Luke 11:1–10

The disciples felt their need of prayer. John taught his disciples to pray, and that stirred them up. They were born of God; but for all that, they lacked power for prayer, their souls were feeble in it. No one prayed like Jesus, and no one depended on His God and Father as He did. No Gospel writer shows this as much as Luke, and so no one shows it in as many different situations.

If Mary suggests feeding upon the word of God at the feet of Jesus, this points to its effect — it leads to prayer. Our Lord's example in this stirs His disciples to ask to be taught to pray.

It is characteristic of the law that, with all its forms, no form of prayer was ever prescribed to the people. When the disciples ask for one, they point to John the Baptist as having taught his disciples, and not to Moses. God's people knew their need and had always expressed it, and of course the Old Testament is full of examples. That makes it all the more striking that the law prescribed nothing of the kind. The law was God's schoolmaster, teaching man his weakness, but it did this by demanding strength from him.

By asking, they admitted that the Lord's ministry had brought a great advance in spiritual teaching. The old forms of prayer no longer gave John's disciples a way to express all they desired. So he had taught them to pray. John's ministry stirred people up and dealt with the conscience. It did not minister grace as the Lord's ministry did, which spoke of the Father. This was a revelation by the Son, never entrusted to John. So old forms of prayer could not fit such fresh truth. In His answer the Lord agreed, and showed that prayer should match the revelation given to us.

They had not learnt the simple confidence in the Father that turns to Him and tells Him everything. They did not understand their place as children of the Father. He stoops to teach them in that condition and gives them this prayer. He teaches them to pray for the things His own heart was taken up with.

In Luke 11 the Lord answered their request, "Lord, teach us to pray," much as He did in Matthew 6, but with slightly different wording and in a shorter form. This prayer comes from the mouth of the Son of God, so it is perfect. Even so, these differences ought to warn us not to make a "fixed form of prayer" out of it. And yet the so-called "Lord's Prayer" has become the most repeated prayer in Christendom.

The Lord next insists on persistence, or perseverance, in prayer, with the blessing attached to earnestness with God. Then He touches on the gift of the Spirit: "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!" He gives not merely good things, but the Holy Spirit, the best gift. They were really disciples; they were born of God, yet they still had to pray for the Holy Spirit to be given to them.

Our Lord then directs the disciples to their Father. This is the first and very significant word of the prayer. When believers today address God as Jehovah or Almighty God, do they not forget that they are Christians? People addressed God as Almighty with understanding in the days of Abraham and the patriarchs. They were the days of promise. Later, when God called out the nation of Israel and put it under law, they knew Him as Jehovah-God. Now it is as Father that the Christian knows Him.

It is true that the King James Bible has it in the matching passage of Luke. But everyone who knows this subject well knows there are strong reasons for cutting the clause there back to the single word "Father." My own conviction is that copyists took the longer form in the common text of Luke from Matthew.

It is the Spirit of God who has decided this. He gives an outline that matches the moral character of Luke's Gospel. But it is an outline, not meant for repeating word for word, since it has no closing sentence and no "Amen."

"Name" in Scripture always expresses what God is as revealed. So, joined to the Father, it is the truth of what God is in that relationship. So when we long for His name to be hallowed, we are asking that it be kept holy in us, by us, and by all who have the privilege of calling on God by this precious title. We are asking that there be in us an answering response to His holiness in this relationship.

It is not the kingdom of the Son of Man, the kingdom of Christ, that is spoken of here, but the Father's kingdom. It is not "my kingdom come," but "your kingdom come." The Father's kingdom is the sphere where the heavenly saints will shine like the sun. The Son of Man's kingdom is the sphere where all peoples, nations, and languages will serve Him. Heaven and earth will both come under the Lord Jesus when He comes, and both will make up the kingdom of God. But the Father's kingdom is the upper department, and the Son of Man's kingdom is the lower one.

For this kingdom of the Father we must look past every age of God's dealings to the sabbath rest of God Himself. To confuse it with the millennium would be a complete mistake, and would drag its character far down. The millennium, with all its blessedness, is only a step toward this glorious completion.

How often we put ourselves and our interests first in our prayers. It was not like this that the Lord taught His disciples. He taught them to put God first: to pray that His name might be hallowed, and then to stretch their desires out to the furthest bounds of the earth… Only then, when the heart has reached up to the sacred glory of God's name and has widened to take in every home of man, may we ask for our daily needs.

In a coming day of persecution and distress God's earthly people will cry this prayer from their anguished hearts, but how blessed if we are in the moral good and truth of it now.

