We're going to look at that passage. Let me pray, though.
Father, I thank you that we can come together now and we can look at one of these,
the essentials of those who are your disciples, looking at the issue of prayer.
And, Lord, we acknowledge that we don't always have your priorities in our prayers.
Father, we pray that as we come to a passage which is familiar to us,
there's certainly words which are familiar to us.
Lord, I pray that you help us to rediscover them afresh and anew
and challenge us, we pray, and we ask it for your sake. Amen.
One day out in the Canadian wilderness, an atheist was taking a walk,
admiring the amazing wilderness that was some sort of freak accident
had sort of brought together, the wildlife that was there by some random chance,
the pristine stream that flowed by because a bunch of molecules come out,
collided millions of years ago and ended up with this wonderful beauty,
when all of a sudden he was awoken from his godless daydreaming by a grizzly bear
which was coming straight at him down the track.
And before he knew it, he was flat on his back.
The bear was knelt down beside him, pushed down on his chest with one paw,
another paw raised, ready to strike him.
And when he cried out all of a sudden, God save me!
Then he realised the inconsistency of living a life as if God doesn't exist
and then in the moment of need, decided to call on God.
And so he had a bit of a moment of brainwave
and instead he called out, God make the bear a Christian.
He figured if the bear was a Christian, the bear's not going to eat him.
And lo and behold, he couldn't believe it.
His prayer was answered.
The bear pulled back its paw.
It pulled its paw off his chest.
It knelt down beside him, closed its eyes, bowed its head,
put its paws together and said,
for what I'm about to receive, may the Lord make me truly thankful.
When difficulty or danger strikes,
it's the immediate response of many people to pray.
It's not unusual for people to pray.
Prayer is one of those things which is, I would say, almost universal
in that I can't obviously answer for six odd billion people,
but I'm working on the assumption that most people,
nearly everyone at some point in their life will pray.
However, when we pray, we often don't give much thought to what we're praying.
Adults often struggle with prayer,
whereas kids tend to find prayer sort of simple and easy,
certainly in a way that we often don't.
I want to say that as a Christian though,
and hear me bearing some of my soul here,
I think that my own lack of prayerfulness exposes my ungodliness
in a way like nothing else does.
I want to say that there is nothing like a lack of prayer
to make me feel like a hypocrite.
Nothing else like it.
It exposes my true heart.
That is, if you understand ungodliness
as being going about our daily life as if God doesn't exist.
It's getting up in the morning,
going about our business,
and giving little or no regard to the God
who has control of this whole universe.
And so day by day,
I give little consideration for his glory,
for his will, for his purposes,
or even the fact that I am completely dependent upon this God
for my very breath,
let alone the gifts that I have to do the job that I do,
or the studies that I do,
or whatever it might be.
If that's what you consider ungodliness,
then that exposes my heart more than anything else.
And there are many good people,
many good people,
good, moral, upright, religious people
who live day by day in ungodliness
because they give little regard to this God
and his purposes, his will,
or even acknowledgement of our dependency upon him
moment by moment.
Yeah, we may get up and we might,
you know, pray a prayer as we get up in the morning
or read something from the Bible
or maybe close the day with a few words of prayer
before we sort of nod off to sleep.
But the bulk of the day in between
is lived in ungodliness.
And ungodliness is also revealed in the content of our prayers.
That is, do we pray for kingdom priorities in our prayers
or are they just the usual shopping list of things
that are concerning me at the moment?
Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a shopping list.
I'm saying, what I am saying though,
if that is all that you pray,
then that is a significant problem.
That is, do your prayers reveal a human-centeredness
or a God-centeredness?
Because frankly, I've got a lot of non-Christian friends
who will pray
and their prayers are always human-centered.
You might remember that we are traveling with Jesus.
Jesus has resolutely set his face for Jerusalem.
And on the way there to Jerusalem,
he is clarifying with his disciples
some of their misconceptions of what it means to follow him.
And today we have his teaching,
one of the essentials of discipleship,
the life of prayer.
We are looking at the most famous of all prayers.
We know it.
We have said this prayer again and again and again
for centuries as a church.
