Growth for the Asking #1

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. Matthew 7-7 contains wonderful words that are sadly too often misunderstood.

Ask and it will be given to you. But today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green will embark upon a series that will take care of that misunderstanding. Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and Don has titled this series, Yours for the Asking. So, Don, what should we be asking for?

Well, Bill, I guess that's the very thing that we're trying to answer with this short series. My friend, I know that you're probably used to thinking about prayer in terms of what your earthly needs are and asking God to help you with those. And he welcomes those kinds of prayers. He says, give us our daily bread. What we're going to see in this series is that there is a spiritual dimension, a spiritual object to our prayers that is far more important. And that's what's ahead just now as we study God's Word together on The Truth Pulpit.

Thanks, Don. And, friend, have your Bible open to Matthew 7 as we join our teacher now in The Truth Pulpit. When you come to Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, Jesus laid out this righteousness in ways that you would miss, perhaps. By the time you come to Matthew 7, verse 7, from Matthew chapter 5, verse 3 to Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, Jesus has done this.

And just, I'm not a big on laying out statistics in sermons, but here is one time where I think it's helpful. When you come to Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, Jesus has done this in His teaching. He has already given us, He's already, by the time you get to Matthew chapter 7, verse 7, He has already given 15 different character traits that are to mark His disciples. He has given 49 positive commands that are to mark their lives. He has given 27 negative commands, don't be like this. And He has asked 14 questions to His disciples, all in this short two chapters, two and a half chapters if you will, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and said this is the standard of God for your lives.

Now, that's pretty amazing. You do the math on that, that's a total of 105 searching standards that Christ says this is what is required of my disciples before you get to this text in Matthew 7, verse 7. Now, beloved, think about yourself and think about your own soul and think about your own mind in light of what I just said. And here's the situation that you and I find ourselves in in response to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here's our situation that we're in. We can't even recite those 105 standards, let alone keep them. There's not a one of you that could say yes, I can number these from 1 to 105 and I can name them in perfection. The truth of the matter is your mind doesn't go there, your mind doesn't grasp the fullness of everything that Jesus has said. You and I, we don't even know them in this comprehensive way to have them ever present simultaneously all in our minds all at once. We don't even know them. And Jesus says, this is how you are to be. Character, do this, don't do that. Wow. I don't even know them, let alone keep them.

Let alone be them. You see, the standard of God, the problem is not the standard of God, the problem is not that Jesus is being unfair in his teaching. You go back through this text, you could go back and listen to this whole series that we've done, it's about 50 messages. Everything that Jesus has said in this sermon is right. It is true. It is the way that things should be. It is the way that his disciples should be and what they should do with their lives and the way that they should trust God and not be anxious over life. Everything about what Jesus says is perfect and right. The problem is is that you and I are finite and sinful and we fall short of everything that he says.

That's the problem. Think about it this way. I like this example. When you and I come to the Sermon on the Mount, we come to Matthew chapter 7 verse 7 and there are 105 things that Jesus has said.

What is it like spiritually? Well, it's like this. It's like having someone come and bring about seven buckets of baseballs and setting them before you and saying I want you to hold all of these baseballs simultaneously. You can pick up maybe five or six. You can put a couple in your pockets maybe.

Put a few in your shirt but sooner or later you start dropping these baseballs because you cannot hold them all in your hands. You just do not have the physical capacity to do that. The Christian finds himself even as he loves the Word of God, even as he loves the Christ who calls him to this standard of living, the Christian finds himself in a similar position. You find yourself in a similar position when you see yourself rightly in light of the Word of God. You realize that as lovely and as desirable and as attractive as this entire sermon is, I find that I just do not have the resources in myself to live this way to perfection. And you go, oh, now I love it. This is lofty.

This is high. This is what I desire. I want this but I'm inadequate for it. What do I do? Well, it is here at that point that Jesus speaks these words of Matthew chapter 7 verse 7. You realize that you're inconsistent. You realize that your temper gets the best of you. You realize that your heart betrays you. You realize that you have fallen short and it can be crushing to recognize those things about yourself.

Now, when Christians, speaking generally, just broadly speaking about the evangelical church in Western culture and probably any other culture as well, when you start to recognize that, you do something. You go one or two or three different ways, I would venture to say. When you try to address this spiritual need that you have, you almost always go the wrong direction. You double down on yourself and on your own self-effort. Some people will see that and they decide to try harder.

I can't hold all of these 105 baseballs. I can't keep all of these things that Jesus says, but I'm going to try harder. I'm going to have a longer quiet time. I'm going to get up earlier. I'm going to pray longer. A lot of you have gone down that path, haven't you?

Self-effort, self-discipline. That may last for a while, but you haven't been a Christian very long until you realize that that fizzles out at some point. You get sick, work calls you away, whatever, and you're back to your own inability to fulfill your own effort to try to do these things. Others become cynical and indifferent.

