Matthew 7:7-12 The Most Generous Giver

You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's podcast. Join us as we are in a sermon series entitled,

Not Your Average Savior, A Study in the Book of Matthew. Good morning, how's everybody doing?

Everybody doing all right? Good. Welcome to Recast Church. Grateful that you've taken the time to come in and join us and recognize a couple people that are checking us out for the first time.

Hope that you find what your soul has been searching for here. Hope that something from the Word, something from the worship, something connects with you right where you live and for your week that you walk away with something here.

This morning we're going to be back in the Book of Matthew. Last week I was out, I was gone two weeks ago at a conference and so we had a guest speaker last week.

So we're jumping back into the Book of Matthew for the next few weeks before we launch into a series in the

Book of Joshua which is going to be coming up probably the beginning of June.

My goal for Matthew is to finish through the end of Chapter 8. We're currently in Chapter 7, so to go through the end of Chapter 8 and then jump over to Joshua for the summer and probably finish up that entire book and that's going to be sometime around the beginning of June that we're going to start that.

A quick review of where we've been in the Sermon on the Mount. We've been in this sermon that Jesus spoke to his followers for several weeks now.

It's a fairly long sermon. It started way back in Matthew 5. Now we find ourselves in Matthew Chapter 7 and it's still part of that same message that Jesus gave at one time.

And yet the depth of what he says makes it hard for me to preach his sermon in one sermon. Do you get it?

I mean, just think about all the distance that we've covered. How overwhelming would it be for us to sit down and listen to all of this in one sitting and try to take it in?

Let me give you a synopsis of the types of things that Jesus has said to us and we would have the potential to be kind of overwhelmed by these things.

He's told us that we are to be a people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We are to be peacemakers.

We are to endure persecution. He then gave his followers the role of being salt and light to our community.

He called his people to guard against anger, lust, false promises, and divorce.

We've been told to turn the other cheek to the one who would insult us and assault us.

We've been told to love our enemies, to be generous to the poor, but to avoid boasting in our giving.

He tells us to pray and fast in secret and keep our prayers simple. He says, stop being anxious about material stuff, but instead lay up treasures in heaven.

And then the last time we were together, Jesus told us that we have the tendency to get out of balance in our lives being too judgmental or in turn being trampled upon.

And so we're supposed to balance that out in our lives. Does that sound like a huge task? Sound like a lot to accomplish?

A lot of things? And therefore, Jesus is now going to turn to express how we live this out in light of the

Father, a Father who is generous. He's going to talk to us about asking and seeking and knocking.

How do we live out this life with Christ as his followers? It's not, again,

I say this phrase often, but it's not just pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and getting your life in order and doing all of these things.

It is a dependency upon Christ that the Father desires more than anything. And so, a dependency upon him, upon God.

And that brings us to the very important task as Jesus is wrapping up this sermon. Our life of following Christ is not dependent upon our striving or our working to obey laws, but it's ultimately upon God and his power to work in and through us by the power of his

Holy Spirit. And he is not just an almighty, all -powerful God, but he's a generous

God. So turn and open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 7, looking at verses 7 through 12.

That's page 691 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you. If you don't own a Bible or didn't bring a Bible, page 691 is the easy way to find it.

Matthew 7, 7 through 12. If you do not own a Bible or do not own an English Standard Version of the

Bible, we want you to take that Bible that's in the seat back in front of you with you when you leave here. That's yours. It's a gift from us to you.

We bought them and placed them there for that purpose that everyone that visits us would walk out with a

Bible. So please take advantage of that. Now follow along with me as I read the very words of Jesus, Matthew 7, 7 through 12.

Let's pray. Father, we come to a text this morning that encourages us to do the very thing that we're doing right this second, and that is to pray, to ask, to seek, to knock.

Father, I ask that you would make it abundantly clear in our hearts and our minds what it is that you're trying to accomplish in this text.

Is this a blank check? Is this an opportunity for us to get whatever we want from you?

Or is there something else working here? I ask that you would open our eyes to your generosity, to your goodness, and understanding what that really implies for our day -to -day life, that we would walk out of your trusting in a generous

God, not a divine cosmic killjoy, but that we would not fall over into the error of thinking that you are a genie in the lamp that offers us as many wishes as we desire.

I ask that you would help us to put this in proper balance this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. Do you think of God as generous?

