Luke 11:1-4 — Praying Like Disciples

This sermon is part one of a short series on prayer out of Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

It is entitled Praying Like Disciples and was delivered to Ecclesia Churches on Sunday,

April 19, 2026.

One thing that we have constantly run into as a church through every book of the Bible

that we have been through is our need for God to work in and through us.

When we taught through Acts, we saw how the church was empowered not only for the work of spreading the gospel, but also to have the power of the gospel applied and at work in them.

We saw miraculous things take place over the decades that Acts covers, including the conversion of the apostle Paul.

We went through Galatians and heard Paul call the church to be a people who were set apart

and marked by the cross to invite the work of the Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit in them.

And then he went through Mark and we saw Jesus himself living a life that flowed from the will

of God, submitting himself in obedience to God's will all the way to the cross.

And finally, we finished Philippians and were encouraged to trust in the power of God

and respond with obedience. So trust and respond, trust and respond. And in the midst of that,

any honest Christian will tell you that there is some struggle or some wrestling of the will

that is involved with the sinful flesh that would orient our lives around ourselves instead of Jesus

and his kingdom, struggling with a tendency to want control instead of submitting to the will

and provision of God, and struggling with a prideful desire to hold on to not only our sin,

but the weight of its consequences in us and others. And all of that can lead to an enormous

sense of overwhelm and anxiety, even for the believer. A little while ago, my youngest son

was given the task of cleaning his room on his own as a consequence, actually, for some poor

life choices, we'll say, and a case of a bad attitude. I went in about 10 minutes later to

find him sitting on the floor with tears in his eyes saying, I can't do it. It's too much.

The task was so big to him and so overwhelming that he was paralyzed and didn't even know where

to start. It was an overwhelm, I think not so different from the Christian facing the struggle

of living in a messy world with weak flesh and a heart that needs to be transformed.

And it is this overwhelm that leads Paul to prescribe a remedy for that in Philippians 4,

Philippians 4:6

verse 6, saying,

It is by prayer that Paul says we are to deal with this sense of overwhelm.

If you remember back to the life of Jesus in Mark, what do you find him setting an example for us

doing? Prayer. Where does he go when he's overwhelmed to the max in the Garden of Gethsemane?

He goes to prayer. If you go back to Acts, you know what you find Christians and the church doing

as a whole an awful lot? Praying. Praying on their own. Praying together. What does Paul say he is

doing in most of his letters to the church. He's praying for them. So this is why we are taking

some time this week and next week, actually, to talk about prayer. And we'll be doing that from

a passage in Luke. We'll be looking this week at Luke 11, verses 1 through 4. And then next week,

Luke 11:1–4

we'll look at a couple more verses that follow. And we'll try to answer the questions of why we pray

and how we pray, which are the questions that Jesus' disciples actually wanted to know,

and we need to know as disciples of Jesus today. We want to know how are we supposed to pray

like disciples of Jesus. So let's read these first four verses of Luke chapter 11.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

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.

And 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 forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

And lead us not into temptation.

There are two places where what's known commonly as the Lord's Prayer is given in Scripture.

The first is in Matthew 6, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount.

That one is a little longer, but keeps the main points and the form of the prayer the same.

Jesus probably taught on prayer multiple times throughout his ministry.

And the reason that we are looking at Luke's account of this is probably because this one came first

and was directed at Jesus' disciples instead of generally at the crowds.

It also includes a little additional teaching on the character of this God who we address

in prayer, and we'll look at those verses next week.

Our aim today is to form our thoughts on prayer from the words of Jesus and hopefully learn

to pray more often and pray more like Jesus.

Since we haven't been reading Luke, though we have read his writing before because Acts was written by Luke,

let me give you a little bit of context for how we got to this conversation in Luke with the disciples.

So Luke is kind of the opposite of Mark in that he wants to give his reader a thorough documentation of everything that they have heard told to them as it pertains to Jesus.

So he takes like three chapters just to get through the birth narratives.

He takes another three chapters just to get like finished calling the disciples.

And while he recounts the parables and the healings of Jesus, it's really not until around

chapter nine that Luke begins to record Jesus instructing his disciples on what it means

to be his disciple.

What does it look like to be a disciple of Jesus?

And so this passage on prayer in chapter 11, the very beginning of chapter 11,

happens very near the beginning of about a 10-chapter section in the middle of Luke

in which Jesus teaches about discipleship.

And the reason that this is addressed early on is because prayer is foundational

to being a disciple of Jesus.

Jesus had set the example for them by frequently being in prayer,

oftentimes going off on his own just to pray.

And in this passage, he had just come back from doing this when his disciples asked him,

hey, teach us to pray.

And it's interesting that they include, like John, talking about John the Baptist, taught

his disciples.

So they knew that John was a prophet, and they likely believed that there was some power

in the teaching that they were receiving on prayer, that John's disciples were receiving.

And they also knew that Jesus was greater than John because John himself had said so.

And so they thought, maybe we'll get some kind of special anointing by the prayers that

Jesus might teach us.

