Luke 11:1-13 | Parables in Practice

Listen to this week’s sermon, Parables In Practice preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Luke 11:1-13.

CREATE - How to be filled with the Holy Spirit

• CONFESS any fears, sins, weaknesses, and needs (2 Cor. 12.9).
• RECEIVE forgiveness, cleansing, and strength (1 John 1.9).
• ENTRUST everyone and everything to God (Luke 23.46).
• ASK for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11.13).
• THANK your Father (Luke 10.21).
• EXPECT His presence and power (Isa. 41.10).

Transcript

Welcome And Luke 11 Reading

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Raquel West 0:20

Please pray this prayer of illumination with me. Gracious Redeemer, as we hear your word, open our eyes to your glorious kingdom and bring us life through your word, Spirit. Through Christ we pray. Amen. Today's scripture comes from Luke 11. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. And he said to them, Which of you has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything, because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.

The Disciples Ask To Pray

Jesus Builds A Habit Of Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer As A Gift

The Midnight Friend Parable

Ask Seek Knock With Boldness

Making Sense Of Unanswered Prayer

The Holy Spirit Is The Promise

Gethsemane And The Strength To Obey

Final Prayer For Fresh Filling

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 3:21

There's almost a spiritual undertone to it. There's almost a way, a moral insistence, this is how you ought to live. Another commentator says it like this. Basically, we're just going back to church. Except instead of having one giant church, we have lots of little churches where you pick your pastor and follow them and believe what they say. Now I get it. I actually can empathize with this in a world awash with information overload and decision fatigue. What we're looking for are models of the good life. All of us. We want a mentor, a rabbi, a teacher. We want to be disciples. That's just that's just in our nature. Discipleship is simply learning from someone to live as they live. That's it. Learning from someone to live as they live. And so whether Aristotle or athletes, plumbers or parents, all have disciples. And many of us have been called students, we've been called players, apprentices, or children, but all of us have learned from someone to live as they live. We've all been discipled. Now, that's why our text is so fascinating. You see, because from a purely historical perspective, Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most influential human beings to ever walk on planet Earth. And he had disciples. He had men and women who were trying to learn from Jesus to live as he lived. Which is why it's amazing to me that we don't have one record in Scripture of any of his disciples asking him, teach us to preach. Although Jesus preached to countless people. I mean, he healed blind eyes. He opened the ears of the deaf. Wouldn't you want to know? Teach us to heal, Jesus. Nobody says, teach us to multiply bread or raise the dead. In fact, over three and a half years of spending time with Jesus, the only request that we have recorded is this one in our text: Lord, teach us to pray. The disciples knew that if they were going to live as Jesus lived, they needed to learn how to pray as Jesus prayed. At the end of the day, what the disciples wanted was Jesus' prayer life. They wanted what happened when he spoke to God. And so they had a simple request. And it's the request I'm going to invite you to be asking throughout this sermon. Ask the Lord this simple request. Lord, teach us to pray. And in response, Jesus models a practice, gives a prayer, tells a parable, draws out a principle, and promises a person. And those are my five points. So if you have a Bible or a device, go ahead and get Luke chapter 11, verse 1 in front of you. We're going to walk through this text verse by verse. Look at Luke 11, verse 1. I want to see how Jesus models a practice. Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place. Pause for a moment. In July of 2023, I had the joy of going on a peacemaking trip to Israel. And while I was there, we landed and I was jet lagged and exhausted and could not wait to just get in bed. And so I got to go to bed and I fell fast asleep and then woke up at 2 a.m. because of the time change. And I woke up thinking, I'm so tired, I'll just fall back asleep. And then three came and four came and I realized I'm not going to fall back asleep. I need to get up and do something. And I happened to be staying in a hotel that was a rock's throw from the Sea of Galilee. And so I put on my Chacos because they're sandals, you know, it feels biblical. And I walked out in the middle of the night, darkness. It was a little sketchy. I was wondering what it was going to be like, but I walked out and I walked down to the Sea of Galilee. And in a moment of, I don't think I'll ever get to do this again, I took my sandals off and I walked ankle deep into the water and I looked up at the heavens where I could see stars and I could see the shape of some of the hills around the Sea of Galilee. And I thought to myself, I've read about this place. I've read about the certain place where Jesus would go in order to commune with his Father. And I just prayed with the water of the Sea of Galilee lapping against my ankles. I prayed the Lord's prayer. And when I got home, my brother-in-law Hardy asked me an amazing question. He says, Hey, what's one