What is...? Christ's command to seek/pray/come

The Great Commission and Discipleship as Multiplication

Hey, good afternoon, happy Lord's Day to you. We're so thankful that we can be together, Dan and I, and just to discuss God's word, to do it with you, to do it with this medium called social media with video cameras and microphones.

We're thankful for what the Lord is doing in growing his kingdom. We're excited about it. We're thankful to be together on the Lord's Day, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as we did with our local congregations this morning.

And we're doing it together this afternoon. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath. We rest in him every day, but we celebrate his resurrection, his life, his second coming on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week.

And so we're just glad to be together and able to talk about his word. What we're gonna do today, well, before I say that, I just want to ask if you would give us a like, a heart, a share, a comment, help us to be getting God's word out through this medium.

We want to reach our community. We want to encourage you. We want to see people saved through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we would ask that you be a part of that and like, share, comment. If we can answer any question, we'd love to try to do that.

If we can pray for you, all you have to do is type me and we'll see that. And we'll be glad to pray for you. What we want to look at today is we are continuing in the commands of Christ. Daniel has been so gracious to come along with me and look at this together.

This is a notebook that my pastor is putting together called Multiply, a discipleship training manual. And basically what the idea is, it's an idea that we all should have a desire for because it comes straight from scripture.

The Great Commission and Teaching All That Christ Commanded

Matthew chapter 28, where we have the great commission for so long, the great commission to us has been go and evangelize, go share the gospel. But we miss so much of the great commission there at the end of Matthew chapter 28, when we just focused on the individual evangelism aspect of that command of Christ.

Jesus tells us all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. So we go forward based on that statement with his authority and him giving us that command because he has authority. And then he's telling us to share the gospel and to make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

And so that's where this discipleship manual comes from, teaching others to observe all that Jesus has commanded us. And then using the same manual, same technique, same idea for them to do that as well with those that they come in contact with.

And that's why he called it multiplies because Jesus is having his desire or command is for us to multiply. That's why you and I are here. That's why you and I heard the gospel, responded to the gospel is because someone received Christ, had a desire to multiply, to share the gospel with somebody else.

And so as a Christian, the Holy Spirit is gonna give everyone that desire to multiply. And this is a tool that he's putting together to help discipleship. Today, we're gonna look at one of the chapters that he's got in there called seek and pray.

And the Bible uses other words referring to the same action. You've got seeking, praying, which praying is just communicating with God. Well, you got seeking, you've got asking, you've got knocking, and then you got the word come.

All of these are commands of Christ to be telling us to be approaching God, be coming to him, be seeking him. The first verse that I wanted to go to was Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. And Jesus is, here he's giving that command.

He says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And then 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble at heart, and you shall find rest for your soul.

For my yoke is easy and my load is light. When I read this verse, I thought about all those that lean left in their ideology and their theology that I've come across in my life. And their accusation, Dan, towards me, is that when I want to say that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, inspired, that it's without error, without contradiction, and I believe and hold these conservative values, their main accusation towards me is, well, you're putting God in a box.

And have you ever heard that? Have you ever been accused of that? I've heard that before, yeah. Yeah, you're putting God in a box. You're limiting him. But I always like to say, I let God limit himself.

He tells me what he does, and he tells me what he wants me to do. So those parameters that I see are from God himself. They're not parameters that I give him. And so I think that's important to note when we look at these verses today, that we let God speak to us and see how he does things, how he wants the parameters that he wants to be laid out for himself and for us.

This is what I wrote down earlier. Well, this is a conclusion to reading some other verses. So I'm not gonna read it quite yet. So I think what I wanted to point out here in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, starting off this seeking, asking, knocking, and coming commands of Christ is that we need to see what Jesus is not saying.

He's not saying he will not every time take us out of the struggle or take this burden off of us. But Dan, you were telling me earlier, it kind of is taking that burden off, but it's putting a different one on.

