By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, June 22nd, 2014:
http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/23102/good_news_110_june22.mp3
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Broadcast Notes:
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‘Jesus on Prayer’
Welcome to
Good News In the Morning a program of words and music bringing a Christian
message of hope and encouragement to those who are looking for intelligent,
meaningful and spirited approach to faith and to life.
Good morning
and welcome to Good News In the Morning. I'm your host today, Brian Wilkie of
St. Andrew's Christian Church in Rockland. You can find out more about this
ministry on the web at www.GNCM.ca GoodNewsChristianMinistries.ca. I do want to
thank you for listening today and for your encouragement and support .Please
remember that you can always visit our website for materials to encourage and
support you in your Christian walk.
If you miss an
episode of the show you can go to our website and download the podcast or the
MP3 of our broadcast.
Today, as I
speak to you and as we share together in God's word I want to look at a teaching
of Jesus which is a beautiful, wonderful teaching on prayer. I'm going to read
to you from Luke chapter 11 beginning at
verse 5.
5 Then he said
to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and
says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a
journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’
7 “Then the one
inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children
are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, though
he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because
of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
9 “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. 10 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks
finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
This Scripture
is really a wonderful teaching on prayer but it's one that has been widely
misinterpreted and can seem to give quite a different message than the intended
one. I'm going to share with you today some thoughts on the Scripture that I
learned from Don Sunukjian, who is a professor of preaching at Talbot Seminary.
He was at the Moody Bible Institute's Pastors’ Conference, which I attended in
the month of May. At that wonderful experience we heard much great teaching. This
is one piece that was done so well, I just want to share with you as best I can.
We are going to take a look at this Scripture in which he speaks about a man
who has a need, because a friend who has come unexpectedly.
When you hear
this Scripture, perhaps you've heard it before, and when you hear the message
of this Scripture about the friend that won't open the door, what does it speak
to you about God's attitude to prayer? Has it been told you, or has a been
taught to you that the meaning of this passage of Scripture is that you really
need to kind of batter on God's door when you pray? That you just have to keep
on banging on the door because God doesn't want to help you, but he will if you
are persistent enough? Is that the kind of message you have gotten out of this
Scripture? Well as we look at this today, I think you will find that the
message is really quite different, substantially different from that. You're going to be encouraged by the word of
God in this Scripture. Well, we will do that and look more deeply at it in a
few moments, but as we usually do, we will to listen to some music that is in
praise of God and remembering his good works. I'd like you to listen with me to
the following song. This is a song from Steven Curtis Chapman's new album, Deep
Roots in which he goes back to his family's roots with a bit of a bluegrass
feel. Here he sings the familiar hymn “He Touched Me.”
As we look at
the Scripture from Luke chapter 11, we need to think about what the situation
is here. What is this situation which Jesus is talking about and how is it
familiar and meaningful to the disciples at that time?
He describes
that you've received a friend late at night. He's come unexpectedly and you
have nothing to set before him. So you go next door to a friend, you knock on
his door and you ask for some help. Why has this friend arrived unexpectedly? Why
has he arrived in need of food? Why has he arrived so late at night? We must
remember of course that we are talking about a different era. We are talking
about Palestine in Judea in the early first century. You can imagine traveling
in those days. There is no means of phoning someone ahead and saying, “I’ll be
there at 4 o'clock.” You likely are traveling by foot in a very warm climate. It
was the practice in those days that people wouldn't start their journeys until
the heat of the day had passed. if they knew in advance that they were going to
visit a friend, they might be able to send a message through another friend and
say, “I’ll be coming sometime next month,” but it was difficult to be more
precise. In that there was no Postal Service per se, there was no email,
telephones. They didn't use smoke
signals for that kind of thing. No, long-distance communication was a trial. So
everybody knew that the unexpected could happen; that someone could drop in any
day. They wouldn't resent that or feel like it was an imposition. They would be
happy to have these infrequent visits from their friends. It wasn't a case of
being able to just hop in the car in drive 20 or 30 miles and just spent an
afternoon with somebody. No, traveling was a big deal in that day. I'm amused
by the fact that the English word ‘travel’ is from the French word ‘travail’ which
means ‘hard labor, difficulty.’
