As we look to this text, remember, this is the Word of God, God Himself has spoken. And so as I read these words here, the Word of the Lord. 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. And He said to them, when you pray, say, 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. 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, where a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before Him. And He Himself will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is shut and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though He will not get up and give him anything because He is His friend, but because of His impudence, He will rise and give him whatever He needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. That 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. 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? This is our concluding sermon on the series, in the series we have done on the Lord's Prayer and kind of Jesus's teaching on prayer, obviously not exhaustive, but we looked at Matthew's Gospel and the teaching Jesus gave and the sermon on the Mount before He gave the Lord's Prayer. We used Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer, it's a little bit longer, it includes, Thy will be done slightly different wording on the, forgive us our debts, our sins, and also Luke omits that last part, right? He just says, lead us not into temptation and omits, but deliver us from the evil one. But we basically looked at that. Jesus is teaching on the front end, the Lord's Prayer, and now in Luke's Gospel, we see that there's teaching on the back end of giving us the Lord's Prayer, and we might say that Jesus spends a lot of, in the Lord's Prayer, tells us what to pray and in the teaching on either side, how to pray. Now I want us to think about Jesus's teaching here for a second. He tells us what to do, and when I think about my prayer life, I find that I need something, I need some help really, to this very day, I've done the devotions every day through this series, blessed by it, in fact, and kind of encouraged that, here I am, the guy who created those things, and yet God spoke to me on more than one occasion, giving me exactly what I needed for that day for them, but I did that, I did the devotions, I've studied, I've preached on prayer, and yet to this very day, I find it difficult to pray. My mind sometimes wanders. When it does, I go off into some day dream, and when I realize what I'm doing, I say, sorry Lord, or something to that effect, and I pick up right where I was, and I end up saying the same thing over and over again, almost like vain repetition. I have a hard time staying focused. Why is that? Why do we struggle in prayer? Why is it hard? I hope today to answer that question. We do want to look at prayer, and I want to give at least a partial answer now, and Lord will fully answer at the end of the message, but let's think about perspective for a second. I have a question for the kids here, especially if you're a girl eight to 12, what do you see in a eight-year-old 12-year-old girl? What do you see? You see the horses? How about those horses? Those are pretty cool. If you look careful enough, their eyes too, right? You see it, it's one of those pictures with perspective. This is one that's easy. It's not like the old haggardly woman or the pretty lady with the hat, and that one you only see one at a time. It's almost impossible to see them both at the same time, and I put that up there just to talk about perspective. When I pray, one of my problems in why I struggle so much is, I want to do it right. I learned to act, you know, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. I've learned other prayer things. I've learned to keep a prayer journal into one area, the attributes of God, and then in the other kind of a little prayer, how to praise him for his attributes. I've learned to keep a journal of prayer requests, and I've done that from time to time, and found, wow, the God does answer prayer. This is amazing. Here's the date, here's the request. Here's an answer and a date to that. I've done that for a while. I sometimes kneel, I sometimes stand, I sometimes, I use this that or the other thing. A prayer book something to help me with my prayer, and it says, though sometimes I think my prayer depends on me and me doing it right. And yet when Jesus teaches us to pray, and we saw this primarily at the beginning of the Matthews at the beginning of the sermon series, that prayer is primarily relational. It's not doing its right, it's talking to our father. Remember he said, don't pray like the hypocrites in order to please man. Don't come up with flowery prayers. Well, we can pray with, it's okay to write out our prayers after all, we do have the book of Psalms, don't we? But the idea is don't pray just to be pleasing to men, to earn their favor, whether it's because you can say I had my devotions today and I had my devotions or so that people are impressed by your prayers. Don't do that, pray to your father and secret, he says there, although he gives us a corporate prayer, doesn't he? Our father, but there's a secret, there's a relational aspect and he says don't do it mechanically. We saw that at the beginning too. That's how the Gentiles pray. They keep saying the same thing over it over and over again as though God was a vending machine and you put in your, you know, your ACT coin, ACTS coin and outcomes, whatever it is you need. He's not, he's not a machine and it is a relationship. And it's interesting as we look at the text, the 13 verses I just read to you a moment ago, he tells us both what to pray for in the Lord's prayer and how to pray and we've spent a lot of time already at looking at what to pray for. So I want to focus our attention this morning on how he tells us to pray and really this at the beginning was a seven point sermon and while that's a perfect number and it would have brought completeness and the answer to our prayer life.
