What difference does it make to be a child of God on the earth today? I think we know, most of us, what difference it makes to be a child of God in eternity. In eternity, obviously, being God's child is everything. It makes all the difference for us. Here, this verse talks about what it means to be God's child after this life. See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God, and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God. And it has not yet appeared what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. This is the greatest thing in life. If you are God's child, there's nothing that compares. To be permanently His, to know that when He returns, we're immortal because we're connected to Him. But what difference does it make to be a child of God now, in this life, on this earth? As I go through my day every day, what difference does it make to be God's child? Basically, that's what the Sermon on the Mount has been about. Jesus has been teaching us how to live as children of God, as heirs of the kingdom, while we wait for God to establish this kingdom that is coming. And Jesus, we've been walking through this sermon, and he's about to wrap up his sermon. The very end of the Sermon on the Mount, there's going to be a challenge. And Jesus is going to address those in the crowd that still have a choice to make. And he's going to say, look, you have to choose what you're going to do. Are you going to build your life on my words and faith in me or not? And everybody has to go one way or the other. That's where he's headed. There's going to be a call to action. Today we really were finishing the body of the sermon that Jesus is giving to us as his disciples and to us as his children about how we are to live our lives while we wait for his kingdom that he's already given to us. And so he's going to key in on two things. And these are themes, it's kind of like we're coming to a summary of the point of this, right? And the two themes that he's going to key in on are not new to the sermon, he's kind of wrapping things up. And so first he's going to talk about our relationship with the Father. What does it mean to depend on him every day, right? And then Jesus is going to talk about our relationship with other people. And what does God want of us in relation to each other? How should a child of God relate to his father? It struck me this week, who's qualified to give us this advice but Jesus? Right? Because Jesus is the Son of God. Stretching into eternity past, Jesus has been God's Son. There's not been a time when God the Father hasn't been the Father and when God the Son hasn't been the Son. They've always related to one another this way. And so here in this very practical passage, the son of God tells us, the sons and daughters of God, how to relate to this father of ours. What kind of a father is he? What's the best way to relate to him? Is he a strict and harsh father? Would we do best to keep our distance from him? Jesus says, no, not at all. You are God's sons and daughters. And so here's how you should relate to him. First thing Jesus says, essentially, is this. You should depend on your Father for everything. You should depend on your Father for everything. Look down at verse 7. Matthew 7, 7 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. Six times here, Jesus tells us that if we ask the Father, He will give to us. This word, ask, in the original language, it means to ask for something for yourself with urgency. Sometimes it's translated as beg. I just, this whole thing, I'm imagining two sons talking to one another. There's a natural-born son who has always been in the family, you know, and he knows the father, and then there's an adopted son who's new and doesn't have the relationship with the rest of the family, he's just learning what these relationships are, and so then the natural-born son is explaining to the adopted son what it's like to have this father. The natural-born says, well, you know, you're a son like me now, and so let me tell you about our dad. Our dad is generous and he loves to say yes. And so listen to me, listen, you're in the family now. If you ever need anything, you go to dad and he's going to meet your needs. This is what Jesus, the eternal son of God, is saying to us as his adopted children. It's like he's pleading with us to avail ourselves of God's generosity. Look at verse 7. Ask, and you will receive. Verse 8, everyone who asks, receives. After having said that, it's as if Jesus thinks we need to hear this again. Maybe we're not fully convinced that we, you know, sinful human people, that we can really go. We really can go to God and ask Him for anything. And so after saying, asking, you'll receive, He uses another set of words. Seek, and you will find. Boy, if you're here this morning, is there something that you feel like you're missing in your life? What is it that you're looking for? Is there something that is lacking and you feel it? Here's what Jesus says to do. Jesus says, go ask your Father for that thing that's missing. Seek. See, the Father cares