Who is Praying?

Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. And He said to them, Which of you has a friend who will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me.

The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. Then I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and the one who knocks it will be opened.

For the father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will he instead of a fish give him a serpent? If he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? It'd be helpful to keep your Bibles handy. We'll be referring to the passage as we hear the message this morning.

Well, at the beginning of this particular chapter in Luke's Gospel, Jesus is asked by His disciples how to pray. Lord teach us to pray is what they say in verse 1 and in reply Jesus tells His disciples what to say. He gives them the words of the Lord's Prayer, something we're familiar with, something we used earlier on in our service this morning. But then Jesus goes on, He just doesn't stop at that point and like all good teachers and wise communicators, He goes on to reinforce His point by telling a story. Two stories in fact.

Not just content with the right words to say, Jesus teaches them how to pray, how to approach God in prayer. Two stories and that's our focus this morning. And one of these stories is about the friend who asked for three loaves of bread and the other is about a child who asks for a fish or an egg. Stories are not about the bread or about the fish or egg for that matter. They're about those who ask for them, the friend and the child.

So what is it about these two people that is so intriguing, so interesting for us this morning? And what is it that gets people praying like these two people? What after all is Jesus teaching us about the praying person? In both these stories the friend and the child are familiar to us. Hopefully most of us is a friend to someone, and we've all been children at some stage in our life, even though for some of us it could be hard to remember.

These two individuals, the friend and the child shouldn't be too hard for us to relate to. So the first story we're told about the friend who goes to visit a man who is in bed after midnight. Now who is this friend who comes knocking after midnight? I mean, apart from the pop group, Abba, no one wants to have a man call around after midnight. Give me, give me a man after midnight.

I don't think so. In a time and a culture without electricity, midnight was really midnight. And it was in the nighttime that you were fast asleep. It's not like today when many people are still awake, where there are shift workers and people coming and going even from home at midnight. This man, like most people at that particular time in ancient Israel, was living in a one room house and there was one bed in that house and that's why he says I'm in bed with my children, the whole family was in bed. And he had some kind of a friend who comes with a request.

He comes knocking on the door at midnight, and he's not coming because there's some kind of an emergency. He's not saying, well, my wife has fallen over and she's had a bad accident and she's bleeding. Can you please help me? Instead, here's his line. I've got a visitor, someone I know, and I've got no food to offer him.

How about lending me three loaves of bread? There's no way for the man in bed to respond to this request without waking up his entire household. Everyone's going to be woken up. And if you're a parent, you might know how difficult it is to deal with children who are awake at midnight or 1am in the early hours of the morning. And yet we're told eventually he does get out of bed because the friend keeps knocking and he gets what he asks for.

Why? Why does he get what he asked for? And Jesus says in verse 8, because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. The friend gets what he asks for because of his impudence says the ESV, the translation we read from this morning. The NIV, another translation has the words shameless audacity, because of his shameless audacity.

The New King James version simply has the word persistence. Another way to translate this word that Jesus uses here is rudeness or discourtesy, because of this man's impertinence, because of his impudence. Now remember Jesus is telling the story about this friend after midnight to answer the question the disciples were asking. Lord teach us how to pray. To pray like that says Jesus is to bother God.

We can read the word bother there. You're bothering me says the man in bed. But because he continues to be bothered, he gets up, gets the bread and Jesus says be a praying person just like that. Now hang on for a minute. We say that goes against common sense and even some of our best theology about God and it goes against what other religions say about prayer too.

The idea of continually coming back relentlessly, persistently asking for anything that we want. But hang on, as if to make the point, Jesus says the same thing in Luke chapter 18. Just to make sure that none of us think that what we're dealing with here is a one off teaching. In Luke 18 Jesus tells us how to pray and He uses another illustration which is just as startling. There is a judge, an indifferent judge, a casual judge, and there's a poor defenceless widow and she comes again and again asking for justice and the judge doesn't want to give it to her.

But eventually we read, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't come back and wear me out with her coming. Wear me out. Finally she gets what she's been asking for all along. And then Jesus says, and will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out continually is the sense to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off?

I tell you He will see that they get justice, and quickly. Day and night bother Him. Shameless audacity with impudence bother God. It's the reason for example why Jesus says prayer is like knocking in verse 9. You don't knock just once.

If you go to the door and you hear somebody knock, nobody will know that you're there if you just knock once. Have you ever noticed that? What you say is you hear this thud in the house and you say, hey, darl. What happened? Did something fall off the shelf?

