Sermon On The Mount

The Assurance of Answers

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 18-25

Genre:

Track: 18

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 18

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee that the government is upon Thy shoulders and that in these troubled days we have the assurance that it is not the will nor the purpose of man that shall prevail, that Thy judgment, Thy justice and Thy plan for the redemption of all things through Jesus Christ. Give us grace so to walk that we may always with a holy boldness walk by faith and trust in Thee and know that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our scripture is from Matthew 7:7-11. Our subject: The Assurance of Answers to Prayer. Matthew 7:7-11.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

The Sermon on the Mount is action oriented and therefore it is also prayer oriented. In this passage we have assurances given to us concerning prayer. Our Lord’s brother James in his epistle gives us like assurances and commands, he says in James 1:5-8 and verse 17:

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.

8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

“ Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

Our Lord’s words here concerning prayer are commands. The same is true of what James has to say. We are told that we are to ask in faith nothing wavering, that if we waver, if we are uncertain as we go to God in prayer we are like flotsam and jetsam in the sea that the waves of the sea drive to and fro and carry about and as such we are not heard by God. We are commanded to be instant in prayer also by scripture, for to be lazy or slow in prayer means that we prefer our way to Gods and that we trust in ourselves. Hence our Lord’s words are very blunt:

““Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”

Three requirements in the imperative, ask, seek, knock. Moreover something is required of us as we ask seek and knock. We have this in verses thirteen and fourteen: enter into the straight gate. We are required to have a disciplined life. Then again we are given a warning in verse fifteen: beware of false prophets so that prayer requires of us a disciplined life and a true faith. Then we are required to ask, seek and knock, to be instant in prayer. The meanings of verses seven and eight were never stated more clearly than they were by an American scholar of about a century and a quarter or so ago: D.D. Whedon. And Whedon’s comments on verses seven and eight are worth quoting in detail and I quote:

“Ask and it shall be given you. Under the three fold symbol of asking, seeking and knocking all the expressions of our desire are included. Rising in the force of climax, our bounteous heavenly Father has a corresponding response to each: for the asking, he has gifts, for the seeking, discovery, for the knocking, admissions. Coming into the kingdom of God and under His paternity we have the child’s rights of petition, gifts, even the highest gifts, the Holy Spirit and much more all lower gifts, suitable for us will He grant and the only limitation of our asking is that we confine ourselves to the proper relation of the child and the only limitation of the gift and so the promise is that God will only give what is suitable to His character as father to grant. The child cannot expect to command the favors out of his proper sphere or at the improper time. Of these the parent is the wise judge so the child of the heavenly Father must not interpret this promise licentiously as if God would obey his orders at the moment he chooses. The promise only affirms that unlike the gentile he enjoys the privilege of accepted prayer and receives the return that the omnipotent Father sees best. Seek and find. To seek is a stronger act then to ask. Not everything is obtained by the means and at the moment of uttered supplication. What we are to seek first, we are told, in chapter five verse thirty three, the kingdom of God and His righteousness. In opposition to all those things that the Gentiles seek and in that kingdom revelations of wisdom and goodness of experience and attainment are granted to him that earnestly employs his day and strength in seeking.” Unquote.

Whedon’s comment is very important because too often the temptation nowadays is to associate our Lord’s words here with modern psychological claptrap like the power of positive thinking and possibility thinking. The emphasis here is not that it is our asking, our thinking that produces the results but that we as children are to go to the father that alone can give us all these good gifts. Now nothing is better adapted to make us ready to pray then the conviction that we are going to be heard. If we do not believe that God hears and answers prayers we are not going to be very prone to prayer. If we think our words are just going up into space as it were our prayers are going to be vague or meaningless. We are told to pray as we pray to a father when we ask him for what we need. True prayer is not a last resort but a first resort, just as a child’s first thought when they want something is to run to the father and mother and say can I have this, through prayer thus is a first resort. Our Lord then after commanding us to ask, seek and knock and assuring us that we will be heard and answered says:

“9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”

Now our Lord was a Galilean, in Galilee the staples of the everyday diet were bread and fish. So our Lord is talking about what He had earlier taught his disciples to pray for, give us this day our daily bread. And he says can you imagine a father who when his child runs up and wants food will give him a stone or a snake. The idea of course is ridiculous and so He says:

11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

We with all our sins and people we know who are unconverted and are positively evil and yet even such people will regularly try to be good to their children, provide them with food, and by no means give them a stone or a serpent. Now our Lord says if a human father will do so much how dare you not expect more from your Father which is in heaven? How much more will your Father that is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him? Now at this point when we turn to Luke there is a difference between what Luke says, our Lord declared, and what Matthew says. Well scholars are prone to making a problem out of such duplicate texts, there really is no problem, our Lord did repeat Himself. He traveled all over Judea and Galilee and again and again made the same points, taught the same parables, as He instructed people from one end of Palestine to the other, and at times in terms of a particular context He made a different emphasis. So we have Luke’s account in Luke 11:5-13 of our Lord in a different place giving similar teaching. This time we are told the entire teaching was specifically on prayer, let’s turn to Luke 11:5-13.

“And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;

6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?

7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.

