This Is How You Should Live -- Ask And It's Yours! -- 07/25/2021

Oswald Chambers has this to say about Jesus and The Sermon on the Mount.

Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher. If Jesus Christ is only a teacher, then all He can do is frustrate me by setting a standard before me I cannot attain. What is the point of presenting me with such a lofty ideal if I cannot possibly come close to reaching it? I would be happier if I never knew it. What good is there in telling me to be what I can never be— to be “pure in heart”, to do more than my duty, or to be completely devoted to God? . . . The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces a sense of despair in the natural man— exactly what Jesus means for it to do.[1]

Our Father’s Promise

In this morning’s passage, near the conclusion of his sermon, Jesus gives to us the solution to the despair He intentionally induced within us in three short words: ask, seek, knock! Along with the promise “your Father in heaven [will] give good gifts to those who ask.”

What I want us to see in these three words this morning is three ways to do the same thing:

Run to our Heavenly Father for everything we need.

Asking, seeking, knocking all take us to the same place: into the presence of our Father in Heaven to get what we need.

Here’s the promise:

Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:8, NIV)

· Everyone who asks receives.

· Everyone who seeks finds.

· Everyone who knocks gets an open door.

Everyone means you and me. There are no exceptions – everyone who asks, seeks, and knocks receives.

On what basis can we trust such an audacious and open-ended promise?

Our Reason to Trust

Jesus points out that earthly fathers, even though they are evil by nature, give their children good things, not evil things, when their children ask them. If earthly fathers who are evil give good gifts to their children who ask, how much more can we, the children of God, have confidence that our Father in Heaven in whom there is no evil at all, but who is pure goodness, give good gifts without hesitation, to His children who ask Him.

Our Father in heaven’s pure goodness is our reason to trust His audacious and open-ended promise that everyone who asks, seeks, and knocks receives what they need.

Eleven words can capture the message of this passage and the point of this sermon:

If we ask, our Father will give us everything we need.

Then the question naturally comes,

Why must we ask?

Matthew 6:8 (NIV)

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Yes, our Father knows what we need before we ask. But look at what Jesus says next:

Matthew 6:9–11 NIV

“This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.

Jesus is telling us, your Father in heaven knows what you need, So, ask Him for what you need.

This is like a mother who knows her daughter needs some new clothes before school starts and promises to provide them, but it’s when her daughter says, “Hey mom, can we go shopping for school clothes today?” that Mom rearranges her schedule to make that happen. Mom makes the shopping trip happen because the daughter took time to ask and in her asking the daughter acknowledged her dependence on her mom’s time, good-will, car and cash to get what her mom already knew the daughter needed.

Likewise, our Father in Heaven wants us to ask for what He already knows we need and for what He already plans to provide us because it acknowledges our complete dependence on His goodness for our every need.

Our call to worship this morning, Psalm 24:1 reminded us,

Psalm 24:1 (NIV)

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;

If the earth is the LORD’s and everything in it, belongs to the LORD, then what belongs to me and to you? Nothing. What belongs to us as a church family? Nothing.

Oswald Chambers continued his thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount, with these words,

The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possessions; . . . having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, “Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.” Then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11).[2]

Jesus teaches us that if we will admit our absolute dependence on God for everything, then Our Father in heaven will give us that for which we ask.

Is this a blank check? Yes, it is a blank check for everything we really need. What do we really need?

One reason people struggle with this passage is because people often attempt to apply it completely divorced from its context within The Sermon on the Mount. This is a flagship verse for proponents of the “name it and claim it” approach to prayer. Lifting the verse from its context implies that God is giving us a blank check for anything we want. This is not the case. God is not promising us anything we want. But He is promising us everything we need that will benefit us in belonging in body and in soul to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ in this world and the next. When we cherish the ground from which this promise grows, our Lord’s teaching in The Sermon on the Mount, then we can ask our heavenly Father with confidence for what we need, knowing that He will give us everything that is good for us.

Asking With Confidence

What can we ask for in confidence? What do we really need? Here is what Jesus has taught us in The Sermon on the Mount that you and I need.

We need a blessed life that shows that we are God's child and a citizen of the kingdom (5:3-12).

We can ask God to make us humble, to comfort us in our mourning, to give us a gentle but strong spirit, to make us hunger and thirst for righteousness, to make us merciful, to give us a pure heart, to use us to bring peace in our spheres of influence, to cause us to rejoice, be glad, and be strong when we are persecuted because of our faith in Jesus.

We need to be a clear witness - a voice of truth for the Gospel - a life that brings glory to our Father in heaven ( 5:13-16).

We can ask the Father to use us to make us salt and light in this world pointing others to Him in what we say and do and bearing fruit that brings him glory and that will last.

We need to fulfill the law of God by fulfilling the Spirit of the Law (5:17-48).

We can ask our Father to:

· root out the anger that leads to murder in the heart and the body.

· rip out the lust that leads to adultery in the heart and in the body.

· change our stone hard heart that leads to divorce and the death of other relationships.

· take away our desire to control everybody and everything so that we trust him in all things, so that we say "yes" to God's good work in our life and "no" to everything that wants to kill God's good work in our life.

· remove our desire for revenge and replace it with the ability to bless those who take advantage of us.

· transform our hate for our enemies into love that works for their well-being.

We need to live a righteous life that points to God and not to ourselves (6:1-24).

· Ask God to help us give in the right way for the right reasons.

· Ask God to give us a delight for spending time with him in prayer.

· Ask God for the ability to fast in ways that transform our life.

In doing this we are building up treasures in heaven. Let’s ask God for more treasure in heaven!

We need to experience peace in our life, not constant worry (6:25-34)

· We ask, “Father help us trust you will meet all our essential needs.”

· We ask, “Father cause us to run after your righteousness as the top priority of our life.”

We need to help others without judging them (7:1-7)

We ask, “Father show us and remove the hypocrisy in our own life, so You can use us to help others see Your love for them.”

This is the promise:

Matthew 7:7–8 NIV

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

In our passage this morning, Our Lord Jesus brings us face to face with ourselves, for to receive the promise we must ask ourselves:

What do we really want? Is what we really want what Jesus says we really need? What are we willing to ask for, to seek for, and knock for ourselves and what are we willing to ask for, seek for, and knock for as a church family?

Let us pray.

[1]Chambers, O. “The Doorway of the Kingdom” in My Utmost for His Highest. Retrieved from https://utmost.org/the-doorway-to-the-kingdom/, July 21, 2021.

[2] Ibid.