Luke chapter 11 and this morning we're gonna look at verses 5 through 13. Luke chapter 11 verses 5 through 13. I love that song that we just were singing. I remember listening to that years ago when I was growing up in my room at night and just thinking about the Lord and that's a good thing to do. Luke chapter 11, let's begin reading in verse 1, just to kind of put it in its context, but let's begin in verse 1, we'll read all the way to verse 13. It says, Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, 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 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 and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is a friend, yet because of his Cudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will 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? Let's pray. Father, as we come to You and as we approach this passage to study it, I pray and ask that, Lord, You would fill me with Your Spirit. I pray that Your words would go forth and Accomplish your purposes here today. I pray that, Lord, you would show your power and your glory amongst us. Lord, help us to understand all that is here about prayer that Jesus teaches us, that we might, Lord, pray earnestly about things in this world, the things that we need, the things that, Father, pertain to your kingdom. Father, I pray that you would stir our hearts to be a praying people and forgive us, Lord, of all the times that we don't pray, that we don't depend upon you by faith the way that we should. Instead, we try in our own strength to, Lord, live the Christian life, or we try in our own strength to do ministry. And, Lord, I just pray that you would just help us to remember to bathe everything in prayer and rely totally upon you. Help us, Lord, again to understand these wonderful truths that, Lord, will revolutionize our prayer life. And, Lord, we ask these things in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we come again to Luke chapter 11. We're making our way through the Gospel of Luke. And in Luke chapter 1, verses 1 through 13, we are dealing with the subject of prayer. And I have entitled this message, Jesus' Teaching on Prayer. In this passage, just to give us a context of what is going on here for what we're going to look at today in verses 5 through 13, I want just to do a quick recap of where we were last week. In Luke chapter 11, we see that Jesus himself had been praying. We see this all throughout the Gospel of Luke, that Jesus is constantly praying. At His baptism, He's praying. We see Him going out into the wilderness, and obviously He was praying there. We see Him praying at certain times when he would get alone. He prayed on the Mount of Transfiguration and so forth. And he will continue to pray throughout the Gospel of Luke. And Luke emphasizes the subject of prayer and how we ought to be people of prayer. But Jesus was praying in a certain place again here in Luke chapter 11 and verse 1. And when he had finished, one of his disciples came up to him and said this. He said, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. John also was one who prayed, and he taught his disciples. And this man wanted to know, surely he had watched Jesus pray and perform many miracles after he had prayed. and seen him do mighty things and teach in powerful ways. And this man saw it also in John and his disciples, and he wanted to learn how to pray. And so he asked that he would teach not only himself, but also the other disciples that were with him. And so he says, Lord, teach us to pray. And that's exactly what Jesus did in this passage. This is probably one of the greatest passages on prayer in all of Scripture, because it's coming from our Lord, His own lips, and He's telling us how we ought to pray. And I think it's one of the reasons why people don't pray as they ought is because they don't understand prayer as they should, and they don't know how to pray as they should. But hopefully this passage will help us in that. Notice when Jesus said, when you pray, He expects that we'll pray, and he says this, When you pray, say, Father. Now, when he gives us this whole prayer here in verses 1-4, or 2-4, this is not a prayer that we just go around and we recite. No, it's okay to recite. There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't think it's a prayer that Jesus says, Now pray this exactly, word for word, when you pray. But I think it's the principles that are found in this prayer that we ought to employ in our own prayer life. And the thing that we ought to get is what he says there in the first part. He says, when you pray, say, Father. Now, again, why did he say that? Because he's emphasizing our relationship with God. Sometimes I think we stand off in a distance when it comes to our prayer life, when we pray to God. We stand at a distance wondering, is He going to hear us? Does He really want to hear us? Is He going to answer our prayers? And will He give us any attention at all? And some of that is because we have a right understanding of the highness of God, or the transcendence of God, that He is holy, and He is perfect, and He is wise, and He is powerful, and He's the Sovereign Lord, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. And so we stand at a distance in trepidation sometimes. As Tozer said, sometimes instead of going right into the presence of God because Christ has opened up the curtain that we might do that, we oftentimes only associate with God in the outer court. We stay far from God. But Jesus says when we pray, we ought to say, Father. And this emphasizes our relationship with God. And when we think about God as Father when we pray, We think about all that term includes, such as his provision and his care and his love, just like your earthly father. Even though he may not be perfect, we see something in a good father here on this earth. We see something in them that we see and find in God. Only God is great and he is perfect. in all of his ways as a father. God loves his children, and so all of those things, his care, his provision, his love, all of these things ought to motivate us in our prayer life. So when we pray, we ought to say, Father, and we ought to remember who he is, that