Ask And It Will Be Given To You #2

Now, an announcement for those of you who are regular here, there are a lot of children in our church, and one of the changes that we're having to make for next semester, or next quarter, I'm sorry, July, August, and September, is that during the worship hour, we're not going to be having an infant nursery. Okay, for those three months, we have one today, we will not have one a week from today. And I know that Vanessa sent out some communication, some of you ladies know that, and I just wanted to remind you, that starts... next week okay so there's no infant nursery there's still a toddler nursery but there's not an infant nursery and that'll just be for the next three months and then we'll get back to having that and the reason we're doing that is simply to accommodate the staffing resources that we have as a church there's a lot of babies being born right now and we want to be able to give those mothers time to adjust and recover and so we're lightening the load of nursery service

The other thing I wanted to say is those of you who are serving in the nursery in the Sunday schools, we see you and we're very thankful for you. The work that you do happens in rooms down the hall with four or five or eight children. We thank you and we appreciate your work. And it's a joy to us to have our children come home excited about the word of God. And so thank you for your work and don't grow weary in well-doing because there's a lot more, doing to be done well. All right. This morning, we're going to be continuing in our study of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7. In the section we're studying, Jesus is teaching on prayer. We started it last week. And so this morning, we're going to be focusing on prayer. Last week, we focused on fatherhood, where Jesus uses as an example the kindness of earthly fathers to their children and says that his fatherhood is even better, is perfect, and is always

there for us. This week, we're going to speak about prayer. And as we think about prayer, I want you to think for a minute about what prayer is. What is going on when you pray? Many times you're asking God for things, the things you need, the things you want, protection or provision. There's things you're afraid of. There's many things you're pouring out your desires to the Lord and asking him to meet those desires. Prayer for all of these things. inevitably leads to a sense at some point that our prayers, some of them at least, have gone unanswered. And this is a real danger that Christians face, this idea that God doesn't answer prayer or hasn't answered prayer for various reasons. And so this morning we're going to be examining Jesus' commands for us to seek after these things and how to understand what's going on when we think that our prayers aren't being answered, when we're not getting what we want or what we think we need.

My hope this morning is that God will grow our love and our trust for him, especially at the point when we don't seem to think he's answering our prayers the way we would like. Our text this morning is Matthew 7, verses 7 to 11. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. 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. Or 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.

And so as I said already, I'll say again, this passage of asking and seeking and knocking is a passage that is meant to be an exhortation to prayer or an instruction about how to pray. When our needs or our fears arise, Jesus teaches us in this passage to take those needs and those fears to his Father in prayer. One of the things I didn't mention about prayer in my opening was that prayer is more than simply making a request. And I think there's an element of prayer that we lack. And if we lack or miss this element of prayer, then this passage doesn't make sense to us. And it opens us up to this idea that God doesn't answer our prayers. And I think it's because we've decided that prayer is simply asking for our needs to be met or our circumstances to change or what have you, very practical, tangible things. And then we sit and we wait to see when and how God will do what we want him to do.

And when he doesn't, we go, it didn't work. It didn't take. And we start down a path of temptation as to why. There's another purpose of prayer. And that is that we would be comforted in being heard. Prayer is not simply a way of telling God, making a request or sending a memo to him about what you want or need or are afraid of. Prayer certainly encompasses that, but that's not all of it. Those of you who've... are old enough to have parents who've gone away, who've been taken home, or that you don't see anymore. Isn't it true that one of the things that you miss the most about it was simply being able to talk with them, to sit down and speak with them? Maybe you have parents that are still alive and they're far away, and the thing you miss was the time spent with them. As a child, you think, oh, well, we used to go and do this thing. My dad used to...

Do whatever this thing was. He would take me fishing. We would go play disc golf. We would read together. I don't know what the thing was, but you miss that time, that fellowship. And you realize that the things that were going on weren't really the point. The point was the time together. That was what was significant. That's what stuck in your mind. There was lots of conversation. You would talk about whatever happened, whatever was going on, what you were afraid about, what you wished would change, what you were angry about. But what you appreciated most about those conversations was not that your father or your mother or your grandpa, whoever it was, that they fixed all your problems. What you appreciated was that they listened to you and that you knew that for that time you had their attention because they loved you. And you knew that their phone ringing, or work wasn't calling. You knew that this time was your time with them. And whether they could fix your problems or address your problems or whether they had any answers at all, you knew that they loved you and you knew that they cared. And the way that you knew that was because they listened. That is one of the purposes of prayer and I think the one that we neglect most. I think becoming so pragmatic as we are and so utilitarian and so busy.

