Outline:
Responding to Jesus
I. The right way to respond to Jesus
(i. Listen to Jesus, Luke 10:38-42),
ii. Speak to the Father, v.1-12
…. who will give you the Holy Spirit , v.13
II. The wrong way to respond to Jesus
i. Misrepresentation, v.14-15
ii. Perpetual skepticism, v.16, 29-32
People of Nineveh— Jonah 2
Queen of the South (Sheba)— 1 Kings 10:1-13
iii. Nominalism, v.24-28
iv. Externalism, v. 37-44
v. Legalism, v. 45-54
Sermon:
Last week I said that this section of Luke’s eyewitness testimony is all about how to respond to Jesus.
And we said that the right way to respond to Jesus, is to sit under his voice. Like Mary!
While her sister was busy doing doing doing, she just sat at the feet of Jesus and listened to his teachings.
So think about that as number 1 of how to respond to Jesus.
The first 4 verses of our reading today follow on directly from that, and they give us a number 2.
How do you respond to Jesus:
- You listen to Jesus
- Ii. You speak to the father
Speak to the Father
Prayer, it is universal!
The number of people who have never prayed is vanishingly small. And you might know that saying from World War II: There are no atheists in foxholes. Under pressure and hiding from gunfire and scraping the ground, everybody prays.
But almost as universal, are some very peculiar ideas about how prayer works; that is, peculiar from the point of view of Jesus, and his teaching about prayer in our gospel reading.
Just think about the kind of God implied by most theories of prayer. In fact, imagine praying to the kind of God that those theories imply.
So there is an unstable, unreasonable God— all of the ancient gods of Rome and Greece were like this—who might like you one day but turn against you the next.
Then there are limited gods or, or angels or or spiritual forces who compete with one another, and have good days and bad days. So Poseidon might be helpful on the sea, but powerless on land or Athena might be useful to have on your side as long as her stepmom doesn’t notice what she’s doing.
Or there is prayer as bargain, which is how many, many people think that prayer works. The gods need something? Or, or at least they enjoy making you offer something and they might give you something back if you are lucky. I’ve heard serious Christians making exactly that kind of bargain.
I think it’s how most people think that Lent works. If I give up chocolate, then you will answer my prayer, and at the extremes, that is why ancient, pagan religious sites are littered with the bones of human sacrifice. What more can I give you than the blood of my child?
And then there are unfair gods or uncertain gods or disinterested gods who need to be pleaded with, or distant gods who need to be woken up or traveled to on some mystic plane.
And at the worst extreme, these peculiar ideas of prayer distill out into a sort of bizarre consensus, that prayer is only a form of meditation, valuable for the exercise itself, with no real sense of communication with someone beyond you.
Now, all of this is alien to Jesus Christ, even though plenty of Christians fall into exactly those traps.
Jesus came to clear away all uncertainty about who we are speaking to when we pray.
If you’re a Christian who prays, then you actually know an enormous amount about the person you’re speaking to.
v.2 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 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”
Now most of us know this prayer well, and so miss the huge shock of this prayer.
You see, the world into which Luke is writing his eyewitness account is a world in which people would not have thought much about Christian spirituality.
Compare with the Pharisees with their systems, and rules and devotions. Indeed, compared with John the Baptist which is how the question is set up in v.1—teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples — Christian spirituality looks like a joke.
And we know sth about how John taught his disciples to pray, Luke 5:33— John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”
The spirituality of Jesus and his disciples didn’t seem very impressive even in his lifetime!
This 5 line prayer here isn’t much, as far as these things go. There are no mandalas, no mantras, no rosary, no icons, no formality or struggle, no distance or emotionalism, no 99 names to memorise, no special foods too eat, no special clothes to wear or not to wear. Before you start.
Is this it, Jesus?
And so Luke tells us, from Jesus mouth: this is what prayer is.
And we don’t have time to consider that two of the 5 lines are praying for God.
Imagine two Christians talking and one asks the other, what did you pray for today. Answer. I prayed for God.
2 out 5, what percentage is that—40% of this prayer is about what God wants. What is good for God.
And the remaining 60% is about us, but notice that our material needs only take one line, and the rest is about sin.
