Sermon: Ask, Seek, Knock

More Than Just Prayer
#1731
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 21-Oct-23; 81 minutes 2023-10-21

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Many of you probably read or heard of the small book (it is actually only about the size of an article or a pamphlet), but it is called, A Message To Garcia. It was written in 1899 by Elbert Hubbard and copies of which from the very beginning went out like hot cakes. They today number in the scores of millions of copies that were made of that little pamphlet.

When it comes down to it, A Message To Garcia was a rant written by Hubbard who had had a trying day, attempting, as he put it, to train some delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radioactive. Those are his words. He was inspired to write this screed after struggling and failing to motivate people to do some necessary work. Reading it one can feel his frustration over people's innate laziness and unwillingness to simply get the job done.

The title, A Message To Garcia, derives from an occurrence during the Spanish—American War. And if you know your history a little bit, you know that occurred right at the end of the 19th century and it basically focused on Cuba. That is where we got Guantanamo Bay and all that came out of the Spanish—American war. As Hubbard writes,

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fortresses of Cuba. No one knew where; no mail or telegraph message could reach him. The president must secure his co-operation and quickly! What to do? Someone said to the president, "There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and was given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How the fellow by the name of Rowan took the letter, sealed it up in an oil skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba, from an open boat disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot and delivered his letter to Garcia are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia. Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where's he at?" By the eternal, there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book learning young men need nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebra which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do the thing: carry a message to Garcia.

Now, you can see why I said it was a rant, because he was frustrated.

This short article has been used for over a century to inspire young people to buckle down and to do hard work without whining or wasting time or asking even pointless questions. It was that age's "Just do it!"

At Ambassador College, when I was there in the 80s, it was invoked as commentary on Christ's statement about going the extra mile, which is mentioned there in Matthew 5:41. We trainees in service to the church, according to certain teachers there at Ambassador College, needed to be people who could be counted on to do the work with initiative, zeal, and full effort, no matter the conditions or persecutions we might face. So A Message To Garcia was required reading out there at the time. I never got a book. I do not think they ever passed it out as a book, but I did get it a Xerox copy.

Elbert Hubbard concludes,

Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village, in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such. He is needed and needed badly. The man who can carry a message to Garcia.

Now, whatever we may think of Hubbard's words today, it does make a point that good diligent laborers—good employees—are hard to find. And the rare diamond among workers we find is truly a discovery to be appreciated and promoted and highly rewarded. Such a person goes above and beyond, walks the second mile, puts all he has into completing his mission. Such people meet their goals and they succeed in life because, to use Solomon's phrase in Ecclesiastes 9:10, "Whatever their hands find to do, they do it with their might." They put their whole body and soul into whatever it is that they are given to do and they do it, as far as we understand, diligently and without complaint because they have a great deal of self-respect and want to get the thing done and to do it right now.

Today, we will look into a familiar section of Christ's Sermon on the Mount that has this theme of dedication, dogged effort, and diligence, and wanting to complete a task to the fullest as its background. It is there in the background. It is really not ever said out loud, but the idea is always there that the person who fulfills what Christ says in Matthew 7:7-12 is such a diligent person. That section is the well known ask, seek, knock passage in which Jesus answers an unspoken question. And that is, how can a mere human being fulfill the difficult expectations of God? Ask, seek, and knock, His reply, is just the beginning of the answer. But it hints at something far deeper, far greater, far more spiritual than that.

Let us go into Matthew 7 in the Sermon on the Mount and read this section.

Matthew 7:7-12 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him? Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

Now, this is not a hard section. It appears to be an elementary, straightforward bit of instruction, mostly on prayer, especially by talking about asking and seeking, that sort of thing. It uses three very simple imperative verbs, commands—ask, seek, knock—and those are such simple words that they do not require much explanation. We all know what ask means. We all know what seek means. We all know what knock means. So there is nothing there in English or in Greek that really is intriguing and moves our understanding forward. We know what they are.

We look at this section and we see that verse 8 essentially repeats verse 7. And so we get two very similar statements by Jesus. These three things—ask, seek, knock—and they are given three responses: find, opened; or in verse 8, it is received, finds, and opened again. So we have there something that is readily understandable, that does not need a whole lot of explanation.

