Who Is Praying?

Well, as many of you know, we've been enjoying a series of sermons in this church from KJ about parables that Jesus tells. Last week, we looked at the parable of the miners in Luke's gospel also. And this morning, we've got the teaching on the Lord's prayer, but we've also got two kinds of parables, two kinds of stories that Jesus tells to help us understand the answer to the question those disciples are asking. Because at the beginning of the chapter, they asked the question of Jesus, "Lord, teach us how to pray." And it's fair enough. Jesus gives them the prayer, the model prayer, if you like.

A prayer that has stood the test of time and a prayer that is much loved by many generations of Christians the world over. One that can be recited off by heart, especially in times of need. But is that all that Jesus has to say about prayer? Like, "say this and you'll be praying effectively." No.

And like all good communicators, Jesus goes on to tell two stories to help us understand how to pray. Not so much what to pray, but how to pray even when we pray the Lord's prayer. These stories are about prayer and how we should pray and not give up. One is about a friend who asked for three loaves of bread and the other is about a child who asks for an egg. But the stories are not about the bread or the egg for that matter, but they're about the character or the attitude of those who ask for these things.

Who are they? And what is it that gets these people to keep on asking? What, after all, is Jesus really saying is fundamental to our prayers? So we're going to be thinking this morning about this friend and about that little child. So first of all, the friend.

A friend after midnight. Consider for a moment the kind of access this man has. Apart from ABBA, a well known pop group, no one wants to have a friend call after midnight. You might even know the song, "Give me a friend after midnight." I don't think so.

We're all encouraged to be somewhat hospitable, but not this, not after midnight. And then consider this: in a culture and in a time without electricity, midnight really was midnight. It was the middle of your night and you were sound asleep. It's not like today when people are still going to work or getting up or just going to bed. And this man, like most people of that particular time, was living in a one-room house and there was just one bed in the house.

And that's why he says, "I'm in bed with my children and my whole family was in one bed." And this is the friend who comes with a guest, who comes knocking at the door at midnight and he's not saying, "I'm coming with an emergency or there's a real crisis in my own family." It's not like, "Well, my wife has fallen down the stairs and she's had an accident and she's bleeding. Please, can you help?" Instead, this friend is entertaining a guest at his house and quite frankly, he just doesn't have enough stuff in the pantry to feed him, so he needs some bread.

So he comes knocking at the door and there's no way for the man in bed to respond to the request without rousing the entire household. Everyone's going to be woken up. And yet, as Jesus tells the story, eventually the man who is knocking does get what he asks for. Why? Well, the answer is in the text.

Jesus says, "He will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs." Quite frankly, he gets what he's asking for because he's bold. In the NIV, in the new NIV, the translation there is, "He has shameless audacity." Jesus is telling us here about an approach to prayer. As we shall see, it really is in the Bible. It runs throughout the Bible and it's an approach to prayer that runs against what other religions say about prayer, or even what, let's say, common sense has to say about prayer.

Because the word boldness is a nice way of translating rudeness or discourtesy or impertinence or impudence, or in the new NIV, shameless audacity. And so when Jesus is teaching us about the model prayer, he's saying, "Pray like that when you pray to your Father in heaven. Go on, if you will, and bother God." The word bother is really there. You're bothering the man who is in bed at midnight.

But because he continues to be bothered, eventually the friend at least got the bread and Jesus says, "I want you all to pray like that." This really goes against common sense when you think about it, and it goes against what other religions say about prayer. It's the idea of continually coming back to God over and over, relentlessly. Continue to ask for whatever it is that we want. And just in case you're thinking this is just a one-off occasion when Jesus tells us to pray this way, He backs it up, doesn't He? When He tells the story in Luke 18:1-8, and there He tells the story about a widow who also needs attention. And she approaches a man who's a judge and he's quite indifferent.

He's unjust and definitely doesn't feel like taking up the cause of this particular widow. But because she comes again and again and asks for justice, the judge just doesn't want to give it to her, but eventually we read, "I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming." Finally, she gets justice and then Jesus says, "And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out continually to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I'll tell you He will see that they get justice and quickly." Day and night, bother Him. Do it boldly, intentionally, be forthright.

That's the reason, for example, why Jesus says prayer is like knocking. You don't ever knock just once. If you go to the door and knock once, well, nobody's going to answer the door. You've maybe noticed that yourself. Instead, if you hear a knock, you might be more inclined to think, "Well, hey, doll, something's just fallen off the shelf or something fell down."

