I don't know about you, but it's wonderful to me to be back, back here. And we will, we'll pick up where we left off. But anyway, if you would please turn to Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11, we're going to, May the 28th was the last time we met. And that was to go through the Lord's prayer, which is Luke chapter 11, verses one to four. But I know some of you were not here over the last year or so when we started on Luke, I guess almost the full year. So I want to just back up just a little bit and review how we got to where we are. It's always, context is always a critically important aspect of anytime you're looking at scripture or studying anything really, but especially in scripture. So this gospel that we are privileged to examine is unique, as you would imagine, in so many ways. All of them, all 66 books are this way. But Luke is, I didn't find this out until last night. I suspicioned it, but I didn't really know. I didn't know anybody had done this, but I wondered, and have wondered for years, which books of the Bible have the most words in them. You know, it doesn't help to count chapter numbers and verses and all those sorts of things. Which have the most words? Well, it's a convoluted question. But believe it or not, someone has gone back to the originals. Now, we don't have the autographs, the so-called autographs, which were the original originals. But this individual has taken the Greek and the Hebrew from Genesis 1-1 all the way through the end of Revelation. And the Gospel of Luke is the longest book in the New Testament. If you add, if you add, boy, a closed door or such. I think we got somebody who's trying to, who, I'm not certain. If you add the book of Acts, of course, which was written by Luke, then you, it's a no-brainer. Acts actually is the second longest book in the New Testament, so you put the two together, you're really looking at a lot. This man had a lot to say, and it's fascinating that this man would be saying it, because he wasn't one of the apostles. an eyewitness of everything, but he generally is introduced as a historian, which he certainly was. But we lose the fact that he was also a theologian. There is a definitive theology that runs through Luke, just as you would expect there to be. But beginning in the first chapter, with verse four. This is a profound statement. He's dedicating the book to a friend of his named Theophilus, and he's going to compile this narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, he says in verse one. But verse four says, in order that, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. That is a dramatic statement that we need never to forget. The scriptures are here for us to have certainty about the things we have been taught. So this is an aspect of Luke's thinking. There are many ways I could get us back to chapter 11. I'm gonna just itemize a few of the distinctives of this gospel of Luke, generally distinct from the other. three Gospels. Now Luke is one of the synoptic Gospels, so claimed. Matthew, Mark, Luke are the synoptics. because they tend to be fairly synonymous in the mannerism in which they go about choosing the topics. I've always disliked that approach because, frankly, Luke has a lot of distinctives. Matthew has distinctives. Mark has distinctives. But nonetheless, they are very different from John. Maybe that's what drove people to do this. But here are a few of the distinctives that we will see, and we have seen this, and they're going to be increasing as we go through this gospel. Number one, salvation history. God's action in Christ is the central driving force of the gospel of Luke. He gets to it from the beginning of it, he's at it at the end of it, and he's pushing. Now, you say, well, obviously all of the gospels, by definition, are talking about God's action in Christ, but Luke does it, in my humble opinion, more and more. encased in the centrality of what he's saying than Matthew, Mark, or John. For instance, the two adverbs, two insignificant adverbs, now and today, far and away used more in Luke than you will find in Matthew, Mark, or John. Luke, for instance, the adverb now, 14 times Matthew 4, Mark 8, The word today, Luke 11 times, Matthew three, Mark once. The point being that Luke is a man on a mission and the now and today signify what has happened when Jesus Christ came into this world, went to that cross and left that tomb empty. Luke is saying, okay, now that this has happened, the world has changed. Now that this has happened, today that this has happened, and everyone living in every day since that has happened, the salvation history of Jesus Christ and the cross becomes the imperative of Luke. Here's another one, the universality of salvation for all people. As you know, Luke sometimes, again, probably not wisely, tends to be looked upon as a gospel to Gentiles, where Matthew is more gospel-oriented to Jewishness. Luke was probably a Gentile, we don't know that. Matthew was Jewish, so perhaps that has something to do with it. But in Luke, what you see pushed is salvation is universally offered for everybody. And this comes out in a number of incredible ways. In the second chapter of Luke, he talks about when the angels come down and announce the birth of Christ, it's glory to God on earth. Peace among all people. There's no narrowness whatsoever in the Gospel of Luke. In the third chapter, when Luke takes his genealogy, he takes it all the way back to Adam. He doesn't stop with Abraham, as Matthew does. He takes it all the way back to the beginning of the world. So there's a