Matthew 7:7-12

Speaker 1: Ayman, thank you so much for that mystery. I was walking through the church two weeks ago singing that song to myself and wondering what this mystery going to sing that song again and got my answer today. So I appreciate that. I do love the message in the words of that song, Take your Bibles if you haven't turned to Matthew. Chapter number seven. Matthew chapter number seven is where we're going to be here this morning. And it's good to have all of our guests with us here today, but glad that we can also host Pastor Paul Gentry and his family today. And they're on a bit of a staycation. And so they're here with us this morning. And Brother Gentry is the pastor of the New Heights Baptist Church in Tulsa and formerly the Tulsa Baptist Temple, which then merged with Bible Baptist Temple or Church. Temple and became a single congregation there and grateful for his encouragement. And I think you arrived in Tulsa two weeks after I arrived here. And so we're both kind of following the same path of our tenure at our churches here, and so glad to have them here with us. For the. Craig, the first time you came here, I thought, what is Pastor Gentry doing here at my church? Now, I know this is like, you know, judging people by their hair and all gingers must be the same person, you know? But now that I have both of you in the same room, I'm looking at you, and I don't feel so bad because you all do somewhat resemble each other. So anyways, and it wasn't just me for them that thought the same thing. I guess it was Brother Paul's here, but we're glad to have Craig here all the time. And you're just visiting anyway. It's just getting awkward and I'm going to stop. All right, Matthew seven, if you're there, go ahead and stay and join me in reading God's Word. We're going to start back in last week's passage and then read through to this week's passage, starting in verse number seven, Matthew, chapter seven, verse number seven, we're going to be down to verse number 12. The Bible says ask. It shall be given you seek and ye shall find, Nuck. And it shall be opened unto you for everyone that ask you to receive it. He that secret find it in him that knock it. It shall be opened. What man is there of you? Whom, if his son asked bread, will they give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts under your children. How much more shall your father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you? Do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets. Let's pray. Or we ask you to help us now as we look into your word. I pray that you give me the words you'd have me to say. You'd help the folks that are here to listen and apply it to here to their lives. It's in Jesus name that I ask these things. Amen. I think you may be seeing it. So of course, first number 12, you might know it as the golden rule. I can still remember in second grade my teacher, Mrs. Copeland, had a poster of the Golden Rule up on the the wall there in the classroom. And of course, it was gold colored because it's the golden rule. But I remember seeing it, and she never hardly referred to it, but it was always there. And so as she'd be teaching and going about the different subjects of the day. Always behind her was the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. Most of us would be familiar with the Golden Rule. How many of you, your parents maybe have said these words to you in some form or another? I mean, how many of us can relate to this? One of the things about the Golden Rule that I've always found interesting is that critics of Christianity actually will use the Golden Rule to denigrate, to kind of chip away at the reliability of the Christian faith. And they will say something along the lines of this, that the golden rule pre-dates Christianity. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to get us to think, oh, well, you know, maybe our faith is just another version of other faiths. And, you know, maybe all faiths are really the same because we're all teaching the same thing. We were talking in our Sunday school class a couple of weeks ago about this prevailing thought that God is at the top of the mountain and there are many paths up the mountain, but we're all essentially going to the same place. And we would reject that, wouldn't we? Here we come to the Golden Rule, and I have to tell you. There are some ancient quotes, texts that pre-date Jesus's Sermon on the Mount that have what we would probably identify as the Golden Rule stated. Let me give you a couple of examples. Some of these instances of the Golden Rule. Before the Sermon on the Mount, there was an Athenian writer who said, this whatever angers you when you suffer at the hand of others, do not do to others. Sounds similar. I mean, reading whatever angers you when you suffer at the hands of others do not do to others. There was a Jewish rabbi who said this Whatever is displeasing to you do not do to your neighbor. Sounds again similar. The book of Tobit says, What thou thyself hardest to no man do. But perhaps the most well known, quote, golden rule, quote, that predates Christ would be Confucius. Confucius said a lot of things, for example. Man who live in glass house should dress in basement. That's the only one I can think of right now. But anyways. Confucius said. What you do not want done. Do yourself. Do not do to others. Now, I'm just curious how many of you have picked up on a little bit of a theme or a trend throughout all of these different quotes, whether it be the Athenians, the Jews, or even Confucius? What is what is a common denominator through each one of these quotes? Huh? They're all negative. Don't do this. Don't act this way. If. If it would be