Now, I won't be able to finish the discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, but I do hope that we'll be able to convey the basic spirit and idea of what Jesus is doing here. And let me let me try reading a few verses in the way that I think he might have actually uh what they might have meant to the people uh who heard what he was saying. For example, verse 38 of Matthew 5. Perhaps what he was saying is well, he said, "Look, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, do you think that is right?" He might have said. He might have asked people to he's getting them to think about it. You know, he didn't just rattle on. Uh he wasn't uh trying to keep people from going to sleep. And uh he was conversing. He's teaching by a a way of speaking and interacting with people. Um that's the natural way of interacting and teaching is to is to do it in a conversational style. And uh pretty clearly, he didn't preach sermons as we would understand them, though he did have unified discourses. So, now you see, is could that possibly be right, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Why just think about it. Maybe sometimes you shouldn't resist evil. You shouldn't say, "Now you've taken my eye, I'm going to take your eye." Because after all, what do you gain if you take his eye? What if you said, "Look, you've taken my eye, and I'm not going to take your eye because you need it. And actually, I care about you." Suppose See, see, Jesus' teachings are designed to draw you off your familiar ground. They push you out of the ordinary human actions and put you in a different basis. So, if you slap me and I slap you, we know where to go from there. Right? We think we do. If you slap me and I don't slap you, then what do we do? Now we have to think rethink the whole situation, don't we? Very often, when people come to you and ask you for something they need, they will give you a song and dance. They will try to cook up something that supposedly will hook you in and get you to answer their request. Well, suppose you said, "No, no, you don't need to do that. You asked for it, you need it, I have it, I can give it to you. Here it is. No song and dance." See, you're you're rewriting all of the scripts that human beings have worked up for managing their way and getting what they want. And now you step outside of that and you say, "Well, no, there's there's a bigger thing going on here. There's something bigger than you just getting what you want. And you introduce them to that by the way you respond to them. And again, if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat. Well, again, you see, that's going to shift the ground away from the way we've ordinarily understood things, where well, I sued you and I took away your uh overcoat, as I said. Shirt, it says here. But I took away one of your garments by process of law. Now here you are and you need some clothing. What do I say? Well, the human way is to say, "You I'm not going to give you anything." That's the human way. But no, you're not standing on human ground, you're standing somewhere else. You have a garment, the person needs the garment, you give it to him. Now, I hope you see that it's not saying that if he doesn't need it, you force it on him anyway because Jesus said that. You're not going to come and say, "Well, you sued me and took away my jacket now and I have to give you my coat because Jesus said that." You see, you have to supply the context. The context is one where there is a need on the part of someone who has sued you and taken something away from you by You can meet that need and you don't stand there and say, "I'm not going to give you anything." Because you're operating out of the kingdom of love. And if it is an appropriate thing to do, then you would give it to them even though they had sued you and taken away your other garment. Okay, now now once again, am I Am I making any sense to you? So, you have to understand that this is a large shift or this isn't a matter of picking over a bunch of little laws. For one thing, the laws given wouldn't begin to cover the expanse of real life. All kinds of situations that you have to deal with that aren't on this list. But there is not a single situation that you have to deal with that isn't affected by the shift into the kingdom. Okay? You with me? Now you have to learn to read this rightly or it'll just drive you nuts. You'll just go crazy trying to keep these laws. They're not laws. They're expressions of a kind of life. You get that kind of life, then these are characteristic kinds of things that you'll see happening. And they will all have the mark of not obeying the usual human way of manipulating and controlling kingdoms. They'll all have that mark. Because the old ways that he's talking about here are all ways that human beings have had of manipulating, of controlling. And I that's what you're stepping out of. And now, if you if you have a question about that, be sure and write it down, so when we come back to the question session, we can go into that. Because this is the heart of the matter. This is the heart of the matter. And as I've said, Jesus starts with these more fundamental things about anger and cultivated lusting and so on, but it all comes down to these day-to-day little things where we have to make decisions and the choice is, who are we going to be? Our kingdom people or God's kingdom people? Uh and I said earlier when I was outlining all of this that uh in chapter 6, verses 1 uh through uh 15 uh sorry, 18. Um you have uh a teaching about uh not performing for human consumption. Not trying to do things because it will impress people. I didn't say much about this last night, but this is one of the biggest problems in our churches. Is performing to impress people. And often it's done for what is regarded as good ends. We want to keep people coming back, so we want to have a good service. And a good service normally means one that they will enjoy. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a good service. Uh there's much that's right and good about enjoying a good service. But the object of the service is not to have people enjoy it. See, the object of the service is to bring them closer to Christ and more fulfilled in the kind of life that is in Christ. That's the object of the service. It's to bring people to God. It's to honor God. It's to worship God. And so those are legitimate means, legitimate ends for us to be doing, but they don't always coincide with pleasing people. And it it shocks people sometimes to hear it said, but when you watch how people get into consuming services and judging them as to whether they're good or bad, you suddenly realize that very often the mode of being that church services have is theater. That what is actually happening is a performance is being put on. That becomes very grinding to the people who have to do it when they realize that and they realize they're just they're just having to put on a performance. And I think one of the things that we have to do if we're going to use our times together as disciples of Jesus in a way that's really profitable is to reject that idea that we are performing. You have three main areas where there's apt to be performance. And the first of those is well, here it's called doing your alms. Practicing your righteousnesses. And Jesus says beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed of them. Otherwise, you'll have no reward with your father which is in heaven. Now notice, the problem is not being noticed by people. That's okay. That's not a problem. It isn't a problem that people notice you doing things. What is the problem is doing things to be noticed. To be noticed. So this is a strategy that someone has more or less adopted, a plan of action. And what they're concerned about when they give and when they pray and when they fast and so on is that people should be noticed. Now see, that's human kingdom stuff. When I do that, I'm running my show. I'm saying I have I'm taking control of things here and I'm going to do this and I'm going to get that result. And so in those days, there were really pathetic lengths to which people went to get noticed. sometimes having people who would blow a trumpet and and call attention to the fact that I am about to do something wonderful. But Jesus and that's what's talked about in verse two here. When therefore you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you. People actually did that. Imagine you're walking along the street and here someone needs some money and you have someone standing there with a trumpet. Everyone notice, Dallas is about to give some money to this person. Well, maybe we would we don't do that, but there is a great temptation to make sure that we get noticed. Now on the list of disciplines that I put up, you may have seen a discipline I call secrecy. And secrecy is actually the practice of doing things in ways that they are not noticed. And why why is that? That's to break anyone of the habit of needing to be It isn't because there's something good about being secret or something inherently bad about being noticed. But the discipline of secrecy and if you care to follow out more on that, you'll find it discussed in the spirit of the disciplines. Uh but you don't need it because I can just tell you what it is. It's It It is the practice of doing things in ways that people do not notice. And the purpose of it is is to free you up from being dependent upon the approval and disapproval of other people. So you practice not being observed. And that that helps break the habit of needing to be observed. Now Jesus goes on to talk about prayer, praying to be seen of men, fasting to be seen of men. Um we're we really have a problem here with with fasting. Many people when they start to fast do think that others need to know. Well, if it's your wife who's cooking a meal or your husband who's bringing home food or maybe cooking a meal himself, they need to know because you don't want to they get the food on the table and you say, "Well, you know, I'm fasting." Not a good thing. And indeed, you know, the old desert fathers and mothers, they had it all worked out that if you were in a fast and a person came to visit you, you would break your fast. And you'd prepare food and you wouldn't prepare food to with them and sit down and say, "Well, you know, I'm fasting so I can't eat." No, you would eat with them. Even though you're fasting. Now see, that that's because they understood very well that disciplines are not righteousness. They're not law. They're wisdom. And so they understood that it was more important to be hospitable and loving than it was to carry on with your dis- You can start again. You can start again. And actually, if you go too far with it, you may have you may may need something to help you with your pride. I don't know how many people I've known who have set out say to have a 21-day fast. I'm not sure why that number seems attractive. And they're just about to get there and then suddenly Aunt Mabel arrives from Cleveland on the 18th day and they have to break their fast. I think that's actually probably a mercy from God to help them uh be humble. Uh but the thing is that fasting isn't something that we we present to God or others as a big deal. It's It's something we might do before the Lord and we fast unto him, not unto people. And then when we do that, he interacts with us in a different way. I don't talk too much about fasting. The primary function of fasting is to align ourselves with the kingdom of God. It isn't to got It isn't to convince God he ought to do what we want. It isn't to put him into a corner or drive him by the glowing merit that we achieve by fasting and denying ourselves. The purpose of fasting is to align ourselves with what God is doing. And you see that if you read if you study the Bible about fasting. See, I mean, Jesus in responding to Satan in Matthew 4 says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. You see, when you are fasting, you are receiving from God. You're not just doing without food, you're receiving from God. You remember in John 4, Jesus was waiting out there at the well and talking with this lady and as he waits, the guys go into town to get food and bring it out and they're going to eat and they urge him to eat and he says, "Look, I have meat to eat that you don't know anything about. My meat is to do the will of the Father." And that's one of those things in Jesus's teachings where you have to figure out whether or not you think he's saying something that's realistic or is it just pretty words? And I suggest that you should think that he was telling the truth. That he did have meat to eat that they did not know And so fasting actually turns out to be feasting. It's feasting on another world. And fasting affirms the reality of that world and draws upon it to nourish one's body and give one strength. I don't have time to talk at length about this, but I hope you will again do your inductive studies of fasting, look at important passages like Deuteronomy 8 and others and try to understand what it is. So it has a real function in aligning us with God. Its function is not to impress people. And so here are three things that Jesus pulls out to help with this teaching because they're things that everyone knows about. And the people of his day was very conscious. You remember you remember he said we were talking about the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees in Matthew 23 and you remember he said they do all that they do to be seen of men. And that's what we're not to do. if the men are the one who are supporting you, that's going to be a problem, isn't it? If human beings are the ones that are making your work go, and they're always going to be involved, aren't they? And we need them. But the point