The Christian Principles
Today let us meditate on Matthew 7:7-12. Chapters five, six, and seven of Matthew are Jesus delivered sermons on the mount on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 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 good things to those who ask Him! 12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
This section of the sermon on the mount that Jesus is teaching is something familiar in our Bibles. What does Jesus say to us in these verses? Three things we're going to be looking at today: the golden request, the golden rewarder, and finally the golden rule.
1) The Golden Request:
"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." - Matthew 7:7-8. We're going to start with the golden request. Jesus talks about asking, seeking, and knocking. It's all about the privilege that we have to make our requests known unto God through prayer. That's what Jesus is emphasizing here: Prayer is the golden request. It is communing and connecting with the heart of God. A hymn that comes to my mind when I think about the importance of prayer. The hymn of prayer was written by Joseph Scriven in 1855. "What a friend we have in Jesus - All our sins and griefs to bear - And what a privilege to carry - Everything to God in prayer - Oh, what peace we often forfeit - Oh, what needless pain we bear - All because we do not carry - Everything to God in prayer"
Prayer is a funny thing. Most people will pray or be motivated to pray. When a trial comes into our life, when difficulty comes into our life, usually we step up in our prayers. A good and right prayer is that we want to draw near to the heart of God and not because there's a trial or difficulty in our life. This is the kind of prayer life that Jesus wants us to have. Interestingly, the sermon on the Mount has three chapters. In chapter six, Jesus talks about prayer, the model prayer, what we call the Lord's Prayer or Jesus Prayer. He's going to emphasize it again here in chapter seven with the words "ask, seek, and knock." It is the golden request of prayer. He is saying, make your request known to your Father in heaven. Pray, seek, and knock are all golden requests from our God. We may call it Christian principles of prayer. Pray & seek His face.
a) Progressive Prayer:
One of the things Jesus teaches here is progressive prayer. Progressive prayer to ask is not as intense as to seek. To seek is not as intense as to knock. Jesus is saying ask and that is on one level and then it becomes more intense. When you seek, then it becomes even more intense. When you knock, there's progressive nature to prayer. First, inquire, then seek, and finally, knock. He wants us to see prayer as progressive. The first thing is to ask.
ASK: In the sermon on the mount, back in Matthew 6:8, Jesus said, your Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask. And also in chapter 6, he said this in verses 31 & 32 when he said, therefore, do not worry saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? or what shall we wear? For after all these things the gentiles seek. For your heavenly father knows what you need for all these things.
Now the question is; well, Jesus already told us that God knows what we need before we ask. Why is he calling us to pray? God knows everything and he does. Why should I pray? He already knows what I need. The answer is because asking is a humble admission of need. Humble admission of our need to our father, who is in heaven.
When he wrote the epistle of James, he would tell us a few things about asking God. This is what he said in James 4:2-3. He said, "Yet you do not have, because you do not ask." You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. " James talks about asking God, he says one of the reasons why you don't have is because you don’t ask. The second thing he says is you don't get what you want because you ask with wrong motives. So first ask, and secondly, ask with the right reasons, not with wrong motives. You might selfishly spend what you get on yourself or use what you get on yourself.
Jesus says here in this passage to ask and it will be given to you. Everyone who asks receives. That doesn't mean that you get whatever you want. “You can't always get what you want". It's true, we can't always get what we want. Jesus is not just giving us a blank check. When you ask whatever you want. Rest in God's best and not your request.
It's not about what I want, it's about God's best for me. As my father, I can always trust him to give me his best even though my requests don't understand how my request is not beneficial to myself. But God always knows what is best. You know, some of us are old enough to be able to look back on our lives and recognize that sometimes when God says no, it was because of his mercy. And you were upset about it at that time. But later, you look back, and you're thankful that he didn't say yes to that particular request. So God always knows best and we need to ask him. John writes, "Now this is the confidence that we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will, He hears us." - 1John 5:14. God has a will. God has intent for us. When we ask, we are coming before him, making our requests known and then trusting him with the answer on it.
