Growth for the Asking #2

The whole point of this passage is that you cannot attain it on your own. This is a statement of grace, not a statement calling you to try even harder when you recognize your failure.

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright and we're continuing our series, Yours for the Asking, with part two of a message titled, Growth for the Asking. Last time Don reminded us that the kind of asking God expects from us is for our spiritual growth. But because we cannot in our own power achieve it ourselves, you'll see today why our requests for growth must be continual. You'll also be encouraged about the sureness of God's answer to the right kind of prayer.

So have your Bible open and ready as we join Pastor Don Green now in the Truth Pulpit. Now secondly, what we're going to see is that it is a sustained request. It is a sustained request. This is really crucial for you to understand. English, the English language, has difficulty in many ways.

But it has a particular difficulty in doing justice to what Jesus is saying here in these two verses. When you read these verses in your English Bible, you could understand it as something that is a one-time request. Ask and you will receive. Well God, I ask you to make me like this, and then you go forward and you never come back to it again. I asked and so apparently I'm going to receive might be the way. One request, one answer, that's simple enough.

Wow, was that easy. All of this effort and all I needed to do was one time say those magic words and it would be mine. Never to be troubled by my sinful nature again.

Wouldn't that be great? Well actually it wouldn't because that's not true. It's not good to want things that aren't true. You see that one request, one answer thing is not what the underlying Greek text means at all. All the commands in verse 7 are present tense imperatives in the original language. That has a great significance for what we're talking about here.

This will revolutionize the way that you think about these things. Those present tense imperatives are calling for repeated action. They are calling for continual action. Do this again and again and again.

The spirit of these commands that Jesus gives is like this. Ask and keep on asking and it'll be given to you. Seek and keep on seeking and you'll find. Knock, keep on knocking, the door will be open to you.

That's really significant. Beloved, what Jesus is teaching you here is not to make a one-time request under the press of an emotional reaction to a one-time sermon like this. He's doing this, oh listen to me carefully.

There is so much at stake with what I'm about to say and more importantly the way that you respond to it. What Jesus is doing here in verse 7 and verse 8 is he is cultivating an attitude of dependence in those who realize they cannot fulfill the righteousness of God alone. He is teaching his disciples to have a settled, repeated attitude of dependence, of need, of trust as they come to him again and again and again. God, I understand that I can't fulfill this and so I ask you to help me today. Monday comes, God I realize that I still can't fulfill this. I'm asking you again to help me fulfill it.

That's in the morning, at noon, God I still need your help. Cultivate in me, give me this righteousness of which you speak. January comes and goes, February you come to July you're still saying the same thing, it's still the same attitude. Ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking. This is part of the way that Jesus is teaching us to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. It is through this ongoing sense of dependence that this is a repeated priority of yours in prayer. God I want to be like this, God help me, God give me the spiritual resources that are necessary, strengthen me, subdue my flesh, overcome my sinfulness.

That I might start to taste more and more of this glorious righteousness which Christ has called me to. It's a sustained request about spiritual things, it is a repeated request about righteousness. It is an ongoing prayer for an ongoing need. Now as a side note in this text, look at verse 7 with me again, I could have read it again, we'll do that now. As a side note it says 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 receives and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks it will be opened.

This is a side point but it's an important side point and I'm trying to help you as you perhaps hear others teach on this passage to understand something very very important. There are some well-meaning Bible teachers who see a progressive urgency in Jesus' words here. And they approach the passage like this, they say if you want it, you ask for it. You seek if you're really serious about it though.

You know you can ask and that's kind of the preliminary effort that you make but then you seek it because that's really, it's even more important than you realize. And then you start knocking because it's just absolutely urgent to you and so they would see a progressive development of urgency through the different verbs, ask, seek, and knock. And so in their understanding, knocking is the most crucial verb in this whole passage.

And you start to knock when you're really really serious about this righteousness. Can I tell you a secret? That's not what Jesus means here. That's not what he's talking about. It's actually no secret.

We're talking about it publicly right? Exegetically that simply does not work. If knocking was the climax of this passage, you would expect it to be the key verb. You would expect knocking to be the key verb.

But it's not. Ask is the key verb. Ask is the verb that is repeated in each of these five verses. Look at verse seven.

Ask and it will be given to you. Verse eight, everyone who asks receives. Verse nine, his son asks for a loaf. Verse ten, he asks for a fish. Verse eleven, how much more will your father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him. You see, the repetition of the verb shows that asking is the key verb here. And you cannot make it so that knock is somehow higher than asking when all through this passage Jesus is saying ask ask ask ask.

You see, to say that asking is an entry level desire, seeking is intermediate and then the advanced doctoral work is when you're knocking. That sets up a pattern that is the exact opposite of what Jesus is teaching here. You see, this is very practical and every one of you who has had any spiritual desires in your life will relate to what I'm saying. Jesus is not calling you in this passage to try harder in prayer.

