The Persistent Petitioner

If you look in your bulletins,
you see the passage in Luke chapter 11 and you see verses 1 to 13
there. And I would be overly optimistic
if I said we were going to get through all of that today. So
you’ll have to put up with me again for another week. Today, we’re going to talk about
the subject of prayer. We’re going to look at this passage
and we’re going to spend some time in another one. And we’re
going to answer some questions along the lines of how is it
that we should we pray? Why should we pray? Things of
the nature of this maybe challenge some of the misconceptions that
we have, what we’ve been taught or what we’ve been raised by
or maybe just what we’ve heard. And so we’ll look at these things.
But first, let’s read this passage in its entirety before we dive
in. One day, Jesus was praying in
a certain place. And when he finished, one of
his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John
taught his disciples. And they said to him, when you
pray, say, Father, hallowed be thy name, your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for
we also forgive everyone who sins against us and lead us not
into temptation. And then he said, suppose one
of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says,
friend, lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of
mine on a journey has come to me and I have nothing to set
before him. Then the one inside answers,
do not bother me. The door is already locked and
my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.
I tell you. Though you will not get up and
give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of
the man’s boldness, he will give up, get up and give him as much
as he needs. So I say to you, ask and it will
be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock
and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds it to him
who knocks. The door will be open. Which
of your fathers, if asked your son for a fish, will give him
a snake instead? Or if he asked for an egg, Will
you give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more
will your father in heaven give this Holy Spirit to those who
ask him? Let’s pray. Father. Grant us the gift of illumination
today to look into your word, to dive into, saturate and soak
in this richness and to come out sanctified, changed and renewed. Father, give us wisdom as we
look into this passage to come into our hearts, Father, that
your spirit may richly dwell here right now. Guide us, show
us, Father, for the glorification of your name. What is it that
this text has for us today and what is it that we are called
to do? In Jesus name, Amen. A recent study. The three hundred
church members was taken concerning prayer, and this is what was
found out. Forty percent of the people who engaged in this study
said that they read their Bible fewer than three times a week.
These are church members, mind you. Forty six percent said they
read their Bible on average less than five minutes a day on those
three days a week. And nearly 60 percent of the
people said that they do not set aside a daily time for prayer. And you might think these are
puzzling figures. How could this be in the body
of Christ? How could this be? Or we would compare our church
to others and think that that doesn’t happen here. After the
pastor conducted the survey, says he went through the five
stages of emotion, hearing these results, the first was the desire
to quit. So to be in this church for six and a half years and
he was extremely discouraged that after six and a half years,
this was all the devotion that the people of his flock were
getting from his teaching. The second was anger. He was
completely angered at the worldliness of just so many hearts in the
midst of the church. And he was completely angered
that the word of God and communion with God in prayer was so low
on real life’s priority list. The third was grief. He just
felt utterly disappointed that his church was just so powerless
to take on a spiritual battle in this world. Fourthly, contrition,
a sense of being rebuked and broken for think that his church
was a special one, that God has set his church out and set him
apart to do great things. And this was their commitment
to prayer. And fifth was a longing. He really had the sense that
God would grace him and his church. To change this, to make it more
attractive, more enjoyable than the things of this world. that
people may want to go in a corner and pray and study the word of
their creator rather than watch TV. He said, this is the prayer
for my people in King David’s words. Oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.
How sweet are thy words to my taste, sweeter than honey to
my mouth. This is the prayer of John Piper
in Bethlehem Baptist Church 20 years ago, 1987. A revolution of prayer in our
lives and our hearts and our churches can bring incredible
reformation to our church today, to the power of the people. And
today, like I said, we’ll look at three key questions. So you
have that section of notes. I’m not a big fill in the blank
guy because I think you just listen for the blank and then
you put your thing down. So you don’t get away with that with
me. Three key questions concerning prayer. The first, why or where
rather, where should we pray? The second, how should we pray? And then the third being why
should we pray? This passage begins in Luke 11. Let me read verse one again.
One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he
had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to
pray just as John taught his disciples. I wonder if we took
a survey here And we asked for an explanation of what is prayer.
