Luke 10:38-11:13

it's good to see you guys. I'm really excited for this morning. It's been a while since I preached and I love getting to do this. I take it really seriously too. This is like a huge privilege from God but also responsibility to just give God's word to God's people. And I'm excited for what we're going to get into today. Today will be at the end of Luke chapter 10, beginning of Luke 11, and we're going to be covering like three different things, kind of like three scenes almost, and they have a common intersection which is intimacy with God. I'll call it that, intimacy with God, building a prayer life, drawing near to Him, being connected to the God who made us. And so that's what we'll be diving into. And that's my heart, that's my prayer for us this morning that whatever I say, most of all though, what God's word says would just like compel us into the presence of God that it would convict us to just be people who draw near to Him. So I'm going to I'm going to pray. Yeah, God, we need you. We need you way more than we even know. And I just ask Holy Spirit that you'd come, that you'd be in this room. I'm sure people are bringing all kinds of baggage into the space. I'm sure some of us have had some people in this room have probably had a really hard week, or maybe a hard few months, hard season of life. Whatever we bring into this space, God, we just want to lay it at your feet and we want to receive from you. And so God, I pray that your word this morning would do what it says it'll do in Hebrews chapter four, that it would pierce us to the division of soul and spirit. And I just pray that you'd speak to us. So come Holy Spirit and just please do that this morning. In Jesus name, amen. So I'm basically just going to walk through the text and give you some commentary as we go. And just the heads up, my message today is I'm making an appeal to the heart more than the head today, okay? So if you're like a logical, heady kind of person, I'm sorry. Hopefully this will help you tap into your heart a little bit more. So just the heads up. But like I said, we're going to be in Luke chapter 10. That's where we're starting and we'll end midway through Luke chapter 11. We're starting in verse 38. Okay. Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. We'll stop there for a minute. She sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. Man, we need to sit at the Lord's feet and listen to his teaching, right? Even that's what Bradley prayed a minute ago that we would have ears to just listen to him. And I read that and it resonates with me. I read that and I'm like, man, that is what I need in my life to just sit at the Lord's feet and listen to what he has to say. I need in my life what Mary is doing here. And I will just say that if we like really absorb that one idea, we really get a hold of what Mary was doing here. And we learn to be people that sit at his feet and listen to him. If that's what happens today, if you're really able to like grasp that in your mind and start to do it in your life, then like mission accomplished for me. That is what I want in this message. I want to compel us to be people that sit at the Lord's feet and listen to his teaching. That's really what I'm going to be talking about this whole message today. And so just getting a little bit into the practical side of this, this is customary. It's customary in this time to sit at the feet of a respected teacher. Rabbis would be oftentimes in public places and they teach and people would sit at their feet and they listen. It's a posture of humility. It's a posture of like you have something that I need. I'm just going to sit here and I'm just going to listen. And that phrase to sit at one's feet, it would come to me in being a disciple of one. Like to sit at someone's feet would mean that you're a disciple of that person. If you actually look back in Luke chapter 8, we talked about this a few weeks ago. When Jesus cast the demons out of the demoniac, Luke chapter 8 verse 35, it says, "Then the people, they went out to see what had happened and they came to Jesus and they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind and they were afraid." And you see it all through scripture, pops up a handful more times to sit at a person's feet. This was customary. It means you're a disciple of that person and you need what they have to say. And so we can't literally sit at Jesus' feet, right? Physical Jesus is not here. If I could sit at his feet, I would love to do that. But we can't. We can't sit at the feet of Jesus in a physical way, but we can in a way. We can do that in a way. Look at Matthew 28. It's the last verse in the book of Matthew. Jesus is about to ascend into heaven and he leaves as disciples with this. He says, "Behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age." He's saying, even though I'm going to leave, I'm still going to be with you through the presence of my Holy Spirit. That's what he's saying to his disciples. And so while we can't literally sit at the feet of Jesus, he's here in a way, right? He's here in spirit and we can still like posture ourselves in this way of sitting at his feet and listening to what he has to say. And so how do we do this? What does this mean for us now? How do we sit at his feet? On the most practical, basic level, it just means drawing near to him. As I use this phrase throughout the rest of the sermon, that's like the main thing I'm communicating when I say sitting at the Lord's feet. It's just coming near to him and taking all the distraction and the busyness of life and the stuff that consumes your attention and your mind and you just put it to the side, quick-looking at it for a minute and you just gaze at him. You just look at him. You draw near to him. I think it really practically looks like listening to his