Well, a few weeks ago, we were looking at the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11 in our series, Kingdom Come. We left off looking at Jesus' instructions. One of the disciples comes to Jesus and says, what? Teach us to pray. And so Jesus starts off by giving them a model of prayer. He teaches them a model of the way to pray. And that's really what the Lord's Prayer is. It's this archetypal prayer. It's a model. Example of what prayer should look like and how we're to imitate it and what sort of parts we should include in our prayers. The idea isn't that we only ever pray the Lord's Prayer or that it has to be exactly like this every time, but Jesus is teaching us what to include in our prayers and specifically who it is we're praying to. We're praying to a Father, not a distant deity, but a Father who in Christ has now drawn near to God's people. And then as the prayer goes on, outside of those vertical expressions that are Godward, there's horizontal requests that Jesus teaches us to make dealing with our needs in everyday life. Now, if we didn't look or you weren't familiar with the text, you might think that's kind of all that's said about prayer in that context. You might assume the Lord's Prayer kind of marks the end of those instructions on prayer, but as we'll see this morning, That's not true. Jesus isn't done teaching us how to pray. He, not just adding to the prayer itself, He tells us a parable. He fills out these instructions. And in this parable, He's showing us this morning the posture that we're called to have in prayer. He's showing us the attitude and the expectations and the disposition of our heart that we should have when we pray. As the Lord has taught us to pray.
So with that, would you look with me at Luke 11:5? Hear God's holy and authoritative Word. And He said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me 3 loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'?" and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give you anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give a fish and give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 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? The word of the Lord. May He write His truth upon our hearts.
Now, I think on a certain level, every one of us can relate to this story. It's probably not common that we have people banging on our doors in the middle of the night. That's not what I mean, but we all know what it means to be deep in sleep. We all know what it means to hate to be woken up at 2 in the morning. If you're a young parent, it's probably happening more frequently than you like. If you're past that stage, you're maybe rejoicing in the fact that sleep has become more normalized. It's actually a joke in our house. When it's time for me to go to bed, I could set a record for going up those stairs. Hannah jokes that when I decide I'm going to bed, we can be doing something and suddenly It strikes me that it's time for bed and boom, I'm gone. I'm up the stairs, I brush my teeth, I'm in, the lights are out, and within 3 minutes I'm trying to sleep. And that's just how I'm wired, that's how I do it. And she jokes, I've learned like if there's anything I need done to ask before that ultimate unchanging decision has been made for Matt to go to bed. Because when that happens, I'm heading there and nothing can disrupt me. And I used to have a gift where when my head hit the pillow, I was out cold. That gift seems to be waning in latter years. I used to mock people who couldn't have coffee late at night. Like, I'd drink coffee at 9 and just go to sleep. And now suddenly I can't drink coffee before 5, otherwise I'm awake. But when I go to sleep, I want to sleep. That's what I'm there. That's what I'm doing. Now, that might not be your habit. You might have more of a bedtime routine where you build up or you wind down. You turn off all the blue lights and the iPads, right, to make sure you're not soaking in those ultraviolet rays. Whatever it is, whatever our habit, most of us would agree at 2:00 AM in the morning, nobody wants to hear a knock on the door. Nobody wants to be roused from bed.
And that's the example Jesus gives us in this parable. He wants us to imagine you're asleep, it's 2:00 AM, and the doorbell rings. Now, if this is really happening and it's 2 AM and you're in like your second REM cycle and the doorbell rings and you're anything like me, it probably means suddenly in your subconscious and in your dream there's some sort of ringing bell. Or if you're me, you're on a submarine and there's like a sound, an alarm for general quarters, and suddenly your dream, like you're walking through a field and now you're on the hunt for the Red October and there's an alarm going off and you gotta get to general quarters and then your mind is somehow thinking, "You gotta turn the alarm off," and you're pushing the button and it won't go off. What is going on? And slowly you start to realize it's not a dream. There's actually a bell ringing. More likely, my wife has woken up and now she's elbowing me, "Get out of bed!" But no one wants to be roused like that. And if you hear there's a friend outside between the rings and the knocks, if you're like me, you probably roll over and say, Just pretend we're still asleep. They'll go away. The person starts yelling, "They still don't know we're awake!"
