Disciples Should Not Ignore God
In our trek through Luke, we’re in a section with three back-to-back-to-back episodes about a follower of Jesus’ responsibilities before God. In the first part of chapter 10, the disciples were sent out for ministry and came back excited about the results and Jesus reminds them where their true identity lies (v. 20). And then Jesus talks about how blessed his disciples are to see what they’re seeing and that it’s only because of his grace (vv. 21-24). The first part of chapter 10 is Jesus reorienting the disciples’ thoughts about who they are, or their identity.
Then, beginning with the parable of the Good Samaritan in 10:25-37, Luke gives us this three-unit section about a disciple’s responsibilities before God. They’re to love their neighbor by serving those in need (10:25-37), be devoted to Jesus and pay attention to his words (10:38-42), and then, in our text for today, they’re to depend on God through prayer (11:1-13).
The disciples are jazzed about their ministry but not clear about their identity. So Jesus teaches them (and us) that we shouldn’t be so distracted by serving others that we ignore God. He’s saying that our service to others is best done in context of being in regular contact with God. Serving others flows out of our relationship with God.
Discipleship and Prayer
A key part of that relationship is prayer. Jesus says that being his follower means living a life of dependent prayer to God. One of the responsibilities every Christian has is a dependency on God demonstrated through an active prayer life.
Jesus’ teaching on prayer undoes what many of us think about prayer. Many think that prayer is a passive religious activity, a ritual we have to do but aren’t sure why or how. Prayer sometimes feels like this obscure and abstract thing. It’s deep and difficult and complicated. Other times it feels arbitrary or impulsive. We do it but we don’t know what we’re doing!
The way Jesus talks about prayer is much different. It’s not passive or obscure or impulsive. Rather, it’s direct and definite, simple and inviting. As one writer says, “Prayer is not a mysterious burden but an inter-relational adventure with God, with Jesus as one’s example and companion.”[1]
We know we should pray, but we’re not sure what to do. We don’t know what to ask or how to ask it. Jesus knows this, so he teaches us how to pray. His main point in this section is that God’s good gifts come through bold prayer. He tells us what to pray but also how to pray.
In our text, Jesus shows us the what of prayer (vv. 1-4) and the how of prayer (vv. 5-13). He doesn’t want us overthinking and overcomplicating prayer. It’s literally just talking to God, and God is good, so talking to him connects us to his goodness.
The What of Prayer
In verses 1-4, we see the what of prayer. You’ll recognize that this is a shortened version of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. Matthew’s version has 57 words in Greek, Luke’s has 38. I won’t get into why there are differences, but it’s very possible that Jesus taught his material multiple times and that Matthew’s version is an expansion of Luke’s.
Notice that his disciples want to know how to pray. Verse 1, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They want to grow in prayer. They see others doing it and want to do it themselves. We’re only going to grow in prayer when we want to. We always and only do the things we want to do.
Two Imperatives
Jesus meets their desire with the model prayer of verses 2-4. It begins with two imperatives, “Let your name be hallowed (or made holy, sanctified),” and “Let your kingdom come” (v. 2).
This shows us something very basic about prayer: it starts with God, not us. How do you normally start your prayers? If you’re like me, you’re prone to start by focusing on all the things you need or want.
But Jesus is teaching us to start with praise. He’s telling us to start our prayers by focusing on God. Just as you praise one you love with words of kindness and affection, rather than giving them your laundry list of complaints, so also we approach God first with praise not petitions.
Notice that he says we should approach God as “Father” (v. 2). Jesus often addressed God as “Father,” which was unique among rabbis at that time. There’s no evidence that anyone used “my Father” to address God. Yet Jesus addressed God that way and taught us to do the same!