And it comes from Christ. Right, what you were speaking of earlier with your left-leaning friends, the ones who say that you put God in a box, one of the things that we need to realize is that when God reveals himself, he's not putting himself in a box, and neither are we when we read what he's revealed in his word.

He's just expressing who he is, which from the left, I mean, that's like the height of what they're going after is you're able to identify yourself as whatever you wanna be. Where you end up putting God in a box is when you take away the inerrancy of scripture, you take away God's revelation of himself, and then you're left thinking about who is God, but you're limited to your own thinking, your own imagination, and your own way of putting him back together, of reconstructing him.

And really, it's amazing that when people do that, God usually ends up looking a lot like them. When God looks like something different than us, it's not always, but generally a good sign that we're onto something right, as long as what we're onto is in line with what God has revealed about himself in the Bible.

But to that other point, about taking off a burden, when we don't have to think of who God is when God has revealed himself to us, when we don't have to try to attain our own righteousness, when we don't have to try to seek God by finding out where he is, and then figuring out a way to get from where we are to where he is, our burden is taken off of us because that's what Christ has done in going to the cross.

He went to the cross, he took our sin, that barrier between us and God away. And the burden that he places upon us now is light. It is faith and trust in what Christ has already done. It's not in doing something ourselves, it's in trusting God.

I was telling you the story a little bit earlier. Me and my boy love to fish. We go fishing whenever we can. It's just now getting warm enough up here in the great white North to go fishing. But we have this one spot and the place where we go, there's this little pier about half a mile off of, from the parking lot.

And so we'll grab our tackle boxes, bait, cooler with snacks and stuff, and we'll go out there. And my boy, you know, he was four last year, five this year, always wants to help. He grabs way too much stuff.

There's no way he can carry it all the way over there. He's never gonna make it to the end. And so we'll get 100, 200 yards down the path. And he'll say, dad, my arms hurt. Buddy, you grabbed too much.

You can't handle that. You're not gonna make it. Here, take this little fishing pole. I'll carry the rest of it. That's kind of a picture of what's going on. If we try to make our way to God on our own, we'll never make it there.

But God takes that burden of getting to him off of us when he proclaimed the gospel to us, that Christ died for sinners, that the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of men, that he draws a people to himself.

And then the burden is light. We trust in what God has done for us. He seeks us first. We love him because he first loved us. All those things come together in that idea of his burden being light, of our heavy burden of sin taken away from us, and the light burden of Christ and keeping his commandments because we keep his commandments through the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's not like we have to maintain that faith on our own. That faith is maintained by the power of the Holy Spirit as a free gift from God. So it's an easy burden because Christ is doing all the lifting for us.

And he sent us the spirit as a comforter and source of strength. So that what he began in us, the good work that he began in us, he will see through to the finish.

Right. And I think a better way for me to explain what I was talking about to get to where I want to go, the point that I wanted to make, help me listen to you and explain the situation. So I think from a worldly perspective, if you just have a nominal Christian or non-Christian, somebody who's trying to read the Bible themselves into it or for whatever other reason, somebody other than, someone reading the text to hear from God, you'll hear that in verse 28 says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

So the thought there is, God will take the burden, take the circumstance, take the hardship away from you so that you are now free to live as you please. But actually the process is he's giving you rest by yes, removing the burden, but giving you another yoke to put on your shoulders.

And it's, but it's his yoke. And that's, and like you were explaining, that's what makes it easy and light, but it's not a release so that you can, I'm now free from hard circumstances. I'm free from going through difficult things.

No, that's not what God does. He lifts those burdens, but frees you by putting his yoke on you. It's never about being autonomous, living for yourself. And that takes me to the point, because I wanted this verse to carry us over to the other verses.

We don't need to read these passages as self-seeking, but understanding them in their context, understanding them in light of how God does things and how Jesus does things, how the Holy Spirit does things.

