The tenth Sunday after Pentecost , 07/24/2016

Sermon on Luke 11:1-3, by Andrew D. Smith

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.” ²And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

“Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

³ Give us each day our daily bread,

⁴ and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation.”

⁵And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; ⁷and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? ⁸I 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. ⁹And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. ¹¹What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; ¹²or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³If 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!”

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for the sermon this morning is the Gospel for today, Luke’s account of Jesus teaching the disciples to pray and what prayer means.

Jesus teaches that Christian prayers are unfailingly heard because God our Father has promised to hear us, and he always keeps his promises. Prayer depends on God not on us, not on our proper formula, not on our right words, not on our right attitude or the proper inclination of our heart, not because of anything we have done. Prayer depends on God, our Father.

Jesus’ disciples ask him an important. They want to know how to pray. They want to be men of prayer like Jesus. They want to be the kind of men that run to the Lord and bend his ear at every need. They don’t to be like the people who think why should I pray? “I work hard. I get what I deserve, what I’ve worked for. Prayer is for the weak and the needy.” They don’t want to be like the people who wonder whether God even hears their prayer and so they do not pray. They don’t want to be like the folks who think that others pray and that’s enough and so they don’t have to pray. You don’t know anyone like these folks do you? No, the disciples knew God’s command and knew their duty to pray and they wanted to be men of prayer.

What is prayer? Some Christians, I’m told have a private prayer language. This was encouraged by some even in Lutheran circles during the height of the charismatic movement. This kind of babbling distracts from the kind of prayer Jesus directed his disciples to pray. I won’t go so far as to say they aren’t prayers, but the charismatics of the day certainly seemed to suggest that that kind of prayer was more effective that plain old prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven...” “Come Lord, Jesus, be our guest...” God teaches us in the Second Commandment that prayer is simply calling upon God in every need. He requires this of us and has not left it to our choice. Christians call upon God, it’s our duty. When we call upon God’s name and pray, His name is honored and used well. God has given us his name to call upon him personally. And too often his name falls from our lips as a curse. And so it matters if we don’t pray.

We can never act as though it doesn’t matter if we don’t pray or as if prayer was commanded only for pastors or nice religious ladies or any of those we think are holier and in better favor with God than we are. Really what we’re talking about is our nature. Our heart which is such that it is not inclined toward God but rather always runs away from God and, if we let it, our sinful heart imagines that God our Father does not wish or desire our prayer. Yes, we are all sinners, this is true. But God does not hear any prayers because the one praying them is worthy to whisper into his ear but rather because he has promised to hear them. He draws us to Himself [John 6:44], so that we might humble ourselves before Him [1 Peter 5:6], cry out about this situation we find ourselves in, and pray for grace and help [Psalm 69:13]. Therefore, we read in the Scriptures that He is also angry with those who were punished for their sin, because they did not return to Him and by their prayers turn away His wrath and seek His grace [Isaiah 55:7]›. How about that? Truly our God is a God of great and undeserved grace and mercy. It matters that we pray to God.

Luther says in his Large Catechism:

16 You should say, “My prayer is as precious, holy, and pleasing to God as that of St. Paul or of the most holy saints. This is the reason: I will gladly grant that Paul is personally more holy, but that’s not because of the commandment. God does not consider prayer because of the person, but because of His Word and obedience to it. For I rest my prayer on the same commandment on which all the saints rest their prayer. Furthermore, I pray for the same thing that they all pray for and always have prayed. Besides, I have just as great a need of what I pray for as those great saints; no, even a greater one than they.”...We must know that God will not have our prayer treated as a joke. But He will be angry and punish all who do not pray, just as surely as He punishes all other disobedience. Furthermore, He will not allow our prayers to be in vain or lost. For if He did not intend to answer your prayer, He would not ask you to pray and add such a severe commandment to it.

Luther always has a way of putting a fine point on it.

The example that Jesus gives in Luke’s Gospel this morning is the kind of attitude God has toward us when we pray. He has not only commanded that we wake him up and ask for bread in the middle of the night, but He wants to make sure that we know he is the kind of God who delights in such requests. God has added a promise to his command to pray and declared that it shall surely be done for us as we pray. He says in Psalm 50:15, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you.” Our Lord says here, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find, knock and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” These are promises concerning prayer. Such promises certainly ought to encourage us and put a fire in our hearts to come before our Father in heaven and lay it all out there with pleasure and delight and confidence. God testifies with His own Word that our prayer is heartily pleasing to Him and that it will be granted. We pray not because of our own ability or personal holiness but because of God’s command and promise which cannot fail us and cannot deceive us.