he is our Father, and we can come to him and not just offer up words, but we're coming to the one who truly cares and wants to listen to us, and he will incline his ear to hear what we have to say because he loves his children, desires a relationship with them. And that ought to motivate us to pray. The other thing that Jesus said we ought to say, Hallowed be your name. Now, what is in the name of God? Well, a name describes a person. And there are many names for God that we find all throughout the scripture. God is holy and righteous and good and perfect and just. All of those things. He's the creator of heaven and earth. He's all-wise, all-powerful, the sovereign Lord. All of those things. And so, He's our Father, but this is who our Father is. His name is to be hallowed. And so, when you think about the relationship aspect of prayer, that God is our Father, and you think about He is to be hallowed, because He is high and lifted up, and this is who He is, He is powerful and all-encompassing, all of His attributes are to the fullest, they're infinite. When you think about that, there's much more of a motivation even there to pray to God, because He's our Father and He cares, but our Father is powerful and mighty, and nothing that I bring to Him is too small or too big for him. Why? Because he is God. And so that ought to give us great confidence in prayer. But it also ought to spark worship and praise and adoration. And then he tells us that we ought to pray, give us this day our daily bread. Give us each day our daily bread. Don't focus on tomorrow and the next day. Focus on today, one day at a time. That's how you live the Christian life. And so we ought to pray, God give us this day our daily bread. Now bread is something, the basic necessity of life. And if we can ask God for bread, we can ask God for other things that we need as well. But we ought to come to God with all of our needs. all of our needs because God can provide them. Let me give you an example of this real quick. Not long ago I was watching a video and it was about the Kendrick brothers, their mother, and if you don't know them, they are the ones, they are a group of They're a couple of brothers, Southern Baptist brothers. They go to a church down south, and they've made many movies like Fireproof and Courageous. I didn't know anything about their mother, and I just happened to stumble across this video. And in this video, it was talking about how their mother, they were talking about how she's just a prayer word. She prays about everything. And she had been praying. She's getting older, and she's having to take care of her father, and they were worried about her, you know, getting out because she liked to go and garden and do things in her yard. And they were worried about her that she was going to trip and fall or hurt herself and would not be able to take care of her husband because of her age. But little did anyone know that she had been praying herself to God. And she had thought about this because she loved to get out, and so she prayed. She prayed, God, give me a golf cart. give me a golf cart where I can move my things around on the property and so forth." And I believe that she even prayed for a certain color. Well, her birthday came around and no one knew about this prayer request that she had given to God. And on her birthday, or as it got closer, One of the brothers woke up and he said he was just impressed upon his heart, not knowing his mom's prayer. He's like, the perfect gift for her would be a golf cart to move things around in the yard. And so he got a hold of his brothers and his other siblings, I guess, and they got together and they bought her a golf cart. They presented it to her. And when they presented it to her, she just basically broke out in tears, went in and got her note that she had written down in her Bible, and she said, this is exactly the thing that I was praying, down to every detail about it. That is how God wants us to pray. And we think that's silly and things like that, but God wants to give us our daily bread. He wants to provide for our needs. Jesus also teaches us here that we ought to regularly confess our sins to God. Forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Now, as the Gospel of Matthew says in Matthew chapter 6, when Jesus teaches us to pray, We are to forgive others so that God might forgive us. One of the things we don't want to harbor in our life is bitterness and unforgiveness. We want to be reconciled to people. We want to forgive those who have wronged us. But Jesus says, forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us. What is Jesus teaching us here? He's teaching us that in our prayer lives, one of the things that ought to market is confession of sin. We ought to be constantly confessing sin. Why? Because we'll lose our salvation? No. That's not, I don't believe, why he's saying this. Although we don't want to grow hardened in our hearts and and fall away from God or anything like that, but the reason why he says this is because when we sin, we hinder our fellowship with God. We hinder our fellowship with God, and that's what sin does. David said in Psalm 66, 18, If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. And I believe that is what 1 John is talking about. He says, if anyone does sin, my little children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father who is Jesus Christ the righteous. And right before that, he talks about how we should not walk in darkness and how we have fellowship with God and with the church and so forth, but we ought to be confessing our sins. And if anyone confesses their sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We need to confess sin in prayer. And one of the things that you find when revival breaks out, when a true move of God begins to happen in a man's heart or in a society, we see that if we follow it back, we can always trace it back to someone was praying, but they were also confessing. Confessing and forsaking sin. And they asked God to forgive them of their wickedness. And then last, Jesus taught us to pray that God would not lead us into temptation and trials. Listen, God does not tempt any man. The Bible is clear about