is, they're not what we trust. We trust God. We count on his kingdom be to be present with us and of course that has the wonderful benefit of freeing us up from the need to please human beings. The proverb says the fear of man brings a snare. If one is living in dependence on human beings, then there's a natural fear and concern that they will desert you and leave you. The person who is living from the kingdom of God is consciously in a position of saying, "I love those who support me. I appreciate them. I thank them, but I do not depend on them. And that's important in in things like giving to the church. We don't give to the church because the church needs it. We give to the church in order to be a part of what God is doing. Should I say that again? The or a ministry, someone with a ministry and some of you probably raise funds. Well, now the people who give you funds, the reason they do not they do that is not because you need it. You have to remember that. The reason they do that is so that they can participate in the work of the kingdom that you are engaged with. Now, do you have needs? Yes, you do. But in your needs, you do not look to them. You look to God. And the kingdom then steps in and takes care of you. And you know who you're depending on and who you're to be thankful for. And then in that context, others will share the blessing that you have as a servant of the Lord. And if you read Paul's letters, for example, you see all of that laid out. Okay, so now the last half of the sixth chapter of Matthew is about trusting money. First is about trusting people and the second is about trusting money. And often they're connected because if we think our our support the money that we get depends on the people, we will we will think that we have to have a good appearance before people to get the money that we need. It's very challenging, I know, uh to deal with this. But Jesus just simply says uh that you should not trust in treasures that you might lay up. Verse 20 and following. Don't lay up verse 18 and 19 it is. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust destroys and where thieves break through and steal. In other words, any treasures you have on earth are subject to the vicissitudes of earth. The treasures you have in heaven are not. Um so, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break through and school. Now, I ask you, how would you lay up a treasure in heaven? What kind of treasures can you lay up in heaven? Even the internet doesn't run to heaven, does it? So, you can't wire money. UPS doesn't go there, post office. Only thing goes to heaven is people. The treasure in heaven that you lay up is God. You let your treasures be God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, those things that belong to the kingdom of God. Now, go back to our thing we quoted over and over, Colossians 3. If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above. What's above? God. God and His kingdom. So, when you you talk about laying up treasures here uh in heaven, you're talking about investing in God. And perhaps in other people who are going there. And actually, the only way you can get any money there is invested in people and in God. And then it will go there. So, you make your treasure God and he then he takes care of you. He provides the money. And uh if you put your treasure in money, then that's where your heart will be. And the vision you have of life will be split and divided. You'll be looking at money and you'll be looking at God and not knowing which ones to trust. And so, we have to lay down our dependence upon money. We need money? Sure, we do. God knows we need money. Do we have to have money for various kinds? Certainly, we do. But we do not trust the sources of money that lie outside of God. We don't put ourselves in charge of that and make have to make it work. And there are many many illustrations, many of which you probably know from Christian history that help us do that. Now, the irony of it all is is this is the way to escape anxiety. You can't escape anxiety in any other way than what Jesus says about not performing and not trying to amass resources that will enable you to survive. The only way you can stop being anxious is to lay that down. You recognize the care of God. You experience it as you go along. Now, sometimes you need to look back and see how it has happened because it's easy to forget. Uh this is where we need to what I call the discipline of celebration is enjoying things in memory of the good that God has done for us. Once again, here I'll just have to refer you to um this discussion of celebration in the spirit of the disciplines and give you some scriptural passages to look at and understand what this means. Celebration is basically, in old-fashioned language, it's counting your blessings. And counting your blessings enables you to know that God has actually provided. And that knowledge then helps you look at the future without anxiety. Jeremy Taylor somewhere in his book Holy Living has this line to the effect that the person who really trusts God is no more worried about the future than he is about the past. Probably none of us sit up at night worrying about what's going to happen yesterday. We might have some regrets about it, but we're certainly not worrying about what's going to happen. And Taylor says, when you learn to live in the presence of God, you don't worry about the future anymore than you do the past. Because why? Because you know that you're in the presence of the of God who has provided in the past. And you look at that and you realize, I don't have a thing to worry about. And you look at the abundant care of God for others, don't have a thing to worry about. Now, you still act. Do you need money? You may ask someone. You may work. But you don't worry about it because you're not trusting yourself or the money. You're trusting the God who provides. And of course, the story of the church is the story of that provision over and over and over again. So, that's the basis upon which he says in verse 25, for this reason, that is, God is in charge of money and reputation, too, for that matter. For this reason, don't be anxious. Don't be anxious for your life. Don't be anxious for what you're going to have to live on. It will come. In the Lord's Prayer, you'll remember Jesus taught us to pray, give us today bread for today. Not bread for tomorrow. Because God's going to be there tomorrow like he is today. And the provision will come. it's hard to move into this, I know, because so many of us have had very little experience with it. I think maybe many of you have had more experience than most have had. The experience of actually not having the resources and then coming to the time when you really have to have them and there they are. And sometimes you don't know how how they come about. But we uh trust God day by day for the things we need and we go ahead