Matthew 7:7-12, What Does It Look Like?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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All right, Matthew chapter 7 from verses 7 to 12, hear the Word of the

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Lord. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.

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Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened.

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Or which one 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?

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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?

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So, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.

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For this is the law in the prophets. May the Lord add His blessings to the reading of His Holy Word.

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Well, in the movie Gladiator, the gladiator, played by Russell Crowe, is ascending up a tunnel with his armor on, his sword in his hand, to go into the

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Coliseum to fight. And when he turns around to his boss, watching him, and says, pointing toward the arena with his sword,

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Marcus Aurelius had a dream that was Rome. This is not it. This is not it.

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And that is this, these gladiatorial games to entertain lazy, bloodthirsty people, corrupt, self -indulgent emperors and aristocrats, is not what the philosopher king wanted

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Rome to look like. Of course, that was what

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Rome really looked like. That was it. Despite the Enlightenment myth that Rome and Greece, the so -called classical era, was a great kind of high civilization, in reality, it was cruel, it was barbaric, and debased.

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It was different from what it was supposed to look like. The founders of this country had a dream that was

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America, a land of unalienable rights. We hold these truths to be self -evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

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Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then over the next four score and seven years, more and more

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Americans began to see that it was not supposed to look like a land of slavery.

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And they eventually had to fight to make it look more like what it was supposed to look like.

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The Lord Jesus had, and has, a dream that is the church.

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What is it supposed to look like? Like the philosopher King's vision of Rome or the founder's vision of America, it was supposed to look like something.

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But sometimes it doesn't look like what it's supposed to look like. To many people, to be a

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Christian is something they think is so internal, it's all about feelings or beliefs that don't have to show in any way, that to ask what a

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Christian looks like is a silly question. What's the church supposed to look like? It looks like anything you want it to look like, they think.

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A Christian doesn't look any different, they think, than other people. He just takes the doctrines he hears at church and is comforted by them no matter how he lives the rest of his life.

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His life may look no different. So he's just as unfaithful to his marriage vows or other vows, goes along with the culture and whatever it is doing, whatever society around him does, he just kind of goes along with it, maybe even more faithfully because he's a

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Christian, no matter what it's doing. Killing Jews, enslaving people, segregating, perhaps killing babies and calling it freedom of choice, reproductive freedom, perhaps accepting homosexuality, calling it celebrating diversity, or maybe just spending a life making money or just having a good time.

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He looks no different than the non -Christian. What does a

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Christian look like? Well, the Lord Jesus was certainly the last preacher who could be accused of leaving you with the impression that you just have to accept his doctrines and then you could go away looking no differently at all, not change at all.

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Here, Jesus vividly portrays for us what it looks like to be a person whom

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God is now ruling, a person who is in the kingdom of God. And we see that here in two parts.

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First, what it looks like and how we relate to God, and then what it looks like and how we relate to each other.

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So, first the God word and then the other word, or first the

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God word. What does it look like to have a God word life, to live in his kingdom under his rule? It looks like someone who was constantly asking, seeking, and knocking.

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Three present commands on how we are to relate to God. That is, each of these commands, ask, seek, and knock, is in a present continuous tense in Greek, and that's kind of important.

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They are saying right now and from now on, continually, non -stop, as an ongoing part of your daily life, you are to be asking, seeking, and knocking.

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Your whole life is geared toward getting in God's kingdom. It's not just about reading some verses in the morning and then going to church on Sunday mornings, and then the rest of your life looks no different.

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No, it's that everything you do is constantly about pursuing

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God, asking, seeking, knocking. This is not just instructions for prayer.

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Some people think, well, this is about how to pray. It's not just a tip on how we get what we want out of God, that if something we really want, we want that new house, and so we follow these easy three steps, this plan, and we're guaranteed success in making

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God give it to us. All right, is that what he's promising? So, first, we ask for the house we want.

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Then we go online, seeking the house, ask, and we seek it and find the one that fits the description.

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We dreamed up, and then we drive to the house and knock on the door, claim, hey, this is my house. No, this is not what he's saying.

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Yes, we are to pray, and yes, this can apply to our prayers for things. If we have a need for a new house or whatever, we ask the

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Father to meet that need, and we do so persistently, continually. We ask and keep asking.

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We seek from God day after day that we get the house we need.

