Parable of the Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8)

Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, a serious Bible study applied to real life. Today is November 28, 2012. Our passage is Luke, chapter 11, verses 5 through 8. This message, The Friend at Midnight, is taught by Krisan Marotta. This is the final lecture in the series titled The Parables of Jesus. What the Bible means and how we know. You can find the complete set of recordings for this series on our website at wednesdayintheword.com. Good morning. unknown: Good morning. Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that we are at the end of our parable study. It's gone by so quickly. Welcome. Whoa, look at all these people here. Like ten minutes ago there were five of us in the room. Good to see you. Well, thank you all for coming. Well, I I have to confess, one of my uh secret delights in the Christmas season is watching Christmas movies. And I really like those cheesy, you know, very predictable Hallmark movies. I know. My husband makes terrible fun of me for liking them, but I always enjoy them. He says, You know how they're gonna turn out. And it's like, I know, but I like them anyway. So if you're looking for a good Christmas movie to watch, one of my favorites is The Ultimate Gift. Have you a lot of you have seen it? Great movie, right? That that one's not cheesy, but it's based on the book of the same name. Yeah, The Ultimate Gift. So if you haven't seen it, it's a great family movie. And in the movie, a very wealthy grandfather dies, and he leaves his considerable estate to his grandson Jason, except there's a catch. Jason has to go through a series of tests, and if he fails any one of the tests, then he gets he loses everything, but if he succeeds, then he inherits everything, the entire estate. So of course the tasks are to teach him what's truly valuable in life. In other words, they give him the ultimate gift, which is not the extreme wealth, but what's really valuable. So as he goes through the test, it looks more and more like his grandfather is crazy and harsh, and that these that he will never survive all these. But in the end, he learns that there is um the lessons he learns are worth the suffering he he endures, and he receives the ultimate gift. So I I recommend that to you. And that's the subject of our parable today in uh The Friend at Midnight in Luke 11. We're going to be talking about giving gifts and whether or not these gifts are good. You'll notice that the commentary that follows the parable is the familiar words, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. So we have this parable and the context that imply that God will answer our prayers, and it raises the question, does it promise too much? Does this parable teach that God will answer our every need? Does it only apply to specific needs? I mean, how much is Jesus really promising here? And what how are we to understand it? So that's what we're gonna try to answer. And I'm gonna argue that the parable does not promise that God will meet our every need or give us everything we ask for, but that God will give us the ultimate gift, the thing we really need, or holiness. So that's where we're going in a nutshell. So turn to uh Luke 11. We're gonna look at the parable first, and then we're gonna back up and look at the larger context afterwards. And there's a handout in your book on page 46, which uh, if you haven't found it yet, we're gonna be following along in that. So let's look at the parable. This is Luke 11, verses 5 through 10. 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 lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And from inside he answers and says, Do not bother me, the door has already been shut, and my children and I 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 his friend, yet because of his persistence or shamelessness, 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, knock, and it will be opened, for it to everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks find, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. So we're first going to start with a background, and then I'm gonna go over the problem we have in this parable. There's one word we just don't know what it means, and it's kind of the crucial word that unlocks the parable. So nothing major. Okay, so let me just give you the background. This guest is probably unexpected because he arrives at midnight. In Syria and Jordan and Egypt, people would travel at night because of the intense heat during the day, but in Palestine and in Lebanon, it was closer to the coast and there was an inland breeze, so it didn't get as hot, and people would travel during the day, and those reasons. So for a guest to arrive at midnight in Palestine was unusual. He wouldn't have been expected. It was more typical for a guest to arrive during the day. So, first we know he's unexpected. The second thing we know is that any guest uh was considered a guest of the community. So how the host fulfills his duties as host reflects on the entire village. So there's a sense in which the community is partly responsible for the guest entertainment. So by helping the host, it makes the whole community look better. So in going to his