Ask And It Will Be Given To You #1

So today is Father's Day, and each year we take this Sunday to study some aspect of fatherhood. And I typically start in my sermon preparations by figuring out what I preached on last year to make sure I don't do it again. Last year I preached on Numbers 30, and that's a weird passage. That's the passage where husbands can annul their wives' vows. And I don't remember why I preached on that, but I thought it was a good sermon for us last year. This year... I decided that we're just going to continue on in our study of the Sermon on the Mount because there's a picture of fatherhood in this passage that I think is helpful to us. We'll be back in this passage again next week. But what I want to focus on this morning is the love and the intimacy and the involvement of fathers with their children. In this last year, many of you have become fathers for the first time.

while more of you have become fathers again. And there are others who are still anticipating the renewal of their fatherhood in the weeks and months to come. And so fatherhood is all around us. This morning, we're going to be looking at God's kindness toward us. And my hope is that as we become fathers and as we grow in our fatherhood, our fatherhood will look more and more like God's fatherhood. It's a simple sermon aimed at helping us to become like Jesus in our fatherhood and the care and the love. and provision for our children. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 through 11. 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. What man is there among you, who when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 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 what is good to those who ask him? This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Next week we'll come back to this text and we'll be focusing on the asking, the seeking, the knocking, the praying. But this week we're going to be focusing on the section where Jesus talks about fathers and their children. He says, And the first thing I want to say to you about this is there's assumptions made in what Jesus is using as an example here. And the thing that he assumes is a father's affection and a father's care for his children. Fathers ought to love to give their children what they need.

and what they ask for. When Jesus asks the question, what man is there among you who? It's a rhetorical question. We should be thinking, what kind of man would a man have to be to not do this? As I was preparing, I was thinking, you know, there are fathers who don't do this. There are men who don't give good gifts to their children, who don't give them the things that they need, who don't love their children. And of those men, we ought to think that they're not worthy of the title. or that they've squandered the blessing of children, and they're not fit for their position. The most basic truth about a father is that he should delight in his children. He should love them. He should care for them. He should care about them. He should know them. When we think of delighting in children, I think it's often an attribute that we naturally ascribe to mothers, that mothers love their children, that they fawn over them, that they fret over them, that they are very involved.

But when we think of fathers and their relationships to their children and their responsibilities to their children, I'm afraid that too often we think simply in terms of provision and protection and not affection or love or delight. That to be a father is to be distant or disinterested or hard or firm. That's not how God's fatherhood is. And it ought not to be how our fatherhood is. as fathers, ought to delight in our children. It's not only for our wives to do it. And it is true that wives do delight in their children. And it's worth noting that fathers and mothers are going to delight in their children over different things, and it's going to look differently. This is something that your children need. You fathers, this is something your children need from you. It's something that you have to come to understand that nobody else can give to them. Nobody else can give to them. Their uncles.

their siblings, older men at the church, their grandparents, their mother, there is no one else that can give them your affection, your love. They will either have it from you or they won't have it at all. There's not one right way to do it, to delight in your children. I was thinking about how to describe what delighting in your children looks like, and it's very hard to explain. I could explain to you what my delight looks like in my children. I could explain what other fathers' delight looks like in their children, and there'd be a lot of variety. I think the question that we ought to ask ourselves as husbands or as fathers is how do we express our love for our children? Do our children know that we delight in them? Would they describe us as being kind to them, as encouraging them, as being affectionate with them?

Is smiling at them or spending time with them? What would their perception be? Does my daddy like me or am I a bother to him? Is he irritated by me or is he encouraged by me? Maybe you should ask your kids these questions. I think fatherhood's a really intimidating thing in our day because many of us grew up without fathers who did this sort of thing. I was telling Eric in preparing for these sermons, I said they're the hardest types of sermons for me to preach because if I was just going to talk about fatherhood, I could talk for a long time. But if I have to preach a sermon about fatherhood, it's hard to figure out a text because there's something that is woven into the fabric of society and men and women that's all dusty and shuttered. Simple things that Jesus assumes in his text about fatherhood, we can't assume.

