In the sermon titled 'Fulfilling the Law and Prophets Through Prayer,' Scott Brown delves into Matthew 7:7-11, emphasizing the commands to ask, seek, and knock in prayer. He argues that these commands are integral to the Sermon on the Mount's broader theme of heart righteousness and fulfilling the law and the prophets. Brown outlines four key observations: the passage's connection to the entire sermon, its simple structure, its positive nature, and its focus on spiritual rather than material prosperity. He underscores the importance of persistent prayer, defining it as a personal, sincere, and dependent communication with God. Brown also highlights God's generosity, likening it to a father's good gifts to his children, and discusses reasons why prayers might not be answered, such as wrong motives, sin, and unbelief. He concludes by urging the congregation to move away from self-sufficiency and to embrace a life of persistent prayer, aligning their desires with God's will and seeking His kingdom above all else.

Could everybody turn to Matthew chapter 7 verse 7. Matthew 7 verse 7. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks it will be opened. O what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 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 good things to those who ask Him? Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets." This is the Word of God.

Be seated. Let's pray. Oh Lord, you've laid before us such magnificent promises here. And oh, that you would open up the windows of heaven to us, to mind the goodness of your great Father's heart. Amen.

Well, with this passage of Scripture, we find ourselves being plunged really into the treasuries of the love of God for mankind. And here, you know, Jesus is speaking about His Father in heaven, the Father that He knows so well, the Father who has loved him, the Father who has delighted in him." And now the Lord Jesus Christ turns and He tells His disciples of the love of a Father, of His own Father, of their Father. And what we find here are some of the most encouraging words in all of scripture. And as we're gathered here as a little church family, oh, my prayer is that we would so more deeply understand the love of the Father. I mean, it was his kindness that led us to repentance in the first place, wasn't it?

It was a declaration of his mercy toward us. We saw his love toward us, and we've never been able to get over it because his love is so deep, it's so broad, it's everlasting. And here in Matthew chapter 7 in the passage that we're in is such a wonderful call to us to consider what a good father we have. You know, if there's anyone who's ever felt lonely or ever felt vulnerable or ever felt in danger or ever felt anything in the way of fear or being in harm's way, this passage should so come and counsel us today. It should help us to see the way the world really is.

The devil wants you to see a different world and live by the principles that are there. But here, what is so wonderful about the Lord Jesus' counsel toward His twelve disciples is that He comes and He opens up the windows of heaven and He tells them what they ought to do in relation to their father who is in heaven. So here we have the words of that great shepherd of the sheep who's coming and instructing us about how we ought to pray. And we've heard a lot about prayer so far in the Sermon on the Mount. We've been asked actually to pray for those who persecute us.

Almost all of chapter 6 is about a context of prayer, how we often pray like the hypocrites pray. We pray to be seen by men. And then the Lord Jesus comes and teaches us how to pray in chapter 6 by saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, John Bunyan said that Those two words said with sincerity at heart are worth more than 10, 000 words said without it. Our Father. We were instructed about fasting in chapter 6, and of course, prayer and fasting are always connected.

It's difficult to disconnect them at all. And so, so much of chapter 6 was about prayer. And then now we come into this passage, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it will be opened unto you. And so we're ushered really into a throne room full of treasure, the treasuries of God the Father toward his children. That's why John Bunyan said, he said, the spirit of prayer is more precious than treasure than the treasure of gold and silver.

So here we are. I'd like to make a number of observations. I want to give you four observations about this text before we begin to, you know, inspect it in more detail. First of all, The first observation I want to make is that this message about prayer is not disconnected at all from the theme that runs through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. It's not some separate category.

We haven't just entered into a whole new, different, completely unusual idea that Jesus just popped out of the top of the brilliance of his thinking. But it's actually part of a logical sequence to help us understand the will of the Lord. It's really a continued running commentary of what we already read in 519, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It's all focused on this righteousness that's found in seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you and And so this what we have to see Asking you or receive seeking you shall find knock and it shall be open to you in its wider Context and it's and it's all part of the whole theme. How can I be poor in spirit?

How can I be hungering and thirsting after righteousness? How can I be salt and light? How can I obey the law from the heart? How am I to give? How am I to pray?

How am I to fast? How can I keep from laying up treasures on earth where moth and rust is right and spend my life wasting it on worry? You know, how can I be a blessing to my brother and go to him when I see a speck in his eye in humility, already broken from my own sin? How can I be that kind of person to actually be a benefit to my brother with the speck in his own eye by first of all repenting of the log that is in my own eye? And then how can I keep from being so gullible and undiscerning that I would be so blind to other people that I would just throw my pearls before swine?

So this whole context leads up to this here, and then how can I go before God? Now when you think about going before your brother and you realize that you have to go before your brother after having removed the log that's in your own eye, you realize how hopeless you are to even correct your brother. You realize how inadequate you are to even speak to any issue because your own sins are so enormous. How do you grapple with such weakness? How do you grapple with such inadequacy in dealing with your brother and trying to be a blessing to him?

