Right Replies to Right Requests

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Luke 11:13

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…

In this chapter there is an evident progress. It opens by the disciples asking the Lord to teach them to pray. To that He gave a full and sufficient reply; He prepared them an outline of what complete prayer should be. Then the chapter proceeds a little further to answer a question: we are shown how to pray, but will God really answer us? Is prayer only meant to do good to the suppliant? Does it end with the benefit which it works in us, or does it really affect the heart of God? The answer is given by our Lord with great clearness. We have a parable to show that as importunity does evidently affect men, so importunity will also gain an answer from God, that He will be pleased to give us what we need if we do but know how, with incessant earnestness, to come again and again to Him in prayer. We are assured that asking is attended with receiving, that seeking is attended with finding, that knocking will lead to opening, that it is not a vain thing to pray. The truth here taught is not that God will refuse us evil things if in our mistake we ask for them; that is a truth, but it is not alluded to here; the one statement of this verse is, that prayers for good things will be answered, and that they will not be answered with gifts wearing the mere appearance of good, but with the actual good things desired. That simple thought I shall endeavour to enlarge upon in this morning's discourse.

I. RIGHT PRAYERS, RIGHT ANSWERS. The child asks bread, his father does not give him a stone. We shall have when we pray for needful things, the really needful things themselves, not the imitation of them, but the actual blessings. And if our faith grows a little stronger, and having obtained bread we ask for fish, not absolutely a necessary, but a comfort and a relish; if we make bold to ask for spiritual comforts, consoling gifts and ennobling graces, something over and above what is absolutely needful to save us, our heavenly Father will not mock us by giving us superficial comforts which might be injurious as a serpent; He will give us so much of comfort as we can bear; and it shall be pure, holy, healthy comfort. And if, gathering more confidence still, we ask for an egg, which I take it was in Christ's day a rarer luxury, we shall not be deluded by its counterfeit. That is our first point — prayer for good things meets a good answer.

II. Then the question will arise in every heart: "It seems then that I have only to ascertain that my prayer is for a really good thing, and I shall have it?" Just so, and hence, secondly, THE PRAYER FOR THE BEST THING IS SUREST OF AN ANSWER, for, saith the text, "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?"

1. There is no doubt about the Holy Spirit being a good thing; when we therefore ask for Him, for His Divine presence and influence, we may rest assured that God will give it. Make that our first point under this head — God will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask for Him.

2. From the connection in which the text stands, I gather the following remark, namely, that it will truly be the Holy Spirit. Go back again to that first thought. The child asks bread, and does not get a stone; you ask the Holy Spirit, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit.

3. But it appears plainly enough from the text that this Holy Spirit is to be given in answer to prayer. He will give you the real Spirit: no enthusiasm that might mislead you, no fanaticism that might injure you, no self-conceit that might become like a deadly scorpion to you, but His own gentle, truthful, infallible, Holy Spirit He will give to them that ask Him.

III. Now for our last point. THE BEST OF PRAYERS, WHICH IS SURE TO BE HEARD, IS ALSO A MOST COMPREHENSIVE ONE. Turn to the parallel passage in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 7:11). Now what does our text say, "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" Is it not clear then that the Holy Spirit is the equivalent for "good things," and that, in fact, when the Lord gives us the Holy Spirit He gives us all "good things"? What a comprehensive prayer then is the prayer for the Spirit of God.

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