Asking
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
The words of Jesus here. “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 he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore,” verse 12, “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” The first word that we read in verse 7 is the word “ask.” And it reminds me that asking is one of the hardest things for us to do, isn’t it? For example, men often get a bad, kind of, rap against us that we have a hard time asking for directions, okay. And I suppose that’s true for a lot of men. But I’ve learned this- that asking for directions is a good thing. You know, I walk into a Home Depot or something, I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time wandering around aimlessly. And I do a lot of that, so I like to ask for directions. But for a lot of guys, we don’t like to ask for directions. Guys…amen over here. Yeah. I understand that.
0:01:51.2
When I was a young man, a young boy growing up, it was hard for me to ask a girl out on a date. Do I have another amen, guys? I mean, every time I picked up the phone…and back then it was a rotary, maybe a touch dial. We didn’t have text messaging and email and all that. That would’ve made it a whole lot easier. But I just felt like a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs every time I picked up that phone. My heart just went “pppp” asking a girl out on a date. When I came out of college years ago, I went into sales and marketing for 6 ½ years. And in all of my sales training, I learned the difference between a successful salesperson and one that just never quite, you know, made it. And it was all about asking for the order. I mean, there are all kinds of guys who could wax eloquently about the features and benefits of their product, but they could never get around to looking across the table to a potential customer and saying, “Sir, can I have an order today?” You have to. If you're in business development, if you're in sales and marketing, you have to be able to ask for the order, but it’s the hardest thing in the world to do, isn’t it.
0:03:02.6
It’s hard to ask for help when you’re broken emotionally and spiritually too, isn’t it? Maybe you're in a marriage relationship where things are tough. It’s hard to raise your hand, maybe to go over to Matthew’s Place, to our counseling center, and ask for some help. It’s hard to ask for forgiveness. You ever had a rough relationship? You know, you’re like two sandpaper rubbing up against each other. And you know you’ve hurt that person. Maybe you’ve had a log in your eye, and it’s been sticking out of your eye. And you’re bumping into this person and bumping into that person. You’re wounding this person and wounding that person. And you need to ask for forgiveness. It’s hard for us to ask for forgiveness because our pride gets in the way, doesn’t it.
0:03:49.6
Well, Jesus introduces us to this whole business of asking as a first matter and first order of business in prayer. We return to the subject of prayer, but prayer in its most simplest and basic form. And that is asking and receiving. Now, He has mentioned prayer earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. We, in chapter 6, talked about the Lord’s Prayer. He gave us this model prayer, this beautiful prayer that we talked about a while back. But now He kind of returns to the subject. And He introduces it by introducing us to this word “ask.”
0:04:29.2
You might think that as we read through those verses that I just read through that there is not a flow to His thought there. That was my first impression. But the deeper I went into the study these verses 7-12, I saw a very distinct flow here. And the first thing He wants us to grab onto is this idea of asking and receiving. Let’s go back to those verses again.
0:04:53.8
He says, “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 he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened to you.” Now, this is not everything that Jesus ever said about prayer. It’s not everything that the Bible even tells us about prayer. This is kind of Prayer 101, and we need to understand it that way, okay. There’s a whole lot more that we could say and need to understand about our prayer relationship with God. But the first thing we need to understand is that the basis of prayer…the basics, rather, of prayer, the fundamental basics of prayer are asking and receiving. And as difficult as it is for us ask things, we need to understand that prayer in its most basic form is asking our heavenly Father to do something.
0:05:55.4
I have a little book in my library written by an old preacher named John Rice, and it’s titled Prayer: Asking and Receiving. And it’s about that thick. And he talks a lot about just the basics of prayer being asking and receiving. Now, ask is not the only imperative in this text. He says, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek…” He takes it up a notch. “Seek, and you will find; knock…” He takes it up another notch. “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” And the verb tenses here give us a sense that what’s He’s really saying is ask and keep on asking. Seek and keep on seeking. Knock and keep on knocking. There is this underwritten idea of persistence in our communication with our Father. And that shouldn’t surprise us, because elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus told a parable about a persistent widow, didn’t He, who knocked and knocked and knocked and knocked on the judge’s door. Or a persistent friend who, at midnight, was out of bread and didn’t have anything to feed his family. And so he went to his friend’s house and knocked and kept on knocking and kept on knocking and kept on knocking and didn’t stop knocking until his friend opened up the door. Whatever prayer is, where you are in your prayer life, persistence—asking and keep on asking, seeking and keep on seeking, knocking and keep on knocking—is very much a part of this.