Well, you must pray. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. Jesus is just continuing to speak of this heart righteousness.

He's constantly contrasting outer righteousness to things way underneath the surface in everything. And so here, after bringing us to this great principle of how important it is that we do go to our brother to take out the speck that is in his eye. But something is required of us, it's very demanding, and that is that we cannot go to our brother without, first of all, repenting of our own sins, to go like this rather than like this. Rather than to go in a condescending way to your brother, you're going in a humble way. I mean, this just exposes the whole bankruptcy of the way that we often speak to one another, the way that we counsel one another, the way that pastoral counseling works, where you have the superior speaking to the inferior, here let me discern all of your problems, let me unpack all the issues that you have, let me tell you what you need to do, you know, in counseling.

Actually, God says no, that is completely wrong. You come as a sinner. All of us come in counseling one another to remove the stack out of our brother's eyes as those who have been broken by the law of God, completely bankrupt, completely unable to keep the law of God and humble and then never speaking out of our own pride or self-sufficiency or self-righteousness or hypercritical spirit. But we only speak as broken, bankrupt sinners. And so how can you do that?

You are completely hopeless without crying out to God for help. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you." So what we find here is part of the flow of the whole context. That's the first thing I wanted to establish before we move on.

Secondly, this passage has a beautifully simple structure. There are three commands and there are three promises and then there are two illustrations. And that's it. That's the whole passage that we have before us. The third introductory comment that I want to make is I want to just identify the positive nature of this command, where God comes to us not only to tell us what not to do, but he comes with positive commands.

He comes with encouragement. This is such a magnificently encouraging passage. To think that your Father in heaven is holding within his treasuries answers and helps for you. That he does pity his children. That he does have mercy on us.

We who are hypercritical, we who lay up treasures on earth, we who are not poor in spirit, God is so kind in that he comes with positive commands and in doing so helping us understand more of himself. And the fourth thing I want to say about this is that this passage has absolutely nothing to do with enhancing your financial or your social capital. It has nothing to do with that at all. It has to do with the child crying out to God in his poverty of the spirit, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, how to be merciful to his fellow creatures, how to be salt and light, how to obey and apply the law of God, how to fast, how to pray, not for the applause of men, but only for God and to set the captives free, how to help your brother with the speck in his eye by coming to him in repentance. This passage has nothing to do with financial prosperity.

It has to do with spiritual things. It has to do with all the things that Jesus has already spoken to his disciples about. The law is spiritual, and these are spiritual matters that are being brought to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's really all about how a son or a daughter acts and how they ask, how they seek, and how they knock, which is just an expression of seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness and having a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees. So with those four observations, that this first of all is not disconnected from the whole sermon, That second of all, it's very beautiful and simple in its structure.

That third, it's a positive command. And fourth, it has nothing to do with enhancing your financial and your social advancement. So let's begin here now with these three commands. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.

Knock and it will be opened unto you." So asking and seeking and knocking are all things that you do. They are not just things that you think, they are activities. They are the things that you do with the time that God has given you in your life. They are things that you actively pursue in the moments, in the days, in the weeks, in the months that God has granted to you on the earth. No one knows how much time He's been granted, but He has, we do know this, that He's granted us time for specific things.

And here are three of them that are identified. And they have to do with prayer. All of them have to do with prayer. And I'd like to give you a definition of prayer that I hope you find is accurate to the whole testimony of Scripture. So I'm going to read it to you because it has particular details in it that can be identified in different places in Scripture.

So prayer is. Prayer is a communication with God that is personal, earnest, affectionate, emotional, genuine, dependent, Where we pour out our acknowledgments of our fears, sorrows, needs, and hopes. Where we seek help and support. Where we give thanks through praises. Where we confess our sins and repent and ask for help to mortify the flesh, where we offer up Appeals for all the saints, where we believe in our hearts of His power, His mercy, His goodness, His wisdom, where we trust in the Holy Spirit's intercession in our weakness, where we diligently labor all our lives asking, seeking, and knocking with perseverance.

So that's the way I want to define this asking and seeking and knocking that Jesus Christ is speaking of here. Now there's something in the midst of all of this that I hope we don't miss in everything that Jesus is speaking about regarding our prayers, because we have such weakness in our prayers. And that is this. And here again, we see another window into the love of God for mankind. We see how much He loves us.

And that is that not only does God give us a command to ask and seek and knock. He is also kind enough to give us help to fulfill it. He gives us the Holy Spirit to be interceding for us. John Bunyan said, no man, no church in the world can come to God in prayer except by the assistance of the Holy Spirit. And that is so true.