story from your trip you're going to tell your grandchildren? And that was one of them. Because there's something so beautiful and powerful about being in the very place. It says here in our text, now Jesus was praying in a certain place. Because Jesus, in his model of prayer, modeling this practice of prayer, he had certain places he would go to pray. Up to this point in the story of Jesus, we see multiple times where the disciples would have witnessed his prayer life. He prayed early in the morning. Mark 1.35 says, rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. Jesus prayed by habitually withdrawing. Luke 5.16 says he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. He prayed before major decisions like choosing his disciples. In Luke 6, 12 it says, In these days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. He prayed after success. In Matthew 14, 23 it says, And after Jesus dismissed the crowd, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. And he prayed before big moments like the Mount of Transfiguration. In Luke 9, it says this, now about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James, and he went up on the mountain to pray. So it's not surprising that when we get to Luke 11, 1, it says, Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when he finished, one of his disciples asked, Lord, teach us to pray. Now, one of the ways the Holy Spirit ministered to me in preparing the sermon was, I'd never noticed this before. One of his disciples asked, just one, Lord, teach us to pray. This is how the Spirit met me in that. I have been praying. I have been asking the Lord, Lord, teach New City to pray for over a decade now. And I don't think I'm the only one asking that, but I'm certainly one person, one disciple, asking, Lord, teach us to pray. And the reason why is because if I if I only got a few things that would mark this church, one of them would be that we would have a climate of prayer. Let me just read to you from my prayer card. A climate of prayer is where New City's ecosystem lives on earth by inhaling the atmosphere of heaven. As prayer becomes like breathing, everyone, even newcomers, will sense that this church draws her life from another world. That's what I want for New City. It's why we can't shut up about seek prayer on Wednesdays or seek nights on March 27th. It's why our staff tithes our time in prayer. It's why our elders fast and pray every Wednesday, especially when we have big decisions coming up. Because we want to be marked as a people of prayer. Disciples of Jesus ask Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray. So I praise God for the incremental increase of a climate of prayer among the people of New City. I say, Lord, teach us to pray like the disciple does here. But it goes on, it says, Teach us to pray as John, that's John the Baptist, taught his disciples. You see, other rabbis like Jesus or John the Baptist, they would teach their disciples how to pray. If discipleship is learning from someone to live as they live, then disciple making is simply taking spiritual responsibility for one more person to teach them to live as you live. Super simple in that way. Now, rabbis in the tradition that Jesus was in, they had prayers for waking up and putting on clothes and standing up and washing their hands, even going to the bathroom. All right? We have this phrase, New City likes to say that all of life matters to God and God matters to all of life. Well, the rabbis meant it. You see, in a in a collection of rabbinic discussions called the Babylonian Talmud, this is a blessing you'll see behind me here. And this is what it reads One who enters a bathroom says to the angels who accompany him at all times. Can we just pause? Is that a different worldview or what? All right, go on. Be honored, whole honorable holy ones, servants of the one on high, give honor to the God of Israel. Leave me until I enter and do my will and come back to you. And I love this. Another rabbi's like, mm-mm, that's not the way to do it. Instead, a person should not say this, lest they abandon the angels abandon him, which would be bad. Rather, he should say, Guard me, guard me, help me, help me, support me, support me, wait for me, wait for me until I enter and come out, as this is the way of man. And then when you leave, you're supposed to say this blessed, who formed man in wisdom and created in him many orfices and cavities. It is revealed and known before the throne of your glory that were one of them to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to survive and stand before you. Now, I that's body positivity, y'all. Like, there's no secular sacred divide. Some of you are like, really, Ben? Bathroom humor? Like, you're not, you're not beyond this. No, no, no. I want you to see the extent to which the rabbis took it seriously when they taught their disciples to pray. This was not an incidental thing, this was integral to the life of a disciple with their rabbi. And so, Jesus, I'm so glad I'm a disciple of Jesus because he gives us one prayer to memorize. Just one. It's not that hard. He gives us a prayer to memorize that sanctifies all of life. And this is what Rabbi Jesus says. Point two, Jesus gives us a prayer. Look with me at verse 2. And Jesus said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. This prayer is so vast and deep and yet so simple and childlike. I'm so glad. I'm so glad Jesus, our rabbi, gives his disciples a prayer to pray. Ian Bowne says it like this it was worth a trip from heaven to earth to teach men