that. We know that the love of the world, the pride of life, all of those things are not from the Father. God does not do that. So what does He mean here when He says, Lord, lead us not into temptation, when we pray that? Well, what we are asking is that in the temptation we wouldn't be led into its power. And what does temptation and trial sometimes do to us? Well, we give in to them. We make sinful choices or we become in trials bitter and so forth. And so, it's a plea for strength that God would deliver us from those temptations and be able to resist temptation when it comes our way. So, those are the principles by which we are to follow when we pray. We ought to remember that God is our Father, hallow His name, praise Him. Remember He is great and He can accomplish great things in our prayer. ask him for things, and we ought to confess our sins and pray that God would not lead us into temptation, that he would help us live a holy life. Now, that's what we looked at last week, but now we come to the second part of this subject of prayer. Jesus not only tells them what to pray, he tells us also here why we ought to pray and how we ought to pray. Well, in verses 5 through 8, we see that Jesus says that we are to be persistent in our prayers. So let's look at this here together in verse 5. Here Jesus gives a hypothetical scenario in the form of a question to teach us an important lesson about persistent prayer. Verse 5. And notice what he says, And he said to them, these disciples, Which of you who has a friend 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 and 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. Now let's think about this story for a moment. We can identify with a guy in bed, can't we? We have somebody that calls us late at night, and they may be our friend, and they knock on the door or whatever, and it's like, yeah, we want to help them. We want to be hospitable to them and so forth. But you know it like me when you're in bed, and you got the kids in bed, and you're you know hunkered down for the night You really don't want to crawl out of bed, and that's the way this friend was but let's look at the details of this story because Jesus is teaching us something very important that we are to understand when it comes to prayer. First of all, notice or see here that there are two friends in this story. One friend has a visitor arrive late at night. They would journey sometimes. He'd come in from a journey, this friend, and he arrived at this friend's house. and this friend had no food to take care of him. Now, they would journey at night, or in the evenings, I'm sorry, because it was hot, and so they would journey at that time. That's why he was probably arriving late at night, and usually, according to the things I read, most of the time, Holmes would not have more than one loaf or so in it. There wasn't much food. It was kind of hand-to-mouth and so forth. And hospitality was also an important thing. So this man, he had a need. He wanted to be hospitable to this traveler, this one who had come, his friend who had been traveling, who is now at his house. And so this friend, because he didn't have food to take care of this traveler, his friend who had been traveling on this journey, He goes to the other friend, and notice that he goes to him and he asks certain things for him. He asks for three loaves of bread, and he comes to him at night. Midnight, to be exact. And so, the thing that we see here is that he comes at an inopportune time. He comes not during the day, which the guy probably would have opened up his house, showed hospitality to him and everything, and said, sure, take it, take what you need, and go. No, this guy was in bed, and so when he goes to him, he goes to him at a time when you shouldn't be knocking on someone's door, especially in those days, because they would probably go to bed a little bit earlier than we would. They didn't have lights to stay up at night, and so They had candles and so forth, but most people, and it's still this way in some parts of the world, when the sun goes down, people go to bed, and then they rise when the sun comes up, and I'm sure that's how it was in those days as well. But he goes to this man's house, who is his friend. Notice he's a friend, he's not a stranger. But he goes to his house, and he asks him for three loaves when he arrives. Now, when he goes and asks for these three loaves, notice the response of the man inside. Verse 7. He says, Do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. He was reluctant. He did not want to get up. He didn't want to go and lock the door and unbolt it and do all the things he needed to do and make all kinds of noise and wake up his children. He says, I cannot get up and give you anything. He didn't want to get up. He's kind of like when we get a call or something and it's like, we may not be rude or anything about it, but we're like, you need this right now? Are you sure you need it right now? That's kind of the tone there in verse 7. The other thing we see is this man in this man's reluctance. He doesn't want to get up. He doesn't want to crawl out of bed. But we see here this man, eventually he will do that. He gets up because the man continues to knock and continues to ask. And so we see all of these things in this story that Jesus lays before us. Now the point of this story that Jesus is telling us. The point is, He's laying it down in contrast to how God is. Now, the man who came to Him, he had a need. He didn't have bread to feed the traveler. Well, that's how we are. We are empty-handed. We are powerless. There are so many things around us, so many needs in our life that we have that need to be met, and we have no way to accomplish those things. Maybe we have a lost loved one. We can't open their eyes. We can't do a work in their heart. We can't do anything like that. But God has the power to convict, and that's what the Bible says. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. God can do those things. We have needs that are beyond us. Maybe they're a material need or a financial need. Well, we know that we can't meet those. I mean, it's God who gives the power to get rich and makes poor, as the Bible says in Hannah's prayer in the Old Testament. And that's the way this man was. He had nothing. And so we're like the man in the story who's going to his friend knocking on the door. But when Jesus lays this story down and contrast it with God, we see that God is not like this friend in the story who was asleep and was in bed with his children. we see that. That man was reluctant. He was reluctant to get out of bed. But what we find with God is, He's never reluctant to hear our prayers. He's never reluctant to hear our prayers. Another thing that God does that is different from this man, and notice the argument that Jesus is arguing for, is that God will hear and answer our prayers And he's doing it from the lesser to the greater. He's showing us the lesser, which is this friend. And this friend, here he is in bed, and when the man comes knocking on his door, it's a bad time. It's at midnight, and he doesn't want to get up. But the Bible tells us that God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. That's what we read earlier in the book of Psalms. but he neither slumbers nor sleeps. So God is not going to, when we come to him with our prayers, be like, I'm too tired, I'm too busy, you're bothering me, I don't want you to come here. And so that's what we see here that Jesus is teaching us, that God is greater than this friend. And what Jesus is saying by giving us this scenario And it's just showing how much greater God is. Another way, God is a loving father. What is this friend? He's a friend to this guy, but at this time at night, he's a grouchy friend. God is not that. He'll never be that to us. He's a loving father. who cares for our needs. That's why we ought to say when we pray, Father. That's how we ought to call upon Him. God also, again, is not reluctant to give us what we need, like this friend. This man, as he said, he goes, I can't give you anything. I cannot get up and give you anything. That's what he says in verse 7. Does God ever say that to us? Now, if we're praying selfishly And we're praying it only, as the Bible says in James 4, to spend it on our passions. Of course God is going to say no to some things. Things that are not good for us. But when we come to God with a need, and it's a genuine need, and it's for our good and for His glory, if you will, God will meet that need. God answers those prayers. And God is not reluctant. He is willing to hear and to answer our prayers. The other thing we see is God is not irritated like this friend. He wants us to come and ask Him for what we need. God is not like this friend who truly didn't care about this man. Now, he might have cared for him a little bit because they were friends. There was obviously some connection there. But this man, if he really cared about this man's needs, needing to have bread to feed this guy who had stopped in for the night, he would have got up quickly and met that need. And so we see here that he didn't do that, but God is not like that. God truly cares about our needs, every single need, even like that need that that older lady, the Kendrick brothers, their mother, just like she had a need for a golf cart. Now that sounds silly to us, but God knew her need and He cared for her, and in a loving way, He provided for her. God truly cares because He loves us and desires to provide for His children. The thing that I want you to see here, will God be grouchy, reluctant, irritated, uncaring if we come to Him? Absolutely not. And we need to get that in our mind. God wants us to come boldly to Him. That's why He sent Christ into the world to become a faithful high priest, to die for us, and open the way to Heaven so that we could come straight to the throne of grace, boldly, to find help in the time of need, as Hebrews chapter 4 tells us. And He will absolutely answer our prayers, which is why we ought to be persistent. That is Jesus' point of telling this story when teaching us to pray. And this story that Jesus told in the form of a question, it's to encourage us even further to pray. We were encouraged by the fact that God is our Father. We were encouraged by the fact that God, His name is to be hallowed. That He is high and lifted up. That He is powerful and He is mighty. But here we are encouraged even more when Jesus contrasts God with his friend. Now this friend eventually gets up and he gives this man what he needs, but only after the man had knocked and asked and pleaded and so forth. And if that man is going to get up out of bed eventually and give, after all of his reluctance, all of his hesitancy, and all of that, how much more will God, when we come and we ask and we seek and we knock, will He not give His children what they need? I wonder how many times we thought of God, though, as being like the friend in this story. I think sometimes that's one of the problems when we come to prayer. We feel like God doesn't really want to hear from us. We feel like God doesn't want to be bothered. And do you feel sometimes like You know, when we come to God in prayer that I don't know if He's even going to hear or listen and you feel like your prayers are hitting the ceiling and everything else, I believe that that's sometimes what happens when we go to God in prayer. And sometimes that's why we're not as bold as we should be. I think that's why when we come to prayer, we don't expect God to answer because we think of God as out there in the other room and not wanting to hear us and occupied with something else or somebody else instead. of us who have placed our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But listen to this. God here is speaking through His Word to you and me. And what He's saying in all of this is this. He wants us to hear this. You and me. He wants us to hear this. That He is ready to meet our needs. He is ready to answer our prayers only if we will come to Him and cry out to Him in persistent prayer. Guys, when you and I pray with these things in mind about God, or when we pray and bring our needs to God, when we think about His loving care, His provision, and His willingness to hear and to answer our prayers, this ought to spark motivation for us to pray. And I think that if we would think of God this way, it would revolutionize our prayer