about you and he will help you find what you're seeking. Jesus says to us, listen, you really are sons and daughters of the Father, so ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. But maybe Jesus senses us here still hesitating, right, at the doorstep of God's goodness. Really? Can I go and ask for whatever? Is He really going to listen? And so He says the same thing again in another set of words. Verse 7, knock and it will be opened to you. Verse 8, to him who knocks, it will be opened. Just imagine a child saying to his brother, well, I was going to go, I was going to go ask dad for this thing. I was going to, you know, I went over there to ask him, but then the door was closed and I don't want to bother him. And so I'll figure something out. I know I got this. And the other son saying to him, well, no, no, no, no. Don't go away and do this on your own. Knock on the door. Your dad loves you. You are his priority. He doesn't want to do anything else but open the door to you and listen to what you have to say. Knock on the door and ask him. Oh, child of God this morning, do you sense when you're reading scripture that God is talking to you? He is, right? What is it you need? Maybe you're here today and you feel like you're just not strong enough. You've been failing. You're frustrated. You're tired. Maybe you're ashamed this morning or depressed. Here's who Jesus is talking to you. And he says, oh, why aren't you knocking? Go, go knock on the father's door and ask him. Six times, he says, you ask him and you will receive. Listen, Christians, this is our resource. We are not strong enough. We can't do this. We can't follow Christ and give Him honor like we want to in our hearts. We're not strong enough. What are we supposed to do? Our strength and our resource is God. And we're just supposed to run to Him and say, Oh, Father, here's my needs and will you help me? Now, maybe you're here and you're saying, OK, well, Mike, listen, I hear what you're saying, but I got this thing going on and I have asked the Father for it. You know, I went and I asked, and it just doesn't seem like, well, the door didn't open. You really hear me? Like, somehow this doesn't seem to be adding up. Jesus is pleading with me to ask and saying I'm gonna receive, but I'm not seeing it. I wanna point out something to you in the original text that might help us here. In verse seven, I can't see it as easily in the English, In verse 7, all three of those commands, ask, seek, and knock, all of those commands are in the present tense. Now, in the original Greek, the present tense describes an action that is ongoing. So when Jesus says, ask, seek, and knock, you could translate it this way. What he's saying is, keep on asking, and you will receive. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be open to you. Jesus is not telling us that the Father will answer right away. Hold your finger here in Matthew, if you would, and turn back to Psalms. Boy, brothers and sisters, Psalms is a beautiful book to go to if you have something on your heart and you want to pour it out to God. Because what it is, it's these Spirit-inspired prayers that go through Psalms. And sometimes I just, I've got something on my heart and what I'll do is just open up Psalms and I'll use those words and make them my words and just say, oh, Father. You know, pray David's words and it can be personal. Okay, so look at Psalm 27. So we see the prayers of godly people in Psalms. Jesus says, keep on asking and you will receive. Psalm 27 is where we're going. Listen, it's a normal part of Christian life. to have pressing needs and to go to God and ask for His help and not get an answer right away. That's normal Christian life. You've got this need and you go to God and you ask Him to help and you don't get an answer right away. What does God want you to do then? He wants you to wait and believe and keep on asking. Look at this, Psalm 27, verse 13. Psalm 27, 13. The psalmist writes, I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord. Turn ahead 10 chapters. Go to Psalm 37. Psalm 37, verse 7. Psalm 37, 7. Rest in the Lord. and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger, forsake wrath, do not fret, it only leads to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Go ahead to Psalm 39. You see this theme of waiting for God? Psalm 39, verse seven. And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. You say, well, if God is so generous, why would he make us wait? If he's such a loving father, why doesn't he just give us what we ask for right away? Here it is. It's in waiting that God teaches us to depend upon him. There's nothing that pleases God in our lives more than faith. There's nothing that God wants us to teach us more than to trust Him. He is generous. He does have good things to give to us. He is listening to your prayers. But the Father is pleased to teach His children to wait. So what's Jesus' advice to us as children of God when we have needs? Jesus says, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking on his door until he answers. Listen, if