doing the things that we believe He wants us to do and the things that He wants us to be. We count on Him for the provision and that's what Jesus is talking about here. And he's really saying that you this is serious business. I mean, you look at the length of the of the material in his discussion of these things, you realize this must be very serious. And it is. Because this is really the only way that you can live in faith in the goodness of God. It's to turn loose how you appear and turn loose gathering resources to depend upon uh where you're the one that's in charge. Well, let's now um move on to the seventh chapter of Matthew and look at this very uh crucial passage from verse 1 uh through verse 12. And I call this living in the non-condemning community of prayer. Do not judge, lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," and behold, the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. Uh this is one of the most challenging passages, I think, in the sermon as it's been given to us. And it's challenging partly because it just kind of looks like a list of things, and we don't have we don't know uh what they are about. Now, so let me suggest to you what they're about. They're about trying to get people to do things. What is the typical case when someone comes in judgment on another in a family or in a church? Well, what is typical is they're trying to get them to do something different. And they do that by condemnation. They they believe condemnation is a very powerful thing in moving people, and so they come with condemnation. So so just now just try that on, okay? That's what's going on in these passages. We're talking about how people try to get others to do things. And it's nearly always trying to get them to do good things. And uh so condemnation is a kind of heavy hammer that you might come on to people, especially if they're your relatives, and especially if you feel very responsible for them, you might come on to people uh trying to get them to do the right thing. One of the greatest temptations that human beings have. And they just lay on the condemnation like they might lay on a whip uh trying to drive people into doing the right kind of thing. Everyone, I think, knows that it just doesn't work. I mean, you imagine a person who receives a good healthy dose of condemnation and says, "Oh, well, then I'll stop drinking." Not very likely. condemnation is a way of distancing people and putting them down. It is a way of distancing people from you and putting them down. It really is a form of disrespect. It is a form of contempt. And uh now again, as always, I mean, you have to think this thing through to see whether or not you believe what I'm saying, and that would mean you would test it against the facts. Have you ever been condemned? And isn't it true that you felt that you were being put down, and that people were regarding you as something less than perhaps you thought you were? See, condemnation condemnation and judging is not the same thing as discernment. A dentist might look at your teeth and say, "You know, that molar back there is really decayed, and we need to do something about it. What would you like to do?" Now, that would be discernment. That would be discernment. Nothing wrong with that. But if the dentist is outraged at you and starts slapping you and cursing you, "Who do you think you are to mistreat your teeth this way?" Right? that's not discernment. That's something more, and you're bound to take it personally, as we say. You probably you're not going to take it personally if he says you have a tooth there that's decayed, and we need to fix it. See, discernment is essential to human life. You cannot get by without it. It has to, and above all in the church, we need to be able to discern and distinguish, say what things are not as they should be, and how they might be fixed. That's not judgment. Judgment is where there is expressed a condemnation, an element of superiority, and even contempt. That's where what Jesus is talking about occurs. Now, notice how he puts it. Judge not that you be not judged. If the dentist says to you, "You know, you have a decayed molar there." You're not likely to say back to him, "Well, you have one, too." Are you? But see, Jesus understood when you come with condemnation, you're going to get it right back. And you watch how that works in families. In fact, we've had in the last 50 or so years a whole intergenerational thing that is basically predicated on what Jesus is talking about here. In the '60s, there was a generation that discerned and condemned the establishment, the older generation. And the effect of that was counter condemnation. We're actually not out of that one yet. We're in a little better place than we were. But still, it's a very serious problem, inner generate intergenerational conflict based on judging. I see what Jesus is talking about here is something where you have an attitude a harmful attitude that is addressed towards another, and often it does break over into anger. Um very often when you see people in families or churches or other social groups or politics, mercy, just listen to how the politicians go after one another. They judge, and they're judged in return, aren't they? How could one break that cycle? Well, you might try not judging. Could you still discern? Of course you could. And we need that. We need politicians who have discernment. Uh they need to know how to lead and see what's wrong and what's right with various policies. That isn't judgment. That's discernment. And if discernment is experienced as judgment, it may very well be, and often that is common today, for example, in our discussions about sexuality and so on, if you say that something um a sexual practice is wrong, then that's branded as hate speech. Well, it may not be hate speech. It often has been in the past, but now, if you are confused about this, you get in a position where you cannot discern because it will be treated as judgment. And so we can't say such things as, "I really love you, and I want to help you, but you're wrong." Because saying that you're wrong amounts to saying, "I don't love you. I condemn you." And you see what kind of confusion that we get into here. But what Jesus is actually saying here is that we really need to lay aside that attitude of condemnation. We don't need it. Don't need it. That's like anger. You do you anything you can do with it, you can do much better without it. What is the log he's talking about? Well, I suggest to you that the log he's talking about precisely is the attitude of condemnation. And here you're trying to take a little speck out of someone's eye, and you have this huge log in your eye, and you can't even see their eye. You have to get that log out. And then he actually goes ahead and says, does he not, "If you get the log out, then you can see to remove the speck." See, that's the move from condemnation