INTRODUCTION

One day, Jesus and his small band of disciples are walking along a dusty Palestinian road in the heat of the day. It’s about noon and the little parade halts near a small grove of trees to rest and eat lunch. While the group begins to unpack food and light fires and set off to get water from the stream at the foot of the hill, Jesus slips off by himself just over the crest of a hill. When he is out of sight, he kneels by a rock and puts his prayer shawl over his head and he begins to pray. As lunch is ready to serve, one of the disciples notices that Jesus isn’t there and he goes to look for him. As he comes over the hill he sees Jesus kneeling in prayer. He stops and waits. After a few minutes Jesus puts down his prayer shawl and rises to his feet. During that time, while the disciple has been waiting, he has been thinking. So after he tells Jesus that lunch is ready, while they are walking back to the others, he asks Jesus a question, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."

Have you ever asked someone to teach you to do something? There are two reasons why we ask others to help us learn a new skill. First, and most importantly, we believe that attaining the skill we want to learn will be a good thing. Nobody would ever ask another person to teach him something he hates doing. For example, I would never ask anyone to teach me how to rock climb. So, if you’re going to humble yourself and ask for help and if you’re going to expend the time and effort to learn a skill, it must be because you believe its necessary for you to learn, that you’ll be happier if you have this ability. The second reason we ask others to help us learn a skill is because we see that they have a level of expertise that we do not have. In other words we admire their ability and want to be able to do what they can do.

So why did this disciple ask Jesus to teach he and the other disciples how to pray? First, he wants to be able to pray more effectively. Why would you want to be able to pray better? Prayer isn’t the real thing the disciple is after. What he is after is what prayer is for. Prayer isn’t the end, it is the means to the end. He wants to communicate with God better. He wants a better relationship with God. Why does he want to know God better? He wants to know God better because he is convinced that to know and love God is the greatest pleasure in the universe. It’s no different than the married couple that goes to a marriage counselor to learn how to communicate with one another. They don’t do it because they love words and communication. They go because they love the other person and want to enjoy the other person more. So this disciple wants help in praying, not so he can be more religious and impress the other disciples, but so that he can enjoy God more. Second he asks Jesus for help because he sees in Jesus an enjoyment of prayer that he does not possess. He recognizes that Jesus delights in God and enjoys God far more than he does and he wants to experience God’s love and presence like Jesus does.

This disciple really believes the answers to the first two questions in the catechism we are learning. He believes that God is the first and best of beings and he believes that the reason God made him was to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Since he believes this to be true he yearns to be able to pray better because prayer is one of the chief means God has given us for knowing and enjoying Him. This is true for each of us as well. If you really believe what the Scriptures teach about God and about the reason he made you, then you want to grow in your prayer life. You can grow in your ability to communicate with God. The question and Jesus’ answer is based on the fact that we do not naturally know how to pray but must be taught. Prayer is a learned skill. We can learn how to pray better. We can know and enjoy God more than we are right now by growing in our ability to pray.

MAIN POINT

The first thing that Jesus does in response to the disciple’s question is to remind them of the prayer that he already taught them. In Matthew 6, which occurred before this event, Jesus gave quite a bit of teaching on prayer, including what we know as the "Lord’s Prayer". He does not give them the "full" version of that prayer here in Luke, which you can see if you compare the two. The fact that he gives it a little differently here shows us that he doesn’t want us to simply pray these words but that he is trying to show us what we ought to pray. Don’t miss this. One of the biggest problems in our praying is that we pray for the wrong things. We don’t get answers to our prayers and we are prayerless people because we pray for the wrong things.

When Jesus is asked to teach us how to pray he doesn’t talk about the position of your body. He doesn’t talk about where you should pray. He doesn’t talk about whether you should close your eyes or not. He talks about what you ought to pray for. He is just like a good dad who has to tell his child, "Stop asking if you can play in the street because I’m never going to let you do that. But if you ask me to go in the back yard and play catch, I’ll say yes to that." So the first thing to note here is that if you are going to grow in your ability to pray you have to learn what are the things that God tells you to ask for. He’s not going to give you whatever you happen to think you need. He is out for your good and is infinitely wiser than you. But the good news is that he doesn’t keep what he wants to give you a secret. He tells you what he wants to give you if you will but ask.

What does he want us to ask for? There are five petitions that we need to unpack to get a picture of what he wants us to ask him for. Let me encourage you, as we look at each of these things to evaluate your own prayer life and see if you are praying for the things you ought to be praying for.