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We knock on the door of heaven, seeking his provision, but if that's all it's about, if it's about reducing

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God, like do a real estate agent. Find me the house, God, I want. I'll give you a commission, or maybe to a waitress.

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Give me my stuff. Be attentive. Refill my cup. And then we can snap our fingers, expect service right away.

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If you don't get notice right away, then you keep snapping. Snap to it, God, what's going on? We keep demanding, but in reality, this passage is about making the opposite, us the opposite of the kind of people who see

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God as our real estate agent or our waitress at our beck and call.

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First notice that it's not necessarily just about asking for things. It doesn't say ask for things.

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Seek things, knock for things, and God will give it. He doesn't say that for the money, the relationships, the career, the success.

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It's not so God's saying, ask me, I'm God, for it all. Seek it, knock for it, and then eventually

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I'll give it to you. Now, yes, we should ask him for things that we need and want, we think we need. He might be wrong about what we need, but that's not all that he's talking about here.

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It is simply ask and it, it what? What is the it that we're supposed to ask for that he will give us?

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Is it whatever we want? Whatever we want, we ask for, we get whatever it is. He answered that already, really.

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And what would have been, remember Jesus gave this whole sermon that we've been spending like two months now, two or three months.

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He gave it all in like 20 minutes. And so just a few seconds earlier, maybe a minute earlier than this, he told us what it was.

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He answered that already. And then again, what he said in chapter six, verse 33, remember?

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We sang it just a few minutes ago. Seek first the kingdom of God. He's talking about seek, ask, seek, knock.

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Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that is being right with him. Seek first of your life, being right with God, having him rule you.

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And so that's what we're to want, that's what we're to ask for, that's what we're to seek, that's what we're to knock for. And so that above all is what we're after.

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We ask for God to rule over us, rule over our family, rule over our church, our workplace, our country.

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Yes, if we need a house, we can ask for that too. But we're supposed to seek first the kingdom of God. If we're sick or we know someone who is, we could ask for healing.

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But above all, we ask for God's rule to come about now on earth, in our lives. A church that just prays for people's illnesses, material things, or when they're sick.

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There's prayer meetings that come, organ recitals. So -and -so is having kidney problems, heart problems, lung problems, whatever organ.

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A church that just prays for things that people want, like healing, isn't seeking first the first thing.

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Remember the first thing? Put first things first. And the kingdom of God is the first thing.

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So, this is here to tell us not to just keep seeking the things we want, not to keep treating

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God like a real estate agent or an inattentive waitress. Step two. No, it is to tell us how we seek first the kingdom of God.

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He said, seek it first, just a few verses earlier. Now he's telling us how to do that. How do you seek first?

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You ask, you seek, you knock. What does it look like to be someone who is seeking first the rule of God in their life?

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It looks like someone who keeps asking. What does it look like to be a successful athlete?

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Now, my coaches taught me that to be successful in athletics, the sport or the training has to be an integral, natural part of your life, got a built -in permeating all of your life.

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Not just something you do during training time or when you're competing. You have to get enough sleep. You have to eat right.

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You should do a few miles of warmup running in the morning. When coach told us, you come to a building, you have stairs or the elevator, you take the stairs.

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And you don't just walk up the stairs, you bound up the stairs. And you're sitting, you stretch out your legs, rotate your ankles.

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Don't let yourself get stiff. Eat lunch with enough time to have your food digested by 3 .30 workout, or else you might see your lunch again.

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Drink enough, be hydrated, but don't drink so much you have no appetite for food. So it's not just about competition on Saturday, but how you live all the time.

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Now, some people who call themselves Christians think that their Christian life are all about an hour or two on Sunday morning.

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It's about that meeting on Sunday morning. And then the rest of their life doesn't look any different. Some even don't even go that far.

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They think to be a Christian is someone who bought fire insurance some time ago or said a repeat after me prayer.

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And they begin of assurance that they're saved now for forever. And even if their life looks so different, they look just like everyone else, that they're okay.

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They don't have to worry about it. But here the Lord Jesus tells us in present active commands, ask for God's rule in your life.

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How does this thing I'm watching? Is it under God's rule? I need to ask. How does my spending, my money, my budget, is that under your rule,

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God? You have to ask God. My relationships, does it show God's rule? Am I relating like God is ruling my life?

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Ask Him. Now and continually seek for more of your life, more of your money, your thoughts to be under the rule of the

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Lord Jesus. Now and continually. Knock for more of God's rule.

