Living Towards The Day: ‘On Prayer’ (Matt 7:6-12)

Sermon on the Mount: ‘On Prayer’ (Matt 7:6-12)

[00:00:00] I’m super excited to be bringing God’s word to everybody, uh, today. Um, who likes pictures? Yeah. Yeah? I love pictures. Um, one of the things that I really love about this part of God’s word is that Jesus uses lots of picture language. So he’s painting pictures with his words. And that’s really cool, but sometimes that might be a little bit hard for us to understand.

[00:00:32] And so I’ve actually brought some things today to help us see the pictures that Jesus is painting with his words. Does that sound fun? Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s jump in. Um, Jesus starts off by talking about things that belong to God. Um, and he, he, [00:01:00] he warns us that sometimes giving those things to the wrong people is like giving those things to, to dogs.

[00:01:06] Um, who here likes dogs? Yeah. Yeah? Who here has seen an angry, mean dog? Ooh, yeah. What are angry, mean dogs like? Mean. Yeah? Stay away from. You have to stay away from them, yeah. What else? Fergie?

[00:01:29] Run. Y- yeah, you have to run away from them. Yeah? Yeah? Stay still and walk away. Yeah, we need to be really careful around them. Yeah, Torren? Tame it. Tame it. It can be really hard to tame some angry dogs. Um, what’s the most special thing in your house? If your mummy or daddy was to, to say, “This is the most special thing in the house,” what would that be in your house?

[00:01:59] Marley?[00:02:00] [00:02:05] Your storybooks. Yeah? Ruben? God. Sorry? God. God, yeah. Tarin?

[00:02:18] The glass things? Yeah. Daddy’s keyboard. Yeah. My Minecraft Lego. Your Minecraft Lego. What did you say? What was- Daddy’s keyboard. Daddy’s keyboard. Does daddy have a very special keyboard? Those are some great things. Now, what Jesus is saying in this is, how would… how do you think, how do you think mom and dad would feel if you gave those really special things to a doggy who was really mean?

[00:02:52] Would they, would they like that? No. No. Yeah. Jesus is saying that there’s some things of God’s [00:03:00] that are really special things, um, and we shouldn’t give those to doggies. Um, now these are pretty nice doggies, aren’t they? Um, but God’s saying that there are some things of his that are so special that we shouldn’t give them to, to people who act like angry dogs towards them.

[00:03:24] So grown-ups, um, what, what are some things of God’s that we want to be careful about giving to people who might act like an angry dog?

[00:03:42] Party?

[00:03:46] Parts of ourself, parts of our heart that is special Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Other thoughts? Yep. Our pearls. Our pearls. Yeah, we’ll get to that in a minute. Yep. [00:04:00] Yep, Hope? Leadership roles and churches. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That, that’s an important thing, right? We need to be careful about who we put into different roles.

[00:04:11] Um, and, and the one that I kind of thought of is we need to be careful with who we trust with some of God’s special things like his word. All right? So I want us to remember from this little bit that we need to be careful that we don’t give God’s special things to a mad muffin. Yeah. All right? We don’t want to give God’s special things to a mad muffin.

[00:04:38] Yeah. All right. Mad muffin. Yep, leave it alone. Thanks, Kayden. He’s a mad muffin. All righty. Now, the next picture that, that Jesus gives us is about pinks. Pigs. Pigs. Pinks. Pink pigs, maybe. Um, who’s seen a pig in real life? Yeah? What are [00:05:00] pigs like in real life? Are they clean? No. No. Do they smell good? No. No.

[00:05:07] They’re pretty stinky, aren’t they? Yeah.

[00:05:12] They’re stinky. What, what’s their home like? Is it a clean place? No, it’s a really muddy place. It’s a really muddy place. And it has- Yeah … no flowers. It has no flowers. Let me, let me. Yeah. Well, yeah, Tarn, you can grab the piggy out. All right, this- Give the piggy. This is our piggy. Thanks. Now, these, this is some of Maz’s very precious jewelry.

[00:05:42] These are actual pearls. Now, if I was to give these to a piggy, what do you think the piggy would do? Stomp, stomp. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp into the mud. Make it stinky. It’ll make it stinky. Yeah. Um, [00:06:00] a pig doesn’t know how valuable pu- pearls are, do they? It’s not worth giving a pig pearls, ’cause they don’t know how valuable they are.

[00:06:17] Hang it on their nose. Hang it on their nose. Hang it on the nose? Okay, I can hang it on the nose.

