The Christian Principles

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.