Jesus' point is the reason you get out of bed at 2 in the morning isn't because you're a great friend. The reason you get out of bed is because that terrible friend at your door won't stop ringing the doorbell. And they won't stop pounding. And because you want to get to bed, you realize The only way to get rid of this person is to get up and to throw some loaves of bread at them and to slam the door to get them out of here. Jesus is drawing our attention to this. The parable actually hinges on this word "impudence." Literally, it means having a sort of shameless persistence.
And that's the first point we see in the parable. Persistence in prayer Pays off. Persistence in prayer pays off. Because of the guy's unrelenting determination, the constant pounding, the doorbell ringing, the calling out, eventually you'll relent just like the person in the parable. What Jesus is teaching us is that there is a place for boldness. There's a place for shameless persistence in our prayers. We should know if that sort of strategy will get a grumpy guy out of bed in the night, how much more will persistence and boldness and consistently asking and bringing those requests, if they come before our Father in heaven, if that'll get a grumpy guy out of bed, how much more will that move God's heart to answer? That's the point of the parable.
6 · Oswald diagnoses the congregation's actual prayer practice—infrequent and hesitant, as if persistent asking bothers God—and contrasts it with Jesus' intent in the parable: to replace our suspicion that we annoy God with the confidence that our Father is always eager and ready to hear from His children
The thing is, I think if we're honest, most of us would recognize we don't often pray like this. The sad reality is most of us probably pray too infrequently to begin with, but even when we do, I think Jesus senses that our disposition is to think that anything beyond asking a few times is just sort of pushing our luck. Jesus is trying to change the way we think about bringing our requests to God. He doesn't want us to have this sort of unspoken, nagging suspicion that our requests bother God, that if we ask too many times, now we're just annoying. Jesus imagines quite the opposite situation. He encourages us. That's what this parable is meant to do. He encourages us to be bold in our requests, to be persistent, to keep pounding on the door of heaven, to keep ringing the bell in prayer, because God the Father is never groggy. He's never in a 2 AM sort of mood. He is always ready and eager to hear from his children.
7 · Oswald closely examines Luke 11:9-10, unpacking the building intensity in Jesus' three imperatives—ask, seek, knock—noting the present-tense verbs indicate continuous action, and establishing that bold expectation is as important as bold asking because God answers not out of obligation but out of love as a Father predisposed to help His children
And so persistence, boldness, a shameless relentlessness with your prayers is part of the way that God's heart is turned. More than that though, Jesus teaches us not just to be bold in our prayers, but to be bold in what we expect from our prayers. Don't just ask bold things. Believe that in asking bold things, God is going to do bold things. Expect that God is going to answer those prayers. Verse 9 is that classic verse, "And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." Now there's a building intensity. To the illustrations and the images that Jesus is giving. It's building, it's increasing. The person who asks is just vocalizing something. They're recognizing their need. There's this sense in the text, they're humbly asking a superior to do something on their behalf. But all they're doing is vocalizing a need. But the person who's seeking, That person is now actively pursuing help. They're moving themselves. They're not just verbalizing needs. The idea is they've gotten up and they're now looking around for help. You see how it's progressing? From just vocalizing a request to now seeking out help, where the person knocking is now adding that component of bold persistence. They're asking, they're pounding on the door, they're pressing for an answer. They're not just asking, they're not just seeking. They've found the person who can help and they are at the door and they are demanding a response. And all the verbs are actually in the present tense. So there's extra force to this image. You could actually read this accurately as being, "Keep on asking and it will be given to you. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and it will be opened to you." Don't ask once, don't seek once, don't timidly rap once. Make this your posture. And in making it your posture, expect confidently that your Father is going to answer. Not because He has to, not because we've badgered Him into it, But as the next verse makes clear, because He loves us. Because like a good Father, He's predisposed to answering His children's cry for help.