We say it here in this church most weeks
and frankly, most services most weeks.
And so I think it's kind of ironic
that when Matthew records Jesus teaching on prayer,
this same kind of passage
that he's referring to here in Luke's gospel,
he does it in the context of telling his disciples
to not be like the pagans and the hypocrites
who go on with their mindless babbling when they pray.
And so we have taken Jesus teaching in the Lord's prayer
and mindlessly babbled it throughout the centuries.
What we have done then is we've forgotten
that Jesus is revealing to us a model of prayer
and instead we've taken his very words
and recited and recited and recited it
until it virtually has no meaning for us anymore.
I'm not really sure that's what Jesus had in mind.
When you look through Luke's gospel,
we see very clearly that Jesus is a man of prayer.
He was praying when the Holy Spirit descended on him
like a dove in Luke chapter 3 verse 21.
He began his ministry after a 40-day fast
in chapter 4 verses 1 to 15.
Other times he redrew into the wilderness to pray
in chapter 5, 16.
He prayed all night before choosing the 12 disciples
in chapter 6 verse 12.
He was praying alone just before he was asked by,
just before he asked Peter,
who do you say that I am?
In chapter 9 verse 18.
And just before he was transfigured,
he was praying with Peter, James and John
up on a mountain.
And he was praying here again
at the beginning of chapter 11.
As a man,
Jesus sought his strength and his guidance
from his father through prayer.
From this alone,
we should feel motivated
to make prayer more central to our lives.
Let me say that I want to be a man of prayer
more than anything else.
If there's one thing that I really,
truly want to desire to develop
in my Christian life,
it is prayerfulness.
I think I've kind of got the activity thing
kind of worked out,
you know, busy in ministry
and stuff like that.
But it's prayerfulness.
It's actually stop the doing
and start the being stuff more
that I want to be more than anything else.
And so Jesus has taught us to pray.
But he's also made some amazing promises
to us about prayer.
He lived a life of prayer
and he taught a life of prayer.
And let me say that it is
the will of the Lord Jesus
that St. Paul's be a church of prayer.
That this building that we're sitting in right now
be a house of prayer,
that you the people
be daily given to prayer,
prevailing prayer for our personal needs,
for the power of the Spirit,
for the progress of the gospel
and for the glory of God's name.
That we be given wholeheartedly to those things.
And so let's have a look at this.
Open up your Bibles, Luke chapter 11.
The first thing that Jesus teaches us here
is to make our praying God-centered.
That's the first thing.
When the disciples ask Jesus
to teach them to pray,
which I think is an amazing thing in and of itself.
Here are guys, right?
These are Jewish dudes
who have grown up all their life praying
and then they go to Jesus.
Now they're following Jesus.
They teach us to pray.
Like as if you don't know.
It's pretty easy.
Close your eyes, shut your, you know,
pay your head, you know, whatever.
Pray, it's really easy.
But it's actually not.
What they're actually wanting Jesus to teach them
is their priorities.
What are the priorities in prayer?
And he says this to me in verse 2.
When you pray, say,
Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Notice that their requests.
In fact, if you look at all of the Lord's prayer,
it's actually all requests.
It's not thanks, it's not praise.
Jesus says our first desire,
our first request,
should be for God's name to be hallowed,
or that is for God's name to be glorified,
and that his kingdom be advanced,
that his kingdom would come.
That is what I mean when I say
about our prayers being God-centered.
The glory of God's name,
the advancement of his kingdom,
is to be the primary concern in our prayers.
The God-centeredness,
and this is what I'm meaning
when I talk about ungodliness.
The God-centeredness of our prayers,
or the lack of it,
has to be the difference between a mature prayer
and an immature prayer.
The God-centeredness,
or the lack of it,
is the difference between maturity and immaturity in prayer.
Or, you might call godliness and ungodliness in prayer.
The plea here is that we have Jesus' priorities in our praying,
namely that God's name,
the Father's name be hallowed,
and that the kingdom come.
If this feels foreign to you,
you think about your prayer life at the moment,
you think about your prayer life just for today,
if this feels foreign to you,
then please,
plead,
plead with God
for you not to be content with that.