For the sake of time, I'll say the seven points in four. I can't help myself. But here's the first one. When we go to pray, Jesus teaches us to pray with submissive humility, with submissive humility, submissive. That's the whole idea behind saying Father, right? It's referred to both at the beginning of the prayer as well as in verse 11 with the illustration which of you fathers does not give good gifts to your kids. The very idea of Father and if we think of God as Father whether it's Father Creator or Father King or Father the one who adopts us and receives us into his family and it's all three of those. It's still relational and as Creator, he has a right to tell the creation how to live submission. As King, he has a right to tell his citizens how to live submission. As Father, he has a right to tell his sons and daughters how to live submission. We should be submissively. That's just part of what the text teaches us. Also, it talks about humility, I think, in that we pray about everything. Really, whether it's daily bread or forgiveness of sins or deliverance from the evil one, basically what we're saying is God, I am weak and you are strong. I am dependent on you and you are the one who provides. That's a certain level of humility, isn't it? That's saying, God, this is the way it really is. I'm weak. Help me. Please help me. And so, he teaches us to pray with the submissive humility. The second thing I want to, by the way, James, the brother of our Lord in the book, he wrote, tells us in James 4, 6 and 7, but he gives a greater grace. Therefore, it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. That should help us in our prayer life. And the very next verse, submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. So, there's that idea of humble submission. Also, we've, number two, and this is somewhat redundant, at least this one of the parts. Jesus teaches us to pray with persistent urgency, persistent urgency. And we talked about urgency already because in the first petitions, in this prayer, the first two, in Matthew's version, the first three, there's a sense of urgency by two things. If you remember, the word order, the verb hollowed is put first, or come, thy kingdom for the second one. The verb is always put first. And that word order communicates urgency. Also, the verb itself, I won't give you all the technical stuff about tense, voice and mood, except for that right there. But the way the word is said indicates urgency. Jesus, just in case we missed it from the Greek, not being Greek scholars and all, he gives it to us in a story that's easy to understand if you know the culture of the day. In the culture of the day, hospitality was absolutely huge. It was king. It was paramount. You showed hospitality. If someone came to your house at midnight, you welcomed them in and you had to feed them. If it was your, you know, when you were traveling, you'd stay at a relative's house. If you didn't have a relative, if you had a friend there, you'd stay with a friend. If you didn't have a friend, if you had a friend you had a friend there, you would stay with your friend's friend, right? So you could be your brother's mother's sister's father saying, hey, I know your uncle's cousin's aunt's niece and I need a place to stay. And they'd have to say, welcome. Come in. It's just the way it was. And when Jesus tells that story, he says, okay, which of you would not happen to you? You don't go on your neighbor's door at midnight. There's a sense of urgency because the rule is you feed them and there's a shame if you don't do it. I'm trying to think about what that shame's like and forgive me for mentioning Christmas before Thanksgiving. I really don't mean to go to work Christmas, but it was the closest side. Come, you know, we live in such a multicultural, you know, anti-establishment kind of, what do you mean tradition? I'm not going to follow your tradition, but so the older you are, the more this will make sense. And if you're young, you still feel the guilt, all right? The shame. This is how it is. When Christmas is coming, Lord willing, after Thanksgiving, you decide who you're going to give gifts to. And you pack up the ones you got to mail out and send them out and you get your gifts. And so on or later you start distributing the gifts. If someone gives you a gift and they're a close enough friend and you didn't have them on your list, what do you do? Well, if it's not 11 o'clock on December 24th, you go get them a gift, don't you? Because there's a sense of guilt. There's a sense of shame. It's like, oh man, they thought enough of me to go get me a gift. And I'm such an idiot, a jerk of whatever you want. I didn't get them a gift, right? That's the kind of feeling. When someone comes to your house, you must feed them. And