Invoking God in our Relationships

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I want to invite you to remain standing and take out your Bibles as we give honor to the Word of God and read our text for the morning.
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Now our focus is going to be on verses 7-12 of Matthew chapter 7, but I want to read to ensure our understanding of context beginning at verse 1.
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So we're going to read Matthew 7 verses 1-12.
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Judge not that you be not judged.
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For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
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Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how do you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
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Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
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And now for our text of the day.
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Ask, and it will be given to you.
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Seek, and you will find.
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Knock, and it will be opened to you.
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For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
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Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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? So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.
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Our Father and our God, we ask now, as we begin the message, that You would, Father, first and foremost keep me from error, as I am a fallible man capable of preaching error.
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And I pray that You would open the hearts of Your people to the truth.
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And I pray that in all of this, You would be glorified, for that is the chief end of all of us, to glorify You and enjoy You forever.
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May it be, O God, that this message stirs within us a stronger desire to seek You in all of our relationships.
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In Jesus' name we pray and for His sake.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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On the very first day that a seminarian goes into a class on the subject of hermeneutics, hermeneutics, by the way, is the art and science of interpreting the Bible.
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On the very first day, the professor will often write one word on the board.
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And that word is context.
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Because proper interpretation of the Bible, proper hermeneutics, requires that we take all Bible verses within the context of which they were written.
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We call it the grammatical-historical principle.
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The grammatical-historical principle simply says that when we interpret the Bible, we interpret it by the rules of grammar and by the historical context in which it was written.
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That is the standard for proper biblical interpretation.
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Now, we've come to a text today in Matthew 7 and verse 7 that is easy to take out of context.
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In fact, looking at the Sermon on the Mount, we've seen quite a few of these.
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We've seen quite a few places where people would rip a verse or two out of context, use them for something it was never intended to mean.
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And this is yet another one of those times.
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We've been looking through the Sermon on the Mount.
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We've come now to verse 7 of chapter 7.
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And Jesus says these words.
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He says, Ask and it will be given to you.
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Now, in this passage, we are told to do three things.
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We're told to ask and to seek and to knock.
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And we're to do so with persistence and expectation.
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And the problem is, within the health and wealth community, better not go too far apparently.
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Within the health and wealth community, this passage has been utterly corrupted.
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It is often used to teach that we can have anything that we want as long as we ask hard enough, we seek long enough, and we knock hard enough.
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It's often been applied to everything from health and wealth to prosperity and happiness, to new cars, to new houses, to all kinds of things.
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In 2006, a best-selling book entitled The Secret, written by Rhonda Byrne, I think is how you pronounce her name, based on the law of attraction and claimed that positive thinking can create life-changing results such as the increase of health, wealth, and happiness.
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And this is a testimonial on her website.
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On the website of the book, The Secret, I went on and looked at a testimonial.
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This is from a lady in Canada who had read the book and apparently has applied its principles.
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This is what she said.
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I quote, I am so excited.
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I am totally loving this metaphysical world.
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Not a day goes by where I don't read, listen to, meditate on, or acknowledge the wonders of the great planet that we are blessed to be living in.
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Pretty much every day I tell my kids, Matthew 7, 7.
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And they say, yeah, whatever, Mom.
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And walk away.
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I know deep down in their subconscious mind that something is cooking in, even though they won't admit it or are too young to understand the complexity of the universe and how everything unfolds so miraculously.
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I'm always instilling in them that they are the creators of their own universe and whatever they believe, they will receive.
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End quote.
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I hope I don't have to tell you that that is an utterly unbiblical, that is an utterly acontextual, that is an utterly misreading, an utter misreading of Matthew 7, 7.
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And her application of it demonstrates that she doesn't understand it and that she's misapplying a biblical principle and through the use of this book is misapplying it to her life in such a way that it was never intended to be applied.
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This belief rejects the overarching biblical concept which tells us that it is God and not us who created the universe and who creates our universe and is sovereign over our steps.
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The Bible says many is a way of a man's heart.