That you may not stay here,
even tonight,
even as you move from here,
that you may not stay stuck
at an immature level of prayer.
Instead,
say in a fresh way,
in a new way to God,
tonight,
right now,
if you have to,
this coming week,
Father,
hallowed be your name
in my life,
in my praying
for this coming week,
for the rest of this year,
and as we launch into another one
in a couple of months.
It's amazing.
The reality of it is,
God's name will be hallowed.
God's kingdom will come.
He will be vindicated among all the nations
as true and glorious,
but He has decreed that we will have a hand
in His triumph
through our prayer.
It's an amazing thought.
So make the glory of God
the centre of your prayers.
Pray again and again and again
in as many words as you can possibly
muster in your vocabulary.
Father,
let your name be hallowed.
Let your kingdom come.
Let your name be hallowed.
Let your kingdom come.
Jesus also teaches in this prayer
to pray with a sense of security
in the Father's love.
Jesus doesn't want us
to feel insecure in our prayers.
He shows this mainly by teaching us
to call God our Father
when we pray to Him.
And so in verses 11 to 13,
He unpacks for us
some of the security implied
in this word Father.
Which of you fathers,
if your son asks you for a fish,
will give him a snake instead?
Or if he asks for an egg,
will give him a scorpion?
If you then,
though you are evil,
know how to give good gifts
to your children,
how much more
will your Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask Him?
The words,
how much more,
mean that God
is much more inclined
to hear us
and help us
when we pray
than our earthly fathers are.
Jesus wants us
to feel secure
in the Father's love
when we come to Him
in prayer.
He does not want us
to feel precarious.
He does not want us
to feel unsure
of our acceptance
or fearful
that we will find
the Father
out of sorts
or just unconcerned
about our daily issues.
This sense of security
is utterly crucial
for us.
It is utterly crucial
for us
in a life of prayer
and a life of worship.
You cannot sustain
a life of prayer
if you think
that God is angry
with you
or you think
that He's neutral
to the circumstances
of your life.
Prayer is sustained
by the confidence
that God
is our Father
and that He
is concerned
and that His disposition
towards us
is,
as Jesus says it is,
that is,
He's more inclined
to give
what we need
than our best
human fathers.
That's the promise.
And so we are to pray
with a sense
of the Father's security,
the sense of the security,
the Father's love for us.
Jesus also teaches us
here to prevail
in prayer
without doubting
the Father's love
in this passage.
He teaches us
to hang in there,
to persevere,
to persist,
to keep on
and not giving up,
to keep on asking
and seeking
and knocking
until,
you know,
at heaven's door
until the answer comes
or until God
basically says
stop praying.
But,
isn't that a little bit
inconsistent
with what I just said?
I mean,
just a tad
little inconsistent.
I mean,
if God is more caring
than the best earthly father,
then why would He
be so slow
to respond
to my prayers
sometimes?
Why would He do that?
Jesus tells a story
in verses 5 to 8
of a bloke
who went to his mate's place
because he got this guest,
came into town
pretty late one night,
goes to his mate's place,
knocks on his door,
give me some bread,
I need some bread
to feed him
and his mate's upstairs,
you know,
lights are out,
kids are in bed,
he's sort of
starting to nod off,
here's his rat-a-tat
at the door
and he looks out the window
and says,
go away mate,
you know,
it's all shut up
for the night
and he goes,
no,
I need some food
and then they go away,
just go away.
The man says,
the door's locked,
the children are asleep,
don't bother me,
but his friend keeps knocking
and he keeps asking
until the man gets up.
He doesn't get up
because of his friendship,
he doesn't have a moral conscience
all of a sudden
and go,
oh,
well,
he is my mate
and I did get some bread
from him,
you know,
last week.
It's because
the man's prevailing,
because of his boldness
as it says,
he's persisting,
he's persevering
in knocking,
he annoyed him
so much
that he went downstairs
and opened the door
and gave us a bread.
Take it!
But doesn't that seem
an unpleasant image
when we approach prayer?
But immediately
in verse 9,
Jesus says
that there is a lesson
to be learned here.