We think of prayer as just like a passing note of to-do list or a wish list or a hope. I want you, can you get this done? We need these things. Can you address that? Can we push this ball forward? We got a deadline coming. We may not pray with those words, but many times I think that's what's going on in our heart is it's just like, I'm just telling you all the stuff I need because I can't do it myself, so I need you to do it. This is causing me pain, so I want you to change it. But we miss the sweetest part of prayer if that's the way we pray.

We miss fellowship and we miss union and we miss comfort from our God and Father in heaven. If you think about the Psalms for a minute or if you were to read through them, I challenge you. If you don't think what I'm saying is true, you're kind of wondering, read the Psalms. Just read the Psalms and think for a minute as you read them. You don't have to dig into every little word and every little phrase. Just read them and say, what is this psalmist saying? Why are they saying it? Why did David write all this stuff down? Why did he care to think or to feel or to write this stuff? Are there requests in the book of Psalms? Undoubtedly, yes. There's requests for forgiveness, for provision, for healing, for being rescued. There's all kinds of practical things that David and the other psalmists are asking for.

But the overwhelming balance of the Psalms is simply the psalmist fellowshipping with God, talking to himself and to God about God's character, about his attributes, about his provision, reminding him and himself and God about his covenants, about his promises, about doing the things that he says he was going to do. The prayer of the psalmist is him doing work, spade work in his heart to get him to trust. and to draw near to God and not to doubt his care and his provision. That's a lot of what the prayers in the Psalms are. And the harder the circumstances got and the more difficult, the more pressure that they felt, the psalmist cries out all the more fervently for God to be faithful, for God to care for him, for God not to abandon him. But many times our prayers are very particular. We don't pray for deliverance.

as much as we pray for a particular sort of deliverance and a particular sort of time frame with all of the details, because we think this is how it needs to go. And if we pray that way, then inevitably we end up spending a lot of our time discouraged or frustrated because the things we're asking for, which we think are good, don't come to pass. And so then we say, well, the Lord doesn't answer prayer, so why should I pray? And we come to a passage like this that should be an incredible comfort to us. And we say, that's not true. Or it hasn't been true for me and I don't know why. And then we face other temptations. Well, maybe the reason it's not true for me is because I'm not a Christian. Or maybe it's not true for me because I've committed some sort of sin. Or maybe it's not true for me because God's not able. And there's all these lies that fill the hearts and minds of God's people. So the result is that we don't pray, trusting that God's answers will come and that they'll be good. This asking and seeking and knocking.

is a habit that we have to learn. And it's a habit we won't learn if we don't think it works. All of us at some place, if we're honest, we say, I don't want to waste my life doing things that are a waste of time. Ironically, we do actually. If we actually admitted what we spend our time doing, we do a lot of stuff that's a waste of time, that's even destructive. But when it comes to serving God, we say, well, I want to know how productive it's going to be. I want to do the most productive things. And so we have this real running in the back of our minds, judging whether these things are productive, whether they're worthwhile, whether God works or responds to us. And if we judge that he doesn't or isn't or can't or won't, then we give up the habit. I think many times when we pray, we don't pray until we've worked out what the solution should be. And then we hold God to the standard of what our solution is. And then we sit there and we go, why won't he do what I know is best? At the risk of insulting you.

It's because you're not as smart as you think you are. Many times your solutions are foolish and are short-sighted and are sinful even. Have you not had it happen in your life when you've wanted something, prayed for something? I mean, with every fiber of your being, you're going, this is what I want and I need, only to find out in months or years later that if you had had that thing, if God had given you the thing you wanted, it would have ruined you or your life. Have you not been able to look back and say, I was wrong and I'm glad God didn't give me what I wanted in that moment because it would have been catastrophic for me. It would have kept me from all this other stuff I didn't see at the time. You see, we live as though we're omniscient, which is just a big word for all knowing. We live as though we know what's best, what should be happening in our lives. And a lot of our trouble is rooted in that problem.

we think we know best. And because we think we know best, when we approach God, we tell him what we know to be best and then we sit and wait for him to do it. Only to find out later that his wisdom and our wisdom is not the same. That he never makes mistakes and that we often make mistakes. We often want things that are not good. We often want things that are harmful or destructive to us. So how do we reconcile this with... Jesus telling us that everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, to him it will be opened. The first thing we have to realize is the thing that we're seeking after must be different than all the stuff we normally pray for. That actually what Jesus is talking about here primarily is not our felt needs, our fears, our desires, even if they're good, but something else.