[00:06:24] All right. Um, Jesus is saying that there are some things that are so precious that we need to be careful about who we give them to. Like a piggy. Like a piggy. Some, some people can be like piggies sometimes, and if we give them precious things, all they were gonna do is stomp them in the mud. So grown-ups, what are some precious things that the piggies might stomp in the mud?[00:07:00] [00:07:03] Yeah? Our pearls. Our pearls. What are some of our pearls? Our children. Our children. Yeah. If we, if we trust our children to the wrong people, they’re not gonna value them, for sure. What else? Money, yeah. If we are reckless with how we are, are generous, um, there’s a sense in which we’re not actually being good stewards of what’s giv- God’s given us.

[00:07:31] Caden, sitting up or sitting back at the chairs. Thank you Well, not yet. Um, I, I think it’s quite funny that in our society, we actually… This is a piggy bank from A&Z. But, um, we’ve actually made it a point that we use a piggy bank where we put precious things [00:08:00] into the piggy bank, and I think part of that’s because the piggy bank doesn’t know how valuable that is, and so it’s a safe place to leave it, which is a little bit ironic and a little bit funny.

[00:08:10] But I think it’s helpful that whenever we see a piggy bank, we need to remember that there’s some precious things that we don’t want to give to a piggy. All right? There’s some precious things that we don’t want to put in our piggy bank

[00:08:27] All righty Jesus moves on from, uh, talking about giving things to different people, and he moves on to talking about prayer and the way w- that we pray. Now, um, grown-ups, uh, I, I think we give the kids the chance to answer this question first, and then maybe if they’re bending the truth a little bit, um, I’ll come back to you and ask.

[00:08:51] Kids, when you want something from mom and dad, do you ask just once or do you ask lots of-[00:09:00] [00:09:02] I ask a thousand times. There, th- there’s my honest child right there. “I ask a thousand times.” Same. Who else asks a thousand times? Yeah? For sure

[00:09:13] Um, what about if you’ve lost your favorite toy? Fergie, can you come up to help me? Torren, stop. Can I help? You will help in a minute. Fergie, can you tell everyone, who’s this? Super Twin Mill. This is Super Twin Mill. This is Fergus’s favorite car. Hey, Fergus, when you lose Super Twin Mill, do you ask mommy and daddy to help you look for him?

[00:09:37] Um- Yeah? A thousand- Do you let us just look for a little bit? No. You make us look and… Oh, Torren, gentle. You make us look, and look, and look, and look, and seek, and seek, and seek, and seek until we find the thing that we are looking for. [00:10:00] And-

[00:10:03] Jesus also says that prayer, when we pray, it needs to be like knocking on the door. Can everybody knock on the ground for me? Whenever I say knock, I want you to knock on the ground Um, if you need something and mom and dad are in the bathroom You knock on the door … do, do you- you knock on the door. Do you just knock once?

[00:10:28] No. I knock a thousand times. Well, we tell you to just knock once, and maybe some other parents can identify with this as well. But do we really knock just once if we really need something and mom and dad are behind a closed door?

[00:10:47] No. We knock a thousand times. We keep knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking, don’t we? Yeah. Yeah. Um, Jesus is saying that when we pray to him, we need to pray [00:11:00] like that. We don’t just pray once. We pray lots of times. Can I help with the food things that cooking? Um, and we’ll get to those things later, Torren.

[00:11:12] You’ve got a sneak peek. Shh. Um, Jesus is saying that when we pray, we need to pray like that. We need to ask and we need to keep asking. Um, and we can, uh, he tells us that we can be certain that God will answer our prayers. Um, and that’s something that’s really important for us to remember. Now, you might be wondering, “But what about when it feels like God’s not answering my prayers?”

[00:11:38] No, like- And we’ll get to that, but we’ll get to that a little bit later, okay? Like crashing The next thing that Jesus tells about, us about is about bad or maybe okay dads and the good dad. Um, I like to think that I’m an okay dad. [00:12:00] And, and if I’m an okay dad… Uh, Torin, can you come up and help me with this one?

[00:12:07] Fish fingers. Come up. You’ll see in a minute. Fish fingers. Um, and Torin asks me for food because he’s hungry. Can you say, “Dad, I’m hungry. Can I have some bread?” I

[00:12:23] want some fish fingers. Can you say, “Dad- I want fish fingers. Oh, you’re not getting fish fingers, but- I

[00:12:30] want some bread, Daddy. I want some bread. Okay. Nice and loud so everyone can hear. I want some bread. You want some bread? Okay. Now-

[00:12:39] Some bread. There you go. That is no bread. That’s gold. That’s not bread, is it? What’s that? A rock. A gold. It’s a rock. It’s a gold. It’s a gold. If I’m an okay daddy, it would be so silly for me to give Torin a rock when he says he’s hungry. What should I give him instead? Bread. [00:13:00] Bread. Fish fingers. Fish fingers.