Short, yet suggestive! Short, because it packs so much into a few sentences. Suggestive, because it reminds us that God's glory, and what concerns our Father, should have the first place in the heart. At the same time, we are perfectly free to make our wants known as well.

Then comes a petition expressing dependence on God for our ordinary need. "Give us our needed bread for each day." It takes up the pure and simple need of the body. The word "daily" is a very imperfect expression in English of the original term. The Greek word epiousios really means our "sufficient" bread. It seems to be a word made for this very idea, set against having more than we need. If we ask for more than enough, we slight the wisdom of the Lord.

Give us today our sufficient (or, necessary) bread. So the disciples are taught to begin by confessing dependence for ordinary wants, as the apostle called us to be content with food and clothing.

The believing Jews looked simply at the one day, it might be, before them. It was a definite request for the present need... But in Luke the Lord was teaching the Gentile believer — the one who is not a Jew. That believer shows a more constant spirit of dependence: "day by day" is the word. He was never to expect rest or a settled home on earth, as the Jewish believer might. His inheritance lay elsewhere; his portion here was to be always that of a stranger... The word for "give" is the same verb in both Gospels, but its form and force differ a little. In Matthew it implies a single passing act; in Luke it is the continuous habit, which naturally goes with the phrase "day by day."

It is not straining the request for daily bread to make it include a spiritual application too. With the Lord it would be simply impossible, while remembering the need of the body, to forget the immensely greater need of the soul. In both ways the supply must be continual. The manna had to be fresh every morning, and freshly gathered as the morning came: hoarded, it bred worms and went bad.

Often all we think of is having our need met; but how little a thing is that with God! It would cost Him nothing, we may say, to meet the need of a lifetime in a moment. A lesser love than His would supply it all at once and be rid of a constant burden. But that is not His way. To supply the need is a small thing. But He means to supply it in a way that makes us feel, in each supply that comes just in time, that the Father's eye is never turned away from us and the Father's heart is always taken up with us.

"Give us this day our daily bread." Many a believer would almost break his heart if he thought his income would come to an end in twelve months' time. But this prayer means we look to Him as our only resource for today's needs.

This is not a sinner's forgiveness, when he first comes to know the Lord. It is the forgiveness of the disciple living under the daily government of his Father. How misleading, then, to make an unconverted person ask forgiveness as if he were already a child of God! Under the gospel, the unconverted receive forgiveness of sins by faith in the blood of Jesus — by receiving the gospel itself. This passage speaks only of a child's forgiveness: the removal of whatever gets in the way of fellowship with God.

Does God make the forgiveness of an unconverted man depend, in any sort or degree, upon his forgiveness of others? By no means. That would demand a very high standard of conduct from a person in the lowest possible condition... In a word, it would ruin and deny the gospel, which would then be of works and no more grace.

If in Matthew it is said "debts" and in Luke "sins," there is a slight shade of difference that ought not to pass unnoticed. "Sin" says plainly how deep the soul's moral need is. The simplest non-Jew would understand the word "sin." A Jew would feel what a debt was in his responsibility to God. It assumes a known relationship — one he already stood in, and in which he had failed. To those who had never stood in that position, the idea of "debt" was not so clear... "Debt" is more of a picture, though a Jew understood it perfectly.

That means our attitude to others has a serious bearing on ourselves. No doubt this passage looks at forgiveness from the standpoint of God's government. And it is exactly on those lines of government that the matter becomes very serious. Do I forgive? Then I can call upon God to forgive me. Am I hard and unforgiving? I shall reap what I sow.

God counts no sin against us now; it is all put away. But will that make me hard when others fail? No. Seeing that Christ went through agony on the cross for me gives me a sense of my freedom, but not indifference about sin. Instead of hardness, it will give us tenderness and softness of spirit.

The disciples knew their own weakness, so they were right to ask God not to lead them into such severely testing circumstances. No prayer such as "Lead us not into sin" is or could be in the Bible, for that would charge God with moral evil. The temptation here means putting a person fully to the proof. If there is evil in the heart that has never been judged, the test brings it out to his shame.

Whoever knows himself will pray, "Lead us not into temptation." May the grace of God work in us so that Satan need not sift us to strip away our pretensions. When Jesus prayed for Peter, whom He knew to be self-confident, He did not ask that His disciple escape the enemy's sifting, but only that his faith should not fail.

The most ancient copies leave out "Deliver us from evil"... This is not taking anything away from Scripture; it is laying aside what is not Scripture. We still have these words, and rightly, in Matthew: leaving them out here is a gain, not a loss.

Here the Lord presses prayer on us. He argues (as He often does in Luke) from what the human heart feels. That shows even more strongly what God feels when men are earnest with Him.