Ask
and it will be given you.
Seek
and you'll find.
Knock
and it will be open to you.
There are three things here
that stress
the importance
of prevailing,
not giving up prayer.
One
is
a little bit technical.
It's the tense
in the original language
which means
an ongoing activity.
It means
keep on asking,
keep on seeking,
keep on knocking.
The second
is the fact
that Jesus
commands this
continuous action
three times
in verse 9
and he repeats
the three words
again in verse 10.
And the third thing
that stress is prevailing
is that the three words
used
get an increasingly
close to the answer
and show a pressing
in on God
if you like.
So asking
as it were,
coming to the house,
give me some bread.
seeking
until we find it
and knocking
until the door
is opened.
Asking
is the simplest bit.
It requires
no movement
whatsoever.
Seeking
turns the activity
into a pursuit
and knocking
on the door
again
and again
signifies
an earnestness
and even
a desperation
to get
an answer
to this
and I need it.
So Jesus
clearly wants us
to be like this
friend
at his mate's
door.
He wants us
to be like that.
He wants us
to prevail
in prayer
and yet
all of a sudden
he makes
this little
sudden turn
in verse 11
this little twist
and he shifts
from the grumpy
old friend
who's just
been woken up
to the image
of a caring
father.
The point
Jesus is getting
across
is the prevailing
prayer
persisting
persevering
in prayer
is utterly
important for us.
He stamps
the truth
of it
in our
memories
with a
shocking
image
of a
friend
who won't
get out
of his
bed
to help
someone
until he's
bothered
enough
to do
it.
But then
Jesus
qualifies
the point
in verses
11 to
13
and says
but God's
not like
that.
God's
not like
that.
He's
not like
that friend.
He is
like the
most caring
father
imaginable.
So yes
God
sometimes
gives us
what we
need
only after
a long
long
season
of
prevailing
and
persisting
in
prayer
but it's
not because
he's
uncaring
and it's
not because
he's
insensitive
to our
needs.
So why?
I think
verse 11
gives us
a few
clues
and that
is that
a good
father
will not
give his
son a
serpent
if he
asks
for a
fish.
In other
words
a good
father
will give
their
children
what is
good
for
them.
It's
like this
morning
I got
up
and
brought
Isabel
downstairs
as soon
as I
put her
feet on
the floor
she makes
a beeline
straight for
the cupboard
where she
knows where
the biscuits
are.
This is
like at
6.30
in the
morning.
This is
breakfast
in her
mind
and she
goes to
the cupboard
door.
She can't
quite reach
the handles
thank God
at this
stage.
But she
goes to
the cupboard
door and
goes
and then
you're like
what?
And then
she goes
which is
tiny teddies.
And if it
wasn't for the
fact that maybe
Nat was hot
on my heels
I might have
sort of
given her
that moment.
But she
persisted in
her asking
but she
got a no
because it's
not good
for her
to have
biscuits
for breakfast
not unless
you're camping
or something
like that.
See God
is giving
us what
is good
for us.
There is
something in
the prevailing
in the
asking the
seeking the
knocking that
we need.
It's something
in it that
is good for
us and he
knows best.
The promise
that will
encourage us
in prevailing
prayer is
verse 10.
And I'll
read it
with a
bit of
a twist
based on
the original
language.
Everyone
who goes
on asking
receives
and he
who goes
on seeking
will find
and to him
who goes
on knocking
it will be
opened.
God is
not
unresponsive
to our
prevailing
prayer.
The
difficulties
in prevailing
prayer is
that we
are in
the instant
generation.
We live
in a
culture
where
satisfaction
is now
where
30 seconds
on a
microwave
is just
I don't
know if
you notice
how slow
that is
nowadays.
Once upon
a time
you want
a steak
you know
you've
got to
go and
catch
the cow
nowadays
it's out
of the
freezer
into the
microwave
and even
then you
know five
minutes to
defrost the
thing for
goodness sake.
I mean is
there anything
faster than a
microwave?
I hope
someone's
working on
it.
And that's
what makes
prevailing
prayer so
difficult for
us because
we want the
answer we
want it
now but
it's not
good for
us.
