A Glorious Promise and the Golden Rule
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Introduction
Introduction
Busyness. In a world where one pandemic is thankfully decreasing, another one is on the climb and claiming victim after victim. More and more people find themselves busier than they have ever been and it can be difficult to find the sole culprit to our problem. A couple of years ago Pew Research released some statistics regarding just how busy students are nowadays.
73% of parents with school age children said that their child is at least involved in 1 sport.
Sports are great as they teach you skills like communication, discipline, and dedication. They also help you form friendships and make memories that can last a lifetime. Sports are also demanding in terms of time as there is next to no offseason nowadays.
60% of parents polled said that their children are involved in either a children’s ministry or youth group
54% said that their children are involved in drama, choir, band, art, or theater
53% said that their children volunteer in some capacity throughout the week
These are good things! Sports are good. Music is great as studies share that it can boost intelligence! Volunteering is a great practice. Being involved as a child or youth in your local church is fantastic as you grow in your faith, learn more about Jesus Christ, and build relationships with others. There are other things that demand our time, though. Work, chores, family commitments, activities, appointments, homework, and so many more! We’re busier today than we have been in any other period in human history. We stay busy with tasks and whenever we aren’t busy we often find something to do in order to keep our brains occupied through our phones, tablets, Tv’s, or toys. Maybe this is just a fact of life and it doesn’t seem that concerning to you… Here’s how the poll concluded: 31% of parents feel as though they are always rushed (anyone else feel that way?) while over half of the remaining 69% said that they feel rushed sometimes. For those 2/3 of parents, they said that they are tempted to see parenting as tiresome and stressful and less likely to view parenting as enjoyable.
Parents aren’t the only ones who are busy - kids are busy too. There is a correlation between busyness and forgetfulness. Our brains are funny when it comes to forgetting things, too! I have a friend who can tell you every US President and the dates that they served in office but this friend routinely forgot to do his homework for a ministry class. Our brains are funny! We remember things that may not matter all that much in the moment and we forget things that we need to know and do.
One of the things that can often go forgotten is our time with the Lord. We have our hands full with all of these other things that we simply don’t have room for the Creator of our life. Anyone else feeling a little convicted this morning or is it just me? We train ourselves in so many areas of life - athletics, jobs, relationships, hobbies… Yet, we can fail to train ourselves in our walk with the Lord as 1 Timothy instructs us to do.
7 But have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness.
Maybe you’re here today and you don’t have a walk with the Lord - today you need to start walking after Him. Maybe you’re here and you’re a follower of Jesus but you’re struggling with time management in your walk - join the club! Today we’re going to look at what is expected of us as disciples of Jesus Christ. He wants us to spend time with Him! He wants us to bring our concerns to Him. He wants us to trust in Him. He wants us to be changed by Him. Let’s continue through the Sermon on the Mount this morning and see what God promises His disciples!
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.
8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
9 Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?
11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.
12 Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
The Prayer of a Disciple (7)
The Prayer of a Disciple (7)
Each day we are bombarded with things trying to get our attention and devotion. Again, we are all busy with so many things! Sadly, one of the most important things in our lives that can be quickly pushed to the back-burner is our time spent with God in prayer. Prayer is important! While prayer is not us commanding God around like a genie, prayer changes lives as God changes our heart and even our circumstances. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has spent a good chunk of time talking about how we are supposed to pray, who we are supposed to pray for, and why prayer matters. He’s told us to pray for enemies and to be careful about being a hypocrite when we pray. He’s instructed us to pray for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done in our lives. Now, in chapter 7, Jesus tells us why prayer matters. Prayer matters because God longs to give us good things.
In verse 7 there are 3 commands: Ask, Seek, and Knock. You see 3 sentences in this verse with these words being the start of each sentence. This is purposeful as it spells an acronym that we all need to remember: ASK.
Whenever a child has a question and his mom is nearby, he will ask her the question. Whenever the mom is not nearby, he will seek to find her and ask. Whenever she is on the other side of a door or in the car, he will knock and ask the question. Again, these are imperative commands, not suggestions to do whenever times are convenient. This is Jesus telling us to act with urgency - to come to God with boldness because we have an open invitation through what Jesus has done in our place
16 Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.
In any and all situation, we can have assurance that God is with us - even if we find ourselves knocking and seeking in prayer for a long period of time. We can rest assured that He hears us and that He will answer us. So what must we do? We must first ask.