Unless you knock repeatedly, knocking has no value. "Knock knock," you say, and you say, "Who's there?" Again, you don't say "knock knock" twice for no reason. One knock is useless and everyone who knocks, therefore, knocks more than once. We have to be very careful, of course, at this particular point and consider what the parable is really about.

And the parable only has one point. Jesus was not asked the question, "How does God receive our prayers?" Instead Jesus was asked, "How do we present prayers?" "Lord, teach us how to pray." And therefore the story is not about how God answers prayers like the friend or the judge, the friend who got woken up at midnight or like the reluctant judge who served justice for this particular widow. Both of them, you could say, did that under protest.

They had no sympathy, but that's not the point of the parable and we shouldn't identify God that way. The parable only has one point and the parable is teaching us how to pray. That's the question. And Jesus tells the story to tell us to pray relentlessly, boldly, rudely, discourteously, constantly. And that's a hard truth. Why?

Because it just doesn't make any sense. Can you imagine that being the teaching of Islam, for example? Is that how a Muslim should approach Allah? With boldness, with that kind of shameless audacity, with real familiarity to the one whom he is praying to? Constantly praying, pleading, even arguing his case before God, reminding God of what He has promised.

Can you imagine that that's the way Jewish people would pray today? And secondly, does it make any sense? You may well be thinking, "Well, if God really loves me, He knows what I need anyway, even before I ask it. Why should I bother to tell him if I'm going to be bothering him?" We should respect what Jesus is teaching here.

He invites us to bother God. We should keep doing it until we get what we want. And why should we keep doing it? Well, the answer is there in the text. Jesus gives us the answer. Why?

He tells us to pray like a little child and this is the second story. We must pray boldly because when it comes to a relationship with God, we're to pray as little children. We must pray and learn to pray without any pretence, without any show, without anything hypocritical or insincere. We must become more and more like little children. That's the key to the whole thing.

It's the doctrine of adoption, the Christian doctrine of adoption. So in verses 11, 12, and 13, the metaphor changes. The story changes. We're no longer dealing with the man who has a visitor who comes after midnight. Instead, Jesus begins to talk about prayer in the context of a family, in terms of approaching a father.

And here's why. Because the opening words of the model prayer that He taught us to pray are not "Our friend who art in heaven." He did not say, "Pray this way, pray our judge who art in heaven." What Jesus has to say about prayer effectively makes no sense at all unless you're prepared to pray to Him on family terms. To trust Him even as a little child would trust a parent.

And yet at the same time, relentlessly bug God, doing that in a way that perhaps only a little child can do. Or to put it this way: only little children, on the one hand, have the impertinence and the audaciousness to continually tug on their father's sleeve, and yet are able to do that with so much trust and so much confidence, not able to understand everything that their father is going to do, but nevertheless to know that the father will respond. Children pray aggressively. Children pray trustingly. And only thinking of ourselves as children, and then seeing God as a father, gives any real sense to our prayers. Let's explore that.

First of all, children pray aggressively. None of the things Jesus is saying makes sense unless you understand that your God is your heavenly Father. Look at the great saints of old. It's amazing. Genesis 18, we go back to the days of Abraham and God comes and says to Abraham, "Abraham, I'm about to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah where some of your own family lives," and Abraham begins to pray.

Look how he prays. "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are 50 righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of 50 righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.

Far be it from you. Will you not judge? Will you not the judge of all the earth do right?" Now what do you hear Abraham saying? What do you hear Abraham praying to God?

Do you hear him begging? Do you hear him pleading as a little child might plead with a father? And God says to Abraham, "Alright, I will answer your prayer. I will spare the whole place for their sake." And Abraham says, "Then, well, let me ask you one more thing.

What if there are 45 people, 45 decent people in that city? What if I actually come up short of the 50? Will you please not destroy the city for the sake of 45?" And God says, "Okay. I won't destroy it for the sake of 45." And then Abraham comes back and says to God, "One more thing. How about 40?

What if there are 40 decent people in the city?" And again, God says, "Alright, I won't do it for 40 good people," and on it goes. "How about 30? How about 20?" What's going on here?

"How about 10?" What's the matter with Abraham? Knock, knock, repeatedly. The boldness of going to the Father. Consider Moses.

