THE LORD'S PRAYER
(Suggested Reading: Chapter 11)
This chapter opens with the Lord's Prayer, which flows here from its moral connection— Mary sitting at Jesus' feet and hearing His Word. The Christian life is regulated by communion with God, meditation on "the Father's things," as given to us in the Scriptures and prayer and intercession to God. Prayer should be intelligent and, for this reason, the Lord gave His disciples some general guidelines as to the pattern of prayer. He did not intend this prayer to become a mechanical one. He cautioned the disciples, "when ye pray use not vain repetitions as the heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be ye not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." Matt. 6:7, 87But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. (Matthew 6:7‑8).
This warning was generally ignored by the nations enlightened by Christianity. In the days of the British Empire, for example, the Lord's Prayer was recited at executions. By pre-arrangement, the trap door was sprung at the hanging of a murderer at a certain juncture of the reading of the Lord's Prayer! Years ago, too, a rich neighbor visited me. He was quite excited and exclaimed, "I've changed my church!" I let him talk on and he told me he had an argument with the minister who recited the Lord's Prayer, as in Matthew, which reads, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." He wanted it recited as in Luke, because he said, "I own plenty of mortgages and I don't intend to forgive a single one of them. That prayer in Matthew is impractical and the world couldn't go on if everybody did that!”
I tried to explain to him that God doesn't ask us to do impractical or foolish things, and He is the source of perfect wisdom. Scripture makes it clear that it is the wicked who borrow and do not repay Psa. 37:2121The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth. (Psalm 37:21). What the Lord spoke about was the forgiveness of debt where the poor had lost the means of payment. Hence the prayer, "forgive us our debts." is related to the Lord's lesson to Simon "and when they had nothing to pay he frankly forgave them both." This is what God did to us through the work of the cross, for we were bankrupt. The cross at this time was future, so the request was "forgive us our debts." Thank God this prayer has been answered for every believer.
Well, I recall a much happier experience with the Lord's Prayer. I was sitting behind two young girls in a gospel tent twelve years ago. I had been asked to preach; there was a large number of people present and I was uncertain what to speak about. It was a warm summer day, with the wind gently rustling the tent flaps, but I was becoming disturbed. Then I overheard one of these girls saying to the other, "These people don't go in for the Lord's Prayer." Rather than correct her before her friend, I took this as the message the Lord had for me and made the Lord's Prayer the entire subject of my message. It left a warm feeling in my heart and is one of the few sermons I have ever preached which I can remember in detail as the years have rolled by.
The Lord's Prayer and Its Associated Teaching—11:1-13
Before commenting on the Lord's Prayer, we might remark that the Lord never taught others to do what He did not do Himself. In his Exposition of the Gospel of St. John, William Kelly draws our attention to some of the highlights in Bishop Chase's book on the Lord's Prayer. Chase drew a comparison between the prayer the Lord taught His disciples, which we are now going to consider, and His own prayer to His Father in the 17th of John (5)
The disciples knew that John had taught his disciples to pray, but John's ministry was one of repentance, so they went to the One of whom John spake. So the prayer commences with "Our Father." The Lord had said, "no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him." Blessed revelation, given to us in its fullness in the Lord's own Prayer to His Father in John 17 and declared to Mary Magdalene as a message to His own in resurrection. Then follows the form our prayers are to take. We are to put God's interests in the earth before our own. God is not only our Father, but He is our Holy Father. His Name is hallowed and we acknowledge this. It gives character to what we pray for. This is the coming of His kingdom, when heaven and earth will be in harmony because the will of God will be done on earth as well as in heaven. God's interests in the earth vary with His ways with men over the ages, but, regardless of this, God's interests are God's interests, and they are to come first. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest— that He would send forth laborers to His harvest." 10:2. Then we have physical needs which must be met— our daily bread. When tempting Christ in the wilderness, the devil suggested that He command the stones to be made bread. But the Lord answered, "Man shall not live by bread alone." His Father provided for Him. He does not teach us what He has not done Himself. He sent the twelve out without bread and they were perfectly provided for. Remembering this, they could count on God to provide for their daily needs as He had done in the past.