8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

Now as you can see there is a difference in this occasion in what our Lord has to say. There is a difference in the gifts, in the other it’s gifts we need day by day for our living, our daily bread. Here it is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Moreover on this occasion our Lord begins with a parable of the friend at midnight and He adds another illustration when He says:

“12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?”

In other words our Lord is even more emphatic on this occasion. What is the difference and what are we to make of this? Why the gift of the Holy Spirit on this occasion. The contrast in Matthew is daily bread, daily lives, and all the needs we have. But in Luke it is daily bread and then the Holy Spirit, quite a difference. The meaning is this: the parable of the friend at midnight tells us the story. What if you were disturbed at midnight by a friend who says there is no place at any of the motels, I’ve been on the road all day, I had an accident, I’ve been delayed, I could not get here until now, I haven’t had anything to eat because it took me so long to get my car working, could you put me up and feed me. Well you will be annoyed but you will let him in because he is your friend. You will wish that it won’t happen again tomorrow night but you are disturbed the same way as I have been almost every night this past week by a phone call around midnight and then phone calls as early as five a.m. the next morning. The sad fact is that people call before eight o’clock to get the reduced rate and they don’t realize that before eight o’clock eastern standard time is before five o’clock our time. So it is annoying, it can be, but you don’t show it do you. You are very tired but you do get up, you provide for them, and you are courteous on the phone.

Our Lord has a point in that illustration with which He begins this teaching on prayer and now what about us, all right we have a problem, so we go banging on the gates of heaven with our prayer saying Lord, help me, bail me out I’m in trouble and it’s at midnight as it were, and what does He say? He will give them the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a remarkable statement. Not only does the Lord say I will provide for you in your emergencies, when you are like that man who beats at your door at midnight the Lord God will do the same for you and will not only hear and answer you but He will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit so that He who moves us to pray becomes himself our comforter and assurance. So that we are not outside of Him as it were but He becomes a part of our lives. And so our Lord is saying just as a child is to be confident of his parents as far as his daily needs are concerned so that a child never stops for a moment to say maybe my father and mother are having troubles with their bills and maybe work isn’t too good now and perhaps they may not be able to make a payment on the place so it’s possible that I may not get my meal, no, the child assumes it. The child goes knowing his father and mother love him to be fed, he asks without a doubt. This is why our Lord says that we are to become as little children in relationship to God the Father and so He says God gives us the spirit in our emergencies so that we may have that kind of childlike trust, so that when we’re up against it and we feel as though we’re banging at the gate at midnight when we will be most unwelcome the Holy Spirit in us and through us leads us to cry out Abba, Father knowing that He will hear and answer our prayer.

So that our Lord teaches us in these two incidents to pray without ceasing, to ask, to seek and to knock and He makes clear that our Father will give us every good gift as He, a Father, sees our needs. And He will if we indeed go to Him. Give us the trust and confidence in prayer so that we are not unstable and double minded and tossed by every wind of the air and the wave of the ocean, but we know our Father we go to Him. We ask and we are heard, we seek and we find, we knock and it is opened. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou hast taught us to pray and that we can come to Thee with all the assurance of a child to a father knowing that Thou art ever ready to hear and Thou hast given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to enable us to pray freely, crying Abba, Father. Make us ever zealous and joyful in prayer that we might indeed receive Thine every good gift. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson, first of all, yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It is a very common opinion among liberal scholars that not only is that true of Matthew according to them but true of all the gospels, that the evangelists collected those sayings that were of interest to them and put them down in the order that they wanted. However while there is a grain of truth to that in that each of the gospels were written by a particular man in terms of a particular concern and audience so that they had a particular audience in mind just as when a speaker gets up he may give the same speech two or three time as our Lord spoke repeatedly on the same thing to many people, the speaker will vary it in terms of the audience.

But beyond that we know that this was not so because there is no way of explaining away the Sermon on the Mount in terms of its entire structure and content, it’s on a mount, that’s a very significant fact. Where did Moses get the law? From Mount Sinai and he speaks about the law, Moses said thus said the Lord when he came down from the mount and our Lord said something no rabbi or teacher had ever dared to say, I say unto you. So that at the conclusion we are told that the people were astonished because he taught not as the scribes and Pharisees but as one having authority. And by authority they mean in the absolute sense, so He was saying Moses heard the word of God from the mountain top, I from another mountain, as God incarnate give you the word. So the whole of it is so carefully structured in terms of that. Moses gives the Ten Commandments as the summation of the whole law and then he gives more, our Lord gives the beatitudes. Well the beatitudes or blessings are the pronouncement of a blessing upon people is something that in the Old Testament was clear that was something that only God could do. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord shine his countenance upon you and so on, which was the main benediction of the Old Testament, it was the Lord who blesses. But Jesus pronounces the blessings now. So both the words that He dare speaks and the setting are so obviously tailor made for each other and a unified purpose that here God incarnate speaks and makes clear the meaning of His law, that you have to say that if Matthew put it together and invented it he was better than our Lord because He was able to take materials and piece them together in so remarkable a manner.

The unity there is so clear and in such a great harmony with the setting. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not we shall continue in our next meeting with our study of the Sermon on the Mount and in particular with the golden rule, one of the most misunderstood verses of the bible which in one form or another appears all over the world in a number of cultures and religions and yet with a very radically different meaning, so we’ll deal with the golden rule in particular detail because it is so very important.