How would you define it? How would you explain it to somebody
that just came as an innocent bystander? Or let’s say you were
on the game show Family Feud and you were asked. I bet the
number one response would be, oh, prayer is just talking to
God. That’s it. It’s all it is. It’s just a simple conversation
between you and God. Well, what does Christ say about that? How
does he answer it? Well, obviously not, because in verse two, he
says, he said to them, when you pray, say. He didn’t just answer. It’s a simple conversation. So
obviously, there are some guidelines. Father, hallowed be thy name,
your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins so that we may forgive everyone who sins
against us and lead us not into temptation. Now, who is he talking
to? This is not 21st century Americans. This is not people who have no
exposure to the Lord or to the book. These are well schooled,
devout Jews he’s talking to. They know the book. They memorized
the Torah by the age 13. They prayed once or twice before,
but they saw something different in Jesus. They said, this guy
prays a little bit differently. I hope that he will teach us
how to do that. They’ve been praying their whole
lives, but they look at him and they see something different.
Now, let’s flip over to the parallel passage in Matthew, chapter six. And we’ll spend some time there. Matthew six, verses five and
six. And when you pray, do not be
like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I
tell you the truth. They have received their reward
in full. Now, for the Jews, it was a very
routine or normal thing to pray in public. It was very different
than today. There were actually standardized prayers throughout
the day at the third, sixth and ninth hour, as it were, being
9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. And so when it talks about standing
and praying, that was a normal position to pray. And on the
street corners, well, today, generally, we don’t see people
praying at the corner of Shields and Prospect before we come out
here. It just doesn’t happen that way. But if a during a routine
time of the day when the hour struck, the Jews would pray.
It’s very similar to what we know as the Muslims do in the
five pillars of faith. So this was not an unordinary
thing, but the difference was this. He calls them hypocrites.
Now, hypocrites, we all know that word, we throw it around
very loosely today, but a hypocrite was an actor. A hypocrite was
a person who wore a full body costume to play a different character
in a different part. So that’s where that word comes
from. And so when he’s addressing those who are hypocrites, he’s
addressing those who mask themselves in prayer for a different reason
than what they are actually praying. And this is really interesting
because today we don’t have this problem as much. I think the
shoe is on the other foot in the sense of in these Jewish
times here, all wanted to be seen praying. They wanted to
be seen praising God. Today, it seems as if the opposite
is true. You go to a restaurant or a public
meeting. You don’t want to see anyone bowing their head. No
one is generally willing to submit themselves and honor God instead
of being a noble thing. It has now become a thing which
we look down on, which the world looks down on. So they’ve already received their
reward in full. These hypocrites desire to pray
standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen
by men, and that’s exactly what they got. Good for you. You prayed. People saw you. Two thumbs up.
Fantastic. God’s not listening to that prayer.
But he says it’s not so with us. Verse six. When you pray,
go to your room, close the door, pray to your father who is unseen. It’s funny, I hear that phrase,
go to your room and close the door. And I don’t think of prayer
initially. I think of what I heard when
I was younger and I blew it. Go to your room and close the
door. So when Jesus commands this, at first it raises an eyebrow.
But this is the point here. So often we think of the words
that we say when we pray, but we don’t think of the where is
important at all. That’s generally not if we’re explaining prayer,
how do we do it? Why is it important? The where never comes into the
picture. Well, if it’s not important,
then why, in verse six, is the first thing that Christ addresses?
Do not be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in
the synagogues and on the street corners. And the command of how
to do it is go to your room and shut the door. The where is extremely,
extremely important. How did Jesus model this? Well,
two examples of many. The first. Jesus went on a 40
day fast and prayer in the wilderness before he began his Galilean
ministry. And the second being hours before the crucifixion,
Jesus spent his time praying to the Father all night in the
Garden of Gethsemane. So before any major event took
place, before any steps that Jesus needed to take happened.
He had to seclude himself to go and pray. And often it says
that he secluded himself. He left, he separated and then
he returned. He had to pray to get his heart
and his mind right, even though he was fully God. And he sets
out the example for us in that same way. The bottom line is
this. If you’re not making time to
close your own door, to get on your knees, to pray to God, Then
you’re really kidding yourself, aren’t you? If you make the claim
that that prayer is important to you, if the only time we pray
is with others and we pray, our father do this for us and not
my father helped me with this, then is our commitment really
true towards prayer? Now, does this mean that corporate
prayer is bad? Does this mean we should only
pray with the door closed, secluded by ourself? Absolutely not. But
the point is this. Your prayer should never be motivated
by a pious desire to be recognized by others. Never. And actually,
corporate prayer, prayer together, should only be strengthened by
your own personal prayer by yourself. They go hand in hand. They’re
not opposed and mutually exclusive to one another. Praying together
should never take the place of praying alone, or we’ve contradicted
the exact definition of what it is to pray. Second question,
how should we pray? How? So we know we’re supposed
to go into a room, close the door, be by ourself. Now what? You just sit there and stare
at the sky and oh, God, do this, do that. What does it look like?
