Jesus has just spent probably several hours on this hot hillside teaching his disciples what a Christian is, what effect they are to have on the world, what his role was in coming to earth, and then giving many illustrations of Christian attitudes and behaviours that define us as Children of God and citizens of the Kingdom found in the Book of Life.
Now for the rest of chapter 7 we have what I think is the most important summary in the entire Bible, showing us exactly what the future holds for us and the basic choices we have to make. In this summary he reviews five points beginning with the most important. I want to remind you also that these are all in the present imperative which means they are ongoing, keep asking, keep seeking keep knocking. So let’s begin with:
I. Ask
Before anything else can take place we must ask to be forgiven. This is the simplest yet maybe the most profound statement in all the Bible. Ask and it will be given you. By now in this teaching, we know we’re sinners, we know we need Christ as our saviour, and because of this we simply have to ask Jesus to save us. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
How many times have you presented the Gospel to someone, pleaded with them to accept Christ’s invitation, and they sit there either silently, or outright refusing? Nothing can happen until the sinner asks Jesus to forgive them. To meet the most basic need that anyone will ever have. The Lord will not turn anyone down who asks for this from a place of humility and honest awareness of the need. And nobody can make us saved until we ask for it.
Remember back in chapter 6 verse 30 when Jesus said you have such little faith after addressing worry about food and clothing? This section describes in more detail what he means. He didn’t say you have no faith, he said little, or insufficient faith. Does it really take much faith to ask for forgiveness and be saved?
He’s talking in these verses about people who have a saving faith but that’s where it stops, and that’s why they experience very little life in their Christianity. It actually takes more faith to turn down, or not ask for God’s forgiveness if you really think about it.
Here’s a question for all of us to ponder as we continue through these verses today. Do I have anything more than a saving faith? Have I totally committed all my life to His Lordship? Does my faith extend beyond the salvation of my soul and into the rest of my life? Because saving faith is essentially no more than belief or agreement with Scripture. In this regard the only difference between saving faith and the belief of the hell bound demons, is that they didn’t ask for forgiveness. They believe all the same stuff about Jesus, but chose not to accept what he offered.
If we still worry often, if we still seek assurance and security from the world, we have a weak faith that has not moved beyond asking for forgiveness and getting our “get out of hell free” card. Our faith has not overtaken our lives.
A man once said, the trouble with many Christians is that we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but we do not believe him. In other words we believe on Him for salvation of souls, but we don’t believe him when he says our Father will provide for us, or that we have the full power of God available to us through the Holy Spirit.
But still, all it takes is this little faith to ask and it will be given. If that’s good enough for you, you can begin your nap now, because the rest of this sermon will not apply to you.
II. Seek
Seek and you will find. Find what? Obviously in this context, find God. Just because you have accepted forgiveness doesn’t mean you know God. After being saved we are to seek God with great effort. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness for they shall be satisfied, and those who are pure in heart, for they shall see God.
We don’t necessarily have that vital relationship with the Lord when we’re saved. That’s just like meeting Him. Like any other relationship it develops over time and we are to seek Him once we are saved. In fact forgiveness/justification is what makes it possible to even begin this relationship and desire to seek Him. But see how the seeking now requires a little more faith and action than simply the asking.
Not only will we find Him, but as the Lord’s Prayer alludes to, we will find His will if we truly seek it. Part of what keeps our faith small is that we don’t think. We don’t consider who God really is, we don’t consider that we are literally his children and he wants the best for us, and part of our inheritance is that He lives in us.
When we seek to live out this faith, obey His will in all of our life, rather than just take a deep breath because we’re not going to hell, our faith has to increase as we see God do more in and through us. He becomes more and more real to us as we let Him take over.
If we spend one minute a day meditating on what this means, the kind of care he has for us, and what he has empowered us to do, it would change everything. So seek also to understand in an experiential way what it really means to be a Spirit powered child of God. Then be amazed at what you find when you apply this reality to everyday life.
III. Knock
And it will be opened to you. What, the gates of heaven? No, I don’t think that’s what its saying. We have asked for forgiveness, we have sought Him through His word and prayer, and now we are to knock. This must mean to persistently pursue righteousness and fulfill the qualities of our sanctification in Christ.