In the first place, it teaches us to be definite in our prayers. "Friend, lend me three loaves." There is a real need, felt and spoken out. One thing is before his mind and on his heart, and he keeps to that one thing. It is not a long, rambling, aimless statement about all sorts of things. It is clear, direct, and pointed — I want three loaves, I cannot do without them, I must have them, I have no other way to get them, the case is urgent, it is the middle of the night. Every circumstance makes the appeal definite and earnest.

Midnight, of course, seems a very bad time to come. Everything looks discouraging. The friend has retired for the night, the door is shut, his children are with him in bed, he cannot rise. All this is very depressing. But he still presses his definite need: he must have the three loaves.

Suppose a man has a friend — not just a neighbour. An emergency comes, and at midnight he goes to ask him for three loaves of bread. Would that friend excuse himself from helping because it would disturb his own comfort? The Lord answered that friendship alone might not move the friend to help at that hour. Yet because of the man's persistence — his earnest insistence in asking — his friend will respond (v.8).

If we have learnt that He is gracious, He wants us to act on that knowledge. He wants us to go to Him with expectancy and persistence — whether for the blessing of others (11:5-10) or for our own deliverance (18:1-7).

So the Lord shows us that we may keep on seeking. We may seek with persistence, as one needy man seeks from another. Someone may object, You are forgetting the difference between God and man. There is a difference, indeed. But we must not let it stop us from pouring out our full hearts to Him... Ask as if He would give in to sheer persistence. Cling to Him as Jacob clung, and say, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

There is no reluctance in God. There is no selfishness to be overcome, as there was in the man at midnight. But there may be reasons to delay the answer. When it does come, it may come in a way you are hardly prepared for.

We believe it would bring great earnestness, freshness, warmth, depth, reality, and power to our prayer-meetings if we came with something definite on our hearts, which we could invite our fellow believers to join us in. Some of us think we must make one long prayer about all sorts of things. Many of them are very right and very good, no doubt. But the mind gets lost in the number of subjects. How much better to bring one object before the throne, earnestly urge it, and pause, so that the Holy Spirit may lead out others in the same way.

But this is not all. We may not stop at the supply of our own need; God encourages us to come to Him about others. The prayer "Give us" has been answered and my own need has been met. But the case of "a friend of mine" who "has arrived on a journey," along with my own poverty and inability to help him, presses heavily on my spirit. It stirs up earnestness, persistence, and steady prayer that does not give up.

He tells us that the man gets what he came for by sheer persistent earnestness. He will not be put off; he must get the three loaves. Persistence wins even where the claims of friendship fail. The man is set on his object; he has no alternative. There is a demand, and he has nothing to meet it — "I have nothing to set before my travelling friend." In short, he will not take no for an answer.

First, it teaches us to be definite in our prayers. "Friend, lend me three loaves." A real need is felt and put into words. One thing is before his mind and on his heart, and he keeps to that one thing. It is not a long, rambling, aimless statement about all sorts of things. It is clear, direct, and pointed — I want three loaves, I cannot do without them, I must have them, I am shut in, the case is urgent, the time of night. Every circumstance makes the appeal definite and earnest.

In the man who went to his friend at midnight, the Lord pictures how prayer begins: with the sense that my friend has what I want. The question is not so much what the need is. I know my friend has what I want, and I know he is my friend. So I go to him to relieve my need, without counting up the various things that might get in the way. One thing is fixed in my mind — he has what I want, and I have nowhere else to get it. This is the first great sense of prayer: complete dependence on God, and His infinite ability to meet what I need.

It is not, blessed be God, that He will ever answer us "from within." He will never say to us, "Do not bother me. I cannot get up and give you anything." He is always our true and ready "Friend" — a cheerful, generous Giver who does not scold. All praise to His holy name!

There is no reluctance in God. He has none of the selfishness that had to be overcome in the man at midnight. But there may be reasons to delay the answer, and when it does come, it may come in a way you are little prepared for.

And the Lord illustrates it even from man, evil as he is, and though the appeal comes at midnight, when the difficulties were greatest. Even then the need was urgent and there was nothing to meet it. And a mere man does not fail to get up and give — not for friendship's sake, sad to say, but because the asking would not stop. How much more should the believer count on God!

And what answer is sure to come back from the one who speaks "from within"? Just what you would expect. "Do not bother me." This man has withdrawn into the narrow circle of his own comfort and enjoyment. He has closed his door and drawn the curtains around him. He does not like to be "troubled" by anyone. Such a man is sure to say, even when someone appeals to him as a "friend," "I cannot get up." And why could he not get up? Because "the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed." His reasons for not getting up were all selfish. And when he did get up, it was only from a selfish wish to avoid more trouble.