universality component in Luke that you don't find anywhere else. The word peace, peace found more in Luke, 13 times in Luke, four times in Matthew, once in Mark. This notion of peace that where Luke picks up from the Old Testament concept of shalom, as you know, it's very, very rich and large a concept in scripture. Here's another one. Luke tends to focus on individuals much more than Matthew, Mark, or John. He's pushing the specificity. He gets down, maybe it's because he was a physician. I don't know, that probably had an influence to it. But he gets into the lives of individual people. He's talking about them by name. He's talking about them specifically. Not great geopolitical movements or all of those kinds of things, which are sometimes, for instance, in the parables, the two gospels that have the most parables, Matthew and Luke, Luke has the most. Matthew's parables tend to push the kingdom, vast concepts. Luke's parables tend to have individuals in them, specific individuals, by name individuals. So it's, in that sense, sort of a friendlier gospel. Here's another characteristic of Luke, the importance of women. Women in that day, and up until recently, I would say, I would always say, still today, but I'm beginning to, having just come back from the Mayo Clinic, I don't know if there's a male doctor left down there. Everywhere I go, it seems to be, women running everything, which maybe that's a good thing. But with the gospel of Luke in an era of history when women were focuses largely and often on women in his stories. He is not shy. He is not put off. He is, in fact, bringing women to a forefront position that none of the other gospel writers do. Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, Martha, Another Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, the widow of Nain, the sinner who anointed Jesus' feet, the so-called bent woman, we'll get to her in chapter 13 of Luke, the widow who gave all she had, the daughters of Jerusalem, and often in the parables such as the lost coin, all of those kinds of things, there are women who occupy center stage, and that's unique to Luke. It's not that the other gospels ignore women, But Luke has no problem, and in fact, I think in very realistic manner, he brings women to the forefront here, not as second-class citizens, no more important than men, but certainly as equals. Children, he focuses on children more than other gospel writers. The only gospel story about Jesus' childhood is found in Luke. The infant narratives are fuller in Luke. Here's another one, the focus on the poor. Luke in particular tends to go toward the disreputable people. He doesn't shy away from a Zacchaeus, from a tax collector, all of those kinds of things. But when it comes to the poor, Luke has more to say by far than any of the other gospel writers. He focuses not only on that side of the equation, but then he goes to the other and says, now, one of the things you really need to be aware of is being rich. So he's talking in economic terms. When you get to the Beatitudes, in Matthew, it's blessed are the poor in spirit. And we all love to try to, you know, we just contextualize that any way you want to. In Luke, it's blessed are the poor. Period. And he is talking there in economic terms. Now, he's not going to say that if you're poor, that's what you should aspire toward or anything like that. He's simply not going to shy away from it, but he has many things to say, as does all of scripture, frankly, the entirety of the Old Testament. The prophets in particular focus on what God's people do with the poor that are in their midst. Here's another aspect of Luke, the passion of Christ. It is absolutely, as I've mentioned, the centrality of Luke. And frankly, it comes out even more clearly in the book of Acts in one perspective, as does the next distinctive, which is a focus on the Holy Spirit. You get more of a focus on the Holy Spirit in Luke. Really, probably, arguably, the Book of Acts is the most prominent book in all of the New Testament in terms of the Holy Spirit. Not only do you have Pentecost, but you've got the Holy Spirit all the way through this Book of Acts, as well as the Gospel of Luke. Two more things, and I'll consider us caught up. He focuses on prayer, and he focuses on praise. This notion of prayer is through, of course, all of scripture, but Luke and Luke alone focuses on the prayers of Jesus himself. There are at least seven prayers that Jesus prays in Luke that are not listed in any of the other gospels. Every single occasion in Jesus's life when he's moving, from one large event into another, it's always preceded by prayer. That does not happen in the others. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying that Luke is unique in wanting to get all of us aware of this. And that's why the word praise comes in as a similar issue. Luke is a singing gospel. In Luke, you've got the Magnificat, you've got the Benedictus, you've got the Nuptimidus, and you've got all those magisterial songs that begin his gospel. You've also got laughter in the gospel of Luke. If you look at chapter six, verse 21, let me do that. Most people, when you think of the Bible, you don't necessarily think of laughter and seeing laughter. Luke's Beatitudes, blessed are you who are hungry now, or you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, or you shall laugh. Luke, I would like this guy. I think we would like this guy. If we met him on this street, I think you'd want to be a friend of this man. He clearly is a humble person. He clearly sees Jesus as the centerpiece, and with