We can’t just stop when we accept God’s forgiveness, we are then to seek and knock continually. This is going to be expanded on next week, but the implication in this whole Sermon on the Mount is that you are not done when you accept salvation. Jesus just spent the bulk of His sermon clarifying what is required, what makes you a Child of God, what salvation is meant to do to you. And may I remind you, going to church is not mentioned.
Salvation causes you to seek and knock with all your might for the rest of your days, knowing that you’ll never find it all, never have all the wisdom of God opened to you, never experience the entirely fulfilled Kingdom of Heaven until your life ends. I see this more as the door to God’s study, not the gates of heaven. The door to intimate relationship.
Now look very carefully at the wording in verse 8. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. This is very difficult Greek to translate so we have to put words in there, but the gist of it is that everyone who asks, will be saved, but only those saved people who seek and knock continually will have an intimate relationship with God and have God use them powerfully.
Isn’t that what we see in the church today? Sanctuaries full of Christians who accepted the forgiveness of the Cross but stopped there, “I got my ticket”, but it was never about more than that for them. They don’t want anymore to do with God than to get their ticket and go on their merry way, seeking nothing but gratification from God and His church.
As great and miraculous as salvation is, it’s nothing compared to finding Him and entering into His very presence. Let me see if I can illustrate this for us. Let’s say you stand in line for three days in the rain to get a World Series 7th game ticket at Fenway Park. You get the ticket and it costs you $2000.
You get into the stadium the day of the game, but you and thousands of others are so consumed with getting your hotdogs and souvenirs in the concourse that you don’t see any of the game. You hear the sounds, but the whole reason you are there gets lost because you had to get your hotdogs and souvenirs, and because so many others were doing the same, you spent the whole game standing in those lines while the rest of the people watched the game.
Now you can always say after that “I was at that game”, but you will never be able to say you saw that game in person. Not a perfect illustration, but hopefully you get the point.
The fourth one is:
IV. Do
Ok, Jesus so what do you want me to do? You have just spent hours giving all these examples, but I’m pretty dense so could you package it up for me?
Jesus says, “Sure, do to others what you want them to do to you. Remember I said I had not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them? Well, here’s how to do it, treat others as you want them to treat you.”
You know, this whole Sermon on the Mount and especially this Golden Rule about treating others as you would like to be treated is not meant to just be commented on and praised. We say, “what a lovely idea, what great rules for life”. They are meant to be practiced and applied.
I bet if you had to listen to this sermon every day, you wouldn’t think it’s so wonderful. You would probably say, “Alright already I’ll do it”. Thank goodness we can leave church and if we want to, we can just forget about it all. But unfortunately as we will see next week, that makes us the fool who builds the house on the sand.
But Jesus it can’t be that simple. “What do you want, I just gave you the complicated version in the last two hours in this hot sun, you wanted me to summarize, and now you complain about that too. Maybe you are dumb enough to give your child a serpent when he asks for a fish”
OK, how about this, you want tougher?
V. Enter by the narrow gate.
“If you think it’s so simple to treat others as you want to be treated, to love like I do, try this on for size. The wide gate is easy and many find it, but the narrow gate is very difficult, you have no idea how difficult, in fact most people including you, will probably never find it. Why, because so few seek it.
Are you sure you don’t want to just stick with the Golden Rule? Wait till you see what I have to say next week if you think it’s so easy. If you think loving people like that is so easy, why don’t you do it?
Do you get it now? Everything that has ever been said in the Bible boils down to this, love me with all you’ve got and love others as you want to be loved yourself.”
But I hate myself? I’ve been suicidal most of my life. You want me to treat others like I treat myself? I feel sorry for them. “You don’t hate yourself, you’re obsessed with yourself, the only reason you want to die is because you can’t find a way to get what you want. You don’t think you’re worthy because others treated you badly or you had a rough time growing up.
Besides, I didn’t say treat others as you treat yourself, but treat others as you want them to treat you. Get over yourself. You still want to be treated well by others. In fact you believe that that’s the only way you’ll ever feel good. Maybe its time to take responsibility for your own happiness and quit barking up the wrong trees.