You know, It seems to be such a battle to pray with all of our hearts, to truly dedicate ourselves. John Bunyan documented his own struggle with it. Let me read to you what he says. May I but speak my own experience, and from that tell you the difficulty of praying to God as I ought. It is enough to make your poor, blind, carnal men to entertain strange thoughts of me, for as for my heart when I go to pray, I find it so loath to go to God, And when it is with Him, so loathed to stay with Him, that many times I'm forced in my prayers first to beg God that He would take my heart and set it on Christ.

And when it is there that He would keep it there. Many times I know not what to pray for, for I am so blind, nor do I know how to pray. I am so ignorant. Oh, the starting holes that are in the heart in time of prayer. None knows how many byways the heart has, the back lanes to slip away from the presence of God.

How much pride also, if enabled with expressions, how much hypocrisy, how little conscience is made there of prayer between God and the soul in secret, unless By the spirit of supplication he helps." This declaration of the ease of God to come and pour out His gifts toward us stands in such stark contrast to our own difficulty, how hard it is to pray. The devil and all of his angels would hate for us to pray. And yet God gives us this wonderful command to ask and to seek and to knock. Zechariah 12.10 tells where God tells the people that he's going to destroy them. But then after that something will happen and then he will give them the ability to do something that they couldn't do before.

And he says, I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication. And they will look on me whom they have pierced. Here it's a vision of the days of the gospel. It's a vision of the coming of Jesus Christ and how God at that time would give help from heaven to pray. It says He would pour out a spirit of grace and supplication and then they will look on me whom they appear." This is a promise that when Jesus Christ comes, he sends his Spirit, that there is a new ability to pray in the church like there never was before.

So at the same time, there's this command. Why three commands for this? And I just want to give several reasons. The first reason is that Prayer and revival, they always go hand in hand. Reformations are always born of persistent prayer.

And God desires to work through His people, and He calls them to pray, so that there would be awakening, so that chains would be broken, so that the works of the devil would be destroyed in the world through times of awakening, through times of outpouring. And it's so important that we pray, not for ourselves, but for our families, but for our churches, but for our whole nations, that there would be an awakening. We must pray for that. Another reason He would give a command, secondly, is that He commands us in order to take us out of our own world. He's really rescuing us from ourselves.

He's taking us out of a self-absorbed, self-obsessed life where we're just focused on ourselves rather than crying out to God for things better. Better gifts than we can give ourselves, better promises, better helps, better things in the world than we can do with our own energy. So he's actually rescuing us from our own littleness in it. Thirdly, he's showing God's passion for our welfare, and he's really disclosing the kind intention of his will toward us to believe. To do this, to take us into his counsels, that he would actually take us into his confidence, and that we would have a relationship with him, to speak to him just like one speaks to a friend, or a wife, or anything like that.

He's actually showing us his passion for our welfare in the sense that we need him so much so he takes us to himself. So in the command, he's drawing us to himself. He's calling us to himself and out of ourselves, and he's exposing us to his great kingdom and his great thoughts, the perfections of all his ways, his words that are tried seven times. And he's coming to us and he's just delivering us from the distance. He's delivering us from being disconnected from him.

The worst thing that can happen in personal relationships is to be disconnected from them. We all know that. Perhaps our greatest griefs in our relationships is this sense of being disconnected. And here God is coming to us and He's saying, here's what I will do for my children to keep them from being disconnected from me, so that they would be intimately bound to me, to the waters of life, to the bread of life, to the light that is in God's throne, to show us how sinfully disconnected we might be, and convicting us of our lack of closeness to Him, and giving us a command to call us to Himself, to call us out of this place of self-sufficiency and call us into His very arms. Remember Moses said that God carries His children as a father, carries his son.

That's what this command is all about, is so that he would carry you, so that he would bring you into his counsels and speak with you intimately, and you speak with him. So here he's showing us his passion for our welfare, to bring us into something better than our own councils and our own, you know, dubious sensitivities to things, our own inclinations, our own strengths, our own gifts. He's delivering us from all of that and bringing us into something so much better. And then the fourth thing he's doing is he's showing us our hypocrisy. By even having the command, why would he even have to do that?

Because we are like the hypocrites when we pray. And then fifthly, by showing us just our lack of passion for prayer. And so here what we find in these three commands is so perfectly consistent with everything that Jesus has been saying to his disciples as he's counseling them, Jesus is continually attacking the self-centeredness of man. And Jesus is continually drawing man out of his self-reliance and his self-sufficiency so that he's crying out to God. And what we know about prayer is that the prayerless life is the self-sufficient life.

And the prayerless person pretends that he can handle everything on his own. So he just keeps working and working and working and working. And he never speaks to God. He works on very blessed and lawful and precious things. He fulfills his responsibilities.

