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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > How much more we can go to God in prayer! | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Hymn 5 Hymn 65 Psalm 34:1-3 Hymn 1 Psalm 79:5 Scripture reading: 1 John 5:13-21 Catechism lesson and text: Lord's Day 45 and Luke 11:5-13 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
Why should we pray? If we’re Christians, there are many good reasons. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin gives six. I’m not going to list all six. I’ll just give you a couple. He says we should pray to fire up our hearts with passion to seek, love, and serve God. We need that passion so whenever we have a need we flee to him “as to a sacred anchor.” Another reason Calvin gives is that when God answers our prayers, we’d be led to meditate on his kindness and praise him for it. Prayer leads to worship.
Our Catechism mentions a couple of other reasons to pray in QA 116. One is thankfulness. Prayer is how we expressly say “thank you” to God for all his gifts, and especially for the gospel. Another reason to pray is that we need God to give us his grace and the Holy Spirit. And he blesses us with his grace and the Holy Spirit when we ask him. We ask him through prayer.
That connects to our passage from Luke 11. Here Jesus is teaching us about prayer. And an important part of understanding prayer from a biblical perspective is to understand who it is we’re praying to. What is God like and how does his character affect the way we pray? Particularly, there’s a connection between God’s character and our willingness to pray. Our Lord Jesus wants us to understand God and our relationship with him so we never hesitate to pray. So I’ve summarized the sermon with this theme: How much more we can go to God in prayer!
And we’ll see how much more than we might go:
- To an earthly friend
- To an earthly father
After Jesus gave his disciples a pattern in the Lord’s Prayer, he went on continuing to teach about prayer. He’s addressing the natural human tendency to draw away from God. That first happened in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve fell into sin, they hid themselves from God. They were afraid and ashamed. Today too, even as Christians, we know we’re sinners. Every day we fall short of what God commands in his law. The awareness of that can make us pull away from God. Our guilt and shame can make us hesitant to go to him in prayer.
Our Lord Jesus wants his followers to get rid of that hesitancy. So he tells them these two mini-parables. In the first one, he asks his disciples to imagine a situation with a friend. Imagine your friend coming to you at midnight. He’s outside your house banging on the door and calling to you to come out and give him three loaves of bread. Your friend has another friend who has just arrived. It’s not that far-fetched for a friend to arrive at a late hour like that. Back in those days, people often travelled on foot and if it was a hot time of year, it would be easier to travel at night. And your friend has nothing in his own house, so he’s come to you – at midnight.
Now before we go further, there’s something you need to understand about the cultural context here. In those times, and even today in that region, hospitality is a key cultural value. You never turn away a stranger at your door, much less a friend. If someone comes to you looking for hospitality, you’re obligated to provide it gladly. That’s what the culture expects. So it would be unimaginable for the friend in this parable to turn away the guy who’s showed up at his house.
It would be equally unimaginable for the other friend to say “no.” Christ is saying, “Just imagine how ridiculous it would be if the man inside the house were to say, ‘My door is shut, I can’t help you.’ What, you can’t open your door? Is it that hard?” Christ is saying, “Just imagine how ridiculous it would be if the man inside the house were to say, “Our family is all in bed and I’m not going to wake everybody just to help you.’ What, your family wouldn’t understand how important it is to help a friend show hospitality?” Jesus is saying, no, this is completely inconceivable.
He explains a little more in verse 8. Even though the two men are friends, he’s not going to help him because of their friendship. He’ll help him because of his impudence. Impudence means being rude or shameless. That friend outside the door didn’t have any shame in coming at midnight to ask for loaves of bread. He knew that his friend inside the house couldn’t refuse him. Whether they were friends or not, he was going to help because that’s just what you’re supposed to do in that culture.
Christ lays out the application to prayer in verses 9 and 10. Ask and it will be given to you. Who are you to ask and who will do the giving? God. Seek and you will find. Who are you to seek and who will you find? God. Knock and it will be opened to you. Whose door are you knocking on and who will open? You know. And verse 10 insists that you can count on God to do all these things. When you approach him in prayer, you’ll always find him responsive and generous.
Implicit in this is a way of reasoning that was common amongst Jewish rabbis. It’s called reasoning from the lesser to the greater. If something is true of the lesser situation, how much more true wouldn’t it be of the greater? So a comparison is being used to drive home a point.