8 · Oswald diagnoses a gap between the congregation's stated beliefs about prayer and their actual prayer lives—infrequent, distracted, lacking boldness—arguing that this gap reveals unconvinced hearts that intellectually acknowledge God as Father but emotionally doubt He will be moved to act on their behalf
Now on the surface, none of us would disagree with this, right? I believe that. I believe we're supposed to go and ask things of God in prayer. And the whole point of a prayer list, right? Is we're supposed to continually ask things of God in prayer. And I think on the surface, all of us would agree we believe that God as our Father wants to answer our prayers. So we do believe these things. The question becomes, though, if that's what we believe, why don't we actually act that way? You see, I think there's actually a gap between our beliefs and our actions. There's a gap between our doctrine and what we think regarding prayer and our heart and how we actually live that out. In reality, many, perhaps most of us, aren't all that consistent in our prayer lives. I wonder how many of us, when we pray to God, when we bring these requests, we're actually doing it from a position of bold confidence. Never mind that our minds aren't wandering, like that challenge in prayer, right? But we're actually praying, we're actually seeking God, and we're doing it with this bold confidence that He wants us to ask and that He's going to answer, that He's going to respond. The infrequency of our praying, the lack of passion and boldness in our prayers, they tell a different story than what we profess to believe, don't they? Unconvinced. They speak that our heads acknowledge God as Father, but our hearts still aren't convinced. We have unconvinced hearts, hearts that think, "Maybe He hears, but I'm not sure He's going to be moved to action."
9 · Oswald turns to the Psalms to demonstrate that Scripture's repeated emphasis on God hearing prayer—over 100 times in 150 Psalms—reveals both God's intent to assure us He hears and the reality that deep down we are suspicious He doesn't, requiring constant encouragement to believe the promise
As I was preparing for this, I went to the book of Psalms. The Psalms in some ways is sort of like the hymn book of the Old Testament. In other ways, it's like the prayer book of the Old Testament. Both of them are helpful images. But when you're preaching on prayer, it helps to go to the prayer book and just consider, what does it teach us? And one of the things I searched for as I was preparing for this was, How often do the Psalms and the different writers of the Psalms talk about God hearing us? 150 Psalms and over 100 times we read people specifically asking God to hear them and then filled with hope and confidence that God will hear. Now that says two things. First, God's Word teaches us God hears when we pray. But the fact that it's repeated 100 times also tells us, I think deep down we're suspicious He doesn't hear us when we pray. Psalm 54:2, "O God, hear my prayer." 'Give ear to the words of my mouth.' Psalm 40:1, 'I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and He heard my prayer. He heard my cry.' Psalm 34:17, 'When the righteous cry for help,' God's Word promises, 'the Lord hears.' When the righteous cry for help, The Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles. God's Word wants us to know these promises, that God hears when we cry out to Him. And He also wants to encourage us with those promises, but He— because He knows deep down there are doubting, unbelieving parts of our heart that aren't sure if He's going to listen.
10 · Oswald pivots from the theological diagnosis of the gap between belief and practice in prayer to introduce George Müller as a historical example of someone who embodied the persistent, bold prayer Jesus teaches in the passage
Now, there are few people in the history of the church who have bridged the gap between their habits of prayer and their beliefs of prayer more effectively than a man named George Müller. George Müller is the champion of intercessory prayer.
