The Son of Man’s Journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:27)

Jesus Teaching on Prayer (1-4)

Jesus taught on prayer all through His ministry, and Luke described some of this teaching as Jesus approached Jerusalem and His time of suffering.

One of the newer disciples, a guy who had been following John the Baptist, was watching Jesus pray and noticed it was different from how he had been taught. Watching Jesus, he asked Him to teach him also (1). Jesus went back to the prayer He encouraged His followers to recite when they prayed, and His prayer covered five major subjects:

• Worship Yahweh as the ultimate Center of life.

• Seek God's will as the ultimate purpose of life.

• Trust God as the ultimate Provider of all things.

• Embrace God as the ultimate Forgiver of those who forgive.

• Follow God as the ultimate Victory over temptation and evil (2-4).

After Jesus gave them the foundational prayer, He then taught them how the heart of prayer worked by sharing two parables with them.

The Parable of the Persistent Friend (5-10)

Prayer is friendship with God. In the Parable of the Persistent Friend, God is seen as a Friend with children, who has tucked His family in bed for a good night's sleep. By tucked in, Jesus was picturing a room with the whole family on the floor sleeping together. If the Father arose, the whole family would be awakened. 

The friend in the street had company arrive, and Eastern hospitality demanded he feed the company who had landed on his doorstep at midnight. The friend in the street had a real problem, for he had room for his guests to sleep, but he had no food ready to feed them. The friend in the street had an idea—he would go to his Friend's house, boldly wake up his Friend’s whole family, and ask for three loaves (5-6).

In many ways, God was not like the Friend asleep for He does not sleep nor is He put off by our requests, but in this picture of prayer, Jesus was teaching that persistence is required, and in this way, the metaphor fit. The boldness of the friend in the street awakened the Friend. The sleeping Friend, due to His friend's bold persistence to believe in his Friend, would wake up, get up, and provide the food.

Jesus then had the sleeping Friend give reasons why he could not awaken to the friend-in-the-street's request. The sleeping Friend had other people's needs to consider (His sleeping children), who would be disturbed if he got up and met the friend's request. Jesus then implied that even though our needs will disrupt others’ needs, the Father will arise and sort it all out, and our persistence in prayer will move God's world to action (7-10).

Jesus was not talking about formal, rote, heartless prayer, but the kind of conversation between two friends where they contend with the very power of darkness (the night) until the Father arises and gives to the friend in the street what is needed. 

The Parable of the Good Father (11-13) 

Jesus then explained the kind of determination necessary for prayer to reach the heart of a Friend, the kind that not only sees the need but sees the kind of heart necessary to awaken Heaven to the need.

A persistent person praying needs bread for others and will:

• ask (boldly spell out one's request)

• seek (focus to pursue God alone)

• knock (pray with expectation for the door of provision to open)

This kind of praying does not care if all of Heaven is awakened or if the whole neighborhood hears. The friend in the street is not seeking bread for himself but for another and is confident the Friend asleep will awaken and provide (11-13).

The promise to those who treat God like a Friend and persist in the Lord's prayer is universal: everyone who is so persistent will receive.

Jesus might have been thinking back to the Israelites in the wilderness who needed food and complained to God in a perverted sort of prayer. Jesus was teaching prayer to God as a loving Friend and Father who didn’t need their complaints but welcomed their persistent, focused prayer with results. In the new exodus, Jesus was teaching His disciples to pray, knowing the Father would provide. If we seek God as the ultimate Provider, then God will provide: first, the Holy Spirit to meet the needs of those who pray with bold persistence and, then, the bread necessary to satisfy the world. 

