Welcome to the Island's Christian Church podcast.
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Thanks for joining us. All right, we have been in this
series where we've been looking at this second of two of Jesus's
2 greatest commandments. The first one being to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.
And the second to be to love your neighbor as yourself.
And so we've been talking about how we actually love our
neighbors. We've talked about how to
identify our neighbors. That was week 1.
We've talked about how to shine our light through our good deeds
towards our neighbor neighbors. And today I want to shift our
focus just a little bit as we wrap up this series.
I want to say before we can love others well, before we can love
our neighbors well, which we're commanded to do, we must know
our true selves, that we ourselves are loved by God
deeply, that you are an object of great love.
Let me say it this way, if you take notes, God has been a
neighbor to you. God has been a neighbor to you.
So as he calls you to be a neighbor to others, He has been
a neighbor to you. He has met us in our need.
He has cared for us. He has provided for us
spiritually and physically like He's come through for us.
And because he's done that for us, we can trust him that when
he calls us to do the same for others, He's been a good
neighbor to us and we can be a good neighbor to others now.
So today we're going to unpack a story and some other words from
Luke Chapter 11. If you have your Bibles, go
there. If you have your phone, go to
Luke Chapter 11. Jesus teaches us in this passage
why we can trust God. So if you're a skeptic about
God, if you're questioning the whole God thing, here's a here's
a teaching today about why you can trust God, why you can
believe that he's trustworthy. And through his teaching on
prayer today, Jesus will reveal to us that our Father welcomes
your interruptions. He welcomes your interruptions.
He loves it when you come and interrupt him.
He invites you to come to him with your needs and often when
you come to God with your needs and you say, hey, God, here are
my needs here, here's what I'm dealing with, Here's what I'm
facing, here's what I'm going through.
Often what God does is he meets your needs ready through a good
neighbor. He comes into your life through
a good neighbor and meets your needs.
And so the so the opposite of that is true as well, that
there's somebody somewhere praying right now for a need to
be met by their heavenly Father. And you are the good neighbor
that will meet that need. All right.
I can think of many occasions in my life when I've been praying
through a need that my wife or my children or my family has.
And God will meet that need, but he has never met it through, you
know, a pigeon dropping a box in my backyard, right?
Prednisone. I'm working on it, OK.
He's never met it through something random or weird.
He's always met it through a brother or sister in Christ.
He's always met it through a neighbor.
He's always met through someone saying to me, hey, I have this
thing. And I can remember in a story
once, years ago, I was taking a pay cut here at the ministry and
we were facing some financial difficulties.
This has been many years ago. And a friend called me out of
the blue and he said, hey, man, you've been on my mind.
I, for some reason, been praying for you.
And I don't know what's going on.
Can you tell me what's going on? And I said, well, this is what's
going on. He said, I thought something
like that was going on. So I was prepared to send you a
check. And so I'm going to send you a
check for $5000 tomorrow and a check showed up for $5000 in our
bank in our check in our mail a few a couple days later.
I was praying for a need to be met.
I had my family had sacrificed on behalf of the ministry and
God provided that need like without any problem at all.
But he didn't provide it through a magical spell.
He provided it through a brother in Christ.
So God, when we come to him with our needs and we say, hey, these
are the needs I have. He meets those and he often
meets those needs through someone being a good neighbor to
us. And then when we see that he
meets our needs through his care and through his people, then
that motivates us to be the same for others.
Here's the thing about God is your heavenly Father, that you
are loved. All of us, You, you and I do not
have to operate on a fear mindset or a scarcity mindset.
In other words, I don't have to be worried about what I possess
and what I own and whether it's, you know, going to be enough for
me. I can be generous with what God
has given me because I have a Heavenly Father who invites me
into his abundance and to all that He has in the promise of
provision from Him. This is what's true of you.
You are loved by a heavenly Father and not you.
And I cannot love our neighbors until we know that that's our
identity, that I'm loved by a heavenly Father and I can trust
him and I can come to Him. And so today we're going to
unpack this passage from Luke Chapter 11 about prayer.
