In this regions of Northern Italy, there was a small monastery, which overlooked a small subalpine village. Every day, among when it is way down the mountain path, the same mass in the village church. One cold, fall day, he noticed a bird lying by the path nearly expired from the cold. He looked at the bird and then, without hesitation, put it inside his habit next to his warm body. By the time he entered the village church, the bird revived by the warmth of the monk and his clothes had begun to wiggle about rather freely. Inside, he knew that it wouldn't do to take the bird into church with him and so he began to scan about for an alternative. As he pondered what to do, he noticed a great steaming cow pie, providentially placed in the village square by one of the dairy cattle who had departed for the meadows beyond the village. Gently but firmly, he put the bird into the warm and gelatinous mixture. He went into the church. The bird was further revived by the warmth of the cow pie, so much so that it was no now no longer wriggling but actually chirping and singing merrily. An old fox happened to be patrolling the wall around the village that day and when he saw the bird and heard the bird, he jumped off the wall and quick as a flash, leaped into the piazza and snapped the bird out of the cow pie. There are three points to this story. First, the one who puts you into it is not necessarily your enemy. Second, the one who gets you out of it is not necessarily your friend. And third, when you find yourself up to your beak in this stuff, it's best to keep your mouth shut. Now, what did I just do? I told a parable and yet you laughed at it. I would say quickly parables are originally I believe vaguely like jokes and that they often surprise people. You don't quite know how it's all going to end. That's why jokes make us laugh. I don't think parables ordinarily make us laugh, but they do surprise and in that way they're like jokes. The second thing is they're kind of like illustrations and yet they seem to be more than illustrations. But I told you there's three points to this story. Do you buy it? What is the point of the story really? What would you say if I told you that when this story was first told, it was told by a Christian scholar addressing a group of young and older Christian scholars. Who largely teach at universities, the man who told this parable teaches at a major university, and he was speaking to university teachers. What do you think the parable is doing in that setting, as you consider being a Christian on a secular campus? What's he saying? Things aren't as they appear. It's certainly part of it. Is it possible that he's saying if you want to survive in the university world, you better keep your mouth shut. It seems like a council of despair, doesn't it? What if I told you, and this is true also, that the man who told that parable told it because he heard it himself from the president of the university where he taught, and he told it to an incoming group of first year college or university professors. In the mouth of the president, what is it? To the line, it's a threat. Keep your mouth shut if you want to survive. So all parables, what are they? Well, how there's stories, but you've got to understand that they're not just stories. They're making a point and the point that they're making is often highly dependent upon the context in which the parable is told. That's true of this not very profound story of the bird and the cow pie. It's certainly true much more profoundly of the parables of Jesus. Last time we were together, we looked at the parables of the kingdom in Matthew chapter 13. Just to remind you very briefly, we saw that the kingdom of God is like a seed that a sow or sow. It comes quietly, easily rejected. It's like something that could be trampled and broken with surprising ease. The kingdom of God is also like a seed field or a field in which good seed and bad seed have both been sowed, so that the good seed, the seed of God, the seed of the kingdom, grows. Meanwhile, as this world progresses, the bad seed, the seed of the evil one grows up alongside it. That's the world in which we live. The kingdom doesn't come with mighty armies or great power. It comes quietly like a seed. And we will never in this life live free from strife and struggle with evil doers. Nonetheless, in the rest of the parables of the kingdom, it's worth everything we have. It's a pearl of great price. That's the parables of the kingdom. Now, mostly today, we're going to look at parables in Luke chapter 10 to 15. And I'm going to call those people parables. But before we do, since we've already looked at parables a little bit, we're going to look at them more. What I would like to do is think about what a parable is and how parables worked. And that's why I came to begin our class this way today. So first, then, some definitions of parables. Let's talk about the biblical language for parables a little bit first. The word for parable in Greek, this is one you can all say I know a little Greek. The Greek word for parable is parable A. So you see how easy it is. Now, the problem is, though, that the word parable A in Greek doesn't exactly mean what we mean by a parable. For example, when we think of a parable, we think about things like the good Samaritan and the prodigal son and the sower. We think of the big parables. But actually in the Greek language, and in the Bible, if you read through