If we had to think, did I have a father who loved me and who did the things that Jesus describes here, who was happy to give me the things that I needed? I'm afraid many of us, if not most of us, would say, no, I didn't. I didn't have a father who did that. And what that means is that when you have children of your own, you're going to be really, really scared because you don't know what you're doing. And I'm not talking about the changing of the diapers or the bedtime routines or how to feed them or how to teach them to ride a bike. You'll figure...

those things out. I'm saying you won't know how to love them. You won't know how to delight in them. They will be a responsibility. They will be a hindrance. They will be work. So how do you learn to do this stuff if you didn't have a father to teach you? Well, our text tells us that the way that you learn this stuff is to realize that you do have a father who has taught you if you're a Christian. You do have a father who's taught you. Some of you guys know that I didn't know my dad growing up. And I met him 2012, maybe. First time I'd seen him since I was a baby, little baby, less than a year old. And there's a long story about how I found him. But anyway, we went to go meet. I meant to meet with him. He lives in Illinois. We live here in Indiana. And so we met. And what I wanted to tell him was, being a father myself now, was that simply that God had...

filled in where he had failed. That really was all I wanted to say to him. I didn't say that with words, but it was clear to him that I wasn't angry at him for his failures. And so if you didn't have a father, I understand. If you don't know how to be a father, I understand. If you need to learn, we all understand. But it should never be said of Christians that they have no example set before them of good fatherhood. Because we have God as our Father. And He does care for us, and He does love us, and He does provide for us all that we need. And coming from where I came from, with no father, with really no male influence growing up, I can tell you that God does provide for the orphan. And if that's you, then I encourage you not to use your past as an excuse or a justification for your failures going forward.

Your father's failures in loving you and caring of you, in being there, are not the sort of thing you should want to replicate or be willing to replicate in your own homes as you have your own children. Fathers should love their children. They should delight in their children. They should know their children. They should know them. As you have children and as they get older, one of the things that you'll learn is that your kids are different. They're not all the same. They're all from the same family, Some similarities between them. But one of the things that you'll learn or you should know as a father is the details of your children. How are they different? How are they wired? What excites them? What scares them? How do they learn? What do they enjoy? All of those things are part and parcel of delighting in your children, giving them the things that they need. How can you give your children the things that they need if you don't know them personally? How can you keep from exasperating your children if you don't know what pushes that kid's buttons?

And so maybe the best way to describe delighting in your children is to ask the question, do you feel as though God delights in you? Or are you overcome by your failures or your griefs or your sorrows or your frustrations? How do you think God sees you as his son? Do you think that he loves you? Do you think that he knows you? Or is he far off? Your ability to delight in your own children will track right along with your knowledge of your awareness of God's love for you. God's love is a peculiar thing. It's not the sort of thing that comes naturally to us because he loves people who don't, at least at the beginning, love him. When we start out with our relationship with God, we don't love him. The Bible tells us that we're his enemies, that we're dead.

that we have no interest in the things of God. And he takes men and women like that, and he loves them. He welcomes them into his house. He gives them food. He gives them a name. He gives them a future. He gives them gifts. He gives them children. And so men, if you're not sure if you love your children the way you should, you should start by asking, do I believe that God loves me? Day to day, do I believe that God loves me? and cares for me, and is for me, and sees my failures and shortcomings and weaknesses, and still absolutely loves me. Because he does. He really does. If evil men know how to love their children, how much more so our Father in heaven. He delights in his children. Not because they're perfect or have everything all figured out. Not because they're growing by leaps and bounds. Not because they try real hard.

He loves them because they're his children. Because he's chosen them and said, that one's mine. And that's why I love them. And there isn't anything that can separate that child from the father's love. And that should be true of you with your children. When you're distant or when you're angry or when you're frustrated or when you're tired, these are the things that have to be put to death inside of you. You remember when Jesus was tired and he withdrew from the people and he got on the boat and he says, I'm going to go over. sail across the sea. And then all the people meet him on the other side and he was exhausted. And all the disciples are like, what are we supposed to do with all these people? And he says, gather them up and sit them down. And he teaches them. And then the disciples say, we need to send them away. They don't have any food for them. And Jesus says, you feed them. And he's exhausted. He was exhausted when he went. And then he teaches and then he feeds them and then he cares for them. Why did he do all of that? Because he loved them.