Jesus, he thinks we should spend 2/3 of our prayer for ourselves, praying about sin.
I really don’t think we understand this prayer!
But the most radical thing about this prayer is how it starts, which is where I want to spend my time this morning.
When you pray, Jesus says, call the Eternal, all powerful, God of the universe: Father.
It is jaw-dropping!
Not that there are no OT references that liken God to a father, and not that there are no other religions in which the chief god is likened to a father.
But in the simple confidence, through the work of Jesus, Jesus’ disciples can relate to god with this intimacy, this closeness, this guarantee of access.
One of the joys among many miseries of doing many meetings on zoom during and after covid is seeing inside people’s houses, which is great if you are nosy; and with that has come the interruption of their children. And my children.
And not once, have I seen, even once, a bad reaction from people when a baby interrupts the meeting. It doesn’t matter how important the meeting is, everyone seems to accept and understand, that a child has an inalienable right to come in and speak with mama or papa.
I have not seen that cause offense even once.
See what Jesus is saying. See yourself like that child in the corridor, who has slipped away from supervision, and is about to interrupt the zoom.
And Jesus wants us to have no doubt whatsoever that there is a welcome for us on the other side of the door.
When you pray, say Father.
Open the prayer in the manner, and the spirit, and the confidence of a much-loved child with a perfect father.
And you may have reacted badly when a child storms a zoom, or you may not have much in your database on what a good father is.
But the point is indispensable: Speak to God as your father.
And there was nothing like this in the religions of the world to which Luke was writing, and there is nothing like this in our world today
Allah has 99 names, but none of them is Father. Some of the names are nice, but compare notes with your Muslim neighbor on how you and they relate to God.
The Christian idea, Jesus idea of family closeness and security and intimacy, and confidence, is near blasphemy in the other world religions.
And can I say that even among people who attend church and say the Lord’s prayer regularly, you sometimes still find an instinctive, deep-rooted refusal to believe that God would be interested in them, like this.
It sounds so presumptuous, so big-headed to believe that God would love me, like this. Like a child.
And the child in the corridor is no doubt big-headed. I’m gonna storm into mama’s office even though I know I shouldn’t, and I’m going to be welcomed, and kissed and cuddled. And it’s true, yes, they will be kissed, and cuddled and given attention. Guaranteed!
And this carries massive implications.
A distant God is, in many ways, easier to live with. Even if the religious system is complicated, and the prayers demanding and the fasting extensive, show me how to appease God and keep him at a distant, and the human religious instinct is generally well pleased.
But Jesus will not have it. His innovation, achieved by tearing down the barrier of hostility between man and God in his death on the cross, means we can relate to God as father.
Jesus will not have us rewrite the relationship to suit what we like—formal, distant, effortful, arm-twisting religiosity that is common in our world. No more of that.
When you pray, say, Father
A generous, trustworthy father.
What we have next is two illustrations on the character of God.
The first illustration is slightly difficult because we need a bit of intercultural education to see how it works.
What you need to understand is that we are speaking about a hospitality culture and a shame culture.
v.5 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.’
I can already feel the questions you are asking:
Why didn’t they make an appointment?
Why didn’t they ring in advance?
Why didn’t they go to a hotel or Airbnb, or sleep in their car? What are they doing at my house? How rude are they?
and why is there nothing in your freezer? And why not just put them to bed and then go and buy some fresh bread in the morning?
It’s totally inexplicable for us today in Amersfoort.
But if you have ever traveled in a rural subsistence culture, and arrived unannounced, maybe with a local missionary or a respected guide, you’d have seen people with very little roll out the full honored guest treatment.
The person doing the asking is at their moment of greatest need.
All of the sacred laws of hospitality say that he must host this long-traveled friend, but he can’t, and the shame will last a lifetime.
But also, I think we miss the nature of the friendship because we hide from our neighbors and we live an hour from our best friends and we don’t have the same sense of a connected web of friendship all around us.
This guy, he is not trying his luck by asking a grumpy neighbor from across the street.
This is a good friend in your moment of greatest need.
And so,
v.7 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.’
If you are a parent, this is the moment when you’ve just got both the baby and the toddler to go to sleep at the same time. And then the doorbell rings.