11 · Oswald recounts the historical context and ministry achievements of George Müller, emphasizing his 66-year pastorate, his founding of orphanages that cared for 10,000 children, and the cultural transformation his work produced—all funded entirely through prayer without debt or fundraising appeals, establishing Müller as a living demonstration of persistent, bold prayer that expects God to answer
George Müller, if you're not familiar, was a German. He was a Prussian. One of those proud Prussians, right? Who ended up in England. He lived in Bristol, England. He actually pastored there. He pastored the same church for 66 years. So he had quite the stretch in a single church. And after those 66 years pastoring that church, he worked his final 17 years as a missionary. So George Müller was pretty hardcore. He didn't mess around. If he's famous for anything though, it's for two things. One is his work with orphans, and the other is his remarkable prayer life. And those two things weren't easily separated. Müller's heart for orphans literally changed how Great Britain thought of people without parents. Before Müller arrived on the scene, there were actually 2 times as many orphans in prison than there were orphans actually in orphanages in England. So in this day and age, if you were 8 or younger, it was more likely, twice as likely, you would end up in jail, essentially as a slave laborer, because you didn't have parents, than it was you'd actually end up being cared for in an orphanage. And this is in a Christian society that purportedly would have been guided by the calls to care for widow and orphan, right? But Müller came along and had this massive heart to care for orphans, and so he founded 5 orphanages that cared for over 10,000 orphans. By the end of his life, the entire culture had shifted to the point that there were over 100,000 orphans in Great Britain being cared for in orphanages just like Mueller's. But the amazing thing was how Mueller funded those orphanages. He didn't go into debt. He funded them entirely, completely through donations. But he didn't send out mailers. He received those donations solely by praying. Met the needs of 10,000 children by praying boldly and persistently that the Lord would provide.
12 · Oswald details Müller's specific prayer methodology—finding a promise in Scripture, placing his finger on it, praying it back to God, and returning to it repeatedly—illustrating the practice with accounts of God providing the exact needed amount within hours, establishing that such miraculous answers became the ordinary pattern of Müller's life because of his persistent, promise-anchored prayer
Now Müller's habit when he would pray was to go to God's Word and to find a promise in God's Word and to literally put his finger on the promise, to meditate on the promise, and then with his finger on the promise to pray the promise back to God, to write it down next to that prayer request in his prayer book and to go back to that promise again and again and again until the Lord answered that request, until He answered that promise. Now, the amazing thing about Mueller's story is there's all these accounts of the funds are basically completely depleted. One of the women that's helping run the orphanage comes to him and says, "We've got, you know, 2 pounds left and then we're done. We don't have enough to buy food today. How much do we need? We need X amount of pounds. Müller would start praying and within an hour someone would come to the door with the exact donation amount. Story after story, to the point where you can't even call them miraculous because this is just the ordinary nature of Müller's life. That's how he lived. That's how he prayed. And that's how God constantly answered.
13 · Oswald recounts Müller's most famous prayer story—praying daily for 52 years for the conversion of five friends, three converted during his lifetime and two within two months of his death—using Müller's own words to showcase his unshakable confidence and shameless persistence in prayer despite decades without visible results for the final two, climaxing in God's vindication of Müller's faith immediately after his death
But even when the answer wasn't immediate, Müller wasn't dissuaded from praying. To give just one famous example, and there are countless ones that could be given, Müller prayed for the salvation of 5 friends for years and years. And when I say he prayed for them for years and years, it wasn't occasionally, it wasn't on their birthdays, He prayed for them, those 5 friends, every single day without missing a day, every single day, whether he was sick or feeling well, whether he was at home or he was traveling. Regardless of his schedule, he pounded the door of heaven for the salvation of those 5 souls. It took 18 months of intercession. And after 18 months, the first friend was converted. And so Müller thanked the Lord and felt emboldened and increased his efforts. 