so sense of urgency drives this. And again, Jesus is giving an illustration about how we're to say these prayers, how we pray the Lord's prayer, the themes that are mentioned in the Lord's prayer. There's a sense of urgency to it. And there is persistence. Verse nine tells us that Jesus, if it wasn't enough, he says ask and you will receive seek and you will find knock in the door shall be open to you. And really, the Greek could be keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, persist in it, continue, don't stop. These are the things that you need to be praying about. How do you pray about it? Well, submissive, humility, and also persistent urgency. And this brings us really to the third one, which is Jesus teaches us to pray with shameless confidence. Shameless. That's actually a marginal note, at least in the New American standard, for the word that's in our translation today, imputence. Verse eight, who because of his imputence, imputence. The translators really didn't know which word to go with. So imputence, imputence in the ASV, the NIV translates it boldness. And then the New King James and the New American persistence. But again, there's that footnote that says shamelessness. And this is what it is. It's back to the culture. There's certain rules and mores. And you're just not supposed to break them. And it's against the rules to go to someone's house at midnight and knock on the door. You don't do that. If it's a rural place, it's a long hike there and usually it doesn't happen. But even in a community, think about it, there'd be small communities, homes that are close together. And most of them, the overwhelming majority of them are one room dwellings. That's why the man inside says, go away. I can't give you any bread. My children are asleep with me. It's dark. There's no electricity. There's no night light. Maybe there is some candle burning. I don't know. But it's not very good. You don't want to stumble around looking for the bread and stepping your toe and then with the bread, you know, tripping over your kids. You know what happens if you wake the kids up. It's time to get up. You don't want that to happen. The only reason he's not saying, shot up and go away is he doesn't want to wake his kids up. So there's the shamelessness. This guy, he says, he's a friend. He's not going to kill me. Bread. I need bread. No bread. Guys start realizing, you know, if I don't give him bread, my neighbors are going to kill me tomorrow. And he gets up and he gives him whatever he needs. There's a shamelessness about it. And this guy knows it. And Jesus is saying that when you pray, this is one of the house. It's a missive humility. What was the other one? Persistent urgency, and now shameless confidence. There's a shamelessness to it. There's a shamelessness to it. He's breaking the morays. He's doing what you're not supposed to do. But there's also confidence, right? He knows. Jesus says he won't give him bread because he's a friend because it's just not convenient. He would during the day because he's a friend. And it's because he's a friend that finally he gives him the bread and sends him away. That's why the guy keeps knocking. He knows he'll get bread. And just to make sure we understand that, Jesus gives that other illustration, right? Now, which of you dads, your son asks for something and you're going to give him some bad. You know, just think, if you have a little child and you're walking around in the desert, which is kind of a cool thing to do having lived in Arizona, I recommend it. And the child sees a little scorpion and says, oh, scorpion, I want that and goes to reach for it. Every parent's going to say, no, you're not getting that one. I want a scorpion. I want it. I want it. I want it. Stop. You know, and some sort of discussion. He said, well, what do you want? I want to, I want to pet. I want something to play with. Well, how about a, about a bunny or a cat or a goldfish, something like that? The parent knows, the kid knows he's going to get something. The kid keeps asking. And the kid trusts the parent to give him what he wants. Mark Driscoll had a great illustration for parents on this one. He said, he said, you know, there's a sometimes parents are afraid to give their kids too much because they're afraid they'll spoil the kids, right? I imagine that happens somewhere. I don't know. It seems we do a pretty good job of spoiling them, but that's just for hypothetical. It helps the story if we say that there are people who do that. He says, I'm not opposed to spoiling my kids. I just don't want them to act spoiled. I want to give them a lot of good things. It's a great way to show love. That's how God shows us love. But I don't want them to act spoiled. If they act spoiled, I have to discipline them for that.