it and notice how the word is actually used, the word parable A parable is used sometimes of riddles. Or of short sayings like, how can the blind lead the blind? Won't they both fall into a pit? That's called a parable in the gospel, Luke. It's so short, it's just a little saying, it's just an image, it's just a metaphor. And there are some very short, very simple stories that are also called parables. Now, one reason why all those things are called parables is that the Hebrew word behind the Greek word parable is Michal. And that word Michal means a dark saying, or a figure of speech, or a riddle, or an oracle, or even a taunt, rather like a dark joke. So we're not going to find out exactly what a parable is from the words. What we get instead is a few ideas about what a parable is, maybe some standard definitions that we've heard. From English, one definition, maybe a lot of you have heard, is that a parable is an earthly story that conveys moral or spiritual principles. How many of you have heard that? Something like that, an earthly story, or a simple story, people sometimes say that conveys moral or spiritual principles. Well, that's true, but I think we can do a little better than that. Another way of thinking about parables is that the story holds up a mirror to the real world. The Jesus tells a story that isn't true, but it tells us the way things really are. The way a good novel, fictional novel, can describe characters that are as real as anybody you've ever known. If they do it well. Another man named C.H. Dodd, about 50 years ago, gave this definition of a parable. He said a parable is a metaphor, or similarly, drawn from nature or life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, leaving the mind in enough doubt about its significance to tease it into active thought. Now, when I read that definition of a parable, I almost feel like his definition of a parable has some traits of a parable itself, because that's vivid and it's strange and it teases me to thinking and leaves me in some doubt as to exactly what he means. But he gets it some really good things. The good things that he gets at is, first of all, almost every parable has something startling or strange. It starts off with nature, with ordinary things, and then something extraordinary happens. And that extraordinary thing grabs our attention. We have to make sure the right thing grabs our attention. And we talked about the sower last time, and in the parable of the sower, we could be arrested by the fact that he's throwing seeds in the road. But actually, that's commonplace, that's where everybody did it, is just saying they threw it on the part of his field that people were walking on. The really strange thing is that some of the fruit was a hundredfold. Almost always there's something odd in a parable. And almost always in a parable, there's something that makes us wonder. What is going on? Why is he saying this? Now, it doesn't work that way always in our lives today, for the simple reason that we've heard the parables so often. But the two that I told you, one last week about the monks and the baskets, and the one now about the, well another monk, and this time a bird, they left you wondering, what is he driving at? What's the point? And I would say that initially, when Jesus told his parables, just about every one left people, it's an exception or two. Just about every one left at least some people thinking hard, what does he mean? What is he driving at? What's the point? And to exegy the parables, to understand the parables, we need to recapture that and to teach the parables, which we'll talk about a little bit as well a little bit later on. To teach the parables, we've got to get a feel for capturing the vividness again and the strangeness again if we teach it to others. Instead of simply walking through them, point by point by point. Well, how do parables work? I notice as I read to the gospels that they don't all work the same way. Specifically, I think it's useful to distinguish between parables in Matthew and Mark, on the one hand, and Luke on the other, and the topics and the way they work. It goes basically like this. The parables of Matthew and Mark are more about the kingdom of God. Now I'm not saying there are no parables about the kingdom and Luke, of course there are. But more of the parables of Matthew and Mark are about the kingdom and the way it works. And more of the parables in Luke are about the life of discipleship, about people who are following Jesus. Within that picture, that scenario, there are some more differences. First of all, the kingdom parables tend to be more allegorical, that is to say, one thing stands for another. Let me just remind you briefly in the parable of the sower, who does the sower stand for? The parable of the sower is the son of man. What does the seed stand for? The seed is, Jesus says, the seed is the word, and the field is the world, and the seed that gets a good response, who does that represent? Now it represents the sons of the kingdom. And it kind of goes through, and really Jesus gives six or seven or eight different specific points. This stands for that. And the same thing with the parable of the wheat and the tares that we studied last week as well. In the parables of Luke, there is not so much allegory point by point by point. Usually they are pretty simple. There is somebody in the parable that stands for God and the way he does things, or