You can turn in your Bible with Matthew chapter 7. We're picking up again in our progress through the Sermon on the Mount here this summer. We have Lord willing tonight in two more weeks and we'll finish right on schedule. We do have a one another group going. I slipped my mind, so I'm glad they're on top of it. So if you're part of that one another group heading to Arbor Inn, now's the time. Tonight we're picking up in verse 7 of chapter 7. This puts us at a spot where we'll be closing out the body of Christ's sermon. It's taken us several months to work our way through here, but basically we saw starting at the Beatitudes that Christ laid out here are the characteristics that he expects for his kingdom. He was setting up a new set of ethics for those who were going to be citizens of his kingdom. And then he began really an extended sermon here on how those characteristics apply and what that means in the lives of his followers. He laid out, beginning in verse 17 to 20 of chapter 5, an introduction and then flowed from there. And we've been following the process here as he's set up time and again new standards He's structured himself as the new law giver. We talked about the law here this evening, and how the Old Testament law was insufficient for anything other than condemnation, but God had given that law to Moses. Well, Christ now is a new law giver, and he was giving a new law, the law that would be for those who are in Christ, that are part of his kingdom, that will be required of those, or the expectations of those who are citizens of his kingdom. We're finishing out the long topic, or long conversation he's been having with his disciples. You can still probably keep the picture in your mind. He's sitting on the hillside. His disciples are around them. There's a greater crowd maybe behind them, but he's talking directly to his disciples on the mountaintop there. And he's working out the implications of the various things he's been teaching. Last week he began with a final prohibition when he said, do not judge so that you will not be judged. And we spent time last week talking about what that meant, not to have an attitude of condemnation. He's giving them another example of ways that they could live with hypocrisy. And he had warned them, citizens of his kingdom are citizens with integrity. They're men that must have integrity. And one form of hypocrisy is a judgmental spirit that thinks condemnatory towards others while excusing actions within ourselves. And he shows how such a spirit represents mistreatment of others. And then verse six last time, he also dealt with condemning, or the option of condemning, which was really showing no judgment or no discernment whatsoever. So we're in the midst of dealing with that prohibition. Let's just refresh our minds a little bit and read verse one of chapter seven through verse six. Jesus says, do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way that you judge, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye? And behold, the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. Not to have a condemnatory spirit, but we are still to practice discernment, and we are still, as we saw last week, to be engaged in each other's lives, dealing with the sin that is there, but done from a perspective that recognizes we are first and foremost sinners ourselves. They're only here because of the work of Christ in our lives. He set a high standard for his followers. That last prohibition is just one of the many standards he set that are a very high standard. The kind of standard that, at this point, his disciples could be wondering, how in the world can any of us do this? How could we possibly achieve the level of ethical behavior that has been imparted here? He's been teaching with authority. He's been contrasting them. He said, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the scribes, so much greater than any that they would look up to as being examples. How can we do this? Well, tonight, as he wraps up that last prohibition, he begins to answer, here's how you can meet these requirements. And as one commentator says, far from demanding the impossible, Jesus is providing the means for the otherwise impossible. He says the means, at least part of the means, that he lays out before us tonight is prayer. That will be the focus this evening. The central point that he's making here is that prayer to a loving Father is effective. God has given us the tool that we need to be able to reach for the ethics that Christ has laid out. So Jesus tells us here in verses 7 through 11 how God treats people. And points out that God treats people at least as well and often better than they treat each other. And if we can understand how people treat others well, God far surpasses that. But we need to ask Him. We need to petition our Father. We need to reach out to Him in prayer. Let's read verse seven. 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, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 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 you what is good, or give what is good to those who ask Him? And then he summarizes here in verse 12, In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you. For this is the law and the prophets. Verse 7 here, we're told very clearly to petition God. But we're not just to petition God with a list of requests. We're to petition God with an expectant attitude. We're to ask of God, expecting that God is going to respond. All the commands in verse 7, in all three of the main words, the verbs that are given as commands, ask, seek, knock, These are not suggestions. These are commands to us. But they're all given in a present tense. And what that suggests is that this is to be a persistent behavior. We are to persist in prayer over time. It's not a one-time event. We don't ask one time and check it off our list and move