to discernment. Now then, specks aren't good things. If you've ever had a cinder in your eye or a speck in your eye, you know, it's not a good thing. So, you need help to get it out, and that's not a bad thing. So, Jesus is not saying that we shouldn't help people get specks out of their eyes. What he's saying is if you have the log of judgmentalism and condemnation in your eye, you won't be able to help people with what they need help on. That's really what this passage teaches is ways that we try to help people that don't work. Should I just say that again because I think you need to get the basic ideas lined up here, and they're fairly simple. They're talking about ways that people try to help people that do not work. And in fact, I think he's mainly addressing ways that involve taking a superior attitude. And um So, once you have the condemnation out, then you can discern. And people will It's It's amazing. If people are convinced that you are not condemning them, they will allow you to help them in many cases where they wouldn't even begin to allow it if they think you're coming in with an attitude of Well, keep that thought now, and let's go on down to the dogs and the hogs. Uh because this continues the same the same idea. Look at what he's saying here. Do not give what is holy to dogs. people who have read that tend to concentrate on the dogs and on someone being a dog or a hog. And so, the suggestion here is that there are certain categories of people that are unworthy of your help. And that you should not waste your time on them. That might actually be true. But I would be very careful with it. I would be very careful with it. And I don't think Jesus here is classifying He's not trying to say there's some kind of people that just dogs. And you don't want to quote scripture to them or waste your prayers on them or care for them. Give your goods to them to help them. They're just dogs. Now, I want to reiterate. I don't think he's saying anything like that. What he's talking about here is what people can profit from and what they cannot profit from. Now, if you have a hungry dog and you lay your Bible down for it to eat, what will happen? Immediately someone says, "Well, that's a disgrace to the Bible." And they start thinking about this holy thing that's going to be mistreated. But what's going to happen to the dog? You come in the next day and say, "Here, Shep, here's another Bible." What's the dog going to do with it? Well, it most maybe chew on it, play with it, and so on. But is the Bible going to do the dog any good? No. The The dog cannot eat the Bible. And that leaves the dog hungry. If you keep giving that dog Bibles, that dog will die. It will starve. That's the lesson that Jesus is teaching. You want to help people? Don't just give them good stuff. Give them stuff that will help them. And sometimes our good stuff won't help them. Well, for whatever reason. In the case of the dog, you don't want to blame the dog. It's just a dog. Dogs don't eat Bibles. its digestive system isn't set up to profit from a Bible. Same way with hogs. You might think Jews shouldn't be talking about hogs, but they had them. they There were uses for them. And Jesus knows about hogs. And one of the things you know about hogs is they cannot digest pearls. You take your bucket of pearls and you pour it in the trough. The hog looks at them. What's that? So, like the dog that can't digest the Bible, the swine the pig can't digest pearls. But you say they're very good pearls. Well, so what? That doesn't help. Still can't digest them. Jesus actually carries that on here. You'll notice he says, "Lest they trample them under their foot and turn and tear you to pieces." Now, I'll tell you something I know about hogs. I was raised down in the Missouri Ozarks, and we have razorbacks down there. Hogs will eat people. They will eat people. You get a hungry hog and a human leg next to them, and there will be some biting going on. And actually, I think Jesus is teaching a very poignant truth about human relations. If you keep pushing stuff that people can't receive and can't be helped with, they're going to hurt you. They're going to hurt you. This is a passage about how to help and how not to try to help people. And what we have to do if we want to help people is we have to be close enough to them and love them enough to find out what can really benefit them. See? It was a great load off of my back as a young person to discover John 3 where it says Jesus says, "I did not come into the world to condemn the world." Condemnation was such a standard part of the religion in the life I knew. Even though I'd be the first to tell you these were good people. They meant well, but they relied on condemnation. And they they counted on condemnation to get people to change. I don't know why they did. I don't think they'd ever seen it happen. And I honestly can't tell you that I've ever seen anyone helped by being condemned. But that's the way we're trained. Same way with unforgiveness. You talk to many people about forgiveness, and they'll be loath to give it up because they think it's a means of hazing people into doing the right thing. And if I forgive you, you might just go ahead and do the same thing over again. You might just never stop. But if I'm unforgiving, maybe you'll stop. Well, once again, have you ever seen that work? I've never seen it work. What I've seen is just more and more anger coming out of that kind of situation. I don't think it works. I think Jesus knew that it didn't work. And of course, he also knew that we we had to get out of the position of trying to make things happen and move into a different area, and we're going to talk about that in a moment. We take a different approach to things. It doesn't mean we let things that are wrong go or that we just ignore people who need help. This This is not what Jesus is talking about. We're expected to be able to help people. We're expected to deal with issues. And again, this is a question of how you do it. And what Jesus is teaching us here is that we can actually find a way of helping people that is not judgmental, that does not keep giving them good stuff that does them no good because they're not in a position to digest it. There is a better way. So, here's what he says. He says, verse 7, "Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you." Now, me Here's what happens with folks normally is they move to that and think, "Oh, now we're talking about prayer." And yes, we are. We're talking about prayer. But not all prayer is to God. What he's saying is if you want to help people, then ask them. Talk to them. Seek, but don't go at it in a condemning way. Ask, seek, knock. That's progressive. You can be persistent. That's allowed. But not condemning and not persisting in using over and over things that the person you're dealing with simply cannot benefit from. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, to him who knocks it shall be opened. Now, there we have to throw the brakes on immediately and remind ourselves that Jesus does not teach by giving us absolutely universal formula that always bring down the result. He doesn't do that. He teaches by contradicting the practice, and the practice is the practice that was studied above in the first verses of the chapter. And now he says, "Stop trying to manipulate people and go simply directly to them and ask. You can ask, you can seek, you can stay with them, you can knock, that is, you can do it in a way that they have to hear that you're there, you don't have to become a a nonentity in their life, you can be a real presence, because that is the way that human beings are built to work. He says in verse nine, he takes a particular relationship of asking, the relationship between the parent and the child to illustrate this. And what he's opening up here is this great theme, this cosmic theme of asking as a principle of the world order under He says, "What man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, he will give him a stone?" Now, once again, you probably could find someone in world history who actually did that. Don't you imagine? You imagine some mean father somewhere in the world has done that. A little kid said, "Daddy, I need a piece of bread, I need a loaf." Here. There are people mean enough to do that. That's not the rule, is it? Usually, when a child asks, do they have to do anything more than ask? No, they just ask. Asking is a great power. And you have to understand I know people who will cross the street or walk around the block to avoid someone who's going to beg from them. Did you ever see that? They don't want to go by that person and have them ask them. See, it it goes right to the heart of who you are. You ever eat a sandwich in front of a dog? What does the dog do? Sits there and looks at you. What's he doing? Looking at you like, "Oh, an interesting thing here on the landscape." No, that's not what he's doing. He's asking. That dog is asking. Now, how do you feel in the face of that? You're going to do one or two things. You're going to get up and leave the room, or you're going to give that dog some of your sandwich. Isn't that true? And see, Jesus turns to the simple relationship between a man and his son. And of course, daughters are even more powerful. On men. Daughter asks for a loaf, you give them a cake. That's the way it works. You guys, you're just out of luck. Maybe you get a biscuit. See, it is so beautiful and so wonderful to see Jesus just dip into the realities of human life as God has made them and bring out the teaching. If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him? Now then, did we suddenly change the orientation? Okay, I think about this. What's the continuum between human beings and God? When I go to ask, seek, and knock of human beings, when I I don't condemn them, I don't try to manipulate them, I take God with me. And I bring him into the circuit of asking, seeking, and knocking. So that when I come to request, I am simultaneously involving God in that. Prayer is asking. Generically, that's what it is. It is asking. And I know that there are many people, especially towards the left of Christian institutions and movements that want to say, "Oh, no, you don't ask anything of God." But you look at the teachings of Jesus, it's all about asking. Now, your relationship to God is not all about asking, and that's what confuses many people. Because I certainly would have a relationship to Jesus and to God that is greater than asking. But people who are they really don't understand prayer, they don't understand the kingdom, they get into this area of prayer and they start suddenly feeling, "Oh, you want to ask anything. You don't want anything for yourself, do you?" Well, imagine you had a child like that that didn't want to ask you for what they needed because, "Oh, I didn't want to be thought selfish." Well, thank God children are spared from such crazy ideas of that. Not to mention dogs, they don't think about it at all. "Oh, I wouldn't ask anything bow-wow for myself bow-wow." No, no. Right. No, they just ask. And children just ask, don't they? And that's one of the greatest things about kids. They ask. But of course, they also curl up in your lap and say, "I love you, Daddy." And not to get something they want, but just because they love you. You see, our relationship to God is much bigger than prayer. But prayer is fundamentally asking and receiving and living in a relationship where that happens. So now, when I go to my friend, my neighbor, my son, or whatever, I don't go to manipulate them, I go to ask. And as I ask, I ask God. And I bring God into that operation. There's so much I need to say about prayer, I won't have time to say about it. Um but you know, we have two ways of getting things done. And sometimes what we're after is so big that it can't be left to us. Uh one of the most stunning passages to me as I study these things, you know, and I and I know you're the same way, you you suddenly turn a page of the Bible and you just see something that's so big and you say, "Why didn't I see that before?" Uh but um there's a wonderful statement here um with reference to Simon Peter, and a part of his job as being the uh first Pope, if you like, or Jesus' right-hand man, if you like, was that he's the illust- he's he's the sort of uh um what's that thing? The visible man, where you can sort of look in and see all the parts of the human being, and Peter is kind of like the visible saint, because you get to look at him and you learn all the things that that you need to know by illustration. And we talked about Peter's denial and all of that. But uh in uh chapter 22 of Luke, Jesus and Peter are going over this thing, and uh Jesus is saying to Peter in verse 31 of chapter 22 of Luke, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat." And by the way, one of the things that teaches us is that Jesus and Satan were talking all along. They It wasn't that Satan just went away. He left for a season after the temptation, he came back. He's always talking. Satan has demanded permission, and permission has been given to him to sift you. But look at what verse 32 says. "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." Now, what's so stunning here to me when I saw it was Jesus prayed for him. He didn't just stop him. He could have stopped him. But he didn't stop him. You see, most of the things we are concerned about in human human relationships are too big for us to do on our own. They're too big for us to do on our own. That's why there really is That's part of the reason why there is such an arrangement as prayer. It's too big for us to do on it. If you've got weeds in your flower bed, you'd better not pray about that. Unless you've left them there so long that now you can't pull them up. You got weeds in your