Luke 11:11–13

0:00 Good evening, church. We're going to be in Luke 11, as Greg mentioned, so you will be helped to turn there. You can find those verses printed on the bulletin as well, but in context, it's always good. I'll be referencing some of the other verses around that passage. So if you're like most people, you wish that your parents had told you no less often when you were growing up and had told you yes more often when you were growing up, right? So, hey, mom, dad, can we go on that awesome vacation? Yes, of course we can, right? You know, maybe going to the local toy store. Hey, mom, can I have that toy? Well, of course you can, son. Why not, right? Can I stay up late and eat a ton of junk food and play video games? Yes, you can do that. You know, there's actually a movie about this very thing called Yes Day. And the premise of it is that the parents, for 24 hours, are not allowed to say no to any requests from their children. I think that anything that's like, you

1:00 know, legal and not going to get them in like some sort of weird trouble. But they have to say yes. Now, the movie itself is absurd. It's just ridiculous over the top. And about five minutes in, I'm just losing my mind going, oh, why would anyone ever agree to something like this? But I think it's actually hitting on something really, really important and kind of fundamental to who we are as people. We want someone, and we wish that we had someone who would just give us what we want. If I just ask for it, I wish you would just give me what I want. Well, our passage tonight shows us that when we come to God our Father, He does indeed give us an answer. He does indeed give us a yes, but it's in a very qualified and certain way. And we're going to dig into that and see what that is tonight. So Luke chapter 11, beginning in verse 11. This is Jesus speaking here.

1:56 It says, what father among you, if his son asked for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asked for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 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? This text comes at the end of a section on the topic of prayer. So if you let your eyes kind of scroll back up there through what's happened already in Luke chapter 11, you'll see that at the very beginning of the chapter, Jesus has been praying and his disciples come to him and say, hey, teach us how to pray. We want to pray like you're praying. And that's where he models for them the Lord's Prayer, what we've called the Lord's Prayer. But he doesn't just stop there. He actually goes on and spends the next several verses teaching about the nature of prayer and of the ones praying. So he gives this interesting parable of a friend waking up another friend in the middle of the night, and just kind of a fascinating story. And the main point of that is really this, that we should pray audacious, almost ridiculous prayers, right? That

3:01 the world should look at what we're praying and think, why in the world would you be so bold to say that to God. And then Jesus goes a little further and he says we should actually persist in prayer, that you should keep asking those types of audacious prayers. And then he wraps all of that little section up on praying with our text for this evening, which I think is actually the motivation for why Jesus' disciples should approach the Father in the first place. And if I could summarize those three verses in one little thought, it would be this, that the Father gives when we ask him. So pray expectantly. That's what Jesus is trying to drive home to his disciples. The Father gives when we ask him. So pray expectantly. And we'll break that apart into two different ways to consider for the next few minutes. We must ask, our obligation to ask, and the understanding that the Father gives. So we must ask and the Father gives. First, we must ask. I think it's safe to

4:01 assume that no one in this room actually thinks actually believes that they have all knowledge right you may be kind of prideful you may think that you're actually really smart but no one actually believes that they know everything about all things right far from it many of you in here are students in fact many many of you in here are students and you either have just started your semester or you're about to start your semester and you know very well that in just a few weeks you're going to be expected to know a ton of things about which you know nothing right now right? Or maybe some of you are parents or are about to be parents, and you only have to look at the children around you, or maybe the children sitting next to you, and the ways that they are just doing things that you don't understand why they do that, right? You don't understand how they can do that, why they won't listen to you, and you understand that your responsibility is to somehow lead them through the complexities of life, and you realize, I'm just making this up as I go, right? I have no clue what I'm doing. Well, it's not only that we don't have all knowledge, It's that that very fact means that we aren't self-sufficient.

5:05 We can't do everything, hardly even anything, on our own. We are a dependent people. And for Christians, then, this means that we pray. It means we come to God and we ask him for the things that we need. It's built into the very nature of what it means to be dependent. Look back at verse 11. So the illustration that Jesus uses here in our text, it's straightforward and easy to understand, right? There's no sort of complexity about it. The son asked for a fish, and then he asked for an egg there in verse 12.