The time may seem as inconvenient as could be. A man may not listen for friendship's sake to the one who asks to borrow bread. Still, he would rather get up and give than open himself to trouble. Everyone knows this is how a man tends to act with a neighbour who is bold enough to press him. He may be deeply annoyed at the caller who keeps knocking. But to avoid the trouble of a continued appeal at his door, he gives in.

Can we apply this to God? Not the motive, of course: God does not give to get rid of the person asking. Even so, the Lord goes on: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

Thank God, He will never answer us "from within." He will never say to us, "Do not bother me" — "I cannot get up and give you anything." He is always our true and ready "Friend." He is a cheerful, generous Giver who does not scold. All praise to His holy name! Still, He encourages persistence, and we need to weigh His teaching.

There is majesty in God's goodness, and yet He takes notice of all our needs, and we must wait for His will and pleasure. Suppose a child asks his father for something. The father says, "You must wait five minutes." Is the child to say, "No, I cannot; I must have it right now?" Meanwhile the waiting exercises faith, and breaks down the spirit in the sense of need. Look at Daniel, and see another thing. God gave him a deep sense of being identified with Himself in what he was doing; so He made him pray three weeks before he received what he asked for. This is a great privilege, because it means fellowship with God. There is a certainty that God will answer in blessing, even though He delays.

It teaches us to be definite in our prayers. "Friend, lend me three loaves." He feels a real need and says it. One thing is before his mind and on his heart, and he limits himself to that one thing. It is not a long, rambling, aimless statement about all sorts of things. It is clear, direct, and pointed: I want three loaves. I cannot do without them. I must have them. I am stuck. The case is urgent.

We do not like to be interrupted when we have withdrawn from the world around us into the narrow circle of our own personal or family enjoyment. We are all too ready, when a call comes, to send our answer "from within." How unlike all this was the blessed Lord Jesus Christ! His door was never shut. He never answered "from within." He always had a ready response to every needy person who came. He was so taken up with human need that He had no time to eat bread or take rest. He never complained about the constant interruption of needy humanity. He never said to any child of need or sorrow, "I cannot get up and give you anything." The door of His heart was always wide open.

By the illustration He uses, He encourages them to earnestness, and even "shamelessness" — which is what the word for "importunity" really means. He points to the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Father's purpose for those who ask Him.

The time may seem ever so inconvenient, but although a man may not listen for friendship's sake to the one asking for a loan of bread, he would rather get up and give than expose himself to trouble. Everyone knows this is how a man tends to act with a neighbour who is bold enough to press him. He might be thoroughly annoyed at the persistent caller, but to avoid the trouble of a continued appeal at his door, he gives in.

In the first place, it teaches us to be definite in our prayers. "Friend, lend me three loaves." There is a real need felt and expressed; there is one thing before the mind and on the heart, and he keeps to that one thing. It is not a long, rambling, aimless statement about all sorts of things. It is clear, direct, and pointed — I want three loaves, I cannot do without them, I must have them, I have no other way, the case is urgent.

There is a sad lack of persistence in our prayer meetings. The lack of persistence matches the lack of definiteness. The two go very much together. Where the thing sought is as definite as the "three loaves," there will generally be the persistent asking for it, and the firm purpose to get it.

The devil uses many arguments against keeping up prayers that seem to fail, and our own hearts agree with them because they sound plausible. Yet if there is nothing more than this against such prayers, the Lord teaches us here to press them still. The parallel between persistence with man and with God is as hard to apply fully, and as open to serious objection, as any parallel one could suggest. The Lord Himself points to the difficulty, while pressing the argument as if there were none... Can we apply this to God? Certainly not the motive: God does not give to be rid of the petitioner.

How unlike all this was the blessed Lord Jesus Christ! His door was never shut. He never answered "from within." He had no time to eat bread or take rest, He was so occupied with human need... He never said to any son of want or child of sorrow, "I cannot rise and give you anything." He was ready to get up and go with every needy applicant, and His gracious word was always "Give."

There is majesty in God's goodness, and yet He takes notice of all our needs, and we must wait for His will and pleasure. Suppose someone asks his father for something, and the father says, "You must wait five minutes." Is the child to say, "No, I cannot; I must have it right away"? Waiting exercises faith, and it breaks the spirit down into a sense of need... There is a certainty that God will answer in blessing, though He delays.

Never say that persistence is needed to move God... There is no reluctance in God; there is not the selfishness to be overcome that there was in the man at midnight. But there may be reasons for delaying the answer, and when it comes, it may come in a way you are little prepared for.