Jesus and the way he does things. And there is somebody in the parable that stands for represents a disciple, or someone who is thinking about being a disciple, or how a disciple ought to act, something along those lines. And then maybe you are usually, also somebody who has tried these side, or someone who has opposed the cause of God, but usually just those couple of things are reliable. And they put us in a story, not about the kingdom, but more a story about us, but about the way we respond to God. One more thing that I would like to emphasize about the types of parables is parables from the last week. The parables in the last week of Jesus' ministry tend to be more clear and more confrontational. Just to take an example, you could turn with me if you would like to Matthew chapter 21, Matthew chapter 21, verses 33 to 46. It is a parable of usually called the tenants or the wicked tenant farmers, Matthew 21 verse 33. I am not going to read this entire parable, but maybe just tell the parable to you. It goes like this. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and to make a long story short, did everything he could to make it a good vineyard. He rented it out to workers, to tenants. When the time came to collect his rents, the tenants took the servants whom he sent, and verse 35 says, 8-1 killed another, stoned a third. He sent more servants. They did the same. Finally, last of all, he sent his son, saying, they will respect my son. When the tenants saw the son, they said, come on, this is the air. Let's kill him. Then the vineyard will be ours. Jesus told this during the last week of his life in the temple districts. It is not very hard to see who he is talking about. Who is the owner of the vineyard? God said 10 people at once. Who are the tenants of the vineyard? The Jews, a bunch of you said all at once. Who would be those servants who were sent to collect the rent? The prophets, even more of you said at once. Who would the son be? What would the casting out and killing of the son represent? The crucifixion of Christ, the murder of Christ, after he was thrown out. So, parables in the last week tend to be controversial. They often are very, very clear, at least when Jesus is done, maybe not when he starts. Very, very clear, and they function as warnings to his opponents and sometimes also as encouragement to his disciples. So, a lot of things can be said, a lot of ways to look at parables. You can look at them by their topic and by their time in which they are told in the audience who hears them. Those are all very valid. But that basic threefold distinction will take you a long way in understanding how different types of parables tend to work. Now, there's a man named Craig Blomberg who has written a very valuable book on the interpretation of parables. And I'd like to go over some of the highlights of his substantial insights on that theme. Blomberg wrote a book called simply interpreting the parables that came out in 1990 that in my view and the view of many other people is an enormous advance, both in terms of the history of interpretation and in the method of interpretation. What he did was tell you not only me, not only how to interpret the parables, but he also surveyed the way people had been doing it and examined what they did. And also examine how people talk about what they do because what we do and what we talk about what we do aren't always the same thing, right? So, people sometimes talk one way about interpreting the parables, but they act a different way and almost everybody's agreed that he caught a lot of people in something. So, here goes the insights of Craig Blomberg. That maybe I'll back up and say one other thing. Early in the 20th century, there's a man named Yuliker. By the way, it's spelled J-U-L-I-C-H-R. There's a man named Yuliker who said that every parable has one point. And that point, he furthermore added, is a moral point, not so much a spiritual point, but a moral point or an ethical point. Now, Yuliker was pretty close what we call old liberalism. That is to say, he would be one of those who believed that the main idea of the Christian faith is that God is the father of a soul. We're all brothers, and we're all of our souls are of infinite worth, and to be a Christian you live a good life. Now, it's more complicated than that, but that's a basic location of Yuliker. Now, what Yuliker did besides saying every parable has one point was to criticize people who had said, who had operated with parables, with what we might call wild allegorization, rampant allegorization, maybe some of you have heard about it, for example, in the parable of the good Samaritan. You know, it's not just that the good Samaritan is like a good disciple taking care of their neighbor, but everything stands for something. And so, when he pours oil on his wounds, that represents the Holy Spirit, and when he takes him to the inn, that represents the church because the church is a place of shelter. When he gives him two denari, I've actually heard this. When he gives him two denari, what that means is that Christ is going to return in the year 2000, and here's why. Because the denarius is a day's wage, and a day is like a thousand years for the Lord, so two denarius equals two thousand years, and so in the parable we have instruction on when the Lord will return. Now, we're laughing right now, you know, in a few years when this videotape is showed in other places, we'll