0:07:22.7
Let’s look at some other places in the Gospels, namely Matthew 21:22. Jesus says, “And whatever things you ask in prayer believing, you will receive.” How about Luke 11:13? “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” How about John 14:14? “If you ask anything in my name,” Jesus says, “I will do it.” John 16:24, “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Now, I know what some of you are saying. You’re saying, “Pastor, I’ve asked. I’ve seeked. I’ve knocked. I’m doing that in the present tense. But I’m not receiving. This doesn't line up to my experience.” And I understand that. Remember, I said this is not everything that the Bible has to say about prayer.
0:08:22.0
So let me just throw in a couple of caveats. For instance, James 4:3 tells us, “You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” Another translation says, “You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives,” James says. Okay? That gives us a fuller picture here, doesn’t it? How about 1 John 3:22? “And whatever we ask we receive from him.” Why? “Because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” Well, that gives us greater insight to this business of asking and receiving. That maybe being on the receiving end of an answer to prayer has something to do with being rightly related to God, not only through faith in Jesus Christ, but also in fellowship with Him. And that’s the subject of the book of 1 John, isn’t it? Our fellowship with Him. What breaks not our relationship with God, but our fellowship with Him? Our disobedience. And if there is an area of disobedience in any area of our lives, we need to get real with ourselves. Before we can ask and receive, we’ve got to get right with God, confessing our sins, repenting of our disobedience before we’re ever going to receive anything from the Lord. Now, again, even that doesn't give us the total picture of what the Bible tells us about prayer, but it does help us understand and balance a little bit of what, in this particular verse, Jesus is talking about. So He says ask. Ask. And be ready to receive an answer, to receive from your heavenly Father. Why? Well, let’s read on.
0:10:07.8
Secondly, I would suggest we need to lean into the Father’s goodness. And look at how Jesus continues the thought here in verse 9. He says, “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more…” Turn to your neighbor and say, “How much more.” “How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” That’s a great, great section of scripture from our Lord here. It gives us great insight into the Father’s goodness.
0:10:54.4
And if the basics of prayer, Prayer 101, the basics of prayer is asking and receiving, the basis of receiving anything is the Father’s goodness toward us. In other words, the Father’s goodness is the primary motivation Jesus gives us for asking and keep on asking, for seeking and keep on seeking, for knocking and keep on knocking. Why do we ask? Why do we seek? Why do we knock and do it over and over and over again? Because we know we have a heavenly Father who is good. He’s good. And He loves to be good and to give good gifts to His kids.
0:11:38.8
Look at how He says it. He asks a couple of rhetorical questions here. He says, “Which one of you…is there anybody among you, that if your son asks you for bread, something nourishing, you give him a stone? Something that has no hope of nourishing his body.” The stones that Jesus probably had in mind were the many stones that are scattered around ancient Palestine. In fact, you can go to that part of the world even today. Even tune into the news and see kids in the streets throwing stones at each other. And maybe He had in mind one of those little stones that were laying on the cobblestone roads back then. “Which one of you? What kind of father would you be if your son asked you for bread and you gave him a stone?” And He takes it a notch higher and says, “Which one of you, if your son asks you for fish, something healthy, would give him a serpent, something harmful?” Nobody would do that. No father in his right mind would relate to his child like that, He says.
0:12:42.1
And then He says, “If you then, being evil…” Ouch. Just a little insight into how we’re imperfect parents too. “If you then, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” How much more? I can’t even begin to fathom the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge and, yes, even the goodness and graciousness and generosity of our heavenly Father toward us. But it’s somehow wrapped up in that phrase “how much more” will our heavenly Father act that way to us. The goodness of God. Lean into it, friends. Lean into it in your prayer life as you ask, as you seek, as you knock. Know that on the other end of that prayer is a heavenly Father who loves you and who is good and who is kind and gracious and generous and wants to give good gifts to His kids.
0:13:52.4
Let’s do a little bit of theology on the goodness of God. The goodness of God expresses itself in two ways. First, through His grace. This may be review for many of you, but grace is God’s unmerited favor. Grace is me being on the receiving end of something I do not deserve, right? That’s why if somebody asks you a question tomorrow and says, “How are you doing?” A good and appropriate and theological response is, “I’m doing better than I deserve.” Right? That’s the grace of God. And some of you, many of you perhaps, are deeply and profoundly transformed in your soul by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And you really do mean it when you say, “I’m doing better than I deserve.” “For by grace we are saved through faith, that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God-not of works, lest any man should boast.” Has that changed your life? Has it transformed your life? I mean, deeply down into your soul where you walk through this life, understanding you are the recipient of the goodness of God expressed by His unmerited favor and His grace towards you.