Have you ever met someone who never asked questions? This often happens for a variety of reasons: maybe the person is shy, maybe they don’t want to be made fun of for asking a silly question, maybe the question has already been asked and they simply forgot already! Or, on the other hand, the person won’t ask a question because they think that they already know the answer. Has that ever been you? You think you have it all figured out and you don’t ask for help only to realize that you needed help all along? This is each of us at some point in our lives. We need help - that’s not a bad thing to admit! The reason that so many people fail to pray and fail to repent and place their faith in Christ is because they believe that they already have all the answers. They’re already a good person. They don’t need help. They definitely don’t need to be saved. I have it all figured out… Or so our friend says. But the Bible tells us that we don’t have it all figured out. The Bible says that we do need help. The Bible says that we are sinners who need a Savior. So what must we do first? We must ask for help. We must first acknowledge the truth of Scripture that we need Jesus.
A disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ will admit this and, now, must come before the Father with openness and sincerity make their requests known to Him. The Bible is clear here - God delights in answering our prayers but He doesn’t always answer them in the way that we think He will. We don’t pray passive prayers, we pray active ones and we expect our God to answer! So what happens whenever there is no answer? If you’re in the Christian life just to get things from God, whenever you seem to get nothing, you’re probably going to pack your bags and call it quits. I’ve seen many people leave the church behind whenever persecution first knocked on the person’s doorstep. Christianity isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme and God isn’t your genie in a bottle to make you happy and healthy. He’s bigger than that.
Whenever we pray and our prayers aren’t answered, we inspect our prayer. Is it self-saturated or is it Christ-saturated? Is it self-glorifying or is it Christ-exalting? Am I asking for something that I want or am I asking for something for the glory of God? As we ask these types of questions we look to James 4 to see what’s really going on.
2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You don’t have because you don’t ask… You ask and don’t receive because you ask with the wrong motives…
Pray - don’t ever fail to ask God something on your heart! As you pray, make sure that you are praying with the right motives. Are you praying for something that goes against God’s Word? That’s a wrong motive. Are you praying for something while you’re living in unrepentant sin? That’s wrong and God’s likely not going to answer your prayer as 1 Peter 3:7 talks about?
Disciples of Jesus Christ must pray. We must ask. We must seek God’s will. And we must knock and be persistent as God answers because, 2nd, God promises things to His disciples
The Promise to a Disciple (8-11)
The Promise to a Disciple (8-11)
There are few things that unite our country these days. It seems like every issue is political with one side of the aisle thinking that this is great and the other thinking that it’s terrible… What could possibly be something that we all agree on? Telemarketers being a nuisance! Have you ever received a telemarketing call? They’re getting smarter and smarter, though, as the numbers don’t always show up as a New York or California number but sometimes they’ll even have a Missouri area code! These phone calls can frustrate us at times but other times the news on the phone can sound amazing. “Congratulations, you’ve won an all expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas” or, “Congratulations, you’ve won a brand new car!” Please give us your social security number, mailing address, bank account, and phone number and we’ll mail you your winnings. The news is too good to be true. We have suspicion whenever we hear something like this on the phone. Many people have suspicion whenever they hear someone talk about the power of prayer and God answering prayer.
While this might be hard to fully understand, if you’re a Christian you’ve undoubtedly had God answer your prayers and go above and beyond anything that you could have imagined initially! If you’re not a Christian and you’re still on edge, look at God’s Word… He promises to hear, care for, and answer our prayers! James Merritt once said this, “What we need in our churches today is not a declaration of independence. What we need is a declaration of dependence.” What we desperately need in our church and throughout the global church is a spirit of depending on God to get through our daily lives. Not a spirit of trusting exclusively on ourselves… We need to trust in the Lord. One of the reasons why is because He promises to answer and give to us.
Often whenever we pray, we ask things from God. God, please heal my mom who is sick. God, please give me guidance regarding this situation. God, please help the Blues to win the Stanley Cup. Some of those prayers aren’t like the others, but we ask things from God nonetheless. Sometimes the things that we want, though, aren’t good for us. A couple of weeks ago, Lindsey and I took Gabriel to the Salem park because he loves climbing the stairs, going on the pirate ship, and sliding down the slides. This time that we took him there was a problem. There were some wasps flying around and one landed on the ground in front of him. What does Gabriel try to do? He reaches down to touch the thing. Now, context here, in the Hayworth household Lindsey and I have responsibilities. If there’s a spider or creepy/crawly as I call them, that’s my duty to kill and destroy. Wasps fall under Lindsey’s jurisdiction as I want nothing to do with those guys. Gabriel is reaching down to touch this dangerous wasp and I pull him away and he starts crying loudly for all to hear!