We look at the next two verses, 9 and 10, and we see that they are obviously rhetorical questions that demand the answer: No. What good parent would ever give his son a stone when he asked for bread? That would be stupid. You want him to break his teeth? Or would he give him a serpent if he asked for a fish? No, of course not. I mean, in this context, serpents are unclean, whereas fish are clean. And then verse 11 confirms the proposition that God will give us good things. He will answer our requests by supplying us with things that are beneficial to us. He will provide out of His providence any good thing that we need that will be helpful to us.

And verse 12, which we know is the Golden Rule, is a general conclusion that our response to God's kindness in His providence is to imitate His goodness toward others, which is as Jesus says, that is the whole aim of the teaching of the Old Testament. To teach us to be good to others, to be kind and loving. So sermon's over, right? I guess if I were just to leave it there on its very surface explanation, we could get out early. And really this simple explanation is how most people understand this section—on a very surface level.

And sadly, many commentaries go no further than this. They do not look to see if there is more that Jesus was actually trying to tell us. It is a shame really that so few recognize and respond to Jesus' teaching style. And if I could put it in just a few words, it is that He packs profound wisdom in simple expressions and everyday illustrations and they are multi-layered. You can go from simple to the most profound things by just peeling off a layer or two and seeing how it can apply in a deeper way, a more spiritual way.

We do ourselves a disservice if we read it only in its most simplest form, most simplest explanation, most simple understanding, because so much insight and wisdom lie beneath that surface explanation. We need to plunge into its depths with the assistance of the Holy Spirit and get the lessons that are there for the taking that will help our spiritual growth.

As a matter of fact, this is the lesson of Ezekiel 47, verses 3 through 6, which I want to read just to remind you. I think about this a lot, especially when I am preparing a sermon, because it motivates me when I study to try to bring something to you that is new and interesting and helpful. We will start in verse 1 because it is necessary background.

Ezekiel 47:1-2 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar. He brought me out by way of the north gate, and led me around on the outside to the outer gateway that faces east; and there was water running out of the right side.

The key here is that there is water coming out of the door of the Temple and the Temple, of course, is God's house. That is where God lives. So the water is flowing from God out toward the east. You remember that east of Eden is where Adam and Eve were kicked and Nod was even further east. This is water going from God's Temple out to the people who are no longer in relationship with God. So we can see it as His Spirit. Obviously, water is a symbol of His Spirit. But we can also see it as knowledge. And therefore, if we can see it as both the Holy Spirit and knowledge, we can think of it as all the gifts of God that flow out from Him by His Spirit.

Ezekiel 47:3-5 Then when the man went out to the east with the line in his hand, he measured one thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters [the prophet Ezekiel was walking in this river flowing out from the Temple of God and he got to one thousand cubits]; the water came up to my ankles. Again he measured one thousand and brought me through the waters; the water came up to my knees [it is getting deeper]. Again he measured one thousand and brought me through; the water came up to my waist. [So this is getting deeper all the time as he goes each 1,000 cubits here.] Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross; for the water was too deep, water in which one must swim, a river that could not be crossed.

So we see in this illustration, this prophetic illustration, that God's gifts, the things that God is willing to give from Himself and from His providence, from His deep reservoir of knowledge and wisdom and inspiration and all those things, is limitless. But we can only go in as far as we can understand. There will be things, most likely, that in this life we will never understand. They are too profound. They are too spiritual. We would, if we get out that far and try to do our dog paddle, we would sink and die because we just could not understand it. It would be too marvelous for us. It would be way beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp.

But that is the way we need to think about God's truth; that we should never be satisfied with just a simple explanation because God's truth is so layered and deep that there is always more to learn. This is part of the reason why you could have two or three speakers use the same verse and get different but agreeing things out of them because they see them at different levels; and it is not that one is wrong and the others are right or however you might think. They might all be right and all three points might be profound.

