Lord God, we come before you now as we humble ourselves before your word and before your spirit and sit at your feet and ask that you teach us. Lord, this is a passage that it's not enough to just learn the meaning of it. It requires such a high, makes such a high demand on our heart. One of those commands that you give us, Lord, that seems outside of our reach, outside of our ability to obey. Our affections sometimes feel like we don't have control over them. So I ask that the very proclamation of your word this morning would be used by your spirit to be the by which you grant us the grace to obey these commands. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's close the purpose of verse 8. If we have verse 7, why do we need verse 8? And by the way, I don't have time for an introduction this morning. So, if you're distracted or scattered or whatever, see if you can get dialed in right away because we need to get rolling. I've got a long sermon. So, jumping right in, what's the point of verse 8? Does it add anything that's not already there in verse 7? Or is Jesus just repeating himself for emphasis? I'd like to suggest that verse 8 actually begins a new point. And the reason I'm bringing this up here is because in order to understand the meaning of this whole passage, we need to know the relationship, I think, between verses 7 and 8 and relationship between verse 7 and 6, because it doesn't seem like this fits into the context at first glance. And commentators are all over the map as to what on earth, why Jesus brings this up here, and what his flow of thought could possibly be in chapter 7, because he's talking about, don't throw your pearls to pigs. And then all of a sudden he says, ask and it will be given to you, and seek and you'll find, what does that have to do with each other? And some commentators say, nothing. There's no correlation, no connection. It's an abrupt, complete change of subject out of the blue. Jesus just brings up a new unrelated topic of prayer. Others will say, no, it's not unrelated. There's some connection. They've tried to find some connection and very often what they'll say is, look, When it comes to dealing with pigs and dogs and not throwing your pearls to pigs and dogs, that's tricky and that requires some special wisdom. And so what he's saying is ask for wisdom and seek wisdom and knock on the door of wisdom and you'll get it. And that's one suggestion. And I'm all for praying for wisdom, for sure. Especially when you're dealing with pigs and dogs, you pray for wisdom. But honestly, I don't see that in the text. I don't see anything in there about wisdom. In fact, none of the suggestions I read this week were convincing to me. I didn't see any of them in the text. So what I want to do is I'm going to show you what I see as the connection. I think there's a very definite connection between verses 6 and 7 and the dogs and pigs thing and the ask and seek and knock thing and I'll just present that to you and lay it before you and then you can decide if you think that I'm on the right track. The first five verses of chapter 7 are about you remove the sin from your own heart and then you help your brother remove the sin from his heart, right? Remember, that's what the whole thing about get the log out of your eye, then you can get the speck out of your brother's eye. And then verse 6 tells us what to do if your brother isn't so receptive to your generous offer to remove the sin from his heart. He doesn't want your help. And he rejects it. And he tramples it underfoot. And Jesus said when that happens, Stop giving it to them. Stop giving them what's holy. Don't throw those holy things to the dogs. Because it dishonors God to take his priceless, precious pearls and throw them to those who will just trample them underfoot. And so we get this shocking and really frightening principle that if you're not sufficiently interested, God's gifts will be withheld from you. God's kingdom is free, but it's available only to those who want it more than they want anything in the world. So, we don't give the truth of God's Word to the unreceptive, to the pigs and the dogs that have a violent response. And the connection between all that and this ask, seek, and knock thing is this. The part about the pigs and the dogs is all about what happens to people who are unreceptive to God's Word. and God's good gifts. And so the part about asking and seeking and knocking show us what happens when you are receptive to God's good gifts. If you're not receptive, you get cut off. But if you are receptive, asking and seeking and knocking, then you receive all the gifts. That's the connection. Why do we not throw what's holy to dogs? Because it's holy. And throwing something to dogs would dishonor that thing. It would dishonor God. But if it dishonors God when we are unreceptive to his gift, then it stands to reason that it honors him and glorifies him when we are receptive to his gifts. And we can appreciate them as good gifts and treat them as the priceless treasures that they are. And so the more eager we are, the more receptive we are, the more we honor him. And the more disposed he is to give us those good gifts. The more disposed he is to answer our prayers. See, what I think verse 7 is, is it's showing us the opposite of verse 6. Verse 7 is the opposite of verse 6 and that's very important because it's not what we would naturally think. We tend to think the opposite of being unreceptive, the opposite of the pigs and dogs, is being accepting. You know, just kind of a passive acceptance. The opposite of pigs and dogs is somebody that says, okay, okay, I'll accept the pearl. That's not what the opposite is. The opposite of the pigs and dogs is not passive acceptance. It's eager, enthusiastic, Askers and seekers and people are knocking on the door. That's the point Jesus is making. Typically this passage is thought of as a passage on prayer. Right? You ask and it will be given to you. You seek and it's about prayer. I don't think this is a passage mainly about prayer. Prayer is a part of it, but I think it's much