the purpose for prayer in the pagan mind goes like this. We do not pray to Jupiter to make us good, but to give us material benefits. 10 When I read that, I have to pause and wonder whether or not that is often at the heart of our motivation for prayer. I wonder if we are more pagan than we are Christian when it comes to the motivation for our prayers. I wonder if this might not be why our prayer lives are filled with frustration and lack power. I wonder if this might not be why our prayer lives are not satisfying because our genie in the lamp is not giving us our wishes like we think he should. So we wonder to ourselves, why even pray. I say this with all sensitivity, that is a pagan approach to prayer. By giving us the Lord s Prayer, Jesus is telling us that He is not just concerned that we pray, but He is just as concerned with what we pray. By giving us this outline, He sets us on a course that will help us pray prayers that align with God s agenda which is designed to change us. Go to prayer with the desire for God to change you! 6

7 LESSON #2: HOW TO PRAY Jesus continues to answer the request, Lord, teach us to pray, with a second lesson on prayer. After He tells us what to pray, He teaches how to pray. He does so by giving us a parable that encourage us to develop a lifestyle of persistent and unceasing prayer. So how should we pray? We should be persistent in prayer. We should pray unceasingly. Like Jesus, at every major turn in life, we should pray. Like Jesus, it should be our custom to be found in a spirit of prayer. Here is the parable Jesus used to drive this point home. And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him ; and he will answer from within, Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything? When we read this parable, we have a very different take on it than the people Jesus was talking to when he spoke it. Most of us would not ever think of knocking on someone s door at midnight, after they have gone to bed, to ask for something, unless it was a matter of life and death. If you came knocking at my door at midnight after I had been in bed for a couple of hours asking for a loaf of bread, you would probably be putting my Christianity to the test!! In our culture, we would consider it perfectly understandable if someone knocked on your door at midnight for a loaf of bread and you decided not to get up and give it to him. We would find it completely normal and acceptable if you were a little put out at such a request. We would even understand it, if this person would not stop knocking on your door at this hour of the night, if you called the police and asked them to please remove this person from your doorstep. But when Jesus told this parable to people from His day and in His culture, they had a completely different take. Hospitality is a premium value in that culture. Bread was a utensil used to pick up food and sop up whatever was on the plate. It is possible this neighbor is even asking for more than bread. It was not unusual to borrow from each other in this Middle Eastern culture in order to serve their guests. Yancey writes, A Middle Eastern audience would have laughed out loud at this lame excuse. Can you imagine such a neighbor? Jesus was asking. Certainly not! No one in my village would act so rudely. It he did, the entire village would know about it by morning. 11 And so Jesus adds, I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. In that culture, the persistent knocking on the door would have led to that neighbor getting out of his bed and giving this man what he needs. So it is with God. Through persistent prayer, God will graciously give us all that we need. 7

8 So here is the application. And I tell 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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. So here is how we are to pray. We are to keep asking, keep seeking and keep knocking. Why? Because our loving Father will give us all we need. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? The implication is that our Heavenly Father never slumbers and He responds to the prayers of His people by graciously supplying their needs. I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking, it sounds so good and so promising and so simple. But to be quite honest with you Pastor, I have been asking but nothing has been given. I have been seeking, but am yet to find. I have been knocking and I feel like God hasn t even gotten out of bed and the door remains shut. Are there situations in your life that you have persistently prayed about and it seems as though God has not moved at all towards you and the situation remains the same? How do you reconcile that with these verses? Can I take a stab at it? First of all, the encouragement to ask and seek and knock with the promise that you will receive and find and the door will be opened, doesn t mean that we get whatever we want. This instruction to persist in prayer follows the instruction of what to pray through giving us the Lord s Prayer. So as we persist in praying that God s name be glorified in our lives and God s kingdom expand in this world and God s will be done in our lives, we know that God will answer these prayers according to His wisdom. When we bring our daily needs before God, we know that He will meet them as He promised. We know, when we confess our sins, He will forgive us and He will protect us from temptation when we wait on Him in prayer. So maybe part of our problem is, when we read these promises, we are reading them with the mistaken view that the purpose for prayer is to change God. When all along, the purpose of prayer is to have our lives changed and conformed to God s purposes, and this request we know God will answer. Perhaps, even though you feel defeated in your prayer life, because it feels like God is not opening the door to you, when all along the door has flung wide open and God has been there all along supplying your need. The very thing that you are persistently praying for God to remove, is the very thing that has kept you on your knees; and through it, God is teaching you humble dependence upon Him, and you are seeing that in this trial God is growing your faith and forming your character. Like the alcoholic who is frustrated because he has prayed every day that God remove his desire to drink, but the first thing he thinks of when he awakes is Jack Daniels. He wonders where God s promise is in all of this. But then he realizes that the presence of his battle and 8