But that is the way God works. He is never going to give us just a simple explanation, even though that may be all we need. There is always something more to understand from God's revelation. And that is one of the things that makes Him so awesome! That He could express things so vividly that even the simplest among us can understand it. But even the wisest among us can get something out of too that may be far deeper, far more spiritual.

Back to Matthew 7. When we simplify matters too much or when we are satisfied with just the simple explanation, we cut off possibilities of interpretation and application and we restrict what we may potentially learn and understand from the instruction. That is why we could make a lifetime study of God's Word and never reach the end. Because though we may read the Book from cover to cover, let us say once a year or whatever, we are still not going to get all that is there, all that good wisdom, the great things that God puts in there because it is bottomless. If we do that, that is, if we are satisfied with just the surface explanation of a passage, it eventually stifles our growth. We stop at just the easy thing, we do not take it any farther and we do not grow. The fruit that we can produce from that simple explanation is limited.

But if we keep growing and expanding our wisdom and understanding by deeper study, then we have the potential to grow a lot and please God with the amount of fruit that we produce because our understanding has deepened. So we need to keep reaching deeper, as Paul puts it in Romans 11:33, where he marvels over "the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God." Some of it, as he goes on to say, is so deep that he says it is past finding out. Not even a scholarly man and such a deep intellectual as the apostle Paul could figure it out. But it is there in all the facets that God created in it.

But even if we cannot understand some of those deep things, that should not keep us from seeking it. God loves to see growth. God loves to see people's understanding expand because when the understanding expands, usually that becomes a motivation for behavior to get better, to become more focused, to be more like His own conduct.

Back here in Matthew 7 part of the depth that we can begin to pursue here concerns its placement in the chapter. Some commentaries and preachers even treat the various paragraphs of the Sermon on the Mount as just separate teachings artificially culled from Jesus' entire ministry and arranged by Matthew as a continuous address to His disciples, but really, because they were given at different times and in different locations for different reasons, they really have little bearing on each other.

That is how some people approach the Sermon on the Mount. They think of each separate teaching, each separate paragraph, as kind of like a pearl on a string. And all these pearls are lined up, but they really do not connect to each other. They are just pearls of wisdom and you can get something out of it, but they do not really apply to one another. And once we accept this kind of organization, we begin to lose a lot because God systematically, through Matthew, put these things one right after the other to be a process of learning and growth.

So we have Jesus' commands here in Matthew 7:7-12 immediately following the very difficult-to-follow teaching on judgment, meaning it is difficult for us to do these things because we are so human. Let us read verses 1 through 6 again to see what is basically the introduction to verses 7 through verse 12.

Matthew 7:1-6 "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck out of your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

What we see here in these first six verses is a very hard saying in all of its aspects. It is hard because judgment is something we do badly—all of us do badly—because we have got the big ego that always places judgment of ourselves as the most important thing and we usually do not do the job properly. We are not harsh enough with ourselves. We usually give ourselves a pass and judge other people harshly when we should be taking that same attitude toward ourselves and judging them mercifully and forgivingly. So this is a hard thing.

Jesus urges us here in verses 1 through 6 to make incisive evaluations of people and circumstances, but without condemnation, which is very difficult to do because we always want to take it the next step. He also tells us to remember that how we judge others will factor in God's judgment of us, which should temper our judgment of other people. But God is invisible and we often do our judgment as if He did not exist. But Jesus assures us that that is going to rebound against us if we continue to judge other people very harshly.

He also says here in this paragraph that we are to judge ourselves first and most harshly knowing that our sins may be and probably are far greater, that is, logs, than our brother sins, which are specks. At least that is the attitude we should have, that we are humble, that we are spiritually poor—as He started out the Sermon on the Mount on that point—and in great need of forgiveness. We are then to use our experience in judging ourselves and overcoming those sins to help our brethren overcome their faults. We are to put out a helping hand and say, "Look, I've gone through this and I know it was tough, but you're so much more spiritually attuned to God than I am and you can do this."

And finally, He says, we are to be able to judge others' readiness to hear the truth and act appropriately. Putting it in modern terms, we are to learn how to read the room correctly in our evangelizing and our witnessing so that we do not blunder into conflict and harm, and perhaps even persecution because we could do it easily if we say the wrong thing.