First, the person who has God as his Father is most concerned with God’s reputation in the world. The word "hallowed" means "to treat someone or something as holy." God, we are told is holy. That is, he is absolutely unique. There is no one and nothing like Him. He is to be treated with the utmost respect and fear and love and submission. It is the chief duty of man to be absolutely impressed with God and to treat him as he alone deserves. This is what the verb means. This is the first thing we are to ask God to do. It is so because this is the great passion of God. He does all things for the glory of his own name. The passage we just read in Ezekial could not be clearer. God says that he is going to wash away the sins of his people and put his Spirit in them for what reason? For the sake of his own name. He sends Christ to die for the sins of his people. Then he sends the Holy Spirit to apply the work of Christ to his people not for their sake, not because they are worth dying for but because his love and mercy and power in changing sinners shows how awesome and great and loving he is.

What Jesus is commanding us to pray is that God would be seen and admired and worshipped and treated with respect. This is the first passion of the Christian. It is what we want more than anything else in life. This is not a hard passion to understand. Every parent understands this desire. Parents are not satisfied with enjoying their child’s performance in the school play or on the team or in the band. They want others to come and witness and enjoy their child’s success as well. I love inviting people to come watch my children perform. When others are delighted with their ability, it makes me happy. Every collector understands this ambition. Collectors are not merely satisfied with finding the rare coin, the unique figurine, the rare piece of art. They want others to be impressed by their collections. They display their collections in their homes. They love to describe what makes each item in the collection great. They contribute their collections to museums for others to see and admire and find joy in. In the same way the Christian is not merely content to know God but he desires to have others see and admire him as well and this is what he asks God to do. He asks God to do whatever it takes to reveal himself so that others see and admire him.

Second, God’s fame is made great wherever his rule as king is being felt. Wherever God’s power to destroy evil and to protect and provide for his subjects is seen, there is God’s name being glorified. So Christians pray that God’s kingdom would come. It is a prayer that he would destroy the evil in me and in his church and in the world. It is a prayer that more and more people would submit to his rule in their lives. It is to pray that Jesus would come and punish all the wicked and save all his people.

You are praying for God’s kingdom to come when you are praying for your children to repent of their sins and to embrace Christ as their Savior and Lord. You are praying for God’s kingdom to come when you ask him to overcome your addiction to pornography and give you a heart that loves purity. You are praying for God’s kingdom to come when you pray that our church would care for the poor and boldly proclaim the gospel in our community. You are praying for God’s kingdom to come when you pray that you love your wife no matter how she treats you. You are praying for God’s kingdom to come when you ask God to open a door for the gospel in China or at your workplace. Do you want the Sovereign King of the universe to manifest his presence in the world by changing lives and mobilizing his people in obedient love? This is what Jesus wants you to pray.

Before we look at the last three petitions, notice something they have in common. We are to ask God to provide "our" daily bread, to forgive "our" sins, to not lead "us" into temptation. Jesus is commanding us to ask for these things not only for ourselves but also for other Christians. My praying is not to just be consumed with what I need but also with what my brothers and sisters in Christ need. These pronouns are the motivation for going to at least one of the prayer meetings this week. It pleases God that we are joining together this week to pray for "us". These pronouns tell us to be asking each other regularly, "How can I pray for you?" These pronouns show us that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. You must belong to a praying community, that is, to the church. These pronouns tell us that we must have other Christians in our lives that we are telling our sins to and talking about our temptations with so that they can ask God on our behalf to forgive us and to deliver us from the evil that threatens to destroy us.

Third,to ask for our daily bread is to ask God, as D.A. Carson says, "to provide our needs, not our greeds." Martin Luther describes our daily bread this way, (It is) "everything required to satisfy our bodily needs, such as food and clothing, house and home, fields and flocks, money and property; a pious spouse and good children, godly and faithful rulers, good government; seasonable weather, peace and health, order and honor; true friends, faithful neighbors, and the like." We are to ask God to provide everything we need to live a life that shows he is our treasure and we are living as his subjects, in his kingdom. God commands us to ask him for these things as a child asks a loving father to provide for her needs. This shows off God’s love and power.

The fourth petition is, "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us." When Jesus commands us to ask that God would forgive our sins he is teaching us that Christians sin. Any time you hear someone say that true Christians don’t sin you can know they are lying. However, Christians don’t delight to sin. They know their sins offend God and so they quickly go to God to seek his forgiveness. Repentance and confession of sin is the daily work of the Christian. If you are not daily going to God with your sin you are not obeying Christ and obviously do not understand how offensive your sin is to God.

