Your Father knows what you need, then why ask?

Posted on April 6, 2016 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

This post is Number 26 in the Sermon on the Mount Series.

In reading through Matthew 6, this evening I read two verses which raised a question. They are these:

“. . . your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then in this way . . .” (Matthew 6:8b-9a)

Copyright: bialasiewicz / 123RF Stock Photo

The question is, why should we pray if God already knows what we need? It is not like I am going to provide God with a missing piece of data without which he could not make a good choice.

Also, when we look at the way that Jesus interacted with humanity, his behavior does not reveal a God who is reluctant to meet the needs of those who are seeking him. So the assumption in verse 8b is that God knows what you need and is more than willing to provide it. Later in the same sermon Jesus tells us that we are not to worry because God will take care of his people.

Why then are we to ask?

I think that we are to ask because through prayer, God grants us the dignity of participating in bringing about God’s will for humanity. He chooses to work through our prayers, even though he could accomplish his purpose without them.

It is a little bit like asking a 4 year old to help you paint the house. The little tyke will be excited about working with Dad, but won’t really contribute much that will benefit the house. Allowing the 4 year old to “help” grants him a dignity that he would not otherwise have.

Because God wants to be in relationship with us, he chooses to let us “help” him get his business done. He enjoys the fact that we come to him to ask for what we need.

Sometimes we are mistaken in what we think we need. But God, being the perfect father, will use the process of praying to shape our desires. Even when we ask for things that are not right for us, God will patiently answer our prayer. If it is not right for us, he will answer in the negative, but it is the correct answer.

I am thankful that I am ecouraged to bring my requests to God. I can do so knowing that even if what I am asking is wrong, he will make it right.

I’ll close with the first verse of an old hymn:

What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

More righteous than the Pharisees?

Posted on June 3, 2013 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

I have written on this verse before but have some thoughts to add. In verse 20 of Matthew 5, Jesus makes a curious statement about being righteous:

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20, ESV)

Let’s set the Way Back Machine to approximately 30 AD when Jesus made this statement in an attempt to understand how his listeners would have reacted to it.

The Pharisees were the group that sought to reclaim the religion of Israel and drive it back to it’s Biblical roots. They were the fundamentalists of their day. They sought to follow the law of God in every particular. They were obsessive about being righteous according to the law of what we call the Old Testament.

A few hundred years earlier, the Pharisees began as a group in reaction to the general disregard of the law of God. They sought revival of correct belief and practice. Therefore the Pharisees were the ones who were pushing the nation of Israel toward following the Old Testament law. They also lead by example and practiced what they preached. The Pharisees were the poster boys for righteousness according to the law.

When Jesus made this statement in the sermon, his hearers would have understood how radical it is. How can one be more righteous than a Pharisee? They display ultimate obedience to the law. This would be like telling me to be a better basketball player than LeBron James. No amount of effort could make me better than LeBron.

We, like Jesus’ first listeners, have a tendency to hear this statement in terms of what we do (or perhaps this is only me). Too often we take it as an encouragement to try harder, to work at being righteous. But if it is impossible to be more strict in our observance than the Pharisees, then what could Jesus mean by this statement?

Habakkuk 2:4 tells us that the righteous must live by faith. Abraham was declared righteous because of this faith, not because of his perfect obedience as the Apostle Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. It is belief and not practice that allows us to be declared righteous. By the exercise of faith, we can be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees.

But faith is only effective if the object of the faith is effective. As Christians our hope is in Christ alone. Paul follows up his discussion of the faith of Abraham with these words:

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1–2, ESV)

We are justified (declared righteous) by having faith in Jesus Christ. What many of the Pharisees (ancient and modern) miss is that the path to true righteousness is through faith in the one who trades our mess for his righteousness (1 Cor. 5:21).

It is this trade that allows our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.

This post is #18 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on True Christians and the Sermon on the Mount

Posted on February 19, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

In the introduction to Martyn Lloyd-Jones‘ Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, he writes this:

I suggest to you that [the Sermon on the Mount] is the best means of evangelism. Surely we all ought to be urgently concerned about this at the present time. The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians. I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, ‘What is the secret of this?’

He goes on to compare Christianity with communism (a serious threat in the 1950’s) and how Christianity, when lived out, provides in reality what communism promises but fails to provide.

While communism may not be the largest challenge to the church today, the need for living out the Christian life is still more urgent. We have the answer to what ails society but our failure to display it in our lives prevents the answer from being accepted.

Mr. Lloyd-Jones calls us to face up to our failures in this regard, repent and begin really living the life of faith.

Purity of heart is the means of seeing God

Posted on February 13, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

Number 10 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

At one point in Jesus’ ministry he was accused by the Pharisees of allowing his disciples to break the tradition of the elders by eating with unwashed hands. This account is recorded In Matthew 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23. Jesus’ response is interesting when he declares that it is not what a man eats which defiles him, but the things which come out of his mouth are evidence of the defilement that is already inside.

Jesus is telling the Pharisees (and us) that it is the defiled heart which causes the wrong behavior. The behavior is a symptom and not a cause of impurity.

It is this context which makes the sixth Beatitude in Matthew 5:8 so interesting.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Practical Purity

In the Israel of Jesus’ day, there were many regulations regarding external purity. The nation had food regulations, commands concerning washing, laws about touching dead bodies, ceremonial cleansings and prescribed worship. When they complied with these regulations, they could claim that they had purity in their practice, or what I would call practical purity.

Modern day legalists operate in much the same way. We can have lists of things to avoid and things to do which are used as litmus tests to determine the level of purity or spirituality. If you’ve been around the church enough, you’re bound to have run into one or more of these modern day Pharisees.

This is not the purity of which Jesus is speaking of here. External purity can be produced by those who are impure in their motives. Jesus referred to them as white washed tombs that were clean on the outside but full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27).

Positional purity

The purity to which Jesus refers is positional purity, or purity that is ascribed to us by God. Jeremiah tells us in Jer. 17:9 that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” David cried out in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God,”

We have a congenital defect, we are born with a sin nature and as A. T. Robertson tells us, “Sin befogs and beclouds the heart.” In Hebrews 12:14 we read that without purity no-one will see the Lord.

So how then can this Beatitude be fulfilled?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that when we are in Christ, we exchange his righteousness for our sin. In other words, we trade our impurity for his purity. We are then viewed by God as being pure.

It is only after this transaction has taken place that positional purity comes to an individual heart. It is because of this positional purity of heart that we can see God.

The Promise

This is another promise that has an immediate and an ultimate fulfillment. In Ephesians 2:4-5 Paul tells us that though we started out life dead in our sins, we are made alive in Christ. Spiritually dead people cannot see or respond to God. In Christ, however, we can begin to see God in the sense that we are aware of his presence and work in our lives. This is the immediate fulfillment.

The ultimate fulfillment comes when believers stand before God. We read in 1 John 3:2–3 we will see Jesus just as he is in his entire deific splendor. We will then be fully know and be fully known by God (1 Corinthians 13:12). What a day that will be!

Until that day, we have to be satisfied with our intermediate experience of God as our down payment on the ultimate experience. When that happens, the good will be transformed into the best.