But the story doesn’t work, if there is the least doubt there are going to be three loaves of bread on the table to refresh the one who has just arrived on a long journey.
And so
v.8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship (which is unthinkable in their culture), yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
The word translated here as shameless audacity is difficult to translate. But it has something to do with not having cultural shame.
And it’s also ambiguous which of the two owns the cultural shame. Is it the one knocking or is it the one answering?
In their cultural world, the friend who needs the bread, he will keep asking because he’s shamed for life if he doesn’t feed his guest; and the friend in bed will get up because he is ashamed for life if he doesn’t help his friend.
This is a story about, No doubt about the outcome. So ask.
Do you approach prayer to the Father, like asking your good friend, your best friend for what you urgently need at a moment of crisis?
Because then you have absolutely no doubt that your friend will do everything to help, however inconvenient.
There is this story about a couple climbing a mountain 30 years ago when phones had small batteries and there was no Starlink. And they were in trouble, caught out in a surprise storm on the north face of some huge mountain in the Alps and sure to die of hypothermia without rescue.
And one of them, she said, we had enough battery to send one text to our friend in London. So I sent them our location and asked them to call Mountain Rescue, and then we turned the phone off and went to sleep.
The point of the story: There was no doubt the rescue will come. So why not catch up on the sleep while they wait.
I don’t know if you have friends you trust that much, but you get the point?
Pray to the father with that degree of confidence. He is a father who is much more trustworthy than the best friend this world can ever give you.
And he has proved it.
Rom. 8:3 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Do you see that we can trust him?
The second illustration is far more simpler. Fathers, even the worst of them, don’t give their children poison if the children ask for lunch.
v.13 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!”
The Holy Spirit
I wonder if you noticed the surprise in the last line. The promised answer to your prayers, every time you pray the Lord’s prayer, God answers by giving the Holy Spirit.
You see, the Lord’s Prayer and every Christian prayer is not a prayer for a list of things. It is a prayer for a person.
And I need several sermons to unpack that, but that’s the big difference between prayer, as understood by Jesus, and prayer as understood peculiarly by much of our culture.
We pray to a person, to a good, perfect father, and he answers with a person his Holy Spirit.
So How do we respond to Jesus,
Listening to his word,
Speaking to the father, who gives the Holy Spirit.
How not to respond to Jesus:
And the rest of the chapter is five ways in which people respond to Jesus
The first, Misrepresentation. A clear miracle has happened. Someone who has never spoken is speaking. Clear miracle.
Their response, they double down. This is conspiracy theory stuff. They twist the facts—Jesus you are using a demon to do these miracles.
The second is Perpetual skepticism. This is the golden standard for all the big multinationals. The evidence was already very clear that Tobacco was dangerous to your health. But you know what they do. Let’s fund another research. We want more evidence.
A man who was unable to communicate with his family until 5mins ago is n0w chatting away, and then they say, give us a sign from heaven.
And I’ve given you a couple of references that Jesus gives, of people who believed with much less evidence. The point is that there is now much more evidence.
The third is nominalism. They receive the benefits of Christianity. The house is clean and put in order. But they don’t do anything with it. The Christian faith is just a badge.
The trendy term nowadays is cultural Christian. I like it. I don’t mind Christianity. I like Jesus, we should all follow Jesus. But It’s not deep. There is no transformation. No repentance. Even though they might say nice things.
An example is v. 27
v. 27 As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”
28 He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
And then the last two are forms of religion or institutional rightness that focus on virtue signaling and red tape. And Jesus shows that they are foolish, dangerous, burdensome and damaging.
And so how will you respond to Jesus?
And I don’t need to do any application because Jesus makes a strong application in the centre of the chapter
23 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
In other words you can’t be neutral. It is time to pick a side. Or even more strongly, you have already
ady picked a side.
Doubling down, changing goalposts, virtue signaling, chistian in name only is to pick a side.
If you have been told, like many believe, that Jesus is happy to embrace everyone who is not actively opposed to him, that we all get to heaven in the end, and it really doesn’t matter if you follow him or not, Jesus says—whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
So will you respond to Jesus by listening to his voice, and by speaking to the father. That’s the right way to respond.