Unless you knock repeatedly, it doesn't work. It's just one of the reasons our kids call a particular kind of a joke a knock knock. It's not just a knock. Now this doesn't make any sense. We have to be careful here and consider what kind of literature this is.

This is a parable. It's not an allegory. In an allegory, every feature of the illustration corresponds to some kind of spiritual truth. But in a parable, there's just one point, and it's important not to get lost in the detail. Remember the point.

Jesus is asked the question, Lord teach us how to pray. This is not about how God receives our prayers and what God does, but it's more about us, we, the prayers. So the questions we need to be asking are about the man who comes knocking at the door after midnight and the widow who wants justice. This is not about the actual answer that God gives to their prayers or God's character. We can't say that Jesus is the God who answers prayers like the father who has to get up at midnight even reluctantly or like the unjust judge who's going to be worn out by this particular widow, these do respond but they do so unsympathetically, almost under sufferance, begrudgingly.

But that isn't the point of the parable because that wasn't the question. The question is the one the disciples raised, Lord teach us how to pray. He's told them what to pray but now this how to pray. How must we go to God with our prayers? And in short Jesus says relentlessly, shamelessly, even rudely, constantly, consistently.

Now that's a hard truth. Why is it hard? Because it doesn't make sense. Can you imagine this being the teaching of Islam? Is that how a good Muslim should approach Allah?

With this kind of shamelessness, with this kind of audacity, constantly arguing, pleading with God. Can you imagine this being the teaching of Judaism, the way Jewish people are told to pray? Doesn't make any sense. Why if God loves us and knows what we need even before we ask Him, why should we keep at Him this way? Why if we respect and revere Him should we be talking to Him like this?

And why should we keep on doing so since we don't always get what we ask for? Well, the answer's right there in the text. It's almost as if Jesus can anticipate our questions. He gives us the answer. He says, we must pray like this shamelessly, audaciously, because we are His children.

We must pray shamelessly who want to become more and more His child. The whole, the key to the whole thing is this doctrine, this teaching of the church called adoption. In verses 11, 12 and 13 Jesus tells the story about the little child. It's not insignificant that these two parables are closely linked together and immediately begins talking about prayer in terms of a family, in terms of a child approaching his or her father, and here's why. Jesus did not say, pray this way, our friend who art in heaven or our judge who art in heaven.

No. Our Father who art in heaven. What Jesus tells us about prayer therefore makes no sense except on family terms. To trust and yet relentlessly bother God is something only a little child can do. Well put it this way, only little children have on the one hand the impertinence and the audaciousness to continually tug on a father's sleeve calling out dad dad and yet on the other hand they're able to do that with so much trust, so much confidence because they're not expecting to understand everything that the Father will do in response.

Children pray aggressively, children pray trustingly and only by thinking of ourselves as children and seeing that God is our Father, only that will make any kind of sense of our prayers. Let me develop that a little more. Children pray aggressively. None of the things Jesus says make any sense unless you understand God is your Father. Look at the great saints of old.

It's amazing. Here's Abraham in Genesis 18. And God comes to Abraham and says, Abraham, I'm about to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah where some of your relatives live. And Abraham begins to pray and look how he prays. He says, 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 not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Can you hear Abraham pleading, begging God? And God responds, alright. I will answer your prayer. I will spare the whole place for their sake. But then Abraham asks, let me ask You one more thing God, if there's 45 people, 45 decent people, what if I'm five short of the 50 that I've asked for, can You please not destroy the city?

And God says, okay. I won't destroy it for 45 people. Oh, and one more thing says Abraham. How about 40 people? For 40 people will You save the city?

Alright. I won't do it for 40 people says God. How about 30? How about 20? What's going on here?

How about 10? What's the matter with Abraham? Knock knock repeatedly. It's the shameless audacity of a child of God going straight to his or her Father in heaven. Consider Moses.

Moses praying in Exodus 33. He says, Lord I'm not going to see Pharaoh if You're not coming with me. You promised to come with me. He's arguing with God. He's reminding God of the promises that He once gave.

He's pleading with God to be consistent. How in the world do people talk like this to God? Think for a moment of great kings and prime ministers and presidents of great and influential and powerful people in the world today. The only people who can approach people like that and take such liberties are their little children. Even their spouses can't do it.

We see this with the royal family, Prince William and Princess Kate. You might have seen them on television during the Commonwealth Games, seated in the grandstand with all the dignitaries enjoying the games. But who gets their attention and the attention of the media? Well, there's so much happening on the netball court or in the swimming pool. It's eight year old Prince Louis.