this great lesson of prayer. Now, our vision here at New City is to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. We've preached sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. So I'm I'm resisting the temptation to do a 20-minute sidebar just on the Lord's Prayer here. So just give, permit me a few comments and then we'll move along. First, if you look at Luke 11, 12, Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer as a script to play to pray. He says, When you pray, say. In other words, one way to pray the Lord's Prayer is word for word. Pray it like it is. Just recite the script before the Lord, not without heart. But in Matthew 6, 9, Jesus gives the Lord's Prayer as a scaffold for prayer. He says, There, pray then like this. So the Lord's prayer is it's something that we should memorize. It's it's both a prayer template, but it's also a copy and paste prayer. Jesus has this way of his disciples learning to pray. One of the earliest manuals for disciples is called the Didiche, and it was written late in the first century AD. And it calls the disciples to pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day: morning, noon, and night. Jesus wants his disciples to pray this prayer in all of life. So then Jesus goes on and he tells us a parable. Point three. Look with me at verse five. And Jesus said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight? Pause for a moment. Um, one of the most difficult things as a church is to measure what matters. And I've said before you can measure stats, stories, and self-report. And in our measure of self-report, what we call our disciple-defined check-in, we have a question in there which says this I have three 2 a.m. friends that I could call in a crisis. Like a mark of a good community is that you have some 2 a.m. friends. You have a friend at midnight, if you will. And so he goes on, he says, and he said to them, Which of you who has a friend who will go, who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him. The best example of this is if you've ever seen the movie Lone Survivor. It's about a Navy SEAL named Marcus Luttrell who is being attacked by the Taliban, and he finds himself in an Afghan village where the villagers risked their lives against the Taliban to protect this wounded stranger because of the Pashtun code of hospitality. Let me just make that plain. In the ancient Near East, hospitality was non-negotiable, but iPhones were non-existent. So if your friend's on a journey to your house, you don't know if they got waylaid, you don't know if they've made record time, you have no idea, you just know they're on their way. But notice if the friend arrives, you better have bread for them. Because hospitality is so important. Now I want to point out there's a prompt to prayer in this text in verse 6. This is the simplest way to grow in prayer is to recognize, as verse 6 says, quote, I have nothing. Like if you want a good prayer life, if you could just take the feeling of desperation and distill it into a liquid, and whenever you wanted to pray, you just take a swig, you would be amazing at prayer. Because the basis of prayer is this sense of I have nothing. And verse seven goes on, and the so-called friend will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I'm so glad for Western amenities that my kids don't sleep in bed with me. Goes on, I cannot get up and give you anything. Verse 8, I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs. So imagine for a moment. Imagine you have a friend who wakes you up at 2 a.m. because they're just blowing up your phone, and you finally answer at 2 a.m., you're groggy and sleepy, and you say, Hey, what's going on? And they say, Hey, I need a ride, and you say, Get an Uber and hang up. And then you finally fall back asleep about 30 minutes later, and you hear a knock on your front door that's just so insistent. You're like, what is going on? So at this point, your dog wakes up and starts barking at the door, which wakes up the whole household, and you go to the door and you realize it's your friend. And you're like, I meant Uber home, not to my house. You're like, hey, well, I'm here. Can you take me home? And you're like, no, I and they they reel, you realize the look in their eye, they're not going anywhere. So you get your keys and your shoes and you take them on an awkward car ride home. And and not because you're friendly, but because you're fuming, that they won't give up. This is what Jesus calls impudence. This is impudence. It means shamelessness, it means bold persistence, it means a lack of social restraint, a refusal to be embarrassed, it's an annoying persistence. Or in one word, verse 7 says, Do not bother me. Dallas Willard said, impudence is what you see in the eyes of a dog when you're eating a sandwich in front of him. So, what's going on here? Like, what is Jesus trying to teach us about prayer? Well, point four, Jesus draws out a principle. Look at verse 9 with me. And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be open. You see, Jesus is doubling down on this shameless persistence. So, what is the principle in prayer? Is it be obnoxious until God gives you what you want? Well, it's important to know, verses five through ten are about how we are to be in prayer, not about how God is in prayer. That's important. This is about our posture, not God's posture. That's significant here. Because God is not like the friend in bed. You are to be like the friend at the door. So, what is God like? Well, just notice that impudence in any other