Let’s look at that. Verse nine, this then is how
you should pray. Now, you see, the Lord’s prayer
given here or the disciples prayers is often called is a little bit
different than that of in Luke’s. A couple more details are given
here. And often what happens is when we’re taught how to pray
or oftentimes in services during the liturgy, you recite the Lord’s
Prayer. Well, is Jesus commanding us
to word for word recite the words given here or is it given as
a model? Let’s take a look. How does he
start? Our Father in heaven. When we
start prayers, we often start with father, but he says our
father must be something significant about that. Well, what it is,
is it’s an invitation. It’s an invitation for yourself
and for all those gathered around you to corporately come to the
feet of the king of kings. This is our God. Praying our
God immediately kills self-righteousness. When we begin to think that we
have a special connection with God that those around us don’t
have. When we address him as our father, we’re all on the
same page. It doesn’t matter. Some weren’t given special connections
that they don’t have to go through the operator to God. God responds
to his people in kind. And the other address is this.
He says, Father. Try going to a righteous judge
in a court system and addressing them as father. I don’t think
the results are going to be very good, but yet the most holy,
the most righteous begs us to come to him in that way. We should
pray prayers centered in the Father’s love. That’s an interesting
thought. A lot of times we think God is
too holy, too perfect for us to connect with him. He absolutely
is the most holy, the most perfect, but he gives us the avenue. through
the cross of Christ to come to him freely, out of love, not
out of fear, not as a dog with its tail between its legs, but
coming with open arms, with love, with joy, with an expectation
to meet God. A committed prayer life can never
be sustained if you believe God is out to get you. or He wants
you to fail, or He desires to hurt you like a little kid with
a magnifying glass on an ant. If that’s the way you look at
God, of course you don’t pray. That doesn’t make any sense.
Why would anyone want to come to that throne? But if you understand
that God is eager to bless His people, if God is eager to reveal
Himself to the saints, then that opens up the door for meeting
a God that you love, that you trust, and that you want to be
like. It’s very clear. He says this, the first prayer
after he addresses his father, he says, hallowed be your name,
hallowed. We don’t throw that word around
very much today, hallowed simply to to make holy the desire for
the magnification of God’s holiness. Very simple. And then your kingdom
come, your will be done. We don’t see a lot of me and
my in this example, even though Jesus was fully God, fully man. He still considered God something
as not to be equal to. Your will be done, your kingdom
come. This is absolutely critical.
If you miss this part, you might as well just slept in this morning
because this is the key. This is the crux of how to pray. How do you do it? Well, you have
to pray God centered prayers. They say it doesn’t really make
any sense if you’re praying to God. Of course, it’s centered on God.
No, not exactly. Think of the prayers you usually
pray. If you do go to your room, close the door, or even when
you pray with other people, does your prayer usually sound something
like, God, help me, bless me, keep me, keep us safe, help us
do this, do that. And by the way, yeah, thank you
for the day. You know, I got to slip that one in there. Is
that how it usually looks? Maybe for many, yes. Now, is
that 100% wrong? No, absolutely not. But if our
prayers are limited to God, do this for me. Do this. I want
this. Give me this. How about this?
What do you say about this? Give me an answer on this. Then we’re
missing the boat and we’ve got a lot deeper to go in prayer.
