Ask, Seek, Knock
Luke 11:5-13
I
don’t specifically remember being taught to pray; it is something that my mom
taught me when I was too little to remember. I do remember thinking that my
cousin Chad was really spiritual because he used really grown-up language like
“beseech” in his prayers. Even in modern times, there is confusion on how to
pray, so Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them to pray. The most well-known
aspect of this teaching is the Lord’s Prayer. We pray this prayer all the time,
but then we stop. When we look at the Lord’s Prayer in Luke’s gospel, there is
no break between the words of the prayer and the discussion that follows. In
fact, the language suggests continuity rather than a break. “Then Jesus said to
them” connects the former to the latter.
So we have the Lord’s Prayer followed
by the parable of the friend in need and the question to fathers, all strung
together in one teaching.
Then Jesus said to them,“Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
“Which
of you fathers, if your son asks for a
fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a
scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to
those who ask him!”
After
he gives what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus continues to teach on prayer.
In studying this passage, I always understood the first part to be what Jesus teaches us to pray and the
second part the how. What should we
pray? Our Father… How should we pray? Like the friend who needs bread, with
persistence and shameless audacity. If we demand enough, then God will finally
give in and give it to us.
The
problem with this is how this view affects our view of God. If we believe that
God will only answer us if we continue to bother him with prayer, it leads to
some dangerous conclusions. The first conclusion is that God is somehow distant
from us and that he doesn’t really want to answer our prayers, but if we bother
him long enough, he’ll finally relent just to get us off his back. The other
conclusion is that if we don’t get an answer, it’s that we’re not praying hard
enough. Again, the only problem with these views is that they aren’t biblical.
So if that’s not the interpretation to this story, what is?
What
Jesus is doing with this first parable is introducing a familiar scene to his
audience. They would know what the cultural norm is and would have an
expectation of how the parties involved are supposed to react. His framing of
the story: “Suppose you have a friend…” is the same as if he started out with
“can you imagine…”
Jesus
asks, “Can you imagine turning away your friend in need?” This might put the
scene into perspective: imagine your best friend lives next door to you, and in
the middle of the night your phone rings – it’s your friend who explains that
there has been an emergency and they want you to let their little one sleep at
your house. Now, imagine the little one has slept over at your house before, in
fact, let’s make the little one your grandchild. You even have a room set up
for her. Now Jesus’ scenario might
make the same kind of sense to us as it would have to his first century
audience.
To
provide hospitality was of paramount importance, and a friend is needing to do
so. Your excuses have nothing to do with the situation; you have the means to
give to your friend (notice that the excuses the homeowner gave were: 1) the
door is locked; 2) we’re already in bed. He never says anything about not
having bread. So Jesus offers the punch line in v. 8, admitting that the scene
is preposterous. Of course the householder will get up and help his friend.
There is a reason Jesus makes up this
preposterous scenario: he is shaping prayer not so much in a “how to” but in a
“to whom.” The key to prayer is not the words we use or our posture for prayer.
The key to prayer is the identity of the Father to whom we pray.
The
main idea of Jesus’ teaching on prayer is, again, not how we are supposed to
pray. The main idea is who is this God we’re praying to, and how does he relate
to us? So Jesus gives another hypothetical. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks
for a fish, will give him a snake
instead? Or if he asks for an egg,
will give him a scorpion? (Luke
11:11-12)
I don’t
think we need much translation from 1st Century Palestine to today;
the very idea that Jesus suggests is ridiculous. Of course a father won’t give
his son a snake or a scorpion when he asks for something to eat. The expected
reaction is one of self-righteousness: of course I wouldn’t give my child something dangerous!
But Jesus
puts us all in our place with his next comment: If you
then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask
him!” (Luke 11:13) What does
he mean, we who are evil? Who does he think he is, calling the dads of the
earth evil? If you get down to it, that’s a pretty good description of us.
Without the Holy Spirit, we are unable to do anything good whatsoever. We are
inherently selfish, and there is nothing we can do about it on our own.
