Calling God “Father”
Download MP3Our scripture tonight comes from Luke chapter 11. It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgave everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not into temptation. Then he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend, and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me 3 loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to set before him.
Speaker 1:From inside, he answers and says, do not bother me, the door has already been shut and my children are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is a friend, yet, because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.
Speaker 1:Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives and he who seeks, finds and to him who knocks, it will 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?
Speaker 1:If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those you ask him? The word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Lord, we do ask that you would honor the reading of your word. Through the power of your spirit, it would penetrate our hearts. It would bear fruit.
Joel Brooks:We thank you for this time that we're allowed to come together with our eternal family, and to soak in your word, to sit at your feet, and to hear from you. That's what we are here for, Jesus. No one wants to hear from me, we want to hear from you. And so I asked that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I recently received an email from one of my friends who's a missionary in India, and we emailed back and forth a good bit. And some of you know her. She started a orphanage over there about 10 years ago, and now she has about 45 kids, kids who the government doesn't want, families don't want, and she takes them.
Joel Brooks:And what she does there is truly remarkable. And she's always asking me to bring a team over there. But with every invitation comes the warning. She says, I want to warn you that if you do bring a team, they're likely to be frustrated because most teams that do come and try to help out are very frustrated. It's not like, you know, she says, you know, I want you to cleaning toilets, or I want you cleaning up the streets, or something like that.
Joel Brooks:That's that's not it. She says that typically when American teams come there, they want to do those things. They want to work themselves to the bone. They want to work hard. They want to immediately set up a vacation Bible school.
Joel Brooks:They wanna start doing their street evangelism, and start setting up medical clinics, and doing all these things. And that's not what she wants or she needs them to do. She asks every group to spend 8 hours a day in prayer. If you would spend 8 hours, your first 8 hours praying, asking the Lord what he wants you to do. If he wants you to do anything besides pray.
Joel Brooks:Because the the the spiritual forces there are so dark and there is such oppression there that just doing things isn't going to make a dent. It's going to help out at all in that community. What what she needs is a spiritual breakthrough. What they need is to hear from the Lord. And she said, teams have a hard time with this because they feel like they're wasting time.
Joel Brooks:She's like, they come in, they're like 8 hours of you know, I came all this way and you want me to to pray? And it's because usually, typically, we're Martha's, which we looked like we looked at last week. We are doers. We are people who want to always have this activity, always be serving Jesus in this capacity. We're not very good Marys.
Joel Brooks:Ones who sit at the feet of Jesus, learning from him. We see that as a waste of time. You know, last week, we looked at the story of Mary and Martha and what this taught us about prayer. I hope it was helpful this Thanksgiving. Martha, she was busy with all of her activity and all of her serving.
Joel Brooks:There are all these things that she had to do, and she told herself that in she was serving Jesus, but she really wasn't. She was just serving herself and that's why she was so frustrated. And then he had Mary, who just sat at the feet of Jesus. Mary, you know, we saw the results of this, Later in her life, she wasted 20 to $40,000 worth of perfume at the feet of Jesus. She also was the only one who understood that Jesus came to die.
Joel Brooks:None of the disciples got it. Nobody else got it. She alone got it because she sat at his feet and she listened. And so how do we get a prayer life like Mary's? What's the secret in order for us to become Mary like prayers?
Joel Brooks:Jesus teaches us in the very verses we just read, Luke puts the Lord's prayer, or what should better be known as the disciples prayer. He puts it right after the story of Mary and Martha because he wants you to see those two things as linked. And just a little, you know, Luke tidbit for you, Luke often, he he'll write a familiar story, but he truncates it. Like the Lord's Prayer here. It's a lot shorter than you find in the other gospels which were written earlier.
Joel Brooks:And when he does that, the reason he doesn't just leave it out, he he wants to put it in, but he wants you to see it in a different light. He wants you to see it as attached to what goes before and what what's after it. That's why he truncates it so you don't focus so much on it, but you you tie it into the story before and you tie it into the story afterwards. And so he wants you to see the lord's prayer in light of Mary and Martha. Let's look at chapter 11.
