Stewarding God's Good Gifts

but let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist But they have been baptized into the name of the Lord For concerning this also the Lord has said give not that which is holy to the dogs

Churches we take this as a good challenge from the early church We must see that we are the pillar and buttress of the truth. We've been made holy by the holy God. We've been given holy things from the holy God. And it means we're first and foremost seeking to glorify him in the way that we're promoting his goodness. We cannot be so casual about baptism or the Lord's Supper. We can't treat these things as flippant. They're holy blessings. We wanna make sure all can hear and come to saving faith in Christ. We also wanna make sure we're practicing what we're supposed to be as God's holy temple. Let me encourage you, where we practice this most emphatically is our members meetings, where we are receiving who would come into our communion, where we're distributing and making sure we are all committed to the same holy commitments as the holy people of the holy God, we need to make sure we're guarding and promoting his glory, and also making it clear how those who don't know him can come to him. The next section is trust, verses 7 and 11. What we do not give, now we look at how God gives so abundantly to us. The throne of the mount has been weighty. Significant commands, Jesus putting his finger into the very heart of our sin, not just our actions, but our desires, our thoughts. You must see this as one of the sweetest places where we see how good God is. Notice the way Jesus emphasizes for us how we should approach God in trust.

Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.

Those are the three ways of saying the same thing. He's emphatically telling us to go to God. And the assurance is when we go to God, he will hear us and respond. He actually emphasizes it one more time. Look at verse eight.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds. To the one who knocks, it will be opened.

We can go back to chapter six. He's already taught us how to pray. Our Heavenly Father. He's already taught us how to ask for bread. He's already taught us how to ask not to be led into temptation. In the midst of these challenging commands, do not store up treasure, do not be anxious, do not judge, do not give what is holy to dogs, there's this wonderful emphasis. Go to God in prayer. Your heavenly Father is rich and generous. So over and over again, if we take the time and just read the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount, and write down every implication or explicit declaration that God knows you, cares about you, and gives. If you've been with us the whole time, we've seen over and over again, God is rich, God is generous, If there's one foundation that we need to point out that is at the heart of this entire Sermon on the Mount for the kingdom of Christ, for the citizens of the kingdom, our good heavenly Father generously gives good gifts. If you're writing anything down today, I want you to write that down. Our good heavenly Father generously gives good gifts. It's the foundation of all Jesus is teaching us. It's the foundation of the entire Christian life. Jesus being the most significant gift, he has given us his son. What more would he hold back? Our good heavenly father generously gives good gifts. That's why that repetition is there. Ask, seek, knock. It will be given. You will find it will be opened. Verse eight doubles down on it just to make sure we get it. Everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds. The one who knocks, it's open. All pointing for our need to pursue God with trust. The call here is to trust God, to depend upon God, to recognize who we are as human beings created, to look up to our God, our creator, and know him as father. Really, this is about prayer. How do we pray? Christian, what are you praying for versus what are you self-reliant about? What are you praying for versus what do you think you're self-reliant about? What are you trying to get your way with your own strength? Prayer is designed to be for us a constant communication of God, to give him thanks for what he gives us, to ask for wisdom in every trial, to seek to know him and to make him known. Notice how open-ended verses seven and eight are. He doesn't say what to ask for, doesn't say what door you're knocking, doesn't say what you're seeking, We do have two examples, verses nine and 10, talk about bread and fish. We've already looked at that explicitly, ask for daily bread. God has designed us with incredible competence. We're capable of doing so much. Make sure we understand that the things we should be asking for and seeking after and knocking to be opened, those are things that are out of our reach in our own nature. Grace to be forgiven. and grace to forgive others. Joy that lifts us up out of difficulties. Love that lifts us up to God. Are we asking God for the gifts only he can give? Or are we seeking the things that God has declared the right, good, true things we should pursue? When you read scripture, anytime it says this is God's will, If you underline your Bible, that's what you should underline. And that's what you should pray for. You're praying for God to fulfill his will in you. We should come to God in prayer, open-hearted, that he could change what we want. But here are the things God says is his will. Our sanctification, our godliness, our joy, peace, love, self-control. Pray to see God, that the eyes of your heart be illuminated to behold him in all of his grace and his glory. Ask for what God has promised. Pray to be a peacemaker, to be meek, to be poor in spirit, to pursue God and his righteousness. If you're wondering where I'm getting that from, it's from the very first statements of what Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount with. Do you trust God to give what is good? If you're an unbeliever, there's one thing to ask, and it's to know who Jesus is. Open the Bible, read Matthew, and keep asking, God, show me who Jesus is. Show me the way to know him as my Savior. Ask God to help you believe, help your unbelief, to help you believe in who Jesus is. That's what you need to seek and ask most importantly. Verse nine through 11, Jesus reasons with us as to why we should trust God and ask him.