word, right? A lot of you guys are holding this book. It's huge. And it's the word of God. You have his word. And while Mary's listening to the actual words of Jesus, like you can listen to the words of Jesus through what you're holding in your hands right now. You can listen to the word of Jesus by paying attention to convictions from the Holy Spirit in your life. You know that little voice in your mind that's like, hey, stop doing that thing that you've been doing for such a long time. It's not righteous. It's not what God wants for you. That's conviction. That's from the Holy Spirit. You can listen to his word by paying attention to that voice or you feel that voice tell you, hey, start doing this thing that you haven't been doing. You felt this prompting to go and do for a long time. Maybe it's sharing your faith with someone. Maybe it's building spiritual disciplines in your life. That's listening to the voice of the Lord. Knowing his word, diving into his word, listening to the convictions from God in your day-to-day life. This is how we sit at his feet and listen. It's building a prayer life, which I'll talk more a lot about in a little bit. But this is what I mean when I say sitting at his feet. Mary's doing this in a physical way, but we can very much do this as Christians living two thousand years later. You can sit at his feet by just drawing near to him coming close to Jesus. Okay, let's pick it back up. Verse 40. So Mary was sitting at the Lord's feet and listening to his teaching. Verse 40, but Martha was distracted with much serving. Okay, so we'll stop there for a minute. This is also customary. Serving, right? Serving is a good thing. It's actually a biblical thing. Hospitality, especially in this time, was so important. In this culture, it was common. You bring people into your home, you have a responsibility to feed them and to care for them. Maybe even wash their feet. That's customary. That's a good thing. Not only that, it's biblical, right? Hebrews 13, too, says, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels." And so, Martha's showing hospitality to Jesus. That's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a biblical thing, but the problem isn't the serving. The problem is the distraction. It says Martha was distracted with much serving. And this distraction we'll see in a moment. It's connected to some other things, but we'll get to that in a minute. I want to just talk about distraction. The problem here is that Martha, she's letting a good thing distract her from the best thing, right? Like the son of God is in her living room. Her sister's sitting at his feet and she's distracted with serving. Serving is good, but she's missing something great. And man, letting your attention be consumed with things that might be good, but letting that force you to miss what's great and what's best, that sure sounds familiar. I look at my life and I'm like, "Man, I do that all the time." I let distractions. I let good things in life like blind me and cause me to miss the presence of God all the time. I'm so guilty of that. And I think a lot of us are. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. But part of why we get distracted from the most important things in life, like the presence of God, I think one of the reasons is because there's so many urgent matters in front of us all the time, right? And I want to talk for a minute about this relationship between what's urgent and what's important. Martha, for example, she's consumed in this moment by what's urgent. She has a guest in her home. This is a very important, highly esteemed guest, so she's just busy serving and getting everything ready. And she's distracted by something that's urgent and she's missing what's important, just sitting at the Lord's feet and listening to what he has to say. And I think we're so the same. And so a mentor of mine talked to me about this years ago, this relationship between what's urgent and important. And it like totally gave me this paradigm that I try to think with in my day-to-day life. And I want to give it to you. I have this little graph. It looks better. It looked terrible this morning, but Cassie fixed it for me a little bit. One axis, you got important. The other axis, you got urgent. And so like, you're exam tomorrow. Anybody got an exam tomorrow? A couple people. Wow, good for you guys. Maybe it'll be a chill Sunday. I saw a couple hands though. Exam tomorrow, okay. Urgent. It's tomorrow. You need to do a good job, like it's important. You steward your academics well, and you can't really put it off. If you put it off, you're not going to you're not going to do well on the exam. And so that's an urgent matter, but is it important? No, it's not important. And I'm not saying don't do a good job with it, but I am just telling you, your exam tomorrow is not actually that important. When you zoom out and you look at all of eternity and you consider your soul, I guarantee you, you will not stand before God when you die and be like crap, man, I should have studied for 30 more minutes for that physics exam that I got to see on instead of a B. That is not going to matter. Do a good job with it. Steward book, God's giving you your academics, your jobs steward that well, but I am telling you, it is not that important. Okay, marriage, married couples in the room. Give me a hand. Okay, shout out to the married couples in the room. Marriage. Important? Yes. So important, right? Like there's actually not a relationship with a human more important in your life if you are married. Not your relationship with your friends, your children, like your spouse is the most important human relationship that you have in your life. In fact, you can get into a covenant with God when you give your life to him and you can get into a covenant with your spouse when you're