bigger than just prayer. I don't think asking, that's prayer. But I don't think seeking and knocking are necessarily just metaphors for prayer. They're expressions of eagerness. They're expressions of desire. Jesus isn't saying, pray, pray, pray. He's saying, be eager, be eager, be eager. You ask for something because you want it. You seek for something because you want to acquire it. You knock on a door because you want to gain entry. Receptivity is much more than just willingness to accept holy things. Receptivity is an insistent unrelenting desire for a holy thing. So the connection between verse 6 and verse 7 is basically the title of the sermon. Be a son, not a dog. Dogs, you try and feed them something, they bite you. A wild dog. Sons ask for good things from their father. And that's the point. So you say, okay Darrell, if the main point is, if you're right here, the main point is desire, not just prayer, then why doesn't Jesus use the word desire? The word desire is not even in this text. And I think the answer to that, the reason he doesn't use the word desire is because he's not talking about just desire, he's talking about desire in action. He doesn't want us to think in terms of a latent, passive kind of wishing, but rather desire that impels acquisition. Desire that forces you to go after it and get it. Desire that gets you moving. That kind of desire. The receptive heart is a heart that craves the good gifts from God so much that it chases after them relentlessly. I think many times our prayers are not answered because we ask but we don't seek. You know, we request something. We don't take any steps to find it, to acquire it, to gain it. We say, God, let me experience your presence, please grant me that, but we don't do anything that could actually be construed as knocking on the door of his presence. We ask for the salvation of a loved one, but we don't bother sharing the gospel with them. We ask without seeking. We pray, Lord, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one, and then we just go fling ourselves right into the thick of temptation. Asking is disingenuous when it's not accompanied with seeking and knocking. See that? You have a request, but it's not accompanied by any effort. It shows that the request doesn't really rise up out of any real desire in your heart. It's not a real request. Sometimes our prayers are like the guy who writes a love letter to his girlfriend and says, I would crawl over broken glass to see you. I would climb the highest mountain, cross the widest sea, hottest desert, just to see your beautiful face. And I'll be there tonight to pick you up at 7 o'clock, weather permitting. Sometimes our actions just don't quite show So Jesus puts knocking and seeking right alongside asking to teach us what real asking actually is. And this isn't to say that asking is unimportant. I don't want to downplay the importance of prayer. Asking is critical. James 4.2, you do not have because you do not ask. Asking places us in the right kind of posture before God. Asking is critical. helps us understand what our relationship to him is. He didn't say, expect. He didn't say, demand. He said, ask, because God is a person and not an insurance policy. Jesus didn't say, manipulate, because God is not a vending machine. He's a father. He didn't say, wish, because God's not a birthday candle. He's a person. He didn't say, demand it, because God is not a bellboy. We approach him not as an insurance policy, or a wishing well, or a vending machine, or a bellboy, but as a loving Father. Wise, loving Father. Loving enough to be eager to give to us. Wise enough to know when the gift is good. So we ask God. And we seek. We seek. Seeking, that just simply refers to putting forth effort in order to acquire something. If you want something, a little bit, you'll wish for it. If you want it a little more, you might ask for it. But if you really, really want it, you will pray and then you will go after it. And that's seeking. And then Jesus gives a third expression of eagerness, knocking. Several times in the New Testament, doors are used as a metaphor for opportunity. Usually when Paul refers to a door, that's what he's talking about. And so, knocking kind of is a picture of there's an opportunity, I want to make progress, I want to go in this direction, I want to do this ministry, I have this opportunity, and there's this blockade in my way, this door, and I'm knocking. Knocking means, please, remove this obstacle so that I can move ahead. That's knocking. So knocking is kind of a combination of the first two, asking and seeking. I mean, knocking is a request, right? It's like the universal signal that means, I'm out. It's kind of funny if you think about it. It's really what our dogs do. You know, they like scratch on the door. They just make a noise. They can't use language, so they make a noise to let us know that they want to come in. We do the same thing with knocking. That means, I'm here, please come and open the door and let me in. signal that we have. And so it's a request. It's a kind of a request. But it's an active request. It's not passive. You're not just sitting around hoping the door swings open. You're banging on it, sending a signal saying, I want in. So God cuts off the supply of his gifts to the unreceptive people, but he pours them out on the receptive people However, receptivity is not a passive thing. It's an active thing. It's not just agreeing to accept something. And that's important to understand because I think people think that way. There's a lot of people who, you often hear people talk about accepting Jesus into your heart as your own personal savior. It's almost like they're painting a picture where Jesus is just pleading, please, please, please accept me. Please accept this gift of salvation. And finally, you say, okay, you can save me if you want. And it's just sort of this passive thing. That's not the picture Scripture gives us of what it's like when a person becomes a Christian. Now, it's true. Becoming a Christian is receiving a good gift. A free gift. You don't become