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Now and continually. The first thing we see about what we look like is that our seeking

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God is part of every second of our lives. Far more than just being a, this being a tip here of Jesus' instructions, being a tip on how we pray, how we get the thing we want.

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No. From God. This is to show us that communicating with the

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Father should be as natural and regular to us as breathing. We're always asking and seeking and knocking.

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Far more than looking like people who merely go to church on Sunday mornings. This shows us that it shapes every hour of every day.

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We are continually asking, seeking, and knocking. Now notice we are not demanding, not claiming, not taking rightfully ours.

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Jesus didn't say that, did He? Didn't say demand, claim, confess it's yours.

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Now we're asking, we're humbly requesting that the Father give us whatever it is we ask Him, particularly for His rule.

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Maybe for the house, maybe for the money, if we really need that, the success, the family, to be in God's kingdom. We look like someone with empty hands.

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That there's nothing we can do, that we have no way to force God to give us what we want.

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There's not a promise that will make God do us what, give us what we want Him to give us. Notice we come to Him with empty hands, seeking the first thing.

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That His kingdom would be in our lives. So we ask. Now we have to ask when we have no right to get what we are asking for, right?

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You understand? You ask for what you have no way to compel someone to give you, and we know that.

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If we have a right to something, we don't have to ask, do we? We may do it just to be polite.

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You know, I paid you the money, now give me the food. We may say, please, please give me what

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I paid for. But you know, we down, down. We put the money across. We have a right to it. At your job, if you work an hour, you have a right to demand an hour's wage, right?

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You don't have to ask your boss for it. The boss has to give it to you. But here, first, we must ask because we have no right.

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We have no claim. We have no way to make God give us what it is we want.

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And this is important for us to remember, especially in this culture, Americans love to demand their rights, even inalienable rights, remember?

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We think we can demand them. So we hate to be in that vulnerable position that the things we want and we need, we have to ask for.

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Often even our beggars think that they have a right to get what they're asking for.

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And when I was in seminary, I was very, very poor. I had very little money. I once had to roll my pennies to keep my bank account alive.

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I once bounced a check for $10. I ate ramen noodles. That's the best

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I could do. One day there in LA, I was approached by a homeless beggar asking for money. And I gave him a dollar thinking of the verse, give to him who asks of you.

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And he looked at that dollar. It was so precious to me. I'll get my wage like 350 an hour or something like that, right?

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So that's like 20 minutes of work for me, that $1. And he looked at it and said, is that all?

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And I then reached out and took the dollar back and went away. He wasn't really asking.

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He thought he had a right to it and that he deserved it. We have so much of that attitude of entitlement of rights, even among ourselves, but be careful that we think we can demand what we want.

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And some people can misinterpret this promise here as a way to do that and just not do that.

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But here, Jesus tells us in verse seven, first to ask. The Lord Jesus is telling us to have the attitude of a humble beggar who has no right to the things that he is asking for, but who believes the one he is asking is good and generous anyway, despite us having no right to it.

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So we ask because we assume the one we're asking is good.

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So a Christian looks like a humble beggar, confidently asking someone he believes is good.

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Next in verse seven, we should seek. Now, seeking is active. It requires action.

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You don't seek by doing nothing, right? Seeking means you're doing something to get whatever it is you want.

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You take the initiative. It doesn't stop until it's attained, whatever it is seeking. If you're seeking the kingdom of God, you don't stop until you get it.

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Some people think that they're Christians just because they don't seek to kill people, or seek to steal from people, or they don't seek to have affairs.

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They're fairly nice people, right? They're good neighbors most of the time, and they believe basically that Jesus is good somehow.

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They're not exactly sure how, but somehow he's good. They look like good citizens, but they're not seeking anything except to go along with the culture around them, to get along, and maybe to get rich.

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But here the Christian is to be a seeker. He's on a mission. He's on a quest, and he or she will not stop until he gets it.

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Seek, and you will find. So, this is the great search.

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A lot of people are seeking money. They're seeking thrills. They're seeking relationships.

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They're seeking success. And they think that this here, what Jesus' words, is a promise that they can get those things through God, that God will give it to them if they follow these three easy steps.

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But this is about the great search. It's not just wasting your life seeking things that in the end, like cash, will be nothing.

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The kingdom of God is the greatest thing you seek. It's greater than wealth. It's greater than fame.

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It's greater than thrills. It's greater than stuff. All the things that people in the world seek, that's what they're seeking.