know, I guess, whether this happened to be true or false. But even if they're right, they didn't get it the right way. And so, you look her had, you know, did a serious job at pointing out the excesses in allegorical interpretation. Now, to point out an excess, however, is not to prove that people were doing things entirely wrong. In fact, some people overeat doesn't mean we shouldn't eat at all, does it? So, if some people over-allegorise, it doesn't mean allegory is wrong. And that's the insight that Bloomberg started with. He said first of all, almost all Christian interpreters have taken parables as allegories for two thousand years. That's the way the church has done things. Furthermore, they were fundamentally correct to do so, even though they may have shown a lack of restraint and allegorise too many things. Third, they didn't err then by taking things allegorically, but by allegorising the wrong features, or by allegorising too many features. Now, how can we defend this idea that seems to be against the consensus? Maybe so, if you've heard the consensus that allegory is wrong, and you shouldn't look for too many details and so forth. Well, the first proof that Bloomberg would advance and I would advance is that Jesus allegorised parables. We started with Matthew 13 for two reasons. One, we were in Matthew 12, right before that. And another reason is to show you yourself, instead of getting the theory of parables, to show you for yourself, Jesus allegorised his own parables. You sat there and nodded your heads, and you were all right, we did it again tonight. Jesus said, the sower is the son of man. Jesus said, the field is the world. He allegorised his own parables. He allegorised them several times. And so we know that he wants some things to stand for other things. That's the main proof. The other proof that Bloomberg would advance that allegorisation is correct is that if you look at the best exegies, even the exegies who did their exegesis after Eulika wrote his book, complaining about allegory, even people who thought that Eulika was an admirable fellow, even they allegorised. And the reason is it can't be helped because it's just all over the place in the text. They said, now we're not going to allegorise, and then two pages later they were allegorising. They were allegorising all over the place, they were saying the good Samaritan stands for disciple, and the prodigal son stands for people who stray from God, and so forth. They were doing what Bloomberg calls, and I like it, a low level allegory, or simple or restrained allegory, or allegory on just a few points. Now, that's vital to understanding how you proceed, and I feel like stopping, pausing, and seeing if anybody has a question or comment about that. Does it make sense? Well, when you think of a question later on, raise your hand, and it'll take it. Now, but let's press on that a little bit further. He says one other thing that's very, very important, and that way you actually see several things, but there's one more that he says that's very important, and I'm confident that it's in your notes. And it doesn't make a lot of sense at first, but he says when you try to allegorise what you need to do is realise this is just a device for communication, and the way it works is first you notice those extravagant details, those twists in the story that go in an unexpected direction. Usually, not always, but usually, look for your allegorisation around there. Then he also says you've got to formulate things in your mind, so you can test them, and here's the rule he uses. Try to formulate A is to B, capital A is to capital B, as small A is the small B, so the story, something corresponds to something in reality, with regard to X. You've got to specify in what regard the allegory takes place. Now, that's vague. Let's make it concrete. In the parable of the banquet, Luke chapter 14, which we'll talk about later, in the parable of the banquet, I'm going to assume you all know that parable. In the parable of the banquet, the giver of the banquet is to those who are invited to the banquet as Jesus is to the Jews. In this regard, the unexpected guests did not come to the party, so he invited others. Now, that's when we would all, I think if you remember the parable of banquet in Luke 14, I think I see your heads nodding. We would all agree, boy, that sounds right, that's just exactly the way we've always taken it. Here's another one, and this illustrates that when you make a formulation, you don't necessarily have the answer, okay? Here's another one. A is to B is A is to B with regard to X. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus is to the lawyer, as the good Samaritan is, a man who is beaten up and lying in the road, in that one who seems to be an opponent or an unexpected person comes to his rescue. Now, you see what this one is saying. This one is saying that Jesus is the good Samaritan. And when he tells the story of the good Samaritan, he's talking about himself, not just about the disciples, but about him. And so, from the perspective of the man who's lying, they're beaten up and half dead, we'll talk about it later. From the perspective of the man who's lying, they're half dead and unconscious. If he were conscious, if he were a Jew, he would be astonished that a Samaritan would be helping him. Just as the lawyer is spiritually more than half dead, and would be astonished if he realized that Jesus was