9 his temptation is the very thing that is driving him to his knees and teaching him how to live in prayerful dependence upon God. Truly the door is wide open. We often tend to think we know what we need when we go to God in prayer. When we don t get it, we think God is missing somehow. When all along the very thing you are trying to pray away, God is using to change you as you prayerfully depend upon Him and learn to trust Him. How should I pray? I should persist in prayer because I know God is a loving God who will give me all that I need. LESSON #3: WHO TO PRAY The final lesson Jesus gives us in this passage seems to come out of left field. When I read this passage the other week, I feel that for the first time I saw what I think Jesus is saying here. He concludes His instruction in verse 13 by saying this. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! I used to think this statement regarding the Holy Spirit was an incidental statement tacked on at the end of this passage. But now I believe it is the central point Jesus is making here. It is the culmination of all that He has said to this point. So the final lesson you need to take from this passage is that when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus tells them who to pray for. They are to pray for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Let me give you a Reader s Digest version of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. God is triune. We believe there is one God and He is made up of three distinct persons. Yes there is mystery to this, but it is what the Bible teaches us regarding God. There is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They are of one essence, each fully divine and distinct persons and yet they carry on different roles within the Godhead. In John 14 and John 16, Jesus began preparing His disciples for His crucifixion, His resurrection and, consequently, His ascension into heaven. He told them He would not be with them any longer, which was better, because after Him would come the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that it was the Holy Spirit who would be the agent that would convict man of his sin, guide man into truth and produce the change in us that would bring glory to Jesus. In Acts 2, we see the Holy Spirit come in power on the Day of Pentecost, and His coming is evidenced by supernatural signs and wonders; and, at the end of the day, 5,000 people are found believing in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. In one day they went from 120 followers to 5,000. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. There is not a person here this morning who is a follower of Jesus Christ apart from the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. It says, in Titus 3:4-7, But when the 9

10 goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. It was the Holy Spirit who brought about the conviction of your sin, pointed you to Jesus. You may be here this morning and you may not understand why your heart is burning within you as you hear the Word of God this morning. That is the Holy Spirit drawing you to Christ. So when we come to faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwells within us and we are told to be filled with the Spirit. That means we are to come under the control of the Spirit. In Ephesians 5, where we receive this command, it says the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives begins to change us inside. It changes our inner spirit and fills us with gratitude and joy, thus impacting the way we talk and how we relate with people in our families, in our church and in our communities. In Galatians 5, it says that the fruit of the Spirit residing inside of us is that He produces within us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control. This transformation that the Spirit of God is doing inside of us is an ongoing transformation that Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, takes place from one degree of glory to another. So here is what Jesus is saying in verse 13. When you pray, you need to pray for the filling of the Holy Spirit. This request God will answer you and He can t give you anything better than the Holy Spirit. I was in a setting recently where I was being mentored, and the facilitator asked us, as pastors, whether or not we were praying on a daily basis for the filling of the Holy Spirit for us as individuals and for our churches. The prophet Zechariah said, It is not by might, nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord. If the Holy Spirit is absent from this gathering this morning, nothing that is said or done will have lasting eternal value. I pray that the Holy Spirit would fall upon us this morning with power. It has become my daily prayer that I would operate under the filling of the Spirit of God. Now can we read this verse back into this passage? Jesus tells us 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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Jesus tells us, with the parable of the man knocking on the door asking for bread, that we are to persist in our prayers. So can I take all of this and connect it to verse 13? Here is what I conclude from the teaching of Jesus. We ought to persist and daily pray for the filling of the Spirit of God. Keep asking for it. Keep seeking it. Keep knocking on the door for it. Like a pushy salesman, prop your foot inside this door and insist that God send His Spirit upon you and fill you. What does Jesus say about this 10