And you fathers, we ought to love our children and care for them and be willing to sacrifice our lives for them, for their good, as an expression of our love for them. Don't let your fear keep you from trying. Just try. If you don't know what to do, the only way you're going to learn is you can ask a few questions of older fathers and then you just have to try. You just have to jump in and do it. Start when your children are young. Start when they're babies. I'm afraid men think of babies as like, I don't know what to do with babies. And it may be true that you can't feed the baby and it may be true that you don't naturally comfort them as well. But your babies, little babies, they need you. Many of you have little babies and have just had them in this last year. Your little babies need you. They need their mothers and they need you. You don't wait until they hit their fifth birthday or whatever milestone there is or when they can crawl or move or talk or whatever it is. You don't wait until then.

to start loving them, to start caring for them, to start blessing them. If you have children, young as they are, you should be delighting in them. Another thing that this passage tells us is that fathers should be gift givers. They ought to give their children good things. Jesus says, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven? These gifts that fathers give children are not limited to or even primarily comprised of things that cost money. or things that would be impressive on social media. The good gifts that fathers give to their children are the things that they need. I think there's a propensity among children, or among fathers, to want to teach their children independence, toughness. You can do it. My question to you is, if that's how God treated you, if his disposition toward you was, you can do it, figure that out yourself, try again while he sat off, Where would you be? Isn't God always coming to you in your weakness and bearing with you and picking you up and cleaning you off and showing you how and encouraging you? I don't think you should teach your children, your little children, you need to figure life out apart from me. You need to figure out how to do that all yourself. Now, you can take these things and hear the thing I'm not saying. Don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying children.

don't need to grow or be able to tie their shoes at some point. But honestly, if you've got little kids and they want you to tie their shoes for them, do it. I'm not the oldest father in the room, but I'm in the older half, and I would just say, just do it. And do it cheerfully, because they won't ask you to do that for very long. I've never met an adult who doesn't know how to tie their shoes. They will learn, and you can teach them. But you shouldn't be frustrated that they ask you. I need to get you away from being dependent on me. I need you to be doing it all yourself. I don't know where it came from. I heard somebody say one time that in parenting, and I think it was specifically of mothers, but it's true of children in general, is that the days are long, but the years are short. It won't be long until your children are independent of you and don't need you to do those little things for them anymore. And I think it's almost inevitable that you will have regrets.

I don't think it's possible for you to go through it and not have regrets. My kids aren't even out of the house yet, and there are things I regret. There's things I've learned to do with younger children that I didn't know to do with my older children. But I'm trying to learn, and you ought to be as well. A father's aim is not to make his children independent of him. That's just not the goal. Competent? Yes. Growing? Yes. But the fact that your children need you, especially when they're little, is appropriate and good and a great training ground for you to learn how to love your children. And so don't forsake it and neglect it. Give them the things they need. When they need you to open their water bottle or they need you to tie their shoes or they need you to feed them. Have you ever had your kids ask you to feed them when they're the kind of kid that's old enough to feed themselves? Every once in a while, we have kids in our house ask us.

My teenagers aren't asking me that. But the young ones who are capable, but sometimes they're not capable because they're tired or they're sick or they're just weak, just having a hard time. Maybe they don't quite like dinner. Would you like me to feed you? Yes, Daddy. Okay. And then I feed the 3-year-old or the 4-year-old, maybe the 5-year-old, I don't know. This is what fathers do. We delight in it. I use this as an example. You realize how irritated you could get at your 3-year-old? After you've worked and slaved away for like two years to teach them to feed themselves and all of a sudden they need you? How irritating that would be? How much of a failure that is? That's not a failure. Give to your children the things that they need from you. And you ought to do it cheerfully. I guess what I'm saying to you guys is that the first thing a father ought to give to his child is his own heart. It's not something that your child has to earn from you. They don't have to become competent enough or interesting enough.

Or to have some level of cognitive ability or physical strength before they have your interest, dads. Your children should have your interest. They should have your hearts. They need you from the time they're born until you pass away. They will need you. When your children leave the home, they will need you. And so give them your heart. Here's the thing about fatherhood. It's true of motherhood as well. It changes your life permanently. It's one of the most difficult things that makes becoming a parent so difficult, and it's one of the things that makes it so rewarding, is that it's irrevocable. It's irrevocable. You cannot escape it. You just can't escape it. There are things in your life that are burdens, that are hard, that are difficult. You might be able to change them. Maybe at your job or at your house or at your vehicle. It may be that, sinfully, it's your marriage. But you just can't get rid of kids because they need you.