Jesus, this man assaults the world. He's got nothing, no fears, no worries, and he doesn't care who it is, male, female, old, young. He's gonna bring the gospel, and he's gonna bring it in the power of the Holy Spirit, focused on the cross and the resurrection. So this is what we're looking at. The word rejoice, by the way, more often in Luke than any book in the entirety of the New Testament. So you've got all of these things about this man and about the book. Now, he puts all of these specifics into a pattern. Most people divide the book. I have no trouble with this at all. The infancy narratives, as it opens, Chapters one and two, the ministry of John the Baptist, in chapter three, the beginning of Jesus's ministry, chapter three and four. Jesus in Galilee goes a large section, chapter four through nine, and then you get where we are now, in chapter 11. And we've mentioned this a lot last spring as we were closing in on this, but Jesus in the gospel starts to move from Galilee, indeed, Caesarea Philippi, way up north, north of the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem. And that journey takes him from chapter nine through chapter 19. It's the largest segment of the book. It's where the vast majority of his parables are contained. And we're going to look at, you remember, we saw the parable of the Good Samaritan before we left. And we're gonna get into that again. But Jesus at this point is moving. He knows what is waiting for him in Jerusalem, a.k.a. a cross and death. But he is moving at this point from all the way from chapter nine through 19 toward Jerusalem. Jesus is in Jerusalem, chapters 19 and 21. 2021, the crucifixion, 21 to 23, and then the resurrection in chapter 24. So in one sense, it's a very logical way to present this. So that hopefully catches us up a bit, and if you're not with us, last spring, then that's who this gospel writer is and of what he, some of his strengths as he goes on this journey. Now, last time, again, the end of May, we covered the Lord's Prayer, four verses, Matthew 11, verses one to four. Today, we're going to pick up and he's going to continue teaching about prayer. We're going to see today probably one of the least recognized and considered more mundane passages in the entirety of the Gospel of Luke. And that's unfortunate because this is just a juicy, juicy passage. that we could spend three to four hours on, we will not do that. But this is going to be interesting on a number of levels, but he's given them the Lord's prayer. They've said, teach us how to pray. And he says, okay, here's a skeleton, here's a form, here's a pattern, what we call the Lord's prayer. Now, the entirety of the New Testament Virtually every single of the 27 books in the New Testament will teach us how to pray and will give us insights into prayer. One of the things that should alert us to is to beware of taking any one of them and seeing that as the exemplar for prayer. It's simply too large a topic for that. It has too many aspects of it for that. And that's going to be true of what we see today as well. As we turn now to Matthew chapter 11, verses five through 13. And we're going to begin with a little parable. Verses five, six, seven, and eight, these four verses, I'm going to call it the parable of the friend at midnight. If you look at any commentary, all of them that I was able to look at, you will see it often as the parable of the persistent friend. We're going to have to deal with that word as we go through this, but let's just look at these four verses. Jesus in chapter 11 has given them the Lord's prayer. And then he says this in verse five, six, seven, and eight. 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 him 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, question mark. Notice the question mark. Verse eight, I will 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. I'm gonna go ahead and read the rest of this passage, verses nine to 13, because this is where I think we get in trouble with the parable we just finished. This is where we start connecting dots in our minds that are not on the page. Verses nine to 13. And I tell you, Jesus continues, 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? Now, we read those four verses, and by the way, some people consider those four verses, 9 to 13, another parable. People have given them various nomenclatures over the centuries. Some people call it a poem rather than a parable. But the problem is the word knock. We read the word knock, ask, seek, knock, and we read it back into the first parable. So we need to look back at this first parable. Now, the Lord's Prayer, I wanna get back and recall to us a couple of quotes about the notion of prayer in general in this Lord's Prayer presentation in these four verses. Again, what Jesus is doing is giving us a form, a skeleton. He's not saying this is the only prayer, this is the main prayer, whatever. He's saying here's a pattern here, and he's then going to disclose this pattern, he's going to reveal it, and what he means by pattern, and what we are to learn from this pattern. Here is the goal of it. Kent Hughes says this, this pattern of the Lord's Prayer And indeed, the pattern and instruction given throughout scripture about prayer in general is, quote, to shape a life of expansive prayer with dynamic upward and outward dimensions that inform and include all of life. That's what prayer is. And that's a pretty dramatic truth. But it is a truth. It's to shape our lives. expansive prayer, dynamic, upward, outward dimensions to inform and include every single