11 CONCLUSION prayer? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Why do we need to persist in this prayer for the filling of the Holy Spirit? Why should we keep asking for the Holy Spirit and seeking the Holy Spirit and knocking down the doors for the Holy Spirit? Let s take it up further in the text to the Lord s Prayer, the instruction for what we ought to be praying for. If we want God s name to be hallowed in our lives and God s kingdom to advance in our lives and through us, and God s will observed by our obedience, then we need the daily filling and enabling of the Spirit of God to empower us to live for God. If we are coming to God in prayer, understanding that our motive for prayer is God s glory first, God s kingdom first and God s will first, we need the power of the Holy Spirit. Our flesh and our natural desires are often at war with what the Spirit of God wants from us, and so we need to pray daily for the filling of the Spirit in us. When we face difficulties and challenges that cause us to exercise faith, we need the power of the Spirit of God to trust God s promise to provide for us. When we sin, we need the conviction of the Spirit of God to see our sin, that we might repent and confess our sin. When we wrestle with temptation, we need the power of the Spirit of God to help us resist. You can t ask for anything more important on a daily basis than for the filling of the Holy Spirit in your life. Whether you fully understand what I am saying to you or not, does not matter. There are mysteries of the Spirit that I do not fully comprehend. But this one thing I know, I need the Spirit of God to fill me on a daily basis, and so I will persist daily in this prayer; and as I conform my prayers to the heart of God, I know that the Spirit of God will use the ministry of prayer to change me and transform my life to the image of Christ. This is the end to which I pray. This is why we must learn to pray. We get on our knees every day because, ultimately, we need God to change us! That is the purpose of prayer. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Lord, teach us to pray. This is the request. To this request, Jesus gives us three lessons. He tells us what to pray by giving us the Lord s Prayer. By doing this, He is telling us that God is not just concerned that we pray, but He is equally concerned with what we pray. The purpose for prayer is not to get God on board with our agenda, but it is the vehicle for God getting us on board with His agenda. 11

12 He tells us how to pray. We are to be persistent in our prayers, knowing that our Father is a loving God who graciously gives us all that we need. He tells us who to pray. We are to pray for the filling of the Spirit of God and we are to persist in this prayer because He is the agent of transformation in our lives. He is the means by which God changes us through prayer. So make it your daily prayer that you would be filled with the Spirit of God. 1 Philip Ryken When You Pray (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2000) 12 2 J.C. Ryle A Call To Prayer (Laurel, MS: Audubon Press, 2001) 2 3 Ryken, 12 4 Philip Yancey, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006) 14 5 William Barclay The Beattitudes and the Lord s Prayer for Everyman (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) G. Campbell Morgan The Practice of Prayer (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 7 Ibid., ) 66 8 Soren Kierkegaard, Quoted in Zaleski, Prayer, op. cit., 99 9 St. Augustine, quoted in Friedrich Heiler, Prayer, op. cit., Cicero, quoted in A. L. Lilley, Prayer and Christian Theology (London: Billing and Sons Ltd., 1924) 4 11 Yancey, 146 By Dr. Scott W. Solberg - All rights reserved 12