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Many are the plans of a man's heart, but God directs his steps.
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It also misses the point of the context of Matthew 7 and that's going to be my focus of today.
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Because I think often when we read Matthew 7, we read it without a context.
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We read it in the sense of these are just sort of disjointed passages which Matthew sort of clumped together and we sort of read them out of context.
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In fact, I want to make a point that in our Bible, the ESV that we use, I don't like the divisional headings that are placed here.
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You notice that these are not inspired, right? The bolded headings that go above the passages.
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That wasn't written by Matthew.
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I think we know that.
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Those divisional headings often create confusion.
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In fact, the chapter and verse demarcations often confuse us.
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Because they sometimes separate a thought that wasn't meant to be separated or separate chapters that were never intended to be separated.
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And we have to read without those interfering with what we're reading.
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And so too today, I want us to look at this particular passage and understand that what we are seeing here is a context that begins in verse 1, goes all the way past verse 12, but that's as far as we're going to go today.
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It goes down into verse 12 and even beyond.
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Because when we look at verse 12, I just want to show you why I'm saying this.
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Look at verse 12.
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You'll notice in the ESV it begins with the word so.
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In the New American Standard Bible, the NASV, it begins with the word therefore.
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And what does the word therefore mean? It means that what came before is now having impact on what's being said here.
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So we know that verse 12 somehow relates to the verses above it.
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And somehow it relates to what came before.
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So there is a context here that Jesus is maintaining.
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There's a context here that Matthew is giving to us in this passage.
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And we need not miss it.
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Because if we miss the context, we miss the purpose of the entire section.
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And it's easy to do as the writer of the secret and this woman in the comment section of the website, totally misunderstand asking, seeking, and knocking.
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So what is the context of Matthew 7 verses 1-12? The context is simple.
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And if you've been with me through this study, and you've been looking at it, you probably already know what the context is in chapter 7.
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The context is how we treat other people.
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Verses 1-4, We are commanded not to judge with hypocritical and unrighteous judgment.
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Verse 5, We are commanded to aid our brother in taking the speck out of his eye only after we've removed the log from our own eye.
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In verse 6, We're commanded to be discerning in whom we admonish and not to get holy things to the dogs and throw pearls before swine.
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And then in verse 12, we're told that the same way we treat others is how we ought to want to be treated.
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Or we ought to treat others how we want to be treated.
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So those two things bookend this whole section.
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Don't judge.
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Love your brother.
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Help him when he is fallen.
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But do so lovingly.
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Remove the log.
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Remove the speck.
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And when you're reaching out to your brother, realize that sometimes he will not listen to you, and sometimes you're going to have to shake the dust off your feet and move on, because sometimes he won't listen to you.
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Sometimes you are dealing with dogs and hogs, and we talked about that last week.
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But then, in verse 12, He says, Treat others as you'd have them treat you.
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There is the bookend of this section.
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And right in the middle, we see the same thing on prayer.
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Right in the middle, we see ask, seek, and knock.
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And a lot of commentators simply say, Well, that's just Jesus chasing a rabbit.
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I don't think so.
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Jesus didn't chase rabbits.
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Jesus was precise in what He said and why He said it.
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And what I think our goal in today's message is going to be is seeing why He said this in the midst of that.
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John Stott says this, It seems natural that Jesus should move on from our relationship with our fellow men to our relationship with our Heavenly Father the more so because our Christian duty of discrimination, not judging others, not casting our pearls before swine, and being helpful and not hypocritical, is much too difficult for us to do without divine grace.
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You see, Jesus has told us, Judge not.
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He's told us, there are going to be times where you have to perform spiritual eye surgery.
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Remember last week when I talked about that? That every once in a while, there's going to be somebody who's got something in their eye.
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You've got to first look at your own eye.
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Make sure you don't have a 2x4 sticking out of your forehead.
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You take that out, you look at them, and you help them to remove their situation.
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That requires grace that we don't possess.
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It requires grace from the outside to be able to interact with someone.
