uh... luke chapter number eleven is one of the greatest passages on prayer we've spent time on the first five or six verses uh... before and now this is our third sunday on this outline the teaching on uh... prayer concerning persistency concerning persistency and uh... we get into verse number our text is verses five through eight let's read that and he said unto them which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and saying to him, friend, lend me three loaves. Four, a friend of mine in his journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of the opportunity, he will rise and give as many as he needeth. Okay. And so here is an interesting, what we say is an interesting parable that the Lord is using a story, something they could relate to, something that was culturally involved in their setting. And we began our outline here with the request is in verse number five. and that we talked about here the hour if you're just getting that outline hour and then the honor those are two things we already covered a couple weeks ago the hour and the honor now basically to summarize that very quickly is that what happened to this man with somebody coming in culturally this is not unusual and it was expected that no matter what hour somebody came to your house you were to have some kind of food prepared or available for them and to not serve them would be not just a disgrace but would be an insult to your visitors and so it's not a matter it's more than just being discourteous it was really to have a disgrace to the homeowner's name so then but when he goes to his friend he has a friend that is maybe that we call the great friend many times he's the one that has plenty he's in the home with his family and in verse number seven he has gone there and asked and what does he get he gets a refusal that's in your outline as well and this is kind of where we were the last time refusal and the first thing he we put down here was a roughness r-o-u-g-h-n-e-s-s a roughness I mean, it sounds pretty stern, what is said. Now look at what is said here. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee. Trouble me not there at the beginning is a pretty strong statement, okay? And according to one of the author's commentators, it means stop furnishing troubles to me. You're bringing trouble to me. And so the real teaching here of the parable, it's not saying that God is going to have the same reaction as an earthly person would have. That's not what the Lord is. The Lord is not capricious. He is abundantly looking forward to supplying our needs and answering our prayers. That part actually comes in contrast. He's saying, even if, if you go down to You'll see this, I think it's easier, verse number 13. This continues, and he says this, if ye then being evil, meaning, hey, you're a sinner, and you know, going on, how to give good gifts unto your children, look at the next three words, how much more shall your heavenly Father? All right? So going back to this concept, this passage is showing a contrast that even people that are sinners will eventually, through the importunity of the persistency of the praying person, even sinners will respond correctly. And how much more our Heavenly Father desires to help us. This roughness is really teaching the need for persistency or perseverance in prayer. And we discussed last week that a lot of the times that The Lord does this where we feel like when we pray, the first reaction of God is that he holds us out. There are reasons for that. So let's give some reasons. Number, capital letter B is the reasons. Capital letter B, the reasons for this refusal. And he gives two reasons here. You can, I didn't give you room in your outline, but you could jot it out to the side. The two reasons, one is that the door is shut. The door is shut. I think open doors and shut doors, an interesting study in the Bible. Paul has said, hey, I'm praying for an open door of utterance. The Lord says that there's a, he said, behold, I stand in Revelation 3 at the door and knock if any man will open. But let's put it in perspective here. Here is a door that's shut. What a commentator, again, and I go off a lot about what other men have written. I appreciate the great value in godly men and smarter men than me. But I guess the understanding is that the locks on the doors in the older time, at this period of time, were very complex. Like if this man is saying, the door is shut and it's locked, Man, it is a problem. It is time consuming to open that door. Now I wanted to make a notation here without going off on my time about living your life in the will of God and not subjecting your life to open doors. So there's a there's a teaching that says finding God's will is searching for the open doors. Of opportunities. And I believe that you'll find if you study the scriptures, you'll find that open doors are mentioned. In fact, as I mentioned a minute ago, Paul said, pray for us that an open door that God would open that hearts he's speaking about concerning the reception of the gospel, but not about the will of God. So here is very common in our day to say, well, I was praying and it seemed like God said to go this direction. But the doors shut on that opportunity. And I'm going to say to be very careful. I'm not. God leads people differently. He does. You know, he knows your personality, knows how you're going to respond. But in a general sense, not in a personal way, be careful when you don't allow your life to be subject to the circumstances that are all around us. So here's what I'm saying. You find God's will in the Bible because you go to him in prayer. Colossians 1 says this and other passages that you pray and you get close enough to the Lord, which means you're letting go of sin. To get close to the Lord, you have to get pure. The pure in heart shall see God. So you draw close to the Lord and then you pray and God impresses your heart about some matter of course that he wants you to take. Now notice that the Holy Spirit is never going to lead you outside of the will of the Bible. He is the author of the scriptures. So the declarations of God's will in the Bible are primary. So finding God's will begins in the word of God. God is not going to lead you to do something contrary