So these are not easy things to do properly. And I am sure the disciples were wondering, like was said elsewhere, "How does a person enter the Kingdom of God? Is it even possible if You're asking us to do these very hard things, very unhuman things?" Because humans with their base nature are not going to do these type of things. They are going to put themselves in the best light and do whatever they feel like they should rather than actually what they should according to God's judgment of a matter.

Jesus' instruction in Matthew 7:7-12 immediately follows this. As the foolish, the weak, and the base of the world, it is very clear that we lack many of the gifts and skills that we need to actually fulfill Christ's commands. We are not up to it. We may be prepared for those things, but in many cases, we just do not have what it takes to do these things, at least properly. We can try, and that is a good thing to try, but oftentimes we just fall short. It is part of being human. We are inadequate. And even when we get the Holy Spirit and we begin to have a relationship with God, we are still inadequate for many of the challenges that we have to face.

And so the question is, how can we do this? How can we get what we need to fulfill these requirements? I mean, we could go further back into the Sermon on the Mount about not worrying about tomorrow or about loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving our enemies, and praying for those who persecute us. How in the world are we going to do that? I hate that guy. So Jesus' answer is in this very simple, ask, seek, knock instruction, but it is so much more than what appears on the surface. Do not get me wrong. I do not think you are all prophets or whatever. It is like Daniel. God occasionally allows us to be thrown into the lion's den on this or that or the other thing. But unlike Daniel, who handled it with aplomb, we are woefully short of the spiritual tools and strengths we need to handle the situation. We do not have the faith and the godliness and whatever it is that Daniel had that we do not have, that got him through that very severe trial.

So Jesus urges us to ask, seek, and knock. It is described here as a way of life because the verb forms are present imperatives. It is basically telling us we always have to be asking, we always have to be seeking, we always have to be knocking, in order to gain what we need to fight these battles, to overcome our faults, to do whatever it is that Jesus requires of us. And the reason why it is a lifelong practice as a way of life is because this is the way godly character is developed. It is not developed in a minute. It is not developed with one request. It is not developed with one pursuit of something. It is not developed by merely knocking once and getting an answer. It is developed over a long period of time, a whole lifetime with a lot of effort and endurance so that we can gather as much as of the character of God that we possibly can in the time that we have.

And so what we have, then, at the end of the paragraph, is verse 12, which is the Golden Rule. As I mentioned earlier, that is the response that we give to God and give to others as we do the asking, the seeking, and the knocking. Because God gives to us and we are in turn supposed to do good things for other people. And so it becomes a corollary of the second commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." That is, the character that you have grown over a lifetime developed in tandem with God over a lifetime, and it comes out as love toward neighbor.

It is interesting to think of this, that what ask, seek, knock is actually about is the first great commandment, as you will see. And the Golden Rule is, like I said, a corollary of the second great commandment: our response to our love of God and God's love for us.

Let us go deeper into ask, seek, knock. First, ask. The most obvious command, here, as related to prayer is ask. That is what we do when we come before God. Normally it is full of asking because we need a lot of stuff. We need a lot of things that only God can give. Whether we use the word ask or request or pray does not matter. They are all basic synonyms of one another. They all mean basically the same thing. Like I said, these words are not hard to understand. And from the mention of the Father in verse 11, "Your Father in heaven will give good things to those who ask Him," it is obvious that the asking is of God, that we come before Him and ask Him for these things that we need.

Although the principle of asking an authority figure or whatever for help in a certain matter, the principle is true that you can get a lot of things, a lot of good things, get a lot of advantages by simply asking for help. So that is true too. But that is on a lower level than what I am trying to teach here today. I mean, it is very clear from chapter 6, when Jesus gave us the Model Prayer, that the first line is, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name," we are to address Him as the great King, the great Potentate of the universe. We are to come before Him for the things that are necessary for our lives. So we petition Him, the great King, for what we need and Jesus promises that the Father will give it. Give it, that is what it actually says, "ask and it will be given to you."

