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How do you approach God to get things and what things do you expect?
Roulette Wheel - spin the wheel and take your chances
Genie - you get three wishes, any wishes you want
School master - be good enough and earn a good enough grade
Donald Trump - approach from a power position and make your best deal
How many of you know the Lord’s Prayer by heart? Most of us do. That’s a problem. We say it like mindless babble at best, an incantation at worst. As if just saying the words have a power of some kind. In actuality, the Lord’s Prayer has a lot to teach us about God, His Kingdom, and our place in it. Approaching God in prayer is a wonderful and dangerous thing-you might find you get what asked for!
Verses 1 - 4 The Lord’s Prayer
Was this a formula?
In a way it is our attitude towards God: You are God (I am not) and I want you to rule (instead of me), provide what I need, including grace when I fall, and make me like You for you are God (your character of unfailing love, mercy, and forgiveness into my character).
Verses 5 - 13
Jewish custom demanded two things: to provide lavishly for a visiting guest and to supply a request from your neighbor.
The word "impudence" here (translated persistence (NKJV) or boldness (NIV)) is used only here in Luke 11 and means both boldness and shamelessness. Imagine that man out in the middle of the night banging on his neighbor’s door - probably waking up the whole neighborhood. Would you do that?
The point here is pretty simple: you don’t have because you don’t ask (James 4:2). But it’s not just a thoughtless wish just tossed heavenward. Here we are talking about bold and persistent prayer - like it really matters to you. We are also not talking about trumped up prayer - God sees through that before you even speak the words.
Things that matter to you matter to God, but He wants to hear you, to hear your heart cry out. That kind of prayer can actually settle your mind on what is really important.
The second thing is what the answer was. We pray for a million dollars and God gives us - what? He gives us an unlimited eternal supply of: The Holy Spirit. Now I know you can’t go down to the grocery store and when they ring up the bill and ask if it’s credit or debit you say, "Oh, I’m paying for this with the Holy Spirit."
I think this is pretty radical. God isn’t as interested in the physical need (He supplies that too - we’ll see that in the next chapter ("consider the lilies of the field …" 12:27). He is more interested in healing, growing, and changing the inner person - strengthening us and empowering us by giving us part of Him. I think this radically changes our outlook and our expectation.
Verses 14 - 23
So here we have this wonderful God who is willing to give us a part of Himself. And the people are claiming that the power at work is actually the power of Satan. Beelzebul is probably a compilation of two Hebrew words: ba’al who was a local Canaanite fertility God (Hos 2:6) and "zebul" which means "exalted dwelling." The Jews who heard this would have understood it to mean Satan.
The Pharisees had a thriving business of driving out demons. If it was by Satan’s power then both He and the Pharisees did it by that power - rhetorical statement - of course the Pharisees would not say they had driven out demons by Satan. He also then says that a king would not throw out soldiers of his own army - that would be absurd.
The "finger of God" is probably a reference to what Pharaoh’s magicians said about Moses as he wielded God’s power to free the slaves in Egypt (Exodus 8:19). No worldly powers can overthrow Satan, but Jesus is stronger (as we saw in chapter 8 with the man who had a legion of demons).
When Jesus says "whoever is not with Me is against Me" He is saying there is no neutrality - you are either on God’s side or on Satan’s - and the default is Satan’s side. Now earlier He told the disciples not to stop a man who was throwing out demons but wasn’t one of their group - so in the fight against evil you are always on God’s side. That’s how people who don’t know God can still do His work - it doesn’t mean they are saved, but anything you do to overcome evil is actually overcoming evil.
Verses 24 - 26
This is an interesting little bit of information about demons. I think Jesus’ point here is that just getting rid of evil in your life won’t do you any good unless you fill it with something good. You can’t just opt out of the fight between good and evil. You can’t just conquer a bad habit or decide to be nice and expect it to stick. Since evil is our basic nature you will return to evil. It’s only by the regeneration of our hearts that we have any hope of being or doing good.
Verses 27 - 28
This verse seems a little odd to me - what’s it doing here? It certainly does fly in the face of Mary worship, though, doesn’t it? We as humans are always looking for objects to worship. God strictly forbids us worshiping anything other than Him. By the way - women in that culture derived their worth from the sons they bore - so that may be why this woman spoke up in this way.
Verses 29 - 32
Jesus’ point is that it’s not your ancestry that matters in God’s kingdom but your openness to God’s Word telling you to believe in the Messiah.
For the Jews that belief was often predicated on some sort of sign or miracle. This wasn’t a bad request if their hearts were ready to receive Him. These people wanted tricks and selfish requests filled. Jesus is not a magician and He doesn’t perform miracles or signs on our demand.
The real sign they needed was the one He would perform on Himself - the death, burial, and resurrection from the dead. Jesus uses the story of Jonah to illustrate it. Interesting because Jesus here validates the story Jonah and the big fish. Interestingly - here he says that he is like Jonah - who preached to the Ninevites that they would die unless they repented. Those folks - who were gentiles - believed and were spared. Many in Jesus’ generation would not accept Jesus’ warnings and would perish.
The Queen of the South refers to the Queen of Sheba, who traveled to Jerusalem to visit with Solomon, David’s son. She too was a gentile, but sought Yahweh.
Verses 33 - 36
Essentially the lamp here is Jesus and his ministry. It wasn’t done in secret but out in the open. The idea of the eye is that if you receive the truth (light) of what Jesus says then your heart and mind are filled with light - but if you reject him then what you think is light is actually darkness.
John 3:19-21 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God." ESV
Verses 37 - 53
The Pharisees were the most powerful religious/political group in Jesus’ day. They had taken the Scriptures and said "if a little Law is good, then a lot is better" and created hundreds and hundreds of rules for people to follow. All this led to an outward appearance of righteousness - while the inward man was just as evil as ever.
Today people are not that different. They think that if they create a set of rules that make them appear to others as righteous, and they stick to that set of rules, then they are righteous and God must accept them. It’s self delusion, really.
You see, it doesn’t matter how others perceive us. It doesn’t matter how good we feel. It is actually much more objective than that. Either you are like God, or you cannot be in God’s presence. And when we were born we were not like God and there is nothing we can do to make ourselves pretty before Him on our own. Only Jesus is like the Father and only by putting on Him can you get rid of the evil - actually by dying and being raised with Jesus.
But - that apparently doesn’t stop us from still trying to please God through our own set of man made rules - or trying to accomplish God’s character through our own strength. More on that this Wednesday.
Look at verse 53 - instead of responding to the light and repenting, they instead sought to kill the messenger. May we never be in that situation. When God calls us on the carpet for something our fleshly response is to silence the words - so we don’t go to church or we don’t read our Bible or we don’t continue in friendship with someone - and we go from bad to worse
Conclusions
Make it your aim to have more of God, rather than more of anything else.
Make it your aim to listen to God - receive what He says, instead of what you hear around you in the world or even what your flesh tells you
Make it your aim to respond to God’s Word - not in a legalistic way, but in a Spirit filling way, letting Him make new life in you.
