Random Quotes & Articles to Provide Food for Thought
Luke 11:1-13
My subject tonight is Prayer, and I want us to begin tonight by asking ourselves a few questions–like: “Do I pray out of a sense of duty–that as a believer it’s something I ought to do; or as a kind of Christian lucky charm, hoping that if I keep up my daily prayers everything will somehow turn out right? Or do I pray with the intention of getting answers; of actually receiving something from God? And do I stay with the thing and stay with God until I receive something from heaven?”
I’m afraid that personally I have to admit that a lot of the time my praying falls into the first category. Not that I’m denigrating praying out of a sense of duty–that’s much better than not praying at all. And I suppose the “bless so-and-so” and “help so-and-so” kind of prayers are heard in heaven. But at the same time I think we’ve got to take prayer into the realm of expecting something to happen as a result. In Psalm 62:5 we read “My soul, wait thou ONLY upon God, for my EXPECTATION is from him.” The Psalmist was clearly expecting something from God as a result of his praying.
It’s this thought of praying UNTIL we get an answer that I want to pursue with you for a little while tonight. Let’s look for a moment at the example of the friend at midnight that we just read in Luke 11. The picture, I suppose, seems a bit strange to us: a weary traveler arrives on your doorstep very late at night and you haven’t got a crumb in the whole house so you go to your friend’s house and batter down the door until he gives you some bread. That seems a strange way of carrying on to us. I wonder what kind of reception we’d get from some of our friends if we went battering on their doors at midnight wanting bread? It seems reasonable that if your house was burning down or something really drastic was happening, then it wouldn’t be out of place to go down the street and shout and bang on someone’s door for help. But the idea of doing that for just three loaves of bread seems incredible.
But, we’ve got to remember that hospitality in the East, especially in Bible times, was considered obligatory. That is to say that if someone came to visit you and you didn’t have a meal to set before them, you must go and do something about it at the risk of life and limb. It was an INTOLERABLE situation. It couldn’t be allowed. And this is just the situation that the man in the parable found himself in–an intolerable one. Something MUST be done. The only thing to do was to go to the house of the nearest friend and stay there and make a hullaballoo if necessary–anything just to get some bread on the table.
Picture this man, then, rushing down the street to his friend’s house. When he arrives he gives a sort of gentle tap on the door so that he can perhaps get away with not disturbing too many folk. But there’s no answer. He keeps knocking, and keeps knocking, louder and louder until someone from inside finally sticks his head through an upstairs window. “What on earth do want at this time of night?” By this time some of the neighbours are awake and wondering what the commotion is in the street. Perhaps a few others get up and poke their heads through the window and give him a bit of a telling off for disturbing the peace at such a late hour. Perhaps they think he’s drunk.
When the man inside realizes that it’s just Joe Bloggs down the road wanting bread, he tells him he’s in bed, everything’s shut up, locked and barred, so be quiet and go home if you please. I’m told that in those days in the working men’s homes the whole family would sleep in one room on a sort of shelf, and if one got up, it disturbed the whole lot. The man outside must have known this, but he just kept on knocking and shouting. He was undeterred by his friend’s refusal. The man inside ONLY got up and gave his friend the bread in order to SHUT HIM UP. It wasn’t because he was his friend. It was because his friend was acting like a SHAMELESS BEGGAR.
In the text it says “He will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his IMPORTUNITY…” Do you know that the word “importunity” in this text really means “shamelessness” or “impudence”? I didn’t know that. I had always thought that importunity meant that you just keep on and on and on; and it does mean that as well. But the predominant sense of this word as used here is SHAMELESSNESS.
Now if we study the context a little, we can see that this parable was spoken in answer to a request by the disciples. In Luke 11:1 the disciples had said, “Lord, teach us to pray…” And as an answer to this request, Jesus gave them what we call the Lord’s prayer and then this parable of the friend at midnight, followed by the example of fathers giving good things to their children. It was all instruction regarding prayer. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this parable was spoken in answer to the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In fact, you could say that the Lord’s prayer shows us WHAT to pray for (in other words the coming of the Kingdom, daily bread, forgiveness, etc.) and this parable shows us HOW to pray. We are to pray, Jesus says, like SHAMELESS BEGGARS. “Blessed are the BEGGARS in spirit,” Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount. That’s what we are–poverty-stricken beggars.
What do I mean when I say that we are poverty-stricken beggars. Well, just think about it for a moment. What spiritual blessing can we possibly confer on ourselves? Take forgiveness of sins, for example. In order to have our sins forgiven we have no option but to come to God and plead with Him for this blessing. What about the gift of the Holy Spirit, mentioned in the Scripture portion we just read? The same principle applies: we are poverty-stricken beggars! Our only option is to plead with God for the blessing. We are totally dependent on God for every good thing. We have nothing good in ourselves. We’re totally bankrupt, spiritually speaking. Listen to Paul in Romans 7:18, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.” All of this means that if we are to obtain any good thing, any spiritual blessing, we must come before God as shameless beggars and ask—and keep on asking until we receive.
This man at midnight could have allowed a sense of shame to make him retreat and leave without the needed loaves. “What will the neighbours think? What will my friend think of me after this? Will he ever look at me again?” But the driving sense of obligation to provide hospitality gave him the motive power to overcome all sense of shame. And that’s what makes prayer effective–the sense of need so overrides every other consideration that we forget all our unworthiness and shame and everything else that would hinder us coming to a holy God.
Let’s just cast our minds back to the Old Testament for a moment. There we find a real-world example of someone who prayed shamelessly: Jacob. When Jacob fled from home after stealing Esau’s birthright he prayed to God at Bethel and made vows. But then when he got to Padan-Aram he got married and prospered in business and soon FORGOT GOD and all the promises he had made. I think if you read carefully the history of his twenty years in Padan-Aram, you’ll see that Jacob seldom, if ever, prayed. I don’t think he became an idolater or anything like that, but he just NEGLECTED GOD. Follow Jacob to the river Jabbok, though, as he travels back to Canaan, and what do we find? We find Jacob praying!–praying like never before in his life–as if his very life depended on it (and it did!). After twenty years of neglecting God you’d think he would be too ashamed to pray. Probably he was ashamed. But he couldn’t let that hinder him from praying for deliverance from Esau who was coming with 400 armed men. And his shameless begging prevailed with God. He stayed with God until the answer came.
Now let’s come back to our parable of the friend at midnight. “Because of his SHAMELESSNESS he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” The point of the parable is this: If an earthly friend can be moved to give loaves of bread at midnight because of shameless begging, “how much more (verse 13) shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” It’s not that we have to somehow overcome God’s reluctance to give; God delights to give good things to His children. It’s that God wants to see that we are determined to get an answer, that we won’t be put off. He doesn’t dole out His best gifts willy-nilly; He waits until our asking reaches the place where, like Jacob and the friend at midnight, we won’t take no for an answer.
Of course that doesn’t mean that we can ask God for anything and if we ask hard enough and long enough He’ll give it to us. That’s not what I’m saying. Remember that immediately preceding this parable we have the Lord’s prayer and in this prayer the Lord safeguards his teaching on the efficacy of prayer by laying down strict conditions. For example, “Thy Kingdom come. . . Thy will be done.” This means that we can’t pray selfish “I want” prayers and expect God to answer them, but we must pray IN ACCORDANCE WITH GOD’S WILL.
If we DO pray according to God’s will, and if we ARE determined not to give in without an answer, God WILL give us the blessing we’re asking for.
Amen.
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