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That requires a supernatural level of love and affection and grace that we don't come by naturally.
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We come by supernaturally.
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So the context of verse 7, when Jesus is admonishing us to ask and to seek and to knock, is we are being admonished that when we are in relationship with others, and particularly when we're in relationship with those that we have to seek to admonish toward godliness, that we seek God in our relationships.
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So the title of today's message is Invoking God in Our Relationships.
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Invoking God in Our Relationships.
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So let's look at verse 7 first.
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It says, Ask, and it will be given to you.
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Seek, and you will find.
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Knock, and it will be opened to you.
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This is a very famous, very popular verse.
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We sing songs.
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Ask, and it shall be given unto you.
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There's hymns written about this verse.
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Many people know it.
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Many people are familiar with it.
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But my question when I first sat down to study this week, and I sat down to sort of flesh out what I wanted to bring to you, as I feed myself and then come and feed you, and my first question was, what is the it? He says, Ask, and it shall be given to you.
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But what is the it? Some people think it's a generic it.
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Whatever you ask will be given to you.
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It stands for everything.
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It's all things.
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But later in this passage, you'll notice in verse 11 that he says good things.
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Look down at verse 11 with me.
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He says, If then you who are 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? So he says it's good things here that we're to be asking for.
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And you might say, Well, all good things come from God, so this is asking, seeking, and knocking for all good things.
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And that certainly would not be untrue.
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We should be asking God for all good things.
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We should be seeking God for all good things.
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We should be knocking on heaven's door for all good things.
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However, in the context, there is a specific good thing which is being asked for.
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As I've already noted, we've been admonished not to judge.
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We've been encouraged to help our brother with spiritual eye surgery.
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We've been warned about rejecting or those who reject our message.
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So I believe that what we're asking for, I believe the it in this context is the wisdom of God in relation to others.
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The wisdom of the Spirit in relationship to others.
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Turn with me to James 1.
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James is a very practical book in the Bible.
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And what a lot of people don't realize is James really fleshes out for us a lot of what is in the Sermon on the Mount.
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In fact, if you compare James with the Sermon on the Mount, you see a lot of similarities between what James says and what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.
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Because the Sermon on the Mount is highly practical, the Epistle of James is highly practical, and they deal with some of the same issues.
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Well, in James 1 and verse 5, we see this.
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If any of you lacks what? Wisdom.
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Let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him.
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So what is the context of James telling us here? He says, ask and it will be given, but what is the it? Wisdom.
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And he says it's wisdom.
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It's the wisdom that we should ask from God in dealing with others.
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Now, very quickly turn to Luke 11 because Jesus gives a parallel passage.
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In Luke 11, Jesus dealing with prayer says just about the same thing that he says here in Matthew in relationship to prayer, but he says this in Luke chapter 11 and verse 13.
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He says, if you then who are 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? So now this is even more specific.
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What are we asking God in this quest? Are we going for a new Maserati? Ask and it shall be given to you.
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Are we going for the new mansion? Ask and you shall receive.
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Name and claim that new job or that best parking spot or that new bank account number or whatever.
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Is that what we're asking for? No.
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We're asking God for the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom.
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We're asking for God to imbibe us with Himself.
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That is something God will never say no to.
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That is something God will never tell us no to.
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God, give us more of you.
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When we go to Him desiring His presence, desiring His wisdom, it says He will give it.
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James 1.
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He will.
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Not that He might, but that He will give us that wisdom.
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He will give it to us when we ask if we come to Him in faith.
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Let me tell you something.
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God does not give us everything that we want in this life.
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And there's good reason for that.
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Can everybody here honestly tell me that you wish God would have given you everything you ever asked for? How many of you when you were in high school really loved one of your girlfriends? Oh God, let me marry her.
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And now you're very happy that God didn't say yes.
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Maybe that hits a little close to home.
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We've all asked for things that at the moment seemed like it was the very best thing.
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God, let me have this.
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Please let me have this.
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And God's answer was no, no, no, no, no.
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And if we knew what God knew at the time that we asked, we wouldn't even have asked.