aspect of life. Now, keeping that goal in mind, that's why Robert Murray McShane said this about prayer, what a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is and no more. Here's what Martin Lloyd-Jones says, prayer is the highest activity of the human soul. Here's what J.I. Packer said, prayer is the spiritual measure of men and women in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face. And finally, a good friend, Terry Johnson, pastor's Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, We lack spiritual depth in our day because we fail to be persistent, I would say shameless, in prayer, in our families, in our personal lives, in our churches, in our neighborhoods, and in our world. Those quotes are worthy of a lifetime of effort. And I will be the first to say how often I trivialize prayer by shooting little 20-second snippets up to the God of the universe. And I doubt I'm alone in that. But this notion of prayer, we seem to treat it as if it's sort of an attachment, an add-on If you can get around to it, it would probably help after you've done all the diligent background checking and work and put out a business model and developed a vision statement. Maybe then I'll, if there's any time left over, we'll go to prayer. We need to flip completely this notion and understand of what we are doing when we get to prayer. And that is why Jesus leads with this particular parable in verses five, six, seven, and eight. 99% again, 99% I think of the 21st century believers read this parable And they assume that what it's just told them is that there was a person who gets up at midnight and goes to a friend's house and starts knocking. And the friend won't come out and he just keeps knocking and that's why it's the persistent friend. That's why it's called a persistent friend. We noticed an odd word, impudence in verse eight in the ESV. We're gonna get to that in a moment. Now, certainly persistence is an aspect of biblical prayer. We're going to get to that in several of the parables Luke is going to present, the unjust judge. In fact, not to confuse the issue too much, you may recall that this enormous passage, this aspect of Luke from chapter nine through 19, his journey from Galilee down to Jerusalem, has been put in a chiastic structure that is a pattern where as you move from 9 to 10 to 11 to 12 you have a mirror of that from 18 to 17 to 16 and so forth. If you were to look at that structure The equivalent here of 11 is the unjust judge in chapter 18. That's going to be interesting. I'm not gonna go into that anymore today, but it's going to be interesting. So this notion of persistence, that is certainly taught in scripture as an aspect of prayer, but I would suggest to you it has nothing whatsoever to do with the four verses we just read. Now, here's what's going on here. Again, I think verse nine, which is not part of the parable, it's part of the next parable or poem, whatever it is, when it talks about knocking, and we also, when we read these four verses, verses five, six, seven, and eight, we immediately think about that woman who does knock, and she goes to the judge, and he won't give her the answer, and she comes back, and she comes back, and she comes back, and because he finally says, here, take it, You win the lawsuit, anything to get you off of my back. All of those things come flooding in because we think what would I have to do if somebody came to my house at midnight and I had to go next door and knock on my neighbor's door, we would assume that we would have to be persistent. Okay, verse five. Verse five begins with a very common three-word Greek phrase. It's very, very common. It's translated, which of you? As you read verse five, Jesus says, and he said to them, he, Jesus said to the disciples, which of you? Is how it's translated in virtually every English Bible. I have no trouble with that. That is literally what the words. But let me show you some other passages here in Luke. Turn to Luke 12, next chapter, verse 25. You see the same three Greek words. And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? What is meant by that question? It's essentially a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious, no one, nobody can. I go to Luke chapter 14, verse five. And he said to them, which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day will not immediately pull him out? And the answer of course is we, everybody would, of course we would. There, goodness, I've got the same phrase in John to the same effect. In fact, that's not a bad one to look at. John chapter 8. John chapter 8 verse 46 is when Jesus himself is in the garden of Gethsemane Struggling, struggling in a way that no human has ever had to struggle nor ever could have to struggle or the ability to struggle. Jesus is sweating blood as he's carrying your sin and my sin to that cross. And in verse 46 of John chapter eight, he says, which one of you, excuse me, Chapter eight, verse 46. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Which one of you is the same phrase, it's translated a bit differently, but it's the same three Greek words. Which one of you convicts me of sin? That's probably the most rhetorical question that could ever be asked in the universe. Nobody is going to convict Jesus of sin. He was not a sinner. The point is this, when those three words occur, it is meant to be a no brainer. This is not something up for discussion, it's obvious. Now, when you get back here to verse five, this phrase being assumed to give a dramatically negative answer, here's how it could be paraphrased. Can you imagine going to a neighbor at midnight asking for three loaves of bread and getting turned down? Of course not. That's what's actually going on in the verse. I'm not going to be, I don't expect to have to be persistent. When you get to verse eight, Here is the big conundrum. There is another Greek word that is found no place else in all of scripture. It occurs one time and it's in this verse, and that's a Greek word that here, the ESV uses impudence. And you notice it has a footnote. And if you look at the footnote, the footnote says, or persistence. In the NIV, it's boldness. Footnote it also to persistence. In the New American Standard, it's persistence. In the King James, it's importunity, which means overly persistent. In other words, every Bible we've got is pushing this notion of persistence. Now, there is a long lineage of what's going on here. You can trace this word, this one word that's in verse 8, all the way back to the 7th century among the Greeks. It's a Greek word. They created the word. Every time it's used from the 7th century B.C. all the way up until about 1,000 to 1,200 A.D., the word is translated shameless. The problem is most people see shameless as a word that wouldn't fit the context. They think is it shameless of me to go before God and ask him something in prayer? So there was a subtle beginning to change this word and indeed in the Latin, in the Vulgate and Latin, I realize I'm jumping into too many weeds here. The word was actually changed so it would be persistent. but that's not what's going on here. Another thing to understand about this is the person who is persistent in the text is not the person that we think is knocking, it's the person who's in bed. If you look, if you read verse eight, 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 blah, blah, blah. It's talking about the guy in bed, it's not talking about the person knocking at the door. And here's another thing, he's not knocking at the door. He calls out to him. A friend calls out at midnight. A stranger knocks at the door. There's nothing like that going on here. Here is the real centerpiece of the whole thing. Ancient Near Eastern hospitality is legendary. It still is today. And it's not from individual to individual. It is in our culture. Somebody comes to my house at midnight and wants me to put him up or feed him or whatever. That's my problem to handle. Nobody else has to know about it. That is not true in what is going on in this text, in this world in which Jesus lived. And if you go there today, it has not changed. When someone comes, when a stranger even comes, to a village, it becomes the village's problem to feed and not just feed, but sumptuously feed. It had to be overdone. This man in this case is asking for three loaves of bread. That's not because the loaves of bread are gonna be the meal. The loaves of bread are the fork and the spoon and the knife. The way they're going to eat in the ancient Near East is have common bowls of food, but you broke off a piece of a loaf of bread to dip it, and by breaking pieces off, you didn't contaminate any of the common bowls. What is expected here is that this person is going to, even though it's midnight, even though the door is bolted, even though the kids are asleep in perhaps a one-room house, He's not going to fight back. He may be groggy. You may have to shout a little bit to get him to wake up, but he's not going to fight back. He's going to answer the call and everybody, including the village, will be praised for the response of hospitality that they give. That's the meaning of this parable. It is not a person knocking at all. It is something very, very different. And we're going to get back to this part of it in just a second. I wanna get down here to nine to 13 again. He moves from that. And again, keep in mind what we've seen, that little four verse parable is Jesus saying, can you imagine? He's just given them a pattern for the Lord's prayer. And he says, can you imagine going to God and not getting an answer? It's unthinkable. That's what's being said here. It's not being said, imagine going to God you knock and he's too tired to deal with it. And he doesn't want to handle it anymore. It's not saying when you run into that, keep pounding, keep pounding. Maybe you can get God to focus on it. That would be such an egregious misread of scripture that it's kind of hard to imagine. But at any rate, when you get to nine to 13, you see why. Some people again, call this the parable of a father's gifts in verse nine. We see three very, very critically important present imperatives. Ask, seek, knock. The significance of being present tense imperatives is that it's ongoing action. What he's saying here is keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. That's persistence. No problem there. In verse 11, you get another one of these, can you imagine, this three phrase, when he says, what father among you? If a son asks for a fish, well, instead of a fish, give him a serpent. Again, of course not. No father is going to have his son come to him and say, I'm hungry, I need a fish, and you say, ha ha. I'm gonna rub it in, I'm gonna give you a serpent instead. Of course not, it's not going to happen. So this second little pericope, whether it's a parable or not is irrelevant, frankly. It's working hand in glove with verses five through eight, and then the bottom line in verse 13, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? Again, now we see Luke focusing, as I've mentioned, Never far from Luke's mind, ask him for the Holy Spirit. There's a wonderful, several