Jesus and Beelzebul (14-28)

Jesus was successfully casting out a demon from a mute man, healing him and giving him his speech back, when controversy stirred up (14). While some of the people were amazed, others sought to explain how Jesus was casting out demons, so they suggested among themselves that Jesus was in league with Beelzebul. This was a way to mock Jesus by invoking the name Beelzebul. Beelzebul would have meant the “lord of heaven” or “lord of Baal,” but in Jesus' day, the name was redefined (Beelzebub) to mean “lord of the flies” or the “lord of the manure pile.” They were asserting that Jesus was doing His casting-out thing because He had a demon Himself (15). Others did not go that far but demanded other signs from Heaven to prove His casting-out was by the power of Yahweh (16).

Jesus, discerning what they were discussing, asserted the impossibility of satan sending out demons to battle against each other. If satan were so foolish, the battle would have ended a long time ago. The kingdoms of this world would have fallen into ruin, with satan having driven himself out of the world (17-18). Jesus then went on to explain that if He were to cast out demons, having a demon, then those Jewish sons of theirs, who were occasionally successful at casting out demons, must have had demons also (19).  

Jesus then explained how He went about casting out demons “by the finger of God.” This was another way to say the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, and the Spirit of the Lord was the “finger of God” doing the casting-out. Jesus was seeking to get the crowd to think about the finger of God, which Moses used (Exodus 8:19). Moses, using God's finger, proved to Pharaoh that God's Kingdom was present to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage. Jesus was letting the crowd know that if He was casting out evil by God's Spirit, then they were face to face with God's Kingdom, and a new exodus was nearing (20).

Jesus showed Himself stronger than demons who govern the kingdoms of this world and stronger than all evil power guarding earthly wealth. To remove a demon was to remove the armor of the demonic world and then to be empowered to divide the spoil of that evil kingdom (21-22).  

Jesus made it painfully clear that one has only two choices of where to stand: with Jesus or against Jesus—to be one devoted to gathering souls for the new exodus with Jesus or to be one scattering souls from being delivered (23).  

Jesus gave His audience a very sparse picture of what happened to demons upon leaving a soul. Once driven out of a person, they roamed seeking rest, passing through waterless places (maybe places where people were not turning to God, places where baptisms were not taking place). If they found no rest, they would eventually return to the soul they came from to see if the soul was “gathering” with Christ (involved in helping souls come to Christ through repentance and baptism) or scattering from Christ (24). If the demon returned and found the soul they once lived in cleaned and orderly but not full of Jesus, the demon would go out and get seven buddies more evil than himself and make the old soul once lived in worse than it was before he was removed (25-26). 

Jesus' emphasis was not so much on a vivid picture of where demons went and what they did, but on warning that those delivered who did not repent and fill with Jesus would usually end up in a worse state than before. 

At this point, a woman piped up in the crowd and, in essence, said, “If only I had a son like You.” Jesus responded and told everyone that they didn't need anything else but to hear God's word, to quit finding ways to make it not true, and to do it (27-28).  

The Sign of Jonah (29-32)

The crowd would not let up in seeking a sign—further proof—that Jesus was the Messiah. They had in their minds a military and political figure and would not be persuaded by Jesus unless they had Him perform the exact sign they wanted, to prove He was what they thought He should be. They would not believe in God's Messiah and God unless He was the kind of God they imagined. 

Jesus called them evil and told them there would only be one sign, the “sign of Jonah.” They wanted something irrefutable; Jesus was going to give them only one irrefutable sign. In all the other signs He had done, they could find excuses for disbelief, but Jesus was going to give them one sign they would not be able to excuse away. 

Jonah was a man thrown up by a big fish or whale after spending three days and three nights in the fish’s belly. This sign of Jonah moved the wicked city of Nineveh to repentance, and so the Son of Man would undergo His death in the belly of the earth, to be coughed up after three days also (29-30).  

Jesus mentioned the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1-10); she traveled a great distance to hear Solomon's wisdom, but the miracle of God's wisdom in Jesus far surpassed Solomon’s, and Jesus was someone much greater than Solomon (31). Jesus then announced that the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba would rise up at the judgment and declare they had repented and were changed by much less (32).