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Sermon
on the Mount series
Ask – Sermon on the Mount series, #10 –
4.20.8
Dennis Mullen
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.
Once when I was growing up, a minister visited in our home and he told us a little story. He had been trying to visit someone else in the area. He told us that he had just been over there and knocked on the door and he could hear people moving around inside but no one came to the door. He knocked several times and rang the bell, and then he went back to his car. And he told us that just as he got back to the car, he spun around and saw someone at the window who IMMEDIATELY pulled the curtain closed.
A couple of observations: One, having heard that, it’s a wonder I went into the ministry. Two, if that had happened to me, I don’t think I’d be going around telling it! Three, to him who knocks the door will not ALWAYS be opened – not in human circles, surely. But God treats us differently. Jesus says that God’s is one door we’ll always find opened to us if we are bold enough to knock and wait for an answer.
The passage I’m drawing from today is Matthew 7:7-12, near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says: 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.
9 "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
This is a simple passage that raises only a few questions. They are important questions though, because they have to do with the times when God doesn’t seem to want to come to the front door and you suspect he’s hiding behind the curtains waiting for you to leave. I’m talking about unanswered prayer, of course, and unanswered prayer is a problem we have to talk about sometimes. But two things:
1. Unanswered prayer isn’t Jesus’ topic here. Sometimes it is important to study a passage in the Bible for what IT says instead of all the rest of the Bible says about it. When the Gospel of Matthew was first read in churches as Scripture, they couldn’t flip over to Ephesians or James to see what ELSE God might have said to someone else about the same topic. We are blessed in that we CAN, but there is some wisdom on sometimes sticking with Jesus in Matthew to hear what he has to say for himself there, without raising all our questions or even pat-answers from some other text,
2. Unanswered prayer is a problem but maybe our larger problem is unprayed prayer. Our reasons for not praying may have something to do with unanswered prayer. But more likely, if we fail to pray (or fail to pray much) it’s because the world is too much with us and eternity doesn’t really exist as a future reality in our hearts, and in many ways we just don’t feel much need for God to be involved with us day to day.
In these simple words abut prayer, Jesus addresses our reluctance to pray or our inattention to it, and he does it in a very natural way – natural, because he never once says the word “prayer” as if he were talking about some special discipline (as he did in chapter 6) and natural because he paints our communications with God as the conversations that might take place between a wise and fair father and a young child who trusts his/her father.
How does a child get what he needs? When things are right in the home, when Mom and Dad are wise and trustworthy and loving, all she has to do is ASK. Not plead. Not convince dad of worthiness. Not promise a sinless life from here on out. Just ask.
Now it goes without saying, especially around here where we have more food than we need and often extra money for things like iPods or phones or xBoxes that so many things someone asks for have nothing to do with need. It goes without saying that a child, by her youthful nature, may often ask for things she doesn’t need or things she can’t handle or even things she won’t want once she gets them. So not every request is granted by a smart mom. Yet receiving begins by something as simple as asking, and asking assumes a relationship that is growing over the years.
How do you FIND what you need? Every morning I have to start out my day by finding my keys, my wallet and my phone. I could put them in the same place every night, but that would be too easy. So I look for them, while Cindy asks me “Where is the last place you had them?” (If I knew that…) But this isn’t rocket science here that Jesus is talking about. If I need something, I seek it out.
How do you get your neighbor to open the door and let you in? Knock. They see it’s you and they let you in. Actually, sometimes I knock, ring the bell, knock again, then call them on my cell phone and say “Behold I stand at the door and knock…” They SAY it’s because they can’t hear the doorbell…
Now assuming that all this is about prayer, Jesus is saying that it is very simple BUT his teaching assumes a relationship between us and God – a relationship between child and a loving and wise Father whom we can trust and feel comfortable with. That’s why he says next: 9 "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Oh, there are fathers who give their children snakes for fish, stones for bread, fathers who are damaged themselves and do a lot of damage to others. Jesus is assuming a lot of good will here from fathers to their kids, a lot of maturity among men that I frankly wonder sometimes how much we can count on these days. But dads, let me say to you that even if you DON’T know how to give good gifts to your children – bread, a little fish, some love and respect, gentleness, your own integrity – if you’ll just own up to that and repent of that kind of living, you can start building something better today. You have a father in heaven, after all, who sets a better example for you, and trusts you to DO better with your own kids.
But that’s veering off a bit into another topic. Jesus does assume the fathers listening to him have a basic love for their kids and know how to care for them, so he draws on that to describe prayer. Why wouldn’t God give us the things we need when we ask? Why wouldn’t he come to us when we come seeking after him? Why wouldn’t he come to the door when we knock at it? How could a father do otherwise?