relationship is a problem. In marriage, it's called nagging. In friendship, it's called codependency. At work, it's called incompetence. In parenting, it's called parenting. You see, impudence is not socially acceptable in any other relationship except one, a child with their parent. Tim Keller says it like this: the only person who dares wake up a king at 3 a.m. for a glass of water is their child. So, this makes prayer a great diagnostic. How do you relate to God in prayer? Do you relate to God like an employee to a boss? Like a subject to a king, like a slave to a master, like a consumer to a vending machine, like Aladdin to a genie, or like a child to a father. That's exactly where Jesus goes next. Look at verse 11. What father among you, all right, fathers and mothers, listen up. This is, he wants you to imaginatively identify here. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a servant, a serpent? Like you're just cooking up some fish tacos, and little Johnny's like, hey, mom, can I have one? And you drop down a cotton mouth in front of him. Goes on. Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. Dad, you make the best scrambled eggs. Can I have some? Here's a scorpion, kiddo. You see the silliness, the ridiculousness of that. Now, none of you would do that. But it's not because you're good people. In fact, Jesus makes that clear, verse 13 if you then who are evil, come on, Jesus, gentle, meek, and mild, like spare some punches here for a moment. No, no, no. This is core to his argument because he wants to point out, he wants to point out if you, with your character as it is, which is questionable to Jesus, are willing to give good gifts to your children, here's his argument. How much Much more will the Heavenly Father give Verse 13. You see, even the best fathers have failed. We know this. They've acted in anger or selfishness, and yet your heavenly father is uncompromisingly good in all that he does. How much more will your heavenly father give? Now, if you're anything like me, when you come to these bold promises of prayer that come from the lips of Jesus, it stirs something up in you, both a longing and a and a what if, a possibility, and a sense of ache at your unanswered prayers. And so I want to talk about this because I know I know bodies and souls, faces and names, I know the particular prayer requests on some of your lips that have gone unanswered. That you've had a longevity of longing to see your Father. You've been asking and seeking and knocking and left without. And so let me speak to that from the text. First, some of us think we're asking for fish and eggs, but we're really asking for snakes and scorpions. Let me say it like this: for God to act unthinkingly with our prayers would be paganism. Pagans believe that their gods will do whatever they need them to do in response to their prayers. Listen, if my three-year-old had a genie in a bottle to give her whatever she asked for, I would move to New Zealand. Like a safe distance, a few oceans between us. There's few things more dangerous than unhindered desire, especially dangerous to ourselves. Tim Keller says it like this if we knew what God knows, we would ask for what God gives. You see, there's only two answers to our prayers. One, God gives us what we ask, or two, God gives us what we would have asked if we knew everything He knows. Second, some of us just haven't endured long enough in asking to see the whole story. Now, I'm a connoisseur of questions. I love a good question. I love the listening practice Joey just taught us about. One of my favorite questions for like table conversation is this if you were to get a tattoo, what would it be? Or for some of you, if you were to get your tenth tattoo, what would it be? I love that question. And mine would be this, because I'm a nerd. It would be the Latin phrase desiderium sinus cortis. It's a quote from Augustine of Hippo. It means this it is yearning that makes the heart deep. Why does that matter with unanswered prayer? Well, one of the ways that God is forming you is by drawing out your yearning over time. You see, what God gets out of our lives is the person that we become. And the main character in all of our stories is God, but but a supporting cast in everyone's stories of formation into Christ-likeness is always unanswered prayer. God uses unanswered prayer to develop us, to form us, to shape us over time. Paul Miller, in one of the best books on prayer, called A Praying Life, says it like this: I often find that when God doesn't answer a prayer, he wants to expose something in me. Our Father wants to shape us as much as he wants to hear us. You see, when someone's prayers aren't answered, I want to know the backstory. I want to know how long did they pray? What did God do in their heart when they prayed? What was God up to in the situation at hand? How is he at work in the world? In our Bible reading plane, we just finished reading through the book of Acts. And maybe you caught this in Acts 12, verses 1 through 11. God frees Peter with an angel, but Herod kills James with a sword. In the same 11 verses. What's God up to? You better believe, you better believe James prayed, Lord, deliver me from Herod. And Peter prays, and an angel comes and does a jailbreak. You see, there's a story God's at work in the world. He's up to something. Brendan Manning says to be grateful for unanswered prayer is to whisper a doxology of defiant praise in the darkness. There's something God wants to do in us. That's the second thing we do with unanswered prayer. The third is that there is one prayer that Jesus promises our Father will always answer. This is my fifth and final point. Jesus promises a person. Look at verse 13. 