Because he promises us here that if we ask, we will receive it. And in other places, in Luke chapter 11, in a parallel passage, it says that if you ask anything in my name, I'll give it to you. And Christians, I think, are tempted to read that passage or this passage as a blank check for God giving you whatever you want. Like he's a genie in a bottle, and if you just but wish for it, he just is obliged to give it to you. But we never stop and think. about what we ask for and whether it's a good thing or whether it's something that God would delight to give to us. He uses parents and fathers as an example, saying when your children ask for something, you don't give them something harmful, do you? You say, no, of course not. We love our children. We wouldn't want to give them things that harm them. So then the question to us is, do we ever ask for things that are harmful or will become harmful to us? We do. We do. Why do we ask for things that are harmful for us?

Oh, there's a ton of reasons. We're tired. We're angry. We're faithless. We're scared. We're proud. There's all kinds of reasons we ask for things that are harmful for us. We don't see it that way in the moment. But once the dust settles, we see that it is. And so in effect, when we're asking for things that are harmful for us, we are children asking our Father to give us poison, to give us something that's destructive to us. Now, you who are fathers, have you never had your kids want something and they're like, I want it, Daddy. And you're like, honey, you can't have that. That's not good for you. You can't do that. And the child doesn't understand. The child thinks that your job in life, we joke in my house that my job is to spoil all my kids' fun. I tell them, I said, no, you can't do that because that would be too much fun. And you're not allowed to have fun in my house. Now, everyone in my house knows that that's a joke. But there is some, there is some,

of truth there. And the truth is that I do tell my kids no. And Vanessa tells our kids no because we love them. And that when we tell them no, it's not an expression of our hatred for them, but our love for them. But they don't understand it. And we can go along with looking at kids and say, yes, but kids are silly and foolish and their brains aren't fully developed and all the rest. But we're adults and we don't have any of those problems anymore. It is not so. You and I. Until the day we die, we'll have those problems that we see in those children. And it is the love of our Heavenly Father to not answer all of our requests. Because we would destroy ourselves if we got what we wanted. And if you think, no, I wouldn't, I think you're a fool. And you ought to be very careful. Because the older and the wiser among us would say, Just keep quiet and trust God and work on the things that you know are right in front of you. Work on obedience in those areas and trust God to give to you and to deal with those things you're worried about or fearful about or desirous of. Set those aside. And so when we come to God in prayer, we should come to prayer with this commitment. God hears my prayer. And not only does he hear it, he doesn't hear it like parents hear the noise of their children in the other room and it's irritating.

And you say, be quiet. I don't want to hear you anymore. That's not the way he hears our prayers. He hears our prayers like, you know, across the breakfast table. When we're happy or sad or worried or angry or whatever we are, he hears them and he delights to carry them. He wants you to speak to him. And so you should come to prayer believing first that he hears your prayers, that he loves to hear your prayers because he loves you. And so when you talk to God, you're talking to... to one who's already absolutely in love with you. Not in a romantic sort of way, but in a fatherly, parental sort of way, but better than anything we can muster ourselves. He wants to hear what you have to say. And whatever picture you had in your mind of that time with that older father or grandfather or mother or grandmother, he's better at it than they are.

They are described in this passage as being evil. And that being evil, they can give good gifts to their children. But your Father in heaven is not evil, but good and perfect. And he hears what you say and gives what you request. And so then, the thing that that changes in our hearts and minds is, what do we ask for then? What should we be asking for? Is there anything to ask for other than for our felt needs to be met? Is there anything to talk to God about? What would you say to God or what do you say to God that's not, will you change this situation of my life? Will you fix this thing that's broken? Will you help me to do better in the areas that I'm weak? Is there anything else to talk to God about? There's lots of other things to talk to God about. The top of the list in what to talk to God about and what to seek after and to ask for is forgiveness.

Now, if I ask you, when you pray, is forgiveness or confession of sin the thing that's at the top of your list? Is that what you ask for all the time? It's not nearly as high on our list as our finances or our work situation or our relational difficulties. Those things are right at the top of the list. But forgiveness, we're like, well, yeah, I know I should, and yeah, I will, and it really needs to be at the top of the list. Here's the thing. What happens to your relationship with God if you don't ask him for forgiveness? One of a few things, maybe there's more than two, happen to your relationship. One is you don't think you need it anymore. You become accustomed to not needing forgiveness, not requesting it, not asking God, will you be merciful to me? Look what I did. Will you have mercy on me and forgive me for what I did? You'll end up thinking, I don't need to do that because I'm not all that bad. But some of you may be more tender-conscious than that.