Seeking First the Kingdom of God

So I think that takes us to Matthew 6, 33 and 34. And I think this verse goes along well with our other topics that we were talking about. And I hope you'll explain to us what Jesus is referring to here, maybe in a deeper way, more profound way than what maybe we were used to in the past.

Matthew 6, verse 33 and 34, let's see. We can read 33 and 34. It says, but seek first his kingdom. So there's that seek aspect again, coming to God, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble on its own. So yeah, we're familiar with this. If we're Christian, we've been in Sunday school, all these things, he will take care of us.

But what does it mean to seek first? Well, you know what first means? It's first priority, but Jesus is telling us about what we're supposed to seek, his kingdom and his righteousness.

Can you tell us what that means? Yeah, the context here is talking about the basically worry and anxiety. What is it that you're gonna do? Can you add any length of life to your life by worrying about it?

No, you can't. Can you change anything by worrying about tomorrow? And he says, no. So what God tells us to do is to seek first the kingdom of God. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't do other things.

It doesn't mean that we sit with a Bible under our tree and look for the kingdom to pop up around us. It means that while we're going about our life, while we're living the day to day, that the very first priority that we have is the kingdom of God.

Now, that is a simple enough thing to say, but what does that look like? It really shows its biggest, deepest meaning when it comes into conflict with the other things that you're called to do in the Bible.

Take care of your family. Make sure that you are providing for them. Make sure that you are working in a way that is fruitful. Now, there are situations where you'll come across at work where they may ask you to do things that are shady or not the way that things ought to be done.

You may have to sign something that goes against what the scripture says. The HR departments are getting absolutely ridiculous now with their anti-bullying policies and the way that they write stuff out.

There are people who would like you to, hey, stay quiet about this problem that we have. We're gonna sell this product anyway, even though there's maybe an O-ring in the sauce somewhere or something, we don't really.

No, they want you to be quiet or they want to sell that car that, you know, well, be quiet, it'll last a couple thousand miles and then we won't have to worry about it. We can say, oh, that was your problem, it wasn't on us.

The warranty's expired now, so don't worry about it. When you are doing the things that God would have you to do, living your life the way that you're supposed to, and you come in across a situation where you can choose to either honor God with the way you live your life, or you can shut your mouth and worry about providing for yourself and for your family tomorrow, always and forever, we choose to seek the kingdom of God first.

That is what it's getting at here. When we have our relationships with one another, we don't first seek, you know, perhaps you're in a situation where somebody is, say you're a single mom or you're someone, you say, I need to share the gospel with this person, or I need to tell them the way of righteousness, but if I do, they're gonna get upset with me.

Maybe I won't have a babysitter. I won't be able to go to work. Maybe if I do, they're going to, you know, X, Y, or Z. You're gonna, if I say something, I may upset somebody. And then if I upset somebody, I'm gonna be in a world of hurt.

I'm gonna be in trouble. What we do is we seek first the kingdom of God. We do what God would have us to do. And why is that? Because we don't have to worry about anything else that comes because God has promised that he will take care of us.

He'll take care of us. Just like he closed the lilies in the field. Just like he makes sure that the, the sparrows don't worry about what to eat and they get fed every day. Just like our days are numbered and the hair on our head, which some of us make that easier than others, but he knows all those things.

He takes care of every single bit of it. So what he's asked us to do is to live as subjects of his kingdom in the world. And to do that, we leave everything, forsake everything, everything that we think this may cause me trouble later.

It doesn't matter. We seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And then it ends in verse 34. So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

If we can lay our head down at the end of the day, knowing that we have glorified God in everything that we did, we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Because here's a little story. My dad and I were looking at colleges about 20 years ago for me to go to.

And we were on a trip up in Ohio. We were passing through Columbus and we saw Ohio State University. My dad grew up in Toledo. It was one of his favorite places. We stopped by, we saw the football stadium and we saw a little gate that was kind of open, kind of not.

They probably didn't want people to go in, but said, what's the worst they can do? Ask us to leave. So, you know, we walk out and see stuff. We end up sneaking around and seeing weight rooms and a whole bunch of stuff we probably shouldn't have done.

