Praying & Receiving

SERMON: 2008-04-29--sm0850--praying-receiving SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:03.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 2 is the final segment of the sermon content (an exhortation/conclusion), immediately followed by [Music] in candidate 3. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:39:51.320-00:42:02.840 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, as we look this morning at these verses that we've read together from Matthew chapter 7, allow me to make three observations. Number one, these verses need to be understood within their context. And the context is both a broader context and a narrower context. The broader context is, of course, the Sermon on the Mount. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches his disciples how he expects them to live as his followers. Particularly, he focuses on keeping the spirit of the law instead of just the letter of the law. Human nature being what it is, exemplified in the life of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Human nature wants to focus on the letter of the law to the exclusion of the spirit. As long as I don't kill you, as long as I don't sleep with my neighbor's wife, then I'm doing okay. But Jesus says that's not good enough. He is looking for hearts that from the inside out are transformed by his grace and observe the spirit of the thing rather than just the letter of the law. That's the broader context of these verses, but there's also the narrower context which is Matthew chapter 7. And as we've been looking at Matthew chapter 7 in recent weeks, we have seen that there is a consistent theme that has emerged so far, and that is the issue then of exercising correct discernment in our relationships with other people. How do we judge people rightly? Because the danger, of course, is twofold. Accepting what we should be rejecting and rejecting what we should be accepting. How do we, on the one hand, obey the commandment, do not judge lest you be judged, and on the other hand, how can we be sure not to give that which is holy to the dogs and throw pearl to swine? That takes a measure of discernment. So it's in this twofold context then that Jesus brings up these verses that we have been reading together this morning. "Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you." In other words, this verse is not a carte blanche that you can ask God for anything, anytime, anywhere, and expect to get it from him. Now there are some people who misinterpret the verse that way. There are those who say, "Well, let's take that verse at face value. I need a bigger house. I need a fancier car to drive. I need a greater job. I want to climb up in the corporate world." God says, "Ask and I'll give it to you." So God, I'm asking you and you got to give it to me now. If you listen to some of the New Age movement, particularly the secret that we've talked about in recent weeks, you will find that there is an appeal to these kinds of verses in Scripture to make it sound as if Jesus is supporting this kind of consumer lifestyle that only sets people up for disappointment because you can't make God give you something that he doesn't want to give you. No, rather the context is the Sermon on the Mount, living for Jesus. The context is having the ability to judge correctly so that you can condemn what God condemns and bless what God blesses. And that's why Jesus goes on then to say in verse 8, "For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened." Very important for us to understand this because what Jesus is really saying here is that when it comes to the issue of following Jesus, when it comes to the issue of being more Christ-like, particularly in our discernment and evaluation, we can go to God our Father, we can ask, we can seek, and we can knock, and he wants to and will give it to us. And why is that so important? Because oftentimes in your life and in my life in the Christian experience, it doesn't seem that easy, does it? We read the Sermon on the Mount, you know, look at a woman lustfully, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart, have an evil thought, and you've already murdered that person in your heart. We take seriously the commands of Jesus to become more like him, and then we look at our own hearts, at our own emotions, and our own feelings, and our own, you know, besetting sins. And sometimes we just want to throw in the towel and say, "Well, Lord, you know, this may work for everybody else, but it doesn't work for me." Understand something really clearly. God in Christ has made full provision so that one day he is going to present us before him without spot, or wrinkle, or blemish, or any such thing. And when we are confronted by besetting sins, deep patterned circumstances that cannot seem to change anything at all that keeps us from following after Jesus hard, the promise of Scripture is that if we ask, we will receive. If we seek, we will find. And if we knock, it will be open to us. That hinges, as we'll see later on, on the very character and the nature of God. And to say, "I don't believe that," or to say, "I can't believe that," is not humility. It's unbelief. So we need to understand what it is that God promises in this passage. He wants to bless us as he already has in Christ, so that we can run the race and do what it is that he wants us to do. And we'll talk more about that later on, but no matter what else we say about that, let's lay hold of the clear meaning of Scripture, because that's where faith begins. So it needs to be understood in its context, and then we need to know that there is, in this verse, a progression of intensity. For note again how Jesus words it, "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you." And so there is a progression in the verbs from "ask" and "seek" and "knock." And here's the picture. As I try to follow Jesus, as I try to take seriously the scriptural command to love God above all, and my neighbor as myself, not only in terms of the letter of the law, but in terms of the spirit of the law, sooner or later I discover I don't have what it takes. If you're here this morning and you have not yet discovered that you don't have what it takes to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, well then just wait around long enough until Jesus shows you what lives inside your heart. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so inevitably in the Christian life there comes a time when God says, "I want you to love somebody that naturally you cannot or will not love, or forgive somebody that naturally you cannot or will not forgive." Or you'll need to step into a new situation when everything inside your heart says, "I cannot go there. I will die. I do not have what it takes." Remember how the Sermon on the Mount begins, "Blessed are the" what? "poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." So yes, there is a reduction in our lives when the cross does its job. Brings us to that place where we are helpless. It's a place the world absolutely hates and does everything that it can avoid, but it brings the Christian to his or her knees. So now what happens? Well you've already discovered you haven't got it in you yourself, and pretty soon if you haven't already you will discover that whatever it is that you need in there, the rest of the world around you hasn't got it either. So now it's just you and God. So God, here I am. This is what my need is. I don't know how to get through this. Will you please help me? What happens? Well sometimes bless God. He answers that prayer sometimes more quickly than you can imagine. This is especially true if you're a seeker after him, or if you're a new believer and he wants to confirm the reality of his love and of his power. That's why Christian communities always need new believers around because they replenish and they refresh our faith and they are often a living demonstration of the immediacy of God's presence. But you know just as well as I do this morning that once you've been in the family of God a little while, it doesn't always get easier does it? In fact you ask and you ask and you ask and God seems to have moved away. And you say to yourself, "Now what?" Well you either throw in the towel, take matters back into your own hands, or if you're desperate enough you get down on your knees and you're ratchet the intensity. Now you're not only asking, now you're seeking. Like, "God where are you? I thought you loved me. Don't you like me? Got something against me? Are you punishing me for that terrible thing I did 20 years ago? I knew it would find me out someday. God where are you?" And so you search. You cry out and sometimes you know in the middle of that search God comes along and he points out something that you've been missing. He uses it as an opportunity to reveal more of his character and of his nature. There's a story like that in the Old Testament where King David lives in a period of time where for three years now there has been a famine in the land and Israel has been crying out to God. And so, "God how come it's not raining? Our lives are on the line here. One year a drought we can take, two years maybe, but three that's pushing it." What did God say? "Well the king who was here before you, King Saul, broke covenant with the Gibeonites, put him to death what he had promised that he would not. And now there is judgment on the land so repent." And they did and the rain came. See part of the purpose of seeking is that you go deeper into the things of God rather than just saying, "Well God must not like me, God must be against me, so give up on God, do my own thing." But sometimes when you seek, like sometimes when you ask, doesn't get any better, it gets worse. Now you're really befuddled and confused because all your neat categories of theology, all the things that you thought you do about God, nothing seems to work anymore. Now you're really up a creek without a paddle because remember you're going deeper with God. You've lost most of your supporting mechanisms that have been a substitute for God so far and now there's no God to be had anywhere. So what do you do? Well you ratchet up the intensity another notch. Now you're not just asking, you're not just seeking, you're getting pretty blooming desperate. What do you do when you're desperate? You begin to pound on the door. You begin to knock on heaven's door and you almost become violent with God and you say, "God bless me or I die." Now a lot of us think that's pretty blasphemous and we're just supposed to bow our heads very reverently and say not my will but yours be done, please God glory hallelujah. And you know what we do in the meantime? We just shut our hearts off. We compartmentalize our lives and don't allow God into those places anymore and we just live our life the way that we had wanted to live it because it's too dangerous when your heart is out fully there with God and God is nowhere to be had. Not true? So here's the question, if God is so good and he loves us so much and he so wants to bless us then pray tell why does he sometimes make it so blooming difficult. Yeah fair question is or not? He says ask receive seeking you'll find knock and it'll be open and I'm asking and I'm seeking and I'm knocking the tar out of that door and nothing much is happening. You know the answer is because God is trying to get us to know his character better. Let me give you three reasons and there are many more but let me give you three reasons why sometimes it goes from asking to seeking to knocking and the first is this the time has not yet fully come the time has not yet fully come. The Greek language and that's of course the language of the New Testament has two words for time. The one is Kronos and the other is Kairos. Now Kronos is the kind of time we in the Western world are comfortable with. We get the word chronology from it, we get the word chronic from it, chronometer. It has to do with calendars, seasons, dates and clocks. Modern people are ruled by appointments, alarm clocks, schedules and date books. Kronos says next month on such and such a day at such and such an hour I expect to arrive at the airport and please pick me up. That's the kind of time we're accustomed to. Kairos time is very different from that. It has to do rather with the fullness of time when circumstances are right for