So as always, they brought some cultural expectations into prayer, just as we do.

So to give some context here, in the ancient world, prayer was often thought of as a kind

of formula or a spell almost, as if saying the right words might give them some sort of power.

Among the Gentiles, people like the Romans, the Greeks, it was thought that if they could use

enough impressive words, they might impress their gods enough to give them what they asked for.

And it's interesting that they really loved speeches and oration and arguments, and so they

assumed, because their gods were made in their image instead of the other way around, they assumed

that their gods were also impressed by these things. So that colored the character of their

prayer. Among the Jews, particularly the religious leadership, they thought that if they could make

enough show out of their prayers, they might impress the people. So they would stand on the

street corners, praying loudly, fasting with a great show of discomfort, because their aim was

to impress God. Actually, it was to impress people with their kind of self-made righteousness.

Among Americans in 2026, if we fast forward 2,000 years, we have some oddly similar ideas.

Take the Catholic priest, for example, who might prescribe 10 Our Fathers for a confessed sin,

as if repeating the very prayer that we're looking at today will somehow earn them into

the good graces of God. This is not a biblical concept for sure, but it is a common idea.

What about the belief that if we might sound more spiritual and therefore have more power in our

prayer, if we use the name of Jesus or we address God repeatedly in our prayers? You've probably

heard this without realizing it. If you spoke to me, for example, the way that some people feel

you're supposed to pray, it might sound like this. Oh, Dan, I'm so glad that I can come to you,

Dan, and just, Dan, speak with you, Dan, and just, Dan, have a conversation with you, Dan.

It sounds utterly ridiculous, but I grew up being taught by many examples that our prayer

should somehow sound different than a conversation. And probably the greatest misunderstanding

about prayer is that we can treat God like a spiritual genie who we can thank for the food

and ask for what we want and then kind of put him away in a lamp next to our Bible until we need him

again. And so this passage is very helpful to us today because as it turns out, we have a lot of

misconceptions about prayer. And if we want to learn to pray like disciples who are seeking

relationship with God and are ultimately seeking to be transformed to be more like Jesus, we need to

learn how to pray. Because the way that Jesus tells us to pray is not a formula to say

mindlessly or to memorize. It is a pattern or a structure that actually changes the way that we

pray. So let's look at this line by line, one line at a time. Jesus begins his prayer by saying,

Father, hallowed be your name. To Jesus' disciples, beginning with Father would have been significant.

for two reasons, actually. The first is that the title Father was a recognition, particularly in

that culture, of God being the authority. The Father was recognized as the absolutely unchallenged

authority in the household. And that authority certainly applies to God. He is the Creator. He is

Yahweh, God. And we specifically say, hallowed or holy is what that means. Holy is your name.

All throughout the Old Testament, in 1 Chronicles and Psalms and multiple other places, we are

told, or Israel was told, to glory in and give thanks to and trust in His holy name.

So, that was important to recognize that.

But second, and really most surprising to them probably, was the relationship implied

by calling God our Father.

Because it requires that we would be considered children, doesn't it?

So when we pray, we begin by recognizing that God is absolutely all-powerful,

and he is holy, which means he's set apart.

He is above all things.

And we also come to him as a loving father, a God who loves us and desires relationship with us.

That is the posture that we come before God with in prayer.

That's the place we start out from.

Then let's look at line two.

Your kingdom come.

For the disciple of Jesus, we have declared not only that Jesus is king,

but also that we are now members of his kingdom.

And what we want the most or should want the most is to see his kingdom come completely.

Our lives are no longer to be consumed with building our own kingdom, our own fame, our fortune for our own sake.

Instead, disciples of Jesus long to see the kingdom of heaven advancing and taking ground.

we see this often painful reality that while Jesus inaugurated or began the coming of the kingdom,

there is still a day coming in which he will come again and complete what he has begun.

So we are living in the midst of a kingdom that I may have referred to in the past as the already

but not yet, that tension in between. A kingdom that is already coming but has not yet come to

completion. The prophet in the Old Testament, Zechariah, this is in Zechariah 14.9,

says this about this coming day. He says, the Lord will be king over all the earth.

On that day, the Lord will be one and his name one. We want to see that kingdom advance toward

that day, the gospel to go forth to all people. The will of God to be done in and through us

is people. And this is the work that we are called to participate in. We don't sit idle just waiting

for Jesus to come. We are not just waiting to fly away. We are an active part of the kingdom

advancement that is happening on earth, or at least we are called to be an active part.

What do you notice in this structure for prayer that hasn't come up yet?

Us, actually.

For disciples of Jesus, prayer is really God-centered from the outset.

We say, Father, your name is holy.

You are the Almighty, and we worship you.

We want to see your kingdom come more than anything else, and we want to be a people

who are all about that work, because we want you more than anything.

So prayer starts from the position of recognizing who God is, that we desire him the most.

And from that place, we are better equipped to bring our needs before God.

Verse 3 starts, give us each day our daily bread.