Moses praying in Exodus 33. He says, "I haven't got that there." He says, "I'm not going to do this if you're not going to come down the mountain with me. You promised to come with me." And there's Moses arguing with God, reminding God of what He's promised, saying, "Be consistent, God."

How in the world do these people begin to talk like this to God? Think of great kings and presidents and great prime ministers. Think of great and influential people and powerful people in the world today. The only people who can really approach them and take real liberties with them are their own children. Not even their spouses can do it.

We've seen that, haven't we, in the latest arrival in the royal family, Prince Archie. And when his father was asked how he was coping with fatherhood, what did Harry say to the media? He frankly said, "Don't get enough sleep anymore." And his brother, Prince William, paid out on him when he said, "Welcome to the sleep-deprived society known as parenting." So who gets all the attention of a parent at midnight or 02:00 or 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning?

Little children just don't see the issues. They'll make noises, they'll cry, they'll carry on again and again, no matter what the time, no matter what the place. Children have unconditional access to their parent. I'll put it to you, husbands: not even our wives have that kind of access to us. The only person who can get Prince Harry up at 4AM in the morning for a feed or a nappy change is going to be this new baby, little Archie.

But what if it was Megan who wants a drink of water at 04:00 in the morning? I tried to imagine. Megan would wake him and he would say, "What's wrong with you? Why do you feel so bad? Can't you get your own drink of water?"

We just don't allow it. So not even your own spouse can take those kinds of liberties with you, but your little children can. Reminding you of what you've said, tugging at your sleeve. What I say to a neighbour or a friend or even a wife can be seen to be so impertinent, so rude, but not when I speak to my heavenly Father. Only children can relate to a parent and do that in a way that seems appropriate, in a way that seems relevant.

And that's what we need to understand about our own relationship with our Father in heaven. There's no other way to explain how Abraham and Moses and David and others like them understood their relationship with God. We need to understand it occurring in the context of a father and a child. Adoption, Christian adoption. The fact that God is your Father makes sense of Christian prayer. We get to talk with God on family terms and that's really important to understand.

John 1:12. "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." And what's so amazing about this text is that it unleashes the power of prayer. When we come to grips with our relationship with our Father in heaven, we are engaged in prayer and it's one way to tell for sure whether we are Christian, yes or no. It's one way to tell for sure whether you really understand the power of the gospel, whether you can understand the difference between merely associating with God or whether you really do belong to God, whether you are His child.

John 1:12 says that when you believe, you become His child. You're adopted into His family and adoption is a real change, not of your nature or your behaviour, but adoption affords you a change in status. And by an act of God the Father, He shows you that you now enjoy privileges and an intimacy and an unconditional acceptance with God that no one else has: only His children. Of course, those of us who know the gospel know it's only happened because Jesus Christ is not merely an example to us as God's Son, but He is our representative and He died in your place and in my place to give us a right relationship with God the Father in heaven forever and ever. Now, please don't misunderstand me this morning. When we go to God, it doesn't mean that we forget about His majesty, His awesome power, His throne in heaven above.

I mean, even Abraham who came back to God again and again. Every time he would say something like, "Well, here I am talking to You, God. I'm just dust and ashes before You and You are judge of all the earth, but please God, how about 30? How about 20?" And on and on he goes. And that's true for Moses as well. When Moses approached God, God says to him, "Take off your shoes, for you're standing on holy ground."

Of course, God is majestic. We must never forget that when we pray. But Moses will remind God of what He's promised: to be with him, to go with him, even if he the reality of confronting Pharaoh. So that's prayer. Come on in.

Ask for a drink of water at four in the morning. Bother God. Pray with this shameless audacity. Pour out your heart to God even as a little child. Now the bottom line is something unique to people who understand that they're adopted and it makes no sense on any other turn.

A little child, when they pray, prays to a father aggressively but also prays trustingly. See what it says here: "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?" No. The implication is this: fathers, if your child asks for a scorpion, will you really give him a scorpion? And the answer is no.

Fathers just don't do that. And what's interesting about children is that they instinctively expect adults to do all sorts of inexplicable, understandable things for them. Most of the time they hear adults talking about things they have no idea about what is going on at all. In fact, children understand that they don't understand. A child, you see, is used to that.