you are a child of God and you have a real need, eventually God will answer. Jesus is promising us this. Look here at Psalm 40. Look at Psalm 40, verse 1. You keep on asking. This will be your testimony. Psalm 40, verse 1. I waited patiently for the Lord, And he inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord." We don't have time to read them this morning, but in Luke, Jesus tells two parables with the same point. The point being that We don't have to wait. We have to be persistent in our prayer. Look here at Luke 18. You can look up the parables yourself, Luke 18. If you start from here and read, he'll tell it to you. But Luke 18 is the point Jesus is making. He was telling them a parable to show them that at all times they ought to pray and not lose heart. So how should a child of God depend on his father? Well, first we should ask. That's letter A on your sheets, ask. Letter B, ask your father. When you have needs, ask your father. So here's Jesus, and it's like he's pouring out his heart to us, and he's saying, go to God and ask him. And so first he gives us these six commands, or three commands repeated twice. Ask, seek, knock. God's gonna open that door to you. And then after giving us these commands and promises, now he gives us an illustration. Let me give you a picture of what your father is like. So, Matthew chapter 7, look at verse 9. Going back to Matthew here. Matthew 7, 9. Jesus says, 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? Now, we're missing part of the picture here that would have been in their minds as Jesus is giving the sermon, right? They're outside, they're looking down over the Sea of Galilee and 2,000 years ago. There's some things that they picture that we don't One of the things we're missing in this illustration is that in Galilee a loaf and a stone they're both round and flat and about the same size like you could you could mistake bread for For rock it looks kind of the same in their era also, we don't realize but it's true that the fish and the snake are are kind of interchangeable. Here's the kind of catfish that they catch in the Sea of Galilee today. It's kind of a long, skinny, nasty-looking thing. If you didn't look very close, you might think snake, right? So the bread and the rock look kind of the same, and the fish and the snake look kind of the same. And so Jesus says, okay, imagine this situation. There's a young child, you know, just a little kid, and he's hungry, and so he goes to his father, He says, Daddy, can I have some bread? May I have some fish? And bread and fish are the staple foods of life in Galilee. The son's just asking for some basic everyday food. Now what is a normal father going to do if his son is hungry and he comes to him asking for food? Is he going to play a trick on him? Is he going to give him something that looks like food? Is he going to hand his kid a rock and say, here kid, here's some bread? Is he going to give him a snake and say, here's your fish? and then laugh and walk away and leave the kid sitting there crying because he's hungry? No, that is not what a normal father is going to do. Now, it's conceivable, there's some jerks in the world that might act that way, right? But that's not the norm, we know that. In this room, that would never happen. The dads that are here, that's not what we would do. Maybe I'd give them the rock and then I'd take it away and give them the bread later, right? But eventually he's going to get his, maybe he's going to get his food, right? This is what Jesus is saying. Okay, now, why is it that we can have confidence that the dad's gonna feed his kid? Do we have confidence because we know that dad is good? Jesus says, no, actually, that's not it. Look at Matthew 7, 11. See there? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. See, Jesus knows our hearts. He knows that since the fall, the human heart is twisted. That applies to moms and dads and kids, right? Our heart's not basically good. According to the Bible, basically, what's at the center of our hearts now, after the fall, it's selfishness, and we've all got it just eating through and through us like cancer. When I trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior, He gives me a new heart and new desires and love for other people. But even as a believer, I don't just like, lose all selfishness, right? And so, here's Jesus, and he's talking to these fathers, he says, well, you're evil. Nobody objects, because they're like, yeah, okay, you're right. But here's what he says, okay, now listen, the father is going to give his son food, even though the father's evil. So what is it that's motivating the father feeding the son? Is it the goodness of the father? No, not in this case. What's motivating him is that there's something powerful and instinctive about the father-son relationship, right? Unless you're so broken by your sin, right, that it's just all humanity is off, which can happen. But normally, normally what's going to happen? Just because I'm the father and this is my son, I'm going to give him food. There's something