But we got to see those things. And our thought was, what's the worst they can do? Ask us to leave? Oh, I'm sorry. We're from North Carolina. We had no idea. It's the same thing when we go through our life.

Very worst case scenario. What are they gonna do? Say absolute worst case scenario, we're killed. And we're instantly in the presence and glory of God. That's not a bad thing. Say someone gives us trouble and causes us to suffer here on the earth.

We have been counted worthy to suffer alongside of Christ. That's never a bad thing. We don't need to worry about tomorrow. We need to lay our head down each and every day, knowing that we, through the power of God and the trust in his gospel, have done everything seeking his glory and his kingdom first.

Everything else is gonna take care of itself.

Yeah, a lot of the stuff that you're saying is leading into thoughts that I had as we continue to look at these verses. I actually added, I think I put down on the verses that I sent you, Matthew 7, 7, but I think I added Romans 8, 31 through 33.

And what you were saying is kind of leading into what I wanted to say there as well. But thinking about his kingdom here and seeking his kingdom and his righteousness, it makes me think of James White and the sermon that he preached when he came out as post-meal.

And he was talking about those folks that fold the bulletin and that hand out the bulletin. You were talking about the sense of avoiding doing bad things, but also, you know, I'm thinking about seeking his kingdom as far as doing things in a positive light as well.

Those mothers, fathers, whatever you do at home, bringing Christ into your home, family worship, reading your Bible, folding a bulletin, everything that you do, I'm trying to be careful with my words because it's so, I got into a conversation this week about post-millennialism and somebody using it or comparing it to something that it's not, shouldn't be compared to.

And so, how did James White say it? I can't remember, but whatever you're doing, even if it's the smallest act, you are behaving, you are exercising the kingdom of God and you are advancing the kingdom of God in every aspect of what you're doing.

So, as Dan said, you're at work, you're at home and you're seeking the kingdom. When you do what's right, this isn't always necessarily some high spiritual function that you need to seek after, like for me to seek his kingdom, I need to be broadcasting myself, preaching the gospel to millions of people.

No, it's you are advancing his kingdom when you're folding a bulletin, you're advancing his kingdom when you are sharing the righteousness of Christ and the grace of the gospel to your children so that they can share it with their children.

In all those areas, when you're seeking the kingdom of God, you are advancing his kingdom even in the smallest areas. And so, that's not just about eschatology, but it's about obeying Christ here to come to him, to seek him, to be obeying him.

And it's not just in these upper echelons of Christianity, it's in the trenches and it's doing the small things.

It's like living your life now as if you, it's like you're imagining what perfection will be like after Christ returned and living your life now as if that is already a reality. You are looking at the finished work of the kingdom that will be forever and ever and saying, because Christ has promised those things, I will live like they're a reality now.

If they're not a reality everywhere, there'll be a reality where I am.

Absolutely, yeah. And that's a concept we all need to grasp and lock into our minds, have that mindset living in light of certain things are a reality. Christ is king. It will be a certain way here on this earth.

Those realities that Christ has won the victory for exactly, having that mindset of living that way, it will change fundamentally how we live. I guess our next verse, Matthew 7, 7, is kind of, that's the key hope text there.

Asking, Seeking, and Knocking in Prayer

Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it shall be open. So what's Jesus talking about there, Dan?

Jesus is saying that if you pray, you'll get an answer. That's a simple way of putting it. Now that sounds wonderful and it is wonderful. It sometimes runs, it pets the dog the wrong way sometimes to us when we think about things are from a self-centered perspective.

Cause he says, seek and you'll find, knock and it'll be open for you. For everyone who asks receives. There is a principle that if we don't ask according to the will of God, we'll still receive. If we pray in the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ, we'll still receive.

It just may not be what we're asking for. You'll ask for something and God's like, no, that's a terrible idea, but here I'm gonna give you the good gift. He goes on a little bit later, now who asks his dad for, like if my son asked me for a peanut butter sandwich and I hand him a piece of bark, he's going to be upset.