And some of you may not be able so easily to just dismiss your failures as it'll be fine. What do you do when you ask God? How do you relate to God if you don't ask for forgiveness? Well, you end up thinking that because you've failed, that there now is this distance between you and God. That somehow he's now far off, and I can't draw near to him until I get all cleaned up, until I do better, until I pay my dues or my penance, until I fix what's wrong myself. The problem is, You can't. And you know that. And so what happens is you solidify the distance between you and your Heavenly Father because you're not asking or seeking the right things. Jesus told us that all who come to him, he will not cast out one of them. He will not lose them. He will not drop or forget or ignore anyone who comes to him and who seeks him.

and who seeks out mercy and forgiveness and pardon. But if we're honest, we've admit these are not the things we seek after. We've got other things that inhabit our hearts and minds and keep us from this more important work. No matter how old you get, and no matter how well other people think of you, you'll never get beyond this necessity of seeking pardon for your sins from Jesus Christ and from his Father. You'll never get beyond needing that to do that, that that being the primary thing that you realize is of first importance in your life. You don't have something better or more important to be concerned with or concerned about. Isn't one of the reasons we don't ask for forgiveness as well that we don't think that we deserve it? Or maybe you think, I've asked so many times, it's just a lost cause now.

I've tried seeking it, and really what I thought was that forgiveness meant that I would not fall into sin anymore, that I would not struggle, or that there would at least be some significant change in my battle with sin, only to find out that it is still a struggle. It is still very difficult. And so what's the point of asking for forgiveness? It doesn't make my temptations go away. I'll say to you what I say to my kids. Did you do the sin? They say, yes. I say, yes. then you need forgiveness. We need forgiveness. We need to seek after it. Because it's not the sort of thing that a day or a week of time will atone for. We need forgiveness and mercy from God. If you seek these things, if you ask God for these things, that is a good thing to ask for. And you can be assured that God will give it to you. And he'll give it to you knowing that this won't be the last time you ask for forgiveness for that sin.

And you ought to ask for it knowing the same thing. And it's through cultivating this habit of humility and trusting God and taking him at his word that you'll actually overcome the sins you're struggling with. You see, we think in this world that the only way to motivate people is to make them scared or to threaten them. And there is an element of fear in the gospel. The scripture says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That fear has a place in our lives as Christians. But the thing that will actually move our hearts to obey God and to desire something other than our sins is not fear, but love. It's often said of military men that they don't go into battle because they're afraid of not going into battle. They go into battle because of the men around them and their love for them. They go not wanting them to be alone. They're willing to go and give their lives because they love the people who are around them. Because they love the people that they're...

that are back home, their families. And so it is true that love is what will motivate you to pray and to seek after God and not fear. Oh, there are things to fear. And so this whole passage is full of the love of God for us. You're left with this ultimatum. Either what I'm saying to you is the truth or Jesus, in these words, is lying to your face. He's just lying to you. He's saying something that he has no intention of fulfilling. He doesn't mean it. He's just talking. He's not lying to us. He's not lying to us. If you'll seek after God and if you'll seek forgiveness and mercy and if you'll ask him to use you however he sees fit to use you, you will find that he answers those prayers. Will his answer sometimes be uncomfortable to you? Yes. Absolutely.

Absolutely. They're uncomfortable to you or foreign to you because you're sinful. There'll come a time in glory where his expectations and his desires for us won't be a foreign thing to us. There won't be this residual discomfort with the things of God because of our sins. But now there is. When God bids us, come, follow me and die, we go, what? You want me to do what? And we can put any other obedience that's laid out for us in Scripture into that category. If he tells us, hey, will you come do this? And we go, why would I do that? That's crazy. It doesn't work. It's dangerous. It'll upset my life or my marriage. But the reason we feel that way is because of the sin that resides in us. And thanks be to God, it won't always be that way. That there will come a time after we die, when we go to be with him, when we won't have that problem anymore. He'll call on us to do whatever in the world.