[00:13:00] Fish fingers? Yeah. Fish fin- Well, we’ll get to that. And I’m gonna help you with the fish fingers. If I’m an okay dad- And I love my son, and he asks for food, I’m gonna give him some bread. Uh- You want bread. Yep, you can take that. That’s fine. Yeah. Um, thanks, Tone. Sitting back down. Um- I want it. I want to keep it

[00:13:24] the, the image is a little bit ridiculous. Tone, sit down. Yeah. Sit down. Um, the image is a little bit ridiculous, right? Um, we know to give our kids the things they need that are going to nourish them, right? Uh, the things that are gonna help them grow. Caden, can you come help me with the next bit? Please help me with fish fingers.

[00:13:46] All right

[00:13:55] Can you say, “Daddy, I’m hungry. Can I have some fish fingers?” [00:14:00] Daddy, I’m hungry. Can I have fish fingers? What should I give him? Fish fingers. Fish fingers? Are you sure? You give him a finger. That’s a little bit cheeky. What about if I give him a cheeky snake instead? Snake is funny.

[00:14:22] It’s, it’s silly, right? A good dad or an okay dad doesn’t give his kid a snake when he’s asking for- Daddy, can I have a snake? Uh, later. Um, when he’s asking for food. Um, for the grownups, you might be interested that, like, this, uh, might not so much be like a land snake that we think of, but it might actually be more like an eel or a bottom-feeder fish.

[00:14:45] And in Jewish culture, and Jesus will talk about this later in Matthew 13, um, those fish were unclean. They look like serpents, and so the word can sort of, can be used to describe them as well. Um, but, [00:15:00] uh, Jesus is potentially not talking about something that’s physically dangerous, but perhaps spiritually dangerous to his kids, right?

[00:15:08] A good dad isn’t going to give something spiritually dangerous to his kid to eat when he asks for food. He’s going to give something clean. So what should I give, what should I give Caden instead? Fish fingers. A finger. Some fish fingers? Ah. There you go. You can take those fish fingers. Can I eat them?

[00:15:35] No I like to think that I’m an okay dad most of the time. Sure. But I’m sure that I stuff it up all the time. And if you ask my boys, I’m sure they’ll tell you how much I stuff up being a good dad all the time. You stuff up 100 times. Yeah. Thank you. Um- Very [00:16:00] rare … and in fact, I know because of what God says- Boys

[00:16:10] I know that because of what God says in His word, um, I’m actually bad right down to my core, right? I’m not just a bad dad sometimes and a good dad sometimes. I’m bad right down to the center of who I am. Um, I sin against God and I reject Him, I ignore Him, and I disobey Him. Um, and yet I can tell what I’m supposed to give my kids to care for them, right?

[00:16:41] And if God is the really good dad, the one really good dad who never stuffs it up Do you reckon he knows what we need? Yes. Yes? Grown-ups, do you guys reckon God knows what we need if he’s our good dad? [00:17:00] Yes.

[00:17:05] Yeah. He knows we want bread. Jesus is saying that we can trust that God is a good dad, and that when we ask for things, he will give them to us. Now, that can, brings us back to our question, right? What about when we’ve been praying, and we keep praying, and we keep praying, and we keep praying, and it seems like God’s not answering us.

[00:17:28] What’s going on? They’re gonna crash in a car. Well, I think there’s a couple of things going on that, that, uh, might be happening when this happens. On the h- the one hand, and kids, this, this is really important. On the one hand, it might be that we’re asking for a bad thing. And God, as our good dad, isn’t going to give us things that aren’t helpful, uh, or that could turn, uh, could hurt us in some way.[00:18:00] [00:18:00] If Torin had said, “Dad, I’m hungry. Can you give me a rock?” Should I give him a rock?

[00:18:11] Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes! ‘Cause, ’cause I know he can’t eat a rock. What if, what if Cayden had said, “Dad, I’m hungry. Can I have a snake? Can I have a cheeky snake?”

[00:18:28] Never once, no If I’m a good dad, I won’t give my child something that won’t nourish him or her. Um, and sometimes I think it’s the same with God. He won’t give us things that are bad for us, even when we ask for them. And so sometimes when we pray and it feels like God’s not answering us, maybe the answer’s no, but for a good reason.

