Lord’s Prayer
I’m
always amused when I come to the passages of the Lord’s Prayer. First, I am amused because there is such a
simple truth in the beginning. The
disciples come to Jesus and ask “Teach us to pray as John taught his
disciples.” The disciples express a simple
truth that most of us don’t get. Prayer
is taught. Prayer is not innate. No, we actually don’t know how to pray just
because we are human. You have to learn
how to pray.
How
do you learn something? Well, you can
read a book or two. But that isn’t the
most effective method. You can go out
and practice by yourself, and while that will be more effective than reading a
book, it still isn’t the most effective.
The best way to learn to pray is simply to find someone who knows how to
pray and pray with them. Talk to them
about it. Get some advice. Let them mentor you in prayer!
But
oh, how many of us don’t do that very thing because prayer is “personal” and
“intimate!” This passage shows us that
prayer is sometimes best done in community – and how often do we ignore this
advice because we are too afraid to be intimate with God in public.
So
Jesus teaches them to pray. Then Jesus
teaches them that it is okay to ask things of God. Granted, we never demand from God. But we do ask from God and trust that in His
providence we will receive that which He thinks is best. And that’s another pretty big key to
prayer. We must trust that God’s wisdom
is better than our perception of what we need.
God’s providence is better than our desires. God will give us good things that bring us
closer to Him. But we must be content
with that as the goal. If we want
something that will take us away from God, we should not expect God to give it
to us. And when God gives us something
that brings us closer to Him we should not scorn the gift because it isn’t
really what we wanted. No, we need to
learn how to want that which God gives.
Then we will be one with Christ and one with the Father.
A Realistic View
Before
we move onto the next story, let’s pause for a second and look at what word
Jesus uses to describe His listeners in Luke 11:13. He calls His listeners “evil.” So we go back up to figure out who is it that
is listening to Him. In order to find
this answer, we need to go back to the first verse. “One of His disciples said.” Then we hear Luke tell us that “Jesus said to
them.” I find it interesting that Jesus
calls His disciples evil.
Now,
don’t get anything wrong and misconstrued.
Jesus is not judging them condemned to Hell. When He calls them evil, Jesus is just
reminding them of their nature. We are
all inherently evil. We like to forget
this fact and call each other good. But
if any of us were inherently good by our nature, we wouldn’t be in need of
Christ’s salvation. It’s a subtle but
neat point to derive from this text.
Speaking of Evil … In League With Satan
The
next part of the story (Luke 11:14-28) has to do with authority. Jesus is accused of being in league with
Satan. And – while certainly wrong –
there is an element of logic in it.
Think of your typical con-man scheme.
The con usually has a dummy who interacts with him as if to show how
great the con man is. Thus, when you put
your trust in the con man you find out that you have been taken advantage
of. The people are accusing Jesus of
doing this very thing. Jesus is Satan’s
dummy, they say. Jesus is only able to
cast out the demon because Satan has “set it up” so that Jesus looks
powerful. But these people argue that
Jesus is really just a way for Satan to get us to follow him rather than
following God.
As
I said earlier, this is clearly wrong.
But the question is, how do we know?
Is Satan capable of giving a little power to people so that we think by
following them we are following God when really we are following Satan? Absolutely Satan is capable of this
tactic. In fact, it is precisely this
tactic that will bring about the Antichrist as spoken of in John’s Apocalypse
(commonly called Revelation). So how do
we know that the people are wrong and Jesus isn’t Satan’s dummy – a ploy to
lead us away from God? Well, the answer
actually comes in verses 27-28. Someone
calls out for Mary to be blessed (Mary, of course, being the womb and breasts
that sustained Jesus early in His life).
But
look at what Jesus does. Jesus says,
“Don’t bless Mary, bless God and those who keep His Word!” How does this tell us that Jesus isn’t
Satan’s dummy as He is accused of being earlier? We know it because Jesus points us to
God! People who legitimately point us to
God are not pawns of Satan. Of course,
we also know that Jesus dies for our sake and does the will of God. That’s a pretty big clue that He isn’t
Satan’s pawn, too.
This
leads us back to Jesus’ teaching of the strongman. Jesus has demonstrated that by pointing to
God He is not Satan’s pawn. Since that
is true, then He must be stronger than Satan.
The logic is simple. If Jesus is
from God and He can cast out those under Satan’s power, then He is stronger
than Satan. Although Jesus is accused of
being in league with Satan, what Jesus actually does is to tell us that He is
stronger than His opponent, Satan.
Jesus Teaches Hard Lesssons
This
leads us to the third portion of this chapter: Jesus getting nasty. I warned you that this would come after the
transfiguration, and here it is. Jesus
warns the generation around Him. Jesus
warns the Pharisees. Jesus warns the
lawyers. Why? Because they are blind. As He says through the parable, the light
that should be burning strong within them has gone into darkness. They do not see Jesus; they do not follow
after the ways of God. Thus, it is not
God that lives within them.
What
can we take from this passage? We should
be careful to not be lawyers and Pharisees and part of a generation that will
not repent. We must be careful to not be
part of a generation that desires its own righteousness over God’s
righteousness. We must instead be part
of a generation that seeks after God’s truth and acknowledges that God works in
mysterious and sometimes new ways. We
must not be stuck in tradition; rather we must be looking for ways to point to
God and to teach God’s ways.
Jesus
was rejected because He was not the Messiah that the people “expected.” Jesus was rejected because He didn’t do what
the people wanted (freedom from Rome and the establishment of Israel as the
dominant force in the world). Jesus was
rejected because He brought truth and did not compromise on pointing out
unrepentant sin wherever he could find it.
But He was nonetheless rejected.
Do
we reject Jesus in favor of our tradition?
Do we reject Jesus and settle for a religion that allows us to continue
in the life that we want to live? Do we
reject Jesus because we expect God to see our greatness and make our life
perfect? Do we reject Jesus because we
let our desires take precedence over God’s truth?
Hmmmm. It seems that I have now come full circle
back to the Lord’s Prayer. It would seem
that accepting Jesus and prayer have much in common. Truly accepting Jesus and truly praying to
the Father imply that we set ourselves aside in favor of what God is
doing. And in general, I think that’s
pretty good advice. Find God, then
journey with Him!
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