This would be such a great prayer if it wasn’t for that little phrase Jesus stuck on right after the prayer for forgiveness. Why does Jesus want us, when we seek God’s forgiveness, to tell him that we have forgiven our debtors? First let me say that Jesus is not teaching that you earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving others. If you owe someone $10,000 and someone owes you $100 you are not going to be able to get out of the $10,000 debt by forgiving the $100 debt you are owed. God forgives people because Christ has paid the debt for the sins of all who repent and trust him. I think there are 2 things that Jesus wants us to remember when we are seeking his forgiveness. First, we all know how angry it makes us when someone sins against us. When people do evil to us we immediately want justice. So Jesus wants us to reason like this. "If it is so offensive to me when others sin against me how much greater must God be offended by my sin. If I, who am not perfectly just and holy, am so offended by the sins of others, how great must be God’s wrath against me." Reflecting on this causes me to mourn over my own sin in greater ways and to rejoice in Christ’s death that pardons me from my sin. Second, it is only those who have received and felt the greatness of God’s mercy who are able to extend mercy to others. When I am able to confidently tell God, who knows my heart, that I have forgiven my debtors, I am declaring the certainty I have that God has forgiven me. How can I hold a grudge against anyone else when God has forgiven such great sins in me? The absence of a vindictive, judgmental spirit in me assures me that God has indeed given me a new heart and washed away my sins. But, if I find myself holding grudges, then I must question whether I have truly trusted in the grace of God to forgive my sins.

Fifth, while Christians do sin and therefore must confess their sins, yet Christians don’t want to sin. In fact they are in a battle to overcome sin and know that the only hope they have of overcoming it is if God enables them to do so. Jesus is not telling us to ask God for a trouble free life. Rather we are asking God to keep us from succumbing to the temptation to abandon Christ when we go through trials. I love how Martin Luther describes this final petition in his catechism:

"God tempts no one to sin, but we pray in this petition that God may so guard and preserve us that the devil, the world, and our own evil nature may not deceive us or mislead us into unbelief, despair, and other great and shameful sins. But that, although we may be so tempted, we may finally prevail and gain the victory. We pray that our Father in heaven may deliver us from all manner of evil, whether it affect body or soul, property or reputation, and that at last, when the hour of death comes, he may grant us a blessed end and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to himself in heaven."

If you believe that God is the greatest treasure in the universe, then you desire to have a growing prayer life. The first thing to evaluate in your praying if you want to grow is the content of your prayers. Do you regularly pray that God’s reputation be made great in your life and in the world? Do you pray that God’s rule over your life and the lives of others be more manifest? Do you ask God to provide all you need to live the life he has called you to live? Do you daily confess your sins, asking God to forgive you while you, out of the overflow of joy in God, are forgiving those who hurt you? Do you daily ask God to preserve you from giving into the temptations that come your way? If you’re prayers don’t sound like this, then the God who exists is not listening to you. But when you pray like this, you can be sure that he is listening and will act on your behalf.

Upon concluding this restatement of what should be the content of our prayers he tells a quaint story that is immediately followed by a principal that applies the story. What we need to remember is that Jesus is trying to tell us how to pray. He wants us to pray in such a manner that God listens to us and that we grow in our relationship with him. The question we have to answer is what does this story tell us that will help us pray with greater consistency and effect?

Let’s look at the story itself and see if we can figure out the point Jesus is trying to make. The basic plot of the story is not hard to grasp. A man has a friend show up in the middle of the night, presumably after a long journey on foot. He is very hungry. The man however, was not expecting this visit and has nothing to feed his famished guest. So, even though it is midnight, he runs across the street to his neighbor, who, we are told is also a friend. He knocks on the door and finally his friend wakes up and sticks his head out the window. Can’t you imagine him hissing, "Who’s there? What do want? Don’t you know what time it is?" The man whispers back to his friend and tells him the problem. "Can you please give me three loaves of bread to feed my hungry friend who has just shown up?" The friend who has just been wakened hisses back with more than a little irritation, "The kids are sleeping and I’m not going to risk waking them up by opening that squeaky old door. So go away!" He closes the window shutter and crawls back into bed. However, his neighbor is desperate for food and has no other alternative and so he starts pounding on the door and does not quit. Finally, the man with the bread throws the covers off and muttering all the way down the stairs gets the bread, opens the door and gives it to his friend with the hungry guest.