We should have that kind of confidence. God's not going to spoil us. But he is a good father. He does know how to give good gifts. And he will give us the good gifts. I like the way some of the Theologians put it. He will give us what we would have asked if we knew all that he knew. Give us the right things. And so we can have great confidence in our prayer. And Jesus is illustrating that. So he's given us some house, hasn't he? But he also gives us one more what? What to pray for in point number four? Jesus teaches us to pray for the Holy Spirit, verse 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? That's like the big idea. He's just taught us about prayer. The disciples say, Lord, teach us to pray. We want to be able to pray. Teach us like John's, the John taught his disciples. And Jesus complies. He gives them, okay, this is the thing you should pray about, holiness of God, his kingdom, these sorts, your needs for bread and stuff. That's what you need to pray for. And he tells all these illustrations about how to pray, right? With humility and submissiveness and urgency and persistence and shamelessness, we just don't mind what people think. We're going to ask God for the things we need, the sort of thing. With great confidence that he's going to give us good things. And then he comes up with this verse saying, if you ask, won't he give you the Holy Spirit? It's like saying, now you know, you need to be asking for the Holy Spirit, right? And before we go there, we really have to look at that first part of the verse to see where our problem lies, because he just kind of lays it out there. Remember he's talking to you. This is not this urban on the Mount where there's crowds from all over coming. This is the 12th. And he says to them, if you then being evil, know how to give good gifts. Wait a second, Lord, what are you saying here? Let me tell you, you're evil. Wait a second, Lord, you know, for me, I can accept total depravity as one of five good points that the Bible makes. That's hypothetical and theoretical. But what he's saying is my biggest problem in prayer is I'm evil. Why do I fall asleep when I pray? Why do I have a hard time setting aside prayer? Why does my mind wander? Why do I start day dreaming and even in the day dream, it's like I'm Superman or something fixing things? Why does that happen? Why do I keep praying and lose track and say the same thing over and over and over again? Because I keep losing track. Why does that happen? I'm evil. The problem was my prayer life.
So easy to be rude, so easy to be perfunctory, so easy to say the right word, so easy to do it right and to work to do it right. Jesus says, if you then being evil, know how to give good gifts. Won't your father give you the Holy Spirit? This is really what you need. This is what you should be asking for. There's some encouragement in that. He doesn't hesitate to say, if you then my disciples being evil, but he doesn't say, don't even bother trying to pray. It's a fool's errand. You'll never connect. You are evil. He tells us to pray all these sorts of ways. Humbly, submissively, urgently, persistently. All these ways because the father wants to give us the Holy Spirit. Why the Holy Spirit? Why is he saying God will give you the Holy Spirit? Well, how else are you going to pray? What do you told us to pray? How are you going to hallow God's name? How are you going to do that? You think you can keep his commandments on your own? You think you can always see the hand of God and what the right thing to do is and how to hallow him in your conflicts and your struggles at work and your marriage with your children, parents, so on and forth. You're going to be able to hallow God's name without the Holy Spirit? I don't think so. And what about the kingdom and the coming of the kingdom? Will the missionaries, if we send our checks, will they be effective in bringing the gospel to people? Well, if they have the Holy Spirit. And what about us? What about the oil change ministry or English as a second language or mobs or in our own relationships with family and friends and coworkers and stuff? Are we going to have the boldness to tell them about Christ or the words to say without the help of the Holy Spirit? How are we going to pray that kingdom come without the Holy Spirit? What about doing God's will? We can't do that either. Ah, food. We've got plenty of food for days to come. I heard it in the prayer this morning. It's true in my house. Fridge is full. Less than when my kids lived at home. Frieza's full. We just don't buy as much. But we have tons of food. But ah, unless the Spirit gives me life, I won't get home. Unless the Spirit keeps me alive, I won't get home.