5:37 It's a son asking his father for food, for something that he needs. And then the father gives it to him. But it's easy to run past something actually really, really obvious in all of that. The son has to ask the father for something. Don't forget, don't forget the context for these verses. Jesus' disciples, right, just a few verses before, they've seen Jesus praying. They've asked him how to pray, how to ask the Father for things. And that's when Jesus gives this teaching tonight, this little illustration in our verses.

6:10 And as we read through these three short verses and the questions that it raises about which one of you would do this, which one of you would do that, it's designed to kind of raise within us the response of, well, of course I wouldn't do that, right? We're all supposed to read those scenarios and go, yeah, there's no way that if my son asked me for a fish, I'm going to hand him a snake, right? It's establishing. Jesus there is establishing a certainty. He's trying to build a case saying, look, you know you won't do that, right? Oh, of course not, Jesus.

6:41 We would never do that. There's no normal father anywhere who would do that type of thing. Well, his point there is that no one's going to give a dangerous item, an essential one, One that you have to have when a necessary one is requested. So when the kid asks for food, something that's life-giving, the father's not going to give him something dangerous instead. That would not only deny the request, it in effect actually reverses the request. You want life? Here, I'll give you death instead.

7:12 It's just absurd, of course. No one's going to do that. But underline all of that. Underlying that reality, that certainty, is that the son had to ask for something. Friends, the Christian life is in so many ways based on a relationship of God's people asking him through prayer for their needs, right? We come to him initially asking for forgiveness of our sins and for salvation through Christ.

7:44 Then we come to him on behalf of others asking for that same thing. and we've done that even tonight. We pray for help and guidance in a difficult world. We pray for relief from pain and from heartache. We pray for comfort and endurance in the midst of pain and in the midst of heartache. We pray for all the things that we just spent 15 minutes or so praying for tonight as a congregation. And Jesus' chief concern, not only here, but his chief concern for us is that our praying would be motivated. It would be motivated by the very fact that God is our heavenly Father.

8:20 But the Son has no problem asking his earthly Father for food, for his needs. And even more so, we should be motivated to believe that our heavenly Father will meet our needs. That's what Jesus is trying to drive us towards here. Great, right? Straightforward, simple. But what if we don't pray? Well, maybe we're not taking seriously that God is our heavenly Father. Look, we all struggle with prayer. If I had to take a poll of everyone in this room, I think every single one of us would want to be more faithful in it.

8:54 We'd probably even say that's the thing we struggle with the most in our Christian life. So why don't we pray like the Son who asked for his food? Well, maybe you think that God is simply not willing to listen to your prayers. Maybe you're more tempted to believe that God will give you a serpent instead of a fish. Maybe you think that he'll give you something that causes you discomfort or trial. Or more to the point, you just think he won't give you anything at all.

9:28 You just think he isn't listening. Or maybe on the other hand, you're just convinced that praying doesn't matter, right? He's just going to do what he's going to do, and my life is just going to be what my life is going to be. My friend, if that's you, let the words here of verse 13 encourage your heart. Jesus tells us that our Father is ready to listen and that he's ready to answer. Tonight, resist the urge, the overwhelming temptation at times to give up on praying.

10:00 No matter how weak, no matter how feeble, no matter how small or simple your prayers may be, friend, keep at it. We ask the Father for what we need because we trust that he'll give us what we need. And so our second point, the Father gives. Have you ever considered how unusual it is in our culture, the custom of gift giving? By definition, you describe what a gift is.

10:31 What's something that you didn't deserve, something that you can't earn, right? Something that you can't just require of somebody. It's something that the gift-to-giver, on their own volition, gives to you. And yet, as a society, right, as a society, we basically made gift-to-giving into something that you feel obligated to give to someone, right? You feel obligated to give them a gift, and often you merely just pick from a list that I'm going to give you, right? Here are your options to give me gifts. You don't actually get to pick anything except for these, like, four or five things, right?