5 years elapsed from that first conversion, and finally the second friend was born again. And so again, Müller praised God and renewed his efforts for the remaining 3, and he continued every single day along with all his other prayer requests. How many prayer requests do you have with 10,000 orphans under your care, right? I got a lot of prayer requests with 3 kids. And yet every day, these friends are being prayed for. 6 years later, over 10 years from when he started, finally the third friend responded to the gospel. And so he thanks God again and continues praying for the salvation of the final two. And after decades, they remained unconverted. And yet Müller remained undeterred. He wrote this: The man to whom God— he's writing about himself— the man to whom God in the riches of His grace has given tens of thousands of answers to prayer in the selfsame hour or day in which they were offered, that man has been praying day by day for nearly 36 years for the conversion of these individuals, and yet they remain unconverted. Now just pause there. The man for whom the Lord has answered tens of thousands of prayers. Isn't that amazing? If we gathered all the prayer requests in this room Would they number tens of thousands? But to have made tens of thousands of requests and to have them answered, many on the same day. And yet here he is, he's been praying for 36 years for these individuals. He writes, and yet they remain unconverted. And then he finishes, but I hope in God, I Pray on and look yet for the answer. They are not converted yet, but they will be. Just this total confidence, this persistent, shameless boldness. The Lord is going to— He's already answered for 3 of them. I don't care that it's been 36 years. He continues praying before the throne of grace every day for common needs, for emergency needs, for miracles, for healing, for provision, for the salvation of souls, for the advance of the gospel. Müller was constantly wetting his belief in the power of prayer. With the practice of powerful prayer. In 1898, Mueller died at the age of 92. 66 years as a pastor in a little church in Bristol, runner of orphanages, 17 years as a missionary traveling the world stirring people for the great cause of God. 52 years He had been praying for those two friends, and within two months of his passing, the Lord saved them both and brought both men into the kingdom of his beloved Son. "I hope in God," Müller said. "I pray on and look yet for the answer. They are not converted yet, but they will be."
14 · Oswald applies Müller's example with a series of direct, searching questions pressing the congregation to identify where they need to pray with Müller-like boldness—for unconverted loved ones they've given up on, for massive anxieties they've been too afraid to bring to God, or for kingdom prayers they've never dared to pray—calling them to begin praying today with bold consistency and expectation
Where in your life would the Lord call you right now to pray with that kind of boldness? What loved one or neighbor or coworker— maybe you've prayed for this person dozens of times and you're at that point where you just feel like maybe this is pearls before swine, they're not going to respond. What massive thing looms in your life that if you were really honest, if you weren't trying to put on airs, if you were really honest, there's a part of you that doubts if God could handle it? What massive anxiety? What persistent trial? What about this? Massive prayer that you've never prayed before, could you start praying today for the sake of God's glory and the advance of the gospel? What would it look like to pray with that kind of boldness and that kind of consistency, fully expecting that God would answer?
15 · Oswald returns to Luke 11:11-13 and unpacks its qal wahomer logic—if sinful, selfish human fathers give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Heavenly Father—and clarifies that God always gives what is truly best, not necessarily what we think we want, distinguishing biblical persistence from prosperity-gospel name-it-and-claim-it theology
Now, no doubt, one of the great promises that Müller was in the habit of putting his finger on is one found right in this passage today. Put your finger on verse 11, right? Put your finger there. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 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! The Father will give good gifts. The Father will give the best gift. The Father will give of Himself to fill us with the Spirit. Jesus is teaching us in this passage to pray, to pray persistently and boldly, and to expect that God will answer, and to expect that God's answers our best. The entire illustration hinges on the reality that even in this world where fathers aren't perfect, they're more than just not perfect. In this world, fathers are sinful. Fathers have inclinations to selfishness. At 2 AM, fathers aren't the ones jumping out of bed to help the crying kid, are they? It's the mothers. But even in this world, Fathers know how to give good gifts to their children. Fathers know what it is to work long hours, to put in long weeks so they can provide bread and housing and clothing. Fathers know what it is to buy good gifts and put them under the tree, to save up to take their kids on vacations. Even fallen, imperfect, sinful, selfishly unkind fathers know what it is to love their children. And arguing from the lesser to the greater, Jesus says, "If you all know how to do that, how much more does your heavenly Father?" More than this though, Jesus is teaching us that the answer our Heavenly Father gives is always best. He knows our true needs and He gives us what will actually bless us. This isn't a name it and claim it verse. Ask and He'll answer, seek and you'll find, knock and the door will be opened. You need the promotion? You just ask and it's coming. You need the raise? You 'You need the healing!' That's not what the verse is saying. The verse is saying, 'Go to the Lord. Trust in Him. Pray to Him. Cry out to Him. And your good Father will give you what is best.' And sometimes you think you're asking for bread, when actually you're asking for the serpent. And God the Father doesn't give you what you requested and actually gives you the bread you need.