a Christian by the works of the law. You do not earn it or work for it in that way. People in John 1-11 were lost because they didn't receive Jesus. It is the receiving of a gift. However, receiving and accepting are two different things. Accepting is passive. You're waiting around, you know, willing to take something. Receiving is active. In fact, if you look up that word receiving, it's interesting. One other place it's used is John 14 3, and you'll see the active sense of it if you just look it up. John 14 3, Jesus said, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to be with me so that you may also be where I am. So it's not just, I'll accept, it's a taking. In fact, usually that word is translated to take. It's usually the normal translation. So it's active, not just passive. And this is the measure of spiritual health. The level of eagerness in your heart measures how far along you are spiritually. When we desire evil things, then that means something in us is perverted and messed up. When we desire good things, that is godliness. Your desires, your longings, the passion with which you desire good things, that's all a measure of your spirituality. There's a sliding scale. It's not just that some people are receptive and some people are unreceptive. There's a sliding scale of receptivity. We all have a certain amount of eagerness and a certain amount of dullness and wherever you are on that line, however eager you are for God's gift, that's the measure of your spirituality. Your spiritual maturity. It's hard for me to think of a battle in the Christian life that is ultimately not won or lost right here at the level of desire. That's the core of everything. Isn't that so? The only men who are qualified to be pastors in a church are people who love the good, Titus 1.8. It's the mark of nobility in the kingdom. We see that with the Bereans in Acts 17.11, which is a verse that's very often misunderstood. I mentioned it last week, but I didn't explain it. I should probably explain it. Very often people think that the Bereans in Acts 17 were praised because they were skeptical. You know, since the Bereans were a more noble character than the Thessalonians because they received the message with great eagerness and they examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was true. And that kind of strikes us like, wow, they're double-checking Paul? That's pretty extreme. And so we think, ah, they won't take Paul's word for it. They're skeptical. They've got to check it out for themselves. When we take that interpretation, what we're doing is we're ignoring the middle portion of this verse. Bereans were not praised for being skeptical. They're praised for being eager and receptive. It's not that they heard what Paul said and they say, ah, it doesn't sound right to me. I'm going to check that out. I'm skeptical. I'm slow to believe that. That's not the point of that verse at all. They were eager to receive the message. They heard it. It says, Now the Bereans were a more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness, and examined the Scriptures daily. They were eager to receive. They heard what Paul said, and they loved it. Like, wow! That's great! Oh, I hope that's true. I've got to check to see if this is true. I've got to look this up. Is that true? Is it in here? Let it be in here. Let it be in here. Oh, there it is! It's true! And that's the attitude that you have in Acts 17.11. They're eager, that's why they're looking in the Scriptures. So they're called noble. They're more noble because of that. Nobility, that word noble, it means to be high born. In the worldly kingdoms, you get into nobility, you have blue blood just by birth. You're born into nobility. In the kingdom of God, you get into royalty, not by birth, but by eagerness, earnest desire. The more intense your desire, the higher up you are. And if you're wondering, well, ask, seek, knock for what? Ask what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say what to ask for. If you're wondering what we ask for, what are the good gifts of God? It's not too hard at this point in the Sermon on the Mount to figure that out. All you have to do is go back to the Lord's Prayer and it becomes obvious because he told us what to ask for. The hallowing of God's name. The coming of his kingdom. More and more people being obedient to the king. And his will being carried out on earth like it is in heaven. Those are the good things we pray for. And in order to bring that about we ask for the supplies we need. Daily bread and forgiveness of sins and protection from the evil. That's what we're asking for. Or, what about all the rewards and promises that Jesus mentioned in the Beatitudes? Those are good gifts that we should seek and knock and ask for. Kingdom of Heaven, comfort, blessing from God, fullness and satisfaction, mercy, seeing God, being called sons of God, great reward in Heaven. Chapter 6, righteousness, greatness in the Kingdom, acceptance of our worship, treasures in Heaven. There's lots of good gifts that he's mentioned. Those are the kinds of things I think Jesus has in mind when he's talking about ask, seek, knock. Ask for that stuff. Seek that stuff. And if you do, and if you're receptive, if you are eager, you will be given that stuff when you seek it. This is why Jesus so frequently talked about the importance of persistence in prayer. You need to persist. You need to bang on the door of heaven. chase after these things. You know, Jesus gives us parables about prayer that are really kind of shocking. He talks about an unjust judge. Remember the widow and the unjust judge? She just keeps bugging him and bugging him and bugging him. Finally he says, even though I don't care about justice, I don't fear God, I don't care about anything, I'm going to give this woman justice just to get her out of here. And you say, why did Jesus tell that story? And we know exactly why he told it, because Luke says why he told it in Luke 18.1. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. Be like that widow. Be persistent. Then he told another parable in Luke 11.5. He said to one of them, suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine is on a journey and has come to me and I have nothing to set before him. Then the one inside answers, don't bother me. This is amazing that Jesus would tell a prayer about prayer. Is that what prayer is? You say, you ask and this voice comes from inside, don't bother me. Door's already locked, children are with me in bed, I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you that although he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. And so I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened." And so on. Now, those are the kinds of illustrations Jesus uses to teach us to pray. Stories that point to relentless, persistent, insistent prayer and seeking and knocking. And in a moment, I'll talk about why Jesus uses these strange images of the one we're asking from. But the point here is just the persistence of it. We need to persist. In fact, here in this one, in Luke 11, where it says, even though he's not going to grant his request because he's his friend, he'll do it because of the guy's boldness. The word actually isn't boldness. It's not the word for boldness. It's a typical, it's a word, it means shamelessness. It always means shamelessness. It's never used in a positive way, this word. It's always a negative thing. It refers to a person that just has a lot of nerve. That's what the word means. A person that has no shame. This is a word that refers to the kind of person who's in a social context, has no social sensitivities about when you're going overboard and persisting and persisting and persisting and it's rude. You know, we try and teach that to our children, right? When your kids are little, then they ask sometimes for things that are inappropriate. You're over for dinner somewhere and all of a sudden your kid's asking them for money or some weird thing and you're like, No, that's not appropriate. You're trying to teach them about what's appropriate. This word is used to refer to a kid that never learned any of those lessons and he doesn't understand social norms at all. And he's just way over the top when it comes to insisting and insisting and insisting. That's the word that Jesus uses here for prayer, for boldness in prayer. God wants us to press after him in prayer. Isaiah 62 6 you who call on the Lord give yourselves no rest and Give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth Give God no rest. You don't get any rest. God doesn't get any rest until you get what you're asking When you pray God says when you pray to me don't give me a moment's rest Persist you can't help but think of the the account of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32. It's kind of an enigmatic text, mysterious, who this person is that he's wrestling. First he's called a man, and then at the end, Jacob says, oh, I wrestled with God. And then later in Hosea 12, he's called an angel. It's like, what is this? And I'm not sure what... It sounds to me like it's an angelic being who appeared as a man, but who represented God in a very direct special, immediate kind of way. But wherever you come down on all that, on who this individual was that he's wrestling, no matter, either way, the interpretation of the passage is basically the same. There's a sense in which Jacob was wrestling with God. And the Almighty Infinite God somehow managed to allow himself to be put in a hold by Jacob so that Jacob's At the end, when the sun's about to come up, Jacob's got him in this full Nelson or whatever and he won't let him go. And the guy says, let me go! The sun's coming up and Jacob says, not until you bless me. He says, alright, I'll bless you. And by the way, when Jacob says, not until you bless me, he's acknowledging that this person is greater than him. He knows that by now. You don't ask a lesser person to bless you. He acknowledges he's greater. And he realizes at the end that it's God. He says, not until you bless me. And that is a picture of how God wants us to seek blessing from him. I won't let go. Why? Why the persistence? Why is that required? Why doesn't God just tell us, look, I don't have any memory problems. I don't have Alzheimer's. Just tell me what you want and then leave it. Why can't I just say, God, here's my prayer. Please, grant it. If it's your will, grant this. Whatever you decide is fine with me. I'm just going to leave it with you now and get on with my life. Why not just do that one time and be on? Why keep persisting and persisting and persisting? Why does God want us to do that? Is it because we need to overcome His reluctance? No. No, there's no reluctance there to overcome. All there is in heaven is eagerness, not reluctance. He is more eager to answer our prayer than we are eager to pray. He's more eager to bless us than we are eager to receive blessings. The point of verses 8 to 11 here is to show the willingness and eagerness of God to give. this passage. He gives, he gives, he gives. And so he keeps saying, ask, really, six times in a row in verses 7 and 8. Ask! Seek! Knock! Ask! Seek! Knock! You don't say that to somebody if you have no intention of giving to them, right? You wouldn't do that. You don't tell someone, hey, ask me. I mean, you wouldn't say to your kid, ask me for this, ask me, ask me, ask me. And the kid would say, okay, Dad, can we have it? No. I mean, we wouldn't do that. And God is the same way. Isaiah 45, 19. Fascinating verse. He says, I have not said, seek me in vain. I, the Lord, speak the truth, and I declare what is right. That's a fascinating verse, because what he's saying is, if I said, seek me, but it wasn't possible for you to do it, or it wasn't possible for you to succeed in doing it, it wasn't going to work, and the whole thing would be in vain, then I would be a liar. I would be misleading you by saying, seek me. This is interesting because this has some implications about certain aspects of Calvinism about the ability of man to seek God. But he says, God says, it would be disingenuous for me to say, seek me, if the whole effort would