So let's just jump into this this morning and I'll give you
the three ideas that we'll see in this Luke Chapter 11 verse.
Starting with verse one, we're going to read a big chunk of
scripture. So hopefully you're OK with
that. This is what it says.
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place.
When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord,
teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.
He said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your
name, your Kingdom come, give us each day Our Daily Bread,
forgive us our sins, and we for we also forgive everyone who
sins against us and lead us not into temptation.
Then Jesus said to them, Suppose you have a friend, and you go to
him at midnight and say, friend, lend ME3 loaves of bread.
A friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no
food to offer him. And suppose the one inside
answers don't bother me, the door is already locked and my
children are in bed. I can't get up and give you
anything. I tell you, even though the even
though he will not get up and give you the bread because of
friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will
surely get up and give you as much as you need.
Verse 9 So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, Seek
and you will find knock and the door will be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds the one
who the one who knocks the door will be open.
Which of your father's? If your son asks for a fish,
we'll give him a snake instead. Or if we ask for an egg, we'll
give him a scorpion. If you then, though you are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him? So here are the three ideas if
you're a note taker. The three ideas from this text
is we pray with dependence on God, we pray with dependence on
God. Number one, we pray with
dependence on God #2 we pray with boldness, we pray with
boldness, and #3 we pray with expectation.
We pray with expectation. So first of all, verses one
through 4, we pray with dependence on God.
Luke begins by telling this sharing in this passage that
Jesus's disciples see Jesus praying.
They notice that he's praying. And here's what's interesting,
They see Jesus praying a lot. Jesus prays often.
If you read the Gospels, Jesus is always wandering off by
himself and praying. Prayer seems to be a key
component of his life. And so this one disciples, after
seeing Jesus pray, he says, Lord teach us to pray.
And they knew something was powerful in Jesus and they knew
that something was distinct and different from him.
And John, now John they're referring to as John the
Baptist, who was kind of a forerunner of Jesus, kind of
like a prophet who came before Jesus and was teaching people
and gathering a following, announcing that Jesus the
Messiah was coming. And he obviously had taught his
followers to pray. But Jesus's followers realized
that there was something unique about Jesus, that that Jesus was
unique. And they had seen Jesus already
do miracles. Actually, earlier in Chapter 9,
we have Peter saying, oh, yeah, we believe that you are the Son
of God, the Messiah who has been sent to the world.
And so they knew that Jesus and John were distinct and
different. They believed that Jesus was the
Son of God in flesh, that he was God on earth in flesh.
They knew that. And yeah, what's interesting is
this God, he had a, this Jesus had a unique connection with his
heavenly Father. He prayed, he prayed to his
heavenly Father. They saw that unique connection
and they wanted it. Now think about this, This is
just quick. If Jesus is God in the flesh,
he's walking on the earth and he constantly prays.
He he constantly prays. If he, Jesus needed to pray that
much, how much more do we who are not God in the flesh need to
pray? If Jesus, God in the flesh,
talks to his heavenly Father and is dependent upon him, he, he's
acknowledging out of that dependence.
Father, I need you to be able to do this ministry.
The the assumption is that we pray because we are dependent
too. If Jesus, the Son of God on
earth, is praying out of a place of dependence, then you and I
who are not God in the flesh are called to pray out of a place of
dependence. Now, in this prayer, Jesus
teaches them. It's often referred to as the
Lord's Prayer. But you notice Jesus doesn't
call it the Lord's Prayer. We have given it that title.
In that prayer, dependence shows up in every single line.
If you look at your text in that prayer, dependence shows up in
every single line. He says, first of all, he says
Father. He says, Father, how it would be
your name, in other words, Father, how it would be your
name? What how how is dependent
showing up in that? Well, Father, you are distinct
from us. Your name is different from us.
We are different. We're not the same.
We are flesh and blood. You are spirit and so you are
distinct and different. We are dependent upon you
Father, how it would be your name and then your Kingdom come
like Father, if there's anything that's going to be done on this
earth, if if it's anything that's going to happen, we can't
bring about any of the good works.