It's not a good meal. And the same thing here, it says who asks his son for, or who asked his father for a loaf of bread and he gives him a stone. It doesn't happen. Who asked him for a fish to eat and he hands him a snake.

Now, if you're in Texas, you may like that because a rattlesnake apparently is really good. I'd like to try it sometime. But what he's saying is when you seek after the kingdom of God, putting it back into his context, when you live as if the kingdom is a reality now, when you recognize Christ's authority over all things and you say that Lord's prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done.

Give me my daily bread. Just give me what I need for today. When you say your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What you're saying is, I trust in you to do what's best. So when I'm praying, I'll pray for specific things, but I believe I heard it put somewhere that you hold on to what you think you're gonna get or what you do get from God with an open hand.

Now, this is not mine to grasp onto. This is borrowed from God. What we understand is that God is a good father. He will give us what we need. He understands the questions that we're asking, the things that we're looking for.

Even if we don't, if we don't have the full context, if we seek and if we knock and if we ask God, he is faithful to respond to us in a way that is beneficial to us. Romans 8, all things work together for good to those who are called according to his purpose.

We know that everything that happens happens because God is working out a plan after the counsel of his own will. So when we pray, we pray in that vein, God, I need this. He will give us what we actually need and not what we think we need.

So what I would take away from it is that God answers prayer. He answers it without exception. When we pray, we need to expect God to do things. Not necessarily exactly what we ask or how we ask it, but we need to pray with a faithful expectation that God is going to act upon our request.

Not because we're anything special or that we're changing what God is doing, but because God delights in answering the prayers of his people. The book of Revelation calls the prayers of the saints in bowls of incense before the throne of God.

Incense is a pleasant smell. God delights in answering the prayers of his people.

And this is the section where I wanted to kind of go back and touch on that thing that I've written down before. And I was trying to bring it back up, but it just wasn't the right time. As we look at Jesus telling us here to ask, seek, and knock, and he's going to answer our prayers, I'm kind of looking at the verse in chapter six, verse 33.

Seek his kingdom, seek his righteousness. And he says, all these things shall be added to you. So Jesus is kind of opening it up to, he's not limiting what the answer is going to be. I mean, he's opening it up to all things.

And then if you go to Romans chapter eight, verses 31 through 33, what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Because he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, he will not also with him freely give us all things.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. So he will not also with him freely give us all things. So like you were saying a few minutes ago, we can take that different ways.

People go in one ditch or the other. I was listening to somebody today saying, you got your hyper-Calvinists that believe that everything's already ordained. There's no need for prayer or intercession because it's already gonna come to pass.

And that just negates everything that Jesus commands in scripture and how he wants us to obey him and our involvement in it. But then you also have the charismatic movement side of it where it says you don't have enough faith, you're doubting.

So that's why your prayers aren't being answered. It's like you can ask for anything you want to. It says all things, all things. So therefore, whatever you want, you can ask for it. If you're not getting it, then you're not having enough faith and you're just falling in the other ditch on the other side instead of the obedience road going right down the middle.

And understanding who Jesus is, how he works, how God works, which is the principle that I wanted to just carry over from Matthew chapter 11, understanding that we don't take or read ourselves into the Bible.

We need to interpret this, understanding who God is and how he works. So when he says all things, he's not saying you can ask for anything you want to, like I want a red Ferrari and all I need to do is pray for it.

If I'm not getting it, I don't have enough faith or an all expense paid trip to the Bahamas. If I'm not getting it, I don't have enough faith. That's how it's taught in some circles, but that's not who God is and that's not his means for us in praying and coming and seeking to him.

Which goes back to the, when we start speaking like that, this is not God's means, this is not his methods. That's when we start getting accused of putting God in a box. And I think you were right on the money earlier when you were talking about how it's actually those folks who would accuse us of putting God in a box and limiting God, when they do that themselves, it's just not as obvious to them.