Yes, he does that. But he's so obsessed with his own responsibilities that he's actually become overcome with self-adequacy and self-sufficiency. When God's desire is to draw us completely away from our self-sufficiency and to trust in Him completely. And of course, you know, Jesus is not suspending working for the Kingdom of Heaven. But He is suspending only working.

How often has that happened? I think back at how often that happens to me. Work, work, work, work on holy things, and yet cry out to God personally so little. So he desires us to be done with our overconfidence. And that's really sort of the worldly view of life that we constantly struggle with.

In the command, he's dealing with a whole world view, a whole world view that says, I just need to do my work and get her done rather than I just need to ask and seek and knock because we can't because we so over we over value our own labor we over value our own thoughts and what we can do about a situation and we undervalue what God can do. So this is such a wonderful act of love for God. These commands are so helpful to us because they deliver us from this ridiculous, foolish, bankrupt, unworkable self-sufficiency. That's part of all of us. And Jesus Christ, of course, is speaking to his disciples.

He's speaking to those who have followed him. They've left everything and followed him. And yet, even his closest disciples have a ways to go in shedding their self-sufficiency, just like all of us do here as well. You know, God is always in the business of delivering man from the bankrupt philosophies of the world. He's always taking us away from the philosophies of man.

And first, there's the philosophy of the world that says, I'm the captain of my own fate. That's the kind of worldview that Jesus is attacking here. But there's another worldview that Jesus is bringing to his disciples. And it's this thought, God causes all things to work together for good. Ask, seek, and knock.

And this is really the worldview of Abraham. Abraham, we learn from scripture that he did not know where he was going. But there was a Puritan writer who said, he said he did not know where he was going, but he did know with whom he went. You know, Maybe someone was singing a song last night in our house, it was a hymn. It says, I don't know about tomorrow, but I know who holds tomorrow, and I know who holds my hand.

And so Jesus is trying to deliver his disciples from this worldview where we're holding our own hands. In fact, we're wringing our own hands rather than lifting our hands in prayer and asking and seeking and knocking on that door. So we have these commands that are appealed to us so, so strongly. Now let's look at each one of the commands now. There are three distinct ones that really are part of the same range of thinking.

It seems that there's kind of an increasing intensity that's here. There's a rising awareness and passion and resolve. Asking, That's one thing. There's a whole other level of seeking and there's a whole other level of intensity of knocking. There just seems to be kind of a rising level of activity in this.

So he says, ask and it will be given to you. This has to do with personal burdens being stated, itemizing things that are according to the will of God, pleading with Him, casting your cares upon Him. There's something that is needed. Asking for bread and you'll get it. That's why the Lord's prayer begins with, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread." So asking has to do with the itemizing of the real things that are going on. You know, be gone with just generalized prayers and bring in specific prayers that have to do with real life. And then seeking, seeking you shall find. Seeking has to do actually with launching into some kind of a pursuit. There's enormous action that's implied here.

And so in prayer, there's something to be pursued. You are pursuing someone or something. You know, think of the days when you were pursuing that woman that you married. Think of those days. What was that like?

You were crying out to God probably more then than any other time in your life because you were in hot pursuit. Seeking has to do with pursuit and we should be pursuing in prayer. And it may be that something has been lost that must be pursued. That's what was happening in Daniel chapter nine. When Daniel was praying, he's wrestling before God for something that was lost in his own heart and in the hearts of all the people in his own nation.

Something had been lost and he tore his clothes and he cried after God. He was pursuing, he was pursuing something in his own life and among his people that had been lost. And in the same way, maybe something has been lost in your own heart. Something isn't the same. You've actually lost something along the way in your life with the Lord.

And you need to pursue it again. Here the Lord Jesus says, ask and seek. Seek it again. Seek it. Go after it.

There's something that needs to be gained. And so you have to name it, name it and gain it. How's that? And go after it, seek it, pursue it, the thing that is holy, these spiritual matters that are so important for the advancement of the glory of God in the world. And then there's knocking, knock, and it will be opened unto you.

And so here Jesus is giving us another sort of word picture to help us understand more about what prayer is like. And so, he gives us this imagery of standing at a door. So, I mean, just picture yourself, you're on a doorstep, and there's a door, and it's a closed door, and you've knocked on the door, and you're waiting for it to be opened. You know, whenever you knock on a door you are completely helpless. You have no idea if anyone's home.

You have no idea if anyone's home, whether they will open the door. You hope that maybe they won't look through the peephole and see who it is and not answer the door because they may not, they just may not answer the door at all. There's no more place of vulnerability than standing at a door and knocking because we are not in control of what's going on on the inside of that door and you know and perhaps if you know if you're incredibly persistent, you might knock twice. And if you are ridiculously persistent, you might knock a series a third time, Like that. And then, if you're still standing there, exposed, you know, everyone knows that no one's answering the door, you're just standing there at the door, You might go around the side and knock on another door.