We can't bring about any of the the stuff that needs to happen.
Only you could do this. Give us each day Our Daily
Bread. Father, we depend on you for
provision. Our Daily Bread.
We need you for provision. Forgive us our sins.
You and I depend on God for mercy.
Have you ever sinned and made a mistake?
I have and we depend on God for mercy.
And then he says, as we forgive those who have have have hurt
us, as we forgive others, do you think you need God's help to
forgive others? Yeah.
So in every line is dependence. And then the last he says, lead
us not into temptation. We need God to, to to protect
us. We depend on him to protect us
from temptation and from destruction and the laws of
Satan and the laws of idols. In other words, every part of
this prayer reminds us that you need God for everything, that I
need my heavenly Father for everything.
Now I do want to point out something here.
I want you to notice this, that how Jesus prays.
He doesn't say give me my daily bread.
He doesn't say forgive me my sins.
He doesn't say protect me from temptation.
Do you notice that? What does he say?
He says us. He says, give us Our Daily
Bread, forgive us our sins, lead us not into temptation.
And what's interesting about that is a lot of times in
Christianity in the in the American West now, you know,
like in the Western Hemisphere, Christianity is primarily a
personal thing. You don't really take your
Christianity outside of this room.
You kind of just have it and it's kind of personal.
It's between you and God and you just live your life and people
might know you're a Christian, might know you're might not know
you're a Christian. But Jesus is depicting prayer,
not as individual here, but as communal.
Now that I think that's on purpose.
I think he's doing that on purpose.
And This is why I think Jesus is teaching us that dependence on
God. Listen carefully.
Dependence on God also creates interdependence on each other.
Dependence on God automatically creates interdependence on one
another. God provide me with my daily
bread. How might He provide you with
your daily bread? We talked about this at the
beginning of the talk through a another person to another human.
And so I'm dependent upon God. God, I need you to move.
But that dependence, God protect me from temptation.
How might he protect me from temptation?
What might it be through an accountability partner, a
brother in the Lord or a sister in the Lord who helps me with
the temptation I'm facing. Lord help me forgive others.
How might he help me forgive others?
Might it be through being a part of a church that teaches
forgiveness that walks me through that.
In other words, dependence on God.
The communal nature of prayer is that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
dependent upon God, but that means I'm interdependent on each
other. So when I'm praying for my daily
bread, I'm also praying for you. When I ask God to deliver me
from temptation, I'm also asking him to protect all of us from
the laws of Satan. That means that while I'm
looking to God to meet my needs, I'm also mindful of the fact
that I'm a part of community, that I'm called to meet the
needs of inside of that community.
Does that make sense that we are praying this prayer together?
It's this communal element. So it's not just that I'm
dependent upon God. We are dependent upon God and we
are interdependent upon each other.
And there's this beautiful picture that the church is a
place that is all looking to God for all the provision and all
the protection, but seeing the hand of God come through each
other for one another like this is the beautiful picture of the
local church. So when you pray dependently
upon God and you say God, I depend on you.
When you pray that way this week and you're praying for the
people in your circle, like maybe there's a Co worker who's
struggling or a neighbor who's dealing with an addiction, or
maybe there's a friend who's lonely and who's hurting.
You pray for them and you pray dependently upon God.
And you say, God, there is no hope for this person unless you
move. But at the same time, you're
intimately aware that God might move through you because you and
that person are now interdependent together.
So first of all, our prayers when we come to God who loves us
and he's for us, He's a good neighbor to us.
Our prayers are marked with dependence upon him.
They're marked with dependence upon him #2 and our prayers are
bold. We we are called to pray with
boldness. Verses 5 through 8, we're called
to pray with boldness after teaching the the prayer,
teaching them some words of prayer and dependence on God.
Jesus tells a story about a man who goes to a friend's house at
midnight. I love that Luke shares little
details like midnight and three loaves.
The Bible is important when you look at little details like
that. It's just important.