trying to help him. Because after all, he came to criticize Jesus, remember? He came to trap Jesus and to test Jesus, and to prove Jesus wrong by asking questions. You like that one? See, you're not sure. You're kind of going, well, maybe. Maybe. You don't know whether I believe it or not, which is fine. And that's what I want. I want you to be in a position of thinking about it. To formulate something is not to prove that it's right. It's to prove that it's possible. Responsible exegesis, responsible Bible interpretation, does not rest on having ideas. It rests on testing and proving ideas. And that's what you've got to do. That's what we all have to do if we want to interpret the Bible. Bloomberg says one other thing, and that is that most parables have more than one point, and he specifies. He says, actually, most parables have as many points as they have major characters. So if you have a parable of three characters, they're going to be three points. For example, the parable of the lost sons, you've got the father, the ripper, kind of like a god figure, and there should be something learned about God. And then you've got the younger brother, whom we call the prodigal son, and he's going to teach us something about the way God treats wicked people. And you've got an older brother, and he's pretty confident that he's a good guy and he can't understand why people are being so kind to the younger brother, and we're going to learn something before the parables over about people like that too. Three figures, three main figures, three points. And that's what he says, and we'll explore that a little bit tonight as well. Question or comment now? Ready to go to it? Ready to actually look at some parables? You don't want any more? You don't want to talk about theory anymore? We're going to get to the real thing. All right, let's get to the real thing. Get the real thing. I want to go to the gospel of Luke. Gospel of Luke. We've been spending most of our time, of course, in the gospel of Matthew, but the largest number of parables is found in the gospel of Luke. And so while we're studying, we should definitely spend our time there in the gospel of Luke, as I said a little earlier, the parables are mostly about people. They're mostly about discipleship more than they are about the kingdom. They are mostly found in a section of the gospel of Luke. The begins in 951 and ends at 1944. Now you may never have noticed this. Matthew, Mark and Luke are very similar to each other most of the time, but there is one section in Luke, it goes from 951 to 1944, in which there is not more than five verses in that stretch. Now somebody will count and say, no, there's seven. There's not more than a dozen. Now I know I'm safe. There's not more than a dozen verses that appear in that section, 951 to 1944, that are also found in Matthew or Luke. It's called the travel narrative. I've heard that term, the travel narrative. And I'll show it to you in 951. It goes like this. At that time, sorry, as the time approached for him, Jesus to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And then from there, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and then all of a sudden when you get to 19, I said, 44, I'll say to be really safe, I'll say 19, 10, because then things begin to overlap a little bit. 19, 1, the 10 tells the stories that he is. All that material, all that teaching, all those stories, all the events, all the miracles are basically only in Luke and not in Matthew or Mark or John. And there we find most of our most popular, most beloved parables. Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem, He's training as disciples. He is saying to them things like this, the Christ must suffer many things, must go to the cross and be crucified. They boggle, they can't understand that. Jesus has the patiently explained that to them. He's defining to them who He is, He's also defining to them who they are and what it means to be. A disciple, as he does, a lot of the main themes that occur through the gospel of Luke, all throughout Luke, get a big parable. And the first of them is the one you have in your separate handout tonight. The parable, the first one I want to talk about is the parable of a man at prayer. I know the very first parable that appears. Yes, I'm talking about the handout that gives a summary of Luke 11 and Luke 12. There they are. And I hope everybody has one of those handouts by now. Work one of those handouts back over here, if you look please. Luke 11 and Luke 12. Let's take a look at Luke 11 and the parable of prayer. This fits within Luke's interest in prayer. Luke is the gospel of prayer. Jesus prayed, only Luke tells us this, prayed before calling his disciples. Jesus prayed before and after during the time of his baptism and temptation, his prayers are mentioned. Jesus prayed, Luke 11 tells us, and it was his prayer, his disciples noticing him at prayer, that led them to ask for the Lord's prayer. You might recall in Matthew, in the Lord's prayer there, in Matthew. It's as Jesus teaching, working his way through, the serving of the man. But in Luke, the way it's described is that they saw him praying in a certain place one day, Luke 11 and one. And they said, Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples. And now all of a sudden I forget how much to be talking about the actual content of Lord's prayer. Not very much. It's taught me if I repeat myself. Wave your hand