be in vain. It won't be in vain. I only tell the truth. Therefore, if you seek me, you will find me. God is eager to give. Eager. There's no reluctance to overcome. He said, well, if it's not to overcome reluctance, then why is it? I gave a couple of examples last week of why God gives these delays. And I could give a hundred more. There's all kinds of reasons why God would delay, but that's not really what's important. You know, why God does what he does isn't really the most important thing. We don't need to figure that out. We can just trust him that he's got good reasons for whatever delays he's doing. The important thing for us is not to babysit God and try to oversee and evaluate His reasoning and His timing like we're His manager or something. We can just trust Him with all that. What's important for us is to pay attention to what happens in us during the delay. Because what happens in you during that delay reveals a lot about what's in your heart, what you are. Another thing, what you do during that delay has an impact on the heart of God and actually influences what God decides to do and how long the delay is going to be. If you know I mean, you're going to give your child a good thing. You've got it in your heart. You want to give this good gift to your child. And your child is dying for it. He's asking for it. He's eager for it. But the timing isn't quite there yet. It's not the right time. There's a necessary delay. You have to wait until just the right time. During that delay, the last thing you want is for your child's eagerness for that gift to wane and to peter out. Right? You don't want that. If anything, you want his interest to get bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger so that when the time comes, he'll be delighted. Our eagerness for God's gifts is one of the very things that makes us fit to receive the gifts. Very often the reason God says, no, or wait, not yet, to one of your prayers is because you're not fit yet to receive it because of a lack of eagerness. If you don't have the proper eagerness to begin with, or if you had it and during the delay it kind of petered out, Very often you can make it so the gift is now no longer a good gift for you. It would be a bad gift now because the eagerness is missing. Imagine a chef who knows that if he delivers the meal too soon, before you're really hungry, he knows what will happen. You'll end up just picking at it and you won't barely make it through the appetizer. You won't even get to the main part, the best part. Before he even serves up the main entree, you're not going to be hungry anymore. And you'll lose interest. But he knows if he waits until you're really hungry and you're saying, oh, I'm starting to get hungry. Can you bring out the food? Wait. You're not hungry enough. I want you to like this food. And so, you know, he waits and waits and waits until finally you're ravenous. Then he brings it out. Then you really enjoy it. And you get the full experience of all the courses and dessert and more dessert and everything else. That honors the chef. See that? It doesn't honour the chef when we just pick at it a little bit. Keep in mind, the whole point of everything God does is to put His glory on display. That is the most important thing. Our pleasure is not what's the most important thing. Now, do we get enjoyment out of God's good gifts? Absolutely, you bet we do. That's not the most important thing. What's important is that God be honored and glorified when His goodness is put on display by how much we enjoy His good gifts. And so it doesn't make sense for God to give us the good gift if we're not going to enjoy it enough to bring Him glory and honor. And so He waits for our appetite to grow. See that? So when we ask for something good, and God's answer is, wait, not yet, It's so crucial that we not go running off and snacking on the world so that we spoil our appetite. And then our craving decreases instead of increases. Let the hunger of your soul drive you to never seek any substitutes but wait on the Lord. disciplining yourself to read the Bible. You're just not disciplined. You make commitments to do it. You just don't follow through. You're not committed to prayer. You're not disciplined to make yourself pray. You're not disciplined to make yourself show up at church every week. If that's you, I would suggest your problem probably isn't discipline. It's probably lack of appetite that's the problem. Most likely, you're spoiling your appetite by snacking on this world instead of waiting on the Lord so that the driving, craving hunger and thirst of the soul that needs God's grace and needs God's presence is dulled because you're snacking on worldly substitutes and so you're not driven to ask and seek and knock. See that? The long and short of all that is God withholds his good gifts from the unreceptive and the uninterested, but he pours out his gifts on the receptive. But receptive means not just willing to accept, but eager and aggressively receptive. The receptive aren't like somebody walking around with a metal detector trying to find a quarter here and there. They're like miners. who dig and blast and shovel and search and risk their lives to get great treasure. That's seeking, masking, and knocking. That's receptivity. Okay, so all that's verse 7. Now that we understand that, we can go to Jesus' point number 2, which is the main emphasis of this passage, verses 8 to 11. And that is this. Eager receptivity on our part is always met with generous giving, willing generosity on God's part. Eager receptivity on our part always is met with willing generosity on God's part. These passive verbs in verses 7 and 8, they're what theologians call divine passives. They're not, it's not like, that isn't that you If you seek, you're going to tend to find. Like some kind of an axiom or proverb that you sort of get what you're looking for in life. That's not the point. The point, that is, God will give it to you. That's what they mean by a divine passive. Seek and God will see to it that you find it. Knock and God will open the