something to take place and in between services an illustration that came to mind is a little risque but I think you'll understand it certainly those of us here who are married will understand it. Man and a woman they're together and part of the nature of the relationship of course is intimacy and some of the battle is how do you get desire and passion in time to line up from his side and her side. Now men typically live by Kronos time. Tomorrow night eight o'clock ready to go let's do it. The woman what does she do? She lives by Kairos time. I got a feel right. The circumstances have to be okay and just because we agree to a date and a time and to an appointment doesn't mean that I'm ready at all. That's why smart men know that sex begins in the kitchen long before the bedroom evening rolls around. Kronos and Kairos. Kronos is a fixed period of time. Kairos is God's way of saying the circumstances have come together and now the time is right. And one of the ways in which you can see that is for example in the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus is already prophesied in Genesis chapter 3 when God says the seed of the woman will one day conquer the seed of the serpent right. That's a prophecy understood by Old Testament Israel as well as many others in the Old Testament that the Messiah is coming. And for years and years and for generation after generation God's people are praying God let this be the time. And even to this day there are people who try to set the time for when Jesus comes again. But there is no time set. Why? Because a certain set of circumstances have to come together and so Paul tells us in the book of Galatians that when the time had what? Fully come. When the time had fully come. When the Kairos moment, when all the circumstances had come together, when the right season had rolled around. That's when Jesus was born. How do we know when Jesus is coming back? When the right circumstances roll around. He says to the Pharisees you can tell what kind of weather you're going to have by looking at the sky. You know the signs of the times in that regard. But he says you're blind to the signs of the times in every other realm. Because he says whenever God's kingdom comes it is preceded by a Kairos moment. And part of being God's people and part of praying with wisdom and praying intelligently is to understand the difference between Kronos time and Kairos time. Because here sees what happens. We begin praying for something over here. Remember we have this need. Now I go to God and I say God please answer this need. And God says good I'm at work. And he begins to set in motion the events that will one day bring the answer that you need. But remember in order for that answer to come about there's a lot of things that need to happen. We often go through this with people when we talk about inner healing. You know people say well I prayed for God to fix this up. How come it's taking so long? Well I'll tell you why it takes so long. It took you 30, 40, 50 years to get to where you are. And it's going to take God a season of time to roll everything back. But it already begins when you start that process. In fact it already started in God's mind long before you ever started to pray because God's the one who thought of it to begin to have. So he gets you on board praying. And so the challenge of praying then is to discern the signs of the times and to recognize okay God is at work in this and it has to reach the right time and the right moment. And you can see this everywhere in nature. A lot of us pretty soon will be out in the garden planting seeds, waiting for the seed to sprout to grow to bear fruit. Now you can look on the you know the back of the little package and it'll tell you well these tomatoes are going to be ripe what 90 days or whatever the variety is that you're planting. That's Kronos time. You can go home into your little calendar and put it on there. First tomato, such-and-such a date. Well you come out there on such-and-such a date. What happens tomato isn't half ripe. Why? Because the weather has not cooperated or it's been too dry. There's a difference between Kronos time and Kairos time. And one reason it sometimes takes a long time for a prayer to get answered is that God is just starting the process. And for those of us who think we're wonderful and great prayers because we've had such powerful immediate answers to prayer, guess what? Just to keep us humble a little bit it might help us to realize that God brings us in in the process right about there. The thing is ready to fall out of the sky and our little prayer just knocks it over the end and we say well here's a man or a woman of great faith and power. Look what God did through my prayer. Well you're standing on the shoulders of a thousand generations that have prayed that prayer before you ever did. So the time has not yet come. More than that God also wants to test our faith. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Faith is knowing that God and God alone holds the answer to whatever it is that we need. Now that is a terribly miserable place for a human heart to find itself because it is very difficult to trust God and God alone. In fact typically our faith is in God plus my wife, plus my kids, plus my neighbors, plus my bank account, plus my job and all of the rest of life that makes life happen for us. And so our forefathers often talked about historical faith. That's the kind of faith that you inherit from your parents. You believe it because your parents believed it. They've talked about intellectual faith where intellectually you believe all the things the Bible says. But they also talked about saving faith, which is where you know it to be true in your heart. And for many of us in many places faith is a mixture. So how do you sort out a mixture? Well you put it in the fire. Peter says, "Rejoice at the testing of your faith that your faith may rebound to honor and glory in the day of Jesus Christ." Because you see the fire, and this is an important distinction, the fire not only burns off the dross, it does that, but it also reveals the gold. And the one thing that we don't have to be afraid of when we go through fiery trials is that our faith disappears altogether because in those places where our faith is truly the faith of Jesus grafted in our hearts, you know, the fires of life and the darts of hell cannot destroy yet. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us, even the person of Jesus Christ. So God sorts it out. And though fiery trials are no fun, we can come through those fiery trials refined knowing that God has sustained us and sustained our faith in ways that we never ever thought were possible. And I'll tell you, painful though that be, and I know a little bit about that in my life, I'll tell you, is better to find it out now. That in the final day of judgment when all our works are going to be tested by fire and we stand there bare naked, we say now what? Better know now so we can ask and we can seek and we can knock to receive the grace that we need from Jesus to live before his face. So the time isn't always right. God wants to test our faith and of course he wants to teach us what? Perseverance. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Why is perseverance so important from God's point of view? Because it demonstrates that your faith is real. Too often we're like children. We're aware of a need, we go to God in prayer, we ask him, we pray maybe for a week, maybe two weeks if we're desperate, maybe a little bit longer. But after a while when the answer doesn't come, like kids we get tired of this prayer, we have all our theological ducks in order to explain why. It must not be God's will after all and we just go on to other things. And God says to you and to me, listen, does this thing really matter to you? Whether you come alive in this area, does it really? Do you care? Do you care whether you can learn to love your enemy? Do you care if you learn how to forgive? Do you care about stepping into life in such a way that you can prosper before God and bless his name? Do you care to become like Jesus? Do you care for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth? If you do, how can you just walk away from it and say well it must not be God's will? There's a lot more things that are God's will than most of God's people are ever ready to believe God for. I'll tell you that. So part of perseverance is not only saying this really matters to me, God, but I happen to believe that this matters to you. I think you care whether I can live a godly life. I think you care whether my marriage succeeds. I think you care whether your kingdom comes and your people's purposes are accomplished. I think you care. So Lord I'm asking and I'm seeking and I'm going to pound on the door of heaven until it opens. And you and I we look at that and we say that's blasphemous. Far better to bow our heads humbly and say well not in my will but yours be done. And don't misunderstand me. There's a lot of things that we ask for that we ask for wrongly that we will never again. But there's a lot of things that God has already revealed that he wants us to go after him with everything we've got until we get it. And just to prove my point, Luke chapter 18, you can read it for yourself sometime, there's the story of the importune widow. This is a woman who has been wronged by somebody and she's appealing to the judicial system, a judge in particular, and this judge is crooked as get all has no interest in defending the poor and the widow and the orphan which in Scripture is always a high value. And so she's calling after him every time she meets this dude in the street she goes up to him and says, "Judge how about my case?" And he doesn't want anything to do with her so he just turns his back keeps on going. Well she's not about to be undone. She goes after him and goes after him and you know the story where he finally gets to a point of frustration where he says, "Listen even though I don't care about her and I don't care about justice and I don't care about doing what I'm supposed to be doing here, she's making such a spectacle of herself and such a nuisance I'm gonna give her what she wants because she is so persistent that is knocking on the door." And Jesus elsewhere in Luke's Gospels is a similar story. Friend comes late at night, he wants some bread. My first inclination is to say no I'm already in bed with my children. The guy doesn't have the manners to go home and leave me alone. Keeps pounding on my door. What does the man do? He gets up and Jesus says, "Even though he might not get up and give him bread because he is his friend, he is going to get up because it's the only way to get rid of his knocking. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find knock and it will be open to you." But somebody says what if it doesn't work? What if after all of that I'm just barking up the wrong tray? Well the third observation I want to make on this passage then as we bring this together is that when all has been said and done it's not only a question of the passage being understood in its context, it's not only understanding that there is a progression of intensity. Really when all is said and done the key to answered prayer is knowing, understanding, and trusting the Father's character. Because notice how Jesus continues, "I love this. Which of you if his son asks for bread will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake? 