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? The best answer to every prayer is always the Holy Spirit. You see, we want stuff, God gives himself. We want presence, E-N-T-S. He gives his presence, E-N-C-E. We want an answer, God gives us a person. Why begin the story with Lord, teach us to pray and end with the Holy Spirit? Well, because just as a mother gives birth and the first act of the baby is to cry, when the Spirit gives the new birth, the first act of a disciple is to pray. You see, Romans 8 says that when we belong to Jesus by faith alone, the spirit of adoption is poured out into our hearts, which causes us to cry, Abba, Father. I've come to realize just in practice what that feels like is if I ever have an inkling to pray, I assume that's the spirit of adoption. I assume it's the spirit of adoption going, talk to your father about this. Don't quench the spirit in that moment. Obey, listen, receive, respond, do, offer up a quick prayer in that moment. That's what the spirit of adoption does in the hearts of his disciples. Romans 8 says that when we are wordless, the spirit groans for us, intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Ephesians 1 says the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our access to the Father through his Son Jesus Christ. So why begin a sermon, begin a teaching, Jesus, where people say, Lord, teach us to pray and end with the Holy Spirit? Because when the Spirit comes, the Spirit brings strength in the very place of weakness, fruit in our barren circumstances, presence when we've been neglected by our friends. Like there's this story at the end of 2 Timothy chapter 4, where Paul says, No one came to stand by me, all deserted me, but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. Elizabeth Elliott says it like this the secret is Christ in me, not me in another set of circumstances. So when we wrestle with prayer, answered prayer, unanswered prayer, the Father always responds by promising his very presence with us. Now, listen, it's one of my growth areas to not outpreach my life. I don't want to give this impression that like I just walk hovering 12 inches above the ground because I'm just like filled with the Holy Ghost all the time. Like I have probably tasted about a shot glass full of what I'm preaching about right now, but I know there's gallons on offer, and so I'm reaching for more. I want you to reach for more. I want you to go before your father and say, Father, you promised. You said Luke 11, 13. And just say, Lord, here I am asking. Give me a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit. Give me more. I'm not, this isn't enough. I'm thirsty. Pour out the water on parched soil, Lord. He's got promises. Take him at his word. Be shameless in your boldness to ask for him to answer this promise. But what if our hope is flagged flagging? What if we what if we've been there, done that, and it just doesn't seem to work? Where do we where do we stir up that shameless boldness? Well, we look at Jesus. Go back to the top at verse 1 again. It says this. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. You ever wonder, Judas dips out on the Lord's Supper, and then he knows exactly where to find Jesus when he leads the Romans to come kill him. You ever wonder? Well, we get an answer in Luke 22, verse 39, it says this, and Jesus came out and went, here's the phrase, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. You see, Jesus' model of prayer was so predictable that Judas knew just where to find him when he wanted to betray him. And what was Jesus doing in the Mount of Olives? What was he doing in the Garden of Gethsemane? He went there to pray. And Matthew 26 says that Jesus prayed three times, saying the same thing. What was he doing? He was asking and seeking and knocking. What was he praying? Mark 14, 36 says this, Abba Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. There's the request. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Did the Father answer Jesus' prayers in Gethsemane? Yes, but not by removing the cup. You see, the answer was not removing the cup, but the strength to endure the Father's will and accomplish his purposes for Jesus. And where did that strength come from? Well, Hebrews 9 14 says this Jesus, through the eternal spirit, offered himself without blemish to God. From a Father who promises to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him, including his unique Son, Jesus Christ. Now the answer was not removing the cup, but it was resurrection on the other side of the cross. And so when we get to our text today, Jesus tells us this parable to argue from the lesser to the greater. If bothered friends will do this, how much more? If evil parents will, how much more? You see, Jesus is a better friend and God is a good father. Jesus not only got out of bed, but he came from heaven to earth. The Father gives to those who ask, he sends forth his son and his spirit in order to bring you before him in shameless prayer so that when you come to him, he says to you, Hey, when you realize you have nothing, bother me at midnight, little child. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, come. Come and fill us. Draw us to Jesus. Spirit of adoption, cry out in our hearts again, Abba, Father. Renew in us a confidence that we have the ear of our Abba. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.