The need was urgent, and there was nothing to meet it. Even so, a mere man does get up and give — not for friendship's sake, sad to say, but because of persistence. How much more should the believer count on God!... God gives to all life and breath and everything; it is His nature.

The way to ask rightly is the secret shown in John 15:7. "If you abide in me" — a life of dependence — "and my words abide in you" — they shape us and produce right desires — "ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." This matches Psalm 37:4: if I am delighting in the Lord, right desires will be created in me. To neglect the word of God is to neglect the true safeguard... "Ask" implies something I want to have; "seek," something I have lost; and "knock," wanting to get in. It means increased earnestness. There is more intensity in "seeking" than in "asking," and again more in "knocking" than in seeking.

The Lord illustrates it even from man, evil as he is. The appeal comes at midnight, when difficulties were greatest. Yet even then the need was urgent and nothing was there to meet it. A mere man still gets up and gives — not out of friendship, sad to say, but because of persistence. How much more should the believer count on God! "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." God gives to all life and breath and all things; it is His nature.

This is a clear climax, and it all leads to urgent prayer before God. Not that God needs it — man does. God values the earnestness of man's heart, though His own heart is open to the cry of need or distress from the very first... In Luke there is always an appeal to the feelings of the heart. Man admits what even he would do, and that illustrates the ways of God, which are far more admirable. There is also a breadth that goes far beyond the narrow bounds of Israel. "Everyone who asks receives."

There is no limit, except the limit that little faith may put on it. There is also a safeguard on God's side, which is not a limit: that the gift be good. And the Lord fastens His encouragements twice over: everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and the door opens to him who knocks. What a door this opens for us, and what blessing it makes possible! How rich we may all be, if we only will be!... And yet the apostle's words could apply even in the fresh early days when he wrote them: "You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (James 4:2-3).

The Lord may keep us waiting ever so long and yet intend all the time to grant the request at last. Delay may be meant to make the blessing greater when it comes. We are inclined to think that delay means denial; it is not always so... I remember a good man and his wife who prayed twelve years for their unconverted son. At the end of that time he turned up, clothed and in his right mind, and that in answer to many prayers.

So the Lord shows us that we may keep on seeking. Seek without letting up. Seek as one needy man seeks from another. Someone might argue, You are forgetting the difference between God and man. There is a difference, indeed. But we are not to use it to stop pouring out our full hearts to Him... Ask as if He would yield to sheer persistence. Cling to Him as Jacob clung, and say, "I will not let You go, unless You bless me."

And the Lord illustrates it even from man, evil as he is. He pictures a man appealing at midnight, when difficulties were greatest. Even then the need was urgent and there was nothing to meet it, yet a mere man still gets up and gives. He does it not for friendship's sake, sadly, but because of persistence. How much more should the believer count on God! God gives to all life and breath and everything; it is His nature.

"Ask" is found in various places in the Word of God as a special form of prayer (for example John 11:22; 14:13; Col. 1:9; Jas. 1:5). "Seek" is the upright, earnest effort to find something (see Psa. 34:4; Is. 55:6). "Knock" shows that outward obstacles and shyness can be overcome as well.

"Ask" — every child knows how to do that. It is simply laying the need before the Father. But suppose the answer does not come; there is a delay. What then? "Seek" — there is something more there. "Knock" — it grows in persistence and urgency. We need to listen to these things from His lips.

In Luke there is always an appeal to the feelings of the heart. Luke takes man's own admission of what even he would do and uses it to illustrate the ways of God, which are infinitely more admirable and excellent. There is also a breadth here that goes far beyond the narrow boundaries of Israel. "Everyone who asks receives." So here we have the call to persistence in prayer, and the certainty of God's answer.

The Lord had instructed His disciples to address God as Father. The assurances He gave in verse 10 fit with this, and so do the statements of verses 11-13. The Father in heaven is not to be thought of as less interested and considerate than an earthly father. He will not give what is useless or harmful in answer to requests for necessary food. Nor, we may add, will He give what is useless or harmful if we foolishly want it and ask for it. Many an unanswered prayer is, no doubt, explained by this.

This man's request seemed unreasonable. It was a strange hour for a guest to arrive, and the friend thought it was too much trouble to provide food for him. For friendship's sake he would do nothing; he gave because of the man's persistence. He thought, "If I don't give him what he wants he will knock all night." But it is not so with our Father, who always delights to give.

The Lord may keep us waiting a very long time and yet intend all along to grant the request at last. Delay may be meant to make the blessing greater when it comes. We are inclined to think that delay means denial; it is not always so.