life. It would motivate us to pray. Not only that, but the man asking for bread in this story reminds us of ourselves, of how inadequate we are and how much we need God. When you look at this man, It took a lot of humility to get up in the night because he didn't have anything and to go to another man's house in the middle of the night and to knock and ask and plead and all the rest to try to get what he needs to take it back to be hospitable to his visitor. Think about the humility that it took. And think about how he had no ability in and of himself to meet those particular needs. I think the sooner we realize how inadequate we are, and how much we need God, and how we are like this man in the story, we too will go to God more often. I think the problem of the modern day church is that we don't pray. And why do we not pray? Because we don't think we need anything. We think we've got it all together. If we can come up with some scheme to do ministry, if we think that we can operate and it all runs smoothly and all the rest. We think there's power there in our ministry, in our life. We think that we can have everything together. But the sooner we realize that we are needy and we need God, we will come to Him and beg Him to come and to show His power and to meet our needs and all of the rest. That's what we need to do as believers. We need to realize that we can do nothing without God. As I said last week, there's sometimes people say, well, we've done all we can do. Now we need to pray. No, that's the opposite of how we ought to do things. We ought to first pray and then we ought to do ministry or ought to do whatever it is we're trying to accomplish. When you get up and try to live the Christian life during the day, you shouldn't just go off into the day. Instead, you ought to begin the day in prayer. I believe it was Martin Luther who, when he would have a big day ahead of him, he would get up hours earlier that day so he could spend time with God in prayer. Why? Because he knew that he needed God. He knew that he could not accomplish things apart from God. And when you look at all the saints throughout the last 2,000 years of church history, all the way back into the Bible and in the Old Testament, one of the things that you find that is common among all of them who did mighty things, well they didn't do it, it was God that did it, but when God did mighty things through them, one of the things you will find, they were men of prayer. Men and women of prayer. They went to the Lord in prayer, and that's how we ought to be. And that's why the Bible tells us in Hebrews 4.16, let us approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our needs. So we need to be persistent in our prayers. We need to go in humility and cry out to God to meet our needs. Now, the other thing that we see here is we ought to be expectant in prayer. We ought to expect God to answer our prayers. In verse 9 he says this, And 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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. It will be opened. In verses 9 through 10, Jesus teaches us here again that we should pray with persistence. That's what we see in the story about this man going to his friend, and we see how God is eager, unlike this friend, to meet our needs. But we see here that Jesus is teaching us that we ought to pray with persistence and intensity and that we should expect God to hear and answer our prayers. And notice how he does this. Notice how God wants us to understand that God will hear and answer our prayers and how we ought to persist in prayer in intensity and expect God to answer. First, notice in verse 9. He says, And I tell you, I tell you, think about who is saying this and giving us this command to pray this way and to believe that God hears and answers prayers. It is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The sovereign Lord of the universe is here, the incarnate Christ, God Himself in human flesh. He is there in this verse, in verse 9, saying, I tell you. God is telling us here to be persistent in prayer and to expect Him to answer our prayers. The second thing that Jesus says here, God Himself again speaking to us, Jesus says, I tell you, ask. ask, which is a way of demonstrating our humility before God and our dependence upon God in faith. What does the Bible tell us about the righteous? The righteous shall live by what? Faith. The righteous ought to live by faith. And I've said this many times, and I'm going to say it again. so that you'll get it and I will be reminded of it. The just shall live by faith. We have focused so much, and rightly so, that a man is justified before God by faith. That is true. That's how you become a believer. That's how you become a Christian. and be declared righteous and become justified before God by faith and faith alone. But the Bible says the just shall live by faith. You don't just start out in faith, trusting in Christ for salvation, but you go on in that faith. And just like you depended upon God for your salvation, you depend upon God all the way, all the way to the end until He takes you home. And you walk by faith. And the greatest manifestation of faith is dependency upon and dependency upon God is this you ask God you pray just like when you trusted in Christ you cried out to God and said God be merciful to me a sinner please forgive me of all my sins I trust in Christ for salvation you cried out to God in prayer and you go on in prayer And every time you pray, and you pray from the heart, and you pray and want God to meet your needs, what you're doing is you're relying upon God and not yourself. And so that's what God wants us to do. He says, ask. I tell you, ask. And what does He say? It will be given to you. There's the promise. Then He goes on. The third thing that we see here in these verses, verses 9 through 10, not only are we to express our humility and our faith and our dependency upon God, but Jesus said we are also to seek. What does he mean there? This demonstrates that we must take action. We can ask, but we must take action. We must be asking and looking to God by faith for help and to answer our prayers. We don't just ask and just kind of throw out the petition. But