married. And so that is like such an important thing that we need to steward well. It is so important, but try to follow me. Does it feel urgent? Not usually because you're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to be married. And you're going to wake up the next day and you're still going to be married. You're going to wake up the next day and you're still going to be married. And hopefully five years from now you're going to wake up and you're still going to be married to your spouse. And so unfortunately what people do a lot of the time is they sacrifice what's urgent for what's important. How many people do you know their marriage was destroyed because they were addicted to their jobs or they didn't know how to prioritize their marriage and they let all this other stuff you serve it in importance in their life. I am sure we all know someone where that happened. And this is it's this mistake that we make as humans. We we sacrifice what's important for what's urgent. And I don't want you to do that. Now your relationship with Jesus. I would say most people do not feel like that's very urgent because you can get to it tomorrow. Man, I feel like I should get in the word. But now I just I'll just get to it tomorrow. I don't have time today. I'm busy. I got that exam. The physics exam. I'll just I'll just see to it tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and something else comes up and you push it down. You're distracted. Just like Martha distracted by things that might even be good. But they're not the best. They're not the most important. And but that's a flaw because are you going to wake up tomorrow? You don't actually know. You don't know. Are you are you going to live through the end of the day today? You think so. I hope so. But you don't know. Like you this could be your last day on the earth. You don't know. Life is a precious gift and it's not guaranteed. And so I will say your relationship with God is actually the most urgent and it is the most important. And so I just man my prayer is that God would protect us from this mistake of of being consumed by what's urgent and missing what's important. Don't let yourself be perpetually distracted from the things that are actually most important. And let's keep going. Martha was distracted. Half way through verse 40. Let's jump back into it. And she went up to him and she said, so Martha comes up to the Lord and she says, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. I think this is kind of funny. She's like offended. Don't you care? I'm serving. I'm doing all this work and my sister's not even helping. Don't you care? She's I sense a fence that rhymed in her words. I sense some offense. Sorry. Okay. She's offended. Verse 41. But the Lord answered her. Martha Martha. So saying her name twice means this is a rebuke. Jesus is about to rebuke her. Martha Martha. You are anxious and troubled about many things. Man, Martha Martha, you're anxious and you're troubled about many things. Don't you just like love how Jesus has a way with words? He can just pierce through everything straight into your heart with a sentence. And he does this here with Martha. I think this wrecked her life. And it hit me really hard this week as I was reading this. You're anxious and you're troubled about many things, Martha. But one thing is necessary. There is only one thing that's necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her. You're anxious. You're troubled about many things, Martha, but only one thing is necessary. Church, you're anxious and you're troubled about many things. But there is one thing that's necessary. John, you're anxious and you're troubled about all kind of stuff. But there's one thing that's necessary. I just want that to like land in your heart because I think God would say the same thing to some of us. You're anxious, you're troubled, you're stressed out about all kind of stuff. But hear what he's saying. There's one thing. There's only one thing that's necessary. And man, this anxiety, this trouble that's present in Martha's life, that's probably present in a lot of our lives, it distracts us from God's presence. It distracts us from sitting at his feet. And I love this here. Jesus, he sees straight through the serving right into her heart and her mind and her motives. And the problem isn't that he's serving. He's not rebuking her service. He's rebuking what's behind it, what's behind the distraction, the anxiety and the trouble about many things. And she's so anxious. This is the crazy thing. Martha is so anxious and so troubled that she's missing the one thing that's the remedy for all of her trouble and anxiety. Isn't that crazy? Like some of you probably relate to this. I do when you're in a space where you're troubled and you're anxious. There's all kind of stuff in your mind. And it's just totally distracting you from the actual thing that can be a remedy for your anxiety and your trouble. It's a tactic. It's such a tactic of the flesh and the enemy. Jesus is literally in her presence, in her anxiety and her trouble, are blinding her to the solution. And so I just, I want to talk about these two things. Anxiety and trouble, I'm not going to be able to be exhaustive in this. Is that the right way of saying that? Whatever. I just want to talk about these two things because I think there's a good chance. It's relevant for some of us in this room. Anxious. Martha, you're anxious. Friend, are you anxious? That word here, I don't even know how to pronounce it. It's a Greek word. Maryam now, I don't know. It's used in the New Testament. This is from Bible Hub. It's used in the New Testament to describe a state of anxiety or worry, often in the context of being overly concerned about the necessities of life or future uncertainties. Hear that. Future uncertainties. It can imply