And what about confessing our sins? Will we see the glory and majesty and beauty of God so much that we want to hate and forsake our sins and see them as evil? I don't think so. I won't even confess my sins. I won't see them for what they are without the help of the Holy Spirit. And forgive those who have sinned against me. Really? Without the help of the Holy Spirit? What about this lead us not into temptation? How Peter do we look at him last week? He knew he loved Jesus. He knew he was willing to die for Jesus. He showed it. But he was no match for the devil. Was he? He was no match for the temptation that came his way. He needed the Holy Spirit. No. No brothers and sisters. We can't pray. We can't do anything without the help of the Holy Spirit.
And when he comes, it's powerful. It's transformative. It's Luke who writes the book of Acts and talks about the day of Pentecost. It's Luke who says that the lives not only did the word go forth with the power so that people were convicted by their sins and turned to God. Their hearts were pierced and they turned to God. But their lives were changed. They started sharing the stuff they had with those who had needs. They made time in their lives to be together from house to house, fellowshiping, enjoying meals and sharing what they had and coming. Their lives were changed because the Holy Spirit was powerfully at work in their lives. So here we are at the end of a sermon series.
What perspective do you have? There's another picture that helps with that. What do you see? Tree? Yeah, there's actually little birds in the hollow of that tree. And there are birds that make the eye, the nose, the lips. Who's perspective do you have in prayer?
We need Christ's perspective, don't we? We need to see that we're absolutely dependent on God giving us this Holy Spirit. And so as we pray in our private lives and as a congregation, we want to pray humbly asking for the Holy Spirit, submissive to God. We want to ask with persistence and urgency, give the Holy Spirit, oh God, give the Holy Spirit. Help me to forgive, help me to see your beauty, help me to see your glory, help me to share the gospel, oh God, give me the Holy Spirit.
We can pray with confidence though, because he will, he does. That's how we know that God is our Father. Let me just a few verses that are I think encouraging to us, Romans 8, 26 and 7. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So the Spirit helps us in our weakness. The Spirit helps us to pray. And then the next words are great. It says, and he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is. God knows what the Spirit is doing in our lives. And it tells us further because he, the Holy Spirit, intercedes for the saints according to the will of God, right in line with the Lord's Prayer. Jesus said, but when he, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And on it goes, it's the Holy Spirit that leads and guides us into all truth. You can say, God, I need to know the truth. Please give me the Holy Spirit. Early Ron and John, he says that the Holy Spirit comes to convict of sin. God, do that in my life. In fact, we can, another great illustration from Mark Driscoll, he said, wives, you want to get your husbands to change, quit nagging. They don't like it. It doesn't work. There's never any men's groups where my wife is so awesome. She nagged me into getting this right. It just doesn't happen. He says instead, just ask the Holy Spirit to come into his life in a more powerful way and to convict him of the sin. And he made a big joke about it that, you know, he'll come to his wife, honey, I'm sorry, I've been acting this way. Did you pray for the Holy Spirit for me? But I think that is something we can do. God, cause your spirit to do its work in my life and in this situation, in our lives. Holy Spirit convicts us concerning righteousness that Jesus goes to the Father. He keeps teaching us that we are okay because Christ has paid our debt. Not only for our sins, the things we did wrong, but for the things we just didn't do, the righteousness, the perfection that Christ earned for us. Jesus did that for us and he went to the Father and the Holy Spirit assures us of that that we are okay, that we are forgiven, that we are loved. And so we pray. God, give us the Holy Spirit. That's pray. That's what we need, Father. We need the Holy Spirit so that whether we use the axe pattern or something else, whether it's morning, noon or night, whether it's in the midst of temptation, whenever it is, oh God, we need you. We need your Holy Spirit. We want to live in union and communion with you until we pray with confidence throughout your spirit honors. Amen.