The Sermon on the Mount: Asking, Seeking, and Knocking
The Sermon on the Mount • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
Read Matthew 7:7-11
Matthew 7:7–11 (ESV)
“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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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!
Admit Your Need for Help
Admit Your Need for Help
First, we have to see this teaching in light of the rest of the Sermon.
Some people think this Sermon makes things easier for us. No longer do we need to follow the law, we just need to have the right heart. Fine!
What is easier, not to commit murder, or not to be sinfully angry with your brother? Or not to commit adultery, or not to desire a person who is not your spouse?
What is easier, to attain the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees or the exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees?
What is easier, to love God or to love the things of this earth? Or to trust ourselves or to trust God?
What is easier, to judge ourselves and to remove the log from our own eyes or to judge our neighbor and see everything they are doing wrong?
If we are rightly reading and examining this sermon, we see that Jesus is actually raising the bar on the righteous requirements of the law. Legalism is actually an easier way to attain righteousness because it doesn’t actually go far enough in developing a heart that loves God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And it should create in us a desperate sense of need within us as we look at what God requires knowing we can never live up to His righteous demands.
We can actually see Jesus’ statement about it being easier for a Camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as applying to every single one of us. If we are all honest, we should all see within ourselves the impossibility of reaching the high standards God has set, and yet Jesus refuses to relax any of His commands simply because it is impossible for us to reach.
So what is it that we are to ask for?
In light of this sermon, it is not simply asking for the things we want, especially in regards to the things of this earth that we have just in the previous chapter told not to make a treasure of, but rather, we are asking for the very thing we know we need, which is a righteousness that exceeds anything we can produce on our own!
We recognize, with Isaiah, that we are a people of unclean lips living among people of unclean lips, and we long for the righteousness and purity that only Christ can provide for us!
We are recognizing our spiritual bankruptcy and we need the righteousness that comes from Christ alone.
Ask for What You Need
Ask for What You Need
So, Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock!
And here’s the beautiful thing about asking God for what we need. We can ask in confidence because God already knows what we need!
Jesus has already spent some time on the idea of prayer.
Matthew 6:7–8 (ESV)
“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Be straightforward with God and ask for what you need because He already knows what you need before you even ask.
So then, why should we ask for something God already knows we need?
Prayer and asking does not allow us to manipulate God. It actually changes us and helps us to see our right condition before God and changes our heart to truly want what God desires for us.
While God knows what we need and could give us what we need before we ask, we will not truly receive what He has to give until we recognize our need and really want what He has to give.
So, Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock.
Asking requires humility and submission.
Asking requires humility and submission.
We have to humble ourselves and admit that we cannot attain what we truly need. Asking for help is a very humbling experience because we have to admit that we are weak and powerless on our own to get what we need.
At Wal-Mart, when you are going down the aisle and what you need is on the very top shelf, there’s a sign that says, “Ask for help for anything on the top shelf.” How many times do we simply want to try and get it ourselves rather than looking for an associate to help us get what we cannot reach on our own.
This asking is an acknowledgement that we cannot be righteous on our own. While some of us might be tall enough to reach things on the top shelf, or we might be able to stand on something we are not supposed to stand on to reach it, the true righteousness that we need to come before Christ is something that is so far out of reach we can never receive it on our own. It requires that we humble ourselves and trust Christ to give us what He alone can give.
This is why the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is not enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. They refuse to humble themselves and admit they need the help of Christ to receive what they cannot earn.
Seeking requires action and effort.
Seeking requires action and effort.
But asking is the first step to receiving what it is that we need. To seek for something requires some effort to find what it is that we are looking for.
Now, to be clear, this effort is not the same as trying to earn what we cannot receive. But it does take effort to ask God to give us His righteousness and to place ourselves in a place to receive what He has for us.
When a child asks you if you can help them find something, as a parent we do want to help our child. But we also want to know if what they are looking for is something that is important for them to find. If they ask for help, but are not willing to also seek for what they are looking for, it suggests that what they have asked for is not truly important to them. Of course, this analogy breaks down because we as parents cannot always perfectly help our children as we do not have full knowledge of everything, but there is a sense in which as they ask, they will also seek if it is something of great importance to them.
Seeking is our active participation that says we are ready and wanting to receive what God is ready to freely give. It is the sign that we are truly hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
how do we seek Christ’s righteousness? We seek when as we pray we are also examining ourselves in light of our current temptations, we flee from those temptations, and we seek help from others. We still acknowledge that what we need comes from Christ but we are placing ourselves in a place to receive what Christ already wants to give.
Dallas Willard - Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. While we can never earn God’s love and grace in our lives, we are called to actively pursue holiness and righteousness in our lives.
Knocking requires persistence in what we are seeking and asking for.
Knocking requires persistence in what we are seeking and asking for.
Finally, as we see the increasing urgency in our requests, we come to knocking which means coming to the source of the provision of our need and persistently asking and seeking what we need. We do not quit.
It is not a persistence that says if I annoy God enough He will give me what I ask for. Rather, it is the persistence that causes us to press on in confidence that God will answer when we come to Him.
