Luke 11:5-13

Luke chapter 11 beginning with verse 5 and reading through verse 13 and he said unto them which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him friend lend me three loaves for a friend of mine is in his journey is come to me and I have nothing to set before. him and he from within shall answer and say trouble me not the door is now shut my children are with me in bed I cannot rise and give thee I say unto you though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend yet because of his import importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth and I say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek you shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you for everyone that asketh receiveeth and he that seeketh findeth and him that knocketh it shall be open if a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father will he give him a stone or if he ask a fish will he for a fish give him a serpent or if he ask an egg will he give him a scorpion if then being if ye then being evil know how to give good gifts under your children how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy ghost your holy spirit to them that ask him may god bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning There was a small town that didn’t have any liquor stores and eventually a nightclub moved into the town. There on Center Street they opened up. Members of one of the churches were quite upset about this so they decided they would conduct some all-night prayer sessions about the situation. And they asked the Lord to destroy that den in in iniquity and one day lightning struck the night. club and burned it to the ground. The owner, knowing that the church people, had been praying against him, took them to court and sued them. His attorney claimed that their prayers had caused the loss of the nightclub. The congregation, on the other hand, hired an attorney and fought the charges. After much deliberation, the judge finally declared, it’s the opinion into this court that wherever the guilt may lie, the nightclub owner is the one who really believes in prayer while the church members do not. Jesus tells us here of this parable of the persistent friend in this passage of scripture. One of the marks of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven is that he or she believes in prayer. You daily engage in prayer, seeking for the Lord’s guidance and the Lord’s help. And it’s in reference to your duty to pray that Jesus does tell this parable of the friend in need. A man here, and he puts it in the personal sense, suppose it was you. But a man received a visitor in the middle of the night. The visitor, had come a long way. He enters the house and the man didn’t have anything for him to eat. And so he’s hungry and weary from the traveling. And because of the day and age, at the time, he didn’t have refrigeration, you didn’t have a way to store things very easily, so not too much got stored. Usually he went to the market daily to get whatever you needed. So people by nightfall might run out of food. Well, in spite of this, the man still wished to care for his visitor, who had come from quite a distance, and so he decided to go to his friend who was a neighbor and ask if he had some bread that he could give him. But it was midnight. It was late when he got over there and knocked on the door. He wants to arouse this man out of sleep. But the night. The neighbor wasn’t in any mood to get out of bed that night. He said he’s in bed with his wife and children. I guess they all slept in the same bed at the same time. I don’t know. I don’t know how that would go with all the elbows and feet and stuff. But they were all in one bed. And he says, if I get up, I’m going to wake everybody up and, you know, I’ll have to get a light and I’ve got to get the bread and it’s just going to disturb everybody. And I’m not going to get up. And so he answered, don’t trouble me. The house is locked up for the night. We’re all on bed. bed, leave us a lot of them. This was a flat refusal. But the man at the door wasn’t going to give up. He’s persistent. Keeps knocking on the door. Keeps pleading for the neighbor’s help. And his persistence finally pays off because the man says, although he would prefer not to get out, he’s, his patience is exhausted. He finally says, if I don’t take care of this guy, he’s just going to keep knocking at the door. So he gets up and gives the man what brings him. he needed he didn’t do this merely because this friend this person was his friend he did it because of his shameless persistence in knocking on the door and so we want to speak this morning on the topic of persistence in prayer. Now as a child of God you know that prayer is essential. Prayer is an important characteristic of a child of God. When you are saved by God’s grace, you begin to realize how utterly dependent you are upon God for His grace, for every day that you live. It’s not surprising that one of the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach us how to pray as John thought his disciples. We need to know how to pray. And so Jesus gave the mild prayer. We looked at and threw through, through, But here’s the important thing. There’s spiritual life within when a person is motivated to pray to the Lord. Do you remember when Paul was persecuting the church and he was going to Damascus to arrest the people there that were Christians and put him in jail, put him to death and so forth, arrest them? And Christ appears to him. He’s dramatically converted. But he’s blind for three days. And he gets taken into the city of Damascus by those who were with him. And he is at a particular house on Strait Street. And God sends a man, a godly man, Ananias, to come and remove his blindness from him. And what did God tell Ananias about Paul? Behold that He pray us. this is the first time he prayed in Christ’s name and to Christ. But he’s now praying. Oh, he muttered some things that he called prayers before, but this is true prayer to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He prayed. So here is a babe in Christ, just converted, but he prays. Prayer is an area in which you as a Christian must strive to grow because Jesus not only gave us the mob, prayer here, but he adds this section on persistence to it as something to encourage us as well. Now you notice that your relationship to God is that a father and son. As we see here in verses 11 through 13, the connection here is father and son. Now we’ve already known from the model prayer that we’re to address the Lord is our Heavenly Father. So he keeps that idea up. And in the parable, we know that was friend to friend. But here’s something you can quote better. This is a father-to-son relationship. And this drives home. The point. This is the attitude of God toward his believing children. The argument is from the lesser to the greater. If a friend will do this for a friend, How much greater will a father do this for his own children? If a son asked his father for bread, will he give him a stone? We see, this connects it with the parable about asking for bread. A friend will give three loaves at midnight. What kind of father would give a stone to a hungry boy? He would ask for bread. Who would give a son a serpent instead of a fish? Or who would give him a squirrel? scorpion instead of an egg. No father would mock their children in such a heartless manner as that. Generally fathers, even though we are fallen in Adam, and evil in nature, still provide good gifts for our children. Believing fathers, while sinners certainly do so. How much more then will your heavenly father provide for your well-being? as one of his children. Children have to rely upon parents for provision, and we have to rely upon God for provision. So our Heavenly Father loves you, assumes the responsibility for your needs and your cares. He knows what you have need on before you ask, and so you can come to God in prayer and ask for it. So as a child of God, you know prayer is essential. There’s no question about that. Now, as a child of God, you need to pray for the right kind of things. You should focus on spiritual things. Now, from bread in the Lord’s model prayer here, asking for day by day for our bread, and for bread that’s asked by the friend in the parable, he moves on to something greater. than just the physical need. It talks about the spirit of God here, asking for the spirit of God. If in our prayers we ask for material things, we would ask for prosperity or worldly things, which our carnal flesh might crave, these things are of secondary nature to spiritual things. and doesn’t he want to provide the best things for his children, of course? Yeah, we’d eat bread, but we need something even greater than that. Now, it’s important that we understand this, and I’ll emphasize this again. We’ve emphasized this before. If you’re a child of God, you already have the Holy Spirit. So what does he mean when he says, here he’ll give them the Holy Spirit? Well, sometimes the Holy Spirit is just a shortened, phrase that’s used for the gifts and graces of the Spirit. And so the idea here is that Jesus is saying that God will provide those gifts and graces that you need as one of his children that come from the Spirit. All the blessings of salvation that were earned for you through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross are granted to you by the Holy Spirit. And so the point here is we apply for those blessings when we pray. Here we are. We’re waging a spiritual warfare against sin, against Satan, and we need grace to endure this conflict. We need love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tamperance, the fruit of the Spirit as we go through this life. Because we’re going to have to deal with troubles and sufferings and distresses and persecutions and all kinds of temptations. Now, God is willing to provide these spiritual gifts for us. We simply need to ask him. And grace from God is much greater than any physical or material things that we could ask for in this life. So you should