powerful in that relationship. Even though I'm selfish, I still want to feed my kids. The twisting that happened to the fall isn't so great that it overcomes the powerful, good motivation that comes in being a dad. Now, here's where Jesus goes with this. He says, okay, now, imagine if you had that great, powerful motivation that comes with being a dad, and you don't have selfishness in the dad. That's what you have in your relationship with the Father. And in your relationship with the Father, do you know that He wants to give you the greatest delight possible? And not only that, He wants to give you the greatest delight possible, and He wants you to enjoy it for as long as possible. And what is there between you and your Father that's going to keep this from happening? There's nothing evil in God. All that's there is good. And so He just What is gonna stop God from giving good to you if you ask Him, right? There's nothing evil in Him. There's nothing on earth that can stop Him. There's nothing in heaven. Like, if God wants to bless you and you ask for it, He's gonna bless you. That's what Jesus is saying. It's the powerful motivation of being a dad without sin. That's what you have working in your favor. So is God not gonna bless you? Okay, now I wanna pause here and point something out. So if you weren't listening, you should listen now. This whole sermon... This is the key. This whole sermon, I'm talking to you like you're God's children. And many people in our culture believe that everyone's God's child because they're human. He created them, so you're God's child. That's not what the Bible talks about. If you want to be God's child, there's something that has to happen. The Bible says when we're born, we're born sinful. We're not in God's family. We're actually under God's wrath because of all of our wickedness. So to be God's child, something has to change. I want you to look in this verse. What has to change for me to become God's child? Look at John 1.12. It says this, but as many as received him, it's talking about Christ who died for you, as many as received Him. To them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." So, are you here today? Have you believed in Jesus? Have you received Him? Then you are a child of God. He has taken your sin on Himself on the cross and He has forgiven your sins. If you believe, then you're His child. But there's a choice that has to be made. If you're like, Well, did I ever believe in Jesus? Did I ever receive him? I don't think so. Then you're not a child of God. This is where you start. You have to put your trust in him. Say, Jesus, I'm trusting in you. I receive you. Please make me your child. Then he will give it to you, and you can count on these promises. So how does a child of God relate to his father? Jesus is giving us two kind of summaries things. The first thing is about, boy, if I have any needs, run into my father and asking him. Okay, so ask your father, let her see on your seats, ask your father for what you need. Ask your father for what you need. Now, some people have come here to Matthew 7, these promises, and they've twisted them into a blanket promise that as if a Christian can ask God for whatever he wants, and God will give it to you. So, will this work? I mean, can you go home and say, Father, you promised, ask and you'll receive, so I want a Ferrari. And I'm gonna ask for it every day. Ask and ask and you will receive. Lord, I need, I need a Ferrari. You know, can I, can I do that? Is that what God is saying? Like, just ask for whatever. No, it's not. It's not. You, listen, you only have the right to claim this promise if you're asking for something that you need. You only have the right to proclaim this promise, even as a child of God, if you're asking for something that you need. Notice in Jesus' illustration, what is it that the Son asks for? Does the Son say, Dad, please give me cake and ice cream? No, that's not what he's asking for, although ice cream in Lamar's may be a need, right? But other places... What he asks for is the basics of life, right? He's asking for bread and fish. He's hungry. He needs sustenance. So what he's asking for God is the things that he needs. Jesus here in our little section, he's not telling us what we ought to be asking for. He's just telling us, ask, because God wants to bless you. If you want to know what to ask for, you should back up to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 13. There in the Lord's Prayer, there's six things that Jesus teaches us. Here's what you should ask for when you go to the Father. And the first three of those commands of what we're supposed to ask for when we ask, it's all things that are I'm surrendering myself to him. Like before I even come with my request for my Ferrari, right? I gotta surrender myself to him. So Jesus says, here's what you should ask for in Matthew 6. Before you ask for stuff for you, ask this, ask, Father, will you advance your reputation and not mine? Father, will you accomplish your plans and not mine? Father, will you satisfy your desires and