So imagine
that the friend started out as the day starts to cool, as everyone would. He’s
been walking. Galilee doesn't have McDonald's to stop by on the way. He
probably doesn't have the resources to eat out, even at the Inns (and the inns
weren't exactly the safest places in many cases). So when he arrives he's
perhaps Dusty and tired. Perhaps a couple of hours ago it got dark, and he
thought, “I’ll just press on a few more miles and I'll be able to get to my
friends house.” He arrives and you are
there. H knocks on the door, you get up in the welcome him in –and then you
realize you've got nothing to feed him. Bread in those days was a staple, and
it was used to serve the sauces and the dips that would make a part of a bigger
meal. There you are without anything to give him. A man was walking all day and
you know that your duty as a friend and as a host is to give him something
before he goes to bed.
Now in that
situation Jesus says to the disciples, and perhaps the New International Version
is not as clear as some other versions. Jesus puts the whole situation as a
hypothetical situation. In the New International Version it reads “suppose one
of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says friend lend me
three loaves of bread.” That doesn't quite get the nuance of Jesus’ teaching.
In fact the
next story begins with the proper phrasing from the Greek of the New Testament
when he says, “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish would give him
a snake instead?” Understand here in this case that Jesus is asking a
hypothetical question where the answer would be expected to be “No, None of
us!” Would any of you fathers, if you son asked for a fish give him a snake
instead? The answer would be, “No obviously not.” If he asked for an egg will you
give him a scorpion? No, never! Never. Jesus asked this kind of a question to
show people how silly it would be to think of God as being less generous and
less good than even a human father. He says, “if you wouldn't do that, don't
you think that God will give good gifts to his children?
Well how does this story become about God giving good
gifts to his children? This story, which we've often thought meant we really
had to force God's hand in prayer?
Well, we’ll
look at that in more depth after we listen to this hymn from A Celebration Of
Hymns a collection of hymns called Reflective Moments. This hymn, the familiar
Good Friday hymn There Is A Green Hill
Far Away.
To help us
understand the story Jesus is telling, and the meaning that it has for prayer,
let me put a hypothetical situation to you. Supposing that you are asleep in
bed one night, and use the phone rings you get a message that a family member
is in deep distress in another city. let's in this hypothetical situation
suggest that it's it your mother. She's living at some distance from you and
she has just been put into the hospital possibly with the stroke. Now you wake
up and you know that you have to be there with your mother. You need to go now.
You need to go and see her. You and your wife both need to be there, because
dad’s going to need some help, and mom’s going to need some comfort,
encouragement. So you think about how you going to do this. The kids can't go
with you, You can't put them all on the airplane, you can't afford the flight. They
have school, They have other things they need to do, and you just don't know
how long this is going to be. You are trying to figure out what to do.
Now let me put
the hypothetical question to you as, Jesus put it to his disciples. Which of
you, if you were in this situation, would call up your friend, who perhaps lives
a couple of doors down the street? You call them up that very night, in the
middle of the night. You pick up the phone and say to your friend, ”Dear Bob,
could you and Martha please take our kids for the next couple of days because
we’ve got a go in and see to my mother in another town.” Now which of you, if
you called up your friend and asked him that question, would find that the
friend would say, “oh, I'm sorry Jim. I really just got into bed. I was just
settling down. You know, we've already turned the alarm on, and I’ll have to
put in the code again and turn it off. And then that I'd have to unlock the
doors and get out blankets for the kids, and that sort of thing. It would be a
lot of trouble, Jim.”
Do you think
your friend would answer like that? I bet you're saying, “No!” You are thinking
that your friend would answer the phone and say, ”I'm so sorry to hear that. We’ll
do everything we can. Bring the kids over, and we will have beds ready for them
in the spare rooms. We will make up some snacks for you to take on the road so
you can keep alert and awake – we will have some coffee for you. Can we take
care of the pets while you're gone? Do you need anything done in the house?