at me if I say anything twice. The first thing you want to notice about this is that Jesus teaches us how to actually pray. It's something that we need, but I can just interrupt myself a little bit. It's something we as Americans need. The way he teaches here is exactly what we need. Because when we come to our prayer life, we have you and I have a certain liability. The liability is that we're doers, we're people of action. And being a person of action is fine by itself, but in the spiritual realm, being too interested in action and too interested in method and too interested in techniques can lead us astray. In prayer literature, I'm sure you've all noticed a heavy emphasis on methods of praying. That is, for example, now you want to get your prayer life together. What you need to do is have a prayer time. And of course, you know what the prayer time is, right? It's early in the morning. And if you want to pray and you have a bad prayer life, what you need to do is set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier, right? That's the way to have a good prayer life. And then of course, besides your prayer time, you have to have a prayer chair. And you have to have a little place, a little place in your apartment in your house where you just sit in that chair. And all you do in that chair is pray. Because if you read the newspaper there, then you'll think godless thoughts about baseball and football teams and stock markets and things like that. And you want to have a prayer chair. You want to have a little prayer light. You're going to have a little prayer guide. You have to have that acronym acts, adoration confession Thanksgiving supplication. I honestly believe. I honestly believe that if I stood in front of a group of people and I said, now you've all heard about acts, but I want to tell you about a new one, it's called bogal. And bogal stands for bowing obligation, glorification and latitude. And 20 people would come to me and ask, what was that fourth term? That's what we think about it. We want our techniques. We want our methods. But they don't get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is not simply what we say. The heart of the matter is our spirit as we pray. And Jesus in Luke 111 to 13 goes through both matters. It begins with how to pray or the words we use when we pray. And the first thing that he says is father. So in prayer, we pray to the one who is our father. Second, we pray, hallowed be thy name. And this is say we pray, may God's name be revered. Now that's something that we talk about this, revering God's name. That's something we can, we can get too narrow on this Christian. So for example, when we talk in churches about how long God's name we say things like, when you pray, you got to really mean it. And when you sing a hymn, you got to really sing the words. And if you're learning tenor, don't focus on the tenor part. Focus on the words of the hymn, right? And you should never, of course, take God's name in vain. You should never curse. Never do anything like that. More broadly, I believe that how would be thy name as a prayer for our entire sanctification? Because as Christians, that you hear what I just said, we are Christians, we bear the name of Christ. And when we pray, hallowed be your name, we're also praying that Christ's name be hallowed through our life. Now it's easy to give a scent to that, but when you see it another, it's a different matter. Let me give you just one quick story from my life. I was in a tenously couple summers ago. And in that league, you ended up playing as you often do in these things, total strangers. And so I was supposed to play this fellow Saturday morning at nine o'clock. And he called me up on Thursday and he said, well, I can't play with you on Saturday at nine. Can we please play it at 11 because I've got a church meeting. I thought, well, this is nice. I'm going to meet some Christian fellow who's dedicated in putting his church work ahead of his sports. And so we met and I said, well, by the way, you know, what kind of a church meeting was it and where did you go to church? He said, well, you know, it was a Christian ad thing. And I go to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I said, well, that's interesting. I'm a seminary professor. And he didn't say it in so many words but it basically went like this. And I'll make you a deal. If you regard me as an Orthodox Christian, I'll regard you as an Orthodox Christian. And I basically said, let's play tennis and we'll talk theology afterwards. But we began to play tennis. And at first it was pretty close but the truth is it was July. And as you can see, I'm not what you would call a heavy man. And he was what you could call a heavy man. He was probably carrying about 40 pounds more than he wanted to carry. And all you had to do was hit it to the right and hit it to the left and eventually he collapsed. And so, not literally collapsed. It just kind of hit it out, 40 feet long, after a while. And the score was 2-2 and then the score was 6-2 and then the score was 3-0 and it was 4-0 in the second set. And then he started taking tennis balls and smashing them against the ground and smashing them against the fence and throwing his racket against the net and throwing his racket against and stamping up and down. Now what do you think that did? His claim, you're a Christian, I'm a Christian. Well now you see, we can see that very easily in the