neighbor, the borrower is asking the sleeper to fulfill his duty as a guest of the village. And if the request is reasonable, the uh the person asked must respond. It's unthinkable for the neighbor to refuse. For honor's sake, the guest needs to leave the village with this good feeling about hospitality and the community as a whole, or they will be dishonored. And part of that hospitality was food. The guest had to eat and the host had to serve him something, even if neither of them were hungry. That was just the rules. So it was this great responsibility to entertain the guests when he arrived, and when he arrived, you had to feed him. So the host has to serve and the guest has to eat, even if they're not hungry. It was a duty, it was a matter of honor. Something you weren't supposed to take lightly. So the request for a loaf of bread is very reasonable. This is a small part of the meal. Bread is not the meal, it's the humblest element of the meal. And we have evidence that village women tended to cooperate in bread baking, and so it was kind of known who had bread left over at the end of the day. But bread was the knife and fork and spoon of the meal. So they would serve different items in common dishes, and then each person would be given a small loaf of bread, and you'd break off a piece of bread, and then dip that into the common dish, and then put the entire thing into your mouth. And that way the common dish was not defiled, and you'd start because you'd start each bite with a fresh piece of bread. So the host has to give his guest a fresh, unbroken loaf of bread. It's it would be an insult to give him a loaf of bread that somebody had already broken pieces off of. Even though he might not eat the whole loaf, you still had to honor had to offer him a whole loaf. So to give him a partial loaf was was an insult. So that's what the borrower is asking for. He's saying, I need a loaf of bread for this unexpected guest. I have to feed him, and I have to give him bread to eat, and the bread has to be an unbroken loaf. And so that's kind of the setup of this parable. In that light, we can see that the sleeper's excuses are weak and his answer is not thinkable. I mean, we tend to read, I don't know about you, but I when I first read this m, it seems like an imposition on the sleeper. Because I don't know, especially when our children were l were little, sleep was sacred. You know, it's like do not wake a sleeping child. You know, that that was the cardinal rule. You know, it ruins everyone's day the next day, we're all in bad moods. So in our modern culture, I think we tend to sympathize with the sleeper. But for I think for J Jesus' audience, his excuses would have been seen as petty or pitiful. Why would you even bring those up? They would be trivial. Door bolts were not heavy at the time. The reference for the children is probably because it's a one-room peasant dwelling and they're all sleeping in a communal bed, so when one person gets up and all that's it, that would disturb everybody else. But this is a question of honor. And it's not just the sleeper's honor or the host's honor, the whole village's honor is writing on the line here. So because honor is at stake, his excuses are not just not valid. They're just not enough. Um the village is not going to make allowances for him based on those excuses. He is duty bound to respond. So that's our situation. We have an unexpected guest who arrives at midnight, the host has to serve him a meal, the guest has to eat, it's a matter of honor. The host has to have a fresh loaf of bread to offer his guest, so he knocks on his neighbor's door and asks to borrow the loaf. It's a reasonable, small request, and the sleeper is duty-bound to respond. He would never refuse such a humble request with a flimsy excuse. So he will get up and give him whatever he needs. Now let's look at the structure of the parable, and this is where I'm going to start referring to what's in your handout on page 46 of the study guide. Because notice the setup of the parable. Jesus opens with a question that expects a negative answer. So he tells us in verses 5 through 7 what will not happen, and then he tells us in verse 8 what will happen. So he starts with this question, suppose one of you, or it could also be translated, who from among you? And it kind of forces the hearer to take a stand and it expects an emphatic negative answer. So it's like us beginning something with, can you imagine somebody doing this? I'm setting you up to say, no, this is unthinkable. How could it this possibly happen? So can you imagine going to a friend for help to entertaining the guests and getting this response? I'm setting you up for the answer, no, of course not. That would never happen. So that's what we have here. And five through seven is what will not happen. Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come from a journey and I have nothing to set before him. From inside he answers and says, Do not bother me, the door has already been shut, and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. So we're supposed to go, oh my goodness, that would never happen. That's unthinkable. A guest has to eat, a host has to serve, the community has to maintain its honor. So can you imagine this? No, it would never happen. Who from among you would do this? No one. Then he tells us in verse eight, what will happen? What will happen instead? I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because uh he is his friend, yet because of his word we don't know what it means, persistence or shamelessness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So verse eight is the positive outcome. But we have a problem in verse eight. Actually, we have two problems. There's a word in the sentence which is I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. I think it's anadeya. We don't know what it means, and grammatically we don't know who it applies to. So it could be the sleeper or it could be the borrower, and we don't know. So that's the problem we have to solve. And there are two options. The word could mean either shameless, which is a negative quality, or persistent, which is a positive quality. So there we've got two opposites. So the question is, does it mean something negative or does it mean something positive? And is it referring to the sleeper or is it referring to the borrower? Now the English Standard Version translates the word impudence, which is kind of a literal translation from its core. The New American Standard and the New and the New International translate it persistence, but you'll notice the New American Standard gives an alternate in the margin of shameless or shamelessness. And there's a big difference between shamelessness and persistence. And which way you translate it makes a difference in how you understand the parable. So, how do we figure out what it means? The short answer is we don't know what it means. This is the only time this word is used in the Greek New Testament. And usually when we have a word and we don't know what it means, we go look and see how other authors used it in other contexts which are more uh similar, but this is it. This is our only use of this word. So in that case, what do we do next? We go look at how it was used in classical Greek. And the difference between classical Greek and biblical Greek is this. Classical Greek was the formal written kind of intellectual academic Greek. Biblical Greek was the common Greek or what you would hear spoken on the street. So if you think about the difference between formal English that you would write, say your PhD dissertation in versus the English you would use on the street, that's kind of the difference in the two languages. It's not quite as dialect, it's just one is more formal and one is common everyday speech. So we go look at classical Greek and we say, what do we find outside the New Testament? We have actually several uses of this word, going all the way back to the 7th century BC, and in every single one of them it means shameless. So we can go back in every ancient use of the word we have outside the New Testament, it is a negative quality. It describes something to lack shame or to behave shamelessly or to avoid being shamed, or it's even in the uh desire not to be shamed. So that gives us the 7th century BC, the fifth and the fourth, which you'll say, well, but those are a long time before Christ. True. We also have a couple of uses from A.D. 50 to 130, and there, again, the word clearly means shameless. And that AD 50 to 130 is very close to the time of Christ. So we can also look at the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and in every place it's used to translate a Hebrew word, it's negative, with one possible exception, and that's questionable. There's one use of in Jeremiah that it uh the Septuagint translates where it could possibly be positive, but it's more likely it's negative. Okay, so now you're thinking, okay, well, if every use we have of this word it means shameless, what's the big deal? It must mean shameless. Well, here's the kicker. At some point the meaning of the word shifts. And it shifts from shameless to persistence. So by the time you get to the 12th century AD, you see this word being used as only a positive quality. And it's the positive quality of persistence. But here's the stickler. When did the shift occur? Did it occur before the time of Jesus and Luke, or did it occur after the time of Jesus and Luke? And that's what we don't know. So that's why you have this dilemma. Now, most the kind of the prevailing meaning today that most think today is that scholars think it meant shameless at the time Luke was writing, but that that was so problematic for a non-Hebrew audience, so for the largely Greek early church, that they changed the meaning to fit their understanding. So they looked at this parable and said, Well, how do you fit shameless into the text? Is it shameless for believers to take their request to God? Well, absolutely not. So, so this must mean something else, and that they changed the word to persistence, and that's the meaning that it switched to. So that there is some evidence for that. Sources outside the Bible tend to overwhelmingly seem to support a negative quality at the time of Christ, but the tradition of the church has been to understand this as persistence. So I lean towards shameless, and I'm gonna tell you why in a minute, but let's look at the other question. The other question is who does this