to the word, the declarations of scripture. But secondly, the Holy Spirit will then impress upon you those things that are not naturally declared in the Bible. So, you know, there's no such thing in the Bible that says, you know, thou shalt sell your house right now. Right? It doesn't have that. It has Bible principles about financial management. There's no question about that. And there are principles about owing no man anything. Bible principles, very important. But you're going to have to pray to know God's will in these areas. And the Lord is going to say to you, if you're close enough to Him, He's going to indicate, not in verbal, not in like audible sounds, but impressing upon your heart What is the will of God in certain areas of your life? And then what's going to happen is you pursue that. And you know, normally what you'll run into first is a roadblock. Not an easy time, not an open door, but you come into really some difficulties. And then you're going to have to know, say, well, man, I know that the Lord told me to do this. Right? and you're going to have to go through those obstacles but if a person is living their life determining the will of God based on open doors and closed doors what you're doing is allowing your life to be put into the hands of circumstances when in fact the Lord wants to show himself strong to really go through the obstacles so you find God's will on your knees and you get up and do it trusting in Him rid of the obstacles as one pastor said you you get up and you go through an obstacle and then you sometimes the lord will have you go around it he sometimes have you go over it sometimes go under it sometimes he'll just go right through it sometimes it's as heavy as if somebody built a brick wall between you and the will of god and you have to go and do the will of god You're not to say, hey, well, I think, well, the door shuts, so I have to go do something. And what I really think we're looking for is ease. The easy way. And Christian, listen to me, the Lord isn't calling us to do the easy thing. He's calling us to live our lives within the will of God. Which is not depending upon open and shut doors. And I know God is a God who can open the doors. He can blow through brick walls. If he can knock down Jericho's walls, he can knock down the walls in front of you. And so my life, in the major decisions of my life, and you'll hear me repeat this sometimes, almost always my life has been God speaking to my heart in prayer. in a direction that I was not naturally desiring. In other words, almost every time with the major decisions of my life, that they have been things that I have run my mouth on. I say, well, I'll never do this. I'll never do this. And it's funny how the Lord hears those things. And a lot of times we'll bring it to pass that you say that and you have to eat those words. And so I say I'll never, that's usually the reluctance of my heart. For me, God had to do that because I'm pretty melancholy. All right, so I know that when I know God has led me, it hasn't been because it's something I wanted. It's something that God has to really work on my heart. And then I know it's God's will because I know it's not me that's just saying, oh, well, I just desire this or greener grass on the other side of the road or the fence. You understand? And then the Lord puts it in my heart. This is his will. By the way, when you submit to the will of God, then there's this love for the delight to do thy will, O Lord. So when the Lord is when I have said in my flesh, I'll never. Yeah, I said I'd never go to Belize, I said I'd never come home, I said I'd never go to Idaho and all the major decisions of my life. Then when I submit to the will of God, I love it. I loved every decision God's ever let me. I love it. I delight to do the will of God. But almost every time I run into huge difficulties. I got on deputation to go raise money to go to Belize. And after about the first major trip, like we spent three months out going to different churches, and I got down to the end, I told one of the other guys at our staff, I said, I don't think it's gonna work. I just don't think I'm gonna raise the money. And so it was a difficulty. I could have said, well, the door is shutting. And hundreds of people that got saved in Belize, I think God would have found some other guy that would be obedient to his will But the will of God is not what I want. The will of God is God's wants. And when you get up there and you get into it, you're going to have a door shut, slam straight in your face. And then you're going to have to know how to pray. And that's about every decision in life is that way. And the Lord might lead you a little differently. You know, there's no thing in here that says this is the only way that I'm going to talk to Christians and deal with them. But that's just my experience. And then I'm convinced of the will of God. I know this is God's will. And we're just going to take whatever comes, no matter how hard it is, no matter how unpleasant it could be. Because I know at the end, it's God's will is going to be the greatest thing for a person to do. All right. So be careful with these open doors. He said there. I can't come out. The door is shut. You're inconveniencing me. And then he talks about second reason, if you're writing those down, they're not in your outline, but the sleeping family. We have a shut door and we have a sleeping family. Cultural habits of those days was to have the whole family, parents, children, and even the servants sleeping in one big room. To get up and to offer the help that was requested meant he was going to wake up every person in the home. Just talking through the window, leave me alone, is probably waking up. Do not disturb was the notice put on the outside of the door. And this refusal, the Lord is not, the failure to take care of a sojourning friend would have been unkind. The Lord is not telling us in the story, hey, you know what you need to do? You need to be unkind to your friends. He's not telling us that. Parables, remember, parables are earthly stories to teach a heavenly lesson. But each parable tells one major truth. Okay, so be careful when people try to tie every point of a parable to some spiritual application or