Now, this is later on in the paragraph defined as good things, that is the it that we will get from God. It is simply a beneficial thing. It is not necessarily any one thing or any particular thing, at least as it is taught right here in Matthew 7. But whatever it is, it will be a good thing and we can be very happy that God does not give us bad things. God gives good things. Now it, as we see it here, could be physical things. But Jesus' focus is on spiritual gifts that help us mature as God's children. Notice that that is the what we call the superstructure of this. This is in the way of children asking a parent for what is necessary. So these are the terms on which this whole passage is built. It is about this child-to-God relationship.

Or as in verses 9 and 10, it is very clear there that He is using an illustration of a child-to-a-parent in a physical family, that sort of relationship. And so the the object of a parent in relation to his or her child is to provide what the child needs in order to mature and live a life on its own. Right? That is what a parent is supposed to do. They are supposed to teach and provide and help that child mature into a human being with great potential and all the skills that are necessary for adult life. I know I kind of worked my way through that with great effort. But that is the idea here. We have got to then take that physical illustration and move it up to the spiritual.

What is being talked about here is God as the Father, our Parent, doing the same thing as a physical parent would do for a physical child. But for us, we are His spiritual children, and He is giving us gifts and making sure that we have the opportunities to grow and mature to become like Him, to become a God being. Because that is the ultimate goal. That is His first object, or first goal in our lives. That is what He wants for us. He wants to bring us up to His level. And so these things that He is doing by giving us good gifts are all part of that job that He has given Himself.

If we were to read Luke 11:13, where this same teaching appears in Luke's gospel, we will find that He says, rather than, "If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him," instead there it says, "How much more will your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" So this puts a little bit different angle on things that what we are talking about here is gifts of God's Spirit. That is the primary thing that Jesus is intending here, that these are things that only God can give and only God can give to a person who already has His Spirit. These are true spiritual gifts that will help us mature as Christians, as children of God.

Let us look at another couple places. Let us go to John 15, among the last things that Jesus tells His disciples. And if you go through this sermon that He gave them from chapter 13 on through chapter 17, you will find that He mentions asking "in His name" many times and assuring them that if you ask in My name, God will give you these things. But just notice here the context and what kind of things He is talking about that we ask Him for.

John 15:5-8 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples."

What are we asking for here in this context? What is the disciple asking for? To put it simply, it is the ability to bear much fruit. It is the ability to please the Father by growth and producing fruit. Those are the things that the Father is very willing to give because that is His goal. He wants us to grow and mature and produce fruit. Because if we do, everybody is happy, everybody is pleased. The Father rejoices.

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you."

Again, this assurance that God is going to give us what we ask for is in the context of bearing fruit. It is spiritual growth here that He is talking about. Those are the things that God is very willing to give us.

John 16:22-24 [He says] "Therefore you now have sorrow [He is going to be arrested and killed]; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."

Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Our joy is only going to be full in the resurrection from the dead when we have completed the course. But all along the way, if we are doing what we should be doing, which is asking the Father for the things we need spiritually to reach that goal; and great! we will all be joyful as firstfruits in the resurrection. That is the type of thing that we need. Those are the type of things we have assurance from Jesus Christ and God the Father that we will get because He is willing to give it.

Let us go to James 1.

James 1:5-7 If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

We have to really want it and we have to want it for the right reasons. But if we ask in faith, he says here He will give it to us liberally and without reproach. It is there, we need but ask in sincerity so that we will use it in the spiritual growth that He wants to see in us.

So while He will give us physical things that we need, the emphasis here is in Matthew 7 is on the spiritual things that we need to be able to fulfill the expectations and commands of God.

Let us go on to seek. Seek is different from ask. Asking is verbal. It is part of a communication that we do through our mouths while seeking is not. Seeking is an action of mind and body to look or search for something, or discover something, or to gain something that is greatly desired. It is an effort. It is a labor. It is a work towards some intended end, whether it is to find a thing or to make proper use of a thing or to reach a thing—a goal. And Jesus has already told us in the Sermon on the Mount what we are supposed to seek. That is back in chapter 6, verse 33, "But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." If we seek the priority things, then we do not have to worry about the physical things.