Joel Brooks:It begins by describing how Jesus was praying in a certain place. And apparently, this was a very common thing for Jesus, that he would spend hours in prayer some mornings or perhaps every morning. And the disciples, they marveled at this, and they said, Jesus, will you teach us to pray like you pray? Now, for me, this is really curious that the disciples would ask this. Especially if you look at the disciples and where they were in their ministry and where they were in life, they were doing some amazing things.
Joel Brooks:It kind of looked like they had arrived. I mean, they they had just got back from this missionary journey in which they were casting out demons. They were healing sick people. They were preaching, just the the the gospel with power and authority. They were mightily being used by god, Which is usually why people pray is in order that they can be used like that.
Joel Brooks:They were already being used like that, but then they saw Mary pray. And they saw Jesus pray. And they realized, we don't have that. We're doing things. We're doing some great things.
Joel Brooks:But when it comes to prayer like that, we're missing out. And so they asked God to teach us. To teach them. You know, they had probably been seeing God as nothing more, I would say, than their boss at this point. You know, you you go to a boss, and you have a meeting, and you you get your assignments.
Joel Brooks:They give you certain authority to do certain things. You exchange some information what's going on, fill in the details about what needs to take place, and then you leave and you're better prepared for your day. You can make more progress in your day. And and we kind of see God as our boss, And I'm sure the disciples saw God as their boss, but they looked at Jesus and that's not what they saw. Jesus didn't go off to pray just so he could come back and do better miracles, or he can have a better schedule.
Joel Brooks:When Jesus went to pray, something happened to him. There was a vitality and a joy that happened to Jesus that he brought back with him. There was this intimacy that they saw. And they're like, that's what we want. Teach us, Jesus, how we can get that.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus, it says that the very first thing that Jesus said when learning how to pray, he said, when you pray, say father. When you pray, say father. This is astounding. I know we've grown so familiar, you know, saying the Lord's prayer growing up. Probably from when we're little children, we learn to pray and say father, and we just kind of jump over that.
Joel Brooks:But this really slowed down, this is something astounding that Jesus says here that we can call God father. At this time, nobody addressed God as father. No one. You you think you look through the Old Testament, all 39 books in the Old Testament, God has referred to his father only 14 times. Never as the father of an individual.
Joel Brooks:It's always as the father of Israel. And so he might be the father of Israel, but he's not the father of Abraham. You won't find that. Nobody addresses God as father in the Old Testament. What Jesus is saying here is absolutely radical.
Joel Brooks:It's completely new to these people. And he says, you are to pray the very start of your prayers, you're to orient yourselves towards god like a child does to their father. Now, being a child is the most unconditional of all relationships, even more than marriage. You know, if, if Natalie, who's 4, calls out at 2 in the morning, and she does sometimes, and, daddy, daddy. And I'm always like, I didn't call mama.
Joel Brooks:Daddy, you know, and I'll go in there, and she's like, I want some water. I'm thirsty. I will go and I will get her water. Now she is capable of getting water herself. She's 4, she does it all during the day, but for some reason at night, children want parents to do everything, and I will get it for her.
Joel Brooks:Now if Lauren said, hey, Joel, could you get me some water? I'd I'd pretend to be asleep. And then if she asked again, I was like, well, can't you get it yourself? I mean, is there a reason I have to go? Is, are your legs not working?
Joel Brooks:Something wrong? You know, but a child, that's the most unconditional relationship there is. You know, just a couple of days ago, Natalie, we're playing out in the backyard and she gets this plastic sword. It's a hard plastic sword, and I'm just looking over this way, and she comes up to me and as hard as she can, she swings it and she knocks my right knee. And so I just fall down and I am I'm reminding myself I'm a pastor and and try not to scare her with things that come out of my mouth.
Joel Brooks:And, and afterwards I'll say something like, Hey, Natalie dear, that's what we had the foam swords for. Plastic ones can hurt. Okay. Do you understand that? And I'm very gracious to her.