on and try to figure out how to make things happen on our own. We are to persist in prayer. That first verb, ask, that's a very general term. It's used in a lot of contexts in the Bible. It's a very general term, but in this context, it's clear that Jesus is referring to prayer. So we are to be asking God. We are to be petitioning, requesting of God. Seek, that's the word that includes that thought of prayer with a greater intensity than would be implied when we're doing no more than asking. This is the idea that of seek and find something, dig in, keep hunting. Think of your children on Easter when they're looking for their Easter eggs that you hid around the house. You can tell them there's one more left and they will keep looking and keep looking. They're seeking. Well, we're to be doing that when it comes to prayer. We are to be intensely We are to be expecting with our ask that God will respond. And then knock, that's a word that conveys the imagery that there's a closed door that the person praying is unable to open. It's closed from the inside, but we're to knock on it so that the person on the inside will open the door. in that then we can enter. So these are just ways that Jesus was laying out here that we are to be petitioning God with this expectant attitude. We, I hope, recognize from other passages that there are other conditions that exist for answered prayer. We can't just ask for anything we want. Just like our children sometimes will ask us, put together their Christmas list, and then they'll ask for things that they'll never receive. No, we can't just ask God for anything we want, no matter how intense we are. If we're intense enough, we'll get it. We know there's other conditions for answered prayer. It has to be according to God's will. And it has to be a number of things that fit into the greater revelation of scripture. But here, the one condition that Jesus is focusing on, the one condition that is required for those who are going to strive for the ethics he's laid out, they're going to be the citizens of his kingdom, the one condition that he is emphasizing is persistence. We must persist. I think that's one of the areas we struggle with the most. We pray, but when the prayer isn't answered, we give up. We do not persist. But here we're told to persist, and persistence is simply demonstrating a belief that God can accomplish what really needs to be done. That God is able. Even though we're not able ourselves, we are petitioning the one who is able. Now, It's a little bit misleading here in verse 7, by the way, we have to almost translate the Greek into English. We have a translate ask and it will be given to you. That the it is a little bit misleading. There's a passive construction here, so we in English need an object or we need a subject for the verb, so we supply the it. But if we were to translate the meaning of what Jesus is saying here, more literally, it would be along the lines of, asking God will give you, and leaves the question mark, give you what? What is it that you're asking? What will God give you? The it in our verse can make it seem like there's direct correlation between we ask for something and that is what God gives. But that's not the way Jesus' words are here. He's saying we are to go to God and petition God and God will give. With the implication being that God will give what is deemed best for us. God will give what we need to be able to reach for the ethics that we're striving to reach for. That we can strive to live as citizens of the kingdom. God will give that which we need for that. which may have absolutely nothing to do with what we think we need. There may be a complete gap between what we desire and what we want and what we believe we need and what God knows is best. But we are to ask and God will give. We are to seek and we will find. We are to knock and God will open. And that's why we have verse 8 then that introduces the reason that these things happen. The reason is not because God gives us what we ask for. The reason is because everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and he who knocks has it opened by God. The God that reigns in the heavenly court that presides sitting on his throne in heaven, he is the one who responds to the prayer. The repetition from verse 7 and verse 8 emphasizes the certainty that prayer will achieve the effect that is sought. The idea is not that prayer will achieve the thing that is sought, it will achieve the effect that is sought. The fact that we are to be seeking based on this sermon is to be proper citizens of Christ's kingdom, that we will live according to the guidelines that he's laid out here that far surpasses the righteousness of those who are striving to be righteous on their own. And when we pray for that, God will give us what we need to affect that change. Verses 9 and 10 simply make this point in a different manner. The or that introduces verse 9 ties it together. It's more or less the same point as he just laid out in verses 7 and 8, but done through a form of an illustration, done with a number of rhetorical questions. And all of these rhetorical questions in 9 and 10, all of these rhetorical questions imply a negative answer. The word in such a way that our obvious answer is no. What man is there among you when a son asks a loaf, will give him a stone? The answer implied is none, of course. No one does that. Same with asking for fish, being given a snake. No, of course not. That's not the way People work. That's the idea. Jesus is using this, the common sense of what we see. No loving parent would try to trick his or her child into thinking that the request had been granted through such deceptive substitutions. They wouldn't send the child off to school with a lunchbox filled with rocks and said, don't worry, you'll eat well today. It's not the way parents behave. And he's simply making that