Text: Matthew 7:7–12
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
Because We Are Sons
I’d like to begin our time in the gospel of Matthew this morning with a reminder of what it is that we have in front of us as we open the Sermon on the Mount.
The Lord has climbed up on a mountain to teach—remember the significance of that. There are mountain scenes scattered through Matthew’s gospel, from the mountain where he was tempted by the serpent in Matthew 4 all the way to the final mountain in chapter 28, where he commissions his disciples to go out and baptize the nations.
These mountains recall scenes out of Israel’s story—no surprise, given what we know of Matthew’s aim, to show us that the coming of Jesus is the coming of the true Israel and of Israel’s God—but each mountain also calls us to look back to the first mountain of Scripture, the mountain of Eden.
That first of Matthew’s mountain scenes, in chapter 4, sees the Lord taken by the serpent to a very high mountain, to be tempted with all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. So the Lord stood like Adam, tempted by the serpent—except he is no mere man, but the God-Man. He is a second Adam, but also a better Adam, so he stands where our first father fell.
Likewise, the final mountain in Matthew, in chapter 28, recalls the commissioning of humanity on the mount of Eden. Remember, our first human parents were blessed in their mountain garden and commissioned there: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Take dominion over all the creatures of land and sea, and make it serve the Lord. Likewise, on the mountain of Matthew 28, the Lord Jesus stands like Yahweh, blessing his new humanity, his disciples, and sending them out as he did Adam to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it—but their offspring, unlike that of our first human parents, would not be merely of the flesh and bound to the Curse, but a new humanity, born with a new birth, freed from the Curse and blessed anew, commissioned anew.
I’m reminding you of this so that you can properly see and locate yourself within that story here in Matthew 7, where we come to the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount.
This mountain, like the others, recalls Eden. Just as Yahweh instructed Adam in his law on that mountain—“Here is your task; this is what you are for. Here is my blessing. And here is my law: Don’t eat from that tree.”—on this mountain, Jesus is Yahweh, Israel’s God, giving the law of his Kingdom: “Here is your task; this is what you are for. Here is my blessing. Don’t walk like this, but rather like this.”
As Yahweh did in the Garden for Adam, and as he did for Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai, so the Lord Jesus—Yahweh in the flesh—will do for his new humanity, his people in his new Kingdom. He will lay before them, before us, two ways: The way of blessing, and the way of curse.
The cursed way is the way of covetous, murderous greed, borne out of a yawning sense of cosmic fatherlessness—the belief that we are, at bottom, that humanity is, at bottom, on our own. That if we don’t demand and grasp and steal and secure good things for ourselves, nobody will, and we will never get good things.
This is the way of seeking first what I need, seeking first my own, because nobody will add them to me otherwise.
The second way, the blessed way, is the way of self-giving sons, confident in the patronage, care, provision, protection, and oversight of their Father in heaven. Because they have a Father in heaven, and because they know that this Father is for them, they’re free to give themselves away for the sake of their neighbor.
These two ways are before us continually in this sermon, as I hope you will see they are in our section this morning, Matthew 7:7–12. Look there with me, if you would. This is the Word of the Living God:
“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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
-Matthew 7:7–12
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith. Let’s pray.
Sons, Not a Bastards
The text is fairly straightforward, right? Some parts of the Bible are very difficult to understand, but this one isn’t really like that: You can understand the central meaning of these few sentences fairly easily.
Continuing what he has been telling us for some time, Jesus would have us remember and believe and live in light of the Fatherhood of God. Remember, we are to pray, “Our Father in heaven.” And remember, we are to do our good deeds in secret, pray in secret, give in secret and not for the reward of men—why? Because we have a Father in heaven who sees in secret and who will reward.
So it’s no surprise here that the Lord would have us meditate again on the Fatherhood of God and what it ought to mean for how we pray. Ask, seek, knock, because if you do, you will receive, find, and have the door opened by the Father. Why? Because he is a perfect Father!
He makes an a fortiori argument, a how-much-more argument: If earthly fathers, who are evil, give good gifts to their sons, how much more will your perfect Father in heaven give his sons good things when they ask? So the central point is simple: Pray as if that were true, as if you had such a Father, as if you believed that you were children of such a Father.
Why No Asterisks?
The first thing I’d like to do is to ask a rather obvious question that ought to arise in our minds after we’ve chewed on these words for a moment, namely, the question of why he gives no asterisks, or qualifications, to this teaching.
Why doesn’t he give a thousand asterisks? He certainly could have! He certainly could have clarified, “Just make sure you understand that I’m not saying that God is a piñata and your prayer a stick, and that if you pray the right way, God will dispense whatever you want, no matter what. I’m not saying that God is a butler. Sometimes he will say ‘No’ when you ask, too.”