Joel Brooks:If one of you came up my backyard and just whacked me in the knee, I would pick you up, throw you through a wall or the fence or something like that. I would not have the grace to you that I have to a child. But now we could just look up at me and be like, what? Now what? And she's totally loved and totally accepted in that moment.
Joel Brooks:Being a child father relationship is the most unconditional of all relationships. And Jesus says that the key to prayer, to understanding how you relate to God, is that you call God father. You were in the most unconditional of all relationships. God is your father. We do not address God as our judge who art in heaven, or your honor, or master, or omnipotent creator in heaven.
Joel Brooks:We address him as father. A very intimate term. Because our relationship with him is completely secure. You don't have to perform to get your father's affection. You don't have to do anything to get your father's affection.
Joel Brooks:You're born, therefore he loves you. He is affectionate towards you. He is gracious towards you. Not because of anything you have done, and just like our relationship with Christ, there's nothing that you do, nothing that you perform in which God goes, that's great. I'm gonna be more affectionate towards you now.
Joel Brooks:There's nothing. It's the merit of Christ, not your works. In which you can stand before him as a child. You have to remind yourself. You have to intentionally pause.
Joel Brooks:Orient yourselves. Father, father, you are my father. That's the starting point for prayer. Jesus explains this a little further by telling a story about prayer. Look at verse 5.
Joel Brooks:He says, which of you has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me 3 loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I 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.
Joel Brooks:Now, this is a story about a rude neighbor coming over and waking up an entire family with a simple request. That's that's what this is about. It's a it's a a story about a rude neighbor. And Jesus says, hey, I want you to look at this rude neighbor and see that's how you're supposed to pray. It's like this.
Joel Brooks:And, I probably should do a little note. This is a parable, which is different than an allegory. A parable is one one point. The point is how you're supposed to pray, not how God responds to your prayers. Don't see in this neighbor how God responds to you.
Joel Brooks:No. The point is, hey, this is how you talk to god. You bug him. You bother him. You're a rude neighbor to him.
Joel Brooks:You're persistent. Picture this scene from the neighbor's perspective. Your bed asleep with your family, and the homes in were one room, and all the families slept in one bed. They only would have 1 bed. So all the families asleep in 1 bed, and and you hear this knock on the door.
Joel Brooks:And so you immediately sit up, and you're like, who is it? Like, hey, it's a neighbor. It's your neighbor, you know, next to you. You're thinking, what's wrong? You know, what's wrong?
Joel Brooks:Something's wrong. Did did your wife die? Did did she sick? What can I do? Because nobody would interrupt you in the middle of the night.
Joel Brooks:And he's like, no dude I need some bread. Like what? Yeah. Three loaves. Can you get me 3 loaves of bread?
Joel Brooks:Like what? You woke me up for bread? Yeah. Go back to bed. You're gonna wake up my family.
Joel Brooks:He keeps bothering. Not over an emergency, but just over bread. Now for those of you who don't have kids, some of this story is lost on you, but let me tell you that getting kids to bed and to sleep is a big deal. When they're asleep, you want them to stay asleep. And if somebody wakes up your kids, you're ticked.
Joel Brooks:If our cat comes in and starts meowing, wakes up the cat wakes up the kids. I pick up the cat, I throw the cat. Sorry, PETA people. You know, I I the the cat's fine. They land on all 4 she lands on all 4 feet.
Joel Brooks:Go. You know, I I can remember in, when I was in college ministry at 11 o'clock 1 night, you know, finally got, you know, kids to bed, Lorna and I are there, and ding dong, somebody just rings their doorbell 11 o'clock at night, no lights on. Come down, and it's just 2 college kids. Hey, you wanna do something? Yeah.
Joel Brooks:I wanna go to bed. There's some other things I'd like to do. It's the reason I'm out of college ministry. That's what's going on here. Jesus gives the, the edited for TV version about what the neighbor says when he's like, hey, will you quit bothering me?
Joel Brooks:But you would get angry, and yet the guy keeps going. He doesn't have that filter that says, oh gosh, this probably was a bad idea. He keeps going, and he keeps asking, and he keeps knocking. Jesus says, that's how you pray. That's exactly how you pray.
