Good morning. As we continue our series on the power of prayer, we are going to look at two of Jesus’ parables on prayer. They are both in Luke, and they are separated by just a few chapters. So please turn to Luke 11, but be ready to flip to Luke 18.
There’s a supposedly true story of a country woman who was the last in the county to get wired for electricity. So she calls the electric company, pays all the fees, and they come out and has power installed in her home. However, after a couple of months, the electric company noticed she didn’t seem to use very much electricity at all.
Thinking there might be a problem with the hookup, they sent a meter reader out to check on the matter. The man came to the door and said, "We’ve just checked your meter and it doesn’t seem that you’re using much electricity. Is there a problem?" "Oh no" she said. "We’re quite satisfied. We turn on the electric lights every night so we can see to light our lamps and then we switch them off again."
Now, why didn’t this woman make more use of her electricity? She believed in electricity. She believed the promises of the electric company when they told her about it. She went to a great deal of trouble and expense to have her house wired for it. But she never made the most of the power she had access to.
I suspect there are people who do the same thing with prayer. They believe in prayer. They know of the promises God has made. They’ve even read and heard stories about answered prayers. BUT they use prayer’s power sparingly…
Maybe they don’t understand how prayer works. But unless you are an electrical engineer, you don't really understand how electricity works either. But that shouldn't keep you from flipping a switch.
Or maybe they don't understand how God's sovereignty and authority work. Maybe they think it doesn’t really matter whether they pray or not. They say to themselves, “Well, God’s sovereign. He's gonna do what God’s gonna do anyway – so why bother!? But if that's the case, you're kind of arguing against yourself. Because the sovereign God has told us to pray, and He has absolute authority!
But I'm afraid most of us treat prayer like the woman on the farm who just turned the lights on long enough to light her oil lamps. We use prayer as a supplement to their own efforts. But in our heart of hearts, we don’t view prayer as making that big an impact on the decisions we make every day.
I think that’s why Jesus told the parables we are looking at this morning. In Luke 11:1, Jesus' disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. Did you know this is the only time in the entire Gospels when the disciples explicitly asked the greatest teacher who ever lived to teach them something? And I love that they didn't say, "Teach us to walk on water--because that was really cool." Or, "teach us how to fundraise. Because that's really going to come in handy for a lot of pastors in the future. No, they asked Jesus to teach them to pray. And in response, Jesus told them this parable, and then a little while later the second parable we are going to look at.
If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word. Now, normally I use the English Standard Version when I preach, but today I’m using the New International Version, and I’ll tell you why in a bit. Here’s the first parable: Luke 11:5-13:
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[e] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
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 opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 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!”
Now, flip over just a few pages, and let’s read Luke 18:1-8
18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Pray…
Perplexing parables, profound point
You probably noticed that both these parables basically tell the exact same story. But in each parable, there’s also something unexpected.
Jesus was the greatest teacher that ever lived, and He knew that a fundamental principle of teaching is that you never learn anything without being a little disturbed. For the lesson to truly stick with you, there has to be something a little unpredictable. A little surprising.
We get the point. Look at Luke 18:1:
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (Luke 18:1).
Matthew Henry said that Jesus left the key to this parable hanging on a hook. In other words, he tells you at the beginning what the point of the parable is—and that is that we should pray and not give up. So the point, with both of these parables, is that…
1. Persistence pays off. God’s word says we should pray at all times. That means regularly, not continuously. Jesus is urging us to maintain the habit of prayer, regardless of whether things are going well or poorly. We tend to give up, “lose heart,” as it says in the English Standard Version. J.C. Ryle says that “it is far easier to begin a habit of prayer than it is to keep it up.” A day goes by without prayer, and we become discouraged. A week goes by, and we are tired. A month, and we are in despair.
So in the first parable, Jesus asks his disciples to imagine that they are a friend who goes to his neighbor at midnight and says, “lend me three loaves of bread, because I’ve got a buddy coming into town.” Now, you can ask the question, “Who does that?” in the ESV, Jesus’ inttroduction is phrased like a question, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’;
If I had been one of the disciples, I think my answer would be, “not me. If I still wanted to have a friend the next day, there’s no way I would do that. And you can tell the friend is really annoyed—Go away. I’ve locked up the house, the kids are asleep. Wal-Mart is open twenty four hours. I can’t believe you are asking me this.
But the text goes on to say that even though your neighbor won’t give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your “shameless audacity” he will give you what you need.
I love that phrase in the NIV. New American Standard says “persistence.” ESV translates it “impudence.” But the Greek word is an-AYE-day-ah. Aidaios means a sense of shame or modesty. It literally means having your eyes cast down. But when you put “ah” or “an” in front of a Greek noun, it negates it. So an-AYE-day-ah literally means no shame.
The widow in the Luke 18 parable has the same sense of shamelessness, and she gets the same result. Keep in mind that a widow in Jesus’ day had almost no resources. She was about as powerless as she could be. But day after day, she keeps coming to this judge, whom Jesus introduces as someone who neither fears God or respects man. Day after day she comes to him, begging for justice against and adversary.