Is that wrong? No. But is it incomplete? Absolutely. One pastor says this,
he says, prayer is the way that God uses to bring our priorities
in line with his. God wills to make great things
the consequence of our prayers when our prayers are the consequences
of his great purpose. In regular English, bring your
heart in line with the jealousy of God and watch the massive
effect that your prayer life has. Stop praying for me and
my for my reasons and start praying thee and thy for his reasons. How jealous is God? We know God’s
a jealous God for his own holy name. Ezekiel 36, 23. Listen
to this. I will vindicate the holiness
of my great name, and the nations will know that I am the Lord,
says the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before
their eyes. Can you tell what priority number
one is? If our prayers are ones that get lost in our own wants,
our own desires, we need to start being consumed by God’s desires
for us. Very easy way to put it is make
God’s list your list. Stop praying against the will
of God and maybe you’ll see some more answers. I’ll give you an
example. All you who are students can
recognize with this. I’m sure everyone has prayed
this prayer time or two. Driving on the way to a test.
God, you know, just please help me out. Bail me out on this one.
Help me pass this one. And I promise I’ll read my Bible
later. I promise. Making covenants,
making little agreements with God. Well, how about this? How
about studying and then praying? God, help me to do well on this
test so that I might honor and glorify you as the gracious king
and provider over all the earth and then meaning it. See, the
reason you pray the first prayer is because you don’t want to
fail and retake the class that has nothing to do with the glory
of God. That is, I blew it. Be my get out of jail free card.
That’s all that is. Rather than father, I desire
to work for you. Let me glorify your name through
this test. It’s a much different intention.
Very similar thing in sports. Prayer is a lucky rabbit’s foot
rather than an opportunity to set our minds and hearts right
of what we’re doing. God, let us win today. We want to go to
a bowl game. We really do. Well, it’s good that you’re honoring
and acknowledging God in that. But at the same time, why should
he pick or bless you rather than the other team? I think God has
bigger fish to fry than who wins the football game. In short, the goal and the purpose
of prayer is not, if it is not, the end to witness or make manifest
the glory of God, that it’s not a prayer designed to glorify
him. A couple of real easy ways you can do this. One, make God’s
priorities your priorities. The second way, pray the priorities
into reality. Seek to glorify God as the end
desire in all that you ask for. And then lastly, start and end
your prayers focused on God. If you ever read a psalm, the
psalmist often comes to God angry, upset. God, why have you risen
up these enemies against me? And he starts off almost upset
with God. And then it shifts and he begins
to pray the character, the will of God. And then it ends with
the psalmist coming to a peaceful conclusion of trust and deeper
faith in God. That’s the same way our prayer
should be. When we don’t understand something or when we’re frustrated
with something, we’re so eager and so quick to pick up the phone
and call somebody instead of picking up the real phone, the
one we have the direct line to. Thirdly, why should we pray?
Final question we’ll look at today. And this is really the
million dollar question. I’ve heard this one asked in
question and answer sessions all the time. Why do we pray?
Can we change God’s mind? Well, I don’t know. It says that our Heavenly Father
knows what we need before we even ask. Okay. So why do we
ask? And if God is sovereign and His
plans are going to come out, doesn’t that take the heart out
of our prayers a little bit? Well, to some, maybe you’d think
so. But in reality, what it does is one thing. It gives you a
choice. You have a choice now. You have a fork in the road.
You can either be an observer. of what God does in this world,
an innocent bystander, kind of a spiritual couch potato, or
you can be engaged and involved in being the means that God uses
towards his end. I don’t know if there’s any greater
honor than to be the means that God uses. There’s a great illustration. Think of a young boy that wants
to cut the grass with his father. And all he does is he has the
blower and he’s standing right behind him. And as the father
cuts the grass in the lawnmower, the little boy’s out there blowing
the grass everywhere. The little boy thinks he’s doing all the
work, thinks he’s helping his dad. His dad knows that he’s
really making a bigger mess than there was to start with, but
he’s delighted and he’s honored that he wants to be a part of
that process. In the same way, that’s what prayer is. Align
yourself with the will of God in that way. Desire to be the
means that He uses. Desire to be the way that He
goes about doing this. It’s not about changing God’s
mind. It’s foolish to think that you’re going to download new
information to God as if he doesn’t know. But it’s simply just about
being used, being a mouthpiece, being a vessel, being a workman
created to do good works in Christ Jesus. Understanding these things
will shift the reason why we pray. Trey came up a few weeks
ago and explained the fallacy of how often we think of God
in our prayers as a cosmic PEZ dispenser and that you just ask
and there’s a never ending supply. Whatever you ask for, you’re
given and it never runs out. It’s not exactly the way it works.