point. That we know how loving parents behave. Well, God is our loving parent. He is the ultimate loving parent. When he talks about the snake here, just a little aside, that it's not clear if, you know, it's clear in verse 9 that the comparison between loaf and stone that he's comparing visual objects. The loaf and the stone, they look somewhat similar even though they're entirely different. It's not so clear if that's the case when it comes to fish and the snake. It could be that the snake is actually an eel-like catfish that they have in Galilee, so he might be referring to that, saying, substitute the type of fish to something that is not edible. In fact, it's a violation of the Leviticus law because they could not eat anything without scales. So, what father would give his son something that's prohibited, or it might be a matter of what father would give his child something dangerous. I'll let you flip the coin on which way you want to take that. The point is very clear. He's saying a parent would not do this activity, would not respond this way. And by using two examples in 9 and 10 here, he's hammering home this point that even in this sinful race of humanity, where men are totally corrupted by sin, that he'll emphasize even more in the next verse. But even in this sinful race, there's no tendency to give those we love and those who depend on us things that are unsatisfying or harmful. We simply don't do that. When our children ask for something to satisfy a real need, their hunger is a real need, we give them something good, something that will meet that need. A very simple point, but very powerful in the context of talking about this prayer here. When we persist in prayer, why would we possibly think our Heavenly Father is different? And that's the point he drives home with the final question in verse 11. And he words the question in verse 11 now in a different way so that assumes a positive response. Whereas the other two, the answer that's assumed is, of course not. Here the answer is, of course, definitely. Where he says, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who's in heaven, give what is good to you? Now, our New American Standard translates, so we don't even have a question, but it's actually worded in a question. We just translate in English with an assumed yes, so it becomes a positive statement. But what I want you to notice is, in verse 11 here, the use of you. If you then, Jesus frequently throughout this sermon has been putting himself in the same group as his followers. Not now. When he starts talking about evil, he cannot be part of that. Now he's talking only to his disciples. You, you who are part of sinful humanity, Jesus must disassociate himself from that group. Now, the other thing I want us to notice here is that Jesus brings absolutely no evidence to bear in this verse that they are indeed evil. It's simply an assumption that Jesus makes. The disciples are evil. You are evil. And they're followers of his, so they're not the most evil people in the world by any means. Jesus' base assumption is that all humanity is sinful. In fact, it's so basic that Jesus simply takes it for granted, even when he's referring here to a good action, and he's talking to what we would consider good people, his disciples. The base assumption is that humanity affects all, or sin affects all humanity. Every single person has the effects of sin, and at our core, we are evil, we are depraved. At the same time, because of the way Jesus is wording this, where he's talking about a good action, he says, even you, you evil people that you are, you people that have sin to your very core, even you are able to do good things. That implies that all human beings are not as bad as they could be. All humans are not utterly evil in everything that they do. And this is important for us to understand when we talk about the concept of total depravity. Jesus is talking about, here, about people being evil. It's a basic assumption. That's what we mean when we use the terms total depravity. That sin affects every single person and affects every single person to the core of their being. No one escapes that. But we are never saying that every single person is as absolutely sinful as they possibly could be. By God's common grace, many, many people are held back from following sin to its fullest. So people can be very good people and be evil. The Bible puts those two categories together constantly. They can be what we would consider very good. They can look as righteous as the scribes and Pharisees. and be part of this group that he calls evil as an assumption. He doesn't prove it, it just simply is. That is who men are. They're evil. And the point he's making, because you know that even evil people, even people that are corrupted by sin, that have not escaped that corrupting influence, even people like that are able to do good things, then how much more will the Father who is in heaven, who is never, ever touched in any way by sin, how much more is he able to do that which is good? Our Father will respond to petitions with good gifts. He'll do that just as otherwise sinful human fathers usually would do. Of course he would do that. He's our Heavenly Father. He's perfect. Now, good in this context, if not the contrast of evil, it doesn't mean sin-free, even though God will always give us sin-free gifts. Good is simply saying that which is beneficial. And Jesus is using this how much more logic that we've seen a couple of times back in chapter six, verse 26, verse 30. He uses this kind of logic. If you understand it so easily in this smaller scale, this situation that is small, then how much more does it must be true when it applies to God? This isn't a logic that they're fairly familiar with. I think we are, too. We instinctively use these kind of arguments ourselves. It's just saying, how much more is it going to be