SEEK: The next progressive thing on the prayer list is seek. Ask and then seek. When we don't get an immediate answer to ask, we seek. We seek God through scripture.We seek his will for our lives. He wants to teach us something when we seek him. Otherwise, we would have missed him. He can simply answer what we asked for. You know when you ask and get it. It happens. God gives us those things that are near and dear to our request. A quick answer to something that we may not have learned about Him. But seeking then requires us to really draw near to the Lord. When we search the scriptures and seek God's face, he simply gives us what we asked for.
In Psalm 105:4 it says, "Seek the Lord and His strength; seek his face evermore.” Matthew 6: 33 remember Jesus said, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” There is a seeking that God calls us to the kingdom of God which is the rule and reign of the Lord over our lives, minds and hearts. When we are seeking first the kingdom of God, we are submitting to the rule of Christ in our lives and we're trusting him as king to accomplish his good purposes. We need to be seekers who search the heart of God, His word, for answers to prayer.
KNOCK: Ask, seek, and then thirdly knock. This implies a closed door, doesn't it? In fact, Jesus said that if we knock, it will be open to us. So it's not just an implication. It's a fact. Sometimes, our prayers will feel like hitting a closed door. But Jesus invites us to knock not because the closed door is intended to discourage us, to turn us away, but because the closed door is an invitation to his presence. If we knock, it will be open to us. We are not to be turned away by the closed door. We are to be invited to knock so that we might enter God's holy presence, through prayer. When Jesus speaks here about knocking, it's the idea of petitioning the throne of heaven. Don’t give up until there's an answer. It's a pleading with God. So all three of these "ask, seek, and knock" are about progressive prayer.
b) Persistent Prayer:
He's also teaching us something else with these three words, and it is persistent prayer. The tense in the Greek language for these three words ask, seek and knock is in the present, active, imperative. Jesus teaches us to be in continual action. Ask and keep on asking; seek and keep on seeking; knock and keep on knocking. It is a call to persistence in our prayer, not just praying once. Some people say, “I didn't get the answer." So I'm going to stop praying. I've known some people who have prayed for decades, 20 years, 30 years, and finally seen an answer to prayer, because they were persistent in seeking the face of God.
There's a parable that Jesus teaches in Luke chapter 18 about the persistent widow. In the parable, it talks about how this widow kept petitioning a judge for relief from her adversaries. And the judge would dismiss her and not listen to her case. But she would go back day after day, after day and she would petition the judge for relief. Finally, one day, the judge had mercy on her. And he gave her the kind of relief that she was seeking. As Jesus begins this parable, Luke writes in Luke 18:1 “then Jesus spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.” He was talking about this persistent widow who kept praying and she would petition the judge day after day, and the judge finally gave her the relief that she was seeking. Be persistent in your prayers, don’t give up. Persistence indicates a heart of faith that you believe the one you are petitioning and your trust is in him. So day after day after day, you're going to seek him with persistence. Ask, seek, and knock because God honors progressive, persistent prayer.
Prayer is not bending the will of God to my will. Prayer is bending my will to the will of God. Too many people think that just confessing this and declaring that somehow God is obligated to do it. That's not true at all. That's very unbiblical. Listen, prayer is bending my will to the will of God. It is aligning my heart with the heart of God, not the other way around.
"Prayer is surrender." Surrender to the will of God and cooperate with that will. “If I throw out a boat hook from a boat and catch hold of the shore and pull. Do I pull the shore to me? or do I pull myself to the shore?. Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God."- Stanley Jones.
Prayer is to ask, seek, and knock.
2) Golden Rewarder:
The emphasis is on the rewarder rather than the reward. We need to understand our Father in Heaven and Jesus in verses 9-11 says " or what man is there among you who if his son asks for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish will he give him a serpent; 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 good things to those who ask him." He's saying here that our whole motivation to ask, seek, and knock is predicated upon a proper understanding of our Father who is in heaven. As a loving Father who delights to bless you and care for you and provide for you. Without a proper understanding of God as the golden rewarder, then we will not be as inclined to draw near to him. If you understand him as a loving Father who wants to bless you, take care of you, and provide for you, then you're more apt to draw near to him more freely.