Or which one of you, if his son ask him for bread, will give him a stone, or ask him for a fish and give him a serpent? If then, 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?

The most operative, significant phrase, how much more? How much more? Jesus seems to be concerned that we might not trust God to be good. He's coming in right where we seem to question if God is really good. Parents, if your son asks for bread, are you gonna give him a stone, a fish, a serpent? Of course not. He's pointing out how ridiculous it is that someone would ask for something like that and receive something that would not be helpful at all, or even dangerous. Verse 11 gives us a whole lot of information. It isn't just that God is a better giver and a more authoritative giver and has more to give. Verse 11, if you then, who are evil? It's not just that our Heavenly Father is up there and great and mighty and we're down here. It's that we're evil. We gotta wrestle with that. We are all born in Adam, which means we're all born in sin. We were created good by God. There's a goodness that is still inherent in us. We're all made in the image of God still. But all who are now born in Adam and born in sin, we have a disposition to sin. We have a disposition to evil. That's the doctrine of original sin, and tied to it is the doctrine of total depravity, and that does not mean You are as evil as you possibly could be. It means every aspect of your life, every thought, every desire, every word, every action has a marring of sin in it. Sin's corrupted everything about us. By God's coming grace, we're not as evil as we could be, but it means we have a disposition towards evil. Everything that, who we are and what we do is marred now by evil. The emphasis is how much God is good, perfectly good, holy in his goodness. How much more if we who are evil give good things, that's why we're not as evil as we could be, we who are evil can still give good things because we are still made in God's image by his common grace. How much more is a perfectly holy good God going to give us when we ask. The significant thing here, though, is we must ask. The end emphasis there, verse 11, how much more will your heavenly father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask? James 4 too says we didn't have because we do not ask. Our heavenly father has He's rich, he's generous, he's told us to ask, to seek him, to know him, to pray. How many Christians go without his good gifts because we just don't ask? Believer, are you enjoying the full blessed life of Jesus who died for your sin and rose again to give you his full blessed life in the kingdom? Are you praying for him? Are you asking God and trusting him? Our last point, give. Verse 12, and notice how it is dependent upon the previous teaching.

So, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

Give to others what God says is good. The first declaration was about how we relate to people. Don't give, those who reject God, holy things. Those who demonstrate hatred to God, do not give them holy things. This is how we relate to our neighbor, the one next to us. This is the normal pattern. The dog and the pig, that's an abnormal situation. Here is the normal pattern that we would treat others as we would want to be treated. We would do to others as we would have done to us. We would give to others as we would want to be given to us. There's a reciprocal rule. Now, taken as generic form, it becomes a rule that's good. You can actually find this in numerous other societies. You can find this as a good basic rule that should lead to a good society. But there's a concern that if we leave it at just that, man becomes the center and rule of morality. And that's never worked out well. Because we're evil. When we are the absolute rule, we like to create loopholes with our rules and sin, we make ourselves the simple center of reality, our morality, and that isn't going to work out. The universal issue of the rule would be if everyone behaved like you, what would society look like? One of my children did a little trick with this golden rule. When a fellow student was rude to her, she reasoned that she should do the same thing to that student. The fellow student was rude to her, did something mean, and so she thought Well, if you're supposed to do unto others that you would have them do unto you, she kind of flipped it on its side and said, well, if that's what she wants me to do to her, I guess I will do it, because that's how she treated me. I had to walk that back. But what a wonderful, honest moment of how we can take a rule like this and flip it over. We also had a teacher that hurt people are the ones who hurt people, and that is not what God expects. The problem would be if we think, I wanna treat others as I wanna be treated, well, you could think, I just wanna be left alone. That's a sad reality. I don't want them to talk to me, I won't talk to them. There's a way in which when we're left to our own selves with this rule, it turns sideways. That's why it's important to see the end, for this is the law and the prophets. We can see that God has informed what this really should mean. We should, and it's good to think, how would I treat my equal? How would I treat my neighbor? How would I treat the one beside me? Jesus is teaching, be proactive in promoting what is good, right, and true. He's teaching us not to be thermometers, but thermostats. If all we do is take on something and then try to reciprocate it, you're trying to tell the temperature and just repeat a bad practice, most likely. No, he's saying here, do to others was right, was good, was true. I believe this command is the same, really, as what he's going to teach us later in Matthew.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