Every time, it's the kids. You see, an eight year old child just doesn't see the issues. They will ask, they'll interrupt, they'll do it again and again, no matter what the time, no matter where the place, anywhere, anyhow. Children you see have unconditional access to their parents. Even your spouse doesn't have that kind of access.

The only person who can go to the Prince of Wales at 4am and ask for a drink of water are his children. Not even Kate could do that. I tried to imagine Kate waking him up. Oh darling, please will you get me a drink of water? And he would say, why?

Do you feel bad? Why can't you get it yourself? You don't allow it. So even your spouse can't take those kind of liberties with you, but a little child can. Reminding you of what you've said, tugging at your sleeve.

What counts as rudeness when talking to my neighbour or my friend or even my spouse is not rude when a child talks that way to his or her father. Only a child can relate to a parent and get away with it in a way that seems appropriate because we understand how the relationship works. There's no other way to explain how Abraham and Moses treated God and David and others. There's no other way to understand this unless you get it. When you became a Christian, your relationship with God was radically altered.

You and I have been adopted and the fact is that God is now our Father in heaven and that makes sense of Christian prayer. We get to talk to God on family terms. It's really important to understand in John 1:12 John says, yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children of God and those rights include access to Him in prayer. Most people believe that what it means to become a Christian is to go to God and say God I promise now to be a good person.

I commit myself to being good and that's really like signing up and drawing up a contract with an employer. Most people think being Christian is all about going to church or praying often or trying real hard. In that sense you relate to God as a boss. You sign up to an employer and you expect wages and benefits. You do not expect to go to your employer to ask for things unless you've earned them.

But you don't go the way a little child goes. You don't go to your employer constantly. You don't go with shameless audacity with the joy and confidence of knowing that you're talking to your Father in heaven. You don't go constantly and you don't go for the little things as well as the big things and you never ever go unless you feel you've worked hard and you deserve an audience with God. But that's not prayer.

That's not Christian prayer. Prayer doesn't have to be formal. It can be intimate. Prayer can be shameless. It's certain.

It always identifies the One to whom we are praying. He is our Father in heaven. Now don't misunderstand me please this morning. When we go to God it doesn't mean that we forget about His majesty, His holiness, His righteousness. I mean even Abraham who came back to God again and again.

Every time he would say, oh here I am talking to You O God and I'm just dust and ashes and You are the Judge of all the earth. But how about 30? How about 20? It's true to say that of Moses as well and God says to Moses take off your sandals because you're standing here on holy ground. Of course God is holy, He's majestic and we must never forget that when we pray.

It's precisely because of His majesty and because of His holiness, because of His towering greatness over us that this kind of access to God is so unbelievable. The invitation's there. Bother Him. Come asking for anything. Like asking for a drink of water in the middle of the night.

Pour out your heart to Him. Child also prays trustingly. More trustingly than the way an employee might talk to his or her boss. You see it says there in the text, 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.

Fathers love their children and children understand that no father would ever give his or her child, or his child rather, a snake or a scorpion. Fathers just don't do that kind of thing. What's interesting about children is they instinctively expect that parents only to give them good things even if they don't always understand why. Most of the time they hear adults talking about things and the little child has no idea what the adults are actually talking about. They actually understand that they don't understand.

A little child is often used to this. They go to a parent asking for something. Oh son, I know you want to have fun, but that would be very bad for you. You can't have the keys to the car. No scorpion for you today.

Or I know you love red cordial, but way too much sugar is bad for you. No snake for you today. And therefore in like manner, if you understand prayer on family terms, our Father in heaven gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything that He knows. Only that which is good for us and ultimately for His glory. That's how prayer works.

Your Father always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything that He knows, but He redirects. He says, I know you want to have fun, but this will be better. I know you want to have this or that or the other thing, but this will do. This is better. Children understand that instinctively.

Children pray aggressively. Children pray trustingly, and nobody else prays quite like that. I want to challenge you as I challenge myself this morning to do something and that is to pray like little children. To be honest the older I get the simpler this is. The blessing for me today is I can hear the prayers of my grandchildren around the dinner table and I realise that even as a grandfather now I don't have to be such a grown up all the time and especially in prayer.

I can put it this way, many of us have had excellent families and especially during our teenage years. I would suggest most of us have had somewhat mediocre families and yet there may be others among us who've had terrible families to grow up in. And if you watch little children, you'll see instinctively they do everything the Bible says here. Instinctively, they bug their parents. Instinctively, they expect parents to take good care of them.