hard. If you wouldn't want somebody doing it to you, then don't do it to someone else. Now, I want you to go back, and I want you to look at Matthew 712. Read it again to yourself. And what do you notice about Jesus statement? What do you think the answer is going to be? I mean, you don't even have to look, but if they're all negative, Jesus gives us a command that's in the positive. Jesus doesn't tell us to withhold from an action. Jesus words tells us what we are actually supposed to do to somebody else. Jesus positive perspective comes through when he says whatsoever he would that men should do to you do ye. Even so to them. Now, why did Jesus focus on the positive aspect of the Golden Rule rather than the negative? I mean, as we saw a few moments ago, there were many golden rule type statements made before Jesus uttered the words in our passage today. In every instance, the quote centers on a restriction of doing things that you would not want to have done to yourself. So something would be unfair to you. Well, then, don't be unfair to somebody else. If somewhat some type of action would cause you pain. Well, then don't do that action to cause pain to someone else. If them treating you a certain way would make you sad. Then don't make them sad if it would hurt your self-esteem. And your own self-image, then don't hurt their self-esteem and their self-image. I mean, that's that's what all those different ones we're talking about. And it may seem like this is an insignificant difference. But is it? Is it insignificant or should we not waste our time in studying out the difference between these negative statements from these other writers and the positive statement that comes from Jesus? I mean, whether we focus on the negative or the positive. Isn't it essentially the same truth? I mean, whether we focus on the don'ts or the dos. Aren't these all basically saying the same thing? Well, as a Bible student, we claim to believe that words mean something, don't we? We claim to believe that the words that are used are important and are chosen for a purpose. And, you know, we aren't the only ones to hold to an idea like this. Philosophy students are also deeply concerned by the actual words that are used. And the the thought is that if a teacher or a in some of these other cases, a philosopher is going to say something a certain way, then there's probably a reason why they said it that way. We live in a in a society where talk is cheap. You can you can go on social media for 3 minutes and see a lot of people saying things. And there's not a whole lot of meaning behind what they're saying. But we're going to study things like this. Then we have to come to it with the idea that these words are important. And they were preserved for us. They were given to us in the way that they were given for a reason. If Confucius and others focused on the negative and Jesus focused on the positive, there has to be a reason. I believe the reason has to do with the different worldviews and their understanding of what is good and evil. We live in a society also that has a relativity of truth. The relativity of truth is not a new phenomenon. Confucianism, for example, places a high value on two things one being humility and the other modesty. Now. Humility and modesty. Those words don't don't stand out in a group like this. We're familiar with the words, humility and modesty. But before you start assigning the same definitions that you and I assign to humility and modesty to their definitions, we need to stop and understand what does humility and modesty mean to them? And let me tell you some things I learned this week. For Confucianism, modesty is the known claim of possessing knowledge in general. So a modest person is someone who doesn't claim to know anything. Now. We have another name for that. Well, that's not the word I was thinking of, but. There is a word for no knowledge. Agnosticism. Not claiming to know something for a fact. Understanding that truth is something to you and something different to me. You may define marriage one way, but I define it somewhere else. And it's not my business to tell you how to define marriage. You may think of God one way and I think of him another way, or see even using the pronoun of him. That's dangerous because. I anyways. But who am I to tell you what to think of God? I mean, it's all relative. We can't know for sure. So that's modesty. Humility. Is more specific. Humility is the lack of knowledge of what is good and not thinking of oneself as good. So if we can't know anything for sure, then how could I ever begin to define what is good? And if I can't define what is good, then how am I ever going to know whether I'm good or not? Now, the confusing part about this is that in Confucianism, they believe that everyone is born naturally good. How do we know that if we can't define what good is? The claim that one possesses the knowledge of what qualifies as good and their viewpoint and their worldview is seen as moral hubris. If you're going to say that something is good and something is evil all the time, no questions asked, then, then, well, I mean, you're just kind of a puffed up. Do the things. They know everything. So therefore, if I'm going to exercise modesty and humility, and who am I to say that just because something is good for me, it must also be good for you? If we can't define what's good, then how are we ever going to do unto others what we would like have done to us? Because how do I know if what I like is good and whether you would like it because good to you is different than what's good to me. I think I just jumped over some of these heads. If there's no standard for good. Then how do I know if my interpretation of what