Goes at midnight and he asks for three loaves.
Why are three loaves important? Well, because 3 loaves is a lot.
It's a lot of bread. It's, it's like me coming to
your house in middle of the night and being like, hey, can I
have a, you know, a big pack of rib eyes or can I have, you
know, $1000? I mean, it's, it's a lot.
It's a lot that I'm asking for. So it's not just like, hey, I'm
in a bond. Can I get a gallon of gas so I
can get home at midnight? Yeah, sure.
Let me help you out. No, I've come to your house at
midnight and I've asked you for something expensive.
You know, I've asked you for something large.
And so the I think we miss that when we read this story because
it's like 03 loaves. I mean, we go to the grocery
store, pick up 3 loaves of bread, like bada Bing, bada
Bing. No problem.
You know, they're 3 bucks apiece, whatever.
But what when the story is being told, this is an extravagant
ask, OK? And it's at a most inconvenient
time. You got to see that.
It's an extravagant ask in a most inconvenient time.
Everyone's in bed. And he says my children are
already in bed. That's another detail that Luke
shares. Because the way children slept
then is when in the house, the mother and father might have had
a larger mat that they slept on, but all the children would have
been in the room with them on mats on the floor.
And the often times you would have to wake up all the children
in order to go and answer the door to give bread to this man
who's come at midnight. And I can tell you having raised
children, when my children were young and they were asleep, you
don't wake a sleeping baby, right, Mama?
You don't wake a sleeping baby ever, no matter what.
There is one rule where you can wake a sleeping baby.
But I don't have time to tell you that I got in trouble one
time because I had one of the twins asleep and one of the
twins awake. And that's a big no no when you
have a, a twins, by the way. So if you need help with those
rules, if you ever have twins, let me know.
We can help you. So the friend is, is coming to,
he comes to his friend's house. He knocks on the door and says
at midnight he's asking for three loaves of bread and
everyone's in bed and the door is locked.
And, and what does the, what does the guy inside the house
basically say? He doesn't basically say it.
He says it. He says 3 words don't bother me.
Don't bother me. I mean that that's like if you
came and asked me for something and I went hey, hey, hey, hey,
don't bother me. That's like officially a no, all
right, Like if you need to know, like that's officially no, I'm
not helping you don't bother me. But Jesus said something
fascinating, OK, He said something fascinating in verse
8. He says, I tell you, even though
he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship,
yet because of your shameless audacity, your your tenacity, he
will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
Now what is Jesus doing with this story?
He's a master storyteller. What is he doing here?
Jesus is painting a contrast with this story.
What's the contrast between who and who?
What's the comparison? The contrast?
Well, the contrast is between the, the, the friend in the
house who says, don't bother me, all right, contrasted with a
heavenly Father who loves you. And he's saying these two people
are not the same. And now what we tend to think is
that God is like our friend in the house.
We tend to think this is how God might respond to us.
I hear people tell me this all the time.
I mean, God's too busy for me to pray to him about this thing.
God's God. I don't want to inconvenience
God with something as small as my bills.
I don't want to inconvenience. It's got to be something.
Have you guys ever had this attitude?
I've got to have something big before I go and talk to God.
I don't want to bother him with something small.
Have you ever felt this way before?
I have talked to people this way who felt this way like I don't
want to take anything, you know, too small.
I don't want to bother God. But what Jesus is doing is he's
contrasting and he's saying our heavenly Father is not like this
man. He never says don't bother me.
He's never too inconvenient. He he never rolls his eyes.
He never sleeps. No, he's constantly anticipating
your interruption. He wants you to come.
He would never say to you, don't bother me.
Instead, he welcomes your interruption.
The tired friend in Jesus story whose children are all asleep is
a contrast, a foil to our loving God, which is why Jesus tells
the story the way he does. Here's the point.
If persistence and audacity works with a tired, cranky
neighbor, how much more should you expect from a loving father
who wants to hear from his children?
How much more? Robert Stein, who's a New
Testament scholar. He wrote this in a commentary.