we look unto God. We seek God. We persevere. We look unto God and say, God, please answer this prayer. Here's my prayer that I'm bringing to you. Fourth, Jesus says, not only do we ask and seek, but we knock. Well, what do we do when we go to someone's door? Like this man. He went to the house. He didn't just ask. But we see that he saw it. He got up out of his home and he went to this man's house. He saw it. But then he knocks. He's knocking, trying to get attention. And that's what we do. And He did not give up in the knocking. We are to persevere, and that is what knocking is. We persevere in asking and looking unto God by faith. And sometimes when you pray, you don't immediately receive an answer. It's not because God is reluctant or anything like that, but in those times when we persevere in prayer, God is teaching us things. He's teaching us to rely upon Him and to continue to rely upon Him. But we knock. We ask, we seek, and we knock. And then we see that all three of these, if we were to look in the Greek, they're in the present imperative, which means Jesus isn't just telling us to do this, He's commanding us to do this, and we're to do them constantly. We're to pray without ceasing. We are to keep on praying. We are to keep on asking and seeking and knocking. Keep on asking, seeking, and knocking over and over again. And given the order of these three things that describe how we are to pray, we see again that there is persistence. Ask, seek, and knock. And we see an ascending degree of intensity. It's one thing to ask, it's another thing to seek, and it's another thing to knock. There is an ascending degree of intensity in these verbs. And so we ought to be earnest about it. We ought to be persistent, but also to be earnest. And last, in light of the commandment to persist in prayer, Jesus here holds out a promise. And look at this promise. We've already seen it somewhat, but in verse 10 he really lays it out. He says, For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened. In other words, just like that friend who opened up, and he gave that man what he asked for, after he sought, and he asked, and he knocked, and did all of those things, he gave him the bread that he needed, so God will hear and answer our prayers. That's a divine promise that you can take to the bank any day of the week and cash it. God has promised that, and He does not go back on His word. Peter says that God has given us these very great and precious promises, and that's what this is. God will hear and answer our prayers. Now, there are three wrong ways that when people hear this in verse 10, that God will answer our prayers, that He will open to the one who knocks. There are three wrong ways to take this verse that promises us that God will hear and answer our prayers. Let me give you number one. There are people who are name it and claim it types. Now, these are the people who go out, and when I say name it, claim it, they're doing what James 4.3 tells us not to do. James 4.3, when he talks about prayer, he says, you ask and you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motive so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures. There are some people who are like that. They think that you can just go to God like some cosmic genie and just throw out a prayer and demand it, and God will give you a Rolls Royce, or a big house, or a fat wallet, or something like that. That's not what God is telling us to do. He's not telling us that you can just go and just ask for all of these worldly pleasures, and they'll be yours, and I'll just give you anything you want. That's the wrong way to ask. We're to go to God and ask for what we need. We're to go to ask God for the things that we need in this life that are in keeping with His will and keeping with His kingdom. coming and His will being done on this earth. So we don't ask like that. We don't ask wrongly just because we're selfish and we just want to spend it upon ourselves and we don't have any thought for God and He's just to be this cosmic bellhop that comes in and does what we want Him to do. That's the wrong way and that's not what Jesus is telling us. Second, there are people, and this is the one I want to focus on because we know the name it and claim it crowd are wrong, but there are people that I believe are all around us a lot of times, people sometimes even we might listen to online or something, people in reaction to the name it and claim it crew, they go the opposite direction. They swing the pendulum way far the other way and basically ignore the promises of Jesus. They act like if anybody is asking and believing God for things that, well, you're a charismatic, well, you're like the name it, claim it crew. And so what they do is they never ask. They never look to God or believe that He's going to answer any of their prayers because they don't want to be labeled a charismatic or some crazy guy out there that's demanding, you know, a lot of money and so forth. So we don't want to fall in that camp either and act like those people. We want to take God at his word. He says if we'll ask and seek and knock, it will be open. In other words, God will answer our prayers. There's a third wrong way to take this. James 4.2 says, you do not have because you do not ask. Some don't receive anything because one, they don't believe the promises of God. Now, it may not be that they just come out and say it, but they don't really believe God's going to answer their prayers. And so they don't pray. They don't ask God. They don't pray. They just kind of ignore the command. They ignore the promise that Jesus gives here. That's because they're not living by faith as they should. And I believe that's the biggest problem in the church today. We don't have because we don't ask. We don't pray with intensity. We don't pray believing God is going to hear and answer our prayers. We might toss up a prayer and hope it sticks or something like that, and then we just go on without any expectation whatsoever. And so those are wrong ways to come at this verse. We should come to God in prayer, and we should seek Him with intensity, pray earnestly, and we ought to believe that God will hear and answer our prayers. We