is good is the same as your interpretation of what is good? How am I to then treat you according to the Golden Rule when no one has the same definition of good? This viewpoint doesn't work in real life. This only makes logical sense if we have not been given a standard outside of ourselves for what qualifies something as good or evil. One commentator that studies Confucius and wrote a book on the issue. He went so far as to say that had Confucius stated the Golden Rule in the positive, he would have also had to supply a standard for what qualifies as good. That's kind of ironic. We're going to come back to that. But even his own commentators say that he had to say what he did the way that he did using those specific words because he has no moral standard to appeal to when it comes to what is good and what is evil. But Confucius is still making a truth claim. It's simply claiming that it is easier to know what qualifies as evil than it is to identify what is good. That same commentator said that claiming knowledge of evil is less immodest than claiming knowledge of good. This is interesting because as I said before, Confucianism believes that man is naturally good. So why give the negative spin to not commit evil if evil is unnatural to mankind? If it's if it's unnatural for us to do evil, why say something against it? Is it because all men inherently, subconsciously know that we all naturally tend towards evil? Don't we all naturally tend to sin? Since the garden man has lost that natural tendency to do and has instead inherited from birth a natural tendency to sin. Jesus focuses on the positive aspect of the Golden Rule because Jesus doesn't have the same problems that Confucius does. He doesn't have the same problems that all these other philosophers have because Jesus has already defined the standard for what's good. The Golden Rule is as a small microcosm that gives us a picture of everything else about the Bible and the Gospel. Everyone else is trying to produce the same effects, but they don't have the same firepower. They're trying to produce morality in mankind. But without the Bible, without the the moral standard that God has set up. They have nothing to appeal to. And it's just another instance of Jesus and his way being superior to all others, because Jesus does have a moral standard that He can base his words on. The words that these other philosophers may have predated the Sermon on the Mount, but they were only standing on a morality that already belonged to God. After giving us the only positive spin on the golden rule, Jesus drops the mic, so to speak. By claiming originality for the principle of the golden rule. I think I might have been getting a little antsy with me saying that these other statements predated the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe some of Jesus's followers were like, I've heard something like this before. I thought this guy was an original thinker, but this sounds very familiar. I mean, they were pretty tied up in the Hellenistic culture. It's not a stretch to think that some of Jesus's audience might have been familiar with either of the words of this Jewish rabbi or even the words of this Greek philosopher and writer. But Jesus didn't says in verse number 12, for their sake and for ours at the very end, he says, For this is the law and the prophets. Golden Rule only works when it has the backing of God's word. The Golden Rule is stated by Jesus and honestly by these other philosophers is simply a summary of the law in the prophets. And if you want to go even deeper, the law and the prophets are simply an expression of the morality that is founded in God and His essence from eternity past. You go back to last week's message and you look at verse number nine where he says, What man is there of you whom if his son asks Bread, will you give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If he then being evil, know how to give good gifts under your children? How much more shall your father, which is in heaven, give good things to them than ask him? We only know the definition of good and evil because of the existence of God. Is the goodness of the father. That allows us to ascribe good and evil in the actions of others. Jesus could focus on the positive perspective of this principal because he hadn't divorced himself from the moral standard of the Word of God and the character of God. All these other philosophers are trying to express a truth, but they don't have a foundation to build on. There's a book that I would highly recommend to you. It's called The Secular Creed. And I don't know if you remember the the yard signs. We had them in Virginia all over the place. I haven't seen one here. Different politics generally here. But you may have seen it basically said in this house, we believe. All lives matter. Black Lives Matter. In this house, we believe love is love. In this house we believe, you know, all these different things. There's a whole list of them. And there's this this this author, Rebecca McLaughlin. She she goes through and she she analyzes each of these statements and she analyzes how, you know, in their way, they're trying to produce a type or form of morality, but they're trying to do so without the word of God. And when man tries to come up with his own form of morality without a standard, it gets all twisted. We've seen it time and time and time again throughout history. We're not the first culture or society to have to deal with this. Jesus directs his disciples to apply this standard to their behavior. Jesus listeners then and now don't have to be legal experts to have a standard of good to apply to their lives. So what? I get kind of bogged down in my Bible reading when