as a picture. These are not types. They are to teach one major point, and the point of this, don't quit praying. It's not telling you, hey, you need to refuse and be mean to your friends or whatever. You ought to just take the one point. The third thing about the refusal is the repeating. In verse number seven, at the end, he repeats it. He said, I cannot rise and give thee. This refusal, repeating is letter C if you're looking, R-E-P-E-A-T-I-N-G. And this repeating of the refusal to loan bread is given to us to show that persistency in prayer was not going to be easy. We're not talking about, Christianity, getting saved is free. But even that was not like, hey, it was natural to believe in the Lord when I didn't know that there was a God. It was not natural to feel the pain that I felt after God was real to me and I realized I was a sinner on my way to hell. That was not enjoyable. OK, I'm not talking about salvation is free, but not cheap either, because it costs the blood of Jesus Christ. It's free to us, but it's not like you're going to just roller skate into it. You have to humble yourself, realize your spiritual need and come to Christ, the Bible says, as a little child to be born again. But most people are too proud. So I look at this and I say, even in our spiritual life after salvation, prayer is work. Right? You're not working to get to heaven. You're already saved. But praying is work. You know why most people don't pray? Because we're lazy. And this is given to us to understand that getting a hold of God and knowing the will of God and doing the will of God and getting things that you need from God is not going to be a piece of cake. So we have the request, number one. Number two, the refusal. Number three, we have the reconsidering so he gets in verse number eight and he says I say unto you though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth now first of all the prompter in this reconsideration he said I say unto you though he will not rise and give him because he's his friend alright so here we have some points here about What is prompting the final giving in? And we could say, first of all, we have the explanation. The explanation. The explanation. E-X-P-L-A-N-A-T-I-O-N. Explanation. This is kind of an interesting set of notes here. I want you to think about this. The word importunity is only used one time in scripture, the Greek word here for importunity. we'd call it a uh... we call it a hamalagamana uh... i think is the name for it there's another word i'm thinking where it's only mentioned one time the word means shamelessness or impudence isn't that interesting? you find that interesting? in other words The Christian is supposed to, by this teaching, come to God shamelessly. Lord, I have to have what I need. Now, I believe that the reluctance in prayer that God holds us off, it serves a purpose, as I mentioned a couple times before, that it weeds out the frivolous praying. You know, if the Bible says you have not because you ask not, or you ask that you may consume it upon your, you ask amiss that you may consume it upon your own lust. Like asking for Lord, can I have a hundred million dollars? For what? Right? And this reluctance of this, let's say, the postponement of the answer from God often takes those silly prayers that we have and kind of stifles that, weeds those out. But real needs need to be persevered in prayer. And that persevering in prayer ought to have this word importunity where you say, I'm not I'm not going to worry about what it looks like to God. I'm just going to come. And in spite of being turned away. I'm going to keep at it. That's the way a Christian ought to pray. The Lord promises this. I want to get through this outline today. Hebrews 4. If you want to just quickly go there so I can get back. Hebrews 4. In verse number 16. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. What did God tell you to do? He said, come boldly. Boldly. I just think it's interesting that the Lord said, and go back to chapter 11 of Luke, and we'll get back to our outline here, that God is not just given us permission, but he's encouraged, he's called upon us, let us therefore, that's a hortatory subjunctive, saying, hey, let's gather everybody together, everybody get along this, let's go boldly to God. That's the kind of language that is being talked about here. And the second point here under the prompting of this, look at the examples, examples, examples, number two, the examples. So I'm going to again, I'm going to just quickly go through. If you want to jot these on the side, I have some examples of importunity through scripture. We find in Genesis 18. We find in verses 23 through 32, Abraham is persevering in pleading concerning the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the deliverance of Lot, his nephew. All right, he uses that word, paired venture. Paired venture, there lack five and there's only 45 righteous. You know, will the judge of all the earth do right? He's pleading. pleading with him, gets down to 10. Of course, you know the story, Lot didn't have 10. If he had just gotten his own family saved and their wives, the children, and sons-in-laws or whatever it was, that city would have been spared, but they... Perseverance in prayer. There's another good example of persevering prayer in Matthew 15, verse 21 through 28. Here is a cyber Phoenician woman. Comes to the Lord and says, my child needs to be healed and the Lord doesn't listen. He did like acts like he doesn't even hear. He's teaching the very same thing about perseverance and prayer. And the disciples are like, tell this woman to get out of here. And he says, well, I'm not sent but to the lost ones of Israel. This woman wasn't a Jewish woman. And she says, or Jesus said, it's not me to give the children's food to the dogs. How would you like it to be treated that way? And she doesn't say no, she says, yay, Lord. Says, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. You know what she was doing? She's expressing enormous faith in the power of God to heal. And importunity. And she is rewarded. Jacob is also wrestling in Genesis 32, verse 24 through 29. And the angel there, the says let me go and he says i'll not let you go till you bless me genesis 32 24 through 