(From a message in the Parables of Jesus series, given October 16, 2022 at Beatty Baptist Church)

It happened, that when he finished praying in a certain place, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples.”

– Luke 11:1

Jesus prayed many times in the gospels. He would talk to His Father frequently because His relationship to His Father was the top priority in His life. And something about the way He prayed stirred up a desire in His disciples to have that same kind of prayer life. It wasn’t about praying with eloquence, power or effectiveness. They saw the relationship Jesus had with His Father, and they wanted that same kind of relationship.

John the Baptist, the last of the Old Covenant prophets, taught his disciples to pray. But he probably did so in the manner the Israelites prayed for hundreds of years: as a servant to his lord, or as a citizen to his king. I like to think it was Andrew or John who asked Jesus to be taught to pray, because they began as disciples of John the Baptist, and they saw something different in Jesus’ prayers. Jesus didn’t pray the way their former master taught them.

Jesus prayed to God as His Father. This was new to them. The Old Testament doesn’t contain prayers to God addressing Him as Father. That would have seemed too familiar or presumptuous.

Of course Jesus had a right to talk to God as Father because God was literally so. Joseph was just a foster father. But He also taught His disciples and He taught us to simply talk to God as a child would to his father.

He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come. [May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.]

– Luke 11:2

In the Old Testament, God told Moses to teach Israel a song. In Deuteronomy 32:6 of the song, God is called their Father. In Exodus 4:22 Israel is called God’s firstborn. So even in the Old Testament, there was a father-son relationship between God and the nation of Israel. But the Israelites never prayed to God as to their heavenly Father. They always prayed as to their Lord and King. Here Jesus taught His disciples to pray as having a much closer, more familiar relationship. We’re to address God as “Our Father in heaven.” This is not merely an additional title for God; Jesus taught us to think of God as a loving and caring Father, and ourselves as His children who always have the right to come to Him with our requests. This is the essential basis of the parable we’re going to look at.

Then Jesus said, “may your name be kept holy“. We are to live in such a way that gives the highest honor to God and leads others to honor Him as well. Don’t treat the name of God as any other name. It’s not common, it’s the most special name of all. How would you feel if someone insulted someone you love and care about: your mother or father, or spoke lightly of them? In the 1950’s, if someone wanted to insult your mother, he might say, “Your mother wears army boots!” This would likely upset you and make you angry because they’re insulting someone special to you. God should be the most special Person to us. The name of God should be held in the highest respect, much higher than even our parents’ names.

In Ezekiel 20:27, God said the Israelites had blasphemed Him, meaning they greatly dishonored Him, through the wickedness of how they lived. The surrounding nations bad-mouthed God because Israel lived worse than they did. They gave God a bad name. We don’t want that to happen to God because of us. So it’s important that we consciously live in such a way that doesn’t give God’s name a bad rap. We must keep His name holy by putting a guard on our mouth, by living honestly and morally before the world, and doing the things that please God, not ourselves. We’re to place His honor above our own.

“Your kingdom come” is next in the prayer. As children of the king, that should be our desire as well. Our primary job here on earth is working toward the increase of His kingdom: telling others about Jesus and doing what He tells us to do. One pastor said, “You cannot pray ‘Thy kingdom come’ until you pray ‘My kingdom go.’” We need to put the honor and glory of God above our own. Besides, since we’re going to co-reign with Christ, it’s in our best interest to seek the building up of His kingdom, because it’s going to be our kingdom as well.

Some translations don’t have the last part of verse 2 (“May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven“), but it is found in Matthew’s account of the Lord’s prayer. Jesus likely taught this prayer more than once, wording it a bit differently each time.

The kingdom of God is where God’s will is done. In heaven, the angels execute His commands immediately and completely with no questioning or complaints. That’s the way we should treat God’s commands to us as well. Why pray the Lord’s prayer if we don’t mean what it says?

Give us day by day our daily bread.

– Luke 11:3

After praying for the most important thing: the honor of God and the establishment of His kingdom on earth, we ask God to provide for our needs. Of course, being the perfect Father that He is, He is going to provide for our needs without our asking. If you’re a parent, you don’t let your children go hungry until they ask to be fed. God also provides for our needs whether we ask or not. But He wants us to ask Him, each day, to give us the things we need so we’ll remember we’re completely dependent on Him and Him alone for life’s necessities. We’re not dependent on our employer or the supermarket or our bank account. All we need comes from God. Plus asking Him for our daily needs keeps the line of communication going between Him and us. It keeps the relationship healthy and fresh.

To pray daily for our needs also means we are not to concern ourselves with tomorrow’s needs… just today’s. When tomorrow comes, then we’ll pray for them, and God will provide for that day’s needs as well. So every day, we’re trusting in God.

Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us…

– Luke 11:4a

Daily bread symbolizes our daily needs. We have many daily needs. Not just bread, but other kinds of food (such as peanut butter and jelly to put on the bread), water, shelter, clothing, air, sunlight, and so on. But the greatest need we have is forgiveness. Jesus died so all of our sins would be forgiven, and they are if we have placed our trust in Him to save us from our sins. But we still do things God doesn’t want us to do—we disobey Him at times—and this hurts our day-to-day relationship with Him. We need to keep short accounts with God, confessing our sins regularly so the relationship won’t be hindered. If we’re saved, we’re still saved, even if we don’t confess our sins. But that living connection to our heavenly Father is hampered, and this causes us all kinds of problems in this life. Life already has enough problems of its own without adding the results of our unconfessed sin to it. So get that taken care of right away.

In this version of the Lord’s prayer, it says we ask for forgiveness because we also forgive everyone who has sinned against us. Remember what we learned from the parable of the unforgiving servant: When we ask for God’s forgiveness, we give up the right to hold a grudge against anyone else. The greatest sin others can do to us is less than the least sin that we do against God. If we want mercy, we need to show mercy.

…Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'”

– Luke 11:4b

This word temptation has to do with tempting someone with the intent of harming or destroying them. God does not tempt us that way. He does test us at times, but His intent is always to prove us and build us up. When we go our own way instead of God’s way, we lead ourselves into this harmful kind of temptation. This prayer is a request to keep us from going our own way, which otherwise would lead us unto the snare of the devil.

That’s all of the Lord’s prayer that Jesus taught at this time. It’s the shortened Reader’s Digest version. Now He tells a parable to teach us about our heavenly Father’s willingness to meet our needs. And it’s not so much a parable as a “Has this ever happened to you?” story.

He said to them, “Which of you, if you go to a friend at midnight, and tell him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him,’

– Luke 11:5-6

Imagine you’re comfortable in bed and you hear a knock at the door. You look at the clock and it’s 11:45 at night. It’s an odd time to for someone to be knocking at your door. As you get up and walk to the door, you think maybe it’s some kind of emergency. But when you open the door, there’s your friend, Henry from Virginia, with a big, tired smile on his face. He thought he’d stop by for a surprise friendly visit, and he’s hungry. Never mind it’s almost midnight, he wants something to eat. Now you would consider it very rude on Henry’s part to impose himself on you like that. He should have called first and let you know he’s coming, and what time to expect him. That way you could have prepared for his arrival, maybe put him up in a motel for the night.

But back in Bible times people didn’t have telephones or email to let you know they’re coming. There was no regular postal system available to the public. So it was quite possible a friend would unexpectedly show up at your door at an inconvenient hour. It might even be likely, for in the hot summer months, it was common for people to travel at night when it was cooler.

Showing up unannounced at someone’s door wasn’t considered rude like it is today. Since before the days of Abraham, Semitic culture valued showing hospitality to strangers and travelers, and that took the form of feeding guests no matter when they arrived. In fact, they considered doing so a cultural obligation. Even the poor were expected to do so as the need arose. John William McGarvey wrote,

The customs of the land then made hospitality so obligatory that the greatest inconvenience and deepest poverty did not excuse one from practicing it.” ¹

Even if you were dirt poor, you were expected to show hospitality any time of day or night.

When Jesus gave this hypothetical situation to His disciples of a friend arriving when there’s no food available in the house, it would have been necessary to go to a neighbor to ask for bread to fulfill the obligation. It was common for Jews to borrow bread from each other… but not usually at midnight. And asking for three loaves instead of one was good because you were expected to eat with your guest. So: one loaf for him, one loaf for you, plus an extra loaf to show your guest that your hospitality is generous… just in case he wanted more.

and he from within will answer and say, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give it to you’?

– Luke 11:7

Houses for common people at that time usually consisted of a single room. At night the door would be locked and mats would be laid on the floor for the family members and servants (if they had any) to sleep on. Animals like a cow, sheep, and goats might even share the room with the family. The rooms, generally on the small side, were crowded, making it harder to get up without disturbing the others.

But in spite of the inconvenience and difficulty of answering this request for bread, the obligation to show hospitality in that culture would have required the friend to do so.

Jesus gave a very unlikely example of a rude friend. In our culture if we went to someone at midnight and asked for some bread, we might receive a response like this guy gave because our culture is very self-centered, convenience-centered, and rude: Western culture in general does not consider hospitality as an obligation.

In the Hebrew culture, what the friend said was unexpected and shameful. He didn’t respond in kind with the word ‘friend’. All he said was ‘Don’t bother me‘—literally ‘Stop giving me troubles.’ His response would have shocked the disciples. Not to say there weren’t any people like that at the time, but the real rude person in this parable is this friend who didn’t want to be disturbed.

I tell you, although he will not rise and give it to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as many as he needs.

– Luke 11:8

What the friend said in the previous verse was just hypothetical. In this verse we see that he does meet the need. He gives more than what was asked for, not because he was his friend, but because of his persistence or shamelessness or importunity.

The root Greek word for persistence or shamelessness here is a compound word that begins with ‘a‘, meaning “not”, followed by ‘ai-dōs‘, meaning bashful: so he’s not bashful; he’s not shy about the request. He’s bold, audacious—he won’t give up.

In Luke chapter 18, Jesus told a similar parable, also about prayer. A poor widow sought justice from an evil judge. He didn’t want to be bothered and kept putting her off—another example of shockingly shameful behavior. But she persisted and eventually he gave in and did the right thing by her because she kept bothering him. Jesus said the point of that parable is, if the widow was able to get justice from the unjust judge, we should keep praying to God because He is just. Therefore, we can be assured we will eventually get justice from Him.

