God is so generous; He gives us more than we could even imagine. Don't dishonor God by doubting His generosity. Go to Him in the middle of your night, and know you couldn't interrupt Him. He delights that you're there, and hold Him to His promises, and be persistent, and demand that He listen, and give you what is best. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Think about the concept of God's sovereignty. He is all powerful, perfectly understanding, and He always does just what He wants. And so, since God is sovereign, how can our prayers change how He acts? Bottom line: Does prayer really make any difference?
Consider that today, as John MacArthur continues a study that may give you several of those aha moments. You may come away with a greater motivation to pray and a greater confidence in the amazing God who hears and answers prayers. John series is called "Don't Be Afraid to Ask." Now, to show you why you can and should pray boldly, here is John with today's lesson. We come now to our look at the Word of God to listen to what God has said on the pages of Holy Scripture. Luke chapter eleven is our text, and we are looking.
At verses five through thirteen, this is a very, very rich and encouraging portion of Scripture. Let me read the text for you, starting in verse five. And he, meaning Jesus, said to them, "Suppose one of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves.'" For a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And from inside, he shall answer and say, "Do not bother me. The door has already been shut, and my children and I are in bed.
I cannot get up and get you anything or give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet, because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. And I say to you: Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it shall be opened.
Now, suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish. He will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? Very remarkable passage.
Starts out with a very simple kind of earthy. Routine look at a little village and an incident with a man who needed some bread to feed a friend who came at midnight, and it ends up with profound theology in the final verse.
Now, let me just give you the broad picture of this passage, and then we'll get back into it a little bit. The one true and living God, the only God, the true God, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is very different. From the deities and the gods fabricated by men and demons, and the difference is in his essential nature. He is loving, merciful, gracious, forgiving, approachable, available, and generous. That is in direct contrast to all the gods of human religions throughout history.
Whose gods are not loving, or merciful, or gracious, or forgiving, or approachable, or available, or generous? They're sort of designed along the line of typical kings and monarchs and rulers. And if you know anything about ancient history and history of monarchs, you know that they are basically, typically, unavailable, unapproachable. In fact, in Esther chapter four and verse eleven, you have a characterization of a typical monarch. This happened to be in the Persian Empire, but this is what is said: All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law: that he be put to death.
If the king doesn't summon you and you go into his presence, he'll kill you. Unless, says Esther four eleven, the king holds out to him a golden scepter so that he may live. You walk into the presence of the king, and you can lose your life. You can't just do that.
Now, that is a typical way that monarchs functioned. You approached only when you were invited. You approached somewhat delicately. You may have approached going in backwards. We read in some cases, or going in bowed over.
For certain, in some cases, crawling. And typically, the king was elevated so that it was clear to you that he was way above you, and you were somewhere under his feet. You you approached with a certain hesitancy, with a certain delicacy, and you certainly didn't approach with an attitude demanding anything. But our God is just the opposite. He is absolutely available, absolutely approachable, gracious, merciful, compassionate, kind, and you can go into His presence boldly and ask for whatever you want.
You can go into His presence any time, and not interrupt Him. In fact, he desires you to do that. Turn to Hebrews four sixteen for a moment, and here's a verse that we'll sort of use as a launch point for our discussion of this text. Hebrews four sixteen sort of pulls together the principle that we learn in this passage in Luke. It says this: verse sixteen.
Let us therefore draw near. We're drawing near to God. Drawing near to our great High Priest, the Son of God in heaven, let us therefore draw near with, and some translations have the word boldness, and some translations have the word confidence. Let's use boldness. I think it's a truer representation of the Greek.
Let us draw near with boldness to the throne, and this is the real interesting twist. A throne of grace, a throne that dispenses grace. It's not a throne of law. It's not a throne of justice. It's not a throne of judgment.
It's a throne of grace.
So we draw near with boldness to the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Now I want you to see the word boldness, parasia, in the Greek parasia. It means freedom in speaking, basically. It means to say whatever you want to say. It means to be bold in your speech. It means to be open and frank, and as we would say, to be upfront and say it like it is.
Go to God with openness and frankness and boldness and confidence, and ask for whatever you want from the one who is dispensing grace and mercy to help. This is a promise I think often overlooked that we are told to come to God with boldness for what is on our hearts.
Now I I showed you some prayers in the scriptures where people actually said, "God, listen to me, hear me, give me your attention. Don't hide from me. I have this on my heart, and I'm bringing it for." You to understand, and I want you to act, O God, and to hear and to answer my prayer. And while there is certainly a measure of humility there, there is also a very strong element of confidence and boldness. A couple of people came to me after last week and said, "You know, we never kind of heard that before.