The third circle is others. The spirit of forgiveness is to characterize us. The Lord had said, "Pray for those who despitefully use you" 6:28. These are our debtors, for they owe us, like all men, just treatment. But when we do not get it, we are to show Christ's Spirit to them and remember them in prayer. Should we sin, we are to pray for forgiveness— "if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:99If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9). Sinning is not normal Christianity and, until we judge it before the Lord, it sets us aside as witnesses for Christ in the world so that we no longer can be a channel of blessing to others.
The fourth and last circle recognizes the weakness of the creature. We need to be kept, but must not be careless and forget to ask for it. The Psalmist said, "Wilt Thou not deliver my feet from falling?" Psa. 56:1313For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living? (Psalm 56:13). In the garden of Gethsemane we find Christ's disciples whom He had taught to pray, "Lead us not into temptation." Yet He has to say to them, "Why sleep ye? Rise and pray lest ye enter into temptation." 22:46. And had He not taught Peter, the foremost of those disciples, to pray for deliverance from evil? Matt. 6:1313And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. (Matthew 6:13). Possibly Peter had forgotten this, for the Lord said to him, "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." 22:31-2.
In summary, we have these things as the pattern of our prayers. God's interests in the earth, whatever they may be, are to be prayed for first; secondly, our bodily needs so that we can serve God and others; thirdly, intercession for others in the Spirit of Christ; fourthly, prayer for our spiritual state, that God will keep us.
Having given us guidelines as to what we should pray about, the Lord now stresses how we should pray. The great principle is earnestness— "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." James 5:1616Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:16). We are not to pray with an alternative plan in our minds if we do not get the answer we want. The Lord uses the illustration of a man who will get up at night to give his friend badly-needed bread, even though it disturbs him. If this is true of an earthly friend, how much more will our Father supply our needs. We know God has what we need, that we need it, and that nobody else can give it to us. In this way we are completely cast upon God for the answer, and have abandoned our own sufficiency. "My God shall abundantly supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Phil. 4:1919But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19).
Sometimes our prayers have to be tailored to the times in which we live. An illustration of such a special situation is that they were to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. We do not pray for the Holy Spirit now— He indwells us— Eph. 1:1313In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, (Ephesians 1:13). "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 1 Cor. 3:1616Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16). But this was not so at this time. Their prayers were answered at the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down.
Satan's Kingdom—11:14-26
In the Lord's Prayer the disciples were taught to pray for the coming of the Father's Kingdom. This is because Satan's kingdom now holds sway, opposing good in the earth. The casting out of the demon lets the dumb man speak. Man cannot pray, praise, or bless the Lord if he is held captive by Satan's power. Satan exercises his power in two different ways— as "the devil" in which he deceives man, acting as an angel of light— and as Satan, "the adversary" in which capacity he violently opposes Christ and His people. In Luke's gospel the enemy is referred to as "the devil" on two occasions— at the temptation when he unsuccessfully sought to deceive Christ 4:2-13 and when he successfully deceives man by taking the Word sown away from him 8:12. The Word of God was always in Christ's heart; with us it is not its natural resting place. It takes a work of God in our hearts, which the devil opposes, to cause it to spring forth in fruit. "Satan" is used when the enemy, by his actions, exposes himself for what he is— the foe of God and man. The Lord gives him this name when He sees him cast out of heaven in a future day 10:18 when his kingdom, reigning over demons, is exposed, as here 11:18, when his baneful influence over man is revealed— the daughter of Abraham bound eighteen years 13:16 when he entered into Judas to betray Christ 22:3 and when he demanded to have Peter to sift him as wheat 22:31.