In whatever circumstance you find yourself, you're needed. You're essential. They can't go without you. And so it makes it both difficult and the most rewarding work you'll do as a father. I read recently an article that was talking about the church and the church's inability to minister to men. And one of the things that they pointed out is they said all the church has basically told men is that they need to get married and they need to have kids and that that's all they should, that that's enough if they do that. And the author was saying, that's not really enough. Men are made to conquer and men are made to, they need resistance and they need struggle and they need all of these things to give their lives meaning. And I just read the article and I'm like, I don't think this guy has a clue what he's talking about. He has no idea what husbandry and fatherhood is actually like. I mean, the idea that a man would neglect his family so he can go lift weights, so he can be strong, is just absurd.

But the reason the guy was saying this about fatherhood is because he had no understanding of the cost of it, the reality of it, how much it demands of you. And the crazy thing is, unbelievers understand it better than most Christians. Their response to it is, let's not have kids. Because they understand the cost of it. And so we would be foolish to think that having children isn't a permanent change to life. It will change you. And you can't ever turn them in or get a new one or refuse their care without great consequences. And so children ought to own their father's hearts. And you might be thinking, well, what about the wives? And I'm thinking, well, these things really aren't separated. To the extent that a man loves his wife and gives her children and she gives him children, their hearts will be owned by one another and by their children, by their marriage, by all the relationships.

that exist under that roof. Some of the things that you'll give your children as fathers, some of the things you'll give to them, they won't appreciate. It's interesting, as I was preparing, I was thinking like, if I just take our relationship toward God and sort of map it out, there's a lot of overlap. How many things does God give us that we don't appreciate, that we take for granted, that we just assume will always be there, or that we are owed it, or that... It wasn't a gift to us. I think children have a propensity to take for granted their father's love. And so you children ought to realize that. It's a danger to take for granted your father's and your mother's love. But you fathers who are to give good gifts to your children, you shouldn't be put off when your children don't always make the best use of it right away. In fact, many of the things you'll give your children, some of the best things that you'll give your children,

they won't realize or appreciate until years, if not decades later. When your kids live in your house, they think that everything that goes on in your house, whether it's good or bad, they know it as normal. And they take for granted all of the good stuff that goes on in your house. And what will happen is when they go out of your house, you know, late teens, early 20s, what have you, when they go out of your house, then they start to realize, they have their first brush with how other people live. And it's shocking to them. that other people don't do the things or don't have the things that they had. And then they get married and realize that their spouse grew up in a home with a completely different set of things that were given or withheld. And it's very difficult for them to figure that out as a new married couple. And so, fathers, you're going to give your children gifts that are meant to be a blessing to them throughout their entire life. You're training and equipping them for all of their lives.

And so you shouldn't sacrifice long-term good things to give to your children for their short-term approval. One of the things that fathers are not, I should say, is their children's friends. Not primarily. Fathers should not be beholden to their children's approval. Okay? There shouldn't be this like, well, is he going to like it or is she going to appreciate it or will this be, you know, what is the immediate response going to be? If that's how you think, you'll end up... not giving them things that they're going to need later in life, lessons that they will appreciate a long time from now. And so when your children don't see or recognize or appreciate the good things that they give to you, my exhortation to you as fathers is to continue to give them good gifts and to give them those gifts in hope of a harvest. It's okay if they don't appreciate everything you do right now. It's okay. We don't appreciate everything God does for us.

And he continues to care for us and give us good gifts. And so we shouldn't be put off the work because our children aren't as grateful or appreciative as we think they should be. This is probably one of the hard things that you'll learn as your kids grow up, is to wait for the return on your investment in them. That's a hard thing to wait for. And I think it's probably harder for mothers to wait for than fathers generally. But to whichever one is struggling to wait, and to hope. If that's your wife, then it's your job to help her continue to give good gifts and to look for the future return on those investments. I think that we should trust God to use our love for our children, to bring them to faith, and to grow into the things that we teach them. Proverbs tells us that we're to train up our children in the way in which we should go, and when they're old, they won't depart from it. I really do think this is part of the good

gifts that fathers give their children is that they would trust that as they give them to them in their youth, that they would bear fruit in their adulthood. Jesus tells us that even evil men know how to do this. Less than perfect men. By evil here, he's not meaning this sort of terrible, destructive, abusive types of things that we might think of with evil. He simply means less than perfect fathers. That they know how to give good gifts to their children. I would be an evil man, an evil father. You'd be an evil father, but even you know how to give good gifts to your children. And so if evil men know how to do this, how much more so our heavenly father? You won't do it perfectly. As soon as you have a child, you'll start to fail at it. You'll start to fail at it. And it may take years for you to realize some of those failures. One of the things that was helpful for me to realize as a father was that my life will be full of failures, but that doesn't mean that I failed as a father.