That approach. Are you sure that's really okay?" And so, I didn't want you to think that I sort of invented that.
So I thought I'd go back and muster a little historic support, and one of my heroes is Martin Lloyd Jones, David Martin Lloyd Jones. And listen to what Lloyd Jones said: "This holy boldness, this argumentation, this reasoning, this putting the case before God, this pleading His own promises." This is the whole secret of prayer. That kind of boldness is what Jesus is teaching here in this wonderfully rich passage in Luke chapter eleven.
Now, as I said last time, we know that God is holy and that God is all powerful and all wise, all knowing. We know that God is unchangeable. We know that God is absolutely sovereign. That God is in complete control of every circumstance, every detail, and He's working out His own plan perfectly. We know that, and that raises the question: Why do I pray?
And if God's going to do what He's going to do, why should I pray? And how would my prayer have any effect on that? And certainly, I'm just going to get in and get out as quickly as I can, since God's going to do what He's going to do anyway. I don't want to bother Him or interrupt Him with my little trivial prayers and. How in the world am I to understand the role of my prayers?
And I told you last time that although God has ordained the ends, He has also ordained the means, and the end is fixed, and He uses the means to reach His end. And one of the means He uses to achieve His ends is our prayers. That's why the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. God determines who He will save from before the foundation of the world. He elects some to salvation, but He, though choosing to save them, that is the end.
The means is their faith and their repentance. And God has determined that we would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That's the end, but the means is our obedience. God has determined to build His church, but the means is our service and our preaching of the gospel. God has determined that He will unify His church, the body of Christ.
The means is the exercise of our spiritual gifts. God reaches His ends through His means, and one of the means that God has given is prayer. And as we pray, we are the means by which God achieves His ends. And even our simplest prayer is not insignificant to God. Just as this illustration was so simple, all the man wanted was three little pieces of bread.
That seems like a trivial thing, not a necessity, not an emergency, not a great need. And that's exactly why Jesus used that as an illustration. What may seem a small thing to you, considering the greatness of God and the vastness of His kingdom and His eternal purposes, is not at all to Him a small thing. You don't need to feel embarrassed when you go to God. You don't need to feel like your trivialities don't matter to Him.
You don't need to consider that because God is sovereign, He doesn't need your input, your information. You don't need to consider that because His divine choice and wisdom and power are already in place, and He's going to do what He's going to do. That your prayers don't play a part—they do—and you need to go, and you need to go boldly, whatever the issue might be. Because, like everything else in our spiritual experience, God's ends are achieved through means that involve our will, our obedience, our desire, our faithfulness.
Now, the key word in Luke eleven is the word persistence. This is what he's pointing at in verse eight, where he says, "I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs." Persistence, I told you, is a very interesting word. Anadayan, very unusual word. It means importunity. Importunity is different than opportunity.
Opportunity is simply a circumstance that's favorable to you. Importunity is something completely different. Importunity is another word for being brash or overbold. It's a word for being shameless. It's a word for being overly aggressive.
It's a word for, as we said last time, having a lot of nerve or a lot of gall. It's it's a word to describe you know rushing in where angels fear to tread. That kind of attitude. And Jesus is saying here, this man got what he wanted because he he was shameless. He got up in the middle of the night.
He went right over there and he bothered his neighbor. And he didn't seem to concern him that the man was asleep. He was in bed with his family. It was in the middle of the night, and he was going to disrupt the whole family. Everybody's going to get up.
The man's going to have to get the bread because he had a social duty to do so, and so forth and so forth. This is a bold thing to do. This is a brash thing to do. This is a thing takes some nerve to do. To wake up this entire family in the middle of the night for something as simple as three biscuits.
And the Lord is teaching us here something about how we approach Him. He's calling in this passage for bold, shameless interruptions. Prayer that is aggressive. That goes to God when it may seem inopportune. Not rushing in and rushing out, but unburdening your whole heart.
Now we saw last time the parable verses five through eight, and I won't read it again. The Lord introduced this issue with a story that everybody would understand, and the point of the story is, when you're not embarrassed to ask, you get what you ask. Remember what James said: You have not because you, you ask not. Don't be hesitant to ask God at any midnight, in any circumstance, however small. If you don't have it, it's because you didn't ask for it.