Why did I pull Gabriel away from that wasp? After all, he really wanted to touch it! Because I’d be a bad father to let him do what he wants to do. Pulling him away from that wasp is me saying, “Son I love you too much to let you do what you want to do because what you want to do will result in pain for yourself and even if you cry for the next 5 minutes and think that I’m the worst dad in the world, I’m not going to let you hurt yourself!” Gabriel doesn’t know that a wasp is dangerous - I do. Don’t we literally do the same thing with our God? We don’t always know where the danger lies. We see something and we think that we want it because we think it would be fun or good, even… But God doesn’t give us things that will cause us harm. And sometimes whenever God pulls away from something that we think is good, we cry and we lash out… But as Romans 8:28 reminds us, God is working all things out for our good and wasps aren’t a part of that good plan!
God promises to give us what we need! Look at the 7 promises in this text:
It will be given
You will find
The door will be opened
The one who asks will receive
The one who seeks will find
The one who knocks will have the door opened
Your Father gives good gifts
So what will we receive? Not necessarily what we want - but exactly what we need. Jesus says that our Father gives us good gifts.
In verses 9-10, Jesus talks about a father giving a gift to his child and giving him a good gift. How many of you have ever gotten a bad gift? I’m not sure if that’s politically correct to say, but we’ve all gotten a gift that catches us off guard a time or two. Say you ask a friend for a chocolate chip cookie and your friend brings you back a delicious looking cookie and your mouth starts to salivate over. It’s been a long day. You haven’t had a chocolate chip cookie in several weeks. You’re ready to eat this cookie and you take a bite… and immediately discover that your so called friend actually brought you a raisin cookie. They deceived you!
Now, we’d all agree that it might be funny but if you’re the one who bit into the cookie, you’d be a little upset! Why? Because they didn’t come through with what you asked for. We know to give one another good things. If someone asks for a chocolate chip cookie, give them a chocolate chip cookie!
Parents, you know how to give your children good gifts. You love them. You care for them. You provide for them. You go above and beyond for them. You give them good things - and we are all sinners. We aren’t perfect. We fall short daily. Yet, we try our best to give good things to those who we love.
Jesus, in verse 11, arrives at the knockout punch. We, as human parents, are evil (in Jesus’ words) because we are sinners. Yet, even as sinners, we know how to give our kids good gifts. Even though we aren’t perfect, we often know what they need. So, how much more will God, who is perfect, give His children good things. If you and I try our best to give our kids good things… How much better do you think the things will be that we get from our God who is perfect? Friends, we have a good father who loves us and who promises to provide what we need, when we need it. He only gives us good gifts! He’s not going to deceive you with an oatmeal raisin cookie whenever you ask for a chocolate chip one - He’s going to give you what is for your good. We trust in His promise to do this.
The Priority of a Disciple (12)
The Priority of a Disciple (12)
So if we are supposed to lift up our prayers to God and trust in Him to supply what we truly need, what do we do while we wait? What is our priority and purpose in this life?
How many of you have heard the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10? This story has become normalized in society to the point that whenever someone does something nice for a person that they might not even know that person is called a “Good Samaritan” due to what plays out in this parable by Jesus Christ. In this story, an Israelite man is walking away from Jerusalem and is beaten up and left for dead. A priest and Levite, two of the respected people in Jerusalem see him and they both pass by on the other side of the road instead of offering assistance like they should! Third comes a Samaritan, bitter enemies to this Jewish man… Yet, he stops what he is doing and assists the beaten man and pays for his recovery at a local inn. Jesus’ instructions are to help those who are in need. How often do we pass by on the other side, though?
Let’s up the ante a little bit this morning. Mt. Everest is the tallest peak on the planet at just over 29,000 feet above sea level. Thousands of people have made it to the summit and hundreds have died attempting to make it there. The trek is dangerous as many things can go wrong and often they do go wrong. Between sudden storms, hurricane force winds, wind chill that can near -100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the constant need for oxygen, this trip has many obstacles. In 2006 there was a 34 year old American man who had just reached the summit with his traveling group but as he began to descend back down the mountain he ran out of oxygen. He was forced to lay down next to the pathway and wait for someone to be his Good Samaritan and offer him some oxygen and share the rest of the way down. 40 people passed him on their journey to the summit and not a single person stopped to help him as he laid dying to the side. One professional climber said that this behavior isn’t uncommon and many climbers die each year simply because people refuse to offer help - people say, “This person isn’t my problem… I’ve spent all of this money to do something and I’m going to do it.”