Verse 8 is the critical verse in understanding what Jesus is trying to say with this story. The man with the bread does not give his friend the bread because he is his friend but only because the friend was "shamelessly persistent". Jesus is not saying that God is like the man with the bread and will only get up to help you if you bug him enough. Neither do I think he’s trying to say, as some commentators do, that if this irritated man eventually gets up and helps his persistent friend how much more will God who is eager to help, answer your prayer. I think the focus of the story is upon the persistence of the man with the visiting friend. We are supposed to look at this man and ask what is it that would motivate him to be so rude? Have you ever found it necessary to call someone in the middle of the night? It’s embarrassing, right? You don’t do what this man did unless you are desperate. The need has got to be so great and the person you are disturbing has to be the only one who can help before you will act so anti-socially. I think what Jesus is saying is that the only reason anyone prays is because they have to pray. Prayer is the cry of a person who knows they are helpless and that only God can meet their need. Isn’t it true in your life, the main reason you don’t pray is because you don’t need to pray? Need is the mother of prayer. You will not make progress in prayer unless you are desperate for what only God can give.

This is born out in vv. 9-10, especially in the original language. The commands to ask, seek and knock are all present tense. In other words, Jesus is saying keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. Persistent prayer is to characterize the Christian, not because God is reluctant to answer but because persistence is what desperate people do. If you are not getting answers to your prayers, it could be that you don’t really want what you’re asking for as shown by your unwillingness to persist in prayer. This challenges me in such a great way. I don’t persist in prayer because I already have what I want without prayer or know how to get what I want without prayer. Don’t you see that no one can provide the five things Jesus tells us to pray for? Our persistence in prayer shows how desperate we are for God to do what we cannot do. It shows how much we really need and want God to work on our behalf. We don’t pray because our wants are so small that we don’t need the omnipotent God to provide, we can do it ourselves. In verse 10 Jesus gives this ironclad guarantee. "If you will persist in asking because you really want and need what only God can give, then I guarantee that you will get it."

The application here is we need to pray that God make us desperate for him to do what he says he wants to do in our lives. We need him to show us our helplessness and his power in such a way that we persist in asking him to give us what we need and what he wants to give us. There are things that God eagerly wants to give to his people but he will only give them to you if you really want them.

In vv. 11-13, Jesus is dealing with a third cause of a prayerless life. The first cause of prayerlessness is that we pray for the wrong things. The second cause of prayerlessness is that we are not desperate for what God wants to give us. The third cause of prayerlessness is we don’t believe God loves us and wants good for us. Usually, when a child tells his father he is hungry and would like a fish to eat the father will give his son a fish. Fathers do not refuse to feed their children or worse yet, give their children things that will harm them, like snakes and scorpions, instead of feeding them. Now we know that sometimes parents do very wicked things to their children but our instant abhorrence of that kind of behavior shows that we all know that what Jesus is saying here is true. It is normal for parents to feed their children when they are hungry and to not harm them. That’s verses 11 & 12.

Now notice what he says next. If human parents who are evil treat their children in this manner, how much more will the one who is our Father in heaven eagerly provide what is best for his children. When we accuse God of not loving us because he does not do what we want, what we are saying is that evil human parents are better and more loving than God. When we complain that God doesn’t love us we are saying that he is more evil than human parents who are by nature evil. What we ought to do when we aren’t getting what we think we need is to think much on the love of God in Christ. This tells me that in all my praying I must be submissive to my Father’s will. I must rest always in the fact that God is my loving and wise Father and I may be asking for a snake when I think I’m asking for a fish. My confidence that I am asking for good things will grow as I mature but always I can rest in the fact that my loving Father will never give me anything except what is the absolute best for me.

Let’s just be really honest about how Jesus ends verse 13. When Jesus says, "how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"—don’t you feel just a little disappointed? It’s a let down, isn’t it? "I was really hoping you’d find me a wife." "I was really asking you for a new computer, not the Holy Spirit." "I was hoping you’d get me out of this depression, not send me your Holy Spirit." "God are you listening to me?" How desperate do you feel for the Holy Spirit to be given to you? Jesus is not saying that the only thing you should ask for is the Holy Spirit. What he is doing is getting us to look back at vv. 2-4. If you ask God for the things entailed in this prayer, he will give you everything you ask for by giving you the Holy Spirit and with him everything you need to live the life God calls you to live. It’s a greater to lesser, argument. When someone loves you, they love to give you the best thing they have to offer. The best thing your heavenly Father can give you is His Holy Spirit.

Why is the Holy Spirit the best thing God has to give? The Holy Spirit is God and so what Jesus is saying is that when you pray for the things in vv. 2-4 with desperate persistence, God is going to give you the best thing in the world, himself. He is the reward. When you are hungry and thirsty and you go to your Father and you just ask for a fish, he instead gives you a seven course, gourmet meal, he gives you himself. The love of God for his children is beyond anything you have ever imagined and he proves it by giving himself, in all his fullness, to his children. There is no better gift. Are you desperate for him to give you himself? If you are, then he will give you the Holy Spirit and with him everything else you need to live the life he wants you to live.

© Copyright 2001 John Swanson.
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