In both parables, the needy request was granted by the bad guy due to the persistence of the one in need. But God is much better than the bad guys in these parables: He’s the good judge; He’s the good friend. God, being good, will meet your needs.

Author and musician Michael Card has an alternative take on verse 8. He wrote:

In Luke 11:8, the [word] “his” in the phrase “because of his persistence” is normally thought to refer to the first man—the one who is knocking. But the Greek is ambiguous. It could refer to the sleeper. And the word translated “persistence” can also mean “shameless.” In this version, the sleeper gets up and provides for his friend because he wants to avoid the shame of violating the law of hospitality.

I lean toward this second view. I like the idea that our confidence in prayer should come not from us “getting it right”—that is, knocking long enough for the door to open—but rather from the knowledge that the One who sometimes seems to be sleeping will answer because of his commitment to doing what he has promised. When Jesus uses the rabbinic [phrase] “how much more” … at the conclusion of this block of teaching [that’s in verse 13], he places the parable within that interpretive context. That is, if the lazy, good-for-nothing neighbor will get up to avoid being shamed, then how much more will the Lord answer the door of prayer when we knock? ²

I also like the way Michael interprets this parable. In Genesis 18, Abraham persisted in prayer with God to save his nephew Lot from Sodom’s imminent destruction. He said to God,

“Will you consume the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous within the city? Will you consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous who are in it? Be it far from you to do things like that, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be like the wicked. May that be far from you. Shouldn’t the Judge of all the earth do right?”

– Genesis 18:23-25

Abraham spoke very boldly to his Maker. But of course God was going to do right. God saved Lot from Sodom, not because of Abraham’s persistence, but because God is good. He is righteous. It nowhere says Abraham changed God’s mind. God’s intent was to save Lot all along. But it did reassure Abraham of God’s goodness each time God said, “I will not destroy the city for the sake of X righteous people in it.“

“I tell you, keep asking, and it will be given you. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and it will be opened to you.

– Luke 11:9

Keep praying—not because God is like a rude friend and we need to wear Him down with constant requests to get what we need. No, God is good. Keep praying because He will meet all your needs. Persisting in prayer shows you’re continuing to rely on God to meet your need. It exercises your faith—your trust in God’s goodness. Persisting in prayer makes your relationship with God closer. Persisting in prayer shows that what you’re praying about is important to you. Continuing…

For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened.

– Luke 11:10

Jesus promised that those who keep asking will receive, those who keep seeking will find, and those who keep knocking will have the door opened to them. We’re not talking about winning the lottery or unnecessary things here. James said some people don’t receive what they ask because they ask with wrong motives: to spend on their own desires for example. Jesus is talking about necessities. God will meet our needs because He is good. This parable is about trusting in His goodness.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he won’t give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he asks for an egg, he won’t give him a scorpion, will he?

– Luke 11:11-12

Parables use analogies to help us understand the character of God. When God is portrayed as a father, it leads us to apply our knowledge of fathers to help understand Him. Jesus is doing the same thing here, using the knowledge and experience of those disciples who were fathers to help them know and trust in the goodness of their heavenly Father.

No father is going to feed his child something that is harmful, even if it looks good. Some rounded stones look like loaves of bread. Some snakes look like fish—like eels. Some scorpions resemble eggs when they are curled up. But a human father is not going to go by appearances. He is only going to provide what is truly good to his children, and children trust their fathers implicitly to provide good things. We must trust God that same way to provide what is good for us.

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

– Luke 11:13

God is a far better Father than any earthly father. He can always be trusted to provide what is good: not just things that look good or feel good, but thing that really are good and beneficial for us.

We’ve heard those fictional stories of people making a deal with the devil. They want something really bad, so they sell their soul to the devil to get it (…which is a very non-biblical idea, by the way). When they obtain what they wanted, they realize the devil tricked them: he also gave them something they didn’t want along with it. So they end up regretting what they asked for.

God is not like that. He only gives us good things. When we ask for bread, He’s not going to give us something that looks good. He going to give us something that is good. There are no evil consequences to the things God gives us when we ask in His will.

And the main good thing God wants for us in this passage is His Holy Spirit. At the time Jesus taught this, the Holy Spirit was not yet given. John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit, but it hadn’t happened yet, and wouldn’t happen until Pentecost, fifty days after His death and resurrection. But Jesus was teaching His disciples to be persistent with God in prayer—keep praying—and the Holy Spirit would be given.

Now, when we are saved, we receive the Holy Spirit as part of the package. We have no need to ask, but we should ask to be filled with or controlled by the Spirit so that we can bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience and so on. So we can know Jesus better. So we can display His character among ourselves and to the world. So the prayer in the first part of this chapter would be fulfilled: That God’s name would be glorified and that His kingdom would be established in this world. All the good and necessary things God provides for us is not just for our benefit; it is for His glory and majesty.

So, trust in your heavenly Father to meet your needs. He will do so for He is good.