ought to come to God and express our dependency upon Him, and express to Him our needs, and tell Him our needs, and come baldly to the throne of grace that we might find help to live the same supernatural life that Jesus did in the flesh. So my question to you this morning is this, what does your prayer life look like? How do you approach God? Do you seek God in prayer continuously? Do you expect God to hear and to answer your prayers? and to hear you when you pray? Do you pray fervently? Do you ever pray with a great burden on your heart? Something's on your heart and it's burdening you down and you just got to go to God constantly. Is that how you pray? Do you believe that God can and will answer your prayers? Listen, Jesus is not telling us here, again, just to pray. He's commanding us to pray, and He's calling us to, when we pray, agonize in prayer, go on in prayer, persevere and persist, don't give up, and as you pray, believe that God hears and He answers your prayer. Now, again, this is the problem, I believe, in the church today when it comes to prayer. One, we don't pray enough. I feel that all the time, that I don't pray enough. Now, we could always be praying more, but I believe that we do not pray enough, even though we may pray here and there and so forth. When you again look at all the great saints of history, you will find that they had amazing prayer lives. They were always going to God in prayer. We find that some of the people that prayed As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there would be kings and stuff that would basically fear their prayers and queens that feared their prayers. John Knox would pray and the queen said that she feared his prayers more than she feared armies. We find people like that all the time. David Livingston was a man of prayer. It was said of David Livingston that at the end of his life when he was losing his health and was unable to go out and preach like he had to the villages of Africa. They carried him out in those last days, but finally he was wore out enough and he said, take me to my house or whatever he was living in. Take me to my room and I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And they took him in. They were going to place him on the bed and he said, no, place me on the floor. And so they placed him on the floor in a position of prayer. And the man prayed. They left the room. They left him to himself. They came back. Well, he was still praying. They left him again. And finally, after a long time, they were wondering about him, what was going on in there. They wanted to go check on him. They go in, and he was gone. The man died in prayer. Those guys like that, God did amazing things. Why? Because they depended upon God in prayer. And the problem is that we pray But sometimes we don't really expect God to pray. Here's how we pray. Lord, thank You for our food. Thank You for this day. Do this, do that. Boom, we're done. And that's it. We're not agonizing prayer. Lord, You are the sovereign Lord. You are powerful and You are mighty. I believe that You hear and You answer my prayers. There's a burden and an agonizing in your heart when you pray. That's how we ought to pray. Instead of just, again, tossing up our prayers, really not expecting God to do anything, May we repent of that type of praying and ask God for forgiveness of our lack of faith when we pray. Now, let's go on to these last couple of verses here. Jesus says that we are to pray. He tells us how. He tells us to be persistent in our prayer and expect God to answer prayers. But now he says, again, just to wrap it all up, be assured in your prayers. Verse 11, he says, What father among you, telling another story, he says, What father among you And he's arguing again from the lesser to the greater. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? Now think about what Jesus is saying here. you can be assured when you ask God he's going to give good things every good and perfect gift where does it come from it comes from God above and he says what father among you well all the fathers around us there are some good fathers but every single one of them are sinners they're imperfect and he says if anyone has a father if his son comes to him and he asks for a fish, is he going to give him something bad like a serpent that could bite him and kill him? No, he's going to give him something good. If he asks for an egg, another good thing, something you can eat, will he give him a scorpion, something that's going to harm him and hurt him? No. And so God says, 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? Now you think about this for a second. I thought about this last verse here in verse 13. He said, How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? He could have said something like this. He could have said, How much more will the Heavenly Father give you good gifts, or answer your prayers, or something like that, or give you what you need. But He doesn't do that. He said, How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? What is one of the greatest things that God can give us? That's His good Holy Spirit. The greatest gift that we could ever receive is the Holy Spirit to come into our life, transform our lives, and transform us and change us and make us holy and everything else. I mean, out of all the material things and all the the monetary things that we could receive from God, the greatest thing that we could receive is the Holy Spirit of God. When we trust God for salvation, that's exactly what happens. The Spirit comes to dwell in our hearts. And so when he draws this contrast here between an earthly father who is evil, that is, he's a sinner, and he gives good gifts, how much more good will God give if we ask? He's showing how much greater God is, and he emphasizes that by showing us that our heavenly father, he's greater than our earthly father, and our father in heaven, he gives us the Holy Spirit. But who does He give it to? Those who ask of Him. I'm like J.C. Ryle. When it comes to this verse, I believe that this promise is not just for believers. Now, I think in one sense it is. When we pray to God, and we ask God for things, and we are depending upon Him, surely He is going