Message:- Lord’s Prayer Series
Matthew 7:7-11
Our Father’s Gifts
From the moment God came to Abram … who will became Abraham … and God said to Abram “Leave Haran and go to the land of Canaan”; from that moment the Israelites became a special nation with many special privileges
Not because they were more powerful.
Not because they had the biggest population
But only because God wanted to show them His covenantal love.
And this love continued even when the nation of Israel continually turned their backs on God and rebelled against Him. Time and again God would have to forgive his people and draw them back to Himself and restore them.
It was a close relationship.
It was a powerful bond that stood any test.
God wanted to be near His people.
Like a family … isn’t it.
So it may come as a surprise to you to learn that, in the whole OT, God is only directly referred to as a Father 15 times (see Deut 32:6; 2 Sam 7:14; 1 Chron 17:13, 22:10, 28:6; Psalm 68:5, 89:26; Isaiah 63:16 (x2); 64:8; Jer 3:4, 19; 31:9; Mal 1:6, 2:10).
4 Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him—his name is the Lord.
5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.
6 God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; out the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
Psalm 68:4-6
15 Look down from heaven and see, from your lofty throne, holy and glorious. Where are your zeal and your might? Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us.
16 But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.
Isaiah 63:15-16
14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands.
2 Samuel 7:14
That is a good example of how the Jews spoke about God as Father, or how God expressed His Fatherhood. Only 15 times in the Old testament does this happen. But in the New Testament God is described as Father 245 times. It is such a contrast. And nowhere is this contrast more evident than in the Lord’s Prayer.
Let’s read the prayer as it appears in the Scriptures
Read Matthew 6:9-13
How revolutionary! Jesus was teaching His disciples to start their prayers with the same word that was used by everyone in the culture to address their own Father.
Just so you are aware. Many people think that the Greek word for Father here is Abba.
This lead to a trend where people started their prayers with something like “Hi Daddy”.
That isn’t what is happening here. The Greek word is Pater.
It was the word used by everyone, young and old, to address their father.
To a Jew it is such a common everyday word that it almost seems irreverent. Yet Jesus is doing this so show us how to effectively communicate with God. You do it by knowing God as Father. Why do we need this relationship in prayer?
Let’s read another passage from Matthew which will be our focus this morning.
Matthew 7:7-11
Why do we need to know God as Father?
Such knowledge ignites child-like awe.
Such knowledge awakens our trust in God.
And, most importantly, such knowledge is the key to answered prayer – for God our Father will not refuse His children when we ask in faith.
Let’s read verses 7-8 again
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)
The Father wants us to make requests from Him. Jesus hammers that truth home … twice.
God is Almighty. All powerful. All knowing. All seeing.
But not keeping Himself at a distance. Not unapproachable. Not stingy.
Our God takes pleasure in giving us things. Our God cares about our needs and concerns. Our heavenly Father wants to help us.
Ask … Seek … Knock … This is a license to come before your heavenly Father with your requests and expect them to be answered. It’s an open invitation from God to have access to God.
What this means is that we should not be hesitant to pray. So often we are slow to bring our prayers before God. Regularly we are quick with excuses for not coming to God in prayer.
• We don’t feel worthy enough to come into His presence.
• We might feel that we are bullying God and we don’t want to overstep our place.
• Perhaps we reason that God knows everything so we don’t need to pray.
• Maybe we just get so busy with life that we don’t take the necessary time.
• It could be that we are guilty about actions we have done and so we don’t come.
There may be a whole range of reasons why we are hesitant to pray. But we shouldn’t be. We have been given the explicit encouragement to come to our Lord in prayer and not be hesitant in doing so.
Imagine what would happen in our marriage relationship if one partner never says, “I love you”.
They might reason that actions speak louder than words – and love is known that way.
They might be like the man who said to his friend, “When we got married I told my wife I loved her … I don’t need to tell her again unless I change my mind”.
They might feel that they are not worthy to use the word love.
Whatever the case that relationship isn’t growing – certainly such an approach would crush the other partner.
The same applies to our spiritual life. Being in relationship without communication with Him is spiritually crushing. It is God’s express desire that we have access to Him and communicate our needs to Him, why be hesitant?
Why be hesitant? That is the invitation. So we come on our knees to the Lord in prayer.
We pray and we pray and we pray … only to find that God doesn’t answer us according to what we have prayed.
We prayed that we would pass the exam and we failed.
We pray for good health and still struggle with pain.
We could list a whole host of requests that remain on the shelf – so in the end wondering if God is really listening and if God really cares.
I guess we would never be so brash as to say these things directly to God; but I am sure we can think of our own doubts and struggles with this exact question. God says ask, seek, knock - and when we do the door seems bolted shut. What has happened to God’s promises?