God is eager to give. He is eager to bless. But as
we saw, his number one priority is the glorification of his holy
name. And if that is God’s number one
priority, that must be our number one priority. John MacArthur
says this. He says, prayer is the means
by which God’s infinite wisdom, infinite power and perfect purpose
are brought together to accomplish his will. We can’t be saved without
believing. We understand that. We also know
that you can’t be sanctified. You can’t grow without obeying.
So then, It’s also true that you can’t experience the true
goodness and purpose of God without praying, which doesn’t work that
way. Let me give you two examples
in closing. The first in Nehemiah chapter
one, listen to the way Nehemiah addresses God and examine your
own heart when you come to God and see if they’re the same. Oh, Lord, God of heaven, the
great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those
who love him and obey his commands. Let your ear be attentive and
your eyes be open to the prayer of your servant and that he is
praying before you day and night for your servants, the people
of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites,
including myself and my father’s house, have committed against
you. We have acted very wickedly towards you and we have not obeyed
the commands, decrees and laws that you gave your servant Moses.
Remember the instruction you gave your servant saying, if
you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. But if
you return to me and obey my commands, then even if the exiled
people are the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there
and bring them to a place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They’re your servants and your
people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty
hand. Oh, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of
your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight
in the revering of your name. Give your servants success today
by granting him favor in the presence of this man. The following
in the passage back in Luke goes into a parable that we’ll look
at next week. of how is it sometimes that if we pray these prayers
in line with the will of God, why aren’t they always answered?
If God is there, if God is powerful and He’s able to do all of these
things, why didn’t He do it all the time? And we’ll look at that.
Let me leave you with one last excerpt from Martin Lloyd-Jones.
It says, We think that sin, and as we see it, is rags in the
gutters of life. We look at a drunkard or poor
fellow and then we say, there is sin. But that’s not the essence
of sin. To have a real picture and a
true understanding of sin, you must look at some great saint,
some unusually or devout or devoted man. Look at him there on his
knees in the very presence of God. Even there, self is an intruding
and the temptation is for him to think about himself, to think
pleasantly and pleasurably about himself and to really be worshiping
himself rather than God. That, not the other, is the true
picture of sin. The other is sin, of course,
but there you do not see it as acne. You do not see it as its
essence or put it in another form. If you really want to understand
something about the nature of Satan and his activities, the
thing to do is not go to the drags and the gutters of your
life. If you really want to know something about Satan, go away
to that wilderness where our Lord spent 40 days and 40 nights.
That’s the true picture of Satan, where you see him tempting the
very Son of God. Prayer is tough. Charles Haddon Spurgeon prayed
three hours every morning and people approached him and asked
him, how with all that you have to get done, can you afford to
pray for three hours in the morning? And he responded very simply,
and he says, with all that I have to do, I cannot afford to not
pray. Do we think of ourselves as more
than just a vehicle that God uses? Do we think of ourselves
as the one getting things done? or do we rightly think of ourselves
as the little kid blowing the leaves all over the yard? We
need to understand this and we need to repent. We need to come
to God and begin to pray for His holy name and His holiness
rather than our temporal wishes and desires. So next week we’ll
look a little bit more at that question of where and how and
why do we pray so that we can honor God. Let’s pray. Father,
God, You open Your Word to us You teach us. You reveal us about
Yourself. You teach us that when we are
to pray, there’s a certain way to do it. That we don’t have
to be scared about approaching You, but we can approach You,
Father, thanking You for Your grace. Thanking You for Your
holiness. Desiring to make Your list our
list. And desiring to see the glory
of God manifest throughout this darkened world. Father, help
us. Show us what that means. Help us not be that church That
reads the Bible a couple times a week, a couple minutes a day,
and never desires to pray and commune with you. We’re foolish
to think that we can grow in you, know you, if we don’t put
in the time that it takes to develop that relationship. We
pray for your grace in our hearts, that because of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, we are able to come freely and we are invited
to come to the fountain of living water. And so we pray that would
be the desire of our hearts as we go forward. Free us, enable
us, plant that desire within us to desire you in a deeper,
greater and more passionate way to close the door, to come with
you one on one. And when we gather with other
believers, it is a blessing, not a chore to be able to proclaim
our Father. Let your will be done. Help us,
Father, as we go forward. In Jesus name, Amen. you