Why? Because, as I said a few weeks ago, God is “Father…all the way down.” Of course, he’s more than that, because he’s also Son and Spirit. But the Source of the Fountain, so to speak, that is God, is “Father.” This designation represents and describes God’s nature and character. It reveals who he is. He’s a Father, meaning, he begets children (eternally in the Son), is inherently love and life-giving. And, as Michael Reeves says, “all his ways are beautifully fatherly.”[2]
Jesus teaches us to understand God as “Father” and to address him as such, because he wants to make sure we have the right ideas in our mind about the kind of God we’re praying to. Understanding God as Father shapes the way we’ll pray.
Three Requests
The two imperatives of verse 2 are followed by three requests in verses 3-4. Jesus teaches us to pray for physical needs and spiritual needs. He knows we need food every day to live, so he tells us to pray for it. The idea is that we’re to pray for necessities, not luxuries. Praying for food and housing and clothes and work is good. Praying for bigger and better whatever is not.
But Jesus knows our lives are more than physical, so he tells us to pray for spiritual things too, specifically for forgiveness and for protection (v. 4).
There should be confession of sin in our prayers. “Forgive us our sins” means we have sins that need forgiving. If you struggle to know what they are, ask the people around you and they’ll help you out! Disciples need the regular washing of their sins. Daily repentance should be a normal part of their lives. If you struggle to see sin in your life, then pray for your spiritual blindness to be removed, and seek out honest friendships with people you love and trust.
Jesus says that God’s forgiveness toward us creates a virtuous cycle of us forgiving others. Because Jesus liberates us from our sins, we’re compelled to forgive people indebted to us.
In a culture addicted to hating and canceling and being suspicious of anyone who disagrees with you, forgiveness should make Jesus’ people stand out. As one writer says, “There can be no life without forgiveness. A world of revenge and retaliation is a world of terror and dread; a world of forgiveness is a world where there is renewal of life, peace, and hope…Believers are not simply objects of forgiveness; they are also conduits of forgiveness, extending to others what God in grace has freely extended to them.”[3]
Prayer in the Imperative, Not Subjunctive
The what of prayer is praise and petition. We start with God and remind ourselves what’s truly important. Then we bring requests for physical and spiritual necessities.
I said earlier that prayer isn’t supposed to be passive or obscure of impulsive. Rather, Jesus teaches us to pray direct and definite prayers. He tells us to approach God with bold confidence, not polite timidity.
Jesus tells us to join him in a position of intimate trust with the Father (“Abba”), and to therefore approach him directly. All the verbs except “forgive” (v. 4) are in the imperative mood. This means that disciples should pray expectantly because God wills to act according to his promises.
This also means we don’t pray things like, “Lord, if you will, if you would, if you might, please provide for my needs.” He is willing! So we pray, “Lord, provide for my needs, forgive my sins, protect me, etc.”
Prayer is talking to God with dependent directness. Since God is our Father we approach him with confidence that he wants to do the things he told us to ask him to do. Hebrews 4:16, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
The How of Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer gives us the content of prayer but not the attitude we should have in prayer. This model prayer could lead disciples to think that, since God is so holy perhaps we should keep requests to a minimum and be careful about bothering him too much. He’s the sovereign King of the universe so we need to approach slowly and quietly, lest we upset him.
So Jesus turns from what we should pray to how we should pray. He gives this short parable to make the simple point that God is approachable and should be approached with confidence.
Don’t Wake the Kids
Look first at the parable in verses 5-8. In ancient culture, food wasn’t readily available. There weren’t stores open all night and bread was baked each day for that day. And it was expected that if someone came to visit you, you had to be a good host.
The host in this parable has a real problem: a visitor has come in the middle of the night and he doesn’t have any food for them! So he has a choice to make. He can either go to his neighbor’s house and ask for bread though they’re probably asleep. Or he can leave his neighbor alone and be a bad host.