Satan's kingdom properly comprises the fallen angels, the demons, and fallen man. In this chapter, the Lord cast out demons with the finger of God. But some of those who witnessed the dumb man speak said that the Lord cast out demons through Beelzebub (6), the chief of the demons. The Lord exposes the folly of such an accusation by pointing out that a kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. Satan would be divided against himself if he cast out those over whom he ruled. Every kingdom has a palace in which its ruler dwells. So, too, with Satan. For this reason the Lord reminds His hearers that "a house divided against a house falleth." Satan's house or palace is the world, for we are told, "the whole world lieth in the wicked one." 1 John 5:1919And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. (1 John 5:19). The people of the world are the servants of his palace. They are powerless to rise up against him, for he is "a strong man armed." But Christ is a stronger Man. He took from him all his armor in which he trusted— the principles by which he governs the world see 1 John 2:1616For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (1 John 2:16). All Christ's subsequent ministry of healing, of which the dumb man here was only another token, was dividing his spoils.
Then the Lord points out that it is not a question of Satan dividing his kingdom, but of the division of men for Him or against Him. From verses 24 to 27, we find the moral effects of the profession of Christianity in the world without reality. First “the unclean spirit is gone out of a man"— this signifies the cleansing effect of even the outward profession of Christianity— the great relief it brought to man. What is implied but not stated is that God allows the unclean spirit to return "unto my house whence I came out" for a governmental reason. In the providence of God, the light of Christianity in the centuries preceding this one, swept away such gross public evils as slavery, piracy, the degrading of women, etc. Today these evils have returned in new forms— piracy of aircraft, for example, being called "hijacking." In returning, the wicked spirit takes to him "seven other spirits more wicked than himself." The book of Revelation is the unfolding of the results of this. Having been enlightened by the Kingdom of God, man prefers Satan's kingdom so that "the last state of that man is worse than the first.”
The State of the People—11:27-32
Next we are given a glimpse of the moral state of the people. A certain woman pronounced a blessing on the Lord's earthly mother without naming her. The Lord's reply was "blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it." The Lord was not disparaging Mary, His mother, according to the flesh, but rather drawing attention to what His heart now longed for— such as the Mary in the previous chapter who "hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." Israel had heard the Word of God, but had not kept it. So He could not connect Himself by natural ties with a people who had disowned Him. "For if any be a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." James 1:23, 2423For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. (James 1:23‑24).
So the Lord pronounces them an evil generation. They sought a sign from heaven (v. 16-29). They should get a sign from earth only. Jonah went and the Queen of the South came. Gentiles only are in question. Jonah preached; the Queen of the South listened. Those who listened to Jonah's preaching would condemn "this generation" in the judgment; so, too, would the Queen of the South, who listened to Solomon's wisdom for a greater than Solomon was there. Jonah is a picture of the sufferings of Christ; Solomon of His glory. Unlike Christ, neither did miracles, yet Nineveh repented the Queen of the South came for wisdom.
The Reason for the Moral State of the People and Their Leaders—11:33-36
Just as our evangelist has been giving us a glimpse of the moral state of the people who rejected Christ, even so, in verses 37-54, he gives us a similar picture of the moral state of their leaders. Wedged in between the two in verses 33-36 we see what caused their darkened state.
The great reason was that the people had rejected the light. Luke's gospel had opened with Christ come "to give light to those who sit in darkness" 1:79. He was "a light to lighten the Gentiles." 2:32. In this chapter, the Lord is on the way to the cross and the effect of the light He shed on those exposed to it is the great subject. Most of the quotations on light are in this passage 11:33, 34, 35, 36, and 12:3. The remaining two relate to further consequences of the light 15:8, 16:8 after which the power of darkness takes over in the world at the crucifixion of Christ— "this is your hour and the power of darkness" 22:53 and "there was a darkness over all the earth" 23:44 at the cross.