What do you think? I mean, we've had an opportunity to reflect on that, so maybe you're leaning more in that direction. And I think the answer, if we're all honest, may depend on where we're at in life.

If we're honest with ourselves, doesn't the way that we answer whether or not God is generous depend on the circumstances that surround us?

I'm honest. I tend towards that anyways. Now, I've got God's Word here that tells me something pretty solid about Him.

But I can tell you that days after my mother passed away, I was 22 years old, I was engaged to Linda, we were going to be married.

She passed away in June, we were married in December. I really wanted her to be at that wedding, and I can tell you that days after that,

I might have answered this question differently than I answer it now. Whether or not God is good.

We go through dark times, don't we? Have you been there? Have you been through those dark times? And at that point, you are challenged to ask this question to yourself.

Is God good? Is He generous?

We're fickle, and if we're honest, our view of God changes with the seasons of life. That's one reason

I am so grateful that we have God's Word. Passages like this that push us towards an understanding that God is generous.

That my dependency and my understanding of who God is isn't inside of me, isn't rooted in my circumstances or my emotions or my feelings or my thoughts.

It's rooted outside of me, in a Word that has been revealed about the truth of who

God is. And we're going to see in the text this morning that God is declared generous, and then we're going to work that out and figure out how does that work in the dark times and in the difficult times.

Jesus begins here in our text with two parallel comments. Verses 7 and 8 are basically parallel if you look at them.

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, back to the same verb, everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened to you.

So we can see that there's these parallel comments where Jesus is saying, what I desire of you is that you ask, that you seek, and that you knock.

These are commands that are given to us, and they come with what at face value appears to be a blank check kind of promise, don't they?

Look at verse 8, doesn't that look kind of like a blank check? Go ahead and look at it, what do you think? For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened to you.

Or even yet in 7, ask and it will be given to you. I think it's very important that we understand the structure of the

English language here and the Greek a little bit behind verse 7, because it's a bit tricky and it's a bit hard for us to understand and put it into practice what this verse is saying.

The pronouns it, I might get a little technical for you here for a minute, but this is important. The pronouns it that occur in verse 7, ask and it will be given to you.

Notice that they don't include that there in seek and you will find it, because we don't need that in English. The pronouns have been added in the

English translation. There is a way to designate in Greek it and it's not there. They put it in there to make it more readable.

Often translations will do that, but it obscures the understanding just a little bit. It implies that if you ask, the very thing you ask for will be given to you, doesn't it?

Doesn't it seem to imply that? Ask and it will be given to you. Versus, listen to this, ask and you will receive something.

That might actually be a better translation of this verse. Ask and you're going to receive something. Not saying it, it is a very specific word, isn't it?

If you're asking for something and you receive it, you get the very thing that you're asking for. That is not the case.

Do you see why this is important to distinguish in English in this verse? God is saying, ask and you're going to receive something.

And now comes the point of trust. Are you going to believe that what you receive is good? Is it coming from the hands of a generous

God? And that's what we're going to have to flesh out and put some, that's kind of the skeleton of the passage.

Rock out. Everybody want to sing for just a moment?

That's all right. Awesome. That is fabulous. I've actually heard a pastor totally ridicule somebody in that point.

I actually think it's funny. But let's take a moment and explore what Jesus means by asking, seeking, and knocking.

Because I think that's the core of the passage here. Asking, seeking, and knocking. So what does that mean?

It's obvious from the text, hopefully obvious to you, that he's talking about prayer. Is that obvious to you? Okay, good.

I don't need to get into the details of that. He's talking about prayer. But think about this. What kind of a person asks?

Think about it in general terms. What kind of a person asks for something? A person in need, absolutely.

Now, all of us know a mooch, right? Does somebody automatically in your mind, is there a mooch there?

Do you know what I mean by mooch? You know, somebody who just is really quick to ask for things? And asks frequently and often and generally for big things?

Of course, everybody knows somebody like that. Yeah, we all know that. But I think they tend to be the exception.

Has that been your experience? That's been my experience. Is that moochs tend to be the exception. I find at least the circles that I was raised in, the circles that I run in, pride is more frequent and it gets in the way of asking for things.

There's a pride that I can do this on my own. I don't need anybody's help. I don't need you. I don't need anything.

I can do this on my own. And asking is a sign of weakness. And we're an individualistic people.

We like to do it our way, our own way, and thank you very much. But no, I don't need help. And even when it's offered, even when it's offered, it's like, no, no thanks.