Mormon. The question is, do we see it in ourselves? I'll put it to you this way. You better check your driving habits before you put a bumper sticker on pro life. You know, pro life. But do you drive pro life? It's very easy to be in favor of a fetus, but how about that poor woman is trying to enter the intersection. How would be thy kingdom come? Is a prayer that God would manifest his reign in Jesus Christ today? That's what we're praying. That God's reign would be clear, would be manifest in the world and in ourselves first. When we pray, give us this day our daily bread. We're asking the God would give us what we need for that day by that day. It's not a prayer, give us this day our daily desires. It is a prayer that God would supply as our Father, but we need each day for that day. To stay alive that day, that God would supply what's necessary. And we pray that He would forgive. We pray that He would forgive as we forgive those who sin against us. Not meritoriously, we don't pray that God would forgive because we forgive. We pray that He would forgive as we forgive. As we forgive means this. We have tasted God's forgiveness in our own life. And because we have tasted and taken that in, we are now forgiving to others because His grace has transformed us and we're forgiving, then we want Him to show. We want Him to see. We want Him to demonstrate that He sees that transformation in us by forgiving us yet more. That's the opposite, by the way, of a vicious circle. That's a happy circle. That's a positive circle. That's what we're praying for there. And last, we pray that we would not be led into temptation. Not meaning that we would never be tested, but that we would never be tested if we were able. And that the testing would always be one, as Paul says, as Jesus says, in which there's a way of escape, in which there is sufficient grace to overcome. We would never be led into the situation that is overwhelming to us. That's what we're praying. Never led into a situation where the evil one has full sway. Now that's what to pray. And the what to pray, although I made fun of it a little bit, is, well, I made fun of the techniques. The what to pray is absolutely vital. But Luke and all of the Bible understands. We all know that there are times when we know what to pray, but we don't because the what and the technique is not enough, the hard has to be in the right place. There are times when we know we should pray, but we cannot bring ourselves to it. And the reason is that we usually have had some experience of praying about that thing maybe recently or maybe many times, and we aren't getting an answer. And somehow we are pessimistic about the likelihood that God will hear our prayer. Maybe you've prayed for health, for a job, for a dear one to come to Christ, for maybe healing in a relationship. Maybe you would find a marriage partner, maybe that you would have children. And you pray and pray and pray, and now you don't want to pray anywhere because you don't want to get another know, or you don't want to have silence again. That's the kind of reason why people stop praying. Jesus takes that seriously. He knows you can't just say, here's the words. He knows we also have to have the proper attitude for prayer. And he does it in a very odd way. Now I don't say that to be critical, of course. I'm not meaning he's strange. I'm meaning it seems odd to us. And we'll see how wise it is, of course, in a little bit. Let me read to you five to eight. Jesus said to them, suppose one of you has a friend. And he goes to him at midnight and says, friend, lend me three loads of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me. And I have nothing to set before him. Now you have to picture this, and I'm going to help you picture it just a little bit. Here's Israel, and you've got plateaus and hills and valleys, and you've got villages, and you've got the sea. And here's a fellow who's been walking and walking day and night over hill and valley, and he doesn't have a car. He's been walking. That's how you get from here to there. And he hasn't been able to stop at McDonald's because there aren't none. And he hasn't been able to stop and get a coke at a pot machine or soda machine, or wherever you call it, because there aren't any. And he arrives at midnight because he's just about flat, exhausted. It's a surprise. He's come at midnight. That's not when you come. Here's a man who's dog tired, and he says, I know somebody in this village. And it comes to him, and he comes to the house, and in that society, when you came to somebody's house, you absolutely had to show him good or her good hospitality, because, again, no burger king, not even Kentucky fried chicken. There's nothing. And so the poor guy is hungry, and he's tired, and he's thirsty. You've got to take care of him. You've got to give him a good meal. But the problem is that in this particular house, in this particular night, there is almost no presentable food. You can't just lay mashed potatoes, and a few three-day old beans, and, you know, a bread crust in front. You've got to give him something good. And so, when he arrives, this fellow has nothing proper to set before him, and so he goes to the house of someone else in the village. And, of course, there are other houses throughout the village, as well. And, he goes to this person, and he says to him, my friend has come to me at midnight, and I need you to give me three loaves of bread, because