not mine? So this is where we're gonna start with our requests. And then we get to, okay, let's ask for the things for us. And Jesus wants us to do that, to pour out your heart for the things that you need. But here's the things that Jesus teaches us to ask for. Three things, in the model prayer that he gives us, he says, okay, first ask for your basic needs, basic physical needs. And then ask for forgiveness for the sins that you just committed. And then ask for protection against temptation. Like, what do I really need? What ought to be dominating my prayer life as I'm coming and I'm asking and asking God, please, the things that ought to be dominating is the things that I need and the spiritual needs that I have and my family has. And these are the things that I'm gonna be pouring out to him. And these are the things that Jesus is giving us the promise about. So depend on your father for everything. Ask your father for what you need. And then fourthly, letter D on your sheets, he will give what is good to you. Ask your Father for what you need, and He will give what is good to you. Look at verse 11. Notice what it says that the Father's gonna give us. 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 what is good to those who ask Him? Have you ever been at IVE or Walmart and seen a toddler throwing a fit with his parent because he wants candy. I think that it's kind of evilly set up though, like for kids, it's stacked against them because the candy, like as you're going out, there's like walls of candy all around them. So, but anyway, so you've seen it, right? There's a child going out and he's convinced that he needs this candy. I mean, he's hungry and There's candy right there, and his mom's got an unlimited supply of money in that card that she uses. And so, mom, please, I want this candy. And he's going to express to his mom in a way that everybody else can see that he's depending on her for the candy, right? I mean, we've seen that. If she's a good parent, she knows better than her child what that child needs, right? Maybe the child needs a nap or spanking or, you know, the snacks that she brought with her. The mother has a bigger perspective than the child does. And so it is with us. The Lord, our Father, from an eternal perspective, He knows what's best for us. And so if you come to the Father and you say, Oh, Father, please, please, please, I want this, and it's not good, He's not going to give it to you. You ask and it says He will give what is good. to you, because He loves you. But you flip that on the other side, okay? He's not going to give it to you if it's not good. But if what you're asking for really is good for you, and you keep on asking for it, Jesus is promising, you ask for something good, He will give that to you. You can count on it. You just got to keep on asking, because He wants to give you everything good. Sometimes He wants you to wait and depend on Him, but He wants to give you everything good. Some people might, boy, if you take this sermon and think, I don't know what to pray, so I'm not going to pray because I don't know if it's good or not. And you're missing the point. Jesus is saying, I want you to come and ask me, right? And so I don't want you to be afraid, like, well, is this good or is this bad? Should I ask for it? No, you go to God and you just ask him and he'll sort it out. If what you're asking for is bad, You just keep on asking for it and probably He'll open your eyes to like, maybe that's not the biggest thing, right? But if what you're asking for is good, He will grant it. So just pour out your heart to God and trust Him. If it's good, He's gonna give it to you. Okay, so how should a child of God relate to his father? Jesus is bringing his sermon on the mount to a close. So there's this father-son relationship that he's been coming back around to all throughout the sermon. And then there's this other theme. And he's gonna summarize that now in the next verse. This other theme is, as a child of God, how do I relate to people? What does God expect of me as I relate to you? And that's the last thing we're gonna see here in verse 12. So look there, Jesus will say, treat others the way you want to be treated. Look at verse 12. In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you. For this is the law and the prophets. There's three ways that you can relate to people. Only a true child of God can do this right. Only a true child of God can relate to other people in a way that pleases him. The first way you can relate to people, and many do, you can be cruel. So letter A on your sheets. Cruel people live for themselves and they don't care who they hurt. Boy, maybe you know some people like this. It's a sad place to be living, right? But there's some people that are just, they're living for themselves. They're cruel. They don't care. If they have to step on you to get to the top of the ladder, they are happy to do it. They're just cruel. So there's that kind of way of relating to other people. I don't recommend it, right? Number two, I don't recommend this either. Probably