So we are supposed to go after, to look forward to, to try to gain this thing which the Kingdom of God sits at the top of the list and His righteousness is right beside it. Those are things that we do side by side because we are certainly not going to be in the Kingdom or enter the Kingdom without His righteousness. So they are very much the same thing, the same goal that we are searching for—seeking.

Now, Solomon too gives us an example of things that we can seek. Let us go back to Proverbs 3.

Proverbs 3:13-18 Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand, in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who retain her.

So seek wisdom.

Proverbs 4:5-9 "Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she will promote you; she will bring you honor, when you embrace her. She will place on your head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory she will deliver to you."

Yes, wisdom is something that we need to get—wisdom and understanding. It will help us smooth the way toward the Kingdom of God because wisdom has to do with skill in living and that is what God wants to see. He wants us to see us skilled in living His way.

Amos also tells us what we should seek. Let us go there.

Amos 5:5-7 "Do not seek Bethel, nor enter Gilgal, nor pass over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing. Seek the Lord and live, lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it with no one to quench it in Bethel."

Let us go down to verse 14.

Amos 5:14-15 "Seek good and not evil, that you may live; so the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you have spoken. Hate evil, love good; establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."

More things to seek, but particularly seeking Him, seeking His face, seeking to be with Him, seeking whatever it is He will give you and help you with; and seeking good and not evil. More things that we can seek. Back in Matthew 7, it comes down to Jesus encouraging us to pursue God and His ways, actively searching diligently for the godly way to do everything! Sincerely learning to do all things in a manner that pleases God.

So what it is, this seeking, is a path of constant transformation into the image of God, seeing something that God does and how He does it, and transforming our own lives and manner of doing things to imitate Him. I mean, you could look at Romans 12:1-2 and that is basically what Paul tells us to do there, saying we should be living sacrifices and always seeking out what the will of the Lord is. Let us instead go to Colossians 3.

Colossians 3:1-3 If then you were raised with Christ [if you went through baptism, if you are converted], seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

You are a new creation. Your old man died. Those ways that you lived before you were called, that is gone, that is dead. Now you have a place at the right hand of God, where Christ is, because we are in Christ. I mean, think about it. If you were a bum on the street and the king came along and said, "I want you to sit next to me in my palace. And we will clean you up, put on new clothes, give you the best that is required for those who are in the throne room. Come on, it's going to be fun." And then it happens. But the bum never changes the way he acts. He acts like a bum, like he is still out on the street rather than having been promoted to sit next to the king.

That is kind of the image here. We have been raised to something far greater! That old way of life has died. We need to start acting now, finding out, seeking how we have to change to be worthy of sitting on the throne next to the King. That has got to be our job. First priority: seek to find out what the King requires in order to maintain the position that He has just given us.

Let us drop down to verse 12. He tells us what to do. Paul is good that way.

Colossians 3:12-17 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved [this is the new position we are in], put on tender mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another; if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond [the glue] of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you are called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

These are the things we must seek in order to fulfill the potential that we have been raised to.

Knock. The illustration is obviously of rapping on a door for entrance. You come up to a place, the door is closed, the door is locked, you cannot get in. Well, nowadays we ring a doorbell, but if there is no doorbell, we knock on the door to get somebody's attention so that the door will be answered and we can do our business. Right? The door is shut, the way is blocked if we want to move forward. But we know that behind this door is something wonderful, precious, and exclusive.

Knocking here implies seeking entrance to a place which we do not have access to unless we request it and it is granted. I mean, we can request it all we want, but the access must be granted, the door must be opened. And further, the present imperatives—ask, seek, knock—suggest it is an ongoing practice. We do not just knock one time and it is over with, it is done. We have to keep knocking because there is more and more behind that door that we need to get access to. It is a picture of persistence, of tireless dedication to gain entrance.

One commentator, one I like very well, William Hendrickson, he concludes, "Knocking is asking, plus acting, plus persevering." And this conclusion comes from the companion illustration which we will read here in Luke 11. Remember I said in Luke 11 was the other other occasion in which ask, seek, and knock is found. We are going to go to Luke 11 and see what introduces it there, that is, this companion illustration. If you notice, just above this is the Model Prayer that was in Matthew 6. But this illustration in the middle of the two, the Model Prayer and ask, seek, knock, is not in Matthew. So we have to come here to Luke.