Will the plants need water?”
Which of you
has a friend that would take that second answer? Of course I certainly hope you
all have a friend like that. That is the expectation that Jesus has when he
asked the disciples this question, “Which of you has a friend that would say to
you, “I can't get out, my kids are asleep. I might wake them. I've already put
the bar across the door and you know that lock sticks. “NO, no,” the disciples
are thinking, “That's not a friend. I know my friend would be out there and
giving me what I need.”
This is in
fact the meaning of the parable.
When the
Scriptures come to one very difficult word they have a great deal of trouble
translating it, because Jesus says in this parable, “I tell you though he will
not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the
man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now this word
boldness in English is a translators attempt to capture the meaning of the
Greek word. If you look into the into other versions, or the footnotes even, of
the New International Version you find some translators say, “because of this
man's persistence” or in the King James version it'll say, “because of your
importunity,” which is essentially the same thing as persistence. The word that
is being translated is a word that occurs only once in the New Testament so
it's very hard to find a translation for it. Usually when you try to translate
a word you can see how it's used in other contexts, but this unique word is a
lot of trouble. If you search through the versions of the Bible you might have
at home or search on the Internet, you'll find that each translator, each
version, takes a different approach to it, which shows you how difficult this
word is to translate. The word in its root meaning is composed of two parts. One
part that means ‘without’ and the other part means ‘shame.’
‘Without shame.’
It's still hard to put that into the sentence and understand its meaning. It
looks like, given the situation which Jesus describes, that Jesus is saying
that the fact that you asked him, the fact that you thought of him, and asked
him, is enough to make the man give whatever you need. you see, you were not
ashamed to phone your friend. You knew you could count on them, you knew that
they loved you and they would understand your situation. You knew that they
would be ready to do whatever they could, that they would bend over backwards
to help you. When that person received the call, though they’re rubbing the
sleep out of their eyes and trying to focus, they’re also thinking, “I'm so glad that he thought
to call me because I can help here.”
Your
shamelessness, your readiness without any shame to come and approach your
friend is a great commendation of your friend. Likewise, Jesus says God is
pleased when his children are not ashamed to turn to him and ask for what they
need. “Indeed he will get up and give you as much is you need.” Jesus concludes
the parable with these 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.”
Is this a
parable about twisting God's arm? About annoying him until he finally gives in?
No, this is a parable about the readiness of God to hear your need, to
understand your want. His readiness to be a friend who will move heaven and
earth to show you his love, his grace and his sufficiency.
Let's thank
God for this in prayer.
Almighty God,
thank you so much for being a generous and good God. You've given us life,
you've given us so many blessings in this world, and when we are in need, Lord,
you have given us hope that we can turn to you and seek from you your help and
sustaining power. We thank you for this in Jesus name, amen.
Well, thank
you, listeners, for your for your participation in this program. I do hope that
you will continue to tune in week by week and that you will, if you are able,
to support our ministry financially. You can help us to continue to reach
listeners throughout the Ottawa River Valley by making a check payable to Good
News Christian Ministries and sending it to P.O. Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario
K0G 1W0. We will be happy to send you a receipt at income tax time.
You can also
make donations through the website. I also do want to encourage you to tell
others about this program and help them to be encouraged by these words from
Scriptures week by week.
Please be sure
to worship in a church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out
with compassion, integrity and resolve.
Now to
conclude our program I would like to have you listen to this song, Immortal, Invisible
God Only Wise. It is an old hymn sung by the a cappella group Glad from their
album A Cappella Hymns.
I do pray the
Lord will hold your heart and you would know Jesus personally and profoundly.
May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart. May the heavenly Father
surround you with his constant, abiding and accompanying love.
Good News In
The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk Radio 580 CFRA.
- Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's
Christian Community, Rockland,
Ontario
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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