Prayer is not our way of manipulating God to do what we want. It is God’s way of changing our hearts to see and recognize what we really need and to desire the things that God desires for us.
It is through the active humbling of ourselves, the act of seeking God’s righteousness, and the persistent act of knocking that leads to God’s sanctifying work in our lives.
We can actively ask, seek, and knock for Christ’s righteousness as we daily approach Him in prayer, asking Him for what we need, as we seek to fight against sin and put sins to death through confession and fleeing temptation, and as we knock on the door of heaven as we continually approach God through His Word and in community with other believers.
Approach God in Confidence as Your Perfect Father
Approach God in Confidence as Your Perfect Father
Matthew 7:9–11 (ESV)
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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!
Finally, as we look at how we should ask, Jesus gives us a parable of a father and how he answers his child’s request.
Be Confident That God Will Answer When You Call On Him
Be Confident That God Will Answer When You Call On Him
What father is going to ignore or mock his child’s request for what he needs? If his son asks him for bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will the father give him a snake?
If we, who are sinners, know how to care for and love our own children when they come to us with their requests, how much more will God hear and answer His children who call out to Him!
Jesus is assuring us that when we go to God with our requests in faith, we can have the full assurance that God hears us and cares for us. God is not going to ignore us or mock our requests.
Romans 10:11–12 (ESV)
For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.
You see, Paul is telling us that when we trust in God and call out to Him, our faith and trust in Him will not be put to shame because He bestows His riches on all who call on Him!
Of course, again, this might seem to suggest that we can call on God and ask for our worldly desires. But what are the riches that God bestows upon us?
Romans 10:13 (ESV)
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
It is His salvation! God answers our calls and our requests with the best thing of all, our salvation! It includes our moment of salvation when we are justified before God in Christ. We are to call out for the thing that God has already provided, salvation through the finished work of Christ on the cross!
But it goes beyond that. It is for those who have already experienced the once and for all moment and goes to our continued need of His sanctifying grace. We have been saved, but we are still being saved, so we continue to cry out for Christ’s sanctifying power and what does He do? He answers by continuing to save us and to transform us into His image!
We can have the confidence of calling out to the Lord because He wants this for us more than we do and He will answer this prayer!
Be Confident that God Will Do What is Best
Be Confident that God Will Do What is Best
But finally, we can have the confidence that God will do what is best for us, even when we do not know what is best for ourselves. We know we are to ask for His righteousness, for His power and grace for us to live according to His righteous commands.
But often when we ask for that, it seems like God answers in ways that we do not imagine. God works in us through means that we do not expect.
When we pray for patience, why does it seem like God places us in situations that really try and test our patience? Couldn’t God give us patience without the difficulty of those circumstances? He could, but He knows that patience comes best in those trying circumstances. We might feel that God is mocking our requests, but He is actually giving us what we desperately need!
We see God work this way in His people throughout the course of history. God always gives His best to His people, but hardly in the ways they typically think or imagine.
This past week, if you have been following along in the Bible Recap plan, you probably read of Joseph the 11th son of Jacob. He was a young man who had a vision that he would be raised to a prominent position and his 11 brothers and even his parents would bow down before him. Out of jealousy, his brothers kidnapped him and sold him as a slave. Joseph spent the better part of his life as a slave in Egypt, only to be falsely accused of mistreating his master’s wife and then being thrown in prison. Even there, he helps the cupbearer interpret a dream and asks him to mention him to Pharaoh, but is forgotten for years before being let out of prison. One might wonder, where is God in the middle of all this? How can God still be working for Joseph’s good? But as we get to the end of the story, we see Joseph’s character tempered from the pride he had as a young man. God had not just saved Joseph, he had sanctified him and made him righteous. But not only that, God had Joseph in the right place at the right time to bring salvation, not just to Joseph, but to Egypt and even to his family. God was working for Joseph’s best even when it didn’t feel that way.
Of course, Jesus Himself also experienced this kind of answer from the Father. In the garden before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed that if it was possible, that the cup of God’s wrath might be passed from Him. He knew what was coming up and He knew the terrible price He was about to pay on our behalf. He prayed and asked His Father to let this cup pass. Yet He also prayed for God’s will to be done, knowing that what the Father had planned was truly best, even if it didn’t feel or seem like it. Without the cross, there would be no redemption from sin. Without the cross, there would be no exaltation and glorification of Christ. The cross, while a terrible thing to endure, actually led to the greatest good for the Son and for His people.
Jesus invites us to bring our requests before God. To ask and seek from God all the good He has to give us. But often God answers in ways that seem opposed to how we would want. But even when we ask for things that seem good to us, He will not give us less than His best.
And often, we can look back and say thank you to God for not always giving us what we thought we wanted. Because even when God doesn’t give us what we want, He is always giving us what we need.
It is often God’s mercy towards us that keeps Him from always giving us what we think we want.
If it was up to my kids, they would probably ask for ice cream and cookies every night for dinner. As delicious as that sounds, we know that is not what would be good for them and therefore, to say yes to this request would actually be to fail them as a father. My answer of giving them a healthy and balanced meal might not seem good to them, but I know what is best and I want to give them what is best.