to send the Spirit of God to work mightily in our lives, to deliver us from temptation, to work in whatever ministry we're in, and so forth, and accomplish great things. we ought to be dependent upon God and the Holy Spirit. And God will do that. And we see something of that in Galatians chapter 3, when Paul talked about when we live by faith, what happens? Well, the Holy Spirit, He works miracles among us. He does mighty things. So I think He's showing us that if we trust in God and we ask Him for things, the Spirit of God will definitely be sent and work. But I think it's more broader than that. Yes, the children of God have the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will work in their lives. But he says, how much more will the Heavenly Father give, he didn't say you, but he says give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. But I'm like J.C. Ryle in that This is a promise, I believe, that goes out to all, not just the disciples. If anyone will call upon God and ask God to save them and trust in Christ, what will God do? He will answer that prayer. He'll save them. He'll forgive them. He'll clothe them in the righteousness of Christ. But the one thing He also does is He gives the Holy Spirit. And we see that God is a generous and gracious God. He's willing to give us even His Holy Spirit to empower our lives, to come into our lives, and to transform us, and to empower us to live the life that He has called us to do. If He's given us His Spirit, if He's given us His Son to die on the cross, I mean, what else is there to give? It shows the giving nature of God. And so if God would give us the Holy Spirit, don't you think He can give you bread? Don't you think that He can meet any need that comes your way that you need help with? or you've got some desperate situation, God can certainly hear and answer those prayers. Well, you might say, well, I've tried praying. I've tried praying and God has just not answered my prayers. Well, there could be a few reasons for that, and here's some of them. It could be that as a believer you have unconfessed sin in your life. You know, as David said in Psalm 66, 18, he said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, he will not hear. So it may be that you just need to go and confess your sins to God and get right with God. It could be as a believer you have not persevered in prayer. You've asked, but you haven't sought God. You haven't knocked. You haven't persevered. You prayed a few times, but you gave up because God didn't answer you in His timing. It could be that you're asking wrongly. Maybe you're asking for something that you don't need. You know, some of God's greatest gifts, and I'm not quoting an old Garth Brooks song, but some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. So maybe you're asking with the wrong motives, or you're asking to spend whatever it is you're asking for on your flesh, and it's not according to the will of God. And it could be that you're praying, but you've not started by crying out for God to save you. And you're not yet a child of God. You've prayed, but yet you're still in your sins. You've never prayed to ask God to forgive you and trusted in Christ alone for your salvation. And if that is true, God's not your father. He's your creator. But the Bible says in John that the devil is your father. And so what you need to do is begin by calling upon God in prayer. And if you will call upon the name of the Lord, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord and look to Christ for salvation, what will God do? He'll give you His Holy Spirit. He'll make you through Christ. He'll adopt you as a child of God. And so you will then have the precious privileges to going boldly to the throne of grace. So that could be some of the reasons why God has not answered your prayers. I want to encourage us all as believers to obey this commandment. This is not a suggestion. It's not, oh, that's fine and Danny, that sounds great. We ought to pray. No, it's not that. It is a command from Jesus. And Jesus is saying, pray fervently. praying and believing that God will hear and answer your prayers. Live by faith and dependency upon God. Not your own strength, not your own ingenuity, not your own ideas, but instead take everything to God in prayer. When you read your Bible, begin in prayer. Before you preach the gospel to someone, pray, and so forth. I want you to, when you get up, before you start off your day, go to the Lord in prayer. Pray earnestly. You got someone who's lost in your family, someone who doesn't know Christ, some situation that's just stressing everyone out? Take it to the Lord in prayer. Pray in faith, believing that God will hear and He will answer your prayers. May we do so much better at prayer, and may these things motivate us. He's our Father, and He's all that His name represents, and we can come to Him and He will hear, and He will answer, and He tells us to come, and He tells us that He'll answer us. Why would we not take advantage of those precious promises? Let's go to the Lord in a word of prayer. Father, as we come to You, we thank You, Lord, for Your Word. And Father, I pray that we would not be like the disciples who fell asleep instead of persisting in prayer. Forgive us, Lord, of the times that we have not called upon You and we've rushed off to live the Christian life, or we've rushed off to do ministry, or we've turned to stress and despondency and despair because of some situation in life instead of praying to You and laying it at your feet and believing that you can hear and answer prayer. Lord, forgive us of our lack of prayer and help us, Lord, stir our hearts to take hold of these promises, to live by them and to believe all that Jesus has commanded us and said to us and promised to us in this passage. And Lord, if there's anybody here today, I pray that they would take hold of your promise and they would cry out to you in prayer that you would save them. I pray that today they would look unto Christ for salvation and turn from their sins and, Lord, look to you to transform their lives and give them your Holy Spirit. Lord, we ask all of these things in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.