If you're really, really bold, you might go and try to look in to see if there's a light on. Or you might try to listen to hear if there are any noises inside. But you have absolutely no control whether that door opens or not. There's no greater place of vulnerability and weakness and instability than standing at a door. Because you're completely dependent on the people inside.

Now You may want to bash the door down, and that way you could get in. But that's not the image that Jesus is giving. He's talking about knocking. And he's illustrating the times when we are at the door, and We are knocking on that door so badly, we are desiring to make connection. And a closed door is like a blockade.

There's just nothing that can get you past it. Nothing can really be accomplished until that door is open. And so Jesus gives us an illustration of a place of vulnerability, but also a place of activity where you have something to do. And that means that you're knocking. You're knocking on that door.

And though we're so weak in front of that door, at the same time God has given us help, that the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses because we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. So we're not hopeless at the door in knocking. One thing we know for sure, someone is home. Your Father in heaven is home.

He is there. And He will open the door at the time of His pleasure. And He'll only open the door at the time of the greatest blessing in your life. Because sometimes you just knock one time and the door opens. Or you knock twice and the door doesn't open or three times or four times or five times and the door doesn't open.

Now here Jesus says the door will be open. That may not be opened in your time, but the door will open. Absolutely it will open. And God will fulfill all of your prayers according to His perfect will. So Jesus' statement here is that all is not hopeless.

Even the most discouraging situations that cause you to get up out of your seat, stand on someone's doorstep and knock, those situations are not hopeless because God will open the door. He is behind the door. Now, you would not knock if you did not desire. And if you wanted it desperately enough, you would stay on the doorstep until it opened. And That's the whole matter of perseverance in prayer.

So the theme of all these three is really persistence. And so the very construction, even of the words that Jesus is using proves this, because they're all given in the present imperative, which means that you just keep on keeping on. You just keep on asking, you keep on seeking, and you keep on knocking. So every single word implies perseverance and continuation of it. And of course, we understand that God is saying the same thing that he said in Psalm 145, 18, the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call upon him in truth.

He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He will also hear their cry and save them. The Lord preserves all those who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy." So all of this means is that with the asking and the seeking and the knocking, There is a treasury in heaven administered by a good father who desires to give good gifts to his children. And so it's not fruitless to ask and to seek and to knock. And that's why Solomon said, my son, if you cry out for discernment and lift your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, then you'll understand the fear of the Lord.

This is the way that God has made things to operate with us that we ask and we seek and we knock, and He does come to our aid. And then there are three promises that are made in verse 8. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened unto him. Now, there can't be anything more simple and more plain than that. And he starts out with the words, for everyone.

And who is everyone? Well, it's only for the sons of the kingdom. It's only for the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ that he's speaking to. God does not answer the prayers of those who hate him. But this is for every believer.

So first of all, I mean, these words are directed to the children of God. And it shows God's favor toward his people. And that's why he says, how much more will your Father in heaven. He holds within his hands treasures for his children. So if you're lifting up your voice in prayer and you're not converted, you're just fooling yourselves if you think that your prayers are going anywhere.

Now if your prayers are crying out to God that He would save you, those prayers would be heard. But these are different kinds of prayers that He's speaking of here. So this kind of praying is not a blank check for all of our prayers. And I'd like to give you a number of reasons why prayers are not answered. It would be foolish just to take these words and not see them in their context in all of Scripture.

Because Scripture has many things to say about prayer that would qualify and would really strengthen our understanding of what this means, ask and it will be given to you. You know, this whole matter of the promise, does it, you know, it can't mean that we get everything that we desire. It just can't mean that because of other things in Scripture. And I'll give you some Scripture that will help you understand that. He may not answer the way you desire, number one, because of your wrong motives.

James 4.3 says, you ask and you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend it on your pleasures. Again, this just shows us that this whole matter of prayer is not about building your financial kingdom. It's about building a spiritual kingdom. So wrong motives would cause your prayers not to be answered in the way that you desire. Number two, sin.

You may be regarding sin in your heart. Psalm 66 Verse 18 says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. And there are many examples of this in Scripture. Isaiah, Chapter 1 is a critical one. He says, when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will not hear you because blood is on your hands.

So sin is a reason that God does not answer your prayers. And then thirdly, unbelief, when we ask with a doubting spirit. That's why James said in James 1, 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, for he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." So unbelief is another way not to get your prayers answered. Or not praying according to the will of God will also get your prayers not answered. In John 14, verse 13 and 14, Jesus says, And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." So when we do not pray things that are consistent with the name of Jesus Christ, Our prayers will not be answered. When we ask things that are not for the purpose of the glory of God, we've already been instructed to pray, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Not my kingdom, thy kingdom. So prayers not given according to the will of God will not be answered. And so, God does, this statement that Jesus is making can't be taken to a ridiculous extreme. To say that every immature desire that you have, every self-exalting vision that you have for your life and plan is somehow legitimized before God.