Joel Brooks:No other religion asks you to pray like that. You know, other religions say, no, no, no. Be polite, be on your best behavior, Treat God with a kind of formal distant respect. And Jesus says, no, bother God. Bother him.
Joel Brooks:And that's not too strong of a word. When you look at verse 8, the word impudence, it can actually be translated shameless persistence. One translation I came across translated it as rudeness, or bold shamelessness. And when we pray, we're to have this bold shamelessness. Now only children really have a bold shamelessness.
Joel Brooks:No neighbor's really gonna do this, but children do this all of the time. I mean, they're not shy. They have no shame in what they ask for, and they constantly keep asking and asking and asking. You know, daddy, can we go to the zoo? Daddy, can I have a snack?
Joel Brooks:You know, daddy, will you buy this for me? Daddy, will you play with me? Daddy, you know, when do we have to go to bed? It's always, they're always asking, always pleading with you with all these requests. And they're shameless about it.
Joel Brooks:You know, if you're trying to read, it doesn't matter. They're gonna ask you. If you're trying to eat, it doesn't matter. They're gonna ask you. If you're doing some work, it doesn't matter.
Joel Brooks:They're going to ask you. There's a shamelessness, a boldness to it because they're a child and you're their father. And it is the most secure of all relationships. Jesus says, pray like that. You know, one thing I've noticed about my children is they cannot tell the difference between a ridiculous request and a good one.
Joel Brooks:I mean, we'll have, daddy, can I have a snack? And 5 seconds later, it'll be like, daddy, can we go to New York City this week? You know, it's just, woah. Okay. The the well, one's a really big request, one's a little request.
Joel Brooks:They don't have any idea. They don't know it's a good request or bad request. They just simply ask, and they trust that you as her father can filter through it. And it also doesn't hinder my child that when she asked for something, daddy, can I have a cookie right now? And like, well, you've already had cookies, why don't you have an apple slice?
Joel Brooks:Here you go. It doesn't stop her from asking again and again. Even though I did not give her what she requested, it's not gonna stop her from asking. She's a child. This is how we are supposed to approach God.
Joel Brooks:We don't see him as our boss. If he was our boss and we went to him with a request time and time again, and every time our boss said, well, I hear your idea, but we're gonna do this. I hear idea, but we're gonna do this. Or no, no, actually, that's not a good request. We wouldn't go knocking on his door or her door anymore, But we do it to a father.
Joel Brooks:And this shamelessness, it culminates in this one request. Look at verse 10. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and so the one who knocks, it will be opened. Would father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
Joel Brooks:If you then who are evil know how to get give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So Jesus says you're a child. You can ask your father anything. Go for it. Boldness, persistence, ask him anything.
Joel Brooks:And you know what, he'll give you anything. He'll even give you His Holy Spirit. Kinda comes out of left field there. I mean, it doesn't say, hey, you can ask anything, it will give you whatever you want. It doesn't say, ask for the world.
Joel Brooks:Ask for that job. He says, the greatest thing that you can ask the Lord for your father for, is his Holy Spirit. Hasn't even been mentioned up to this point, But Jesus, he's leading up to this. He's leading up to this. The greatest thing that you can ask.
Joel Brooks:Now Jesus, he waited to tell his disciples about this prayer request because he wanted them to understand what it takes to ask for the Holy Spirit. He wanted them to see the difference between a Mary and a Martha. Mary asked for the spirit of God, which is His presence, to sit in His presence. Martha seeks the Holy Spirit just to do something. Galatians 4:6 says that God has sent His Spirit into our hearts crying, 'Abba, Father.' Romans 8:15 says that, we have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father.
Joel Brooks:And so we ask for God's Spirit that we might know God more. And the more we know God, the more we want to ask of His spirit. This is a merry request, and Jesus says that you're continually to ask this. You're you're to be persistent in asking for this, but you're to do more than just ask. It says you were to ask, you were to seek, and you were to knock.
Joel Brooks:If Jesus just wanted you to ask for a spirit, he would say, hey, just ask. I'll give you my spirit. But he says, no, you're to ask or to seek and you're to knock. Which means there is this continual passionate pursuit. And we can ask somebody of something if if their presence is right next to us.