Right? He could have said that, and it would be true. We’ll get to why in a moment. But instead, he simply says without qualification, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” Again, as we’ve already seen, he reaches for hyperbole.
Why no asterisks? Because he knows that our biggest problem is not that we believe too much of our heavenly Father, but too little. This is why the Golden Rule of verse 12 is not out of joint with the preceding section on prayer. If we believed the Father’s promises and trusted in his provision and character, then we would be free to do to others what we would have them do for us.
We would be free to give ourselves away for others, because we would trust that we had a Father behind us who would provide, protect, vindicate, and bless us.
He doesn’t give the asterisks—even though those asterisks are good and true, and we’ll get to them—because he knows that our bigger problem is not that we will believe too much, but that we believe too little. We are too slow to believe, not too quick. We are prone to believe too little of the Father, not too much.
I can prove it to you. Think about this teaching of the Lord: If you would ask of the Father, seek after the desires of your new heart from him, knock at the door to his throne room—then he will answer. He will give. He will pour out. He will bless.
With the magnitude of that promise in mind, consider another question: Do you act like you believe that? Do you ask as if you believe that? If that were true, and if you really, really believed that it were true, how much time would you spend in asking? In seeking? In knocking?
Our prayerlessness proves the failure of our belief. If we really believed this paragraph, we would spend far more time praying than we would checkin at our stock portfolios, running around busy busy busy, generally fretting about and trying to secure a glorious future for ourselves through our own scheming, plotting, and grasping—all the while mired in a hectic foam of low-grade anxiety that we might not get what we need.
If we believed what Jesus has just told us, we would pray more than plot. Now, I’m not saying that wisely ordering your affairs proves a lack of faith. But I am saying that where we go for our security, what we worry about, what makes us either wildly happy or depressed in a given day—and what we do with those emotions—can certainly show the presence or absence of simple, childlike faith in our Father.
What About The Father’s ‘No?’
And maybe you think, “Sure, but I have asked, and the Father didn’t seem to answer. What about that?”
That question is a good question. It’s basically the question: What about the Father’s ‘No?’ Verse 11 really helps us out, here.
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
-Matthew 7:12
Verse 11 tells us that the Father will give what to those who ask, to his children? Good things. This is why, even in a statement that deploys a measure of hyperbole, we know that the Lord is not presenting the Father as a piñata for us to whack with our stick of prayer.
What verse 11 tells us is that the Father’s No! is actually a Yes! He says no to what would not constitute a “good.” No amount of asking can coerce this good Father to give bad things to his children. Again, earthly fatherhood—which is a creational type, a creational shadow that God made to teach us something about himself—shows us that we should expect this to be so.
Do good fathers say yes to every request of their children? If you do, I hope you have good insurance, and I mean all the insurances: Health, house, car, life, all of them. Because your children are going to be in the hospital, your house is going to be on fire, your car will explode, and then at some point, you will probably die at the hands of a knife-wielding toddler.
Would a good father honor the request of his darling 3-year-old daughter when she asks if she can play with the hairdryer in the bathtub?
Obviously good fathers say no, and say no often. Why? Because they are wiser than their kids, have better perspective on reality, and at least ought to have a better measure of what will actually serve or harm their children.
So question for us: Who is wiser, you or the Living God? Who has a better perspective on things, you or the Living God? Who is able to choose better means to serve the best possible ends for your life, you or the Living God? Who is better to appoint and determine that greatest possible end for your life, you or the Living God?
Obviously we know this, right? God says no to his true children because he loves them, not because he doesn’t. James gives us good insight, here, in James 4:2–3,
“You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
-James 4:2–3
Remember those two ways laid out before us in this sermon? James is describing the first way, the cursed way of covetous, murderous greed, borne out of a yawning sense of cosmic fatherlessness—the belief that we are, at bottom, that humanity is fundamentally on our own. That if we don’t demand and grasp and steal and secure good things for ourselves, we’ll never get good things.
James is telling us one of the reasons that the Father so often says no to us: He says no so often because we are so often asking for his help in walking down the path of the Curse. He says no because he doesn’t want to help us live like bastards—as if we had not Father.
He is therefore serving us, giving us a truly good thing—his emphatic “No!”—and therefore even turning our wrong asking on its head and making it serve us. So Jesus speaks truly: If you ask, the Father will give you good—even if that good is the good of a denied request.
A New Kind of Righteousness
Do you see how this brings us right to the Golden Rule of verse 12?