A teenager might go to his father today and ask for something and the father says, "Son, I know you want to have fun, but it would be very bad for you. You can't have the keys to the family car. Let's have fun and try this or that or some other activity." Giving the keys is the equivalent of giving him a scorpion. And therefore, if you understand prayer on family terms, your Father gives you what is best, what is right. And that's how prayer works. Your Father gives you always what you would have asked for if you knew everything that He knows, but you don't know everything He knows.

You don't even understand the conversation that grown-ups might be having even after church when you go home for coffee or lunch. Father says, "No, you wanna have fun, but I've got another way to show you how to have more fun. I know you want to have this, that, or the other thing, but I will show you something else. I will give you something else." And children understand that.

So children pray aggressively, children pray trustingly, and nobody else does. And this begs the question: How will God respond? Who do you understand God to be? Who are you praying to when you offer your prayers? Do you really know Him well enough to talk to Him, to pour out your soul to Him?

If you're a Christian in church this morning, you know what you believe. You say, "I've received Christ as my Saviour and Lord and I know and declare that God is my Father in heaven." But I want to challenge you on that this morning. Saying it aloud, professing it even publicly in a church like this, is one thing, but to make that translate and have an impact on your prayer life is another. Most of us present in this room this morning have problems.

Problems that come because we don't believe it. We don't realise that many of our problems happen because we're not consistent about making that confession that God is our heavenly Father. Challenge me on that if you will, but let me say this: many of us come from excellent families. Some of us have come from mediocre families and yet I suggest a few of us here this morning have come from terrible families. And if you watch little children, you'll instinctively see that they do everything that the Bible says here.

Instinctively, bug their parents aggressively, trustingly. Instinctively, they expect their parents to take care of them. They expect parents to love them and they expect to be loved, and that's something instinctive. And they know that to be true. But a lot of us have had parenting, and especially in our formative years, in which we learned that that was not always the truth. That sometimes parents did not respond in ways that were loving, in ways that were understanding.

And consequently, we've pulled back from that familiar relationship out of families. We've lost that instinct to want to pray aggressively, trustingly. I'll put it to you that as you grow and mature, you lose those instincts anyway. Complete trust, knowing that you're accepted, knowing that you're not about to be kicked out of the family home because you've just had a temper tantrum, knowing that the Father loves you and wants your best, being able to open up and not have to worry about protocol, being able not to worry about whether I deserve this, but instead just coming. That's something instinctive to children. What does it mean to become a Christian?

What does it mean to grow as a Christian? It means that you get those childlike responses back, to recover those responses, and you have those responses not so much to earthly parents, but to your heavenly Father. So often when we pray, we treat God like a genie in a bottle. What would you expect if your four or five-year-old got hold of Aladdin's lamp? I haven't seen the movie yet, but I understand it's coming.

Now Aladdin has three wishes and I reckon if you had a five-year-old and he could have three wishes and with which he could ask for anything he wanted, as a parent, you'd get away from him as far as possible. There's no telling what that little person is going to be asking for. In fact, maybe the smartest thing to do is to take off in a rocket and go to the moon, to go someplace safe, because disaster is looming. I'll put it to you: if you're a Christian and you've been asking for something and God has not given it to you, maybe you've been asking for a scorpion. And if you're mad about it, if you're angry, and if it's because your prayer life is not working, maybe you're treating God like a genie in a bottle.

It doesn't work that way. We're all toddlers. Prayer is so powerful. Moses understood that. If this is my Father, then I've got access to the throne of Him who is King of the universe, and this is the greatest power, the most meaningful resource that I could ever have.

Prayer is so powerful that it's gotta have a safety catch on it because we're all toddlers and we don't really know what we should always be asking for. So prayer doesn't work like Aladdin's lamp. If it did, we would have all killed each other by now if we haven't already killed ourselves. Prayer only works on family terms. We go to our Father, not to a genie. That's what prayer is.

He is your Father and prayer only works on family terms. What's the alternative to trusting Him? Well, you'll just end up becoming bitter and tying yourself up in knots. There's no other alternative. Let me give you another example of how we treat God.

Sometimes we choose not to pray like little children because we feel so unworthy. You say, "Oh, because of what I've done, because of how I've failed, because of what I've done, I couldn't possibly keep coming back to God talking to Him like that." You're talking to God like an employee, not like a child, and you're treating God as if He were your employer. If you sign up for an employer, you expect to get wages, certain benefits. You don't expect to get anything when you underperform or when you simply do not perform. But look at what Jesus says here in the text.