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That's what their lives look like. Ours should look different. The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in the field, Jesus said.

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So, it's worth trading everything you have, all the other stuff that the world is about. It is seeking to get that, get that kingdom.

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In the pursuit of living under God's rule, in a right relationship with Him, we discover the true riches lie not in money or thrills or in trophies, but in the unfathomable love of the

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Father. It's the great search. Then there's the promise, you will find it.

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After the command, seek, is the assurance that you will receive it. Now, it's not seek wealth, seek success, seek the things and you'll get that stuff.

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It's the promise that you will find God if you seek Him. So, here, understand the promise, ask, seek, not for God.

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Now, if you believe that, what are you going to do? You're going to ask, seek, and not for God.

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If you want God, if you're promised that you will find God if you seek

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Him, and then you don't seek Him, you don't pray, you don't read the word of God, you don't come to church, it can only be, logically, the only way

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I can make sense of that is that you don't really care to find Him. You're just not interested in finding

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Him, right? If I said, follow these steps and you will lose weight, and you don't follow the steps,

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I guess you don't care about losing weight, right? And here, follow these steps, you will find God, you don't follow these steps,

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I guess you don't care about finding God. Maybe you'd rather have money or whatever the world is promising.

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Here, God promises Himself to those who seek Him. So, the

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Christian is someone who wants Him, who wants God. And so, he prays, he reads the

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Bible, comes to church, because he or she wants to find God. Not just because it's a duty, or it's just a habit you've been doing for your life, you forgot why.

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No, it's what you want. The Christian looks like someone who seeks what he wants.

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The Christian looks like someone who knocks. Knock, and it will be open to you.

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Now, think about this. Asking is using your mind and your voice. Whom have I in heaven but you?

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And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. Psalm 73, verse 25.

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Seeking is using your heart. It's what you desire, it's what you want. Knocking is using your body.

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It's making noise to plead for entry. Hear all of who you are.

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Your mind, your heart, and your body seeks for God. And each of these is in an ascending order of urgency.

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Asking is, please let me in to your kingdom. Seeking is looking for that way in.

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Is it a doggy door? Do I have to crawl in? I'll do it. Climb through a window? If I have to,

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I'll do it. A window left open? I'll do whatever I have to do to get in. I'm seeking.

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Knocking is, please let me in. And knocking especially emphasizes the persistent quest to get into God.

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No one knocks just once, do they? No one just goes like that. If someone knocked once at your door, you're just like, well, that's just the wind or the house making some noise.

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So we knock at least several times. We're persistent. And that's what we're to be.

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We're humble petitioners, again with empty hands, seeking God's ways and a relationship with him.

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And we do it persistently. There's an escalating tenacity about these commands too.

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Ask, seek, and knock. Be tenacious. Be bold.

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John Knox prayed for Scotland. John Knox was Scottish. He held to the Reformation.

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He prayed for his homeland. Give me Scotland or I die.

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Now that's knocking. Perhaps the reason we're not seeing as many conversions as we like is that we're not knocking enough.

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When we start praying, give me my child, give me my spouse, give me my

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Jim Jr. kids, give me those youth, give me Castle County or Danville or I die.

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Then we're knocking and God will open the door. Most of all, we're knocking for entry into his kingdom that he come and rule over us.

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That we're tired of looking just like the world, looking just like we were before we were believers.

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We say, give me a Godward life or I die. Then he goes on.

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Why should we ask and seek and knock? For, the beginning of verse 8, it's because, it's explaining why, giving the reason to ask, seek, and knock.

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Everyone, notice that, everyone. It's not just a few, not just the favorite few, not just the priest, the holy people.

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It's everyone. Everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened.

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Here he is emphatic in this promise, and he repeats it three times.

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We will receive, we will find, we will have the door open for us.

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He repeats for emphasis, you can count on it, is for certain.

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But remember to be seeking the kingdom of God. If you're just seeking in the house, the car, the cash, the wealth, you can be sure that your father will give you good things, but it may be that what you're so sure is good, oh, it'd be so good to be rich, is not really good for you at all.

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Yes, in verse 9, which of you, if a son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Now, bread's an essential of life.

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You need that. You may not need to get wealthy. But anyway, here, if you ask for bread, give him a stone.

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Who would do that? If your child asks for bread, give him bread. If she asks for a fish, give her a fish. Only a cruel, abusive father would give a child, ask you for some basic need, a useless or even harmful fake.