I got this. I got this well in hand. I've experienced this week. Linda and I have been blessed by the generosity of this church in bringing us meals.

And I have felt awkward every time somebody's brought us a meal or brought us something this week, just because it's kind of like,

I feel like I should be able to fix a meal for my family. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's, now

Linda knows other than that. So, I mean, we really are appreciative. And to be honest, our family is surviving because, you know,

I haven't burned the kitchen, you know, or anything. I mean, this has been great. We really appreciate it. But can you relate to that, that sense in which somebody comes and offers and actually helps you?

And it's like, oh, this is awkward. This is weird. I really like that feeling. Our pride gets in the way.

Jesus is telling us to come to the Father and ask. And that implies a coming to the end of ourselves and recognizing that we cannot do some things on our own.

We cannot accomplish it. We need help. So, asking.

He's saying, come and ask. Now, an honesty check. When you see this command to ask and it will be given to you, just be brutally honest.

Raise your hand if you think primarily about material stuff when that comes out. I do.

I do. I did. When I started reading this, it's like material stuff. Asking it will be given to you. Okay, I'm thinking about cars and all different kinds of things.

It's my tendency to think about material stuff. But think about this. What about asking for patience?

What about asking for strength? You know, there's an old saying, you know, this goes way back to before I was, you know, people will say don't pray for patience.

Have you ever heard that? Don't pray for patience because then God's going to give you something in your life to be patient about. No, pray for patience.

It is what sharpens us. It is what strengthens us. And what God brings you through to cause you to be a patient person may be tough at the time.

But it will yield fruit in your life that will give you wisdom and intelligence and rooting in God.

If you see that as an opportunity for growth. But patience, strength, endurance, joy, peace, kindness, love.

What about asking for those kind of things? We misunderstand this passage right from the first word, ask.

Because our minds immediately turn to the junk that we've asked for. And primarily, we begin to discredit this passage because our mind doesn't just turn to stuff, but it turns to stuff we've asked for and not received.

I've been praying for a raise. I've been praying for a job. I've been praying for this, this, and this, and I haven't received it.

We turn our minds to the stuff and say, you haven't come through for me on these things.

You haven't given me a new car. We're going to get more on that in here in just a minute.

But we need to move on to what kind of people are seeking. The kind of people that are seeking are people who know that there is something more out there.

They're looking for something more. Isn't that right? If you're seeking for something, you believe that whatever you're seeking for is out there, and you're going for it.

There are those who are currently following Jesus who know that there is a deeper life out there, and they are not satisfied with the games that they've been playing.

They've been playing these games with sin, and they're desperately seeking to know Christ more. To know

Christ more, you know, it's a relationship. It's not a list of rules. It's not a list of regulations, but it is a relationship, and that requires seeking.

If you believe you have arrived, you know what I mean by arrived? I mean the capital A, arrived.

You are there with God. Then you've misunderstood something about this being a relationship.

I can tell you that if you think of it like a list of rules, you can think of it like a lease agreement.

How many of you have ever signed a lease agreement before? You can pretty much understand the parameters of a lease agreement.

If you take the time to read it and pore over it, you might need to look up a couple words in a dictionary or something, but you'll get it figured out, right?

And then you know the boundaries that you're putting yourself on by signing a lease. Am I right?

You pretty much figure it out. You know whether you've crossed the line, whether they've crossed the line, whatever. My relationship with my wife does not work like a lease agreement.

She didn't come with a manual where I could read and understand the parameters and figure everything out.

Any of you guys relating to that? Any of you guys that are married figure that out yet? It's a relationship, and there is always room for me to grow in patience and love and care and concern.

If I feel like I've arrived in my relationship with my wife, that relationship has begun to die. If I feel like I'm all that,

I've got it figured out completely. Relationships require time, and that's where seeking comes in, seeking to know

God better. There are some people whose alarms go off early, as if that's a sign of godliness, but their alarms go off early, and God's word is on their mind throughout the day, and they meditate on it, and they're confessing their sins, and they are seeking

Him. Now, there's another class of seekers who apparently are not following Christ.

They haven't given over their lives to Christ. The verdict is still out. They haven't decided to follow

Him yet, but they're seeking. They have felt like a spark, maybe just the faintest of sparks or embers that are alive in them, and they're saying,

I'm curious about Christ, and I want to know more. They felt this awakening in their minds and in their hearts.