He put it this way when one wonders if it is really
worthwhile to pray, when it seems the prayer goes
unanswered, when the believer walks to the valley of the
shadow and heaven seems deaf. The believer nonetheless
persists in prayer due to the character and the promises of
the one they call ABBA Father. In other words, what gives you
boldness is not the urgency of your need.
It's not that you need 3 loaves in the middle of the night.
That's not what you gives you boldness.
What gives you boldness is the character and the nature and the
goodness of God, and that you have the faith to believe that
about this God, that you know this God is faithful.
You know this God is good, you know his character is
trustworthy. And that gives you boldness to
come to His door in the middle of the night in the most
inopportune time. We prayed boldly because our
Father is the type of Father who is sitting up waiting on us to
knock on the door. And something happens when you
pray boldly, when you pray boldly, when you go to God and
you say, this is crazy. I'm asking you for this, but I'm
going to ask you anyway. Prayer doesn't just change or
move your circumstances, and it can, but more often, going to
God with something bold shapes and changes you.
It shapes and changes you. When we pray boldly, whether
it's for ourselves or for our neighbors, our hearts began to
be molded and shaped to reflect our God's heart.
We start to think like He thinks.
We start to care like He cares. So bold prayers align who you
are with God. So whether you're praying for
your own situation or someone else's, pray boldly.
Keep knocking, keep asking. God hears you and He's forming
you through your prayers into someone who thinks like He does,
who loves like He does. Let me say it as simply as I
can. When you pray boldly, when we
pray boldly, we are saying to our own hearts, We're saying
heart, listen, heart. Pray boldly to this Father
because this is the type of God we have, one who loves us, who
welcomes our interruption and responds to our bold prayers.
This is who our God is. So this morning we pray with
dependents. Secondly, we pray with boldness
because we have a loving Father who welcomes our interruption.
And lastly, this morning we pray with expectation.
Verses 9 through 13, we pray with expectation.
Let's look again at verses 9 through 10.
This is what Jesus is saying. He says, So I say to you, ask
and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock
and the door will be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and to
the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Now what is Jesus inviting you into here?
He's inviting you into a particular type of relationship.
He's inviting you into a asking and receiving type of
relationship with your Heavenly Father, not unlike that between
a child and a parent. Jesus is inviting us into this
ongoing expectant relationship with our Heavenly Father, The
one like a kid, where a kid would ask me boldly and ask me
freely and then trust me fully. Ask me boldly, ask me freely,
and then trust me fully. Now he drives home his point
that this is the type of relationship you're being
invited into. One is like a child talking to
his father. He drives this home by the next
example he uses in verse 11 through 13.
Listen to verses 11 through 13. He says, which of you fathers?
So it's a group of men standing there.
Which of you fathers, if you're a dad in the room here, this
here, this is being spoken to you, Which of you fathers?
If your son asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake instead.
Hey, Dad, can I have a fish? Oh, no, no, but I'll give you a
snake, buddy. Which of your father's would do
that? Verse 12 or if he asks for an
egg, we'll give him a scorpion. These questions are these
questions are rhetorical. Like every father standing there
is like no, of course not. Verse 13 If you then though you
are what's that say yeah, I love that Jesus doesn't preach seeker
sensitive sermons right. It's like if you then though you
are evil like he doesn't hold back.
If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, you, you are, you are not God, you're not
holy, righteous, perfect God. You are actually evil and you
know how to give good gifts to your children.
How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask Him? In the Matthew version of this
it says how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts
to those who ask him? The point being is that the type
of relationship you're invited into is a relationship of
expectation with my heavenly Father.
The point is simple, your God is a good Father who knows how to
give good gifts. He will only give you what's
good for you. He will only give you what's
good for you. And he will always refrain from
granting to you that which is not good for you or not part of
His plan for this world. This is that's I just laid a big
just like heavy thing down. I'm going to say it all again so
you can hear it. God is a good Father and He
knows how to give good gifts #1 He will only ever give you that
which is good for you. If you ask for something that is
bad for you, He will not give it to you.