Even today in the Middle East, bread is a staple part of the diet, and it is baked fresh every

single day. There are vendors in the streets selling it. There's a bakery that serves every

neighborhood where you will go to get your flatbread. A flatbread that is called laffa

is delicious. And in the first century, you would have likely baked your own bread every day or

purchased it from a baker if you were in a big metropolitan area like Jerusalem. But it was baked

daily, and only enough was made or purchased for the members of the household, so it really was the

daily bread. Jesus is telling the disciples to ask for what they need for that day. If you think back

to during their time in the desert, God provided manna or a kind of like a wafer bread for them to

eat, but only enough for one day at a time, except the day before the Sabbath. That's detailed in

Exodus 16, when you would have two days so that you could actually rest on the Sabbath.

A little later in Luke, Jesus will tell them that God knows what they need and not to worry about

tomorrow, tomorrow has enough troubles of its own. Because God wants his children to learn to trust

him and know that God is the one who will ultimately provide for them. So we are invited

to bring our needs to God, but this is very different from a kind of give me what I want

and make things go my way request.

It's a grateful recognition that God is providing what we need for each day and that we trust

him.

And actually, the reason that we're asking for our daily needs to be supplied is so that

we can do the will of God, see points one and two.

When we connect it to those first two lines, what we're really saying is, give us what

today to do your will. And the biggest barrier to us doing that isn't usually physical at all.

It's spiritual. So the next thing that Jesus has us address in verse 4 is,

and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

Because how are we to be a part of the coming kingdom if we are separated from the king

by our sin. And how are we to be forgiven for our sin against a holy God if we refuse to forgive

those who have sinned against us? You'll notice that there are two different words used here.

We ask God to forgive our sins with the expectation that we forgive others indebted to us. Sins and

indebted. There's a reason for that. The word for sins means missing the mark or breaking God's law.

People who have no inheritance in the kingdom of heaven because they are law breakers against the

Most High. Without the forgiveness of God through Christ, we have no part at all in the kingdom of

heaven. What we have been forgiven through Christ is great. We have been forgiven much.

The word for indebted, though, means simply some money owed. So Jesus tells this parable in

Matthew 18 about a servant who was forgiven an enormous debt and then failed to forgive a

comparatively small amount that was owed by a fellow servant. And so do you see how even here

where we're asking for forgiveness, our perspective is being shifted? We're forced to recognize that

in this life, we will still struggle with sin and we will need to ask for forgiveness.

And that forgiving others is so important that Jesus even says,

our forgiveness depends on it in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Forgiveness is an ongoing need for the disciple of Jesus.

And giving out forgiveness is an ongoing requirement for those who have been forgiven.

Finally, Jesus tells them to pray,

lead us not into temptation.

While Jesus was tempted, he never sinned and he never needed to ask for forgiveness.

But what makes this last line challenging is what it seems to imply.

The question that it poses, does God lead us into temptation?

We want to be very careful with our words here so that we're speaking accurately about what God does and does not do.

First, we can say very clearly that God does not tempt.

James 1.13 says,

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

God is not rooting against us, hoping that we fail, but he does allow us to be tested so that we will turn to him.

And we do need help resisting temptation because we are prone to wander and fail in our flesh

alone.

We need the work of the Holy Spirit to give us the strength to resist temptation and turn

to Christ.

Jude verse 24 says,

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence

of his glory with great joy.

Talking about Jesus, talking about the work of the Spirit who is able to keep us from stumbling,

that is what we are asking for. So when we ask God not to lead us into temptation,

we are asking him to lead us away from situations in which we might stumble and give us strength to

hold tightly to him. We are asking him to lead us on the narrow way with Christ, to give us

strength to endure in our faith until the end. The way that Jesus teaches us to pray is not so

much a prayer to memorize, but instead it's a structure that helps correct our self-centered

posture. For disciples of Jesus, prayer is not a kind of request line that we call for service,

but it's a conversation with our Heavenly Father in which we invite Him to work in us.

God is not a spiritual Santa Claus or a genie who will give us all our earthly desires. Instead,

He actually wants to change our desires entirely so that we desire Him and that He gives us Himself.

And asking forgiveness isn't a cheap get-out-of-jail-free card to use repeatedly. It's

a recognition of the cost of our forgiveness in Christ, and that we would continue to not only

turn to Christ for that costly forgiveness, but also a reminder to forgive others in light of that.

Honestly, when we begin to pray like Jesus instructed, instead of changed circumstances,

we often end up being changed people, which is what we should want more than anything.

I had planned to originally go on to verses 5 through 13, but we're actually going to spend one more week talking about those verses next week instead.

So feel free to read ahead, but in those verses, Jesus talks about what a life of prayer should look like and what the God is like who we pray to.

That he is better than a friend, that he's even better than an earthly father, even a good one.

This week, I want us to do something kind of unique as we prepare for Midweek House Church.

I want you to spend some time in prayer, but structured around the Lord's Prayer.

And we'll talk about that experience in house churches.

Because I believe that when we pray the way Jesus instructed us to,

the result is the transformation of the believer into the image of Christ.

And that is something that we need more than anything else that we could possibly ask for.