11:01 That's every shower you've ever been to, right? I mean, we literally have lists of gifts that you've told us, these are acceptable ones. Please don't bring me anything that's not on this list, right? I'm going to return it if you do that. Well, interestingly, there's a surprising twist here in verse 13 that kind of flips that script on its head. Did you see it? Do you see it there? Who names the gifts in verses 11 and 12, right? Who names those good gifts as they're called? What's the one making the request? It's the son, right?

11:32 I want a fish. I want an egg. But now, here in verse 13, the good gift in this entire exchange is determined by the giver and not the one making the request. It's the Father. The Heavenly Father is now determining what that good gift even is in the very first place. Well, here's the point. When we ask for help from the Father, He gives the very best gifts to us. If we, if we as people know how to give each other good gifts, even though we're evil, as Jesus points out, how much more will he give the best gifts, especially since he's perfectly good?

12:15 Like Paul says as much, right, in Romans 8. He says, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? He gave us his son on the cross. He gives us his spirit for daily living in the faith. He's going to give us everything that we need. But the idea here, especially in our passage for tonight, is that we would daily and consistently and repeatedly depend on God for the things that we need. So we need to look to him for help to wage war against sin every day.

12:50 We need to look to him for help to trust him in life's difficulties. We need to look to him for help to find joy in hardship, to have courage to live boldly, to empower us to serve one another here in the congregation, and to have strength to forgive each other. We need to look to God to set our eyes on the things above and to peel our eyes off the things of this world. Friends, is that list what you expect to receive when you ask God for help? When you come to him in prayer, do you expect his answer to be something along those lines, or is it something else?

13:27 Do you expect that he'll give you his Holy Spirit, the one who guides, the one who gives wisdom, the one who is his very presence with us? Look, this is not a name it, claim it, prosperity gospel-esque type of blank check. Far from it, right? But in fact, it is indeed a sort of blank check. It's just that it's a blank check to ask for the things that we need. for the necessities of the Christian life and to trust that God will never tire of hearing that request and he'll never, ever run out of resources as he pours out his infinite spiritual blessings on us.

14:12 Friends, the promises that the Lord holds out to us in prayer are vastly deeper, they're richer, they're greater, they're more eternally significant than we often think that they are. He's promised not to just give us good gifts like we give one another. You know, he's promised to give us the Holy Spirit. See, the Spirit is promised to those who humbly come to God in prayer and ask for it. That's his point. And when the Spirit comes, he brings eternal life and a changed heart and a new citizenship in heaven. But it's only possible through the means of coming to God and humbly asking for it.

14:49 In other words, this is available to Christians. This is what it's, he's defining what it means to be a Christian. You come to God and you admit that you're dependent, that you have no other hope of salvation, and you ask him to save you. Friends, if you're here tonight and you're not a Christian, then this gift is available to you as well in the gospel. The good news that Jesus has lived and died and was raised again on your behalf, but you must turn from your sins, as the Bible says, Turn to faith in Jesus and receive this gift as well.

15:25 The 19th century pastor J.C. Ryle summarized this whole passage, I think, just really beautifully, really eloquently, and I'm just going to quote it here for us. It says, The Holy Spirit is beyond doubt the greatest gift which God can bestow upon man. Having this gift, we have all things, life, light, hope, and heaven. Having this gift, we have God the Father's boundless love, God the Son's atoning blood, and full communion with all three persons of the blessed trinity.

15:58 Having this gift, we have grace and peace in the world that now is glory and honor in the world to come. Friends, this means that to have the Holy Spirit, like Jesus says we have when we ask God in this verse, is to have everything that God has to give us. And he delights to do this for us when we ask him. Tonight, this week, even as you leave this place, pray, pray expectantly. Pray expectantly, trusting that the Father will give you the best gift that you can have and that he will indeed meet your needs.

16:34 Let's pray. Father, we thank you that in your word you've made it so clear to us that you want us to come to you and ask you for what we need. God, we thank you that you are not a God who sits far off from us and despises to hear us, but instead longs to hear our requests so that you can meet them and so that you can prove yourself loving and faithful to us. Tonight, we pray that you would build within us an even deeper understanding of that, an even deeper faith to trust you.

17:05 And we do pray, God, that even the things we've mentioned to you earlier in this service, that you would work in clear and powerful ways to answer those things for your glory and for our good. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.