They expect their parents to love them. That's why they expect to be loved. But to be honest, a lot of us had to have parents through which we learned that that did not always work. And so we've kind of lost those instincts. In fact, as we grow up, we lose those instincts anyway.

We lose that quality of complete childlike trust knowing that we are accepted, knowing that we're not to be kicked out of the family just because we've had a temper tantrum about an hour ago. We've lost the idea that we have a Father who loves us unconditionally and always wants the best for us. We've lost the idea that we can be open with Him not having to worry about right procedure or right words. Not to worry about whether I actually deserve to be talking to Him at the moment, but instead just to keep coming. That's instinctive to children.

Too many children today are abused and they learn to doubt. They pull back. They protect themselves and they do so very quickly. And even as we grow up into adults and we enter the school of hard knocks, we all pull away against this as well. And yet ask yourself this, what does it mean to become a Christian?

What does it mean to grow as a Christian? It means to get those childlike responses back. To embrace those kind of responses and use them in relationship with your Father in heaven who loves you unconditionally. Sometimes when I pray, I pray not with my hands folded, but I'm twiddling my thumbs. Or I'm just tapping my foot because I'm growing impatient.

You know God, it's taking a long time. I've asked God for things and they just haven't come through. Pray trustingly says Jesus. Pray without a doubt. Pray that your Father in heaven is working all things for good.

And if you're mad about that and if you're upset about it, it could be that because you're behaving like a toddler. Impatient, prone to temper tantrums. Prayer is so powerful. Moses understood this as no way he was going to see Pharaoh, the king and ruler of a great empire unless God would go with him. Prayer is so powerful that it has to have a safety catch on it and because we are like toddlers and we might be asking for things that are not good for us, not helpful for us because we just don't know what God knows.

As a little child then, will you accept His answers to prayers even if that is a no or a not yet? Some may be bitter and upset and angry. Your life, your family life is in turmoil because, well, God hasn't done things the way you want. And you're not practising the fact that you are His child. You're not willing to respond to Him as your Father.

He is our Father, and remember that only works on family terms. He only gives what is good for us. Question this morning. At the end of the day, what alternative do we have? What other options do we have instead of trusting Him?

If you don't know your Father in heaven, you're just tying yourself up in knots and getting bitter. You'll live your life thinking, I'm an abused child. I'm a victim really. I'm a rejected son or daughter. I'm not the full quid.

Sadly I can't say that I have this loving heavenly Father. Hear the words of Jesus this morning. Come to Me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Hear those words echoing in what Paul writes to the church when he says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. That's practising the fatherhood of God.

It's accepting the invitation of God Himself, recognising we are loved more than we imagined and we remain His children. Sometimes we don't pray because we feel so unworthy. We say 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. And that is that, that is the end of the matter. Throw yourself into His arms.

Feel His warm embrace. Unburden yourself. Enjoy the rest that He offers. If you can't, you're not practising the fatherhood of God. When we pray to our Father in heaven, we pray in terms of a family relationship.

He wants you and I to come back continually to Him. Fathers love repetition. As a father and as a grandfather, I love to have my children remind me of what I've said in the past. Often I'm surprised and delighted. We all know that we are being listened to.

We all like to know that we've been listened to and we've been heard. And prayer works the same way on a relational family basis. The Father in heaven wants us to come to Him depending on Him. He wants us to be taking what He said in His word and even to plead with Him on the basis of the promises that He gives us in His word. The Father wants us to become like Him, spending more time with Him, seeking His presence.

He knows there's nothing more we need. Therefore knock. Keep knocking. Jesus says, ask and it will be given you. Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven we simply ask this morning that as You've spoken to us through Your word, that You'll help us by the power of Your Holy Spirit to live out the truth of our relationship with You.

Help us to value our full inclusion into Your family. Help us to enjoy our childlike status. Help us to do that with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Help us to live out Your fatherhood in all the detail of our lives and forgive us, we pray, for those times when we act like victims, when we nurse our hurt and our pain. Help us instead to come running to You, to plead with You, to recognise You're the one who can remove all our burdens and give us that childlike simplicity with a childlike trust.

Help us to recover those responses. Show us more and more how to repent of sin in ways that change us and bring us the joy and the power that we want to have as we follow You. Only because we identify You as our great Father in heaven. And in Jesus' name we pray when we say together, amen.