You know, when the lottery hit 1.6 million billion dollars or
whatever, Like if I don't even I don't play the lottery, but if I
wouldn't bought a ticket and I said Lord, please let me win
$1.6 million. Do you think God and his wisdom
would say that's probably good for Steven?
Like he would be like, you know, this guy's never really had that
much money in the bank. Let's just give him $1.6
billion. This probably won't go bad.
He will never grant to us that which would be bad for us even
if I asked for it. But he also will never grant to
me that which I asked for. That will be outside of outside
of his plan for me or the world. Here's the tension and I feel
and you feel not everything that we ask for is given to us the
way we expect. It's just not just like a loving
parent says doesn't just like a loving parent doesn't say yes to
every request. That would be crazy.
God's no or not yet is still a loving answer.
It's still from a place of love. We're not called to understand
or even know what's best for us. This is hard because who do you
think knows? How do you typically think knows
what's best for you? You.
The Scripture teaches that you and I don't actually know what's
best for you. I don't know what's best for me,
and you don't know what's best for you.
I'm not the best captain of my ship.
The assumption is in prayer is that I am not the best person to
know what's best for me. That's God's job.
My father can see what I can't see.
Your father can see what you cannot see.
He always knows what's good for you.
So when Jesus tells you to seek, to ask, and to knock, he is
inviting you into a particular type of relationship.
A type of relationship like a child has with his parent.
He's inviting us to come to Him like children, where we ask and
we seek and we knock with open, honest, and trusting dialogue.
We don't pray expecting God to give us exactly what we asked
for. We pray knowing that He will
always give us exactly what's good for us.
You always give us exactly what's good for us.
And every time we bring our desires to Him, we can trust
that His answer will always be what's best for us and what also
fits His perfect plan for the world.
Tim Keller once said this and I love this quote.
He says if we knew what God knows, we would ask exactly for
what He gives. I read that sometimes I think I
don't know if that I don't know, brother, I don't know Tim, if I
got that much faith. Expectant prayer does not mean
assuming God will do exactly what we want.
It means believing that whatever He does is right.
I pray expectantly, become like a child.
I expect him to move and what do I expect?
I expect him to move exactly in the right way.
So when you pray for your neighbors, whether it's or you
pray for your own needs, we can do so with confidence that God
hears us, that God loves us, that he's always working for our
good. He's not distant or indifferent.
He's a Father who delights to always have your best interest
in mind. He always has your best interest
in mind. And Jesus shows us that we have
a Father who loves us deeply, and he calls us to approach him,
to interrupt him, and to approach him boldly and to trust
him expectantly, to depend on him fully.
And every prayer that you pray, friend, reminds you that you are
not alone, that you have a Father who's faithful.
He may not always answer you the way you expect, but He always
will answer you in love. And one day I'm convinced, or
with all of my heart, I'm convinced.
One day I will look back and you will look back on the plains of
time, on the life that you lived, and you will see how
every yes and every no and every not yet or wait was part of His
perfect plan for you and part of His perfect plan for the world.
And This is why we love our neighbors.
This is why we love our neighbors next door.
Because God first loved you. We pray for them because God
hears us when we pray. We serve them because our good
neighbor served us. We forgive them because our good
neighbor forgives us. God's love towards us isn't
meant to stop with us. It's meant to be received to
flow through us, out of our heart into those around us.
We are. We are received as a good
neighbor to Him and we are receive good neighbors around
us. And friend, when you live that
way, depending on Him, praying boldly, trusting fully, you will
become the answer to someone's prayer that they're praying this
week. You will become the answer to
someone's prayer. So, friend, will you stand with
me as I pray our benediction over us.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, as you go from this
place, remember, remember, you are loved by a good father.
Depend on him daily. Pray to Him boldly, we trust Him
expectantly, and as you do, let His love throw you.
Let His love flow through you to your neighbors so that they too
may see His goodness and glorify His name.
Now you go in peace and love your neighbor in the strength of
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Love you guys. See you back here next week.
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