[00:18:57] But I think also [00:19:00] sometimes when God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers or seems to be saying, “Wait,” um, there’s actually another greater good that needs to come from Him saying no or saying, “Wait. Not yet.” Perhaps there’s a lesson that we’re still in the middle of learning, uh, and if God gives us the good thing we’re asking for straight away, we’ll lose the greater good of learning that lesson.

[00:19:26] Yay, I love you. Or maybe God knows that if He gives us that gift, we might forget that He’s the one that gave us, gave it to us, and so it might actually cause us to stop relying on Him.

[00:19:44] It might mean that we stop asking him for things And start to think that we can do it on our own. I want this Lego. And I think those are all reasons that God can say no to some of the things that we’re asking for. [00:20:00] Grown-ups, I would love for you to have a think about the things that you’ve, uh, been asking God for or have asked God for in the past.

[00:20:11] Um, are there things where later on you saw the greater good that God w- uh, brought by saying no or later to your prayers? Does anyone have anything that they might want to share from those things?

[00:20:35] I know that’s a pretty big question, grown-ups And i, and if the answer’s no, that’s okay But let me encourage you to think about that, and maybe this isn’t the context to share that, but when we think about raising our kids in prayer and in knowing and loving God, it’s helpful for us to model those times [00:21:00] when we’ve seen God’s greater good come from Him saying no or wait.

[00:21:05] And it’s actually really helpful for us to be honest about that with, with our kids. And when I say our kids, that can be your kids or that can be your GC’s kids. Um, but it’s really helpful that we use those opportunities that God has given us to learn to teach our kids to be patient in prayer as well

[00:21:30] Now, maybe you’re in this situation in the moment, at the moment. Maybe you’re asking for things and it feels like God’s saying no or saying wait. Let me encourage you to do two things if that’s you. Number one, keep praying. God’s a good dad who wants to give his children good gifts

[00:21:54] But we keep knocking. That persistence in prayer is one of the things that actually changes [00:22:00] us

[00:22:03] If you aren’t receiving what you’re asking for, maybe just remind yourself that just like we say no to our kids when they ask for things that they think are good but that we know might harm them, God might be doing the same thing for you as well Now, the final part of our passage, uh, is what we commonly call the golden rule.

[00:22:28] What… Does anyone know what the golden rule is? Kids, does anyone know the golden rule?

[00:22:40] That’s all right. We don’t, we might not use this language so much anymore, um, but the golden rule is do unto others or treat other people the way you want to be treated. Um, it’s actually a little bit funny that this is being put with this sermon. It, it comes at the end of this [00:23:00] passage, but this standalone statement is actually a summary of all of Jesus’ moral teaching in, uh, the Sermon on the Mount up to this point.

[00:23:10] And so it’s a bit funny that it comes h- here in this sermon because next week we’re actually gonna jump back into chapter six, and we’re gonna keep hearing about some more of Jesus’ teaching on this. And so we’re coming, kind of coming to the summary, um, before we get to the end of what it’s summarizing.

[00:23:27] Um, but perhaps, uh, it’s, it’ll suffice to say for today, um, f- uh, and this is a quote from R.T. France in the Tyndale New Testament co- commentary. He says, “As a general principle to guide us in specific ethical decisions, the golden rule has not been bettered. In the positive form propounded by Jesus, it makes a very far-reaching demand for unselfish love in action.”[00:24:00] [00:24:00] Kids

[00:24:04] What that means for you guys is that y- if you are ever faced by a situation and you don’t know what the right thing to do is, one of the best ways you can try to start figuring that out and do what God wants you to do is by asking yourself, “If that person was me, how would I like to be treated in this situation?”

[00:24:35] We’ve gone through a lot. Let me remind you, we don’t give special things to a mad muffin.

[00:24:48] We don’t give precious pearls to stinky pigs

[00:24:55] When we pray, we want to ask and keep asking. [00:25:00] We want to knock

[00:25:05] And keep knocking. And we want to seek and search, and we want to keep looking How we doing?

[00:25:19] Our God is a good dad who won’t give us a rock when we ask for bread- No, that’s snake … won’t give us a snake when we ask for fish- And fingers … and won’t give us these things even if we ask for them- Yes, he will … ’cause he knows what we need. I said fingers

[00:25:44] And finally, as we think about how God wants us to act, one of the best ways we can figure that out if we have no specific instructions from God is ask ourselves, “How would that other person like [00:26:00] us to treat them in this situation?”

[00:26:04] Great job, kids