Many ancient houses were one room with one mat that everyone slept on. Waking up the owner would wake up the whole house. So Jesus is saying, “Which of you has the nerve to wake up the neighbor – and his family – at midnight to ask for bread?”[4]
The host knows that no matter how quiet he is or how he paints his dilemma, the neighbor will be bothered by the request. The neighbor doesn’t want to be “bothered” (v. 7). He sees the request as a nuisance. Not because he can’t provide the food, but because of the chaos that it would create.
Anyone with small children understands this. When the kids are finally asleep, you don’t do anything to wake them! Peace and calm have descended on the house, mom and dad can finally breathe, and anything that interrupts that is enemy number one. When we’ve had babies in the house, I perfected the art of opening and closing doors without making noise. I feel like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 1, dropping into that room trying not to touch anything less the alarms go off.
“Shameless Boldness”
Jesus is saying that this neighbor could help, but he just doesn’t want to because it’d make his life harder. But by the end of verse 8, he’s given him the bread. What changed his mind?
The point of the parable is in verse 8. The word for “impudence” in the ESV is a hard word to translate because it’s only used one time in the New Testament. Some take it to mean “persistence,” which would mean the neighbor helped because the friend just kept asking. But the idea of a repeated request isn’t clear. Jesus teaches on persistent prayer in 18:1-8, but here the focus is something else.
The reason the neighbor gets out of bed, probably wakes the kids, and makes bread in the middle of the night is because of his friend’s “shameless boldness” (CSB). Think about the nerve it took to go wake up the neighbor and his family in the middle of the night. This friend is willing to do whatever it takes and even willing to risk being rejected in order to be a good host.
The audacity and gumption and brazenness and brashness and even presumption of this guy is amazing. This word has a negative connotation, but Jesus says it’s the reason his friend got up and gave him some bread. He doesn’t help him because he’s a friend. He helps him because of his boldness.
What’s Jesus’ point? Jesus is contrasting the neighbor with God. If an irritated neighbor responds to boldness, then so will a gracious God. Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. If a man responds this way to a bold request, then so will a good and gracious God respond to those who have the nerve to bring their honest requests to him.
Jesus is inviting us to bring our prayers to God with boldness, making our needs known with confidence that he hears and will respond. Yes, we pray for his will to be done, but we also pray with fervency. Prayer isn’t this quiet, calm, passive practice. In prayer, we wrestle with God.
If we overemphasize submission in prayer, we’ll become too passive. We won’t pray like Abraham pressing God to save Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16-33), or like Moses pleading with God for mercy for Israel and himself (Ex. 33:12-22), or like Habakkuk and Job questioning God’s actions in history, or like the psalmists who’re constantly sharing their honest thoughts with God about what’s happening to them and asking him to intervene.
The parable is also about God’s humility. Unlike this neighbor, he’s willing to be “bothered” in ways we wouldn’t tolerate. He can be approached with “shameless boldness” because he’s not offended or bothered by honest and urgent prayer.
Guard against Spiritual Adultery
In verses 9-10, Jesus invites this kind of prayer. He’s not offended by direct and bold prayers, he welcomes them!
We sometimes feel uncomfortable asking the Lord for things because we don’t want to be guilty of wanting anything more than God. John Piper has a great section on this in his chapter on prayer in Desiring God. He talks about James’ exhortation against praying just to get what you want from God. James calls this spiritual adultery (4:3-5). Piper says it’s a wicked thing to pray to our heavenly Husband for worldly things with which we’ll commit adultery on him. He says the way to pray for things without glorifying things over God is to pray that our delight in them is also a delight in their Maker.[5]
So we must guard against spiritual adultery and idolatry, or asking God to give us things we really love more than him.
“A Proper Earnestness of Desire”
Nonetheless, in verses 9-10, Jesus urges us to pray boldly and expectantly. In his discussion on prayer, the old Princeton theologian Charles Hodge says that “we should manifest a proper earnestness of desire.” He says this comes from “appreciating the value of the blessings for which we ask.”[6]
“A proper earnestness of desire.” Does that characterize your prayers? If not, it may be because you think desiring things is wrong and you’re suspicious of your heart wanting things.