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Even a normal, sinful father will not do that to his children. How much more will God, our father, certainly give us?

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Notice what the promise is. In verse 8, he gives us good things. That's the promise.

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Good things. The promise is not that we'll have what we ask. We may ask for wealth.

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He will give us good things, which may not be wealth. The promise is not that we'll have the things, the stuff that everyone else in the world looks like they want.

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The promise is that coming humbly to the father as an asker, seeking his kingdom persistently, urgently, tenaciously, he will give us good things.

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Mainly himself. The promise is that he will give us good things.

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And he knows what they are. We don't. Now, what will a good parent do if their little child asks for a snake?

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He sees a rattlesnake at the zoo and pleads, oh, they look so cool and so cute. I want to cuddle with one in my bed.

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Give me a rattlesnake. Mommy, daddy, I want a rattlesnake. Now, only an irresponsible parent would give into that.

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Parents are supposed to use their superior judgment to give the child what is good for them, which isn't always the same thing as what they want.

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Here, the promise is that he will, God will always give us what is good for us. He will give us good things.

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And he knows exactly what that is. Even evil fathers know better than to give their children evil things, harmful things.

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Here in verse 11, the Lord Jesus says that all human fathers, like all people, period, are evil.

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If you then who are evil, he says, just slides that in there because let's just assume you should know that by now.

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You're in Matthew already. You should know that already. They're sinful. We're sinful. We're bent.

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We don't naturally seek the kingdom of God. But even though we're so evil, we still know better than to abuse our children by giving them useless or even harmful things when they ask for them.

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How much more than will the perfect sinless father give good things to his children?

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What does a Christian look like? What about the way he relates to others, to other people, the other word?

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The Old Testament law regulated much of how people were to live together. And here in verse 12, the

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Lord Jesus tells us what it all boils down to. You don't have to read all those laws.

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It's good for you if you do. Like 612 laws in the Old Testament. Here they said,

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Jesus says, they all boil down to this. In verse 12, the

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Lord Jesus tells us this is it. He could have told us here, Jesus could have said, well, here you should love, love one another.

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And that's true. He says, similar things elsewhere. And then, but said, just love and kind of lift it up to our imaginations about how to do that.

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What's it look like to love? And some people would say, oh, I love you in my heart.

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Sure, it doesn't look like it. I'm not doing anything that looks like I love you, but it's in my heart.

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You just got to believe me. I say sweet words with a smile, right? That's all it looks like.

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No, Jesus doesn't do that. Instead, what Jesus does is describe what we are to do so that we can see what it looks like.

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This is the famous golden rule. And let's take it apart word by word and go through it word by word, basically in the

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Greek word order. So it begins first, so, or therefore, this is a conclusion based on what he just said about being a persistent asker, seeker, and knocker, trying to get into God's kingdom, believing that it's worth everything and that he's the good father and he gives us the good things we need.

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We believe that, although we've talked about just now, even when we don't get the good things we always want, we believe he's good and he's giving us good things.

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So, because you are God word, so, therefore, because of that, be this way, other word, whatever.

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Otherwise, there's no exceptions. Whatever you do. Literally in Greek, it's all things.

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And in Greek, it is emphasized by two words. In English, they boil it down to one word, but it's two words. One means all things and the other means as many as.

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So, not that in some things you get to ignore what others need or want. No. And everything, as many of them as there are.

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That make sense? All things, as many of them as there are, consider others. Whatever, all things you desire, not what is actually being done to you, we do back to them.

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It's not what Jesus said, right? He didn't say what's done to you, you do back to them. No. Whatever you desire, what you want done to yourself.

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So, it's what we desire to others, we do to them. Next word in Greek is that.

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The thing we desire should be done. Notice how much it's about practical action here.

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It's about things you can see, about different ways of living, should be done to you.

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Many people are very adept at wishing other people would treat them better. They think,

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I wish she was more respectful. I wish she would do that for me. Right?

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But here Jesus tells us to take that imaginative power we're often using to say,

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I wish that other person would do this for me. Instead, imagine how that other person wants you to treat them.

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How we'd love for them to remember us, say good things about us, consider us, use that to think about how the other person wants us to treat them and then do it.

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So, it's not reciprocity. It's not we return what we get.

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You do this for me, I do it back to you. We give as good as we get. Sounds bad, but we've returned favors.