Here we’re comparing the man inside the house in the parable to God. Obviously, the man inside the house is much lesser than God. But even as much lesser than God, this man would help his friend just because he was compelled to do so by cultural expectations. Now what about the greater? What about God? God is infinitely greater than any friend. God is not compelled by cultural expectations. He simply acts out of his grace and love, which are far greater.
So how much more can we go to God with our needs than to any earthly friend. That’s the point. We can go to him, we can ask, seek, and knock. He’ll always receive us. He’ll never turn us away. He’ll always give us what we need when we approach him. So you don’t need to be afraid that he doesn’t want to hear from you. You don’t need to be hesitant in approaching him in prayer because you’re ashamed or guilty. No, he has an open door policy. Listen, God is more friendly to sinners than any sinners will ever be to one another. Loved ones, this is what Jesus is showing our God to be like and it’s to encourage us to pray and keep on praying.
In case his disciples still don’t get it, he tells them another mini-parable to drive it home. This time it involves a father. Our Lord Jesus says, “Imagine a father who has a child asking him for fish. And instead of giving him a fish for food, he gives him a snake to harm him.” There are nine species of venomous snakes in Israel, so take your pick of various vipers and cobras. It’s inconceivable that any normal father would give such a thing to his son.
The other scenario would be equally inconceivable. Christ says, “Imagine some father giving his son a scorpion when he’s asked for an egg.” Even with anti-venom available today, thousands of people die around the world every year from scorpion stings. In Israel, they have the Deathstalker, one of the most dangerous scorpion species in the world. Scorpions there can be deadly, especially for children. Jesus is saying that no father in his right mind would want to hurt or kill his son by giving him one of these deadly creatures in place of an egg.
Now before going further, we have to acknowledge the reality that not all fathers are good to their children. Fathers should be good to their children. We should expect it to be that way. However, the reality is that some fathers actually do harm their children. Some fathers have given their children the equivalent of serpents and scorpions – maybe not killing them, but certainly harming them. Perhaps some of you have been harmed like that by your father. The rest of us should acknowledge that and grieve. The reality is that some fathers abuse in different ways, some neglect. Sometimes fathers will even use God and the Bible to try and justify what they’re doing. That’s evil. It’s sinful. God condemns it. Those of us here who are fathers, listen: God expects that we’ll do good for our children, never harm. That’s normal. That’s the way things have been created and designed to be. If you’re giving them serpents and scorpions, if you’re harming your children in any way, you need to repent before it’s too late. God warns that that those who do such things should have a millstone hung around their neck and they should be thrown into the sea. God has a heart for the oppressed and he will bring his justice down on those who don’t repent.
In verse 13, our Lord Jesus acknowledges the general truth of human depravity. Human beings are sinful and every father is sinful. But even most sinful human fathers know how to give good gifts to their children. Even most sinful human fathers know how to provide for what their children need.
Then Christ applies that lesser to greater reasoning explicitly in verse 13. If a sinful human father is going to give good gifts, how much more isn’t your good heavenly Father going to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? The sinful human father is the lesser, and the good heavenly Father is the infinitely greater, the infinitely better, the infinitely more generous. So you should go to your heavenly Father and you should ask for what you need.
It’s interesting that Jesus specifically focusses here on the Holy Spirit. Because he is God, the Holy Spirit is the greatest gift of all. When we have the Holy Spirit living and working in our hearts, that’s such an enormous gift. Now there are a couple of points to work out in relation to this.
First off, Christ is speaking to his disciples. He’s teaching his believing disciples about prayer. How did they come to faith in Jesus Christ? The same way we come to faith in him. They believed and we believe because the Holy Spirit has caused us to be born again. The Holy Spirit took hearts of stone and turned them into hearts of flesh. So Christ isn’t saying that the disciples in front of him don’t already have the Holy Spirit and that they need to ask for him. Rather, what he’s saying is that we need to constantly ask for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When we keep on asking for his work, the Father will keep on giving. The Holy Spirit will continue working in our hearts so we grow as God’s children in faith and obedience.