Luke 11:5-8 He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give to you'? I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs."

This is where Hendrickson gets the idea as he says there, "Knocking is asking, plus acting, plus persevering." And Jesus also says, we could add this in Matthew 24:13, that only those who endure, or persevere, or persist to the end will be saved. Persistence or perseverance or endurance is something that it has to be part of our character. We have to keep on keeping on, as long as we draw breath, to knock at the door, and woe be unto us if we quit knocking.

Now, I do not want to get too much into this. (It is already 10 after the hour here.) But let us just go to John 10. We will dip a toe in at least.

John 10:7-9 Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anybody enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture."

What we have just in this one little parable here is that knocking, and doors, and gates, and opening, and shutting, and keys, and all those type of things, are part of a larger theological subject of authority and access. But let me just simplify it for you, if I can. All of it has to do with Christ and His role as High Priest, especially as High Priest, and judging is part of all of that. But we can say that these illustrations show Jesus to be the gatekeeper to God and to the Kingdom. Nobody comes in without going through Him.

Let us look at John 14 just while we are here. It is a simple statement by Jesus that has to do with the same subject.

John 14:6 Jesus said to him [this is Thomas], "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Jesus is the one behind the door. Jesus is the door that we keep knocking on throughout our life—knocking, knocking, knocking. We are getting His attention. We are asking Him to open up to us and give us what is necessary.

Let us go to Revelation 3:7 in the letter to the Philadelphia church.

Revelation 3:7 "To the angel of the church of Philadelphia write, 'These things says He who is holy, He who is true, "He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens."

He has sole authority over that door. If He shuts the door, there is no opening it. If He opens the door, there is no shutting it without His permission. And He has the key that grants access to all the things of God. So He has the key of David, which is a symbol of authority. And what we see here is that He has sole judgment as to who gains entrance, who gets the things behind the door.

Let us go on. II Peter 1, this is still dipping a toe in. I am not getting into this very much, but just showing you some obvious verses here.

II Peter 1:10-11 [These are all the things that we are supposed to add to our character, add to our faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, etc.] Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What is Peter saying here? That yes, we are to seek the Kingdom of God diligently, but entrance to it must be granted. Nothing is guaranteed. You can still fall along the way. But if we keep knocking, God—Christ—is going to open the door, but we have to be persistent. We have to pursue this day by day by day by day all through our lives. We cannot assume anything.

Let us go to the next section here back to Revelation 3, this time in the letter to the Laodiceans, because the same image comes up there.

Revelation 3:18-19 [Christ says] I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. [He is telling us these are all the things you need to be a righteous person and appear before Him and to gain entrance to the kingdom of God.] As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten."

That is part of the relationship here that we are we have with Him. That sometimes He has to call us down and tell us where we are wrong and give us a little bit of punishment, a little bit of discipline, and a little bit of chastening, so that we turn around and do what is right. So He says, I do that out of love because I want you behind the door with Me. Therefore, be zealous and repent, be diligent, be active, be on fire, and get rid of those parts of the old man and put on the new man.

Revelation 3:20 "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with Me."

Also, just for the for kicks, go back to the Song of Solomon 5.

Song of Solomon 5:2-6 I sleep [this is the Shulamite speaking], but my heart is awake; the voice of my beloved! He knocks, saying, "Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is covered with dew, my locks with the drops of the night." [and she replies] I have taken off my robe; how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet; how can I defile them? My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door, and my heart yearned for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, on the handles of the lock. I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone. My heart went out to him when he spoke. I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

In both of these places, Jesus, or the symbol there in a Song of Songs of Jesus, is the one who knocks. Not us, not the supposedly-converted person, but Jesus is knocking! And it suggests that the Laodiceans and the Shulamite have stopped knocking. They are no longer doing what He told them back in Matthew 7: to keep knocking so that He would open up to them. The image in Revelation 3 of Him entering, desiring to enter, and dine with the Laodiceans implies the resumption of a stalled relationship. He wants the Laodicean to open so they can eat and talk together and to have fellowship. But they are not opening the door. But He says if they do open the door, then we can begin this process of overcoming and being in the Kingdom.