better. There's moral people. There's cruel people and there's moral people. Moral people live for themselves, but they follow some rules about not hurting others. Moral people are still living for themselves. They just, they've, they're following some rules about not hurting others. A moral person is not necessarily selfless. A moral person doesn't necessarily love the Lord. A moral person does not necessarily care in his heart for those other people. But the moral person has some rules that he's set up to kind of limit his selfishness. And why does he have these rules? Why does he follow them? I don't know. Maybe he fears God's judgment, or maybe he wants to look good in the eyes of other people, or maybe he just likes to think of himself as a good person, and so he's got these rules. The Pharisees were like that. The Pharisees were moral people. Jesus has talked about them and their rules that they had as moral people earlier in the sermon. If you boil down the Pharisees' rules, it's don't. Don't do this, don't do that. Jesus talked about it, the Pharisees' rules, they taught the people this. Look, you want to be moral, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't illegally divorce your wife, don't break solemn vows, don't hurt anybody before they hurt you, or worse than they hurt you, right? There was a famous rabbi in Jesus's day. He died when Jesus was a teenager, Hillel. He's still famous today. So in Jesus's day, the man would have been a legend. There were these two rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, and everybody picked a side. Which rabbi do you like better? It's kind of like Nebraska, Iowa, you know. So Hillel and Shammai were together one day and there's There's a Gentile that's thinking about converting to Judaism, and so he's asking the rabbi's questions. And so the Gentile says, hey, rabbi, here's what I'd like you to do. Can you give me a summary of the whole Old Testament while I stand on one leg? The idea is, can you boil this down for me? What is it to be a Jew? I'm gonna stand on one leg, and if you can summarize it before I lose my balance and fall over. Well, Shammai said, well, it can't be done. You can't summarize it that quickly. Apparently the guy didn't have great balance. But Hillel said, no, I'll give it a try. And so here's Hillel's answer to the question, summarize the whole Old Testament while I stand on one leg. He said this, do not do to your neighbor what is hateful to you. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Others over history, even before Jesus, taught the same principle. Confucius is quoted as saying, what you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. That's basic human morality here. Don't do anyone any harm. It's logical. I can explain this to my kid. Look, if you don't want the guy to punch you in the face, then don't punch him in the face, right? That's basic human morality. Don't do anyone harm. You'd be committed to that, but if you think about it, the cruel person and the moral person that just has rules for what not to do to people, at heart, they're the same. They're both selfish. They both just want what's best for them. They're really not necessarily concerned about other people. The moral guy just has rules, and so he doesn't step on you quite as hard, right? But it's about him. Neither one of these, the cruel man or the moral man, are acceptable in the eyes of God. God's expectation is that we care for our neighbor from our hearts and sacrifice our own good like joyfully for their good. Look at how Jesus sums up how to relate to other people and notice how it's different than what Rabbi Hillel said. Matthew 7 verse 12, Jesus says, in everything therefore, Treat people the same way you want them to treat you. For this is the law and the prophets. Do you see the difference? The moralists say, don't treat them in the way you don't want to be treated. But to follow that, all you'd have to do is just nothing, right? As long as they don't hurt anybody else, I'll just stay in my little room, I'll be fine, right? Jesus' is so much more all-encompassing for your life because Jesus says, okay, you wanna live like a child of God, you have to be an active blessing to the people that are in your life. So how does God want us to treat other people? Jesus has given us this, like, immensely wise little question to ask ourselves. Okay, so there's a person out there. How should I treat them? It's easy for me to figure out the answer. I just got to ask myself, well, if I were in their shoes, how would I want to be treated? And it's amazing how much this can help. Like, if you're just thinking something through, like you're coming into the church one day and there's a person standing by themselves in the entryway. Now, if you're moral, don't hurt him. Okay, I'm not going to be rude to him. I don't have any responsibility to him, though. I'm just going to go talk to my friends and sit down. Great. But Jesus' command is entirely different because he says, okay, I want you to treat them the way you'd want to be treated. And so you