the case? What we should note is that the blessing that's promised here are reserved, though, for those who are in a relationship with God. How much more will your Father, who is in heaven, there has to be that relationship there. So Jesus is not talking about the blessings of common grace. He's not talking about God responding to petitions of those who do not place themselves in the kingdom of Christ. He's not talking about your neighbor who does not know Jesus Christ, but when a crisis comes, prays, or at least claims to pray, says words. He's talking about those who have a relationship with God, and that relationship only comes through Him. Throughout here, the whole point is those that have a relationship with God will find that that God, that Father who is in heaven, will give to those who petition Him. So, the point is that we must ask, not because God does not know what we need. God is omniscient. He knows what we need. But we must ask because this is one of God's ways of training His family. Those that are His children, that have Him as Heavenly Father, when we petition Him, and sometimes in His good wisdom, He causes us to have petition over and over and over, and we must learn to persevere in that. It's His way of training us to depend on Him and to anticipate His goodness. And that's why Jesus wraps this all up in verse 12 with what we know as the golden rule. In everything therefore, that therefore refers to the section we just concluded. And, quite frankly, probably sums up the entire sermon. Not just the immediate section, because he closes verse 12 with Law and the Prophets, which ties right back to verse 17 of chapter 5, when he started the sermon. Do not think in verse 17 of chapter 5 that I came to abolish Law and the Prophets, and now he ties this up neatly with the Law and the Prophets at the very end. Therefore, in everything, treat people the same way you want them to treat you. for this is the law and the prophets. He says not only does this golden rule as we refer to it summarize this teaching on petitioning God, it summarizes everything that's in the Bible, everything in the Old Testament. In view of God's generosity to us, than treating others in a manner that we would like to be treated is the least we can do. If God, a good God, a God who listens to our petitions will give us what we ask for, then the least that we can do is treat others the way we would like to be treated. One thing that is of slight interest here, there was a form of this golden rule that is fairly common in that era, or that region rather, and been around for centuries, but was always worded in a negative sense. There's no record prior to Christ of anyone ever stating this in a positive manner. The negative form goes like, do not do to others what you don't want them to do to you. And that was given by many. It was found in various codes of ancient literature. Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. But Christ, again, raises the bar. That was considered common logic. Don't do something to others that you don't want them to do back to you. Christ raises the bar, because if you think about it, you could satisfy that negative form of this rule by simply doing nothing. If I do absolutely nothing to anyone, then I've met that requirement. Christ always raises ethics for his kingdom. We cannot satisfy this rule by doing nothing because he says we must treat people the same way we want to be treated by them. We must positively act for the cause of Christ. There's no way that we can fulfill Christ's expectations for us by doing nothing. We must act. That is the core message he's given his followers here. In the passage that we've looked at this evening, we're told we must begin by positively praying to God. We must petition God to help us do the things that we cannot do ourselves. He blew their mind when he said you must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. How can that be possible? They are the ultimate in those who are striving to follow the Old Testament precepts. They did it as perfectly as could humanly be done. And when Christ said that is insufficient, their minds were burst. How can we possibly exceed that. And then he started going on and on. Here's how it must be exceeded. But we must act, and the first way to act is to petition God to help us do that which we cannot do on our own. We must be persistent in that request. We cannot give up. We must recognize daily our dependence on God. We don't persist in prayer to manipulate God. It's not that by wearing him down we will force him to do that which he is reluctant to do. No, persistence in prayer is a way we train ourselves to depend on God and indicate our belief, our firm belief that God can do that which is required to enable us to do that which he asks of us. So the first positive action that we see working our way back would be in prayer, and then we work our way back through everything we've seen in the sermon up to now, saying we do all this, and that is how we meet the requirements of God's law. Christ followers must lead the way by positive action. Christ doesn't give us the golden rule in verse 12 so that it's a key to how we manipulate others. We treat others, manipulate them, do things to them to coerce them to do things for us. Now that is not at all what we're saying here. What we do is we treat others in the way that God calls us to by living as positive citizens of the kingdom, knowing that that is the way that we would prefer to have people treat us. And it summarized everything that the new lawgiver has given in this sermon. Christ is the lawgiver. So as we conclude tonight, let's once again commit ourselves to persistence in prayer. Let's commit ourselves to positive action for the cause of the one who gave himself for us. Let's commit ourselves to positive action because that one has called us to do that. Let's pray.