refer to? So does this this word, yet because of his Anidea, who is the he? Is that the sleeper or the borrower? And the grammar is ambiguous. Grammatically, it could be either one. So then we have to say, well, what makes the most sense in the context and the sentence? And if you break the sentence down and ask who is the subject of each clause, that's what I've given you on your handout, every other clause refers to the sleeper. So I tell you he will not give him anything. The giver is clearly the uh the sleeper is giving to the borrower. So the he is the sleeper in that sense. He will not give him anything. Yet because he is his friend, the sleeper is the borrower's friend. Or not because he's his friend. Wait, did I try you know what I mean. I'm I've got my notes all confused here. Yet because of his anadea, okay, that's the one we're trying to figure out, he will get up, well, who's getting up? It's gotta be the sleeper, and we'll give him whatever he wants. Who's doing the giving, it's gotta be the sleeper. So in every other phrase in the sentence, the subject is clearly the sleeper. Either it's grammatically required or it's logically required by the verb. So I think it makes more sense that on a day the subject is also the sleeper, because if Luke had expected us to switch subjects in the middle of a sentence, he would have given us a clue. You just I mean, it's too confusing, we just can't do that. So I think there are ways he could have grammatically made it clear that he's now switching subjects, and he doesn't. So if it's the sleeper, this word is referring to, is it his persistence or his shamelessness? Well, I would look at this and say there's no hint that the sleeper is in any way persistent. So that leaves us with shameless, and that makes sense of the context, because the sleeper will get up because he wants to avoid being shamed. He is acting to preserve his honor. He doesn't want to get up and get the bread, but he knows it's his duty. He knows the village will uh scorn him and mock him if he doesn't get up. So he gets up uh and provides what is needed because he knows that's what he's honor bound to do. He's duty bound. And if he refuses, presumably it would be all over the village by the next morning and he would be shamed wherever he went. So that makes sense of the setup, can you imagine? Can you imagine who of who from among you would ever do this? And it also makes sense of the language about he will get up and give him whatever he needs. Because if he just got up because if the sleeper just got up because he was irritated by the borrower's persistence, then he would just throw him a loaf of bread and do nothing else. But because he desires to avoid shame, he will get up and give him whatever he needs, as much as he needs is what's implied. He'll do his duty. So I think that makes the most sense in the context. Again, the evidence we have is is not a lot. So you'll find scholars on both sides, but and I don't know that there's a majority opinion. A lot of people kind of say, Oh, I don't know, but you'll find people with both sides. But to me that's what makes the most sense. So he's saying what won't happen is the sleeper will say, Go away, I've already locked the door, but because the sleeper knows it's a matter of honor, he will get up and do whatever is required of him. And that gives us the point of the parable then. If we can have that kind of confidence in our sinful, selfish neighbors, how much more confidence can we have when we take our request to God? We have every reason to be assured. So I would summarize this just as the borrower was confident of having his needs met by his selfish, disagreeable neighbor, how much more can believers be confident that their needs will be met by a loving and honorable God? And as we go through the context, you're going to see that's how Jesus tends to sum it up. So if even a selfish neighbor has enough integrity to uphold his honor, don't you think that the holy and just God who loves and cares for you has enough honor and integrity to meet your needs? Augustine put it rather eloquently, if I can read it, I hope I can read it properly, but I like the way he summarized it. He said, From this we should understand that if a man who against his will is wakened from his sleep by a suppliant is compelled to give, how much more bountifully will he who knows no sleep and who awakens us from our sleep that we may ask? How much more bountifully will he give who knows no sleep and awakens us from our sleep that we may ask? So see, Augustine agrees with me. Anyway, so I think that's where we're um where it comes down. If we can we can count on a that there's a contrast between the sleeper and God. So if we can count on even our fallen, sinful, selfish neighbors to do the right thing, how much more can we count on our Heavenly Father? So now we still need to answer the question of does this parable promise too much? Does this apply to every need? Can is this ask and we shall receive, seek and you shall find, is that a promise of everything, or does it does it only apply to certain types of requests or specific requests, or what? So to answer that, we're gonna look at the larger context of chapter 11 and look at what precedes our