There's an assumption that there's a sameness here. Both made in the image of God, both worthy of the same kind of love, compassion, and dignity. Our country, culture, society, historically has been influenced by Christian in the church, so this was a good rule. As that foundation has eroded, the practice of this golden rule has, well, stopped. It's not in the culture at large anymore. For us as a church, this is a rule. This is how we should first learn to practice this here, where we all agree to the same rule. As a church, we should see this as good for us as one of the love commandments. Love one another as you would have others love you. That's not even yet getting to the new commandment of Jesus Christ, love one another as I've loved you, but this is the beginning of a rule, of an equality of being made in the image of God. For us as a church, what does it mean to do unto others as we would want them to do to us according to the law and the prophets? Well, let's just take a quick look at the Ten Commandments. Half of them clearly fit this teaching.

Do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, do not covet.

If we look at these laws, they're really like a bill of rights, if you think about it a different way. We do not murder because our neighbor has a right to life. We do not steal because our neighbor has a right to what God has given him. We do not lie because our neighbor has a right to truth. We're not covet because God has a right to give as he sees fit. If we want to know what we really should be thinking about, what it means to do unto others, we should be thinking, how do I promote what is good and right and true according to God's law, according to what God has said is true? I think the real problem with how we apply this law is we find loopholes. We come up with ways of thinking somebody isn't worthy. or equal. We pretend some are less than and aren't worthy of the same dignity. Christian, if Jesus is your king and you're a citizen of his kingdom, there needs to be a real regular recalculation to apply God's law lawfully. If you're quick to assign the dog and pig label, you should be concerned. You are not keeping this commandment. If you typically assume the worst and assume some mode of be concerned, you're not really applying this golden rule. Do unto others every single other human being. No loopholes, no qualifications. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It applies to our home, our church, our society. At home, Children, practice this. We haven't done this in a while. Children, if you're under the age of 18, stand up. This is a good rule to promote peace and goodness in your home. Practice among your siblings. Do unto them as you would want them to do unto you. I want to keep you standing because it's fun to make it awkward, but I'll let you sit down. Church here, we assume the best. Don't apply motives to disagreements. Desire what is good. Pray for what is good with one another. There's a higher call to love. We must be the model of society that begins here in the way we live. I want to apply this to one more thing in our society. There's lots of talk about immigration in our country. I want to say the one clear thing we must say when we think about immigration. Every human being is made in the image of God, regardless of citizenship, immigration status, legal, illegal, criminal. Every human being is made in the image of God, worthy of dignity and honor. That has to be at the regular front and center of how we think of every human being, regardless of citizenship, status, criminal record. Our laws are designed to protect that human dignity. Our government has been given the sword to punish criminals. We need to make sure we're influencing our society first and foremost by making clear every human being is made in the image of God. We should want for every human being to be treated as we would want to be treated. There's a hundred qualifiers and significant issues when it comes to law that are way outside of my lane. This is our lane, church. Every human being is made in the image of God and it cannot be lost. However we're thinking about treating other human beings, that has to be at the heart and center of how we think about every human being. Our theology must have tension. We must be steadfast in declaring the goodness of what God has said about every human being. Let's back out once more of this text. This command is tied to the previous text with that little word so. Just like loving your neighbor as yourself is really built upon the belief that God created us in his image and our first commandment is to love the Lord God with all our heart. We're to do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. We typically do this because we don't trust God to be good enough. We don't trust God to be good in his law. We don't trust God to be good in what he gives. So we don't do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. We don't trust God to give what we need, and so we extend reluctantly. We don't trust God to provide what he promises, so we hold back grace and kindness. We don't trust God to be the blessing of the depth of forgiveness, and so we don't extend forgiveness. Every neighbor problem is a God problem. If we steal from others, we're saying God should do a better job of giving. If we covet, we're saying God could be doing a better job in distributing all the good things that he gives. If we lie to others, we're seeking an authority over what truth is. The way to start Learning how to treat others as we would want to be treated is first looking up to God and seeing him as the good, right, and true, generous father who gives us all that we need so that we give and do freely and generously. God has given us whatever we have that is good and holy. We're called to guard it, promote it, proclaim it. Central passage here. Ask, seek not, knowing that our good Heavenly Father generously gives good gifts. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you are good, and that you use all of your authority for your people's good. Thank you that we can see so clearly you've given us what we need for salvation. You've given us your Son to die for our sins, to rise again to give us new life. Even now we can call you Father in his name. You've given us your Holy Spirit to change our hearts and to transform our minds so we can think your thoughts after you. Lord, may we know how to promote you to make known who you are in all of your glory. May we know how to treat each other according to your good ways. May we trust you. Help us, Lord, to believe, to ask, to seek, and to know. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.