Asking, Seeking, Knocking

When Jesus came out of nowhere and began to teach the multitudes, they marveled at his teaching. They ate it up. It was fresh, it was vital, it was practical, it made sense. But it wasn’t anything like the kind of teaching they were getting from the rabbis.

The rabbis, who were of the party known as the Pharisees, claimed to be the authoritative teachers of the OT Law. They had cornered the market on Bible teaching. They had the franchise. If you wanted to know what the Bible said on a particular subject, you went to the Pharisees. They would tell you what God meant when he wrote the OT. They would tell you how to be right in God’s sight.

But then Jesus came along and he debunked all that. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said “Listen people, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The righteousness that they are teaching isn’t good enough. It’s just a surface righteousness. It only goes skin deep. It isn’t a righteousness of the heart. If you follow their teaching, you might do all the right things on the outside, but inside, you’d still be wicked. Because what they’re offering is a man-powered righteousness, and what you need to get into the kingdom is a God-powered righteousness.”

A man named Paul MacCready invented the first human-powered airplane; that is an airplane propelled solely by manpower. It was called the Gossamer Condor - a fragile plastic and aluminum contraption enclosing a bicycle frame on which a rider would supply the energy needed to turn the propeller. In 1976 the Gossamer Condor became the first human powered aircraft to fly one mile. MacCready won a prize of $100,000 for that accomplishment.

Next, he set his sights on the prize of $250,000 for the first human powered aircraft to fly across the English Channel. He built a better version of the Condor and called it the Gossamer Albatross. In June 1979, the Albatross took off from the shores of England headed for France. Inside was Bryan Allen, a professional bicycle racer. The fragile airplane struggled against headwinds, several times coming very close to falling into the water. Finally, 2 hours and 49 minutes later, verging on collapse from exhaustion, Bryan Allen guided the Albatross to a gentle landing just beyond the water’s edge on the coast of France. That was a remarkable accomplishment for a human powered airplane. But no one in his right mind would suggest that the Albatross could cross the Atlantic.

I say all that to say this: The difference between God’s righteousness and man’s righteousness is on the same order of magnitude as the difference between a Boeing 747 going 600 mph at 35,000 ft. altitude across the Atlantic, and the Gossamer Albatross struggling to cross the English Channel at 11 mph just barely skimming the tops of the waves. The best that man can do in his own power falls far short of the righteousness we need to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus gave us a whole lot of examples in the Sermon on the Mount of what it means to be truly righteous. And he warned us how we could actually deceive ourselves into thinking that we’re really righteous when we’re not. That’s what the Pharisees had done. They thought they were ok, but in God’s eyes, they were evil.

They would pray and they would fast and they would give their gifts to the poor, but inside, they were thinking “Look at me. Look at how good I am. God must really be impressed with what a spiritual person I am.” And really they were doing all this just to impress the crowd.

Jesus said “Look, you can’t be like that if you want to get into the kingdom of heaven. You can’t go around living a double life. You can’t pretend to be doing one thing on the outside while you’re thinking another on the inside. The lifestyle that I am asking you to live as my disciple cannot be achieved by man-powered righteousness. It’s impossible.”

So what’s the answer? The answer is right here in chapter 7:7-11. We must understand this passage in its context in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gives us this teaching about asking and seeking and knocking in light of the fact that kingdom righteousness is impossible for us to achieve on our own. We need God to help us. And not just to help us, but to do it for us.

When we read those passages about not judging others, and not becoming worried or anxious about our needs, and not being greedy and storing treasures up on earth instead of in heaven, and not being hypocrites in our spiritual life, and how we need to love our enemies, and not seek vengeance when we are wronged, and how we need to be people of integrity, people whose word can be trusted, and how we need to be faithful to our marriage partner, not just in deed but in our thought life as well, and how we need to be reconciled to our brother or sister if there is something wrong between us…

When we read those things and we realize that this is the kind of people that we need to be if we are to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, then we should be struck dumb with the fact that we can’t do it ourselves. There isn’t one iota of that kind of righteousness in us. This is far above us, it’s way beyond us, it’s out of our reach. God expects nothing less than perfection. We’re not talking about climbing Mount Everest, we’re talking about climbing out of the solar system to a different galaxy!

And it’s only when we read the Sermon on the Mount with that realization that we will become poor in spirit. Jesus began this sermon with the statement “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s when you’re poor in spirit that you’re ready to ask.

