Sermon on the Mount -09- Asking For It

Reading: Matthew 7:7-12

 7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV)

I.   An Open Invitation

     A.  What do you Want?

           1.  The simplest prayer is your expression of what you want.

                 a.  What do you want — really?

                 b.  God invites you to express your wants.

                       (1)      When God listens, He listens not merely to our words, he listens to our heart.

                       (2)      If we ask for a bike, because we want love, He’ll give us love.

                 c.  We receive, not always what we ask, but always what we need.

           2.  Everyone who asks receives (v.8)

                 a.  Not only the disciples, but all who follow Jesus: Rich and poor, slave and free, male and female, illiterate and Ph.D’s, young or old, employed and unemployed, from farmers to physicians, nurses to nannies, pastors to plumbers, teachers to truck drivers, homemakers to horticulturalists, Realtors to rodeo clowns.

                 b.  We receive as we ask - not future tense but present.

Before they call I will answer;

while they are still speaking I will hear.

Isaiah 65:24 (NIV)

     B.  What are you looking for?

           1.  If all you’re looking for are things, what happens if you get everything?

           2.  Everyone is looking for just 2 things:

                 a.  The love of people

                       (1)      We need parental love

                       (2)      We need to be loved by people who don’t have to love us.

                 b.  The love of God

                       (1)      We need to know God loves us.

                       (2)      We do all sorts of things to try to get God to love us — everything but go to Him and ask Him to show us his love for us.

                 c.  Everyone who seeks finds.

                       (1)      The same list as before.

                       (2)      Everyone who looks for God’s love will find it. EVERYONE!

     C.  Who are you looking for?

           1.  Knock, knock... (Who’s there) God (God who) — Oh, you thought this was a joke. May I come in?

                 a.  But this is backwards, God does come knocking on our door.

           2.  (Knock, knock) Who’s there (Rich) Rich who — (Your son Rich, may I come in?) Sure!

           3.  When we go knocking on the door of sin, even then we’re looking for God.

                 a.  That’s why we never find what we’re looking for, even when we find what we thought we were looking for.

II.  The Kind of Father God is

     A.  Bread & Fish or Stones & Snakes

           1.  Jesus asks us about ourselves — what kind of people are we.

                 a.  Would we give something useless or harmful to our children when what they ask for are the necessities of life?

           2.  Do we consider ourselves morally superior to God?

     B.  How much More?

           1.  If you who are evil Jesus hung out with people and he loved (loves) us — but he knows we can be really messed up.

           2.  Certainly, by comparison with God, we are evil — and yet we claim to know better than He, what would be the best way to answer our own prayers?

                 a.  Do we really think we could recognize a good gift when we see it?

     C.  Good gifts

           1.  God always and only does good.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. Jeremiah 32:40 (NIV)

           2.  God is incapable of giving us gifts that harm us — even when what we receive is painful — even when we are on the receiving end of an injustice.

                 a.  When we get something harmful (and we will — even if we ask God to keep it from us — we can be sure it doesn’t come from God.

                 b.  HOWEVER God can and always turns the bad that we experience to our own good.

III. Out of the Closet

     A.  Doing good

           1.  Asking God to do good, is one thing. Getting out of our prayer closets and relating to others in ways we believe are good is another.

           2.  There is always a link between the sincerity of our prayers and our life choices.

     B.  Like God

           1.  Our choice is to be God-like. God always does good to us.

           2.  Jesus said “If you who are evil, know how to give good gifts...” and invites us to continue imitating God, in whose image we are made.

           3.  In prayer we ask for God’s goodness, we seek God’s love and we knock to meet God himself. Who is asking of you? Looking for your love? Wanting to meet the real you?

The Bottom Line:

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