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It sounds better. No. We do for others what we want done to us.

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And the next word is others, literally in Greek, the men. The Greek word is anthropos, where we get anthropology from.

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Just means the men, people, the people. Whatever you want people to do to you and the people is everybody.

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So also, in the same way that you want people to do to you, so also you do to them.

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Our wishes for ourselves are to be the standard of our actions toward others.

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Put another way, your desire for yourself is the measure of how you treat other people.

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Next, you. That's us speaking to us, citizens of the kingdom of God.

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We who are asking, seeking, knocking to live under God's rule. What does it look like to live under God's rule?

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It looks like you doing this. It's for us. Do. Be doers, not just feelers, not just oozers, not just sayers, not just smilers.

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Notice we're not commanded here to love. Some people think that's what Jesus said. It was just love all people. He could have said that,

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I guess. You know what we would do if he said that? We'd say, well, okay, I have the feeling of love in my heart and it doesn't change how

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I live, but I have the feeling there, so I obey the command. That's what we would do. No, he says do.

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Do what we want done to us. Some people are good at making other people feel good temporarily. Sweet words and a smile, but they don't actually do much.

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It doesn't change the way they do, they behave. But here Jesus says do. Doing is shown in your money and your time, not just your feelings, your sweet intentions.

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Finally, in Greek, to them. That's to the others. To them, pronoun pointing back to the, remember, the

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Anthropos, the people, the all kinds of people. And we don't get to choose which of those people, right?

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It's all the people. We don't get to choose which others we will treat like we want to be treated.

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That's the point of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is my neighbor? Well, it's the one who was a foreigner, who was an outcast.

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It was someone who we would normally exclude. But according to Jesus, he, that one we would normally exclude, is one of the people.

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He's one of the others for whom we do for them like we want done to us. Jesus said the greatest command, second greatest command, greatest command is to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart. The second greatest command, he said, was like that, was to love your neighbor.

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But that's not really hard if you think you get to define who your neighbor is.

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You know, you get to define who are the ones you will include or exclude, who ones who will say, that's one of my neighbors.

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The other people are not. If you draw a circle around some people encircling those who are your neighbors, you'll treat them like you want to be treated.

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These other people, you won't. You'll exclude them or maybe hate them or just ignore them. That's not what it looks like to be a

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Christian. Now this building, look around at this building, these rafters, these beams, these cinder block walls.

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This building was built for the purpose of breaking this command.

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This building was built as part of a private school, which is established to avoid integration. It was built for the purpose of saying some people do not belong here.

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To keep some people out, to draw a circle through humanity and say, these people we're allowing in are the others.

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And with these who we allow in, these we will love, we'll do to as we want done to us.

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They're the ones in the circle. They're the people we'll treat like we want to be treated. Now the other others that we don't let in here, we'll ignore them or hate them.

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They don't get to be the others that we'll do to as we want done to ourselves. And so they established a school for those they circled as their neighbors and to keep the other others out.

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And they built this gym for that school. But now we've redeemed this building for God to ask, seek, and knock to get into his kingdom and for all the people.

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Jesus had and has a dream that was the church. And he pointed to segregated schools and churches built to avoid his commands and said, this is not it.

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This is not it. Instead, the conclusion of the Sermon on the

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Mount and the law and the prophets, that is the whole Old Testament, the conclusion is for this, this doing to others what you wish would, they would do to you.

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This is the law and the prophets. This is it. This is what it looks like.

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What does a Christian look like? Well, like Jesus himself, who looked at us and saw, as he says here, that we are evil.

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You know, we're not good, righteous, pleasing people, just so attractive and cute he couldn't help himself.

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We don't mean well. We're not seeking truth. We're not seeking

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God. No, we are, Jesus said, evil, ungodly, unrighteous, repulsive to a holy

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God, the perfect father. Now, we might still have some good instincts left in us to like to provide for our children.

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But even then, we're merely doing it for our people, the ones we've included, which means basically just for ourselves.

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So we are evil and worthy only of God's anger and judgment. But the father showed his love for us and that while we were still sinners, still evil, he sent the son to die for us.

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What does a Christian look like? Like the son who instead of doing to us what we did to him, we nailed him to a cross.

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He did for us the good thing we needed. He went on the great search for us.

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He made us right with the father by taking on himself our evil, spilling his blood for it.

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He did for us the good thing we needed. Now, don't you want to seek him?