One complaint I hear from anti-Christians is that
most people are basically good. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. We
live in a world, as John Stott put it, where a promise is not enough; we need a contract. Doors are not enough; we
need to lock and bolt them. Law and order are not enough; we need police to
enforce them. This is all due to man’s sin. (John Stott, Basic
Christianity). This isn’t just “someone else’s sin” because, as 1 John 1:8
tells us “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”
Let
me quote again from John Stott: “Our sense of failure depends on how high our
standards are. It is quite easy to consider oneself good at high jumping if the
bar is never raised more than waist-high.”
In
the book The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence, a lay
brother in a Carmelite monastery in the 1600s, expressed that as far as the miseries and sins he heard of
daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the
contrary, he was surprised there were not more, considering the malice sinners
were capable of. In other words, it’s not surprising that people are as bad
as we are. What’s surprising is that we’re not worse, considering what we are
capable of. Indeed, each and every one of us is capable of atrocities. And
Jesus specifically points at parents.
Now
I can understand that there are bad parents. Last Sunday I read an article in
the front section of the Columbus Dispatch about one such parent:
CHICAGO — Raised in a $1.5 million home in Barrington Hills, Ill., by their attorney father, two grown children have spent the past two years pursuing a unique lawsuit against their mom. They accuse her of bad mothering and say she damaged them when she failed to buy toys for one and sent another a birthday card he didn’t like.The alleged offenses include telling her then 7-year-old son to buckle his seat belt or she would contact police, “haggling” over the amount to spend on party dresses and calling her daughter at midnight to ask that she return home from celebrating homecoming.Last week, an Illinois appeals court dismissed the case, finding that none of the mother’s conduct was “extreme or outrageous.” To rule in favor of her children, the court found, “could potentially open the floodgates to subject family childrearing to … excessive judicial scrutiny and interference.”In 2009, the children, represented by three attorneys including their father, Steven A. Miner, sued their mother, Kimberly Garrity. Steven II, now 23, and his sister Kathryn, now 20, sought more than $50,000 for “emotional distress.”Among the exhibits filed in the case is a birthday card Garrity sent her son, who in his lawsuit sought damages because the card was “inappropriate” and failed to include cash or a check.
Pretty
tough upbringing, eh?
Jesus
recognizes that there are times when we do good things, such as providing good
gifts to our children, even if we fail to include cash or checks in birthday
cards. Human parents wouldn’t think of withholding food from their children,
instead giving them poisonous animals. And if humans, who are at root evil, can give good gifts to our children,
how much more will our Heavenly Father, who is at root good, give the best gift?
Parents,
who are sinful, can only give good
gifts, but God, who is GOD, demonstrates his superiority over human as He gives
the Holy Spirit to those who ask. This is the best gift; there is nothing else
that even comes close. The gift of God Himself, living within us!
Finally
we get to the most famous portion of this text, a portion I chose to take out
of order. There’s a reason I skipped verses 9-10 until last. Listen to Jesus’
words: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and
you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the
one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Luke 11:9-10)
Because of who God is in his very
character, a loving Father who gives His children the best gift, and because of
His love for us and the promises He gives, he invites us to bring our requests
to Him. God will give us what we need. Remember the context of this command; God
isn’t a genie in a bottle, and we often have a lot of discerning to do in order
to differentiate between wants and needs. We have generally seen our basic
needs falling into one of four areas: food, clothing, medical care, and
shelter, In a recent newspaper article, I read that American Baby Boomers are
redefining basic needs. In a survey by MainStay Investments of 1,049 consumers
aged 45-65, these were deemed as basic needs: an Internet connection: 84%;
shopping for birthdays and special occasions: 66%; pet care: 51%; yearly family
vacation 50%; weekend getaways: 46%; professional hair color/cut: 43%;
children/grandchildren’s education: 42%; dining out: 38%; domestic travel: 35%;
ordering takeout: 34%; movies: 30%.
The
truth is, we get confused about our wants and our needs, primarily because we
fail to recognize that our chief need is for God Himself. As God supplies our
needs (and even some of our wants), He doesn’t do it indiscriminately! The
purpose is always to draw us to Him. As we turn our attention to Communion,
I’ll invite you to ask God, who gives the best gifts to His children, to give
Himself to you.
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