But again, the thing that is assumed here is a relationship that, quite frankly, you may not have. The one thing I know about all of you (and the only thing I know about some of you) is that on occasion (maybe once a week) you come within hearing distance of the Bible – i.e., you show up at church. I don’t know much more than that about you, and if that is all there is to your spiritual life, then when you pray (if you do) it’s possibly in times of deep trouble. Your prayers are sincere, no doubt, but you have little idea really who it is you’re talking to.
When my Dad was around, it was mostly easy to keep up a good relationship with him. I wish I had done more, of course, but we talked on the phone and exchanged emails, and we’d visit up there at Mom and Dad’s three or four times a year, and we’d sit in the sunroom and drink coffee and talk and I’d run errands with Dad, and we knew each other and had a great and blessed relationship. So when I needed to talk to him, there was no catching up to do or issues to be overcome, and I knew just how to get into contact with him.
I can’t say that it has always been that way with God, and it isn’t that God has been difficult to know (although it isn’t easy) but the biggest obstacle to the relationship which Jesus assumes here has been me – sometimes I have had little interest in maintaining the relationship or little felt need for God moment to moment. It’s not like a wholesale rejection of him, not at all. I’m talking about day-to-day neglect, unprayed prayers put off till tomorrow, and then the tomorrow after that.
Simply going to church and being religious and leaving it there…it would be like me for the past 25 years since I left home going back to Mom and Dad’s place and sleeping under their roof and eating at their table and yet not speaking to them at all – just watching TV, reading, playing on the computer, visiting with my brothers as they stop by…a strange situation that nevertheless we carry on in God’s house.
Jesus suggests something so much better, and it isn’t complicated. It’s simple in fact, though not necessarily easy because we are, after all, physical creatures moving by faith into the world of God’s Spirit when we seek God. And yet it is as simple as this: 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.
If you’re not praying or if your prayer life needs a boost, let me suggest a few things that help me.
1. Treat prayer as an appointment to keep. Now I know that the best relationships in life tend to happen in the unscheduled moments, right? Maybe so, but if you came to me and said that you’re marriage was suffering because you weren’t spending time together, I’d say to start with the same thing. Make a plan to pray just as you might do to exercise or you might schedule in an afternoon to play golf or whatever else you really want to do. Living 8 hours from my parents has meant that we never spontaneously got together. We always had to plan it, and it didn’t take away from the love or reality. So put prayer on your calendar. Get up early, or reserve a few minutes after supper, and just get started and get consistent in talking to your father.
2. Give prayer your best attention. IOW don’t multi-task while you pray unless you really can focus on God while you wash the dishes or mow the lawn. I saw something this week (maybe on Leno’s headlines) about maybe banning talking on cell phones while driving. They quoted one teenage girl who said: “That’s all there is to do while you’re driving!” If you can really talk to God AND stay in your lane, OK, but don’t let driving rob you of prayer. Some people say they pray when they exercise. I can’t do that. When I run, I like to listen to something to distract me from all the pain! But it isn’t my best time to pray. Walking, however, is another story for me.
3. Follow the model. I hope you remember that just a few weeks ago we talked a bit about the Lord’s Prayer or the model prayer that Jesus gave us in the last chapter. If you don’t know what to talk to God about, some have found a good list in the Lord’s prayer:
· Begin with love and praise – “'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,”
· Pray for his will to begin to shape your life – “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Begin to pray this not just generally but specifically. Don’t just pray about world hunger but about Him making YOU more generous and likely to do something about someone in need that YOU know”.
· Pray about your own needs – perhaps the most natural thing to do – “Give us today our daily bread.”
· Pray about the condition of your heart – your own forgiveness and the forgiveness you may be withholding from others. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” If you are nurturing unforgiveness or hatred against someone, you are a slave to a power that will destroy your prayers.
· And pray against temptation – “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Pray for his power against those things that can destroy your witness and decimate your family, and yet are so powerful to you.
The last question to answer is “Why?” Why pray? Again, Jesus gives a very simple answer. Ask…and you’ll be blessed? Ask…and your guilt will diminish? Ask and you’ll be well thought of? No, ask and you will receive. WHAT will you receive? Not always the thing you asked for. But always in the asking, the seeking, the knocking, you will receive God.
Before we finish, I ask you to make an appointment with God. Over this coming week, WHEN will you pray? Where?
M T W Th F
Time:
Place:
_______________________________________________
(sign here)
Invitation
Morrison Hill Christian Church - P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E.
Race St.
Kingston, TN 37763 (865) 376-5205