And maybe some of you here are like that. You are seeking to find Christ. We welcome you.

We're glad that you're here. We encourage you in that search to keep looking for Him, to come to the place where you understand

Him, and you're willing to trust Him. Part of what this message is about this morning is about painting a picture of God through the text of Scripture, where Jesus is revealing that God is trustworthy, and He is generous to us.

What kind of people knock? People knock when they believe they have found what they're looking for, right?

You knock on a door when you believe you've arrived, and you're at the place where you have found the thing that you are looking for.

Picture this, just to illustrate the way that ask, seek, and not can work together. And this is just my illustration.

This doesn't come from the pages of Scripture, per se. But picture that you're in sales. Some of you don't have to work hard at that, because some of you are in sales.

You show up to a small business, and you're making a business call, a sales call. And you arrive, and it's a smaller business, you know, just a handful of offices or whatever.

You show up, and you get to the main desk, and they don't have all the security protocol like MPI, so they're not going to ask if you have a camera on your phone or anything like that, right?

I've been caught a couple of times with trying to bring my camera into MPI. It's just on my cell phone.

So you ask the receptionist. You ask the receptionist, where is so -and -so's office? Can I see them?

And because it's a small business, they're not going to escort you back. They're just going to say, back, you know, back down this hallway, turn right, second office on the left.

So now you are in the process of seeking out that office. You arrive there, the door is shut, and what do you do?

You knock, right? You've asked, you've sought, and you've knocked.

That's the way that we can see these three together. You have now found the place where you have been going, and you knock on the door, asking to be let in.

Now, Jesus didn't have a sales call to a small business in mind when he said this, but hopefully it illustrates how these three tie together and points out what the distinction is between them.

The one knocking has now found what they're looking for and recognizes that they have the need to be let in.

It's not all on them. They need to be let in. Asking, seeking, and knocking are all huge exercises of faith.

They require faith because they are out of our control. Have you ever stood at a door, knocking, and known that somebody was home and they are not answering?

How many of you have been there before? I know I have been. Oh, that is aggravating. Like, I'm right here.

How loud do you knock before it gets awkward and you have to leave? You know what I'm saying? It's out of your control, though, isn't it?

Something that's thoroughly and completely out of your control. Knocking, but you're dependent on them to answer.

Have you ever sought for your car keys? You're out seeking for something? What about a

BlackBerry? Have you ever been looking for your lost BlackBerry? Sorry, I didn't know somebody was looking for a

BlackBerry this week. You're looking for something. You're seeking after it. How out of control do you feel at those moments?

Does that aggravate you and frustrate you like it does me? Yeah, oh yeah.

And you just, you know, you think, man, where did I leave this thing? And you're seeking and you're seeking and you're seeking and you're not.

Out of your control. It takes trust in a spiritual sense when you are seeking. Have you ever asked for something?

You know, you're at the restaurant and you ask for the pork chops. You're just thinking about some nice juicy pork chops and they're out.

It just seems like whenever anybody's out of something, it's always pork chops. That's why I use that as an illustration. Have you ever been there?

Wait here, is anybody, nobody's tracking with me? All right. You agree?

Okay. One person agrees with me that they're always out of pork chops. So somebody else orders pork chops. I was a short order cook.

That's where that comes from. We were always out of pork chops. Anyways, asking for something is out of your control because it's dependent on the other person to be able to provide it.

So do you see how these are all trust, like highly trust statements? When we ask for something, we must demonstrate trust.

When we seek something, we demonstrate trust. When we knock, we're demonstrating trust.

Do you agree with that? Okay, we're all on the same page there then. Verses 7 and 8 ironically have this promise in there that we have to deal with.

There's a promise that this type of spiritual asking, this spiritual seeking, this spiritual knocking will be rewarded with receiving, finding, and open doors.

And the promise is very general as we get to the word everyone in verse 8. For everyone who asks, receives.

Everyone who seeks, finds. Everyone who knocks.

And to the one who knocks, it will be opened. And everyone in the

Greek is a highly technical word that when translated in English means everyone.

Everyone. All who ask, receive. All who seek, knock, find.

All who knock are permitted entrance. How does that sit with you? Confused?

Is that confusing with your experience, with what you have experienced with God? Anybody here ask for something that they didn't receive?

How does that gel? Was Jesus wrong? Was Matthew wrong in recording this?