Desire, however, isn’t bad in itself. Like everything else, it can be and is corrupted. But desires for godly things honor God. Though there’s the danger of desiring created things in an idolatrous way, it’s nonetheless okay to want things God wants. And Jesus is saying that it’s okay to pray for them earnestly and boldly.
What do you desire? Deeper friendships? A spouse? Kids? A growing marriage? Sex in your marriage that’s less transactional and that grows and deepens the oneness of your “one flesh” union? Better health? Healing from chronic pain? A job to provide for your family? A job that better aligns with your gifts, skills, and interests? Salvation of a loved one? Healing of our divided country? More people to be saved and discipled in our church? More elders and deacons in our church? Missionaries and church planters to be sent from our church?
James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (4:2). He and Jesus are encouraging us to bring our requests to God with boldness. Yes, we must guard our hearts and pray for pure motives. But we also need to stop being embarrassed about the God-given desires in our hearts for godly things. Proverbs says, “A desire fulfilled is a tree of life” and “A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul” (13:12, 19). If a fulfilled desire is compared to the sweet life of the Garden of Eden, then godly desires aren’t bad. Rather, they point us to the life we were created for.
“Ask, And It Will Be Given to You”
The tense of the three verbs in verse 9 (“ask, seek, and knock”) indicate an ongoing and habitual engagement. In verse 10, Jesus tells us what the outcome will be. It’s not tentative or uncertain but clear and sure.
Jesus doesn’t mean you’ll get everything you ask for. When we ask for godly things, God will provide even if it’s not exactly what we had in mind. When we seek, we’ll find what God wants to give us, even if it’s not exactly what we were looking for. When we knock, doors open, even if they aren’t the ones we were knocking on. The point is that when we pray, God works.
Do you see why prayer isn’t mysterious or passive or impulsive? Rather, it’s direct and simple. It’s not complicated. Jesus wants us to come to him with our honest requests and pray for them like we mean it.
For example, if you want to be married, don’t pray like this, “Lord, if it’s your will, if you could, if you might, I’d love to be married, but only if you want and in your timing and when I’m ready and only if it’s your will.” There are some good things in this prayer. But why not rather pray, “Lord, I’d love to be married, please provide me a godly spouse. Amen”?
The Lord isn’t offended by our honest and direct prayers. He prefers them.
Good Gifts from a Good Father
And the last few verses show us why (vv. 11-13). God isn’t offended by bold prayers because he’s a good Father and it’s his pleasure to give good gifts to his children. And notice the specific good gift God wants to give his children: the Holy Spirit (v. 13). God generously gives himself to those who ask.
This is the message of the gospel, that God offers himself to anyone who admits their need for him. He sent the Son to die for sins and now he sends the Spirit to bring us to the Son and empower us to follow him. God isn’t stingy; he loves to give himself away.
God’s goodness is why we can be direct with him. He’s a good Father. And his goodness is most visible as his Son hangs on a cross for our sins. If he would do that for you, won’t he also provide all the rest? This is exactly what Paul says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)
The cross shows us the goodness and provision of God. And it creates a secure foundation for our relationship with him. Christ brings us to the Father and the Father is so happy we’re his children and promises to hear our cries and answer.
The cross reveals God’s goodness and God’s goodness compels us to trust him. And in the security of this relationship, we’re free to be assertive with him, to speak the truth in love.
God’s goodness toward us is why we can be direct with him. If we belong to him, we’re safe in his arms. Our bold prayers aren’t annoying or off-putting. They’re music to the ears of our good Father. And he promises to give good gifts through bold prayer.
[1]James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Luke, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 338.
[2]Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 23.
[3]Edwards, 335, emphasis his.
[4]Darrell L. Bock, Luke, Volume 2: 9:51-24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996), 1057.
[5]John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2003), 164-8.
[6]Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018), 703.