Second, we already noted that Christ uses this lesser to greater reasoning. Well, here that reasoning can also be legitimately reversed. We can go from the greater to the lesser. If God would give you this great gift of his Holy Spirit, what makes you think that he wouldn’t give you lesser gifts? In fact, in a similar passage in Matthew 7, Christ says, “…how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Indeed, when we come to our good Father God, he’ll look upon us tenderly and hear our prayers and answer us with good things. We can trust him to bless us.
But why is this so? Why do we have God as our good Father in the first place? Similarly, we could ask why in our relationship with him, God treats us infinitely better than any earthly friend would? To answer that, we have to think more deeply about our relationship with God. It’s a special relationship known as a covenant. On the one side is God, the infinitely holy and majestic God. On the other side is us, people who have committed evil of an infinite magnitude. We have rebelled against this holy and majestic God. How can it be possible for us to have a relationship with him? There’s where we look to the one in the middle – we look to Jesus Christ. In his love for us the Father gave his Son to be the mediator of the covenant of grace. Mediator means he’s the one who goes between us and God and brings us together. He brings us together so that God treats us in a friendly way. He brings us together so that God deals with us in a fatherly way.
It’s because of what Christ has done for us that this relationship functions in a healthy way, a way that blesses us and honours God. It’s because of what Christ did for us in his perfect life of obedience. Jesus kept all the commandments in our place. It’s because of what Christ did for us on the cross to pay for our sins. He took the hell we deserve for our wrongdoing. All because the good news is true, God is for us and his ears are open to our cries. Any healthy relationship needs communication. When we have Jesus as our Saviour, we can communicate with God with no hesitation. Our friendly Father stands ready to hear. Loved ones, look to Christ in faith, keep looking to Christ in faith and you can be sure of this.
There’s one more question I think should be considered. When you pray and ask God for three loaves, will he always give you three loaves? When you pray and ask God for a fish, will he always give you a fish? Or an egg? What I mean is, when we say that God is receptive to our prayers and answers them, do we mean that we always gives us exactly what we ask for?
We have to break the answer up into two parts. We start with the greater, with the Holy Spirit. Will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Absolutely, 100%. He will give you his Spirit to work in your heart. There’s no need to have any doubt about that at all.
But then what about the lesser? What about other good things? We read from 1 John 5. In 1 John 5:14-15 it says, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” Notice those four words in verse 14, “according to his will.” We have to pray according to his will. When we make our requests to our heavenly Father, we should be lining them up with his revealed will in the Bible. Jesus specifically teaches about what we should pray for in the Lord’s Prayer and in the weeks to come we’ll be exploring different angles of that in more depth. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to pray according to God’s will.
For now, we can note that God always hear the prayers of his children. You see, we can be sure of that because we always have the Holy Spirit to perfect our prayers. Should our prayers not line up with God’s will, then the Holy Spirit makes them line up. Then God hears and he answers. Sometimes his answer is ‘no,’ sometimes ‘yes,’ sometimes ‘not yet.’ But his answer is always exactly what we need. This is because God is infinitely wise. He knows far better than we do what we need. Sometimes we get fish instead of loaves of bread, but he always gives us food. Our Father will never forsake his children. You can depend on that.
Loved ones, it’s normal and human to desire good things. But to go to God to ask is another matter. Christians should know they have the freedom and the privilege to approach their heavenly Father with their requests in prayer. We should never think of him as a brute or an angry monster we have to be afraid of. Instead, we should think of him like Jesus teaches us to: a kind and warm-hearted, friendly Father who loves his children dearly. Thinking of God like that will ensure that we never hesitate to approach him in prayer. AMEN.
PRAYER
Merciful and compassionate Father,
We worship you because you’re infinitely better than any earthly friend. We praise you because you’re the Father that far surpasses all earthly fathers. We’re thankful that Christ has revealed you to us as kind, warm-hearted, and friendly towards believers. Thank you for being that way because of what Christ has done for us in his life and death. O kind Father, we ask you to please give us your Holy Spirit. Please let him do his work in our lives, producing faith and also the fruits of faith in a holy life. O kind Father, please also supply all our other needs for body and soul from day to day. Please continue to show us your love and mercy. Please help us with your Holy Spirit as well, so we never hesitate to call on you. Please lead us to a deeper and more open relationship with you. Father God, thank you for who you are and what you do. Thank you for being good, wise, and so loving towards us.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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