That the work and the responsibility of being a father, you're going to screw up. But that doesn't mean you're a screw-up or that there's no blessing or no benefit to it. And I think many times that's what fathers need to be told, especially those who lack confidence, is that it's not the end of the world when you mess up. Even evil men know how to get back on the horse and continue to give their kids good gifts. And so do that work. Love your children. Care for them. Give yourself to them. Let their needs direct you. I think the last thing I want to say to you about fatherhood is that it's a gift from God that not all men receive, and less and less men in our society are receiving it. That it's not something that we should take for granted. And we should realize that fatherhood, as with other blessings that God gives to us, require us to grow. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy that when women have children, that they'll be saved through the bearing and raising of their children.

as long as they persevere in faith and love and sanctity with self-control. And this is true of men as well. It's a high calling, it's a gifting, and it will be the primary means by which you will be sanctified as a man. It will grow you up, and it will make you more like Jesus, or it will at least give you the opportunity to become more like him, to become more like his father and ours. And so if you want to grow as a man, and you want to grow in your holiness, The simplest route is to get married, love a woman, get married, and have children. Nothing will help you mature more or become more like Christ or learn more about God's fatherhood than that. You and I, we have to be careful not to squander this gift that God's given to us. You remember I said that children don't always appreciate the things our Heavenly Father gives us? I'm afraid that fatherhood is one of those things that we squander, that we just take it for granted.

that we think of our children as a collection or that the size of your family is a competition. That's not how God sees us as his children, as a collection that he keeps in his house. He loves each child individually. He cares for us. He meets our needs. He provides for us. And that's what fathers ought to be doing as well. And so if you think of your children in terms of collecting them or that simply having a bunch of them is a good thing, I can tell you that big families are not a blessing unless there's a father at the head that leads and loves and cares for his children. Children require fathers to care for them, or they will become a curse. It's the sort of thing you see happening out in society, where kids are not well-behaved, kids are not taught. In other words, they're not loved. They don't have anyone who cares for them. And so you ought not to think of your children in such superficial terms as

well, we've got more than the rest, or we're on our way, or we hope to. Those things are up to the Lord. Some of you may end up having big families. Some of you may end up having small families. That's not the point. It's really not the point. Good fatherhood does not mean having a bunch and bunch of children, necessarily. Good fatherhood means loving your children and giving to them what they need. And in the pursuit of that, you will give your whole life to that end, whether you have one child or whether you have a bunch. It'll be your life's calling. It'll be your life's work. It'll be the place where you come into conflict with your sin most. Having to care for, having to provide for, having to love, having to talk to, having to pray for and with. And so please don't think of your children as something that God just gives you and that you deserve them or that you'll do well with them naturally. I want you to see them as a gift being given to you by God. God making you a father is a great kindness. So how do you grow in your fatherhood?

That's the question we'll end with. How do you grow in your fatherhood? Well, the first thing to do is simply to ask, what areas am I weak in and what am I doing to strengthen those areas? If it never gets beyond talk, then you're not growing in your role as a father. What are some weaknesses that fathers have? They're distracted. They're tired. They're lazy. They're selfish. What are you doing to fight those things? That's the question. What are you doing to fight those things? What are you doing to free yourself up to give yourself more to your wife and to your children? It's easy to talk about it. I think we've all probably been guilty of it. It's hard to do. What good gifts have you not been giving to your children and why? And what can we do to get toward giving them to your children? Children are a blessing from the Lord. If you have them, I was asking Vanessa, I said, are there any...

who are becoming fathers for the first time this year. And I don't think there's anyone in our church, unless you're getting married soon and I don't know about it, that doesn't have children. I don't think there's anyone in our church who's married but doesn't have children. And so what I want you to see is how good God's been to you in giving you a wife and giving you children. And I want you to rely on God and on the older men of our church to teach you how to become a father to your children. There's no shame in asking for help. There's danger in thinking you've got it all figured out. And so this is our life together as a church. And it's a kindness of God that he's given a vision for and a desire for children and that he's met that desire. Don't squander the good gifts he's given to you. Don't despise the work of it. It is hard work being a father. Make it your aim to give your children good gifts and ask God to bless it.

so that your labor is not in vain. Let's pray.