“So [therefore, in light of what I have just said] whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
-Matthew 7:12
We are to be a people who believe with everything we’ve got that we are sons of a Father who is all-good, all-wise, and totally for us.
A people who really believe that, and who walk in light of that belief, and who ask and seek and knock at the Father’s door, trusting that he will give them everything they need, that he will serve their highest good—whether that means prosperity and three generations of inheritance left behind when you die, or an early death from lymphatic cancer—that people is free to be given away, used up, and poured out. Such a people would be utterly free from a dominating concern to protect themselves, hoard themselves, and use others to get what they need.
If we believed the Father’s promises and trusted in his provision and character, then we would be free to do to others what we would have them do for us—because we would trust that the Father will give us all we need, even if we are given away in the process.
We would be free to give ourselves away for others, because we would trust that we had a Father behind us who would provide, protect, vindicate, and bless us.
A Radical Shift
I fear that this statement, verse 12, is so simple that we might miss just how radical the Lord’s teaching is, here. Think about it: He’s been talking about righteousness this whole time—a righteousness that exceeds the Scribes and the Pharisees—that is to saturate his Kingdom.
And though it has been clear from the beginning, this sentence in verse 12 puts it up in bright neon letters: The righteousness of the Kingdom is going to be a restorative righteousness. It is going to be a righteousness that is full of gladness, full of mercy, full of humility, full of self-denial for the sake of neighbor.
This is emphatically not a tight-fisted righteousness that is concerned only with making the right ethical calls. Of course, it will be a righteousness that absolutely does begin by making the right ethical calls—naming sin properly for what it is, calling sinners to repentance, and warning them of the justice and judgment of God—but that right ethical call is then a vehicle for mercy.
We are to be like the Father. The Father looks at our sin, names it, hates it, mourns for it, damns it, and then—because he is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—extends unfathomable mercy and grace. He says, “I will send my Son, my only Son whom I love, to bear the curse you deserve by your actions. I will adopt you, cleanse you, transform you, and glorify you.”
That is the kind of righteousness that this Kingdom is to be alive with. It is a Kingdom whose citizens don’t first think, “What does this person deserve from me?” but rather, “What would I want from me if the roles were reversed?”
Do you see how this changes everything? When we are sinned against, we don’t start by meting out judgment—and not because we are moral relativists who don’t care about truth and justice! No, we start with mercy, because isn’t that what we would want? Isn’t that exactly what the Father has given us? Isn’t his mercy the very reason we even know what wrong is?
Justice is about rendering to others what they deserve. It is about paying wages—and the wage of sin is death. But the Kingdom of God, which has arrived with Christ, is about transforming humanity through grace into something it was always meant to be.
It is about clearing debts.
It is about forgiving enemies.
It is about redeeming slaves.
And then it is about making those men who were foolish enough to incur those debts, wicked enough to make themselves enemies of God, and so mastered by evil that they became willing slaves—into something better. It is about making fools and enemies and slaves into risen sons and friends and free men—who know how to forsake the Curse and receive the blessing of their Father.
Do you treat your children with that kind of love? Do you use that kind of measure with them? Do you treat your husband like that? Your wife? Do you treat your neighbors like that? Your brothers and sisters in this room? Or how about this: Do you treat your enemies like that—those who hate you? The Father does. You, if you are in Christ, are proof that he does.
This is the kind of love that can interrupt even generational cycles of dysfunction. A soft, humble, word turns away wrath. A single moment of humility can disrupt a long-standing conflict. Mercy can overthrow bitter feuds that have gone on for years. Forgiveness, love, and Christ-imitating self-sacrifice can undermine the schemes of our most serpent-like enemies.
And again, there are all sorts of qualifications we could give here. Of course God will judge the world by his Son. Of course there will be many who curse his name, reject his grace, and go to Hell. Of course all of this is consistent with turning over tables, prophetic rebukes of the world, and more.
But the major note of the Kingdom of God in this age is that of gladness, mercy, and restoration. The major note of this Kingdom—and so the major note of this fellowship, of our community—ought to be an eagerness to die to ourselves that others might live.
And here’s the open secret: That way is the way to joy, life, and blessing. The open secret is that if we spend ourselves trying to get ours—forgetting the goodness of our Father, who will give us what we need—we will end up not even getting those things we grasped for, or at least not being satisfied in them.
But if you make your money, your time, your strength, and your days serve your people, your neighbor, and even your enemies, you will find that the Father can bless you far more than people can curse you or use you.
So, therefore: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—because you have a Father. And turn to the cross even now, come even now to his throne room for mercy and grace in your time of need. For every time—and there are many for all of us—that you and I have fallen short of that glory, of that standard of divine love.
Ask, and he will give.