They're limiting God and they're putting him in a box.

Right, God has to do what I ask for, otherwise it's not really answering prayer. Instead of realizing that God is free to think outside the box, so to speak, when it comes to answering the prayers of his people.

Right. No, I want a Ferrari, but instead we lose all of our vehicles, but we never have to go anywhere out of walking distance. It's still giving us all the transportation we need. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I wrote down, those seeking to keep God out of a box are the ones truly putting limitations on God. God said all things, good gifts, which is what he says in Matthew 7, verse 11, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him?

And that may be the key to understanding this section, Matthew 7, and prayer and asking, seeking and knocking. He's a, God said all things, good gifts, the request will be answered, but according to the good gift giver, because his answer is always better than our request.

So, we may be requesting something, like you said, I may be requesting a red Ferrari, but what I really need is transportation. And God's answer is gonna be better than my request because he's got the whole plan laid out and ordained.

And it's leading to a greater fulfillment, a greater glory for himself that we're not always able to see.

Right, think of it on a larger scale. This may upset some folks, but who cares? Let's do it anyway. We pray for our nation and our nation's leaders all the time. We pray, God, we pray that you would take care of us, that you would cause us to have a revival, that you would cause America to be a great nation.

God has a plan though, that we do not know. We don't have written scripture about what God's plan is for America. We pray those things because we want the welfare of our nation. Very well may be that God desires to completely destroy America, to throw us to the ground, to obliterate us, wipe us off the map and have us barely be a little 300 year blip on the radar in order to bring about the salvation and preservation and the perseverance of his saints and the growth of his church in this area that we call America now.

Now, when we say God, we pray that you would bless America. The blessing of America may be its downfall in that it was used to grow God's church, that its destruction was brought about the salvation of many people, just like Joseph's brothers who threw him down in a pit looking to kill him.

What they meant for evil, God meant for good. So we talk about the Ferrari and the transportation, but it could be those big things as well. So we really need to just be ready for anything, be it small, be it big, maybe eating out of garbage cans, hiding from people who speak a different language from us before the end of our lifetime.

We don't know. God may grant us repentance as a nation, but whatever it is, we know that God's answering our prayers and doing so faithfully, that his blessing is going where his blessing is supposed to go, that his people are being taken care of, that all things are working out for our good.

It gets a little difficult to stomach sometimes because we have a certain idea of the way that we want things to be. But we have to remember in times like these, when we're not facing those things, that God is a good God, that God is a good father who's not going to give us a stone when we want a piece of bread.

He's not going to give us a snake when we ask for a fish. He's a good God who takes care of us. And he will, it says, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him?

It's times like these when we need to beat that into our brain so that if something like that does happen in the future, we know that this truth still remains, that God is a good God, that we've been seeking him, knocking on doors, asking him, and he will be found and he'll give us exactly what we need.

Because it can get tough at times to see that through the fog of living in a portion of history.

Oh yeah. And so I'm going to apologize for continuing to go on, going back to our favorite subject or at least it seems like it's mine. But you think with that scenario in mind, not knowing the future, not knowing what's going to happen in America, not knowing where we could be, you would think it would be us Christians who would be keeping this command most heartily, most zealously in our lives because we don't know what's going to happen in the future.

This means of fellowship that we have right here could not exist in the near future. And so we don't have this fellowship, this support, this accountability, this communication. Bibles and commentaries aren't readily available to us anymore because electricity's gone.

It could happen. We're not conspiracy theorists or doom and gloom, but things can happen. I mean, we have enemies out there and there are weapons that are capable of wiping out electronic systems. We just saw that a gas pipeline was hacked, their computer system or whatever.

Things are possible. And I'm going somewhere with this, but you would think that we as Christians would be the ones most zealous to obey this command of Christ, to seek him, to know him so that we are prepared, have his word in our hearts when we're going through those things, to be able to encourage ourselves as we go through them.