16 · Oswald uses a Müller quotation to frame the proper focus of bold prayer—kingdom concerns, God's honor, the church's welfare, and souls' salvation—and then traces a canonical thread connecting Müller's prayer life to the prayers of David, Hannah, and Israel in Egypt, arguing that what distinguished Müller was his genuine belief that the same God who answered throughout biblical history would answer him
Listen to how Müller would instruct us. I now ask you, my dear reader, he's obviously writing, a few questions in all love, because I do seek your welfare, and I do not wish to put these questions to you without putting them first to my own heart. Do you make it your primary business your first great concern to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, are the things of God, the honor of His name, the welfare of His church, the conversion of sinners, and the profit of your own soul your chief aim. When we pray boldly and earnestly for these things, we can be confident that God will answer. You see, the same God who was answering Mueller's prayers day after day and year after year is the same God who heard all of those prayers in the Psalms. Those prayers were in the prefix, it'll say, David, when he's fleeing from his son Absalom. David, when he's fleeing from Saul's armies. And you see David crying out and you hear the Lord responding. When Hannah pours out her heart before the Lord and the Lord answers. When the entire nation of Israel is crying out in Egypt and the Lord hears and the Lord answers. That's the same God that we're praying to. I think sometimes the difference between us and George Müller is a man like George Müller really believes that. I am praying to this God who for generations has answered the cries of His people, and in praying to Him, I am confident that He will answer me and that He will give exactly what I need.
17 · Oswald recounts the story of Elizabeth, a 15-year-old believer abducted into sex slavery, who—despite being mocked by other captives that God couldn't hear her prayers in such a place—clung to Scripture promises written on her wall (Psalm 27:1) and recited Psalm 34:4 until IJM workers miraculously found and rescued her, demonstrating that the same bold, promise-anchored prayer Müller practiced works even in the darkest places
I was reading recently about a testimony There is a ministry called the International Justice Mission. I am not sure if you are familiar with it. The International Justice Mission, the IJM for shorthand, is in the work of rescuing people, rescuing women from the sex industry. So specifically young women oftentimes who are captured and taken across borders without their passports and then forced into slavery. So IJAM is in the work and the habit of finding these people and rescuing them and returning them to their families. And I was reading the story, hearing the story of a young woman named Elizabeth. She was a believer. She grew up in a Christian home. She had 6 other siblings, so it's a big full house, lots of activity. She loved the Lord, and her dream, even as a young woman, was she wanted to go to Bible college. She's not from the States, in the United States, so going to Bible college is actually a pretty big dream. She's dreaming big things. And she heard eventually about a job in a neighboring community. And so she decided, "If I get this job and I go and take this job, this can help fund me getting to Bible college." And so she set out the first day to go to this other town to find this job and to go and work and to earn this money. But on the way to the job, Literally on the first day, she was abducted along the road. And her captors took her and they moved her across the border into a neighboring country. And so suddenly she found herself in a country where she didn't speak the language. She's trapped there without her passport, so technically she's there illegally. She doesn't have any real way to get back across the border, even if she could escape. And all this happened to her while she's 15 years old. And they brought her to a brothel. She's cut off from her family, seemingly without any sort of hope of deliverance. And in that desperate situation, Elizabeth said that all she knew, all she knew to do was to cry out to God. And so she started praying. And she started calling upon the Lord. But as she started praying and crying out to God, the other girls in the brothel actually crowded around her and started mocking her. "God can't hear you in a place like this." "Prayers are worthless here." It's like a modern example of the Psalms, isn't it? My enemies surround me and they mock me. And that's what this 15-year-old girl is experiencing. And yet, literally surrounded by that, her enemies assaulting her and telling her, God won't deliver you. God, in fact, won't even hear you. She stubbornly declared in the face of all of that, she still believed in her heart that God would hear her cry. And he did hear her. An IJM worker in the area discovered what had happened, miraculously found out, and they came to her rescue. They planned a rescue, they came and they got her. And the IJM worker who saved her said he saw the most startling, unexpected thing. They came to her room, they had never seen something like this before. On the wall, she had written above her bed, Psalm 27, verse 1: The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? I like to picture her like Mueller. Finger to the promise. The Lord can't hear you here. No, the Lord can hear me. When they asked her how she had kept the faith in this absolute darkness without any sort of hope, Elizabeth said she believed the promises of the Lord. And then in addition to the psalm that she had written on the wall, she kept reciting to herself as she prayed, Psalm 34:4, "I sought the Lord and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears." I sought the Lord and He answered me.