And that's what this progressive thing of asking level one, seeking level two, knocking level three, that multi-tiered, that multi-level thing might work in Amway, in multi-level marketing, that might work someplace else, it doesn't work here. That is not what Jesus is telling you is that if you haven't received it you've got to try harder and try even harder after that. The whole point of this passage is that you cannot attain it on your own. This is a statement of grace, not a statement calling you to try even harder when you recognize your failure. What's he saying then, this ask and keep on asking, this seek and keep on seeking, this knock and keep on knocking.

Watch this beloved, this is gorgeous, this is beautiful. What's he saying when he says that? Asking, seeking and knocking are all different ways of simply expressing the same idea. He is teaching you the value, he is calling you to an attitude of patient consistency in your request.

Ask and keep on asking. Let me give you a different picture, seek and keep on seeking. I'll tell you the same thing from a different way of looking at it, knock and keep on knocking.

He is teaching you to sustain your request for grace over time. If it seems like the door hasn't been answered at your first knock, knock again. If you haven't found it with your first seeking, seek again. If you didn't get the answer to your question the first time, the answer to your request, ask again. See it's the same idea, just three different perspectives on doing it. The whole idea is rooted in you is ask and keep on asking, knock and keep on knocking, seek and keep on seeking.

And here's what all of this means, we're going to tie a big bow around what everything that we've said so far. As you are seeking the spiritual growth in your life and you inevitably find multiplied stumbles along the way. Because Scripture says, James 3 to 2, we all stumble in many ways. We stumble often, we stumble in a lot of different ways and it's very easy to get very discouraged along the way, isn't it? To feel the crushing weight of your own sin when you're seriously, earnestly, sincerely desiring righteousness and I stumble again and again and again and I am just so frustrated. Jesus speaks this word of grace into it and says, my child here's what you are to do. You are to ask for grace from God in the midst of that and yes you will stumble again and ask for more grace. And you'll have periods where it seems to be going well and ask for grace and ask for grace and ask for grace again and again and again. You see, spiritual growth requires the help of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot sanctify yourself in your own power or by your own efforts. Yes you must put forth effort, yes you need to read your Bible, yes you need to pray, but you need the help of the Holy Spirit to help you to make that process work and to have power in it so that there is a real lasting change that comes to you. That lasting change that every true Christian somewhere in his heart really wants to happen.

I know I do, don't you? I don't want to keep being this mediocre Christian that I am. I don't like this lukewarm spirit that so often animates me, who I am inside. I don't like that, I want to change, but we need the help of God to do that and here is where you need to pay attention. I point my finger to encourage you not to be rude. Beloved, do not expect a one-time blessing to come that will settle your sanctification for the rest of your life.

Some of you have probably heard that teaching, there were plenty of people over the years that teach it, that's not the way it works. You don't expect a one-time blessing to settle your sanctification forever. You see God has designed it so that you would learn a daily dependence on Him. A daily coming back and saying, God this is the desire of my heart, help me live righteously here, help me to grow spiritually here, conform me to the image of Christ here, again and again and again. And here's the genius of what Jesus is saying, God meets your ongoing dependence with an ongoing supply. Given out day by day, moment by moment, just as the children of Israel as they walked through the wilderness, day by day God gave them manna to eat.

Day by day they had to go out and gather what they needed for their physical sustenance during those 40 years in the wilderness. Day by day they had to go out and gather the ideas that on an ongoing way you go out and you gather, you go out and ask God help me be this way. Now, God look at the difficulties in their life, I pray that you would sanctify them to the good of their souls. God he's experiencing so much prosperity and I'm glad for that but God help him to grow in righteousness. Father sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. God, 2 Peter 3.18, help them to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. See, I know that many of you pray for me and I'm very grateful for that. But I don't really, you want to pray for my health great. You want to pray that God would help me great, thank you, I appreciate that. But if you really want to pray for me, pray that I would grow in righteousness.

Pray that God would sanctify me more and more. That's how I pray for you as well. And we pray this way over time. And what this does is we recognize our spiritual need and we request God's grace with a sustained repeated ongoing request for spiritual growth.

God I haven't arrived, I need your help to grow still more. And so that prayer sustains you when you're up, it sustains you when you stumble. God, here I am stumbling, I need to dust myself off of more sin. God, you see why I was praying this way before, I'm renewing it now.

This prayer is always in season, this is always the right way for you to pray. God, conform me, God help me, God change me that I might become more and more the righteous person that you want me to be. And this becomes what you want more than anything. Now I've said, I've said in the past multiple, multiple times, at least twice, what a person prays for is really revealing where their heart really, really is, what they really, really want. God, God I have this magnificent blessing of access to you through Christ. If you have that access and you know that God answers, then what is it that you ask for?

Is it the lofty things of which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount or is it stuff that's going to pass with the using? And so there's kind of a, think about it, there's kind of a gateway as you enter into the courtyard of prayer. You walk through this gate that says, why is it that I'm coming in here? What is it that I want as I step into this garden where God receives prayer? I'm thinking before I pass through that gate, Lord what is it that I want here? Lord, what I want is I want to smell the sweet perfume of the roses of righteousness manifesting themselves in my life.