"Without faith, it is impossible to please God, and it says that he who comes to God must first believe that God exists." He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. " -Hebrews 11:6. He is the golden rewarder. He is the one who stands ready to help us, provide for us and take care of us. Jesus draws on this example here of a human father who is decent and loving to his kids and would never do something so terrible as to offer his kid a stone, when his kid asks for bread or to offer his kid a snake when his kid asks for a fish. He is a normal, loving, decent human father. If a decent loving dad would do decent loving things to his children, then he says, how much more will your father in heaven do good things for his children, and he reminds us that every human dad, no matter how good a human dad is, is still a sinner. He said, "If you are evil, sinful, and know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to his children who ask?"
He wants us to understand. The freedom and the privilege we have in approaching the throne of grace is wide open. And guess who is there ready to receive us! A loving Father in heaven who wants to do exceedingly more abundantly than we could ever hope or imagine. The greatest dad on earth is not worth comparing to your loving Father who wants to do exceedingly abundantly more than even an earthly father. What is Jesus saying? This is why we need to draw near to him. This is why we need to approach the throne of grace. He's a loving dad who wants to take care of his kids. He is the golden rewarder.
But again, just like a good earthly father will not give his kids anything and everything they ask. We're a little bit older and wiser to understand that some of the things our kids ask for are not good for them. That's the way our Father is to us as well. Thus, sometimes God says yes, sometimes God says no. Sometimes God says not now. And you know that any of those answers is appropriate, because a loving dad is always going to look out for our best interest. It's all part of his mercy towards us and his love towards us. The question is, will we be able to accept whatever that answer might be and rest in that.
3) The Golden Rule:
In Matthew 7:12, he says, "Therefore whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them." It's been commonly referred to as the golden rule: do unto others as you want them to do to you. Some translations would say, treat others as you want them to treat you. It's called the Golden Christian Rule because it is traditionally called the Golden Rule. It's important. Anything that is golden is important or valuable. This is the top rule, and in fact, it is such an important rule. Jesus even adds it at the end of verse 12, for this is the law and the prophets. In other words, that is the summary of the entire Old Testament. The law and the prophets could be summarized in the moral principle: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. The theme of the golden rule is to highlight three golden things.
There were other people before Jesus who made similar moral statements. Around 500 B.C, before Christ, Buddha was quoted as saying, "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.. Around 480 years before Christ, Confucius said, "Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.". Around 400 years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Socrates said, quote, "Do not do to others that angers you when they do it to you.". And even after Jesus, in Islam, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism, almost every world religion has a motto like what we call the golden rule that Jesus spoke of. The difference is this: in every other world religion, either before Jesus by philosophers or after Jesus, every world religion that made a similar golden rule statement was always in the negative. Jesus is the only one who put it in the positive. Do unto others. what you would like them to do unto you. Now why is this an important distinction? If you are told not to do something like the other religious mottos, then you are doing well if you do nothing. Because their goal in their religious mottos is similar to this.Their goal is to do your neighbor no harm. However, there is no guidance or instruction on how to proceed.
Jesus comes along and he says "No, I'm putting this in the positive and by putting this in the positive, Jesus is calling us to do good to our neighbor. The same good that we hope that they might do to us. But not waiting on them to do it, we are initiating it first. Because what Jesus is saying here by giving us this motto about doing good to others as you want them to do good to you, It's not simply the absence of harm. It's not the absence of harm. It is the presence of good that you demonstrate to your neighbor in the name of Jesus, and this is significant.
Now how and why does the golden rule here have anything to do with the instruction on prayer? Jesus goes right from this whole thing about asking, seeking, knocking and your father in heaven being loving and how he's going to take care of us and he's going to respond to us according to his best. What does that have to do with so do unto others as you would have them do unto you? The answer to that is because if you ever hope to have a chance at keeping the golden rule, You're going to have to still practice the first part of it. In other words, you have to understand what a relationship is with Jesus through persistent prayer and diligently seeking him. If you ever hope to act like Jesus. You have to seek him first. You have to ask, seek, and knock. And come into his presence and understand what a relationship with Jesus is. Because it is only through a relationship with Jesus that we are able to exemplify him to our neighbors. The opportunity and the privilege we have to enter the presence of God to commune and connect with his heart. Ask, seek, and knock. He is the golden rewarder who will bless us in ways that we can't even imagine. We can live out the golden rule towards others. Amen.