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This is why James tells us that we have or we don't have because we don't ask and that what we ask for we ask amiss.
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We don't get some of the things we ask for because we ask for the wrong things.
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And beloved, the reality is we do that all the time.
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And that's why this verse which says ask, seek and not cannot be applied the way the modern health and wealth preachers say whatever you ask for God's going to give to you because God is smarter than you.
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God knows more than you do.
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God knows more about this life than you do.
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I remember the story of the man who went into the rug shop and he goes in and his wife wants him to buy a beautiful rug for their home.
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And so they go into the rug shop and if you've ever been into one of these nice fancy rug shops you'll see that they're hanging from the ceiling and they move them about so you can see them beautifully arrayed like pieces of art.
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And he comes upon this rug and he sees this rug which is just ugly.
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And this is a place that sells thousand dollar rugs.
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And he sees this one and it's just the knots are all ugly and it's fashioned there's no shape or rhyme or reason to any of it.
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And he calls to the salesman and he said, I need you to interpret this piece of art for me.
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It looks like a Picasso.
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The eyes, you know, nothing looks right.
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Can you tell me what's wrong with this? And he said, sir, you're standing on the wrong side.
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And he turned the rug around and there was the tapestry, the beauty of all those knots and ugliness on the other side.
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There was now a beautiful mural that he could not have seen if he would have stood only on the back side.
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Beloved, that's where we are right now.
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The Bible says we look as through a glass dimly.
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We don't see everything that God sees.
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And we don't see the beautiful tapestry of His sovereign will being worked out in our lives.
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All we see is the ugliness.
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All we see are the knots and all we see are the parts that don't seem to fit together.
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But when we receive our glorious eyes in heaven, we'll be able to look back and see the beauty of the tapestry that God created in our life.
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And we'll know why we asked for things that we didn't receive.
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And why we sought for things that we didn't...
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that we were not given.
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And we knocked on heaven's door for things that were not open to us.
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We'll know.
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So I think again, when we come to Matthew 7-7 and Jesus says, asking it will be given to you, the it is very specific here.
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The it is the wisdom of God in relationships with others.
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We see that in the context, but specifically the it here is not all that we ever wanted in this life and all that we ever wanted according to the flesh, but it is all that God has for us.
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The Bible says in the Old Testament, and this is often a misused verse, the Bible says in the Old Testament, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
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Now, if that's not a verse that hasn't been misunderstood and mistaken by health and wealth preachers, I've never heard one.
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Delight yourself in the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart.
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And some guy told me that one time, he says, I know I can have this Mercedes because I delight myself in the Lord and that's the desire of my heart.
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And so God told me I can have it because I delight myself in the Lord.
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I said, beloved my friend, whoever, you listen to me.
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That verse comes with a commentary.
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The verse is its own commentary.
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Because it says, if you delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.
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If you delight yourself in the Lord, what will be the desire of your heart? Him! He will be the desire of your heart.
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He will be what fills your longing.
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He will be what meets your needs.
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Him! Him! Him! Not the Maserati, not the mansion, not the money, but God! He will be what fills your heart.
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He will be what you long for.
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He will be what meets your needs.
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He will be what you ask and seek and long for.
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It will be Him! And He will give Himself to you freely.
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And He will fill you fully.
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That's what we ask for.
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We ask for God.
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We ask for Him.
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We ask for His wisdom, for His Spirit, for His hope, for His joy, for His love to fill us.
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So when we invoke God, we invoke God.
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Come and dwell in Me.
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And then in verses 9, or rather verse 8, He gives the promise that goes along with the question.
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He says, For everyone who asks, receives.
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Everyone who seeks, finds.
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And the one who knocks, it will be opened.
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So He gives a promise.
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He says, If you ask, it will be given to you.
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And the it there again is the wisdom of the Spirit of God.
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It is God Himself within us.
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And then He goes on to give a reason for this expectancy.
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A reason for this comfort.
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A reason why we should feel like this is the truth.