It’s when you’re poor in spirit that you begin to seek.

It’s when you’re poor in spirit that you start to knock.

When Jesus talks about asking and seeking and knocking here, he’s not talking about praying that you’ll get good grades in school, or that you’ll receive that promotion at work you’ve been hoping for. He’s not talking about asking God to heal your uncle who’s dying of cancer.

No, he’s talking about asking and seeking and knocking on God’s door for the kind of righteousness that he’s just described. Those other things, as important as they may seem to be, pale into insignificance compared with issue of whether we are the kind of people God wants us to be. That’s what this passage is all about.

Jesus says “If you’ve caught a glimpse of what it really means to be righteous, and if you want it, if you aspire to be this kind of person with all your heart and soul and mind, then ask God to make you that kind of person, and He will.”

When Jesus said Ask, Seek, Knock, he was using a form of imperative in the Greek language called the present imperative. The real force of it is “Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.” In other words, this isn’t a flash in the pan desire. It isn’t where one day you get out of bed and decide “Boy, I really feel spiritual today. I think I’ll ask God to make me a righteous person.” and then you forget all about it for the next six months. No, this is a constant desire, a growing desire, an all-consuming desire to be right in the sight of God.

Now Jesus says if we pray that way, if we pray for God to make us righteous, we can pray with confidence. Because this, above every other thing, is what God wants for us. When we keep on asking for it, we will receive it. When we keep on seeking it, we will find it. When we keep on knocking on the doorway of righteousness, the door will be opened for us. When we come to God in poverty of spirit, seeking His face and hungering and thirsting for Him to have His way in our lives, then we’ll be right where God wants us to be.

Proverbs 8:17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.

The first key in praying with confidence is to be praying for what God wants us to be praying for. Righteousness: That we will be the people God wants us to be.

The second key is to pray with persistence and not give up. Keep on asking for righteousness, keep on seeking for righteousness, keep on knocking for righteousness. Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

The third key is to remember to whom we are praying.

Matthew 7:9-11 “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

I want you to notice something interesting about the word picture Jesus uses here. He says if your child comes to you asking for bread, would you give him a stone? In ancient Palestine, they used to make bread in small round loaves that looked just like the smooth round stones you find on the seashore.

Remember when Jesus was out in the wilderness, probably over by the Dead Sea, the devil came to him after he had been fasting and said why don’t you turn all these stones into bread. The stones actually looked like bread - that’s what made the temptation that much more tempting.

Jesus is saying here that you wouldn’t give your child a stone if he was asking for bread, even if that stone actually looked like a loaf of bread. No, you’d give him the real thing.

And then he says suppose your child came to you asking for a fish. Would you give him a snake? The word for snake could also refer to an eel. Eels were found in the Sea of Galilee, but the Jews wouldn’t eat them, because the OT law said you couldn’t eat a fish that didn’t have scales or fins. They were regarded as unclean. So an eel was a fish, but it wasn’t a fish you could eat.

Jesus is saying here that you wouldn’t give your child an eel when he asked you for a fish, even though an eel was a fish. He wouldn’t be able to eat it.

Over in Luke chapter 11, we have a parallel account of this passage, except that Luke adds one more detail. Jesus says “If your son asks you for an egg, will you give him a scorpion?” Scorpions live in the land of Palestine. They are about 4” long and have claws and a tail. Some of the species in Palestine are pale colored to blend with the sandy soil. In their tail is a stinger which can inflict a very painful sting which can even be fatal to children. Now when scorpions are at rest, they roll up into a little oval ball that looks at first glance like an egg, especially with its pale color.

Jesus is saying that if your child comes to you for an egg, you’re not going to give him a scorpion, even if that scorpion looks like an egg.

Jesus says that, even though we are evil, we know how to give good gifts to our children. How much more true is that of God, who is our heavenly father? He wants to make us more like Him - that’s what righteousness is all about. If we pray for righteousness, He’ll give us what we need. He won’t give us something bogus. He won’t give us something that looks like righteousness but isn’t. And he won’t give us something that will be dangerous for us.

As a father, my children often come to me asking for things. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, whether to answer yes or no. I’m not always certain whether something will be good or bad for my kids. But God never has this dilemna. He always knows what is good for us.

The problem is that we, as God’s children, don’t always know what is good for us. This is where the whole issue of unanswered prayer comes in. Have you ever prayed for something - not just a trivial thing, but something serious that you felt was really the Lord’s will - and God didn’t answer your prayer?