God is so good that He doesn't give us the answers to our immature and fleshly desires. It would be actually an act of hatred toward us to answer fleshly, you know, worldly desires. It wouldn't help us or anyone at all. Why would a good Father do that? A good Father doesn't do that.

But a good Father does give good gifts to those who ask Him. You know, why might He delay? Because he often does delay. He answers but not in our own timing. He delays to build our faith.

Each day stretches our faith. Each day increases our endurance. Each day shows us how dependent we are upon Him. Each day keeps us coming back unless we wickedly just throw up our hands and say, where's God? I've done my part.

Now Who knows what will happen next? Or he delays and then you take up your own ways to go accomplish the will of God, like Abraham and Sarah did when they had no children. How rather than waiting on God, who had good gifts ready for them in his own timing. They jumped the gun. And instead of taking the delay to sweeten their souls and draw them even closer, they used it to rise up in their own self-sufficiency, to do the will of God in their own way, rather than seeing the will of God be done in his own way.

I think he delays also to increase our joy, you know, when you pray for so long and then all of a sudden after years God breaks open, you know, the windows of heaven and He answers that prayer. And it's sweeter than it possibly ever could have been if it had just been answered immediately. And I really believe God makes us wait to increase our joy. And also to help us see that He's answered our prayers in the right way. Like, I mean, how many times have you prayed for something and it didn't come to pass, but something else came to pass?

In the midst of it, there was tremendous hardship. And you look back and you say, oh I would never have it any other way. I would never trade that hardship for what God accomplished. I cried out that God would relieve the conflict from me, but he didn't do it. But now, after all these years looking back, I can't imagine being without what I learned during that time in that conflict.

So often God delays the answers to our prayers so that when we look back we see the greatness of His wisdom. We see how much wiser He was than we are, how He had things that He wanted to be part of our lives. He wanted to buff it and strengthen us. He wanted to expose us to things. He wanted to take us to places that we would never go on our own.

And so he delayed the answer to the prayer so that when we would look back we would say, Oh Lord, you are so wise. I would not trade that trial for anything in the world. How often has that happened to you? What's happened to me many times of things that I cried out to God that I would be relieved of, but wasn't, and then came to the place of just being so thankful for what God did as a wise Father in dealing with me and taking me through the things that I needed rather than relieving me of the things that I wanted to be relieved of. So God always answers our prayers in the right way, not in our own timing and not always in the way that we hope, and not, and really never according to our own immaturity and our own self-sufficiency.

But He answers prayers for his own glory, according to his own name, to bless his own wisdom in our own lives. Why does God ask us to pray when he is sovereign over everything? I mean, Who knows the answer to that question? I mean, He's commanding us to pray and promising a result. Why is He doing that?

He's already determined everything according to the counsel of His own will. He holds all things in His hand. Remember Romans 9, it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. So why even pray? You can become a hyper-Calvinist by thinking that kind of a thought.

Let me read you. Someone sent me this this week of the RC Scroll and explaining that. Can our requests change God's sovereign plan? Of course not. When God sovereignly declares that he is going to do something, all of the prayers in the world aren't going to change God's mind.

But God not only ordains ends, He also ordains means to those ends. And part of the process he uses to bring his sovereign will to pass are the prayers of his people. And so we are to pray. So that's R.C. Sproul.

I like the way he says that. Yes, God is sovereign, but He involves His people. He draws His children to Him. He calls them into fellowship with Him to hold them in His arms and have them ask and seek and knock on the door. He desires us to come near and it engages us with Him and we participate with Him and He with us in the execution of His will because we are His sons and we are His daughters.

So that's why that's why we pray. I love what William Henderson said about prayer. He said not one single prayer will disappoint. Prayer in his name. Okay, and then we see the generosity of God.

Not only do we see these three commands and these three promises, but also the generosity of God is spoken of here in verse 9. Or what man is there among you? Who? If his son asks for bread, will he give him a stone? What a beautiful statement.

And here Jesus is illustrating to his disciples why it makes sense for them to pray. And the answer is that it makes sense to pray because God is a good Father. And so here the Lord Jesus takes us into the whole doctrine of sonship, adoption, his own fatherhood, all of these things. And how God is so contrasted from the devil. He's saying, this is your father.

And he's contrasting a man who has good desires for his son with God, who has absolutely perfect, really good desires for his son. And it's interesting when you think about this, here you have a son who asks for bread, and will he give him a stone? Well in reality, this is exactly what the devil does. You ask for whatever you ask for, and He'll give you a curse for it. That's what the devil does.

But your Father is not that way at all. If you ask for bread, if you pray in His name according to His will for holy things that his name would be hallowed. He will give you that bread. He will not give you a stone. The devil though, he gives snakes in payment for all the prayers of his people.