0:15:07.3
The second way the goodness of God expresses itself is not only in His grace toward us, but in His generosity toward us. Do you know that God is a generous God? I mean, He is the most generous being in the universe, friends. The most generous being in the universe. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son.” I can’t think of anything more generous than that. James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father.” What a great insight into our Father’s heart. He is a good God, isn’t He? And His goodness is expressed in His generosity toward us as much as in His grace toward us.
0:15:57.0
But that’s not the total picture of our God and the God of the Bible. In fact, for a more complete understanding of who God is, we might want to go to Romans 11:22 where Paul says, “Therefore, consider the goodness and the severity of God.” Now, Jesus doesn't talk in the Sermon on the Mount in this text about the severity of God. But we do need to understand that is a part of the character of our Father. He is a consuming fire. And He is severe when it comes to sin and judgment. If you want any indication as to how severe He is against us, just look at the cross. He was severe about our sin, but that severity went through His Son, not toward you and toward me, so that Jesus could satisfy the righteous anger of God. Be our propitiation is the idea here. But the goodness and the severity of God. I certainly want to be on the receiving end of this goodness and graciousness and generosity, and I know you do too. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of His severity.
0:17:14.0
Let me bring this home to maybe where we all live in our families a little bit. My son came home this week from his 7th grade class at Lake Braddock. He’s taking a creative writing class. And I’ve tried to encourage him in this area because I think he’s got an idea for a 12, 13-year-old boy when it comes to writing. And he came home with this booklet, “My Writing Projects” by Reagan Jones. And we were kind of leafing through this and reading some of them. And my wife and I came across one title “My Family” yesterday. “My Family”. I don’t know if I can read this without sobbing in front of you, but here goes. He went through different members of our family, immediate and extended. And he came to me, and he says, “Ron Jones, a.k.a. Dad, has been my role model since I was 9. When I was a kid, I was looking up to all the famous people, saying that I would be like them one day. I still believe that, but with a different view. Once I got older, I started noticing my dad in a new way.” He says, “He can make everyone happy all at once.” I didn’t know I could do that. And then he said this, “Clark Kent is fired because my dad is the new Superman.” Wow. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back because, friends, I am not Superman. And I hope he never comes to that realization. But my kids think I am for whatever reason. (0:19:00.1) And I was just trying to process how a young, now 13-year-old boy this month came to feel as deeply about his dad as he did in this essay. And I hope it has something to do with how Cathryn and I desire…and listen to this carefully. We desire so much with our kids to be a conduit of the goodness and the graciousness and the generosity that we have received from our Superman, our heavenly Father. And if our kids just get a little taste of that…oh, there may be times that they think I’m severe because I have to discipline them, okay. But in the balance of things, I want them to taste something of the goodness and the graciousness and the generosity (0:20:00.0) that my heavenly Father has given to me.
0:20:04.7
What are you a conduit of to your kids, in your marriage relationship, in your relationships in the church and the community, the workplace? Are you a conduit of the goodness and graciousness and generosity of your heavenly Father? Or have you somehow become a conduit of severity? Remember the critical, fault-finding spirit we talked about last week? Perhaps what Jesus, in the flow of the thought here, is first asking us to ask is, “God, cleanse me of that so I can be a conduit of the goodness and the graciousness and the generosity that I show to you.”
0:20:49.3
There is more. We lean into the Father’s goodness, but thirdly, we respond to the Father’s goodness—you ready for this?—with the Golden Rule. That’s what we bump into in verse 12. Look at it here. “Therefore,” He says. He’s summarizing. He says, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” This is known as the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Everybody has heard that. Everybody has heard that. I remember years ago Zig Ziglar, who is a motivational speaker and a sales and marketing coach and consultant and also a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, kind of built his speaking ministry or speaking career and his sales career on the idea that if you help enough people get what they want out of life, you’ll get everything you want out of life. It’s kind of a variation on the Golden Rule, isn’t it? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
0:21:57.2
Where did this Golden Rule come from? Why is it called the Golden Rule? What’s so golden about the Golden Rule? Well, I’m trying to answer that this morning and put it in the flow of our context, the flow of this study this morning. I’ve taken the word “golden” and created a little acrostic. And I want to talk about why the Golden Rule is so golden. Number 1, letter G stands for the goodness of God. Because, listen to this, because the Father has been so good to us—and we just talked about that—we ought to be good to others. That’s the idea. O stands for “Others first.” Do unto others. This Golden Rule is golden because it’s an antidote to a self-centered life that is all about me. It’s “do unto others.” L stands for the Law and the Prophets. Did you see that in there? Jesus says, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” He is summarizing the totality of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, which was to love God and love your neighbor. I got up this morning about 6:00, 6:30. And I needed to shovel my driveway. I got a snow blower. But I love my neighbors, and it was 6:30 in the morning. So I got my shovel. I could have fired that baby up and…well, you know, gotta love your neighbor, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So I used a shovel this morning, not a snow blower.