a sense of distraction or being pulled in different directions. And so I'll just say, there's always a reason to be anxious, right? It might not be a good reason, but there's always a reason to be anxious. There's always something to be anxious about. And you people who struggle with anxiety, you know this. Your life could be great. Like, you back up, you look at it, it's like everything is actually pretty good, but you know this. You know how to find something to be anxious about. That's what anxiety does. And unfortunately, anxiety, this isn't all of what it is, but a big part of what anxiety is, it's a gross misuse of our imagination. Our imagination is actually a gift from God. He made you with an imagination. And it's something he can sanctify and renew and speak to you through. Like God wants us to dream with him and to use our imagination a way that glorifies him. But what anxiety does is it takes our imagination and it uses it to create these hypothetical future outcomes that we don't might not even have any evidence for. And it just consumes us and distracts us mainly from the presence of God. That's a big part of what anxiety is. And so he says, Martha, you're anxious. And then he says, you're troubled. It's the Greek word throughbio. It means to disturb greatly, to terrify, to strike with panic, to be agitated in the mind. This is actually a really intense word. It'd be the word that you'd use to describe a riot. Okay. Acts 17.5 uses this word. The Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble. They form a mob and they set the city in an uproar and attack the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. That phrase set the city in an uproar. It's the word throughbio. It's like this word that implies chaos. It's a really intense word. Not only was Martha anxious. She's anxious to the point of total inner chaos. She's troubled. Are any of you in that spot, you're troubled on the inside. Your inner self is in chaos and in trouble. That's the state that Mary was in. Martha was in. And then the Son of God comes into her house, which was probably crazy. She probably freaked out. That's what happens when light meets darkness. That's just what happens. It freaks out. Because Jesus can see right through it. I think of the demoniac. I referenced that story earlier. Jesus steps on the beach and this dude just freaks out. He's so full of demons. He literally just runs to Jesus and falls on the ground and the demons start talking. It's just like darkness is meeting light and it does not know what to do. It's freaking out. I think of the woman at the well where Jesus sees right through all of her junk and he's like you haven't had, you're not married. You've had actually five husbands and the one you're with isn't your husband. And she's just probably like, oh my gosh, you're a prophet. And that's kind of what I see happening here. Martha has this trouble and this anxiety and it's consuming her and Jesus walks into her house and she's probably freaking out. But I love how confrontational Jesus is. He's so lovingly confrontational. He just comes right up to our brokenness, like our worst issues and just calls them out. That's what he does here with Martha. He sees her. He knows exactly what's going on inside of her and he just confronts her junk. And man, that's what he wants to do with us. And I think that if we are people that sit at his feet and that draw near to him, he will. That's what I've found in my life. That there's times where I'm able to get in God's presence. I'm able to push the distractions to the side. And one of the things that he loves to do is put his finger on the pain in your life, the problems, the addictions, the sin, the junk that you have. This is just what he does. He puts his finger on it and he presses and it hurts. But the awesome thing is he's confrontational like that because in it he heals. He has the ability to actually heal. And this is what he does with Martha. I am sure that this situation changed her life. I'm sure it did. And if we would learn to sit at his feet, we'd find that he'd start to uproot the messy parts of our life and he'd remedy them. And then I love what he says. He says one thing is necessary. You're anxious, you're troubled about all kind of stuff, but there's only one thing that's necessary. This echoes the Psalms to me, Psalms 73, 25, "Whom have I in heaven but you? There's nothing on earth I desire beside you." I think there's nothing else on this earth that I really need in desire beside you. You're the one thing, the only thing that I need. And that's true for Martha and Mary and it is true for you and me. I just want it to sink into our minds that there's only one thing that's necessary and it's drawing near to Jesus and sitting at his feet and listening to what he has to say. It's intimacy with him. Psalm 274, "One thing if I asked of the Lord and that will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and inquire in his temple." That sounds a sure lot. Sure, it sounds like a lot of sitting at his feet. That's what David was getting at when he says this. There's only one thing that I want and it's your presence. And I pray that I would be that kind of man more and more and that would be us as a people that we would really get that. There's just one thing that's necessary in our life and it's being in the presence of Jesus and we'd be amazed at the way like doing that, coming near to him and sitting at his feet. We'd be amazed at the way it transforms our situation. It just does. Like God's presence changes us. It changes the way that we think about things. And so I don't really, I don't mean this in a bad way but it's like I don't actually, I don't really care about what the distractions in your life are. There's tons of, there's unlimited distractions. For every single one of us, there is still only one thing that's necessary. And it's being men and women that get into the presence of God and know Him, enter in love with Him and have intimacy with Him. Okay, I got to move. More I could say about that but let's just, okay, chapter 11, we got a role. I also don't know what time, I didn't bring my phone up here so I'm going to move fast. Chapter 11, this is funny. So Jesus praises Mary for being in His presence and sitting at His feet. He rebukes Martha for being distracted and anxious and troubled about many things. And then what does Jesus go and do? Chapter 11 verse 1. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place. I love how He has this situation and then what is the first thing He goes and does? He goes and He sits at His Father's feet. He goes and gets in God's presence, His Father's presence. And He prays. And when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught His disciples." Now this might not seem like anything interesting but this like really spoke to me this week because, okay, these disciples, they walked with Jesus for three years. They watched Him do so many things. They watched Him raise people from the dead. They watched Him cast out demons. They watched Him heal the sick. They watched Him preach with authority unlike anything they'd ever heard before. But this is the only time that I could find where they observe Him doing something. And then they're like, "Hey, whatever we just saw you do, teach us how to do that." It's the only time I can see that. Where they're like, "Teach me how to do what we just saw you do." And what that communicates to me that seeing Jesus pray and sit at His Father's feet and be in His Father's presence, seeing Him do that must have been a compelling thing, right? Because they saw all kind of compelling things. And no other time do they look at that and they're like, "Hey, teach us how to do that, but he's praying." And they say, "Teach us how to pray." We want to know how to do what you're doing. It provoked something in them. And that's why they asked Him to teach Him, to teach Him how to pray, the same way John taught His disciples. And as I was thinking about that, it's convicting to me, because I'm so casual about prayer sometimes. Which, hear me, it's good to just be relational with God. It's amazing that we can speak to Him as we speak to a friend. But I think at the same time, it's really healthy for us to be reminded of what in the world we're actually doing when we pray. I think sometimes I am way too casual. And I take God for granted, and I lose sight of the fact that when I'm coming to Him in prayer, I am in the presence of a holy and powerful God, a God who has wrath for sin, a God who spoke everything into existence, a God who breathed life into man. Like, I can talk to Him. That is insane. That's mind-blowing. And I'm sure Jesus like knew this, because He was one with the Father completely. And I'm sure that His understanding of who God was manifested in the way that He prayed. And it was provoked the people that saw it happen. Like, I think of Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, weeping. And He literally is sweating blood, praying to the Father. Jesus' prayer life was probably absolutely wild. And that just convicts me, because I think I'm far too casual sometimes. In the way that I approach this holy, all-powerful God, we need to understand what we're doing when we come into His presence and pray. So they say, "Teach us how to pray." Verse two, He said to them, "When you pray, say." And so what He gives them is the our Father. And Luke's version is a little bit different than Matthew's version. Matthew gives some more detail. I'm going to have to fly through this. Churches will preach like a whole sermon series on each line of this prayer. We can't do that. I'm just going to have to breeze through them. I will say, though, Jesus, what He's not doing, He's not giving them a script, okay? The Lord's prayer is not a script, it's an outline. And it's an outline that He gives us so that we can follow and like, pray the way that He prayed. And yeah, so we're just going to walk through each line of this outline for prayer that Jesus gave His disciples. So He starts out this way, "Father, hallowed be your name, hallowed is another word for holy. Father, holy be your name." Matthew says, "Our Father who's in heaven, hallowed be your name." Luke just says, "Father, hallowed, holy be your name." And I'll just say this, if your prayer life is just exclusively requests from you to God, it's just you asking for stuff and that's it. That's not bad. Like, later in the prayer, Jesus literally teaches us the disciples to ask God for things. It's good and appropriate to ask God for things. But if that is all your prayer life is, I will tell you, you're missing out big time. You are really missing out because the greatest treasure in prayer is not just when you ask God for something and get it. That is not the greatest treasure in prayer. The greatest treasure in prayer is just God Himself. And when you start to like not just seek His hand for what He can give you, but you start to seek His face, that's the good stuff. That is the best. That is the treasure. And so Jesus teaches us the disciples to start their prayer by acknowledging who God is. You're holy. God, you're holy. And that doesn't mean you stop there and move on. It means when you approach God, acknowledge His character and His nature and His, like, God, your beauty, your beautiful, your powerful, your holy, like, you've been so good to me. And I don't understand all of who you are, but what I know is you're better than anything else in this life. Like, that's what he's, get carried away, right? Get carried away with the character of God. That's how Jesus is saying to start your prayer by acknowledging who God is. And then He says, your kingdom come. Man, this is like a confession of God, I don't want what I want. I want what you want. Like, I want your kingdom to invade my life and my situation. I want your will on the earth. Matthew throws that in there. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is like an acknowledgement that God's ways and God's will is way better than ours. And so, man, like, we should desperately long for His kingdom to come into the earth and to come into our lives and our families and our friend groups and our situations and our future. And like, we need His kingdom in our life. That's what Jesus is getting at. Is that kingdom's eternal? This one is not. This one is just going to be gone soon. So, let's long for His kingdom. And then, verse 3, give us each day our daily bread. This is like the first part of the prayer that's saying, God, give me something that I need, like for me, right? And it's good. We need to ask God for things. To me, this echoes the manna and the wilderness. When I read this, I think of Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and something God did was give them daily bread, right? He gave them this thing called manna. It was like this supernatural bread like substance that had come down and it'd be there for the day. And if they took, it was meant to feed them for that day. And if they took extra, it would get rotten for the next day. And what God was like really trying to do in His people there was teach them to trust in His provision. I will give you what you need. And He says the same to us. So, what do you need? Ask Him. Bring your needs to God. Tell them what you need. It's an invitation to do that. And then He says, forgive us our sins. Man, a lot I could say about this. In our prayer life, we should never forget or graduate from our desperate need for God's forgiveness, okay? God's forgiveness is literally our only hope at eternal life. If we don't have His forgiveness, we're screwed. We desperately, completely are in a place of need for His forgiveness. And so, this is saying like acknowledge that in your prayer that we need His forgiveness. But not only that, like what do we need His forgiveness for? It's an invitation to search your heart and to be real with yourself and look in the mirror. Where am I falling short? Like, where am I continuing to just wander into sin? Maybe it's sexual sin in your life. Maybe it's gossip or drama that you're giving into with people and like, I don't know. I don't know what it is. But what I do know is we need to be real with ourselves and be real with God and bring our sin to Him because He wants to forgive us. But if we hold onto it and we protect it and we grow attached to our sin, it's not good. So Father, forgive us of our sin. And then He says, for we ourselves forgive everyone and dead it to us. It's this idea of like if God offers us forgiveness, who are we to withhold it? We have no right at unforgiveness or bitterness. That is a right that when you sign up to follow Jesus, you are forfeiting your right to be offended or bitter or hold on to unforgiveness. You don't have a right to because you've been forgiven from something far greater than anyone has ever done to you. And so I think this is an invitation to pray about that and invite God's help in searching our own heart and where do I need to forgive people in my life? Where do I need to deal with bitterness and resentment? And then He closes by saying, and lead us not into temptation. Matthew adds, deliver us from evil. Okay, this is not saying like God, please don't tempt me. James 1 tells us that God doesn't tempt anyone but that we're tempted by our own desires and desire gives birth to sin. I don't remember the verse. God doesn't tempt us, but our desires are so shaped and affected by the broken fallen sinful world that we live in. And this world is influenced by the evil one. And so we're in a war, right? We're in this conflict between God's kingdom that we've just prayed and asked to come in this world that we live in. And this world has influenced us way more than we would probably like to admit. And it's like this part of the prayer, I just see it as like an invitation to work that out with God. Work out the flesh struggles and the temptations in the sin in your life with God. God, deliver, lead me not into temptation. Help me conquer temptation in my life. Okay, I wish I could spend way more time with that, but really like what I want to get at is more of the same stuff I was talking about in the beginning. Like I want us to be a people that build a strong life of prayer. That is a massive part of what it means to sit at Jesus' feet is building a prayer life. This is how we communicate with him and talk to him. I want us to build a life of prayer. And I actually, I think of times in my life where I was doing that. Like I think of the end of my college career where a group of us, we go to the anchor in the basement and we pray like four or five days a week from like seven to nine. And that was crazy in the morning, by the way. I look back at that time and it was like, man, I think of it with such fondness. And it was so rich. I felt like I was building something in that time. And I was, I was building history with my father. And I was learning in that season to run to him as my refuge. So I'm 161. David says, in you, I take refuge. Like I was building this refuge relationship with God where I was learning to depend on him, right? I want us to be people that build something with our prayer life. It's just this casual to do. It's so much more than a casual to do. It's something worth building. Man, and it's just like, it's crazy how we build so many other things that just don't matter. And we like, we run to other things as our refuge that are just like pitiful and not helpful and will never give us rest. And we miss this reality that like God, he wants to give himself to us in prayer, right? I saw this statistic. This is like crazy. 