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Because He says in verse 9, Or 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 serpent? If you then, who are 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? Jesus is telling us, when we come to God, and we're seeking God, and we're asking God, and we're knocking on His door, that we need to come with confidence.
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We need to come with expectancy.
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And He uses the earthly Father here as an example.
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It's a fancy term, but it's called a fortiori, meaning from the lesser to the greater.
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That's the argument that He's making.
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Jesus makes this argument all the time.
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If this is true, then how much more would this be true? That's an argument Jesus often makes.
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And this is what He says.
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He said, if you all who are evil, by the way, I just want to make a side note.
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I'll chase a rabbit even though Jesus didn't.
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The side note here, Jesus affirms our doctrine of total depravity just in a passing statement.
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If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts, that's a straight up...
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People say, I'm a good person.
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No, we're all evil.
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That's why we need to be redeemed.
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And it's in the text.
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And Jesus, notice He said you being evil.
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He didn't say us, because He weren't evil.
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He said you.
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You know, He pointed at you all are evil, need to be redeemed.
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And if you who are evil give good gifts to your children, how much more...
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There's the opposite theory, from the lesser to the greater.
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If you less, you evil, you sinners, give good gifts to your children, how much more will God, who is better than you, who is greater than you, who is more powerful than you, how much more will He give to those who ask of Him? Such an important passage.
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But I will say this.
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I will say there are some people who can't relate to this, because some people don't have good fathers.
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It's just the truth.
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It's a sad truth.
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But some people don't have fathers that gave them good gifts.
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Some people had fathers that abandoned them.
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Some people had fathers that took from them what was theirs.
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Some people had fathers that held back what they needed.
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And some people had fathers that abused them.
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And some even so abused them that it was beyond what anything can be stated publicly.
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It was an abuse beyond compare.
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You know what? It's hard for that person to understand what Jesus is talking about here.
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It's hard for that person to really communicate the love of the fatherhood of God.
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And I've been in those situations where I was trying to talk to someone about God's fatherly love, and they look to this, and they say, my father didn't do that, so I don't understand.
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And I feel for you.
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If that's you today, if that's your situation that you didn't have a father who loved you, who you didn't have a father who would give you bread, who you didn't have a father who would give you the necessities of life, if that is you, then here's my prayer for you.
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It's very simple.
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That you would know, that you would know that what you lacked in an earthly father, that what you were not given by your earthly father, is not just made up for by God, but is redeemed in God.
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You, who may have been sold into the market, have been bought back.
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And you're owned by a father now who loves you.
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Those of you who have good fathers, you look at this verse and say, yeah, my dad would have given me anything, and I can understand the love of God.
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But if that's not you, know this.
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God loves you, and He wants to give you good things.
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Even if no one else has ever done that for you.
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Even if no other father has ever done that for you.
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You have a Father in Heaven who desires to do that thing.
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And we ought never forget it.
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Jesus tells us here, that even evil men, in general, do good things to their children.
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Not all of them, as we just mentioned, but even in general, evil men do good things for their children.
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How much more will the God of glory, the God of Heaven, do good to us who ask of Him? And now we get to verse 12.
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And again, verse 12 ties this all up.
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And you might think Jesus is changing the subject.
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Oh, nay, nay.
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He has not changed the subject.
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Because He says so.
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Therefore, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.
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For this is the law and the prophets.
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Here's how this all connects together.
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It's very simple, but it's easy to miss.
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Jesus gives us this command, verses 1-5, about how we are to relate to those who we feel ill about.
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We don't judge them.
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We love them.
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We seek to build them up.
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We seek to perform that spiritual eye surgery.
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And we seek to do good towards them.
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And even when we go to them and we love them, if they turn and they bite us like a pig, we can separate ourselves from them.
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But we know that we tried.
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We know that we went to them.
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We know that we went to them in love and mercy.
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And then what can we do? God.
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We ask God, give us the wisdom in dealing with this.
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Give us the strength in dealing with this.
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Give us the ministerial power of the Holy Spirit of God in dealing with this.