I get to Leviticus. That's, you know, the basis for this. I mean, I don't know if I got the time or the energy to really try to dig into Leviticus. Let's look. Because Jesus has been preaching the law and the prophets to them through the Sermon on the Mount, which we've been studying for the last several months. They really just needed to listen to what Jesus was saying to them right then, because throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had given them both general and specific instructions and examples of what is good. You can go back to the very beginning. Then he tells them to be merciful to others. He tells them to be salt and light in the darkness. Reconcile with those that you have offended. Think pure thoughts about the opposite sex. Show love to your enemies, and we can just keep on going throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Excuse me. And we would understand and we would come to realize that he is giving them a standard of what is good and what is evil. All of these things can be summed up in the words of the Golden Rule. Whatsoever you would that man should duty you do ye even so to them. They all needed and wanted to be treated a certain way. You see, they knew what it was like to stand in need of mercy. And need someone to be merciful to them when they deserved retribution. So if they wanted to be shown mercy. You want someone to do that for you? Well. And that's what you do for someone else. They had been in darkness at one time. And needed someone to be the light. No doubt they had offended someone and needed that person to be willing to reconcile with them. We understand the word reconcile. It means stop fighting. The lay down your weapons, your arms. They wanted others to be purer towards them their wives, their sisters and their daughters. Well, if that's what you want someone to do to you, that's what you do to them. There's I've said this form of probably say it again to you. There is an account. I'm going to I'm going to promote something on Instagram to you right now. This young man is in his twenties and he has started using Instagram for good. I know it's hard to believe, but that is what has happening. And he is a coach that helps men get the victory over the addiction of pornography. And you know what he does? He shares different Bible passages, but he also helps men as they're scrolling through their social media feeds, remember? What are you really doing? Really watching when you watch pornography. That that's not a. A nameless, faceless, non-existent person. That's somebody's daughter, somebody's mom. That's his wife. So you're. You wouldn't want someone to do this to your family. And take advantage of them this way. Plastered them all over the internet. So why are you why are you engaging with this? You know, if we want a really strong motivation for overcoming the addiction of pornography, which let's just be honest in a room this size with the statistics, there's probably a lot of people in here, men and women, that struggle weekly with an addiction to pornography. You want motivation? It's in the golden rule. Would you want that to happen to your daughter? Would you want somebody to be watching your wife? Well, then don't watch somebody else's wife. Right. You want your enemies to show you love. So your enemies love. Jesus words direct his disciples to apply the positive aspect of the golden rule to their lives. It's not just about withholding evil actions. It's about extending positive goodness to others. And who defines what goodness is? Jesus does. I want to take a moment. This is in my notes, but I've been thinking about since yesterday. If I'm going to withhold evil actions. That's a don't, right? It requires a lack of action. Now, sometimes, let's be honest, it takes a lot of effort to not do something, doesn't it? Somebody smarts off to you. I. You know, you sit on your hands. You get a bite your tongue. Because you're trying not to do something. Usually once you've fought that urge and you didn't do it, the moment passes. There's no more responsibility. I didn't do it. I didn't go through with what I wanted. Now, you might have thought it. You might have imagined it fantasized about what it would be like to haul off and hit that guy. Which Jesus already dealt with in the Sermon on the Mount. You know those you hate your brother and all that kind of stuff. It's not just withholding from, you know, committing adultery. It's what happens in your mind as well. Is. Withholding takes effort, but. Once you've done it, you've done it. But the positive aspects do good to someone else. That takes continual commitment. It's like we're talking about in Sunday School. It's it's kind of like the idea of just handing somebody a track and saying, I've done my duty and I'm done, I'm guiltless. And then actually going in and investing in that person and following up with them. And it costs you something because you're having to go back over and over and check in with them and invite them and see if they need something and offer to help be a servant to them. If we're going to take the Golden Rule, it's not just, Oh, I did one thing or I didn't do one thing and now I'm done. No, the golden rule is a continual way of life. We'll get to this in a second. Because we need to look at this of how do we apply this to our lives? And we could be really general. Right. Very general, very vague. And just say, well, you know, I just I just need to be nice to people. And if we're just nice to people, that's it. That's fine. That's good. But we kind of want and need some more difficult applications of this principle. For example. As a customer. How would you want to be spoken to if you were the employee? You have