While we probably won’t climb Everest, we see people in our spheres of influence who are struggling and we can all be tempted to pass them by in order to get to the summit. We can justify such an action as well because we’ll say, “This person isn’t my problem!” This is the motto of our world, after all! Everyone might say that they know the Golden Rule and they might even argue that they practice it, but there are always stipulations associated to it. We’re good with the Golden Rule only after we add some strings to it. I’ll treat someone else nicely so long as they are kind to me. I’ll forgive them once or twice, but I can’t forgive them a third or fourth time. I’ll be respectful to someone until they disrespect me.
What do we have to remember?
We must remember what Christ has done for us!
Christ treated you and I nicely whenever we were sinners and unkind to Him
Christ has forgiven you for all of your sins - past, present, and future
Christ died for us long before we respected Him
So how should you and I treat other people? Especially those who disagree with us? We fulfill Matthew 7:12 and treat them the way that we want to be treated. Why does this have to be our priority as Christians? Every religious group talks about this Golden Rule - how is it any different for Christians than it is for Muslims or Hindu’s? It’s different because we don’t just think of situations from a personal standpoint, we examine situations from Christ’s standpoint. How has Jesus treated me? How has Jesus treated others? That’s how I’m supposed to treat them too!
Does that mean that I’m supposed to stop on the way up the mountain to help a stranger who is in need? If you were the stranger, wouldn’t you want someone to stop and help you out? See, whenever we look at things simply from our perspective, we can fail to help those in need… But whenever you remember someone else and what they are going through, suddenly helping them out isn’t hard but it comes naturally!
If you’ve struggled to make ends meet financially in the past and someone else is struggling to pay their bills, you can understand what they’re dealing with and know how to help because you’ve walked that road. If someone helped you when you were in need, you help them because that’s what you would want someone to do if the roles were flipped. There was a time when Lindsey and I first got married when times were tight. Our rent was $530 a month for our apartment and there were some months where that was just about half of what we had in our checking account. Those were sweet days that we reflect on frequently, but man were they tight! I can’t tell you how much of a blessing it was whenever a couple from church gave us a check on a Sunday night after I preached. They didn’t know there was a need, but God did.
If I was hurting, I’d want someone to care for me.
If I was upset, I’d want someone to listen to me.
If I was struggling, I’d want someone to give me the Gospel.
It might be hard to do those things - but this is what Jesus is getting at. Don’t just do nice things for other people… Do what Jesus what do. Spurgeon once said of Matthew 7:12 that, “This is the Christian Code.” Our purpose isn’t to glorify ourselves and take the easy way out and walk on the other side of the road where we can stay comfortable and complacent. Jesus has called His disciples to love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them, not be a judgmental jerk, and now to treat others well. Why on earth would we do this? Because this is what Jesus did for us. Because Jesus is worth it. Because He calls us to follow in His likeness. As we do this, we fulfill the law and prophets. Look at what Jesus will say in Matthew 22 concerning loving Him and others
37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38 This is the greatest and most important command.
39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
If you claim to love Jesus, you will love others. If you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you will treat others well.
What if they wrong me? What if they are a jerk? What if they don’t believe the same way I do? I don’t see Jesus give a single clause that says “If they do ____ then you can be a jerk.” Treat others with the same grace Christ treated you with whenever you were dead in your sins!
Conclusion
Conclusion
As has been the case throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has modeled how to live out what He preaches. Jesus tells us to pray to God and trust in His promise. Throughout the Gospels we see that Jesus continually prays to the Father and Jesus continues to trust in the Father’s plan. Jesus continues to live out the Golden Rule and He invites you and I to follow in His discipleship path today.
Where are you at in that process? How is your prayer life? Are you trusting in God to give you good gifts today? Do you treat others the way that Christ has treated you? If your answer is that you have room to improve in those areas, you’re not alone! Jesus invites you to lay your burden down and pick up what He has in store for your life. To taste and see that He is good. To receive what you truly need. To experience the best gift of all - salvation by grace through faith in Christ. Have you repented of your sins and placed your faith in Christ? If not, today can be the day where you trust in God’s promise. If you have, are you following in Christ’s footsteps and living out the Golden Rule to those around you? Are you keeping the score or are you giving grace to others as Christ has given grace to you? This week, intentionally spend time each day with the Lord and ask Him to guide you as you seek to glorify Him and share His Gospel. Bring your requests to Him with boldness knowing that He hears you and that He will give to you what is for your good… because He is good.