Have you ever sought for something without finding it? Have you ever knocked on a proverbial door? And even to this very day, that door is locked up, shut, deadbolted, chains across it, and it's boarded up with chairs up against it.

Have you ever felt that way? Maybe that's your experience right now. Or even a further problem.

What does this imply for this thing called the prosperity gospel? How many of you are familiar with the prosperity gospel? I say that and you kind of have a notion of what that means.

A handful of you. Let me explain what the prosperity gospel is. You can watch this more prominently on TV than anywhere you're going to find it.

There are churches in our community that would ascribe to this actual false gospel.

It's a false and heretical gospel that says that followers of Jesus will be blessed with material blessings.

They will become wealthy. They will have good health, if they just have enough faith in Jesus.

You heard that? That God's plan for you is to be wealthy. And if you're not wealthy, maybe you don't have enough faith.

God's plan for you is to be healthy. If you don't have enough health, maybe you don't have enough faith.

You encountered that? You've seen that preached? It's a travesty of the modern church.

And even at my conference two weeks ago, it was spoken of by a man named

John MacArthur. Have any of you heard of John MacArthur? It was spoken of as one of the greatest challenges facing the church in America today.

It is as though people in churches are operating according to this principle that God wants me to be wealthy.

This is a gospel, by the way, this false gospel, that can grow a church quickly. If I were to just get up and preach to you and preach to people in general that God wants you wealthy, is that a message that Americans want to hear?

Oh, yes. You'll probably fill this place pretty quick with that message. But I can't preach it because Scripture doesn't preach it.

Why? How can I say that this gospel is wrong when we're sitting here looking at these verses? Let me start by saying that many errors come into the church by taking a couple of verses and ignoring everything else.

Just take a couple of verses so that I cannot say, if I had only

Matthew 7, 7 through 8, if I only had those two verses, what kind of a conclusion would I come to about prayer?

I would think of prayer like a magic wand. If that's the only two verses I had in Scripture, I'd be like, just razzle -dazzle, you know,

God, I'm asking, I'm seeking, I'm knocking, now give me, give me, give me. Right? It's not as though the pastors who preach the prosperity gospel don't use

Scripture to support their views. It's just that they don't use all of Scripture. They choose to ignore parts of Scripture.

So they'll skip over where Jesus told them to pray for God's will to be done in chapter 6, just a couple chapters ago, just a chapter ago.

He was talking about praying and asking for God's will to be done. Or where in the next couple of verses, Jesus is going to temper this asking and seeking and knocking by explaining that we will receive what is good and not necessarily what we asked for.

Praise God that we don't always receive what we ask for. Or that Jesus asked, they'll skip this, that Jesus asked to skip the cross.

Did you know that the night before He went to the cross to die for us, He went to His Father and He asked,

Father, if there is another way to save this sinful human race, bring it on.

Take any other way than the suffering and the pain that I know I'm going to endure tomorrow. And what was His Father's reply?

We don't know the actual words of His reply, but we know that Jesus went to the cross. And what was

Jesus' words, final words in that prayer? Not my will, but yours be done.

Somehow they missed that. They skipped that, that the very Son of God suffered.

And they skipped that completely. I want to show a clip at this time. I'm going to ask

Peter, whatever it takes to get that up, I'm going to show a clip. A pastor that was at this conference, his name is

John Piper, demonstrates a clip about the prosperity gospel that I cannot speak any better than him, and I think it's only appropriate that he share this with us.

So enjoy this for just a second or be convicted by this. I don't know what you feel about the prosperity gospel, the health, wealth and prosperity gospel, but I'll tell you what

I feel about it. Patriot. It is not the gospel.

It's being exported from this country to Africa and Asia, selling a bill of goods to the poorest of the poor.

Believe this message. Your pigs won't die. Your wife won't have miscarriages.

You have rings on your fingers and coats on your back. That's coming out of America.

People don't ought to be giving our money and our time and our lives instead of selling a bunch of crap called gospel.

And here's the reason it is so horrible. When was the last time that any

American, African, Asian ever said, Jesus is all satisfying because you drove a

BMW? Never. They'll say,

Jesus did you do that? Yeah. Well, I'll say Jesus. That's idolatry.

That's not the gospel. That's elevating gifts above giver.

I'll tell you what makes Jesus look beautiful. It's when you smash your car, and your little girl goes flying through the windshield and lands like dead on the street, and you say through the deepest possible pain,

God is enough. God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us.