Finally, this unrighteous judge says
‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
Don’t you love this image? Picture your favorite little old lady. Maybe its your mother or grandmother. Maybe its one of the senior adult ladies here at church. And here’s this judge, who is described twice as not being afraid of God or man, saying, this old lady is going to attack me! Again, the NIV probably makes the best translation choice here, because the Greek word hupopiADZo literally means to punch someone in the face.
And I think that’s what is perplexing to me about these parables. Are we really supposed to be like an obnoxious neighbor who wakes up his friend in the middle of the night to get bread? Are we really supposed to be the little old lady who is so persistent with her requests that an unrighteous judge is afraid she’s going to beat him up? Is that how we are supposed to approach God in prayer?
The answer is yes, and here’s why: Because
2. God’s character is so much better
• Better than a friend (11:6). You don’t have to worry about waking God up in the middle of the night with your request, because the Bible says that God never sleeps or slumbers. (Psalm 121:4). You don’t have to worry about God being surprised by your request, because the Bible says that he knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:8)
Better than a father (11:8). In the first parable, Jesus goes on to say, Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 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!”
Many of us had or still have great fathers, who are wonderful examples of Godly men. But a lot of people don’t. I went to seminary at a time when preachers were trying to be hyper-sensitive to the emotional issues people were dealing with, and we were taught to be careful about referring to God as father because of the emotional baggage people can attach to that word. But when Jesus teaches about God as our heavenly father, he is saying, “No matter how good your earthly father is, your heavenly father is so much better. And even if you have an earthly father who is a bad example, you can trust that your heavenly father is perfect. The key word in verse 8 is “how much more.”
God’s character is so much better than a human friend. He is so much better than an earthly father. And third, he is so much better than an unrighteous judge. In the parable, this man is described as unjust. I believe in the United States we have the best legal system in the world. I believe judges really seek to be fair and impartial. But even the best of them make mistakes, and there are judges that are corrupt, or allow their own bias to cloud their judgment. But the point of Jesus’ parable is that if even an unjust, biased, corrupt judge will respond to an old lady’s shameless persistence, how much more will God, the righteous judge (2 Timothy 4:8), bring about justice for His chosen ones?
So what do we do? We approach God with confidence. And we are persistent. We don’t just ask once. In both of these stories, the emphasis is that the asker kept asking. Jesus makes it explicit in Luke 11:9-10:
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 opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
3. ASK Means Keep ASKing (Luke 11:9-10)
ASK and it will be given to you: when you are in need of something, you ask for it.
S EEK and you will find: when you are looking for something, you seek it (wisdom, peace, answers, something you’ve lost)
K NOCK and the door will be opened: when you want to see someone, or when you want access to somewhere, you knock on the door.
The emphasis here is on continual action. We’ve talked before about the fact that Greek verbs have a tense, a voice, and a mood. The tense tells you past, present, or future. These verbs are in the present. There’s also a voice—active or passive. These are in the active voice, meaning you are the instigator. You are the one taking action. Finally, there’s the mood. When a verb is in the imperative tense, that means it’s a command. Not an invitation. It requires full obedience.
Both of these parables teach that you don’t just ask, you keep asking. It reminds me of a story Paul Harvey told on his radio program years ago. A young boy went to the grocery store with his mother. She put him up in the cart & he sat in the little child’s seat while she wheeled down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. He saw the chocolate chip cookies & he stood up in the seat & said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “No, you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies. Sit down.” So he sat back down.
They continued down the aisles, but in their search for certain items they ended up back in the cookie aisle. “Mom, can I please have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you that you can’t have any. Now sit down & be quiet.”
Finally, they were approaching the checkout lane. The little boy sensed that this may be his last chance. So just before they got to the line, he stood up on the seat of the cart & shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?”
And everybody round about just laughed. Some even applauded. And, due to the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy & his mother left with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies.
I want to ask, are you being persistent in your prayers? Would anyone ever accuse you of shameless audacity in your prayers? Or do you come to God timidly, afraid you are going to bother him? Afraid you are going to make him mad?
Jesus ends his teaching on prayer in Luke 18 with a question. He says, in verse 8:
However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
What kind of faith is he looking for? I think he is looking for people who are shamelessly audacious in their prayers. Who are going to persist in prayer until they get a clear no.
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith at Glynwood? Will he find faith in your home? Will he find faith in your prayer closet?
There’s an interesting story in the Old Testament when Jacob wrestled with God. In Genesis 32, Jacob is on the run from his father in law. He makes camp next to a brook called Jabbok, and according to verse 24, “a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” We learn later that this “man” is actually the angel of the Lord. So Jacob is basically wrestling with God all night long. I think this is a picture of persistent prayer. Notice how “shamelessly audacious” Jacob is:
26 Then the man [that’s the angel of the Lord] said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
Could you be bold enough to grab hold of God and say, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me?” this is the same angel of the Lord that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. With a word He could completely destroy Jacob. Instead, he says,
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
God gave Jacob [the name means cheater or deceiver] a new name that day. The name Israel means “one who struggles with God.
I want to be that kind of pray-er. I want to be Israel in my prayers. Don’t you?
When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
Invitation