29 and jacob's perseverance with the angel got him a new name changed from jacob which means swindler to israel which really means a prince with the lord or striving with the lord And Christ illustrates this in Matthew 11, 12, when he says, The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, but the violent taketh it by force. He's referring to Christians who will not quit praying. As I've said many times in our study here, that Christians, a church ought to teach you how to pray. I sometimes, I look at my life and I, as a, you know, personally, a melancholy person, I always am hard on myself. I always say the Lord, I believe, is wanting to call Christians to a ministry of intercessory prayer. But I think that the reason we lack this is because we are not persevering in prayer. There's some great examples throughout all of history. I think one of the greatest, if you can write down the name of George Mueller and get a hold of his biography and how God answered prayer, you'd see that in modern times, you know, semi-modern times, this is 1850s. You know, he said, I'm not starting orphanages to feed children. I want the world to know that there is a God who answers prayer. So we decided that there was only five of them that made a team. And they said, we're not going to share the needs of the orphanage. You know, there's not going to be any infomercials that say, for 67 cents a day, you can sponsor an orphan and you can feed a needy person, right? So we're not going to tell anybody except for God. And for decades, up to 500 orphans were fed daily by the prayer life of these individuals. because there's a God who answers prayer. I wonder what God really wants out of us that he's not seeing because of our lack of energy in prayer. I have this next one, it's essentialness. You know how to spell that? I wouldn't know how, so I'll tell you, E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L-N-E-S-S, essentialness. The real difficult problem And I'm over time just a little bit. I'll give you these points here. We're going to finish this. The difficulty with Christianity is that the devil comes to your mind and says to you, it is no use to pray. What good are you doing? You're not getting anywhere. The devil's a liar. He's been a liar from the beginning. If you remember John 8, 44, he's a liar and a murderer, right? He is after your prayer life. It's life. We're supposed to live our life, a life of prayer. But how essential is this to our daily walk? Well, I can go a whole day without praying, some people might say. Or I pray in the morning, but not throughout the day. And the Lord wanted you to fellowship with the Lord in prayer all day long. Perseverance is vital. Albert Barnes said, men, and so men, when they ask anything of God, often give over seeking. They go once, and if it is not granted, they are discouraged. And that's why we don't receive. Now, I'm going to tell you something that I don't believe. You hear the language that I'm, I don't, I am not impressed with anything spiritual in me. In other words, I'm a nobody. I'm not especially a great man of prayer. I want to be. But I'm going to tell you something. I as little as I know that I pray. I see answers to prayer. all the time. And it amazes me. What amazes me is that, you know, I think it should be these Christians who are down on their knees and they're sweating and they're working. OK. And sometimes the Lord leads me to prayer late at night, all night, sometimes in tears, sometimes wrestling with God. But I feel like I do so little, but yet I'm seeing so many enormous answers to prayer constantly. What does that say? The Lord really does desire to hear your prayers. He wants to do that for everybody. And you don't, but you're not going to get anything unless, unless, unless you keep at it. My last point under four is the effect, E-F-F-E-C-T, the effect. So the effect is that the man in our parable, all I'm trying to do is give a balance here. And I've said this already, so I'll go quickly. The man in our parable did not want to give bread, but God cannot be accused of not wanting to bless his people. So here we have the contrast. God does not finally answer our prayers because we're a nuisance to him. He has the opposite viewpoint. The conclusion here is like verse number 13 that I read to you. That if a churlish man can be won by mere importunity, how much more? Certainly shall the bountiful Lord bestow. On his children who come to him in his manner. To not give up in prayer. And my last point is letter B under reconsidering is the plentifulness plentifulness and verse number eight we conclude this lesson with that thought that yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needed if you remember he went and said give me or lend me three loaves and he doesn't just get three loaves does he at the end He says, I'll give him as many as, and you know, that's what the Lord is doing. He said, God is gonna give you as many as you need. And I've seen the blessings of God in prayer, and the Christian life can't be lived successfully without prayer. If you're struggling with sin, it's probably a prayer problem. If you're struggling with your decision making, it's probably a prayer problem. If you don't have wisdom, it's a prayer problem. The Bible said that. If any of you lack wisdom. Every point in the Christian life that is frustrating the Christian can be determined or defined. When we view this one thing, that everything comes from a problem in prayer. Let's get our prayer life correct. Let's do what we need to do. Let's have word of prayer will be dismissed and have a little break before the morning service. Heavenly Father, I pray that you'd have a blessing upon our meeting here today. I pray, God, that you would, Lord, stir us up, stir us up in the direction that you want us to go. Thank you for answering prayers. Thank you for prayer. Life without prayer would be just a darkness, and yet we close our eyes and it gets dark physically when we close our eyes, but yet, Lord, we can see the most on our knees. We are in the greatest light when we're just bend before you and our hearts are submitted to you. And Lord, help us to respond to the call of your Holy Spirit to be people of prayer. In your name I pray, amen.