parable, which is the Lord's Prayer, and what follows our parable. So let's back up to 11.1 and look- I'm gonna go pretty quickly through the Lord's Prayer. Hopefully that's familiar to you. So notice in 11.1, it says, Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. Now, you may not know this, but it was common at the time for rabbis to give a prayer that encapsulated their teaching. So, and I think that's what the disciples are asking for. When they say as John taught his disciples, that could be just a general teach us prayer on prayer generally, but it's more likely the specific request that a student would often get a rabbi of give us a prayer that to help us remember what you've taught us, to help us encapsulate that. Just like John gave his disciples. So I don't think they're asking for a general discourse on prayer so much as give us a way to remember what you've taught. Give us a prayer that summarizes the main point of your teaching. And that was what was known as a rabbi's prayer. Now, I'm going to argue that the Lord's Prayer is a prayer for one thing and one thing only. And that may be news to you. But I think it's a prayer where every phrase ends up saying is asking God to give us righteousness. Or ask thy kingdom come, asking God to give us holiness and establish his righteous kingdom. And I'm going to, that's a little controversial. I'm not alone in that, but I'm going to I'll tell you why I how I get there. So let's read the prayer. Luke gives us an abbreviated version in Luke 2 through 4. Matthew gives us a fuller version. So, but let's just read that. 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 forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. Okay, so that's an abbreviated version of Matthew's prayer. I'm gonna go over all the petitions that are included in Matthew's prayer because it's probably more familiar to you. And I am gonna go through it rather quickly, so I probably won't answer all your questions, but I'll at least get you the main points. So it starts with Abba, our father, who is in heaven, and uh Abba is typically the first word that a child would learn. It it's the word that children use to address their earthly fathers. It was also used to address a respected person of rank. So a student would use this word to re-address a respected teacher, for example, and it refers to both this profound respect you have for the one you're addressing and a profound relationship you have with them. So it's both respect and relationship. Now it's interesting that in the Hebrew Old Testament, when God, when the word father is used as reference to God, it is never direct address in the Old Testament. It is always simile or metaphor. In the old every one of the uses we have, it is God is like a father in some way, but it's never used as direct address. So for Jesus to start our father as direct address was a pretty new idea. And it expresses both the profound respect and the profound relationship we have with him. So by starting with Abba, as opposed to something like the God of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, it moves it out of a specific culture because now everyone can address him as Father. There's no insider, there's no outsider, there's no sacred culture that you have to be part of to address God. It is now the familiar common word. And that's also unusual for Jesus to have given this prayer in Aramaic. Most people, for the Jews of his day, they would be requested expected to pray their prayers in Hebrew. So they would speak Aramaic, but they would pray formally in Hebrew and most likely would have expected Jesus to give them a prayer in Hebrew. But by giving them a prayer in Aramaic, he's putting it in the common language of the street. Aramaic is to Hebrew, kind of like Koine Greek was to classical Greek, it's the common language. And it opens the door of there's no sacred culture, there's no sacred language, and opens the door probably to the New Testament being written in Greek, which was the language of commerce as opposed to Hebrew. Anyway, that's a little bit of an aside, sorry. But I just find that so interesting. So he starts with Abba, our loving Father, who's approachable and yet dwells in all his majesty in heaven and all his glory, kind of. All right. Now we get to the heart of the prayer, and I'm gonna argue that all these petitions are for one thing, and that is righteousness. And I'm gonna give you kind of a wooden translation just to make you think about the words. So our Father who is in hoen, let it be holy your name, would be kind of a literal translation. And or may your name be made holy is the idea. And in the Old Testament, whenever the verb to make holy is used in the passive, as it is here in this Aramaic and Greek phrase, God is always the after. So let it be holy your name is a prayer that God would make his name holy. Now, his name is holy, but we have defiled it through our disobedience, and so the request is God demonstrate your holiness. Make it clear to everyone on earth that your name is holy. So fill the earth with your glory in that sense. Vindicate your name, your people, your character. Then let it come thy kingdom, let it be done thy will on earth as it is done in heaven. So the idea there is