When it comes to prayer we should not be hesitant. However
Prayer is not an unrestricted license to get whatever we want.
Prayer is not a signed blank cheque. Jesus shows us this because of the different “prayer-words” He uses in our text. Ask … Seek … Knock.
Jesus uses the prayer word … ask. The word appears about 70x in the NT and is tied to all sorts of requests. If there is something that is important to you and you feel is a necessity in your life then you ask for it. BUT this does not make prayer a “wish-list”
… asking is limited by the need to avoid self-centred or egotistical prayers. Think about these requests.
“Lord I ask for a brand new car to keep up my image”.
“Lord I ask that You remove me from the consequences of poor judgement without bruising my ego”.
“Lord I ask you to make me important”.
Even before we open our mouths we know there are some prayers we can’t ask for – prayer isn’t a magic formula.
Jesus uses the prayer word … seek. This as not a new way of praying, but a further qualification on how we should pray. This important word describes an action of the heart.
There are people in Scripture who seek Jesus so they can talk with Him and know Him better.
On other occasions we meet people who are earnestly seeking God because they want to know His will for their life.
… seeking means coming to God with the real conviction to do what is pleasing in His sight. Jesus gives us a good description of this attitude in action when He says in Matt.6:33 seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. To seek is to search for the will of God. In our prayer we are seeking to follow God’s pattern for our lives.
Jesus uses the prayer word … knock. In prayer we are approaching the throne room of the Father – a heavenly Father. We don’t just barge in and make ourselves at home with contemptible familiarity.
… knocking means using the right methods to approach God. Jesus told us about these methods when He spoke about prayer earlier in the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 6:5 says, When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing on the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Hypocrites enjoy praying in public because it gives them a chance to show off their spiritual vocabulary; but they are so busy finding expressions which please that they are not really focussing their attention on God. When we knock we are politely seeking the presence of God for His glory not ours.
Matthew 6:7 says, When you pray do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. A “pagan’s prayer” mentions all his “gods” and the same request is made to each god a few time, in the hope of being heard. When we knock we recognize we will not extract favors from God just by the sheer volume of our words.
When we knock we acknowledge that we are entering God’s personal space on His terms.
Ask. Seek. Knock. This is the encouragement Jesus gives us to pray so we may receive answers. But it kind of brings to mind the feeling that we are back to square one again.
What comfort can we receive from knowing that our Father wants us to bring our requests to Him when the process of doing so seems extremely difficult?
Let’s be sure that Jesus isn’t teaching us about prayer to make us feel less inclined to pray. Rather Jesus wants to make sure we understand our relationship with God.
Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or is 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! (Matthew 7:9-11)
We have a heavenly Father!
When God created us He wanted us in relationship with Him ... but we basically said “Stick it, we are going to do this our way.” But because of His love for us God would not have anything to do with such a crazy … and eternally deadly … idea. So He came and sorted us out.
He calls us to be His children.
He adopts us into His family.
He makes it possible for us to call Jesus our brother.
Our heavenly Father did all that was necessary for us to be restored, remodelled, revitalized and renewed. It is an act of grace.
Only grace enables us to know that the sacrifice of Jesus was for us. Therefore we can be forgiven.
Only grace enables us to accept the fact that God is willing to forgive my debt of sin because Jesus paid for it. Therefore we can be adopted.
Only grace enables us to be included in the family of God. Therefore we have access to His throne.
It’s all because we have a heavenly Father.
This heavenly Father who wants to give us the very best.
If God gave us what we wanted in terms of our relationship with Him, we would all be in hell.
In the same way, when it comes to our prayers, sometimes God doesn’t give us what we want because it isn’t the best for us.
As parents we take this approach. Children can incessantly ask for junk-food. I’m sure they really believe it is good for them, and it certainly makes them happy. But there are going to be times when we say “no” because we are aware of the consequences.
In a similar way God also says “no” – because He knows the consequences of what we are asking. And it is junk for us.
Which means that prayer does come back to having a true sense of child-like trust that the God who is in heaven knows exactly what is best for us … even when we can’t see it ourselves.
Our Father. These two little words bring us back to the basics of the Christian life.
Our Father … remind us that we are loved as inheritors of eternal life. We are Your children God so we can come to You in honesty. We don’t have to come to You with fancy words, but only a trusting heart.
Our Father … remind us of our forgiveness and that we will not be forgotten. God give us Your best for we know that we are the children that You love.
We say, “Jesus, teach us to pray”. And Jesus stands by our side as an older brother and shares with us the loving fellowship we can have with God. You want to know how to pray? Call God “Father”.
For such communion is the secret of true prayer.
And such communion kindles the basic attitude of child-like awe and trust.
This is the sort of communion God will not refuse.
Let’s Pray