We pray and we pray especially the Lord’s Prayer because our Lord’s gave it to us to pray. We repeat back to him what he has said to us, repeating what is surest and truest, the very Word of God. So the Lord’s Prayer is not some cultural symbol of identity; it’s the very Word of God. Think about it. When do we pray it? We pray it at a Holy Baptism with hands on the person’s head just before baptism. The ancient tradition was that catechumens were not given the Lord’s Prayer until they were baptized on Holy Saturday night, during the baptisms on the Vigil of Easter. Pastors are ordained into the Lord’s office of preaching and teaching by the laying on of hands and praying the Lord’s Prayer. We pray the Lord’s Prayer just before the consecration of the elements at the Lord’s Supper. We pray the Lord’s Prayer on couples at weddings and next to the casket and once again at the graveside during the rites of burial for our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we were to follow Luther’s instructions in the Small Catechism we would pray the Lord’s Prayer upon waking up and before going to bed, before every meal and certainly at other times. It is certainly one of the first things children learn and I can tell you from the experience of many an elderly person suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, they often remember the Lord’s Prayer even when they have forgotten everything else, even their own name. The Lord’s Prayer encompasses the entirety of the Christian faith, the entirety of the relationship we have with God that allows us to approach Him and ask his favor. The Lord’s Prayer is not a formula; it’s a gift from God. We pray it because our Lord gave it to us to pray.

I’ve been trying to emphasize in the Bible Class on Leviticus that all these very precise levitical instructions are not there because our God is so persnickety but because he wants his people to know how to do the sacrifices and where to do them and when so that they know they are doing it according to God’s instruction and therefore are confident of the blessing that comes from them. Yes, the OT Law was Law, however, God intended Israel to be blessed through it. In the same way He gives us the very words our lips should pray. The psalmist prays, “O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth will declare your praise.” That is in effect what the Lord’s Prayer is. Doctor Luther also took great comfort in the Lord’s Prayer. He said,

“This ‹the Lord’s Prayer› is a great advantage indeed over all other prayers that we might compose ourselves. For in our own prayers the conscience would ever be in doubt and say, “I have prayed, but who knows if it pleases Him or whether I have hit upon the right proportions and form?” Therefore, there is no nobler prayer to be found upon earth than the Lord’s Prayer. We pray it daily [Matthew 6:11], because it has this excellent testimony, that God loves to hear it. We ought not to surrender this for all the riches of the world.

Think about the many ways others have turned prayer into something other than what our Lord intended it to be. They turn prayer into a stepladder to God or to personal holiness. And so when we don’t feel particularly holy after we’ve prayed, we think, “Aagh, what’s the use?” And then we realize those kinds of prayers and methods of prayer are not prayed from obedience to God and faith in His promise. They are not prayers of need but prayers of how we can help God, if he should be so lucky. Prayers like this are unwilling to take anything from God, but wish only to give Him something.

True prayer comes not from a full heart but from the awareness of our need. We need to be able to see where God can be God and fulfill our lack. That’s why we need to learn to pray by praying the Lord’s Prayer, because it serves as a reminder of all our needs. We all have enough things that we lack. The great problem is that we often do not feel or recognize this. God requires that you weep and ask for such needs and wants, not because He does not know about them [Matthew 6:8], the Lord knows your every need. But he asks us to learn to pray so that we learn our needs so that we turn to him in every weakness and trouble and receive his ever greater gifts. As the psalmist says, “O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.” (Ps. 10:17)

All of us then, should form the daily habit of praying for all our needs. We should pray whenever we notice anything affecting us or that of other people around us. We should pray for preachers, the government, neighbors, and always (as we have said) to hold up to God His commandment and promise, knowing that He will not have them disregarded. This is a different way to pray than I think many people pray. We need to know that all our shelter and protection rest in God alone. Whenever a godly Christian prays, “Dear Father, let Your will be done” [see Matthew 6:10], God speaks from on high and says, “Yes, dear child, it shall be so, in spite of the devil and all the world.”

This is our encouragement. This is the reason we pray. We have a strong God who has promised to hear our prayers. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Rev. Andrew D. Smith
Cookeville, Tennessee, USA
E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com

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