Jesus says, "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven?" If you, then, though you are evil—and Jesus is talking to His disciples here—evil. You who are evil, we who are evil, even in this room right now, even those of us who have given our lives to God, we're still self-centred. We're still full of all kinds of flaws. We're still evil.

But guess what? God is still your Father. He is still our Father. Think about that. Let that sink in and never turn away from Him because you feel unworthy.

Come to Him. Run to Him. He's not your boss. You don't say to Him, "I broke a rule today and therefore I cannot expect any wages or any benefits." He's not your employer. He's your Father.

Throw yourself into His arms for anything. Do you really unburden yourself? Take up His yoke and give Him your burdens. If you can't, if you cannot do that, you're not practising His fatherhood. Here's one more.

Some of you, though, don't think of Him as Aladdin's lamp or a boss, but here's another. A lot of people say, "Well, I've asked God once and that's all I should ever need to do." Well, that's treating God like a computer. You know, my computer: if I put a file in a particular folder, it simply does not want it there ever again. If I try to paste it in there again, it says something like, "Well, sorry, a file cannot be copied onto itself."

It only needs it once. God is not a computer. He's a Father. God works in the context of relationships. But why do you think He wants you to continually come back to Him?

Fathers love repetition. We love to have our children remind us of what we said. These days, my aging mother suffers from dementia. Her short-term memory is shot, but she loves to hear the stories of decades ago when she functioned well as a mother, as a parent. She loves the repetition.

She loves the affirming statements that were a reminder of times long ago. Prayer works like that with God as well. God loves it when we can quote to Him what He's promised us in His Word. When we remind Him of His good character, of how it is that He wants us to bless Him. He wants us to come to Him depending on Him, taking literally what He has said in His Word and reminding Him of it.

Which of the wives among us doesn't want to hear their husband say to them again and again, "I love you, darling"? I'm reminded of a story where a wife asked her husband, "Do you love me?" And he said, "Well, back in 1984, I told you and if I change my mind, I'll let you know about it. Why do I need to tell you now?" And the answer is your wife is not a hard drive.

She's not a place where you park your files. A file cannot be copied on itself. Your wife is a person and the reason you're not relentless in telling her you love her is because you treat her as a computer. Knock and keep knocking. Keep knocking.

Paul writes about his dear friend, Epaphras, in Colossians and here's what he says about Epaphras: "He sends greetings. He's always wrestling in prayer for you that you may stand firm in the will of God, mature and fully assured." Here is a man that Paul identifies as someone who's wrestling, crying out to God day and night, and it's good for us. It's the only way in which prayers will be heard by God.

A way in which we can be remembering our family, our friends, people that we love, knowing that God is delaying even the return of His Son in anticipation of all those coming to faith that He has chosen. Consider your neighbourhood. Consider the picnic planned for next Sunday. What about our witness? How are you going to impact your neighbours unless you can pray?

Pray for them without ceasing. When we wrestle in prayer for them, for our neighbours and for our family, we come to God again and again, knocking, knocking, going back again and again to our Father in heaven. We're the ones who are there tugging on His sleeve, reminding Him of what He has said in His Word. And you can almost hear God stooping down to listen, inclining His ear towards His children. Says the psalmist, "I love that. I love the way you talk to me as my child. It honours me so much."

It is good for me and good for you to pray that way. Using that prayer, like that, can have the potential to change not only your own life, but the lives of the people you're praying for. So pray relentlessly. Become the instrument that God wants to use. His instrument in the world today. And then have the peace and joy of knowing that you are in your Father's arms. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, we simply ask that as You have spoken to us in and through Your Word, that You'll help us to live out the truth of our relationship with You. We identify our adoption, our childlike status with You. We identify Jesus as our brother and our friend. Help us to pray even as Jesus taught us to pray, even as we have seen Him pray throughout the scriptures. Lord, we pray that we might live out Your fatherhood in all the details of our lives.

Help us to see that our anxiety or our anger is because we're not praying with childlike simplicity and childlike trust to You. Help us to relearn those responses of a little child so that we can always respond to You. Help us to recover those responses and show us how to repent of sin in ways that change us and bring us the joy and power of the gospel because only then can we identify You as our great Father in heaven. Thank You for binding us with You through the blood that was shed on the cross and so saves us from all our sins. Thank You for Jesus and in His name. Amen.