to go to customer service. Or better yet, you have to call customer service. And they have just royally messed up. Your account. You know, you've been charged four times for your cell phone bill. Cellphone bills are cheap, right? And you got all kinds of money laying around. That's no big deal. Well, just let it slide. No, you're. You're upset. And so you call in some unfortunate employee as to pick up the phone. And you're loaded for bear. And you lay into that guy or that girl on the other line. How would you like it if you were the one on the other line? And you had to answer for your company's mistakes. So it wasn't your mistake. You don't manage this person's personal account. You're just the customer service rep. Golden Rule says that you will do to that employee what you would like to be have done to you. How many of you had to work in customer service? You know what it's like. It's not a stretch. I love this one. As a parent. How would you like to be thought of if you were the teacher? You're the teacher. How would you like to be thought of the way you think of the teachers that you have? Do. What you would want somebody else to do to you. Talk the way you would want someone else to talk about you. Think the way you would want someone else to think about you. You go back to first Corinthians 13 million times. It's not just about marriage. Primarily, it's about church member relationships. We thinking evil about each other? Would we like others to think evil about us? Assume the worst about us? Or would we like people to think the best of us? Give us the benefit of the doubt. Well, that's what we would want others to do for us. Then why can't we do that for everybody else, especially the people we go to church with? How about this one? As a Christian. How would you like to be evangelized if you were the last person? Probably most people in this room are Christians. You've accepted Jesus as your savior. You believed that Jesus died on the cross, took your sin, debt, your penalty. Paid for that with his own blood when he died on the cross. And you've you've asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins. You're on your way to heaven. There's a lot of people out in this world that are still in that lost condition. How would you like the Christians in your life? To reach out to you. Well, I've tried. They didn't. They didn't listen. They didn't receive it very well. Well, if it was you and your soul was in the balance, would you want them to try again? You know, if it was you and you were on your way to hell and you didn't even really understand what that meant, wouldn't you want the Christians in your life to keep being light and keep being salt to you? Until it clicked. Of course you would. That's part of the golden rule. Doing to others what you would want done to you. By simply asking the question. How would I want that person to treat me? We can find the answer to how we are supposed to treat others. Whether it be a family member, a church member, a coworker, a neighbor, a friend, an acquaintance, or even a stranger. Jesus didn't put any exceptions on this command. There's no exemptions. In fact, if you look back at verse number 12, what does he say? The first three words. Therefore. Some things. Most things. Occasional things, he says. All things. We don't get to pick and choose who we exercise the golden rule with. Jesus said it. It's our responsibility. It's our command. We would behave this way to all people. And it's not just the withholding of things that would cause pain and sadness and unfairness is not want to go a step further and I want you to actively invest in and show. Good. To the people that are in your life. You say, brother Gary? I do this. I exercised the golden rule to everyone. That's great. I'm so glad. Maybe you can take this message. In offer and operate in the Golden Rule. Share it with someone else. That needs to hear it. Maybe you don't need to be reminded to do good to others. You're already doing it. There might be somebody in your life that needs to be reminded of this. You take this message, share it with someone else this week, even if you've already got it down. I'm being sarcastic there. Could we use this? Could it be a blessing to someone here in this room or someone out in the in the community this week? I'm sure that it could. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the good reminder that you have given us here this morning. What? I pray that she would help all of us, to be honest with. With ourselves. Honest with you. Lord, it's such a simple principle that you've given to us. Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. What I pray that you will help us to take. This message this morning. It applied to our lives. That we would seek to. Examine our relationships with others and see if there isn't. A situation where. Perhaps we're not applying this the way we should. If that is the case. God, I ask that you'd help us to confess that to you this morning. Rely on your Holy Spirit to change us and to change the way that we react and respond. The people that are in our lives would help the people of this church to be known for applying the golden rule to everyone that they come into contact with. Or if there's somebody here today that doesn't know for sure that their sins have been forgiven. Never accepted your free gift of salvation. And I pray that today, Lord, would be the day. They let somebody take a Bible and show them how they can know for sure. They're on their way to heaven. Their sins have been forgiven by you. Or as we go into this time of invitation, we ask that your Holy Spirit would be at work in our hearts. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.

‍