He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there's nothing that I desire besides you, my flesh and my heart.

My little girl may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever. That makes

God look good. As God, not as giver of cars or safety or health.

Oh, how I pray that America would be purged of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, and that the

Christian church would be marked by suffering for Christ. God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him in the midst of loss, not persecution.

You see why I couldn't say it any better. I agree wholeheartedly with what

John Piper had to say there. God is not a genie in a lamp granting us infinite wishes.

So how do we reconcile our experience in prayer, asking for things, with the text of scripture here?

I think the answer is in pressing on to the rest of the paragraph to get to the root reasons why Jesus is even saying these things.

What is the point He is trying to get at? In verse 9,

Jesus begins with an illustration. One that I can relate to because He talks about us. He talks about me.

He says, which one of you? I'm talking to everyone in the room.

Which one of you? And Jesus paints a picture.

He paints this picture. He says, it's like, Don, you come home from work. And your son Adam is already there.

He's home from school. And he says, Dad, I'm hungry. I want a snack. And I'm like, dude, I got just the thing.

Here's a rock. And I throw him a rock. Hopefully he catches it, but probably not. It probably hits him.

Here, take a rock. Does he laugh about that? Does he think I'm being funny? Only in that maybe

I'm being absurd, right? Hey, here's a rock. But further yet, in verse 10,

He says, if your son asks for a fish, it would have been the staple diet, so we're still talking about food here.

Bread, fish. Not talking about the aquarium. Son asks for something to eat.

Again, a fish. And who's going to say to their son, hey, I've got one right here in my backpack. Why don't you reach in and grab this fish?

And he reaches in and whoa, poisonous viper. Surprise. Who's going to do that?

Who's going to do that kind of thing? That's crazy. Now, obviously, he's speaking generally of human goodwill towards fathers to their children.

Unfortunately, not every father does what is in the best interest of their children. They've fallen. So we recognize that, but he's generalizing here.

And it's meant to be sarcastic. Because a good father, we know, does not give serpents to their child when they ask for a fish.

And now, at the beginning of verse 11, Jesus gives these two illustrations, and then He's going to punch us in the face, so I want this to sit with us.

He says, if you then, that's all of us, if you then, me included, who are evil.

If you then, who are evil. Six words that have some pretty significant doctrine in them.

Pretty serious things about us. Two points that I want to make from these six words. First, Jesus assumes of all of us that we are evil.

Takes that for granted. Just an assumption. If you then, being evil. No supporting evidence is needed.

He just bases His argument on this fact that we are an evil people.

The second point is that He doesn't say, we are evil. You see that?

How arrogant would it be for Him to stand in front of a crowd and say, if you all being evil. And not including

Himself in that, if it were so. He was perfect. He was sinless. He relates to us and identifies with humanity as flesh and bone.

But He does not identify with us as sinners. Because Jesus never sinned. He was not a sinner.

He leaves Himself out of the equation. But the sinfulness of humanity and the sinlessness of Christ is not

His primary point here. His verse 11 serves as a central point of the entire text. And here it is.

If 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? Can you read the implicit trust that is in this statement?

What He is driving for is for us to trust that our Heavenly Father is generous.

He is good. Jesus isn't just telling us to ask, to seek, and to knock.

He's calling us to trust in the ultimate generosity of our great God. He's saying, you ask, you seek, and you knock.

And then trust the Father to come through with what is good. And I've said this before, and this won't be the last time that I say it.

We are pitiful in understanding what is best for us. Do you agree with that?

We are sometimes the worst assessors of what is best for us.

Even when we reflect back on my previous question I asked us all, who's ever asked for something that they didn't get?

What was it you were asking for when you didn't get it? Consider that. Was it what was best?

Was it a good thing? You see, the word good is used twice in verse 11, and it's a very specific word in Greek that means beneficial, useful, or healthy.

It's not just a good thing, but it's actually beneficial. It's something that's useful for you. It's something that is healthy for you.

And I have to confess that I've asked for and sought after and knocked on the door for many things in my life that were not useful, that were not beneficial, that were not healthy.

Can you relate to that? You asked for things that were not good? I praise

God that He's committed to giving me only that which is truly good for me. I trust Him to send me no more than I can handle, and that everything

He sends is for the purpose of making me a better person. To take

Jesus' illustration a step further into my life, I have at times been guilty, thinking about His words, the illustrations

He gave in 9 and 10, I've been guilty of literally asking for snakes. You ever been there?