Without embarrassment, we are invited to come invading and intruding and claiming we have the invitation and saying, "God, you promised. You said to pray without ceasing. You said to ask. You said to come.
So sue me if I'm out of line." Here I am, and so we looked at the parable, and it was a fascinating one to look at. And the second thing we saw—not only the parable, but in the application of the parable—came this incredible promise. The second point is promise, verses nine and ten. And I will take you to that again. Jesus again is speaking still, and I say to you: Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be open to you.
For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it shall be opened.
That this is just beyond. Imagination—it's—it's staggering. I'm telling you, come, come in the middle of night, of the night, come for what might seem small to you. Come and hold me to my duty, just as one friend held another to his social obligation to show hospitality, to give to someone who had a need. Hold me to my promises.
Hold me to my responsibilities. You come, you ask, and I'll give. You seek and you'll find. You knock and the door will be open to you. This is almost too amazing to be true.
So amazing that after saying it once in verse nine, just to deal with our sort of incredulity, he says it again in verse ten. This again is God inviting us come into His presence. And there's a progression. You start out asking, and then you get more aggressive, and you start seeking, and finally you start knocking, banging. Your your appeal gets more aggressive.
Does that somehow turn God away? Does that somehow irritate God? Quite the contrary. You ask, you receive. You seek, which means you plead, and you find.
You knock, which means you get more intense, and the door. To God's blessings will be open to you.
Now that's just review. Come to a third point, and let's call this the principle. The parable made sense because of a promise. The promise makes sense because of a principle, and the principle is a pretty simple principle. It is this principle: fathers do good to their children.
Look at verse eleven.
Now, suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he's asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?
Now, this is a basic principle. Fathers give good gifts to their children. Generally speaking, humanly speaking, fathers care for their children. And he's he's upping this a little bit from friendship. The friend's response: "Don't bother me.
The door's been shut. My children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. I'm your friend, but don't take this friendship too far. I like to be your friend in the daylight.
I'm not interested in being your friend in the middle of the night." Friendship is one thing, and friendship goes so far. Fatherhood is something else, isn't it? This again is the typical, common Jewish pattern of reasoning from the lesser to the greater. If a friend will respond to your boldness, what will a father do? My children certainly didn't hesitate to ask me for what they wanted.
Do yours? They certainly have never hesitated to ask their mother what they wanted, and the expectation is that if it's something they need, and we know they need it, they're going to receive it because they understand the relationship that we have is one of love and care, and responsibility and affection, and that's the point here.
So Jesus is then saying this promise. You can ask and seek and knock, and you will receive, and you will find, and the door will be open. Is based on the fact that you're coming to a father. This is the analogy. This is the principle here, and it's very interesting how he lays it out.
He says, "One of you fathers, one of you of the disciples that are listening to this," says back in verse one that he was speaking to his disciples. One of you fathers is asked by your son for a fish. Your son's hungry. He wants a fish. He wants fish.
That was kind of the staple meat. And so, what are you going to give him? You're going to give him a snake instead of a fish. I mean, if he wants to eat and he's hungry, you're not going to mock his hunger, and you're certainly not going to give him a snake.
Some suggest this is also the word for eel. I think it's best to see it as a snake. You wouldn't give him an animal that could poison him. When he wants food and he wants to be fed, you're not going to give him something that could kill him. And then he gives another simple analogy.
If he asks for an egg, he he will not give him a scorpion. Will he? Why that comparison? Because scorpions were a kind of a yellowy color. There are different.
You know, breeds or different kinds of scorpions, but historians tell us the kinds in those days were of a sort of a yellow color, not unlike color of a an egg, and they would curl up, and when they curl up in a little ball, they look like a small egg.
So there was some kind of a similarity there to make the analogy work. He says, if your son wants an egg because he's hungry, you're not going to give him a deadly scorpion.
Now, when Jesus taught this elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew seven nine, he added a third analogy. He said, "If your son asks for bread, you're not going to give him what? A stone. You're not going to mock your son's hunger. You're not going to mock your son's need, and you're not going to give him something that he can't eat.
You're not going to give him something that'll kill him." That's the principle. The principle is that fathers take care of their children. And when children come and they have needs, the father meets the needs. And so we see the parable, which illustrates that we are to come at any time, no matter how simple the need, and to be overly bold in our asking. The promise that underlies our coming is that whatever it is that we seek, if it's within the framework of His will, we'll receive it.
That is based upon the principle that God is a father.