flower bed. That's in your causation. You can go pull those. That's God's arrangement. That's one form of the causation that he has given us. You can pull the weeds in your flower bed. No need to pray about it. Don't need to ask God to do it or send an angel to do it or don't need to do spiritual warfare against them. Just pull them. All right? But if your sister or brother is addicted to cocaine, you probably better not try to do that. That's too complicated. That involves too much. Better pray about that. Better get God involved in that one. He knows what's going on. He knows what might be done in the right way to help that person and what can't be done. If you have someone who's unsaved, it's okay to talk to them. Don't try to manipulate them. Don't try to grind them into the kingdom of God by condemnation and all sorts of pearls that you have found which they couldn't possibly use. And don't keep just putting them pearls in saying, "Boy, this is a good one. This is a good This is really a good one." Because they can't use it. That's where you go to God. You can speak to them. That's fine. You should ask. You should seek. You should knock. But you should go to them with God. Not on your own. And that's why there is such an arrangement as prayer. What is prayer? Prayer is talking to God about what we're doing together. about what we are doing together. Prayer is a way of engaging with God in bringing something to pass. It's not a way of putting the coin in the Coke machine and expecting it to kick out. That's why prayer is very much a matter of staying with something. Though there's a wonderful pattern of praying. I mentioned Wimber the other day that he knew and taught to his about praying with people that you you got with them and you talked with them and you let what is needed come out and take form and then you begin to pray and you don't walk off. You stay there. And you say, "Is anything happening?" And maybe you talk about that and then you pray more and you So, you stay with You know, that the dive bomb is just you come in, you swoop down, you drop the prayer and you're out. That's not prayer. Prayer is getting involved in something. It is staying in action with the kingdom of God. It's staying there. You have a part. You can't make But you have to do something. A mechanical illustration of the to me that is very helpful is power steering. You have power steering in your car or your truck. If you don't touch the wheel, nothing's going to happen or you better hope nothing's going to happen. You don't want the thing to start steering itself down the road. Well, today, you know, you have to think about all these experimental cars where you do Then you do want it to steer itself. But you're probably going to be in control anyway. So, you you touch the wheel and the power takes over. You don't touch it, nothing happens. Prayer is fundamentally important and it is important because of these two causal roles. One of which is placed in our power and the other of which is done with God. These Benedictine words, laborare and orare, and their slogan is laborare est orare. And oh, folks on the left really love that because that says when you're working, you're praying. But anyone who's worked and prayed knows that it isn't necessarily true. But they do go together. And praying is actually working. And if you've ever done much of it, you know the truth of that statement. So, praying is getting involved with the kingdom of God and staying there. And Jesus' great teachings on prayer in Matthew 6, we have a teaching in Luke 11 and Luke 18. They are all statements about how prayer works by bringing to bear the action of the one who is praying. Now, you can talk about this theoretically and so on. But you probably know, and if you don't, I hope you will, you know how this works. When you pray for something, you really get involved with it and you stay there. You pour out your energy in prayer. And as you do that, the normal thing that happens is you will begin to see things happen. They won't necessarily be just what you had in mind. Sometimes they will. But if you ask for the stone and what you really want is bread, probably you'll get bread if you need something to eat. Because that's where the kingdom of God takes over and directs the prayer. And Jesus' teachings are always predicated on on this idea that praying is asking and the idea is you get involved and you stay there. And as this great passage in Luke 18 says, Jesus told a parable that men ought always to pray and not give up. They ought to keep praying. And then he tells the story about the widow and the unjust judge. And again, if you look at that, you're going to see there's one thing present and that is the power of asking. He takes the widow and the unjust judge because they're the sort of the opposite poles of social power. The widow is a nobody. The unjust judge he describes and this guy doesn't fear God and doesn't fear human beings. He is one mean guy. But he's a judge. And here comes the little lady. Has no pull on him. All she can do is come and ask. Do you remember what the unjust judge said? I'm going to give this lady her request lest her lest she will wear me out with her frequent coming. Now, again, it just takes your breath away to think that that might somehow apply to God, but it does. We stay involved. The same way with the story in Luke 11. You may You will remember this is the case of the guy who comes at midnight and says, "I need some bread. I have a friend who's come to me. He was late on the road. Freeway was blocked up. He's hungry. I don't have anything to feed him. Give me some bread." Again, it's simply the power of the request. The householder is in the house. The door is shut. He's in bed with his children. That's a story in itself. You know how they slept. I mean, you get the kids down and asleep. They sleep with you. You wake up, they wake up. They didn't have Schlage locks on the door. They had bars. It was a real operation to shut the door. The door is shut. The children are in bed with me. I can't. But he did. And why did he do it? Well, it's a it's a very interesting term to try to translate there. Uh but really, it's just shamelessness. That's that dog again. See, the dog is utterly without shame. It just sits there and locks its eyes on you. No shame whatsoever. It just says, "I want her. I want her. I want her. I want her." That's all it said. Utterly shameless. Dogs don't know any better. And this fellow that's asking doesn't know any better. He's just standing there saying He's thinking about that guy back at the house. He doesn't have anything to feed him. He doesn't want to go back there and tell him that. He has nothing to feed him and so he just keeps standing there. And pretty soon, the man inside gets up and gives him what he asked for. This is one of the deepest teachings about the nature of the universe and of God. And prayer is the