Joel Brooks:Hey, would you pass me the salt? Sure. Here it is. Right there. You you have this great sense of God's presence, and sometimes you have that.
Joel Brooks:Other times it's more of seeking. Like, God, I don't feel you. God, I don't see you at work. But you ask anyway, God, but give me your spirit. I don't see you, but I'm asking.
Joel Brooks:And other times you were knocking. You're like, God, I do know you're right here, but I don't see you. I don't hear you. And so I'm gonna keep knocking, and I'm gonna keep pounding until you finally answer me. You're to ask, and you're to seek, and you're to knock.
Joel Brooks:You've probably experienced all those things in your pursuit of God. Be relentless. You know, I I want to give my children gifts. When I we go to the store, you know, we're going down the toy aisle, which Lauren always says is a tragic mistake, but I really go so I can look at the toys. Not necessarily so my children can, but they always, they always point at something like, daddy, I want that.
Joel Brooks:Daddy, I want that. And so they ask for it. Can I have that? I never give them that. I never like and, you know, otherwise, you'd be giving them everything.
Joel Brooks:I wait. Do they really want this? When they wake up in the morning, are they gonna ask for that, you know, special glittery Barbie again? And the next morning, are they going to ask for it again? Are they going to continually ask, do they really want this?
Joel Brooks:Because if they just ask and I give it to them, it's just going to collect dust on a shelf. I need to know, do they really want this? But all the while, I really wanna give it to them. But I'm not going to because they would just trample it and they would not use it. And God is the same way.
Joel Brooks:He says, I want to give you my Holy Spirit. I long to give you my Holy Spirit, but you gotta do more than just ask. This is the greatest request in the world. Do you understand that? Ask, seek, knock.
Joel Brooks:Don't stop. He wants to know if you really want him. If you want to be in his presence that much. You know, years ago, I came across a sermon by Jonathan Edwards. It had been hidden away in Yale's private library, and they finally published it.
Joel Brooks:And it had a pretty profound impact on me, and I've talked about this before. It's a sermon on Luke chapter 11, and seeking God's Spirit. And Jonathan Edwards, he says this, says that often in the asking of God's spirit in our lives, because of the way we ask it, we actually deny ourselves our request. Often in the asking of God's spirit in our lives, because of the way we ask it, we are actually denying ourselves the request. And what he is saying is that we can ask God for his spirit, but we can do it so flippantly, so casually, without any persistence and passion, that just by the way we ask it, we show the worth of it in our eyes.
Joel Brooks:And our request is denied. His presence to us needs to be worth more than the things that always consume our prayers. Our health, our security, our relationships. All these things that we're constantly bringing up and and just when you think back to this past week, the things that have consumed your prayer life, that's what has value in your eyes. And then we casually will mention, and God give us your spirit because, you know, your presence is really what I'm after.
Joel Brooks:God says, by the way you ask shows you do not know what it is worth, and your request is denied. Jesus knew the worth, and he died to give us that gift. You know, every time in scripture that Jesus prays, he calls God, Father. Every time. Except for 1.
Joel Brooks:When Jesus is on the cross, he does not say, My Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me? When he's on the cross, he doesn't use that term of affection, he uses, My God, my God. Because at that point, Jesus is feeling the absence of God's presence so that we might feel in abundance, God's presence. He is no longer feeling the joyful presence of God's spirit at that point. He took on the wrath of God so that we might have the joyful presence of God's spirit.
Joel Brooks:He is no longer claiming this special privilege of my father, my father. He is taking on the wrath so that we might know the privilege of calling God. My father, my father. Jesus knew the worth when we ask for His Holy Spirit. And He gave His own body, and He poured His own blood for it.
Joel Brooks:And that's what we're going to going to celebrate tonight. When we look at this table, we partake of these elements, the bread and the wine, we think of the greatest gift that God wants to give us, and that is His presence. That's a Mary request. That's a Jesus request. His presence, His Spirit, and we look at the cost to make that available.