18 · Oswald reaches the sermon's Christological climax by explaining that the reason Elizabeth, Müller, and we can pray with bold confidence is not our own righteousness or correct method but because Jesus, the righteous one, intercedes for us and covers all our prayers with His prayers—when God hears our prayers, He hears them in the voice of His favored Son Jesus
Now the sweet thing about that Psalm, we quoted it earlier in the passage in this message, in Psalm 34:17, The psalmist writes, "When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles." The reason Elizabeth can point to a promise on the wall and cry out in the darkest of places in hopes that the Lord will hear, the same reason that Mueller for 50 for 2 years can cry out and pray for the salvation of his 5 friends. In the same way that whatever that massive thing is in your life that you're almost afraid to pray for because you don't want to be disappointed, in all of those same ways, the Lord will hear. But it's not because of anything you've done or accomplished. It's not because you've written a promise on a wall you've picked the right promise in the scriptures and you've got your finger on it. The reason why the Lord hears our prayers is because the Lord hears the prayers of Jesus, because Jesus covers all of our prayers with His prayers. When the psalmist writes, when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears. It's pointing us to the reality that even now, Jesus, the righteous one, intercedes for us. And He covers all of our prayers with His prayers. The passage talks about God being Father and the fact that we pray to a Father. We look at a story like the story of Joseph, right? Part of the story is the failure of his father in playing favorites curses the favorite son to be sold off into slavery. And so we think, well, God doesn't play favorites. But God does play favorites. There is only one favored son to whom God inclines his ear and listens, and it's his son Jesus. But the good news of the gospel is that for every person who comes in the name of that Son, who comes in the name of Jesus, when the Lord hears your prayers, He hears them with the voice of Christ.
19 · Oswald closes in corporate prayer, grounding the congregation's confidence to pray in Jesus' high priestly intercession, asking God to comfort the weary, give the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, increase faith, and grant the audacity of Müller and Elizabeth to believe God truly hears and answers prayer offered in Jesus' name
Would you bow your heads? Lord, We pray right now to a Father, and we recognize that you are our Father because of Jesus. Lord, that we have hope to come into the throne room with confidence and with boldness because our great High Priest Jesus has already come before us. And his bleeding wounds plead our case. Father, I pray that you would comfort anyone in this room who is weary, who feels like they've been asking for so long. Lord God, would you comfort them? I pray now that you would give the gift you promised to give, that you would give your Spirit, that you would fill them, that you would comfort them, Lord, we ask in the name of Jesus that you would increase our faith. Lord, we want to pray bold prayers. We want to pray for your kingdom to advance. We want to pray for your name to be glorified. We pray that you would work for the glory of your Son Jesus. We pray that you would work for our good, that you would work for our sanctification. We ask in the name of Jesus that you would give us all of these good gifts, and we ask especially this morning, Lord, that you would send your Spirit and fill us corporately and each person here individually with your Spirit, Lord, that we would desire the things of your kingdom, that we would have faith to to believe with the audacity of George Mueller, with the audacity of Elizabeth, that you hear our cries. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.