Sometimes we come to God in prayer and we think we’re asking for bread, when what we’re really asking for is a stone. To us it looks like bread, so we think we should have it. But God knows it’s a stone. He knows that if we try to eat it, we’ll break our teeth on it. It won’t prove to be nourishing to us. It won’t help us to grow. So he doesn’t give us that “loaf of bread” we’re asking for.

Sometimes we’ll come to God in prayer and we think we need a fish. But the fish we’re looking at isn’t a fish at all. It’s an eel. And God knows that if he gave us that eel, we’d eat it and become unclean. We’d be damaged spiritually by it. Our testimony would suffer. We’d no longer be clean and useful to Him. So he doesn’t give us that “fish” that we think we need.

Sometimes we’ll come to God in prayer and we want an egg. But the egg that we’re looking at is really a scorpion all rolled up in a ball. And as soon as we get that “egg” in our hand, God knows that the scorpion is going to spring open and sting us and grievously wound us. It might even kill us. So God doesn’t give us that “egg” that we’re asking for.

A big part of growing spiritually is to accept that God doesn’t grant us all our requests, even when we make those requests sincerely believing that we’re in the will of God.

God is our father. He loves us like a father. He wants what is best for us. There will be times, in the context of that loving relationship, that He will simply say No.

In 1982, my wife and I moved to Denver, Colorado. I had been in the pastorate for six years, and I felt that the time was right for me to work on a graduate degree. So we enrolled at Denver Seminary. We bought a house in Denver, and my plan was to work part-time while I attended seminary.

Naturally, having already been in the ministry for six years, I was hoping that I could find a church that would hire me as part-time staff. There are lots of evangelical churches like that in Denver. I had been in touch with a very large Baptist church where opportunities seemed to be very promising. I interviewed for a position, and everything looked good. Carolyn and I prayed that God would lead us there. But I wasn’t hired. We were disappointed. But we found out later that shortly afterward, that church went into a time of deep turmoil, which was focused around the pastoral staff. God, in His sovereignty, had kept me from being involved in that situation.

I started work part-time for Sears, in their hardware department. It wasn’t very glamorous, and the pay was lousy, but at least it was something. We also got to know a real estate man who put us to work doing odd jobs on the properties he was managing. We’d load our lawn mower in the trunk of the car and do landscape work. Another time, Carolyn and I repainted the interior of a house that he had for sale. We did anything we could to make a living, but we kept praying that, if it was the Lord’s will, he’d open up a pastoral job for me.

In the meantime, we had begun attending a small church just up the street from where we lived. It was close, we quickly made good friends there, and they really seemed to need us. I began teaching an adult class, Carolyn began teaching a class of children, and our home became the location of one of the Bible studies. Pretty soon, I was helping out on the Board of Christian Education. After we had been there several months, the pastor approached me about becoming a part-time associate - a member of the pastoral staff. Naturally, I was excited about the prospects. Carolyn and I felt that our prayers were going to be answered after all. But the whole thing fell through.

And I’m glad it did. Because not long after we left Denver, the pastor left that church in disgrace. He had fallen into sin with one of the women in the church, and he has since divorced his wife and married that women. And it was revealed that he had laid down a whole pattern of unethical behavior in his role as pastor of the church. Now when I was praying that God would allow me to become the associate pastor of that church, all I could see was the positives. To me, that opportunity looked like a loaf of bread, a fish, an egg. But God knew all along that it was a stone, a snake, a scorpion. So he didn’t give it to me. I’m glad now that he didn’t, but I didn’t understand it at the time.

And furthermore, the humbling work at Sears, the landscaping, the painting, and later on a job as a security guard was good for me. It taught me lessons I would never have learned had I been in a leadership position all through seminary.

It taught me to something about being a servant by showing me what it was like to be treated like a servant. It taught our family to live by faith. It taught us to rejoice in the little pleasures of life. I remember the night we had finished painting a house and had gotten paid for it. We were driving home dead tired. The kids were in the back seat. (Just Jonathan and Peter in those days!) We saw a McDonald’s in the distance and said “Let’s go for it!” since we had a little extra money. I enjoyed that Big Mac more than any I’ve ever had before or since!

I wouldn’t trade the experience of those years in Denver for anything in the world. But it all turned out that way largely because God wouldn’t give us what we asked him for. He had something better for us instead.