Now that takes us to the fourth and the most important point. Let's call it the premise, and by premise I mean the bottom line, the foundation on which this whole discussion is built. And here it is, verse thirteen: If you then, being evil, Know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? You can go to God because He's a loving Father, but He's a loving Father far beyond the most loving Father in this world, who is by nature evil and who does His best to give good gifts out of a corrupt and fallen heart.
How much more will? Your heavenly Father loves you with a perfect love. How much more, with perfect wisdom and perfect compassion and perfect mercy and grace and perfect understanding of your situation and perfect goodness, give to you?
So when you go to God and you go with boldness and you go with persistence and you rush in and you unload what's on your heart and first you ask and then you start pleading and then you start banging, know this that God is delighted with that, delighted with that, because He, with His perfect love and perfect wisdom and perfect power and perfect provision. Is able to give the best to his children. In fact, Psalm eighty four eleven says, "He withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly." His children, he holds nothing back. This is all so overwhelming to us, Father. We are so undeserving and so utterly unworthy.
And yet, you have just given us way beyond what we could ever comprehend. We asked for a gift, and you gave us the Giver. We can only say thank you. And we will come, and we will plead, and we will pray, we will ask, we will seek, we will knock, because you've told us that that's how we will receive and find, and the floodgates will be open to us. We love you, and we thank you for being the generous one that you are, so magnanimous.
We could never be so bold as to ask you to live in us, and yet that's what you've done. We thank you for that, and we thank you that the Spirit is there to strengthen us, to teach us, to guide us, to comfort us, to help us, to intercede for us, and to keep us, seal us. Until eternal glory, for this we thank you. In Christ's name. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
The title of John's current study: "Don't Be Afraid to Ask." Now, going back to the closing words of John's lesson, a young child has no problem talking to his parents any time and all the time. But what about young Christians, new believers? What problems might new Christians have in talking with? Their heavenly Father. Here was John's answer to that.
Yeah, and I think that's why the Bible teaches us so much about prayer. I mean, we are taught about prayer by our Lord Himself in the teaching of the disciples' prayer or the Lord's prayer, as it's called, and the apostles in writing the epistles have filled those epistles with prayers, particularly the Apostle Paul, and all of that instructs us how to pray. We don't know how to pray as we should. Paul says in Romans eight, we don't know how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us.
So, prayer is a struggle. We don't know what God wants. We feel a little bit reluctant to push Him on things, and we're learning not to do that in this series. We don't want to, you know, pray to consume it on our lusts, as the Bible says. That's wrong.
We don't want to pray repetitiously, like the Pharisees, who just thought that repetitious prayers were some kind of magic force that moved God.
So, trying to figure out how to pray the right way, boldly asking what we desire, and trusting that God will hear and answer those prayers, is like any other part of spiritual life. You have to learn how to pray, and and I think it starts with mass. Mastering the disciples' prayer, when they said, "Teach us to pray," he gave them a prayer, and it was basically an outline of how to pray. We're familiar with what he said, but I am not sure we're all familiar with what each of those lines means. "Our Father," you can stop and talk about that.
"Who art in heaven," stop and talk about that.
So he was given an outline. All of that I've put in a book called "Lord, Teach Me to Pray." The Lord will will come alongside you through this book and teach you how to pray. It answers questions like why should I pray, what are the conditions for prayer, when and how often, what do I pray about. Just amazing truth taught by our Lord. Yes, it is, friend.
If you want to learn how to pray with more passion and more consistency, and and to see greater joy as a result, let me encourage you to get John's book. Lord, teach me to pray. When you contact us today, Lord, teach me to pray is available for fourteen dollars and shipping is free. This beautiful little hardcover book makes a great Christmas gift. It gives concise and practical help for new believers and veteran saints alike.
You can order Lord, teach me to pray by calling eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or go to our website GTY. dot org, and as we mention from time to time, we love hearing from friends like you, listeners who are growing spiritually because of what you're learning from John's Bible teaching. If that's true of you or of someone you know, email your story to letters at gty dot org, or if you'd like to use regular mail, our address here is Grace to You. Box four thousand, Panorama City, California, nine one four one two. Thanks also for mentioning this station's call letters when you get in touch.
That is more important than you may realize. Our email again: letters at gty dot org, and our mailing address: Box four thousand, Panorama City, California, nine one four one two.
Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be sure to watch Grace to You Television this weekend on WTLW in Lima, Ohio, or check your local Christian station, and then be here tomorrow for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on Grace to You.