The inlet to light is the eye. The Lord had illustrated man's trouble ignoring "the beam that is in thine own eye" and speaking out against "the mote that is in thy brother's eye." 6:41, 42. This was the spirit of the Pharisee and lawyer. "God, I thank thee I am not as other men or even as this publican." 18:11. It was a complete lack of self-judgment the repentance John preached. And so the eye became evil. Since the light of the body is the eye 11:34 the single eye, that is, the eye on Christ, filled the body with light. The evil eye with the beam in it un-removed, obstructed the light of Christ so that the whole body was full of darkness. The Lord then summarizes this teaching in a most profound word, "take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness." The corruption of the best (Christianity) historically became the worst. It is an indisputable historical fact that crimes have been committed in the Name of Christ which would have made the old pagans blush with shame. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." Matt. 6:2323But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:23).
The State of the Rulers of the People—11:37-54
Both the people and their rulers were really part of Satan's kingdom, for both rose up against Christ at the cross. Here, Luke takes up the ruling classes of Pharisees, scribes and lawyers. The Sadducees, also influential, are largely ignored in the gospels, but become prominent in the Acts. The classes mentioned here represent orthodoxy in religion; the Sadducees, the "liberals" who question and deny fundamentals. Christ met the first class in His ministry on earth; His people the second class, the Sadducees.
The Pharisee was rebuked by the Lord for concentrating on externals— not washing before dinner, cleaning the outside of the cup and saucer, tithing, etc. But they lacked inner moral purity as evidenced by their outer actions— disinterest in the poor and passing over judgment and the love of God. Worse still, they made themselves prominent in spite of these defects, loving the highest seats in the synagogues and greetings in public. For this, the Lord pronounces woe on them, including the scribes also, and telling them that they are invisible graves but men do not know this.
This sweeping condemnation stings one of the lawyers, who rightly reads into it the judgment of his own state. For this reason, the Lord pronounces judgment on the lawyers at the beginning rather than at the end of His message. The Lord pronounces a woe on the lawyers for burdening men with grievous loads which they themselves ignored. We can be sure the burdens were not the law of God, for the Lord would not condemn His own law which He came to fulfill. They were human ordinances superimposed on the law and given the sanction of religious tradition. This incurred the first woe judgment on the lawyers. The second woe was for building the sepulchers of the prophets which their fathers killed. The heart of man tends to honor unduly religious leaders of the past, incidents, places, etc., connected with their service rather than the God whom they served. It was for this reason God buried Moses so that men such as these lawyers could not erect a shrine around his body as they did to the bodies of the prophets. For the same reason, Hezekiah broke in pieces the brazen serpent Moses made 2 Kings 18:44He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4) for he found the children of Israel burning incense to it. But the blood of all the prophets should be required of this generation who pretended to venerate their memory. Why? Because they testified of Christ and they sought to slay Him as their fathers did the prophets. The third and final woe upon the lawyers was that they had taken away the key of knowledge. They had not entered into the kingdom themselves and had frustrated those who would. The principle outlined here manifested itself in the dark ages when the clergy saw to it that the people were kept in ignorance of the Word of God. Stained glass windows told the stories of the love of God in picture form, but the Bible itself was chained to the church pulpit and the people were told that only the Church could interpret it.
The exposure of these conditions incurs the enmity of the heart of man, today as then. It is astonishing how much space is given to Christ in the secular press today— not honoring Him, of course, but attacking Christianity. "Men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil." John 3:1919And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19). The darkness speaks out because it cannot bear the light which exposes it.
So here "the Pharisees began to urge Him vehemently, and to provoke Him to speak of many things, laying wait for Him and seeking to catch something out of His mouth that they might accuse Him." This explains the sternness of the Lord's rebuke to the Pharisees' internal murmurings that the Lord had not washed before dinner. Compare the way the Lord handled Simon the Pharisee in chapter 7, and this Pharisee. If we had been doing it, wouldn't we have given Simon the greater condemnation for not washing our feet, etc., and this Pharisee the lesser condemnation? Not so the Lord, who did not take offense against ill-treatment of Himself by Simon and who reaffirmed this in 12:10. The Lord discerned in this Pharisee the hatred against God, which surfaced in verses 53 and 54 hence His condemnation.