77% of people in our age range would say when nothing's occupying my attention, I reach for my phone. That's crazy. I'm part of that 77%. When nothing's occupying my attention, I reach for my phone. It's like, imagine if what we could say is when nothing's occupying my attention, I reach for Jesus. That'd be a way better thing to build. That's a way better refuge to run to. I'm not condemning your phone. But like, man, we have so many vices and worldly things that we do to fight and scrap for rest. And it just doesn't work. We have so many go-tos. Some good, some bad. But like, man, those things are not the one thing that's necessary. They're not going to compare to sitting at the feet of Jesus. What if God's presence was our vice? What if like a prayer life was the thing that we would run to rather than whatever the heck else? I was talking to a texting a friend last night. And he was like really struggling with some stuff. And it's anxiety and different things. And he texted me, I don't know if it was last night or this morning. He was like two hours. It was really difficult. And then I just got on my knees, had my bed, and started praying. And it just, it all went away. And it's like, yes, that's what I'm talking about, guys. There's a remedy to the trouble and the anxiety. His presence is the one thing that's necessary. Okay. Then Jesus expounds on prayer. And I'm going to run through this super fast. And he gives this little lesson. This is like scene three. Okay. Verse five. I'm like actively losing my voice as I'm up here talking. Verse five. He said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and stay friend? Let me three loves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to to sep of for him. He'll answer him from within. Do not bother me. The door is not shut. 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 him anything because he's his friend. Yet because of his impudence, pause, some translations say persistence, others say boldness. Yet because of his impudence, his persistence, his boldness, the friend will rise up and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you ask and it'll be given to you seek and you'll find knock and it'll be open to you for everyone who asks receives the one who seeks finds and the one to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Okay. Here Jesus is inviting us to be persistent in our prayer life and there's a lot of other stuff going on but I'll just talk about that. He's inviting us to be persistent, impudent, bold in our prayer life. Bear with me. He's inviting us to bother God. Okay. God can't be bothered. But if he was an ordinary person, Jesus is inviting us to talk to him in a way that would bother an ordinary person just coming like the middle of the night like I go to Grant's house 3 a.m. and start throwing rocks at his window and I'm like grant, give me some bread. That would be annoying. That would be very annoying and Grant's great. He'd probably give me some food but like that'd be annoying. Jesus is saying be persistent, be impudent, be bold in the way that you pray. Don't just pray for something to happen. You a lot of you have heard this acronym Conor Russnack doesn't live anywhere yet a shirt had this acronym push. I love it. Pray until something happens. I think there's a big difference. I think we're constantly met with like needs and things that we should pray for and we're just like we just kind of like throw it up like a Hail Mary. God please just help my friend who doesn't know you and is struggling with you know their relationship and then we just go on with our life and it's like ah cool whatever. It's like no. Be persistent in the way that we pray. You want your family member to meet Jesus. Don't just pray for that to happen. Pray until it happens. Like contend in prayer. I love that word contend. Like a big football guy. The season's about to start. The analysts are like who are the contenders? Who are the people that are going to stick with it? Like they're going to be there week 18 when the season's ending fighting for a playoff spot. Be like that in the way that you pray. Don't just pray and wish and that's it. Contend in prayer for the things that you want to see God do even if they're radical. Jesus is literally inviting us to pray with persistence and boldness. First Thessalonians 517 it says pray without ceasing man. Father God. And I think this persistent prayer it's like why? Why? Why does that matter? Why won't God just give us what we ask for on the first trial? And maybe you will. This isn't a formula but I think that he would love to see us come before him and like contend for things and fight for things. It shows that like we need him and I think it builds faith. When you step into the place of prayer you have a really hard situation and you're just like you're going after it. Maybe you're even fast. You set aside food for a couple days. God, I need you to move. He loves to see that kind of faith in us. He loves to see persistence in the way that we pray. Okay. Let's wrap this up. Verse 11 and then he gives this really cool picture. What father and this is what we're ending with? 