He has in his mind and heart and will to do, and we will rejoice to be able to do it. And so we should aim to that end now because he loves us. And he would never tell us to do something that was bad for us or harmful to us. When you think of love for children, I think mothers, at least in the world, tend to get first prize. You say, well, when it comes to loving children, mothers tend to do a better job of it than fathers. I want to read to you what Isaiah says here about the Lord's love compared to a mother's love. It says this. This is Isaiah 49, verses 14 and 15. It says, but Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me. The Lord has forgotten me. And so Zion is the people of God. They're crying out. They're going, the Lord has forgotten us. He just left us aside. He doesn't care anymore. And it says, can a woman forget her nursing child?

and have no compassion on the son of her womb? And of course, we're all sitting here thinking, no, of course not. But then the Lord says this. He says, even these may forget, but I will never forget you. And so when you pray, you're talking to a God, your Father, who will not forget you. His love is better than the love of a mother for their children, better than the love of an evil father for their children. And so you see how far we've come when we take on the... the issue of prayer, and we say, he doesn't answer prayers. He's distant and far off. And I think, how hard-hearted are we? How far have we fallen? Many times we don't perceive God's love for us. We don't see it. We're unaware of it. And it's because we filled our hearts and minds with our own desires. And at some point, at some point, we have to set those things aside. And we have to ask God to be merciful to us.

And to hear us and to trust that he does hear us and that he will answer us and that he will do good by us. Always, every single time. In Romans 8, Paul says that he, the father, who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all, speaking of Jesus' death, how will he not also freely, with him, freely give us all things? You see, there's a problem with us, that we live as though God is far off. And it borders on making me angry when people say that because it's so untrue. It's so untrue. And it's proud and it's arrogant and it's hard-hearted and it's blasphemous to act like God, who's given his only son, would not hear the things his children has to say, doesn't care about them and won't provide for them. It's blasphemy to say such a thing about God, to believe it, to entertain it in your hearts.

But it is that blasphemy that gets us to come to prayer and say, well, it doesn't work. And I say, shame on us. Shame on our heads for thinking and believing such things. If evil fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, you who have children or grandchildren, could you conceive of giving them something bad? You're evil, and you can't conceive of giving them something bad. How much more will your Father in heaven give what is good to those who ask him? And so when you come to pray and when you come to ask God and make your request known and pour your heart out, you need to come already having settled in your heart and mind that whatever his answer is, is the best answer in the world for you. And if you don't feel like it is, we understand, but that feeling is wrong. Our Father will always give to us what is good for us if we ask him. And so when we pray, we should trust and rest and be committed to...

The goodness of his answer. If his answer is no, then that no is good for us. And if his answer is not now, then that answer is good for us. If the answer is, I'm going to allow whatever it is you are terrified of happening to happen, then that's what's good for us. Good for our souls. Good to prepare us for heaven. Good to glorify him. I might not get what I want. Yes, and more times than you'd care to admit what you want. is deadly for you. Whenever you think, if I could just have fill in the blank, you presume that you would do good with what God gives you. Is that your track record? It's not my track record. I'm really good at taking things, feeling entitled to them, and then squandering them away. That's what I'm good at. And it turns out I'm not the only one in the room with that problem. Being a Christian should be a joyful thing to you. You should have peace that the world doesn't know anything about.

You should have comfort that is inconceivable to them. Why are you so happy? Don't you see all this hard stuff? There's plenty of people who can be bitter and who can be angry and who can be cynical and who can be miserable about what's going on in the world. But that should not be the case with Christians. Whatever goes on in this world can't touch the joy of having their sins forgiven and a Father in heaven that loves them. And so whatever you find yourself in, that doesn't change. And if you die, you'll go to be with the one who loves you like that. And so while it'll be bittersweet for those who are left behind, it won't be bitter for you. That's how Christians ought to think about their life in this world. And if they think about life this way, then they will be willing to pray to their God and Father with faith and with hope and with joy because they trust that whatever comes to pass came to them from the hand of God and that he wouldn't do anything to harm them. And so that's what it means to ask and receive or to seek and find or to knock and have it opened to you.

So may the Lord help us to believe this and to take it to heart and to stop worrying about our lives, all of the stuff that's come before us in this sermon on the mount. Why do you worry about what you'll eat? Why do you worry about what you wear? Why do you worry about tomorrow? Why do you worry about the future? Why do you grumble and worry about the past? You have God as your Father if you're a Christian. What more do you need? He who's given us his son, will he not freely with him give you all things? If you're older and if you've been a Christian for a while, have you not had some small taste of that in your life? Have you not seen the mercy of God to you? I have. These are the things that ought to be on our lips when we pray to God. Thanksgiving and love and humility as we speak to him, as we seek his face. Let's pray.