Ever asked Him for a snake? And He's faithful to give a fish. Ever asked

Him for a stone, something that was unbeneficial to you, something that was not going to be healthy for you, and you asked for it anyways?

He's faithful to give bread. That's the kind of God that we serve. He is generous.

Sometimes we pray for prosperity and success to find that we're left without a job. Sometimes we ask for a sweet ride, we're given a beater.

Sometimes we pray that our beater will hang in there, and the answer is that it is dead and we need to replace it.

Right, Dave? Just this week, he was without a car. One of them just died. I am saying,

John Piper is saying, that that is good. And no, this is not opposite day, where I say yes and I mean no.

It is good for us. Can you take that on board? Can you believe that? Can you trust that, that God gives good things to us?

I can only say this because of two things. First and foremost, because Scripture says it.

God is generous, God is good, and He gives us good things. But second of all,

I've experienced it. Some of the worst things that I have been dealt in life,

I now see as some of the greatest gifts from God. Relate to that. You look back and see some of those hard and dark times.

Maybe you're in the middle of it now and you're shaking your head no because you're going, I just can't see it. Five years down the road, ten years down the road, you're going to look back and you're going to go, that was a defining moment for me.

It was because of the grace of God in my life. I would not be the person that I am if He just let me skate through life and gave me every little thing that I asked for, every little thing that I wanted.

I'd take the easy road for me. What kind of things do you ask for? Do you ask for things that are going to make your life easier or do you ask for things that are going to make your life harder?

That's natural. Of course we ask for things that are going to make our life easier. I'm not condemning you for that.

But trusting God that what He does send your way is good. The health, wealth, and prosperity gospel can never give any rhyme or reason to why we go through hardships.

But Jesus does make sense of this. He says trust the Father by asking, seeking, and knocking. He is generous and He will give you good things even if they don't feel good at the time.

God is generous and seeing that He has our best in mind has the power to turn our troubles into growth.

So finally, in view of all of God's generosity, Jesus tacks on one final life principle that summarizes this entire sermon.

It's the final of His principles that He's going to lay out. The rest of the passage will see the sermon goes on but it's not full of principles anymore.

And in this final principle is called the golden rule. Whatever you wish others would do to you, do that for them.

And that, He says, summarizes the entire Old Testament. It summarizes the entire Old Testament law.

I find it ironic that we get this wrong in our understanding where it's due to others as you would want them to do to you.

We often apply it this way, due to others as they do to you. You hear the difference?

Due to others as they do to you. I call that the bronze rule. Revenge, it doesn't even warrant a silver.

Revenge or even reciprocal relationships where if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours kind of thing. You know what

I'm talking about? Those of you who are married, I'm sure that you've seen this in your marriage where you've been in a fight and you're applying the bronze rule and you're waiting for her to come to you.

And until she sets it right or until he sets it right, I'm not going to move. I'm not going to budge an inch. I'm going to respond.

I'm going to be a responder, not proactive in making this relationship right, not proactive in healing and doing what

I want her to do but instead waiting on this to happen. The golden rule has the power to end that cycle.

It actually takes a moment for us to consider how we would like to be treated in any given circumstance and then ask yourself to take the initiative and give that to others, whatever it is that you would like.

The ultimate act of generosity is giving to others with no expectation of return, and nobody is ever going to outgive

God on that. God, as the most generous giver, has given the greatest gift of all, and this gift leads me to the final conclusion that he clearly is worthy of our trust as we ask, seek, and not.

He is worthy. Why? Romans 5, 8 through 11. You don't need to turn there, but if you want to write that reference down,

Romans 5, 8 through 11, Paul tells us of the greatest expression of generosity of all time.

He says, But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, that means made right by the blood of Christ, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies, enemies of God, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his

Son, amazing generosity, amazing gift, while we were enemies, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation, a right relationship with God by the generosity of our

Father in sacrificing the Son. My question to you today, are you asking?

Are you seeking? Are you knocking? Wherever you're at in your journey with God, I'd encourage you to really seriously apply yourself to those things and trust him with the results.

I'm convinced that everyone who asks of God will receive and will receive good things from him.

Everyone who seeks to draw closer to him will find that deeper relationship. And everyone who knocks will find that he has been there ready to open the doors wide and show you things that you never imagined possible.