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?" Follow his logic with me. What is he saying? Jesus always logically argues his point. It's a very interesting thing. And he says, "Now look at yourselves, particularly those of you that are parents. You know and understand that you are flawed human beings." In fact that's putting it rather generously. Jesus is much more blunt and he says, "You're evil." Jesus never was one to make us feel good for the sake of feeling good or puffing us out. No, you're evil. Why? Because as fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve we are fundamentally self-centered at the core. But Jesus says, "You can take the most self-centered parent, think of him or her in connection with a daughter or a son and a daughter or a son's needs." So your son comes to you and says, "Dad or mom, I ask for bread." Or, "I need a fish." That is to say, "I need food or something to sustain the hunger of my life." And Jesus says, "Which one of you, even when you're evil, in response to that kind of a request would give a stone for bread or a snake for fish?" Now there can be the occasional sadist who is so warped and twisted that he might just step into that despite his son or despite his daughter. But even the most pagan of pagans, all things being equal, loves a son or a daughter so much that he or she would do everything within his power to meet or to satisfy the needs of that. Isn't that true? Of course that's true. Well, Jesus says, "Now look at the Father who is in heaven. You're evil. He's not." I mean, there isn't a shred of evil in the heart of God the Father. If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him? What's the key to prayer? It's knowing the character of God the Father. If your kids are even reasonably smart, they've got you figured out well enough to know what they can ask for and what they cannot ask for. Isn't that true? And they're smart enough to know which parent to play off against the other parent because sometimes one is a little more favorably inclined than the other, and smart parents put their heads together so they don't get into that situation. I used to think years ago that the key to faith and the key to answered prayer was memorizing the promises of God in Scripture and standing on them, and I still think that's very important, but I discovered that memorizing all the promises of God didn't help me trust him any better. I discovered it's far more important to know the character of him who makes the promises, and when I know God the Father and when I know his heart, when I know what beats within him which is my privilege through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I know what it is that I can go to him and ask for boldly and with courage and with determination because I know my Father's heart. That's when prayer becomes natural, and that's when we begin seeing answers to prayer because we're no longer shaken up by circumstances or by events or by is the sun shining or do I feel spiritual or do I feel good? God doesn't change, and his mercies are new every day. So it all hinges on the character of God, and that's where our struggle lies, you see, because by nature we don't trust him very much. By nature we've believed the lie. He's not good to remember. That's how the devil started in Genesis chapter 3, "Has God really said?" That's what he said to the woman, and since then our natural disposition is to disbelieve the goodness of God, and that's reinforced then by the things that happen in the course of life. Every prayer that doesn't get answered, every situation and circumstance that I ever find myself in where it isn't going my way, another nail in the coffin until I become for all practical intents and purposes a practicing atheist. Here's my little Sunday self where I go through all my, you know, nice religious routines, and yes, praise God, glory hallelujah, I love you. But then here's all the rest of the week where I fight just as dirty as everybody else down the alley, and I just have as much lack of faith in God that he cares about me than the guy down the street who's a raw pagan. In fact, sometimes the raw pagans live better in that way than you and I do, and the antidote to that is growing in the revelation of the character of God. And why do our prayers not always get answered so fast? Why do we sometimes have to seek so miserably? Why sometimes do we have to pound on heaven's door wondering if God has got a hearing problem? It's because God is wanting to bring us to a place where we get to know him and his character. Because how do you know that God is your provider if he hasn't put you in a place where he's the only one who can provide? How do you know that God is the only one who can lift you out of the miry dregs of your life unless you've been in the miry dregs and you have discovered the reality of God's power? And we're way beyond a time in history when God's people can just do business as usual and expect to have an impact on the world because they look at us and they say it doesn't get out. And God puts many of us through the fire by different times so that out of the fire comes a deeper knowledge, a deeper understanding of his character so that when the whole world goes to pot we are a people who know their God and they are rooted on the rock whose name is Jesus. So here's my challenge to you this morning as we wing this up. In one of those moments where you are reflective, when you're in touch with those deep longings and desires of the heart that often we just sort of have to shove aside and keep on going because we can't bear to live in the pain of that hunger. When you get in one of those moments where you feel that pain and you want to move to whatever addiction it is that you have adopted to cope with that pain, ask God to give you grace to enter into it, to step into it and to say, "God reveal yourself to me in this." And if you don't know what it is that you need to pray for then say, "Lord show me what my hunger is, show me what the burden is on your heart." I can promise you that he will and if he's already given you a specific desire then just lay aside your religious self for a little while and just be honest and say, "This is how I feel. These are my real feelings towards you. These are my real feelings towards other people. I know a thousand of them are wrong. I don't know what to do with this but you know me and you understand me and so Lord I cry out to you. Show me how to pray in this situation. Show me how to ask. Show me how to seek and show me how to knock." And then keep at it and I promise you something long after you will have forgotten your prayer. Maybe years later all of a sudden God will come along, the light will go on in your mind and the Holy Spirit says, "Remember what you prayed five, ten, twenty years ago? This is that and you will stand in [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:39:51.320; remove through 00:42:03.000] awe and you'll worship God like you've never worshiped him [CUT] before." 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