establish your holy and righteous kingdom in not only in all the world, so everywhere. Let it let your kingdom that will establish your holy name in all its righteousness and glory and holiness come to earth, and so that your will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, no longer disrupted by sin, no longer broken or fallen. So again, it's a prayer that God would restore his holiness and remove sin and death. Okay. I'm sorry I'm going to go fast, but I do want to get through all this before we run out of time. And this is where we get to the problem. We're just full of grammatical problems today in Luke. Give us this day our daily bread. There's two words, the one this day is no problem, but the word daily is another problem because this particular word we don't know what it means. Again, we have two of them. Only this word is used nowhere else in the Greek language. So, like we looked at persistence or on a day of shamelessness, and we started looking at where else is it used in other in the classical Greek or in the Septuagint, to find it, this is it. We this is the one use of this word in the entire history of the language that has survived. Very, not very helpful. Now, Origen, who was one of the early church fathers, concluded that Luke must have made it up because he couldn't find it anywhere. And he lived in third century Alexandria, Egypt, which was one of the centers of Greek learning in the ancient world. And he didn't know what the word meant. He writes about how we don't know what this word means. So, what do we do now? We can't go to classical Greek, we have no uses, we can't go to the Septuagint, we have no uses. What do we do? So the next step we have to do, absent any other evidence from the Greek, is to say, how did early translators translate this into other languages? So we look at how they took the Greek New Testament and translated into Syriac, Egyptian, and so on. Well, that gives us two solutions to the mystery, and each solution has two variations. So I'm going to call them 1A and 1B and 2A and 2B. So option one is that the word refers to time. Option two is that the word refers to a mount. So scholars thought the word either referred to time or it referred to amount. So if it rework refers to time, what kind of time? And the early church fathers were split on this. So option one A is today. Give us today the bread of today, our daily bread. And that's the option which has survived in our translations to the present day. So give us today bread for in as opposed to time. The one B is that it means tomorrow. So give us today the bread of tomorrow. That is the bread that we will eat when the Messiah returns at the promised great banquet. So you've got time. Is it today or tomorrow? Then you've got a mount. So other early church fathers said, no, this word has nothing to do with time. It refers to a mount. And option 2A is the amount of subsistence. That is, we should pray for just enough bread to keep us alive today and no more. And that's actually the option that Origin opted for. Other church fathers said, no, subsistence is too harsh. It's the amount we need. So that's 2B. So pray for the amount that is that we need. And for some people, you might need an entire loaf, others might need a slice. So it depends on your life, your circumstances, the size of your family, and so on. So those are the options. We have bread of today, referring to time, bread of tomorrow, referring to time, just enough bread to keep us alive today and no more, that's amount, or the bread that we need, that's also amount. So there's our options that have come through, debated through history, and looking at other translations. So now what do we do? Got a coin? Really, we have to take our best guess. And my personal opinion, which I admit is worth nothing, but I think it means the bread of tomorrow. And here's what tips the scales for me. Well, one is the context, which I'm going to argue in a minute. But in the late 19th century, we found two copies of an ancient Syriac version of Luke. And they were discovered. We didn't have these before. And this Old Syriac translation is probably the closest thing we have and one of the early to the original language and one of the earliest translations of Luke into any other language. Now, Old Syriac and Aramaic are very closely related languages. So many of the words in Aramaic are identical in Old Syriac. Or which would be the bread of tomorrow. And that, because it's so old, because the language is so closely related, and because it's one of the earliest translations, that carries a lot of weight for me. And that makes sense in the prayer. Give us today the bread of heaven. Give us the true bread, the bread of life, Jesus Christ, the bread that sustains our very soul, not the bread that sustains our bodies. And if you add in the context that everything else in the prayer centers around righteousness, and that rabbis tended to give a prayer that encapsulated one main idea of their teaching, I would expect that this petition would also be revolving around righteousness, not food. And that tips the scales for me. But again, um it's kind of controversial. You don't have to agree with me, but uh that makes a lot of sense to me. Alright, so then moving on. Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. Matthew's text uses only the word debts. Luke uses two different words, one for sins and one for debts. So he translates, forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us, that kind of difference. And what's the difference in the words? Well, the word Matthew uses refers to unfulfilled obligations. So things we have left undone, things that we ought to have done but we did not do. Luke uses two different words that mean the opposite. One is what Matthew means, the word he uses, failure to do things. The other one is doing the wrong thing. So debts is failure to do the right thing, and the sins is doing the wrong thing. So in one I have not done that which I ought, in the other, I have done the thing I ought not to have done. Now, why do we get those different translations? There is an Aramaic word that means both. So Greek, like English, to express those two ideas, we have to use two different words. But bless you. Aramaic had one word that expresses both ideas, and most scholars think, well, Jesus probably used that word which expressed both. And so when you translate it into Greek, you have to pick. And Matthew picked one, and Luke split the difference and used one of each. Now, we've talked about this in the parable of the unforgiving servant, how forgiveness is an integral part of saving faith. So I'm not going to spend too much time on that, but I'll refer you back to that lecture. But remember, we talked about part of coming to saving faith is knowing that God owes me nothing, and I've done nothing to deserve his grace. So if I realize that I am completely unworthy of grace, it follows that I should recognize all my friends, everyone else in the world is equally unworthy, and there's no standard by which I could judge someone else that does not also condemn me. And so part of saving faith is realizing, part of realizing I need forgiveness is realizing others forgive. And I think that's what he's pointing to there. And then the last request: do not bring us into the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. This petition is also kind of fraught with theological difficulty. Do we have trials or temptations? What does it mean for God not to leave us? Is this causative or permissive? So is it do not cause us to go into temptations? And what does that mean for God to cause us? Or is this do not permit us to go into temptations? And since we're running out of time, I'm not going to go into that. But we talk about this a lot in James. So for those of you who are here with James, this may be familiar to you. And just to make a long story short, most scholars make a distinction between God testing us and God tempting us. So that God does test us, but he does not tempt us. He puts his people to the test and that he puts us in situations where we choose to obey him or not. And how we choose reveals whether our faith is real or not. So God tested Abraham when he asked him to sacrifice Isaac. He put him in a position where he had to choose to follow God or not, and that displayed how real his faith was. God tested Israel by surrounding them with pagan nations and foreign gods. God tested David by giving him the opportunity to kill Saul and seize the throne. So he puts us in situations that stretch us and reveal whether or not we have faith. But the desire we have to sin comes from ourselves. It doesn't come from God. It comes from our own sinful nature. So we're not innocence being entrapped by a God into committing a sin we would otherwise not commit because left to ourselves, we'd sin. So we are the person who would naturally sin. And when we flee or resist that temptation to sin, that's the gift from God. So I think that's what's going on here. God may place you in a situation that tests and strengthens your faith, but he never seeks to induce you to sin or to break your faith. So I would see that as guide us away from evil. Or we placed our total trust in your leadership, so left to ourselves, we'd run headlong into the path of evil unless you intervene, God. So lead us not in temptation. You have to guide us, or we will go there. So just to wrap that all up, all the petitions are bring about your kingdom, make us righteous, establish your righteousness on earth, in our lives and in our hearts, give us the bread of life, forgive us and save us from our sins, and that all adds up to a prayer of holiness. So notice the first three focus on God bringing his holiness to the world. So let it be holy your name. God's the one making his name holy. Let it come your kingdom. God's bringing his kingdom, establish his righteous rule everywhere. Let it be done by will. God is the one who will fulfill his will and make it real. And then the second three focus on giving holiness to believers. Give us today our daily bread, and I would understand that as the bread of tomorrow, the bread that doesn't run out. So give us that holiness, the bread of life, forgive us our debts, so God has to forgive us our sins to make us righteous and lead us not in temptation, guide us away from the evil that we would naturally run to. So quick overview, but I think all of I would understand all of the Lord's prayer is asking for righteousness. And notice the context that follows is the same thing. Look at Luke 11 through 13. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish, he will not give him a steak instead of a fish willy, or if he has asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion willy. 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 who ask him? So in eleven we have the same phrase we had in verse 5 Who from among you, or can you imagine? And he's setting up the same kind of question. Can you imagine this happening? This would never happen. A father, a son who asks his father for a fish, the father will never give him a snake. That just wouldn't happen. Or the scorpion. And he concludes, which I which I think is the same point of the parable, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So he's essentially concluding the same thing, which I think is the point of the parable. If we being sinful can count on our sinful neighbors to answer our our and to do their duty, how much more can we count on God? But notice in 13, Jesus gives us a new piece of information. He says, We'll give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Now, what does he mean by that? And I think the Holy Spirit is the seal of our inheritance. But tomorrow Paul's language from Ephesians 1. So you only get the Holy Spirit when you have been given saving faith, given righteousness, and forgiven. And so to give for God to give the Holy Spirit is for God to give his forgiveness and his righteousness. And I think that's the point of the parable. So you can have confidence and assurance before God that your needs will be met, maybe not the way you're expecting, but that you will get what is best for you because God will give you the ultimate gift. Just come back to my analogy, and that is righteousness. So he may not answer your prayer for what, health, wealth, um, end of a trial or whatever, but he will answer your prayer for righteousness. You can have absolute confidence in that. And even though life is hard, because it's all designed by our loving Father to bring us into righteousness, we can have confidence that we will get what we need. Maybe not what we want, but we will get what we need ultimately. And that is worth having. So whatever troublesome, frustrating, devastating circumstances you face, um, from the you know the long, minor frustrations to the big, huge trials, we can have face that with confidence because it is the tool God uses to bring us about into a strong, mature faith and into his kingdom. It's what he uses to establish his holiness in our lives. So our needs will be met in a way that furthers us on the path to eternal life and gives us the one thing worth having, and that is holiness. So I just to wrap this up, then the moral of the parable is not that God will give you what you want, but that God will give you what you need, and what you need is holiness, righteousness, forgiveness. And we can have utter confidence that whatever we face, we're on that right path. We're on that path to the ultimate gift. God knows what he's doing, he cares about us, he knows us even better than we know ourselves, and he will give us exactly what we need at the right time and in the right way to bring us into our inheritance. Now, from our perspective, it looks hard, it looks painful, it's impossible. It may seem like the worst thing you could possibly do, and or it just looks crazy, but I think the assurance of the parable is trust him. You can have confidence. If even sinful fathers know how to good good good give good gifts, how much more confidence can we have in our loving, wise, and merciful God? So, in that sense, it's a very encouraging parable. So it doesn't mean you're gonna get the you know whatever specific request you ask for, but it does mean you will get ultimately what you need. Okay, let's stop there. Let me pray for us and I'll give you a chance to ask some questions. So I'm sure you got some. Father, we just come before you and thank you. That even though this is a hard parable, this is a hard section, and there are difficulties that we face in trying to understand it. Um I I just thank you that the main point seems to be clear that you give to those who ask. And that those who seek you will find you. And those who ask for faith and forgiveness will be granted faith and forgiveness. And I just um pray that you would be working these truths into our hearts and you would be taking away anything that is wrong, misleading, or confusing, and that you would bringing us bringing us all into a greater understanding of your love and your mercy and your character so that we can love you better and then share that love among our family, friends, and in the world so that others may come to know you too. Just thank you um for being a God who gives us the ultimate gift and solve the problem of your wrath and solve the problem of our sin by giving us your Son, uh, whose birth we remember in this Advent season, and looking forward to what He did for us by dying in our place on the cross. In Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. What the Bible means and how we know. For notes and study questions, please visit wednesdayintheword.com. Thank you for being with us, and we hope you'll join us again.