And so the Lord here is bringing us into the familiarity that we ought to have with Him and His disposition that He is good and His comfort that He's promising to take care of us, that He is a good Father. He will give to us what we need. Turn over to Luke, Luke chapter 11, and you'll see the parallel passage here. Message here. Verse 10, For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks will be opened.

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? You notice how Luke adds what Matthew does not supply?

That he's also, he's speaking of the gift of the Holy Spirit. He's speaking of the gift of the Holy Spirit who intercedes. That God gives so generously that not only he supplies the command but he also supplies the means to fulfill the command by giving the Holy Spirit. It means that these are spiritual things. He's talking about things of the Holy Spirit that are being prayed for and being given.

Everything we are asking for is given by the work of the Holy Spirit. And so he gives us generously these things. And he says, how much more, how much more will your Father in heaven give you good things? He begins with speaking of you being evil. If you being evil know how to give good gifts.

So Jesus is making clear the depravity of fathers, the inadequacy of fathers, the lack of discernment that fathers have. And he's saying that even in their lack of discernment, they still know how to give good gifts to their children. And so Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. He's using a human father and comparing with something greater, his own fatherhood. And to show what his fatherhood is like, because earthly fathers are really just very dim images of our Father in heaven.

But we are made in His image. And because we're image bearers, we do certain things that are like our Father. And this is one of the things that we do. We're wired to give good gifts to our children. Some fathers may have the ability to give greater gifts than other fathers.

But all fathers desire to give good gifts to their children. They may not be very well equipped to do it. But I've never met a father who didn't somehow desire to give something good to his children. And so that's what he's speaking about. But the interpretive key is this, and this is really the heart of the message.

How much more will your Father? How much more will your Father? If you if you want to give good gifts to your children, just recognize that your desire is absolutely nothing compared to your Father's desire to give you good gifts. You have an inkling of it. God's it should tell you of the immensity of the Father's love toward you and His desire to give you good gifts.

If you could take all the best fathers in the world and mingle their love, it would mean nothing compared to the love of this Father in heaven, because He's a perfect Father. And then the summary of all of these things is given. And it's a summary of the law and the prophets, but it's a summary of more than just the law and the prophets, prayer is. But it's included in it. Therefore, so That word connects what was just said about prayer with this next statement.

So again, we just see that Jesus is not just bringing one random thing and throwing it out for their consideration. He's working in a logical sequence in order to give a whole picture of what the Christian life is all about. So he says, therefore, and that indicates that this is not something that stands alone, But it draws up what has been said before and now somehow brings it into a summary. And then we find what people have called the golden rule. Therefore, Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets." This just stuns me.

I mean, look, therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. That's the law in the prophets. That's it. The entire message of scripture is communicated right here. It can find its summary here in the way that love works in the world.

Every law of God is a law of love. And that law is meant to be communicated to mankind in our personal relationships. How do you apply the law of God? Its application always works itself out in love, in the way that you treat your brother, your neighbor. And so, now I believe that He's also saying that This kind of prayer also is involved in fulfilling the law and the prophets.

But it's everything that was before. Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. And again, he's speaking of this terrible urge in ourselves to please ourselves. This is our biggest spiritual problem. We have such a long list of likes and dislikes, and yet the Lord Jesus is trying to deliver us from those and to desire the glory of God in all of our prayers, in all of our living, and in all of our relationships.

So Jesus is just continuing to sum up what he's been saying about the self-driven life, the life of praying for the praise of man, the self-congratulatory life that gives alms, the prayer life that doesn't even exist because it's so wrapped up in itself, it doesn't ask, it doesn't seek, it doesn't knock. The whole problem with man is that he loves himself too much, and that is the heart of the matter with the golden rule. Because he doesn't love the law of God enough, he cannot love man enough. So I'd like to get this in applications here. The first thing that I want us to just consider is how in this whole passage, you have this interplay between a father and a son.

And this relationship is a working relationship. And God has caused us to be born, to put us in a working relationship with Him. And that includes the way that we relate to Him. We ask and we seek and we knock. So we're in a working relationship with God.

That's the whole purpose of our lives, and that's why prayer is so important. Our working relationship with God falters because our praying falters. And God is desiring to bring us into this relationship so that more of His good things would be channeled through us. These things of the Holy Spirit would be in the world. And so God is glorified when His sons and His daughters are working together with Him.

And so here, I hope this just helps us to see that we have a daily and moment-by-moment life with God. And we are with Him in His business. The Lord Jesus says, do business until He comes. And that is the business of the Kingdom of Heaven. The second thing that I want us to consider is this.

While this passage is so encouraging that God would make such wonderful promises to us, at the same time, if I do not have a desire to ask and seek and knock, what does that say about me? If I do not have a desire to ask and seek and knock, what does that say about me? I don't want us to depart from this place today without coming before God And then finally I want to just end with a story from Pilgrim's Progress. Christian is on a journey to the Kingdom of Heaven and he comes up to a gate. And over the gate are the words, knock, and that shall be opened unto you.