door. Jesus is very concerned here that we not miss the generosity of God. Beginning of the sermon, I asked you why verse 8 and what does verse 8 add that's not already there in verse 7? I just struggled with that so much last week. Why? Why? Why do we need verse 8? It doesn't seem to add any new information. It's not already there in verse 7. And finally I realized the purpose of verse 8 isn't to add any new information. It's to give a different emphasis. The emphasis in verse 7 is on our end. Ask, seek, knock. It's commanded. The emphasis in verse 8 is on God's response, the receiving and the finding and the opening. The more eager you are to receive God's good gifts, the more God gives them. And that's really the point that Jesus wants to expand on, so he gives us the illustration in verses 9 and 10. Verse 9, which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? God is more eager to answer your prayers than you are to give good gifts to your children. And by the way, are you starting to get the feeling here in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus really, really wants us to think of God as our Father in heaven? I mean, you've been here from the beginning. This comes up again. This is only the 15th time he's brought it up in the sermon. 15th time. If you just read the Sermon on the Mount just out loud, just read it, we're about 15 minutes into the sermon at this point. 15 times in 15 minutes, Jesus returns to this idea of thinking of God as your Father. It's so important. It's so important. You don't have to be a literary genius to realize what's important to Jesus in the sermon, that fatherhood of God is big. Which sometimes bothers people because they think, well what about people who had horrible fathers? For that matter, what about all of us? We all have fathers that fell short at some point. And some fathers are really bad, just heartless and cruel. Abusive. Why does Jesus risk comparisons like that that might create confusion? Well, I would say, first of all, if you had a terrible father, notice here that Jesus' illustration isn't about your father. It's about you. He doesn't say, hey, didn't all you have earthly fathers that gave you good gifts? He doesn't say that. He says, which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? So whatever horrendous things your dad did, the question isn't about him, it's about you. What are you naturally inclined to do for your children? But even beyond that, even if you are a horrible father, even if you take into consideration bad fathers, Jesus' point still holds. In fact, the more evil the human father, the more powerful Jesus' point here is. Jesus isn't ignorant of the fact that human fathers are evil. He actually said that right there in verse 11. He says, you, though you are evil, give good... Jesus, he's just so stark. He's just like, you, who by the way are evil, give good gifts to your children. How much more? And notice by the way that Jesus says, you and not we. He doesn't include himself. He's not like every other pastor. All other religious leaders, pastors, we all say, we're all sinful. We all fall. We all stumble. Jesus never says that. He never includes himself when it comes to that because it would be untrue. So he has to say you. And this is an important statement on the doctrine of depravity, human depravity. The doctrine that man is sinful. It's very instructive. One thing it tells us is obviously the depravity of man does not mean that man is as bad as he can be because Jesus is acknowledging the goodness of giving good gifts to your children while you're evil. And so that's one thing. But another thing it tells us is our evil is so profound that even in the moment when we're expressing love to our children and giving them good gifts, that does not override our being evil. It's at precisely that moment that Jesus calls us evil. So we're evil, and yet we still give good gifts to our children. Well, just let me take it a little aside here, just as a rabbit trail. I want to encourage you. I want to point something out to you in verse 11 as an encouragement. And it's those words, you are evil. Underline those words in your Bible. You are evil. You're looking at me like, Darryl, it's not working. I'm not feeling the encouragement. I believe this is one of the most encouraging words in the entire Bible. Here's why. Sometimes you can read the Sermon on the Mount and get really discouraged. You know, you're reading and it's like, oh, this is so hard. I fall so far short. I must not even be in the kingdom. I must not even be in the family of God. I'm probably like the Pharisees or something, because this is just... In fact, some people just reject the Sermon on the Mount altogether and they just write it off as law, it's not gospel. Or they'll say, it belongs in some other age, some other dispensation, it can't apply to us, it's just too hard. There are people who have said, I've had people ask me, you show me one place in the whole Sermon on the Mount where there's grace. In fact, I had a pastor once say to me, you show me anything Jesus ever said that's grace. It's all law. And so he rejected Jesus' words for this age. He said that we only pay attention to Paul. Well, if you want to find grace in the Sermon on the Mount, it's not hard to find. And one place you can really find it is right here in verse 11. Let me read verse 11 again. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your... What's the next word? Father. Your Father in heaven give good gifts to you. You underline that, your father. You underline those two phrases, you are evil and your father, and you will see grace. Do you realize that these people who are children of God, who are in the kingdom, are evil people? You are evil and simultaneously a child of God? Now, don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that condones sin or that justifies disobeying God in any way. I'm not saying that. What I am saying, though, is what kind of people make it into the family of God and become genuine children? Evil people. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with grace from beginning to end. You don't have to overcome all of your evil in order to be a child of God. The very first verse of the Sermon on the Mount, the poor in spirit, the people who are spiritually destitute, bankrupt, have nothing to offer spiritually. Those are the only people that can get in. That's grace. The greatest news ever given for evil, spiritually bankrupt people is the Sermon on the Mount, which teaches that those people, only those people, can enter heaven and become sons and daughters of God. So, hopefully that encourages you. Let me get back to the sermon. point that Jesus is making here. Jesus is not only aware that human fathers are not perfect and they falter at some point, but he actually goes out of his way to draw attention to it because it makes his point more powerful. The more evil the person in the illustration, the more powerful the point. That's why he talks about an unjust judge and a lazy, grumpy neighbor and an evil father in examples about prayer. It's not that we're to think of God that way. That God, we pray and God does not now, I'm busy, I'm lazy, I'm tired, go away, I don't care about justice. It's not that we're to think that God is like that. Jesus gives those illustrations to show us, I mean, if you want to understand the point of how to take that It's right there in the middle of verse 11, that little phrase, how much more? How much more? Jesus isn't saying that God is like the guy in the bed, or the unjust judge, or the evil father. He's saying God is unlike them. What Jesus is saying is, even though they are bad, they are bad, and so think of how ridiculous it is to think that God would be worse than them. When we assume that God will not be responsive to persistent prayer, we're assuming that God is worse than an unjust judge, a lazy sleeping neighbor, and an evil father. So it's the very fact that in those illustrations those people are bad that makes the illustration so powerful. You see that? If fathers are sinful and evil and limited and weak, and even they give good gifts to their children, how much more will a loving Heavenly Father do it? Kind of like if somebody came up to you and they said, hey, were you aware of this piece of information? And you say, of course I know that. Even an idiot knows that. Why would you say that? Are you trying to compare yourself to an idiot? Are you saying, well, idiots know that and therefore I know it because I'm so much like an idiot. No, that's not what you're trying to say. What you're trying to say is, if even idiots know it, then obviously a guy like me will know it. since I'm a non-idiot. And that's exactly what God is saying here. He's saying basically this. If you say, look, even an idiot knows that. What you're saying is, please don't think of me as being dumber than an idiot. And I think that's what Jesus is saying here about God. Don't think of God as being less than an evil father. Don't think of him as being less than a grumpy, sleepy neighbor? Don't think of him as being less than an unjust judge. You say, God, will you be responsive to the pleas of a persistent child? And he says, of course! Even unjust judges and lazy neighbors and evil fathers respond to persistence. How much more would a generous, loving father be responsive? When the enemy comes after us, He tries to convince us that God is less than an unjust judge, less than an evil father. And tries to make us believe that God is like that. And so Jesus places it in these terms so that we can see the absurdity of it. The absurdity of thinking that God would ever fall below those levels. God is more eager to give to us than we are to ask. He's more eager to reveal himself He's more eager to fling open the doors of opportunity than we are to seek and knock. And when God decides the most loving thing to do is delay, when He says the answer is wait, I have to delay. Do you have any idea what it's like for God during that delay? I mean, you know what it's like for you. It's tough for you, but do you know what it's like for God during that delay? Isaiah 30, 18 tells us. It says, yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you. He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is the God of justice. Blessed are those who wait for Him. We have to wait for Him for various reasons. We need to wait for Him. There's reasons for the delay. But the delay is never ever because of reluctance on God's part. God is on the edge of His seat. He longs to be gracious. He rises to show you compassion. He's more on the edge of His seat than you are on the edge of yours during that delay. You can't wait. His timing is always perfect. And so if it's a good gift, you know, if it's not a good gift now, then God will give it to you at a time that's better than now. And one of the things that will make that future time better than now, one of the things that can turn what today would be a bad gift into an actual good gift that you can receive is the receptivity and eagerness of your heart. Imagine you're a world famous artist and you decide you're going to create a painting for your children as an expression of your love for them. And you want your kids to have something to remember you by. And so you pour yourself, you spend like three or four years on this, working on this painting. It's your magnum opus, greatest thing you've ever come up with. Every detail of the painting, represent some special thing about one of your kids, some special memory or some inside information you have with your kids. And it's just all, you put a lot of thought into it. And the whole painting is just beautiful. And so the moment it's unveiled, it instantly becomes famous around the world. Even though most people don't understand, they can't appreciate the meaning of the details, the picture is just absolutely so stunning that collectors all over the world just begin making offers for it. And the painting is worth tens of millions of dollars. But you didn't paint it to sell it. You painted it for your kids. And so now the time comes where you're going to make out your will and you