stories from the life of John Newton, who did precisely this when he was dying. This isn't the story when he was quite a sinner and was being punished for all of that. At least two of the stories I know about was when he was actually out on the ocean as captain of a ship that was sinking. And in the midst of it, as people are getting washed overboard left and right, his prayer is that God will give him the Holy Spirit. He's not saying, keep the ship afloat. He's saying, I want something that's going to guarantee that and so much more. So, when you see all of these three together, the Lord's Prayer, verses one to four, the Friend at Midnight, verses five to eight, and the Father's Gifts, verses nine to 13, what they teach all together is the extravagance of God to answer prayer. We know of passages, there are many passages in the Gospel of John, John 14, verse 14, portion of that verse says, if you ask me anything in my name, I'll do it. And that phrase or something almost identical is found in John 15, verse seven, John 16, verse 23. So why is it that so often we think God didn't hear my prayer? I've prayed, but it's like the sky is iron and bronze and my prayers bounce off of it. Or why do we say that God heard, but he didn't answer? Both of those, by the way, are impossibilities. It is impossible to pray a prayer that God does not hear. It is impossible to pray a prayer that God does not answer. He may not give you the answer you want. He may not give it in the time you want it, but he will answer it. So what's the problem? Book of James. James chapter four, verses two to three. Very, very critically important here. James says, you do not have because you do not ask. So part of the problem there is if you're never praying, if you're never bringing your petitions before God persistently or not, you're not gonna get what you're not asking for. But then James says something very interesting. He said, you ask and do not receive. because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. Now, what James is talking about there, he's kind of unpacking this pattern of the Lord's Prayer. And again, that's why I say, when you're looking at the teaching on prayer, it's a very broad, deep understanding of the Lord's Prayer. aspect in the New Testament in particular with many aspects to it. And we're looking here in Luke 11 and only one of them, the fact that God is extravagant. If you go to him and say, I need help on this, he's not gonna make it worse. You're not gonna go to him for a fish, he's gonna give you a serpent. That's what we've come through. Now here, I wanna conclude with this. Mark chapter 14, verse 36. Jesus is in Gethsemane. We can't even begin to fathom the pain and the suffering that Jesus in his human aspect is undergoing at this time when all of the sins of his people from Adam, all of us, through to the point where he comes again a second time. All of those sins are being piled on him by his heavenly father. And he's beginning to sense the loss of a communion that you and I can never fathom. And in Mark 14, 36, Jesus prays this way. And he said, Abba, father. Know the love, the love that Jesus has and comes to his father in heaven with, Abba Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. He's not shy, he doesn't, if pain, suffering, all of the many aspects of life can be so painful, so difficult. No reason to hold back a bit, that's why I love the book of Psalms. You never see anybody in Psalter holding back. Jesus says, remove this cup from me, I know you can do anything. His next words are these, yet, not what I will, but what you will. And that is an insight that I pray I could have in my own heart. And I would pray it for every Christian. Jesus is very real about his feelings, about what he's undergoing, about the trauma of it, the pain of it, the suffering of it. But his feelings don't control him, nor does he try to control God with them. He does not come back and say, I couldn't believe it. His own son and he put me through that camp. He comes before him with all the love of an Abba father, all the love of this great communion. And he prays, I can't handle this. Take this cup from me. but not what I want, but you want. That is what I ultimately want you to do. That is what these couple of verses here that we've looked at here in Luke chapter 11. They're fascinating for a number of reasons. Persistence in prayer, I have no trouble with that, but it's not here. It's not in verses five, six, seven, and eight. We're gonna get to it, we're gonna see it, but it's not here. What is here is much more important, in my humble opinion, and that is God hears the prayers of his children and he will answer them. Let's close in prayer. Father, we do come before passages like this and it just, So humbling because we know that we can get in ruts. We can pray without even thinking about what we're praying. Our prayers can become simply come before you with lists of the things we want. We don't acknowledge who we are. We don't acknowledge our own sinfulness so often in prayer. Father, help us to be those who come to you in adoration, who come to you in confession of our sins, who come to you in thanksgiving for who you are. who come to you with supplications, with those things that we need, but always, always knowing, you not only hear, you not only respond, you not only answer, but you answer our prayers in ways that are better for us than we know ourselves. Father, help us to learn these wonderful, wonderful insights that this man Luke is giving us here. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.