have to kind of imagine, well, if I was new here and I was standing by myself in the interway, what would I want? Well, I'd probably want someone to come and say hello and maybe show me where to take my kids and help me get settled in so I can relax. You know, like, Jesus is an outgoing command. Maybe you're in the community and there's a guy and you know his mom just died, right? Well, how should I treat him? Well, all I got to do is just think, well, how would I be feeling if my mom just died, you know? What would I want somebody to do for me in that situation? And then that gives me a guide for how the Lord wants me to treat him. Jesus says this sums up the law of how you're to treat all these little rules. You don't really need a hundred thousand rules for how you should treat everybody in every situation. Just do this. In a way, Jesus is saying the same thing here in different words then. Love your neighbor as yourself, right? Just do to them what you would want done to you. It's the golden rule. Our secular world recognizes this. Now, here's the thing I don't think people necessarily think through. Okay, so this is great, like this is a great moral standard. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. You know, if you try to do that with a selfish heart, you are going to be the most miserable person on earth. And there's a lot of miserable religious people. Because it's like, okay, Jesus, you want me to treat others the way I'd want to be treated. So, okay, I'll go talk to the person in the entryway, but I got other things to do. And so I go talk to them, and oh, now this guy needs my help because his mom just died, and I'm going to go show compassion to him. Like, if my heart is selfish, all I'm doing is I'm gritting my teeth and I'm making myself be nice on the outside. I'm smiling and I, that's not even like, it's not real, that's not who I, that's not what I want to do. And so it's just like a compulsory niceness that's being forced on me from above. I'm like, yeah, right? So many people live their lives that way. That is not what Jesus is talking about here. Well, so how do you, how do you have a heart? that's not selfish, like that. What Jesus is saying, it ought to be natural, like it flows out of you, to think of others and serve them first. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 22. Matthew 22. Again, Jesus is saying, here's a summary of the law, and he gives us the whole story here in Matthew 22. This command to treat others like you would want to be treated, it's only the second half, really, of what God asks for us. Look at Matthew 22. See there, verse 35. One of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question, testing him. Teacher, what is the great commandment in law? And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. Listen to them. Obey these two commandments. You must go in this order. First, you must love God with all your heart and soul and mind. You're not going to be able to love other people, to just genuinely from your heart want what's best for them, unless you start with, Father, I love you. I'm so thankful for what you've done for me. You've given me life. I worship you. My life is about you, Father. and as I'm worshiping Him and I'm loving God, then He does something to your heart. He changes the way you think and feel about the people around you. He can make it so that there really is love for you to give. It's not a forced thing, it's who you are. You start with, I believe in you God, I love you, and then see how He pours out that love in your heart for the people around you. Without it. It's just religion and you're gonna be miserable and you're not gonna please your father anyway, because he can see your heart So let her see on your sheets a third way to relate to other people letter a a child of God lives to please his father a Child of God lives to please his father and since his father loves people He's always trying to help other people Boy, are you a child of God today? This life of ours as a child of God, it's not super complicated, but it's impossible without the Father's help. You can boil it down and think this is what Jesus is doing. Look, what's it mean to live as a child of God in this world? Well, there's two things. If I got any needs, I gotta run to my Father and ask Him for my help, and then treat others the way that I want to be treated. Maybe your life is overly complicated right now and you're chasing after everything else instead of what's important. Well, here's what's important. You want to live as a child of God, depend on your father, love other people. This is what he's calling us to. Join me in prayer. Father, thank you so much for this wisdom that you gave to us in Jesus. We can't go anywhere else in the world and find this depth and understanding of our own hearts. So we thank you so much for giving it to us. We thank you for Christ and what he's done for us, the life that he's given to us. We thank you that you've made us your children so we can depend on you. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.