And he knocks, and he knocks, and he knocks until his knuckles are bleeding. And finally the door is open. And then his dear wife and children come to the door as well. And the same thing happens to them that happened to their father. When Christian was knocking and the door was opening, he felt a pull back because the city of the devil was just right nearby.

He felt the pull back and it hit him, but he kept going forward. And so when his wife knocked on the door, a vicious dog began to bark, to terrify them, to terrify them away from the door. And they knocked and they knocked and they knocked. And the door was opened. And what's so helpful about that story is that it tells us a particular fact about our lives, and that is that we enter the kingdom of heaven by knocking, and then we continue to glorify God in His kingdom by knocking.

We continue the same way that we start, by knocking on that door. And God is such a kind Father that He gives the desire to end people's hearts that they would knock. He gives them a sense of their sin. He takes them to a place of loathing themselves. They repent of their sins.

They believe in the gospel. And it causes them to knock. And when God begins to give a desire in someone's heart to knock, and to continue to knock, to continue to seek, He will open the door if it is Him that has given the desires to knock. And I just want to say, if there's anyone here who has been living a self-sufficient life and you've never genuinely repented of your sins, you've never entered the Kingdom of Heaven, you don't know what living water is, you don't know what living bread is, you don't know what light is like, you just don't know. But in your heart, in your heart, there's been something that has been saying, knock, knock, I want in.

Then let this be the day that you repent of your sins and enter the kingdom of heaven and that you believe in the shed blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse you of all of your unrighteousness, the only thing, your only hope for dealing with your unrighteousness, and that you trust that Jesus did die and was raised again to sit at the right hand of God, that He might intercede for you now, that He is interceding for you because He loves you. If you've not been converted and you are knocking on the door of heaven, then recognize the Father's heart to give good gifts to his children. And then, you know, for those of us who have repented, perhaps even many, many years ago, and we can recall that season when we were knocking on the door, And it was opened unto us. And God flooded our souls with joy and expressiveness. But yet, yet, we've become so self-absorbed, so self-sufficient, and we just don't care enough for the sufferings and the heartaches that are going on in this world.

And so we don't knock very much anymore, and we don't seek very much, And we don't ask very much. And we just sort of play away our days in the air. I was thinking about this yesterday when we went to the abortion clinic. And we were there. We really go there not to protest but to pray.

We go there to cry out to God for souls. We go to turn back the perishing from destruction. That's why we go. And so we're all standing there. And it's easy to just stand there and talk, but we're not there to talk with one another.

I was standing with someone there and this person was talking and finally the person said, am I talking too much? And I said, yes, I think we should be praying for these people Because we're there to pray. We only have so much time in this life. And God has called us to spend our lives in asking and seeking and knocking. And this is how he accomplishes his will in the world.

He ordains the means of doing his own will as well as the ends. And the means that he uses includes our prayers. Why do you think So much of the Sermon on the Mount is given to the subject of prayer. Jesus is instructing His disciples so that they might go forth from Him to declare His glory in all the earth. And He is establishing this principle that they should spend their lives asking and seeking and knocking rather than to waste their lives in self-sufficiency just working and working and working and working and talking and talking and talking rather than dropping to their knees to pray before God.

Now as we pass through this section on prayer, I just want us to recognize that we're going to just continue to move on in the sermon. But let's don't get by this part of the sermon without some adjustment in the way that we approach our lives, that we would carefully consider how self-sufficient, how proud, how self-absorbed we become, that we don't even pray. How unloving and hateful we are to our brothers, that we don't even care enough to cry out for them. And oh yes, we do pray for our financial and our social aggrandizement. But when it comes to matters of thy kingdom come and thy will be done." We are so sparse and so selfish that we rarely pray and allocate time for that.

Now, we have been taken by the will of God through this season to consider these things about prayer. He's passed us through this moment in our lives as a church. And we won't leave the subject of prayer as we go through Scripture. But let's just recognize that God has stopped us up over and over and over and over again in this church to stop us to pray, to stop us to reconsider our ways. Let's not let this moment pass without carefully considering that God Almighty has laid this before us for a purpose.

That we would not be the same people that we've been. Let it be true that God has brought us through this season so that He would anoint us with the Spirit of prayer and supplication, that this would be such a mark of our lives together that His kingdom would come, His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Oh God, we pray for help. We've all stood before these words and read them and we've memorized them and we've considered them, we've tried to dissect them. But oh God, Please do not leave us there.

But that all of these considerations and readings and memorizing and dissections would lead us to our knees. Oh God, Please would you do this for our congregation? We are a weak and poor and pitiful and blind congregation. And we are so self-absorbed. We are so selfish and self-sufficient.

Oh, help us, Lord. Amen.