I don't have anything that is to say, I don't have anything proper to set before him. The one inside says, don't bother me. The door is locked. My children are with me in bed. I can't give you anything. Now, what kind of excuses that? How would you rate that excuse? One being excellent, ten being sad. Sad. Does anybody want to give it a one? I want to give it about eight, nine, ten. Let's just think about these excuses a minute. The door is locked. Did you know that tens of thousands of people starve to death every year in Israel, because the door was locked, and they could never get out? No. Now, when the door is locked, you unlock the door, and then you leave. So, that is a pitiful excuse. How about my children are with me in bed? All that means is they didn't have beds like we have today. They're all sleeping in one mat, maybe under one blanket, if they even had a blanket, but they're all sleeping probably under their outer garments, and there they are all arrayed around them. Is that a valid excuse? No. If you are children, we're sleeping around you on a camping trip. Could you get around your kids without turning on even a flashlight? Could you do it? Let me just feel with your toe. There they are. You poke them. That's a foot. That's a rib, lightly. Take off your shoes, and you walk around them. These are terrible excuses. But Jesus says, I tell you, and this is the what? This is the translation from the NIV. We'll talk about a literal translation just a moment. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's shamelessness, that's a literal translation, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now look carefully at your handout now, and notice a literal translation of verse 8. What verse 8 says is, this about the man who is asleep, if he will not give to him having a risen, because he is his friend, now who's not giving? It's the sleeper, so if the sleeper will not give, having a risen who, the sleeper, because he is his friend, yet because of his shamelessness, it's still talking about the sleeper. Having a risen who, the sleeper, he will give to him who will give, the sleeper will give as much as he needs. Now here's a crucial thing. I know in your NIV translations, some other translations that says, something like this, even if he will not give because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness, so give it to him, or the man's persistence. And so the way we've interpreted this parable is this to say that this parable urges us to pray persistently, if we keep on boldly knocking and persisting, we will eventually get what we want. I'm telling you that's wrong. The boldness does not belong to the asker, it belongs to the sleeper. All of verse 8 is about the sleeper. All of the action is from the man inside. The man inside will not arise, will not give, is not a friend, and yet because of his, not boldness, that's a wrong translation, because if he is shamelessness he'll get up and give him as much as he needs. Now, how can shamefulness or shamelessness or an interest in shame motivate like this? If this man goes to his neighbor and says, give me some bread, and the man inside says, I am not going to give you any bread, leave me alone, don't bother me. What is he going to do? He is not going to give up, he's got to get some food for his friend, so what he's going to do is go to the next house, and go to the next house, and he's going to say, listen, it's a shame I have to bother you, but I went over to Georgia's house, and Georgia wouldn't give me anything, because he's probably not only got to get bread but vegetables and stew and so forth, and he's going to go through the village, tell everybody, hey, I hate to bug you for two things, bread and vegetables, but you know, Georgia wouldn't give me bread, and the whole village would know. And so if only because of a desire to avoid being put to shame, he would get up and give as much as he needs. The shame is a concern, not of the knocker, but of the man inside who doesn't want to be put to shame. Now, what's the parable about? Think with me, representation. Who is the asker? Who goes around asking for daily needs? Who is it? It's us, it's disciples, it's every man, it's every woman. Who is the sleeper? Think, who does the sleeper represent? It represents your right, God, it represents God, and here's what the parable's saying. If you think, if you don't pray because you have some suspicion that God is like a grumpy, erasible, irrational neighbor who gives lame excuses for not giving us any help when we need it, if that's the way you think about God. If that were true, if only for the sake of his name, if only so as not that he put the shame, he would give to you. What he's saying is this, you entertain your darkest thought about God. Go ahead and bring it into the open, that's what's strange about this parable. It proposes something very odd, he says, suppose that God is mean, that God isn't different, that's what we fear, we don't want to say it, we try to hide it from ourselves, we don't want to bring our fear about that out in the open, but Jesus says, let's bring it out in the open. Label your fear, entertain it, turn it over, here's the answer, even if he were mean, if only for the sake of his own name he would do it. But God is not mean, God is a father to us, we're going to have to stop right there and come to the positive teaching of the parable, the way God actually is after a break.