The final
teaching that
God gives
on prayer
is if you
like a
circling back
to the
original point
and that is
the God
centredness
of prayer
and if I
understand
Jesus here
he means
for it to
be the
prevailing
heartbeat
of the
prayer life
of our
church.
This is
the main
point.
If I
understand
what Jesus
is saying
here he
means for
this prayer
to be the
prevailing
heartbeat
of the
life of
our
church.
Jesus
teaches
in verse
13 that
our prevailing
in prayer
should be a
prevailing
for the
Holy Spirit.
If you
then though
you are
evil know
how to
give good
gifts to
your children
how much
more will
your Father
in heaven
give the
Holy Spirit
to those
who ask
him.
He's
saying if
you know
how to
give good
gifts then
God the
gracious
Father
giver who
knows all
good things
will give
you
not your
new car
not your
health
he will
give you
the Holy
Spirit.
There is
nothing
greater than
that.
And so
it's no
accident that
Luke tells
us in
chapter 3
verse 21
that while
Jesus was
praying the
Holy Spirit
descended upon
him like a
dove or
that the
outpouring of
the Spirit
at Pentecost
came at the
climax of a
10 day prayer
vigil or in
Acts 4 31
that when the
church had
prayed the
place where
they were
gathered was
shaken and
was filled with
the Holy Spirit
prevailing
prayer is the
pathway to
the outpouring
of the
Holy Spirit.
And my
hope is for
us as a
church as
we've mentioned
and we've
been bleating
on about it
for a while
our vision
our next
stage of
ministry for
this church
launching into
2020 for the
next 11 years
is coming up
very soon and
that we might
be a church
that prevails
in prayer and
asking for God
to pour out
his spirit
amongst us.
And as I've
said before in
a previous
sermon to
pour out his
spirit amongst
us another my
way of saying
that is for God
to invade our
lives that we
might prevail in
that prayer that
there might be
truly a revival
amongst us here
because when we
prevail in prayer
for the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit
more is happening
in our life through
that prevailing
prayer than we
could ever imagine.
God waits because
our prevailing
is good for us.
May the Lord
prevent us from
losing heart
and failing in
the very thing
we need
mighty prevailing
prayer for the
outpouring of the
spirit.
So let's this
week as we
enter even
into this
evening and
enter this
week with
God
centred
prayer.
with a sense
of security
and the
fatherly care
of God
with a new
resolve to
prevail and
to persist
in prayer
without doubting
God's love
for us
and let us
prevail
specifically
in praying
for the
outpouring of
the Holy Spirit
amongst us
for his power
his gifts
his full
blessing
and get
this
all the
while
rejoicing
that the
prevailing
in itself
for that
prayer
is a great
work of
the indwelling
spirit of the
living God
in and of
itself.
So let's
pray the
Lord's
prayer.
I'm going
to pray the
Lord's
prayer for
us
as a
model
and picking
up the
intention
of Jesus'
words.
Let's bow
and let's
pray.
Our
gracious
God,
loving
Heavenly
Father,
we long
to see
you
honoured
more and
more in
our church
and in
our city.
Cause your
name to be
hallowed
among us.
Magnify
your worth
and your
glory
amongst us
and let
your kingdom
come.
Take up
your kingly
rule more
and more
fully over
our church,
over our
lives,
over our
families,
over
Chatswood,
over this
city,
over this
country
and speed
the day
of Christ's
final
appearing,
we pray.
Meet our
physical needs,
we pray,
Lord,
not for our
own comfort
but so that
we can
press on
with joy
in the
work you
called us
to do
for your
namesake.
Forgive us,
O Lord,
where we
have sinned,
where we
have fallen
short of
your glory,
where we
have lived
each day
in ungodliness
revealed in
the lack
of prayerfulness
or in the
human
centredness
of our
prayer.
And
Father,
we ask
that you
might keep
us from
the entangling
temptations
that would
want to
trip us
up as
your people
and bring
criticism
to your
name
and to
your
church.
And we
ask it
through Jesus
Christ,
our Lord.
Amen.