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I trust You because You are my Father in Heaven.
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You are greater than any earthly father.
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All earthly fathers are in some way evil, but You, God, are good and I trust You to give me the power to do this.
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And now how do I do it? I do unto them as I would have them do unto me.
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This is the going part.
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This is the doing part.
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This is putting legs to all of the theology that we've gotten so far.
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Now you go and do as you would have it done unto you.
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You know, we're all familiar with that term golden rule.
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There was an emperor named Severus who had it imprinted on a gold plate and hung in his closet so that every day he would see it.
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That's why it's called the golden rule.
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He wasn't a Christian, but he said in this statement is all ethics.
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In this statement is the truth of all ethics.
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And you know, it's interesting.
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I've often heard people say, well, all religions teach this.
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Oh, nay, nay.
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No, they don't.
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In general, this is what all religions teach.
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Don't do what you don't want done to you.
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In fact, the Rabbi Hillel, the great Rabbi of Jesus' time was once asked by a man.
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He had one of his students come to him and he picked up his foot and he said, Hillel, great Rabbi, condense the whole law while I stand upon one foot.
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Meaning as soon as my foot goes down, you're out of time.
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I want the whole law in as long a time as I can balance on one foot.
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And Hillel said, whatever you consider evil to you, do not do to others.
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He said, that is the whole of the Torah.
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All else is commentary.
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Now, all of that being said, what's the difference between what Hillel said and what Jesus said? Jesus said do.
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He didn't say don't do.
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He gave us a positive command, not just a negative command.
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You could obey Hillel's maxim simply by not ever interacting with others.
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You could obey Hillel's maxim by simply never trying to do evil to anyone else, never interacting with anyone else, never having a relationship with anyone else.
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You could simply sit in your cave in the mountain and live alone a life of solitude and you could be obeying Hillel's maxim, but you could not obey Christ who said go and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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For this is the law of the prophets.
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It's not just a negative.
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It's not just a don't do, but we have a responsibility as Christians to go and do and to do good and to do well and to love and to show mercy and to show kindness and to show forgiveness and to love one another as God has loved us.
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That is our command.
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It's not just, I heard people say all the time, well I've never hurt anybody.
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That's not good enough.
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Have you ever loved anybody? It's not enough just to not hurt.
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Do we do what is right? Not just not do what is wrong.
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That's the whole law.
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And that takes a measure of the Spirit of God that none of us were born with.
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And thus we ask.
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Thus we seek.
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Thus we...
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God, I know that I don't have it within me to not be judgmental.
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I don't have it within me to not be hypocritical.
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I don't have it within me to not be argumentative.
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I don't have it within me to do to other people as I want them to do to me.
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So God, fix me.
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God, live in me to do that which I can't.
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For it is God who works within us, both to will and to do His good pleasure.
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Father in Heaven, we thank You for this opportunity that we've had to look at Your Word.
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I pray that it has been taught in such a way that it is understandable, but most importantly that Your Holy Spirit has guided this to the hearts of Your people.
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I pray that as we've examined this Word today, that we have a better understanding of it, and that we understand that our goal in this life is to ask and seek and to knock with persistency and expectation to You that You would give us the wisdom that we need to relate to others as we ought.
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Father, if we are in a relationship right now with someone wherein we know there is a division, maybe there's a brother in sin, and we're too scared to discuss it with him, Lord, we ask that You would give us that strength.
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Maybe there's someone we're angry with, Father, and we need to forgive that person.
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Father, may it be that we seek that forgiveness from You, a forgiving soul.
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Father, maybe we realize that we don't do to others what we'd have them do to us, but we cheat others, we steal from others, we lie to others, and we cut others with our words, and we say things about others that we shouldn't say, and we do things to others that we would never want done to us.
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May it be, O God, that we repent, that we knock on Heaven's door and ask that You, O Father, would change us in all our relationships, Lord.
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May it be that we seek You.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Beloved, let's stand and sing, and if you have a need for prayer, I encourage you to come.