God, I want to see the beauty of transformation in my soul, that I'd be more like Christ. That's what I want as I pray here. And so it's a spiritual request that you sustain over time. And the fact that, here's the grace in it, here's some of the grace in it my friends, is the fact that you stumbled doesn't mean that you can't pray that way.

It doesn't exempt you or mean that God won't receive your prayer. You're just seeing once again the fact that your dependence and your need has been manifested before you. And in the consciousness of your need, into that very point of failure, Jesus says, ask and it'll be given to you. Jesus says, seek and you'll find.

Knock and the door will be opened. And you ask and you pray that way over a period of time. And you know what you find?

You know what you find? You don't find perfection in a day, but as this becomes what animates you, you find that a year from now you're a little more sanctified than you were today. Five years from now you've grown in grace. Your priorities have changed. Your desires are more consistent. You love Christ more. You're more faithful in evangelism. Or you're more faithful to the people of the Lord. And you've changed over time. And that becomes the source of your encouragement. I'm not perfect yet, you say.

Okay. But you know what? I'm not what I used to be. Praise God for that. I'm not what I should be. I'm not what I will be when I'm glorified.

But praise God, I'm not what I was. And that is the spirit in which we pursue these things. So it's a spiritual request. It's a sustained request.

Point three, here's the best part. It is a sure request. It is a sure request. By which I mean God answers this kind of praying. You see it three times in Matthew chapter 7 verse 7. Look at it again with me.

Matthew 7 verse 7. Ask. Keep on asking.

And here's the promise. It'll be given to you. Seek. Keep on seeking.

You'll find. Knock. Keep on knocking and it will be open to you. You know, these are passive verbs.

The first and last one are passive verbs. It will be given to you. It will be open to you. Who is it that's doing the giving?

Who is it that's doing the opening? The God to whom you pray. You see, when we pray this way, we are laying hold of a great promise from God that says I will answer and bless a sustained request for spiritual growth. I will do that, he says. And so three times it'll be given to you. You will find.

It will be open to you. Those promises are unqualified. God will produce the change that you seek when you come to him with this kind of request. And Jesus reinforces the promise in the next verse. Verse 8.

For. He says, because. Let me reinforce what I just said in verse 7. Here I'll say it again in verse 8. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. And to him who knocks it will be opened.

Jesus puts the credibility and the truthfulness of God on direct display and stakes the veracity and the integrity of God on what he says here. He says, everyone who asks in this manner will receive. He who seeks in this manner will find. To him who knocks it will be opened. Everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. It's opened to him who knocks.

Now, this is glorious. Because it means something to every one of you. It means something to every lowly Christian perhaps overlooked by the world, perhaps alone in many ways in your walk with Christ, without much encouragement around you, perhaps in your family, your loved ones oppose you and fight against you.

Just so much resistance to say nothing of your own spiritual inadequacy inside. Beloved, Jesus says everyone who asks will receive. This is not a promise reserved for the prominent. This isn't a special enclave where only the pastor can go in.

This is as open to you as it is to me. This is open to you as it is to John MacArthur or any other Bible teacher anywhere in the world. This is something that God promises to every one of his children. This is not something that is earned through earthly stature. This is something that is received when his humble child comes and humbly asks.

This is not excluded from brand new Christians. And beloved, just as your request is ongoing, God's provision for this kind of spiritual growth, this spiritual change is also ongoing. He gives today.

He gives tomorrow. He gives repeatedly as you continually ask for grace to change, God continually gives it to you. May portion it out a little more deliberately than what you might like, but see where Jesus is telling us. Look at this over the long haul.

Do this again and again and again. Do this in a way that says this is my life goal and I will walk step by step along the way seeking it. I will gather the spiritual manna day by day. That's the spirit of this.

And so, beloved, we come to this key question. Would you grow spiritually? Would you like to change spiritually? Would you like to see yourself more sanctified? Is that what you want?

Don't answer that question too quickly. But when you find that the answer is yes, that is what I want. That is what I would have from God. Beloved, here's the thing. God's answer to that request of your heart is yes.

He will give it to you. This kind of spiritual growth of which we've been speaking, beloved, it is yours for the asking. To summarize, our request before God needs to be for spiritual growth and be sustained. If so, you can be sure of an answer that results in your being more like Christ. Pastor Don Green will have more of our series, Yours for the Asking, next time here on The Truth Pulpit.

So don't miss a moment. Right now, here's Don with some closing words. Well, hello, my friend. I want to thank you for joining us today.

Well, hello, my friend. I want to thank you for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Thank you for being a student of God's word.

You are the reason that we do these things. We want to bring God's word to you in a way that makes it alive and applicable to you and brings you into a deeper knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, if you've benefited from this broadcast, we just ask you to do a simple thing. Go to our webpage or go to our Facebook page. Look us up on Facebook and just drop us a little note, just a word that would let us know that you've appreciated today's broadcast or the other aspects of our ministry. We would love to hear from you. Thank you for listening to The Truth Pulpit. We are grateful to Christ for you. Again, just visit thetruthpulpit.com to stay in touch. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.