What is the use of this if it's impossible? I'll just confess my sins and I'll not worry about it and I'm just going to go on and live my own way. What some people do is they will change their theology to accommodate their inability to live a righteous life. They'll say, well, righteousness then doesn't matter and I'll find a perverse teacher to teach what I want so that I can do what I want here.

What's the use if this is impossible? God's forgiveness simply becomes an excuse for spiritual mediocrity and people set aside the law of God and the teaching of Christ just so that they can live any way that they want to. That can't possibly be right. Did Jesus teach us these things just so that they could be set aside? Did the eternal Son of God speaking eternal truth do it so that a sinful, poverty-stricken man could set it aside at his whim?

That can't be right. And still others, including some of you I know, fall into a sense of despair, of morbid introspection. You desperately want to have this righteousness be a mark of the way that you live and yet you find that you fall short and it discourages you and it crushes you and leaves you not knowing where to go next. Wow, that sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it?

It is kind of bleak when we're looking at it from those perspectives. Very few people will actually take seriously what Jesus says here at Matthew 7 verse 7 and realize that even as he has laid forth this lofty standard for us, he has laid before us the means of provision that God has given us. Few Christians will do what will actually help them to grow. Few Christians even know what the key to spiritual growth is.

And you see, ultimately, where all of this is designed to bring you, what the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount does, what we've been doing for a whole year here is designed to bring us to precisely this point that I am about to lay out before you. Your spiritual poverty, which is undeniable in light of what we've said here today. You don't even know, you can't even begin to recite 105 character traits, commands, both positive and negative. You can't even begin to recite that. And if you can't even recite it, how can you know that you're living it, right? How can we know that we're living it if we can't even recite it?

And this is only three chapters out of 260 in the New Testament. Your spiritual poverty, beloved, is this. Your spiritual poverty, as you start to recognize it and it starts to explode on your conscience like that, your spiritual poverty is designed to be a lesson in grace. It is designed to be a lesson in grace and a lesson in humility that brings you to a point where you humble yourself in your heart as you think about yourself, you realize, I am not what I ought to be. You humble yourself vertically before God. God, you are high and lofty and I'm unworthy of your presence. Ian Murray, that great Christian biographer, said this, and I quote, the mature Christian is the one who knows more dependence on Christ alone.

Christ in him is his only strength. They that have most grace are those who are conscious that they in and of themselves are nothing, have nothing, can do nothing, and see daily cause for abhorring themselves. You see, as you recognize your spiritual poverty, you realize that there cannot be anything good in me that commends me to God. You realize that there cannot be any source of spiritual power that I possess in and of myself that would enable me to fulfill these things.

You know, the longer you go, the more you see it. You know, you say, I've been a Christian five years, 10 years, 20, 30, 50 years, and after all of that time, here I am. That, beloved, that my friend, is where Matthew chapter 7 verses 7 through 11 come in to the picture. That is why Jesus speaks these words at this time in this particular sermon.

God knows your poverty. Christ knew your poverty and inability when he said these things, and he has brought you to the point where you despair of your own strength, you despair of your own ability, and you look up for grace to supply that which you cannot do on your own. That is the point of these words here that Jesus says. Let's look at the first two verses, which is where we're going to spend all of our remaining time today, and then we'll pick up verses 9 through 11 next time.

Look at verse 7 with me again in light of what we've said. Jesus says, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be open. Who is Jesus speaking these words to?

Who are these promises addressed to? This is not addressed to the world in general. This is not addressed to any unbelieving mate in honor of our Australian friends. This is not for any bloke going down the street who has no regard for God, Christ, or his holiness.

It's not about that. That's not who Jesus has been talking to. Jesus is still talking here in Matthew 7 to the same people he's been addressing all along, those who recognize that they are poor in spirit, who mourn over sin, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who are seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness. That's who he's talking to, and he's talking to them here in Matthew 7 verse 7 about the same theme that has been animating the sermon all along, this call to personal righteousness that is the mark of the disciple of Christ, that is the mark of the one who truly belongs to the kingdom of God. And so the theme is, where does this righteousness come from? Where do I find the power to live in a way that I know I don't have the power to do?

That's what he's addressing here. And it is there that Jesus says, ask and it'll be given to you. Seek and you'll find. Knock and the door will be open. How do you bridge the gap, you as a Christian, between what God calls you to, as he calls you to live a righteous life in response to the grace that's been given to you, and you find your own inability causing you to stumble and being an obstacle at every step of the way?

Where do you bridge that gap? You ask. You ask for help from the storehouse of God's grace. And I want to show you in these two verses three aspects of the kind of prayer that Jesus is calling us to hear. And it's convicting to me to lay these things out before you. It's convicting to hear these, and yet this is done in grace. These are words of grace from our Lord showing us where the concentration of our prayers should be, where the desires of our hearts should be, and Jesus is shaping us into being dependent disciples of our Lord.

Now, what's Jesus talking about here in verses seven and eight? Well, first of all, I want you to see that it is a spiritual request. It is a spiritual request, and I'm going to repeat myself a little bit from what I've already said. Jesus says, ask and it shall be given to you.