way that you enter into it. Now, when you do that, then you transform everything in the community. It's no longer a battle of will against will. It's a It's a process of of coming to grips with things that are needed and things that need to be said. But we we put those requests in the context of our overall walk with God. then our business is his business and his business is our business. And that's the way we learn to stay in prayer in the community of love. Uh in asking uh I recognize and welcome God's presence with me. I make myself present to him. And that's the nature of the asking. Just presence of one person to another. Now that's also if I go to my brother or my sister that I want them to change. I ask. I just make myself present to them. Now what you will observe often is when you do that they will not make themselves present to you because they're hiding. But the pressure is still there. And then you bring that under God and you are waiting for God to move. And that's the context of change. That's what prayer is really about. Prayer is a way of allowing us to count. Prayer is something that God has worked out as a special arrangement. Just so that human beings can be free and also can be significant. There's a lot of theology here that's very harmful. And you have to work your way through it if you want to call it openness or closedness or whatever whatever whatever it may be. The basic practical issue is does God ever do anything in answer to prayer that he didn't intend to do in the first place? Or does he not do things that he intended to do in answer to prayer? And here you need to read your Bible and your biblical stories. But in the end it comes down to this whether or not your prayer your praying makes any difference. Or is it just mood adjustment like a cocktail hour? So that's the way many people presented it. It's oh it's you feel so much better if you pray. And you do. And it will adjust your moods. But the real issue is whether or not the universe is the kind of universe in which there's more to be done as a result of of our prayers than just what would happen anyway. Well, just a little comment here on why there is this strange arrangement. And it is an arrangement that allows us to learn to begin to be involved in what God is doing and to make a difference. I said the other day that giving and prayer are the two baby steps um in learning to act in the kingdom. And this is really important to understand. Uh prayer uh and giving uh are opportunities for the smallest, the most the youngest, the smallest to make a contribution that God can then act with. And acting with God is the secret of life in the kingdom of This arrangement is one which allows one to step right in and begin to work with that without allowing you to hurt yourself. And that's what we do in teaching and growing in every aspect of life with young people. We try to arrange things where they can begin to get involved without being hurt, without hurting others, and they grow, and they learn, and they become more and more capable. Uh I mention here the case of the widow's two mites. Now I mean think about that story. And if you remember Jesus is standing over against the offering plate, I guess you'd say. Watching people put in their gifts. And people are coming by and putting in their big tax deductible checks. And here comes this little widow again. Why do you think Jesus pulls out widows so often? Something to think about, isn't it? Well, widows again were the people who had the least going for them in human terms. Blessed are the widows. Now here's the teaching in this passage in Luke 21. Jesus said this widow who has put in her the mites Mites were the two smallest coins that were running. He said she has put in more than all the others. And see that's one of those statements that you read in the Gospels from Jesus that you don't really perhaps quite know what to do with. And well, maybe we should make a song out of that one. The widow with her two mites and so on. But is it really true? Did she put in more? Or is this just flowery language? You know, Jesus was given to flowery language. He's a great poet. Well, he was that. See that's like I have meat to eat you know not of. Did he really? Did she really? There used to be a slogan that Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, used. Little is much if God is in it. See that's the insight that you need to understand the teaching of Jesus here. The widow actually did put in more because what she put in more was with God. With God. And so the total of what came in for the kingdom of God with her two mites was greater than all of what came in with the We need to understand that and we need to take Jesus' great prayer and put it in kingdom language. It's beautiful the way it is. It almost feels sinful not to say Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. But wait a minute. What do you mean when in And most people mean way off and way later. But that's not the kingdom of God. What that really means is Our Father always near us. Our Father who art in heaven means Our Father always near us because the heavens are accessible to everyone and everyone is accessible to the heavens. Our Father always near us. May your name be treasured and loved. What does hallowed be thy name? Most people have never the word never heard the word hallowed unless it's in the Gettysburg Address or the Lord's Prayer. What does it mean? Or comes close in Halloween, doesn't it? It means treasured and loved. May your rule be completed in us. What does it mean to say Thy kingdom come? Your will be done here on earth just the way it's done in heaven. Give to us today the things we need for today. And forgive us our sins and impositions on you in the way that we are forgiving anyone who offends us. Please don't put us through trials. But deliver us from anything bad. See this is a child's prayer. Deliver us. Lead us not into temptation. Don't don't let us walk into trials. You say, "Well, but I thought trials you're supposed to be happy in your trials." You are. But you shouldn't seek them. You should ask not to be put through trials. That's what Jesus is teaching. But deliver us from everything that's bad. Because you're the one in charge. Thy kingdom come. Thine is the kingdom. Thy kingdom come. Thine is the kingdom. You're the one in You have all the power. And the glory too is yours forever. And that's just the way we want it. That's what amen means. It means that's let it be that way. Now if you really got into it, you might want to say whoopee instead of amen. And that would be okay. That would be permitted. All right. You see prayer opens up the kingdom. And it makes it possible for us to be present to others and present to God in the way that creates a wonderful community of love and non-condemnation. And that's how we can live together under God in the kingdom of God. That's what Jesus is talking about.