focus on spiritual things. You should ask for what is truly needed. It’s evident that this man who was knocking on the neighbor’s door at midnight was seeking help for a real need. He didn’t come with some vain or silly request to the Lord. He didn’t trouble his sleeping neighbor with non-essentials. He needed bread, a staple food. He didn’t ask for lobster. He didn’t ask for T-bone steak. He didn’t ask for pheasant or something of this nature. He just needed some basic food to feed his visiting friend. Now, God expects you to come to him for the normal staples of life that you need, like daily bread. and he will provide those things for you. As a Heavenly Father, God does not begrudge you what you need, but you need to go to him for it. Notice something else here. You should seek help for others. If you look at the Lord’s prayer carefully that he laid out, notice how he says in verse three, give us day by day our daily bread. Verse four, forgive us our sins. verse 5 or verse 4B lead us not into temptation to deliver us from evil notice the plural nouns your pronouns here the man knocking on the neighbor’s door did so for a friend who was in need thought that the man needed to eat at midnight but his visitor did and so here we have the idea of not being selfish in our prayer. but praying for those fellow believers who need God’s blessing. His motivation and our motivation should be love for others. We intercede for another. That shows love for that individual. Concerned for that individual. It keeps you from focusing exclusively on yourself. I like what Samuel said when he was basically retiring from, the duty of prophet because they had chosen a king. He said this, God forbid that I should cease, I should sit against the Lord and ceasing to pray for it. I won’t forget you. I will keep praying for you. So as a child of God, you need to pray for the right kind of things here. Spiritual things, for what’s truly needed and help for others. Thirdly, as a child of God, you need to pray in the right manner. you should pray with courage. I say that because you and I are sinners. It was midnight when the traveler came to the neighbor’s house and yet it took some courage to go to his neighbors, knock on the door, get him up, and try to get some bread from. It took some courage to do this. Knowing that his neighbor would be none of the door. too pleased with it. It may seem this way with your prayers. You are a child of God, but as he indicates to us here, we still have evil in us. We’re still corrupt. We’re still sinful in the eyes of God. We don’t always walk the way we should. Sometimes we deny the Lord, as Peter did. Sometimes we manifest love for the world, as we should not. Daily we forfeit certainly the right to blessed of our heavenly Father. But you bow your head at night after a day of sinning against the Lord and you pray for forgiveness. And you’ve asked for God’s blessing. Sometimes you’re ashamed of yourself because of your failings. It’s humbling after a day to look at yourself and say, boy, I failed on here and here and here and here, and here. And so we can become prayer-shy-shy-shy- But God would have us come boldly before the throne of grace. It asks for the things that we need to help us. We sort of have to be like Esther going before the king. Well, I had out the golden scepter. It was a scary moment going there, but she went. She knew he loved her. And she went and asked. And so we take our request. before the Holy God. And so we have to have some courage. You should pray with courage. You should also pray with persistence. Now in verse 9, he says here, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be open under you. There’s a rising intensity in these words of Christ. Ask, seek. Seek. Knock. In the Greek, there are two kinds of imperatives. Ask, seek, and knock are imperatives. There’s the heiast imperative. That means you’re commanded to do one particular thing at one specific point in time. It’s like a period at the end of the sentence. There’s a present imperative. which is a command only to do it once, but to keep on doing it indefinitely. It’s like a bunch of periods put together, so you’ve got a line. Let me put this in a simple way. Suppose you say to a person driving the car, stop at that light. That would be the heirest imperative, but it refers to one action. That light. Stop at that light. light. But if you would put it in the present tense, in the present imperative, you would say, stop at red lights. That means every red light you come through, you’ve got to stop. So these words, ask, seek, and knock. There’s an element of persistence here, and they’re in the present imperative. Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. We’ve got to be like the man in the peril. It keeps not. knocking on the neighbor’s door. We’re to ask without ceasing for God’s blessing. We’re to seek. Now, here we have the idea, perhaps, of action added to the seeking. Persistently praying, but actively endeavor to obtain what you’re asking for. One should not only pray for a deeper knowledge of the Bible, you should open your Bible and read it. Study it. so that you would get a greater knowledge of it. And knock, here we have prayer plus action plus perseverance. We’re like the persistent friend. We keep knocking on the door until it’s opened. You’re confronted with a closed door. You don’t know how soon God’s going to open it. So you keep knocking. Persistence in prayer is commanded in the Bible, of course. The Bible says this. and you shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart. Or, as we read in Isaiah 62, 6 and 7, you shall make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest. Don’t give him any rest. Men always ought to pray and not to faint, Jesus said, in Luke chapter 18 and verse 1. There are times it seems that God has turned his face away from you. There are times that heaven seem like brass. There are times when you pray and you don’t get an answer. At least not right away. And Jesus says, here, don’t get discouraged. Keep seeking, asking, seeking, knocking. Redouble your efforts. I had Russell read the story about the man with the palsy. He was carried by the four men who wanted to bring this man to the house where Jesus was healing people, that they may. have their friend healed. But it was crowded. People were packed in like sardines. They couldn’t even get close to Christ. Did they give up? No, they decided, well, we can’t get in the normal conventional way. We’ll take the towels off the roof and we’ll lower them down by ropes, evidently, right in Christ’s presence. Christ saw that their faith and their persistence in this, and he healed their friend. Remember Jacob as he wrestles with the angel at Penael. He won’t let him go. I won’t let you go till you bless me. Remember the Sira Phoenician woman in the Gospels. She sought that the Lord would heal her daughter. How easily she could have been discouraged when Christ said to her that he can’t give food meant for the children under dogs. She was a Gentile dog, so to speak. she’s not an Israelite What did she do? Did she walk away, discouraged? No. She increased her plea. She said, that’s true, Lord. Yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Surely, you have a little crumb for me here. Surely, yes, well, the bulk of your healing may be for the children of Israel. Surely you have a crumb of healing for me. And her prayer was answered, and her daughter was healed, you remember? Do you remember Blind Bartimaeus? Who’s sitting there begging and the bystanders tried to shut him up? He kept crying out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, and the more they tried to shut him up, the louder he got. And Jesus stopped and gave him his sight and healed him. You should pray with persistence. You should also pray with hope. Notice verse 10. For everyone that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be open. It seems to me that Jesus is saying, keep doing this, and you’ll have success. Eventually, I will answer your prayer. God doesn’t ignore his children, nor do you pray in your own strength. Isn’t that the Holy Spirit who prompts you to pray? And if the Holy Spirit is prompting your prayer, it is the fruit of the grace of God, that you’re praying. Truly, God can’t ignore the work of grace in you that he’s doing. Also Christ is praying for you, isn’t He? Isn’t Christ there as your eternal high priest in the most holy place there in heaven, interceding on your behalf? He continually prays for you. Maybe your prayers are unworthy. Maybe they’re misguided in some way. Doesn’t he make them right? The Father never ignores the prayers of the Son. He always hears the son’s prayers. The Bible tells us. If God is going to hear our prayers, he will eventually answer them according to his long purpose. Surely, when you’re praying for God’s cause, when you’re praying for His kingdom, when you’re praying for the right kinds of things, God is going to give you those things. Now, God’s answer may not be exactly what you expect, but God will provide an answer. So the manner in which you should pray, with courage, with persistence with hope. Let me close this morning by saying this. The nightclub owner who took the church members to court who had the all-night prayer sessions to stop his nightclub, believe that their prayers caused the burning down of his nightclub by the lightning. They fought the charges and saying their prayers didn’t cause the fire. But the truth of the matter is, the world, it shouldn’t. be like that. That’s the opposite of what it really is. The world doesn’t believe in prayer. You as a child of God should believe in prayer. The world doesn’t trust in God. And he’s not in all their thoughts, but he certainly should be in yours. So one of the marks of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven is prayerfulness. Are you persistent, though, in your prayers? This is the key factor from today’s study. Persistent. in prayer. Don’t give up too easily or too quickly. Let’s close with a word of prayer.