Well, beloved, the most, in some ways, the most important thing that you could do as you hear these verses taught, as you read them in the Scriptures in the days to come, is to drop your earthly baggage at the door before you enter in. To realize that this is not inviting you to simply say, what would I really like in an earthly sense? I'd like more prosperity. I would like better health.

I would like my loved ones to have a happy life or whatever. Understand that Jesus has conditioned us through the prior two and a half chapters to be thinking in a spiritual way and to be thinking about righteousness. That is his focus, and that is the substance which he is promising to us here. It's not a promise of prosperity. It's not a promise of health, physically speaking.

This promise is defined by everything that has gone before it to give us a sense of where the righteous living that we need comes from. And so this is not an invitation to seek every materialistic desire. It's not inviting you to use this verse as a promise, I want a new job, God, I'm asking you for a new job.

I'm asking you for a spouse. I'm asking you for other earthly things. This has nothing to do with what Jesus is talking here, and the context makes that undeniably clear. He is teaching you here, beloved, to seek growth in your personal righteousness through prayer. And the spirit of the prayer is something like this, God, oh, beloved, hear me, hear me.

The spirit of the prayer is this, God, I want what Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount to be true of me. I want to be someone who is marked by mourning over my sin. I want to be someone who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. I want to be someone whose righteousness exceeds the external trappings of the scribes and Pharisees. I want my inner man to be pure of anger and lust, not simply being somebody who avoids the external sins that those things lead to. God, I want to be someone who does not store up treasures on earth, but I want to be someone who stores up my treasures in heaven. God, I want to be somebody who does not live going through life filled with anxiety, but knows something about what it means to trust you, to care for my every need. God, that's what I want. I want to be like that, because that inner quality of life is high and lofty and desirable, and that is the kind of man I would be, that's the kind of woman I would want to be.

Even though no one around me is like it, Lord, I find that attractive and that's what I want. I want that to be true of me. I want that kind of righteousness, Lord. I want to be like that. I want to be someone different from the sinful kind of person that I was before you saved me. I want to be something other than this person that is animated by fleshly and carnal things in my life. I want to transcend this world.

I know I'm going to be in it, but Lord, I don't want to be of it. I don't want the philosophies of this world to mark the way I think. I don't want the aspirations of this sinful, materialistic world to be that which I seek after. And yet Lord, here I am in my fallen flesh, and I realize that what I want is completely beyond my human power to achieve. You see, sooner or later, beloved, you should come to this point in your Christian life where you get tired of being like what you've been. You get tired of the spiritual failure, the spiritual indifference, the spiritual mediocrity. You get tired of confessing sin again and again and again and again and again and again. And all of that, all of that spiritual fatigue humbles you to the point of seeking grace. Saying God, I need outside help.

I need help from you because I'm incapable of this on my own. And what Jesus is saying is that when you come to that point, ask for the grace that will change you. Ask for the help that will transform you.

Here's the simplicity of the point here. If you want to do something more in your spiritual life than just have an attainment chart. I read my Bible today. I read through the Bible this past year. I prayed 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it is that you think is the standard. If you want something more than that, you want something more than just another external list that leads you to pride and boasting.

I did it. And you throw your arm out of socket patting yourself on the back over your spiritual attainments. You want something more than that and you want the reality and the substance of what Christ speaks about in the Sermon on the Mount. Living in a trusting way, living in a humble way, living with a heart oriented toward righteousness. If you want that kind of spiritual growth, the real kind, Jesus says you have to ask for it.

We've already established that you can't do it on your own. If you want that kind of spiritual growth, you have to ask. That means that you have to humble yourself. That means that when you fall on your knees, it's no longer asking God, fill this void in my earthly life. God, fill this void in my heart. Fill this void in my spiritual life. God, I want to be a godly person. I want to live righteously. I've come to faith in Christ. I know that you accept me through the righteousness and the shed blood of Christ, but Lord, there is so much more. There is a gap in who I am between what you have declared me to be and what I actually am. Lord, I'm asking you to change me, to conform me more and more to the righteousness that you yourself call to me.

You've set the standard. Lord, supply what's necessary for me to meet it. It's a spiritual request. Next time a material request you've made in prayer goes unanswered, remember what you've learned today on the truth pulpit. Jesus was not referring to material things in his Sermon on the Mount, but pray for growth in your sanctification process and you won't be disappointed. Pastor Don Green will continue our series, Yours for the Asking, on our next broadcast, so be sure to join us then.

Right now though, Don's back here in studio with some closing words. You know, friend, we realize that you may not be close enough to our church to be able to join us as you would like to on any given Sunday, so let me invite you to join us on our live stream that you can find at our website, Sundays at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, and also we have a midweek service on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. We would love to have you join us in that way. A lot of people do. You might as well be one more that join us for those special studies of God's Word and our church services on Sundays and Tuesdays. Here's Bill with some final information to help you find us. Just visit TheTruthPulpit.com for the live stream. That's TheTruthPulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.