have to decide which child to give this painting to. Your oldest, you know, he's 17 and he's expressed some interest in the painting, but all he wants to do is sell it. He's just interested in the money. You talk to your youngest and she says, you know, I'll take it. I think it's kind of a cool thing. You know, the cover on my geology textbook. And, you know, you ask one of your other kids and they're like, I don't know, I'll think about it. And so far, you haven't given it to anybody. You haven't given it to any other kid. Your children are asking for it. They want it. It's a good gift. I mean, they're asking for it. It's a good thing, but you still haven't given it. Why? What are you waiting for? You're waiting for somebody to want it, to really want it. If somebody barely wants it, as a cover on their textbook or just wants to sell it, it wouldn't really be a good gift for them right now because they would miss the purpose of the painting. The purpose of it was for you to express your love and to create joy in their hearts, in you, in their relationship with you. And so you're waiting for one of them to realize the value and the beauty and the meaning of it. And it's not a good gift until they understand that meaning. And they treasure it. The purpose for why it's created needs to be fulfilled. And so you're waiting. If I go to God in prayer and I have a half-hearted desire, I'm kind of acting like the pigs and the dogs. The more I'm like them, the more I create a situation where it's good for God to withhold the pearls Because I'm offering these lame, distracted, thoughtless, half-hearted prayers. I'm saying, God, please do this, and please do that, and whatever. And a half an hour later, I don't even remember that I asked for it. If you gave it to me, I wouldn't even think of it as an actual prayer because I barely want it. We do that with our prayer group. You say, oh, I'll pray for you this week. And you remember during the week, oh yeah, please let so-and-so have this request. There's so little desire in your heart for the answer to that prayer that by the time you get to next Sunday, you don't even remember that you asked for it. But the more desire I have in my heart for good things, the greater the eagerness, the greater the persistence and the effort and energy into pursuing good things, the more likely it is that it will be good for God to grant me those things and give them to me. See that? But the more urgent and intense your desire, the more God piles on the blessing. Psalm 8110, open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Isn't that a great verse? The portion size is limited only by the stretch of the jaws. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. Wider you open, more I'll give you. Paul said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 6, he said, we're not withholding our affection from you, but you're withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange, I speak as to my children, open wide your heart also. I believe God says that same thing to us. God says the problem isn't me skimping on offering my love. My heart is open wide to you. I'm asking you, open your heart to me. The bottleneck is with our hearts, not his. The riches of the kingdom of heaven are free, but they're available only to those who desire more than anything in the world. That's why Jesus compared the kingdom to a priceless treasure in a field. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again. And then when his joy is sold, all that he had in order to buy that field, nobody can afford that treasure. Nobody could ever earn favor from God. You could never afford any of that treasure, but everyone can acquire the field. And the way you acquire the field is just simply by wanting it more than anything else in this world, more than everything else you own. You say, well, how do I get that desire? My heart is a dial tone. There's no passion. There's no appetite. There's no drive. I'm depressed. I don't have this. How do I increase my appetite? Obviously, we don't have time now to get into that. We've talked at length about that in the past. I'll just give you the summary. Basically, you use all the pleasures and all the pain in life. You use all the pleasure in life to train your soul to realize, oh, this is a sampling of what it's like to be in the presence of God. That's why pleasure exists. The sampling of what it's like to be in the presence of God. And if we use it the right way and interpret it the right way, it'll make us crave the presence of God. So you increase your appetite that way, and then you use pain also to increase your appetite. When you suffer, then that's also a sample that teaches us this is what it's like to be apart from the presence of God. This is a sampling of what it's like to be distant from the presence of God, and so it makes you thirst. That pain teaches you, oh, I want the presence of God more than anything else. So use all of the pleasure and all of the pain in life to increase your appetite for God. And on top of that, If you want this passion, if you want this desire, if you want this drive, ask and it will be given to you. Seek after it, run after it, strive for it, chase it down. Hunt, search, dig for it and you'll find it. Knock on the door of greater desire and it will be opened to you. Let's pray. Father, we're asking. You said to ask, we're asking now. And we won't stop. We will persist. We know this is a good gift. And we know it's pleasing to you. And so we will persist and persist and wait on you. And we won't seek any substitutes. We'll ask and ask and beg and plead and seek after it until you grant us greater delight in you, greater desire for you. that we might bring you glory and honor by how much joy we take in receiving the answer to this prayer. We pray it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right, let's all stand for the benediction. To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, power, and authority through Jesus Christ, our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore. Amen. The Lord bless you all.