0:23:36.1
D stands for “Doing.” He says, “Do unto others.” He doesn’t say think unto others. He doesn’t say feel unto others. No, the Golden Rule is all about actions, friends. It’s all about doing something. And I want to challenge you in the way you interact with truth, the truth from God’s Word. Because I love Immanuel Bible Church. And we are all about the truth. But there are various levels at which we can interact with truth. We can interact with it at a cerebral level.
And that’s one level. Now, this is the smartest congregation I have served in 19 years of ministry. More Ph.D.’s around here, more posthole diggers. I’m mean, you’re just going to stumble upon all kinds of them. And I’ve got all knows letters behind my name too, and I’m thankful for that. I don’t want to just interact with truth at a cerebral level. We’ve got to go from the head to the heart, right? Got to go to the heart. But that’s even not enough. You’ve got to go from the heart to the feet. We’ve got to put shoe leather to it. Got to put shoe leather to it. James says be doers of the Word, not thinkers of the Word, not feelers of the Word, but doers of the Word. The Golden Rule is golden because it says do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
0:25:04.1
E stands for everyone. In other words, this Golden Rule applies to everyone and to all relationships. Even if you’re on the receiving end of a critical, fault-finding spirit as we talked about last week, do unto others. Do unto others. Listen again. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And then finally, N stands for a new twist. Jesus states an old truth in a new way. What do I mean by that? Jesus was not the first one to state the Golden Rule or to state something like it. In fact, you can find it in most major religions and philosophies of the world, even predating the time of Christ upon this earth. But did you know that in every one of those cases, it’s stated in the negative? For instance, Confucius said, “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” That’s even kind of clunky just to say it, isn’t it? “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do unto others,” Confucius said. It’s clunky and it’s negative. Jesus took a negative and turned it into a positive. It’s a new twist on an old truth. He said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus is profoundly and divinely and eternally positive. And I love that about His teaching. I don’t like to be around, even critical, fault-finding people any more than you do. You know, after a while you’re just, like, man, get me out of here. I love to be around positive, up lifting, generous, good, gracious kinds of people. And we all do, don’t we? And Jesus modeled that for us, even in the simplicity of how He took an old truth and put a new twist on it and turned it in a positive direction.
0:27:17.4
Pretty fun stuff, isn’t it? Ask and receive. Lean in to the Father’s goodness. Respond to the Father’s goodness with the Golden Rule. That’s some good take-home today, isn’t it, even on a snow day. Let’s pray together.
0:27:36.4
And with our heads bowed and in an attitude of prayer this morning, I want to ask you this very pointed question. Have you been on the receiving end of the kindness and goodness and graciousness and generosity of our heavenly Father, our creator, through faith in Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know Christ as your savior this morning? Have you trusted Him? Have you believed in Him? Have you said, “God, I know that I am a sinner; I agree with Your diagnosis of my human heart that all have sinner and fallen short of the glory of God. I agree that You say that the wages of sin is death. That’s what I deserve. But I also receive the truth that says, ‘But the gift of eternal life comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.’” You can receive that gift right now by faith and just by crying out in the quietness of your own heart, “God, save me. Forgive me. Transform me. I come to the cross of Christ and receive Your forgiveness. Make me a new person and a new creation in Christ right now.” Father, we thank You for those who, right now as You examine each of our hearts, those who right now are making that step of faith, that transition from death to life and into an eternal relationship with You through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You for the truth that Jesus told so plainly and so boldly on that hillside 2000 years ago. Help us to be men and women who are bold because we ask and receive. Help us to lean into Your goodness and to respond by being good to others. We pray this in Jesus’s name. And all God’s people said amen.
0:29:56.6