So reading this meaning back into Matthew 7, knocking takes on the suggestion of intentional fellowship and relationship between the disciple and Christ Himself. The knocking is not just this [light knocking], the knocking implies greeting and speaking and spending time; and a lot of intimate sharing between the disciple and Christ.

Do you see how we have moved from mere asking to then pursuing, and now we are spending valuable time in company with the One we pursued. It is like a bride and a bridegroom or people who are dating, a couple. They want to spend time with one another. It probably all started with a question. Will you go on a date with me? And then the man, usually it is the man, sometimes it is not, but often it is the man as the aggressor, he pursues her. He wants to be with her, he wants to find out about her. He wants to learn everything he can in order to please the one he has asked out on a date and it soon becomes that they cannot get enough of one another and they want to be with each other all the time. They want to eat together. They want to go do things together. They spend a lot of time talking together.

That is the idea, blurry in the background, of ask, seek, knock. That He is giving us a progressive illustration of becoming closer and closer and closer to God. That is where we get the strength to live as Christians in this world and do all those hard things that God asks us to do. That process is how the called—the elect—gain entrance to the Father and to His Kingdom. It is all about intimate fellowship with Christ because we have been placed in Him. He is in us, we are in Him. The Father is in us with Him. And we are all supposed to get together in fellowship. It is the peace offering. It is the thank offering. We are all in intimate fellowship with one another and we are happy, we are joyous, and as the human part of it, we are learning and growing.

So on a more spiritual level, ask, seek, knock have the force of communicate with God. Pursue the things of God. And fellowship with God. That is what He is telling us to do.

We are back here in Revelation 3. I just want to pick up I John 1, verse 3.

I John 1:3 That which we have seen and heard we declare to you [he is talking about Jesus Christ], that you may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

We are all in fellowship together. If we are all asking and seeking and knocking, then we are just one big happy family. So each of these—asking, seeking, knocking, or communicating, pursuing, and fellowship with God—each of these increases our intimacy and closeness with Him. And the closer we relate to Him, the more likely 1) that we are going to ask for the things, the kinds of helps and gifts that we need to aid us in our spiritual journey and spiritual growth. And 2), it is more likely that He will readily bestow His spiritual largess upon us. He will overflow with the abundance of the things we need. He is not going to hold back.

He gives things, as Paul said, "exceedingly abundantly, more than we can ask or even think." And as we become closer to Him, that urge to give us grows exponentially and He will do it. That is why Jesus says back there in Matthew 7, "How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" You might want to jot this down, James 1:17, where it says that, "Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes from the Father of lights, in whom is no variation or shadow of turning." He wants to give you every good and perfect gift. And that does not change because He does not change.

Now seen in this light, the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12 is an obvious conclusion to His teaching. Remember, we went over this at the beginning. Verses 7 through 12 answers an unspoken question. How can a human being fulfill the difficult expectations of God? How can a Christian live a godly life in a world that hates him and sometimes wants to tear him into pieces? Christ answers in ask, seek, knock, by growing in faith and knowledge and intimacy with God. That is how you face the world. You will learn by doing this how to treat others with love, and kindness, and mercy, and grace; and those things will allow you to live in peace with all men.

In other words, if you live like God, because you have learned from God, then you can express the love of God to everyone you meet and odds are that is going to produce peace with just about everyone. And when times get tough, well, God is going to be there right by your side.

Let us finish in James 4. I am going to read this out of the Berean Study Bible. I wanted to thank Doctor Maas for sending this to me. I just got it yesterday and I looked it up in here and I thought this was good.

James 4:1-10 What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don't they come from the passions at war within you? You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask. And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures. You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God. Or do you think the Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He caused to dwell in us yearns with envy? But He gives us more grace. This is why it says: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and weep. Turn your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

James says, in all those words, I know it is ten verses, but he says basically the same thing as what we saw in the first part of Matthew 7. If we have troubles with the world, it is because we have fallen short. And the answer is to ask, seek, knock. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you, and exalt you in due time.

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