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 we'll 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? How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So we haven't talked much about the Holy Spirit but he's a really important element of my message today because who is the Holy Spirit? He is your experience with God in this life. God the Father is in heaven and Jesus is at his right hand. You can't literally sit at Jesus' feet but Matthew 28 I'll be with you. How? It's through the Holy Spirit. God is here in your life and in this room through the Holy Spirit. This is our experience with God. He's not this mystical ambiguous force. He's the presence of God in your life and he's our experience of God. And so I see in this scripture God wants if wicked people can still give good things to their children. How much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? God wants to give us the Holy Spirit. He wants us to even be persistent in the way that we ask him for his Spirit and I want to contrast this with Matthew chapter 7. It's like the same exact scripture but there's one little difference. It says few who are evil in Matthew 7 know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your father give good things to those who ask? So you see the difference. Matthew it says the Father will give good things to those who ask. Luke it says he'll give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. So which one is it? Does he give us good things? Does he give us the Holy Spirit? The answer is yes like both and the catch and the really cool thing is we need I think this is meant to show us the best gift we can get in this life is the Holy Spirit. It's God's presence with us through the Holy Spirit. That is the greatest prayer that God can answer for us is giving us Himself. We can actually as a Christian when we decide to follow Jesus we actually can have the presence of God dwell within us. That should shatter our brains. This is the best gift that any of us can have and what it communicates is this idea that like God wants to be with us and worship team you can come up here. God wants to be with us. That's why he did this. That's why he offers us the Holy Spirit because he wants to be with us. He wants us to sit at his feet. Jesus loved what Mary was doing and he loves the idea of you sitting at his feet, getting in his presence, acknowledging that he's the one thing that's necessary, pushing to the side all of the things that are urgent and prioritizing what's most important, which is his presence in your life. He wants that. He actually wants to be close to you. Do you know that? Like God's not disgusted by you. He's not like get your stuff together and then come to me. Like he wants to be close to you. As I think about that idea and I think about sitting at his feet and being able to build a prayer life and be intimate with God, I think of a scripture in Hebrews 4.16. It says let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. Let us with confidence draw near the throne of grace. Those words shouldn't be able to go together. You shouldn't be able to approach God's throne with confidence and I shouldn't either because he's perfect and I'm not. We should not be able to draw near to his throne with confidence. Those words should not go together. But the beautiful thing is that he did something so that we could. You are not allowed to draw near his throne with confidence because of anything that you've done. You are not worthy of that. But he did something to make that possible. And I don't know if you know this. I heard this once and it wrecked me. Jesus referred to God as Father every single time in the gospel. That was the word that he used to communicate with God was Father. I heard someone say once, "Father is the Christian name for God." That's the name Jesus talked to God with. Father. Father. Father. Father. It's this intimate relationship but there's one time he didn't call him Father. And it was when he was hanging on the cross and he said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And it's like the answer is because of you and me. We are why the Father forsook the sign. Like that's why we can draw near his throne with confidence because God punished Jesus for our sin. The answer to Jesus' question hanging on the cross the one time he was like, "God, why are you forsaking me?" And the answer is because of us. That should just wreck us like God forsook God the Father, forsook the Son, crushed the Son, poured out his wrath on the Son for us to pay for our sin. And we're going to do communion and like as you do communion and you go back and you take the bread, just be reminded of this reality that like Jesus opened up a way for us to draw near the throne with confidence by letting his body be totally crushed for me. His body was destroyed for me to pay for my sin and his blood, all of his blood was spilled. He suffered for you and me. That's why we can approach his throne with confidence. And I'm just like, as I reflect on that, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's, yeah, there's only one thing that's necessary and it's sitting at your feet Jesus." So I'm going to pray for us. God, would we not sacrifice what's important for what's urgent? And we just repent for doing that. We all do it. We all take you for granted all the time. And we shouldn't be able to draw near to you the way that we can, but it's just your, it's purely your love that's made that possible. You got to just pray for relationship in this room that we would be people that I just love you and sit at your feet and adore you with like every day of our life. You're the treasure to us. You're the one thing that's necessary. And so God, I don't know what the action step is for people in this room, but you do. And I'm sure you're convicting people right now. I'm sure you're speaking. And if you're not, I pray that you would. I pray that you just show us what we need to do. The ways that we've been neglecting, drawing near to you and sitting at your feet, like show us what we need to wake up tomorrow and do. And God, I pray even just as we worship you, you draw us and as we take communion, we would just be aware of you. We look at you and see your beauty and see who you really are. Yeah, Jesus, we just, we love you and we thank you for being so good to us. Jesus, thank you.