I want you to be as obsessed with me and others as you are with yourself, and stop you’re pity party. Start giving others what you didn’t get if it was so bad, and definitely don’t treat them the way you were treated by those who damaged you so much. Oh, and by the way my child, you might even want to try some forgiveness of those who hurt you, I think I may have mentioned that once or twice before.”
Now what about this narrow gate. Well, on one level it means that you can get eternal life only through Jesus. He is the narrow gate. These people would have understood this because he’s using a metaphor for sheep pens. Shepherds would pile up rocks in a circle to keep the sheep together over night and keep predators out. The shepherd would then literally be the gate by laying in front of a small opening left to let the sheep in and out. Jesus is this narrow gate here.
He says, “If I just let you wander around the fields, you would be devoured by predators and poachers, that’s what I mean by destruction. Its harder to follow me, its maybe even more restricting to be jammed into this little pen, but if you don’t your dead. Life is only guaranteed in my pen through this little gate. But you gotta want it, you gotta knock and follow me into it.
This is the first of the choices I give you. The narrow gate or the wide gate? Your way (man’s way), or my way? Next week you have to make some more choices, but today, which one is it? Are you going to take your chances out there in the field overnight where the enemy prowls? Or do you trust me enough to obey and follow me?
You can ask for the gate, but unless you seek it, you will not find it, unless you knock, you will not enter it.
You being evil know how to give your children good gifts, do you think then, that I am going to give you something worse? Peter summarized it this way, “his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness”.
None of this means that if we ask for anything we want, we’re going to get it from God. What it means is that if we ask for any of things that are truly good for us in God’s eyes, he will give them, that is the salvation of your soul, your ultimate perfection in Him, anything that enlarges our lives and brings us closer to God. He won’t though, give us the things that are bad for us even if we think they’re good and ask for them.
Martyn Lloyd Jones says, “If we really want to be more like Him and all saints, if we really ask for these things, we shall receive; if we really seek them, we shall find them; if we really keep knocking, the door will be opened and we shall enter into their possession”.
Why don’t we live by these rules? Why are their disputes? Why is there backbiting, jealousy? Why do people choose not to talk to each other or even look at each other?
It’s entirely a theological question and the answer is simple if we look at the first part of the great commandment. We are to start with loving God, which comes before loving your neighbour.
We are self-centered, not God-centered, and we are at enmity with God. You don’t love your neighbour? Simple, you don’t love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength – period. Hard to hear that maybe, but if you search yourself, you know it’s true. You are more important to you than God is. That’s it in a nutshell.
The way is hard that leads to life. When I was younger I went hiking up Golden Ears Mountain. Several years earlier I went with my school and there was a nice rope bridge that crossed the waterfalls to keep you on the trail up the top of the mountain. The path that led to the bridge was wide, covered in nice bark mulch, very easy and flat.
Well away I went with my 50 pound pack heading up this easy path to the falls to cross the bridge. When I got there the bridge was no longer there. I turned back down the path to head home when I noticed this tiny little opening in the bush with an orange tag marking it. I decided to head through this overgrown, blackberry infested sort of path.
I got cut up on the blackberry thorns and there came a place still marked by the tags that wanted me to scale these rocks and walk along a very narrow ledge with this huge pack on my back and nothing to hold onto. I did, and a few minutes later I emerged at the river now above the falls in this beautiful valley with gorgeous beaches. The river was easy to cross here over the rocks, and the path up the mountain continued on the other side.
Well, it was so beautiful there, I decided to camp there before heading up the next day. The wide path led nowhere, there was no reward at the end, but this other one that obviously very few had trod led to amazing rewards. The Christian life is travelling the road less travelled, and everything in us will say, let’s just stay on the beaten path, it’s easier and more familiar. But there’s nothing at the end of it.
In fact even in your mind there are beaten paths and until you practice doing and thinking different things you will impulsively travel the worn paths until you make new ones. The point is, if you want God’s rewards, including eternal life, you have to trust the narrow, unbeaten path. When we ask, seek, and knock, this is the path we will be led to. You may be bleeding, terrified, and uncertain at times along the way, but do you believe the promise is worth it?
