The Golden Rule

Introduction

I invite you to go ahead and turn your Bibles to Matthew, the seventh chapter. Matthew chapter seven. I don’t spend just a lot of time thinking about or reviewing my past. That has some benefits to it. That typically means that wherever I am, I’m pretty focused on where I am. I’m pretty focused on the people who are there and the work that needs to be done. But it also has drawbacks. And the drawback, of course, as I’m reminded this week, as I sometimes think I’m not that good of a friend. Because, yes, while if you’re there with me and in front of me, I’m paying attention to you, but if you’re not right in front of me anymore, then I don’t just don’t get to pay that much attention to you.

I sure have enjoyed being back with you this week. A lot of good memories brought back, some surreal things. Staying in the home of Greg and Kashka, being invited out to lunch by Kaylee and Carson. Well, I just was not nearly that old when I moved here, and they were not either.

The young men and young women that are growing up to serve the Lord, and I’m certainly glad to be here with you. A lot of good memories stirred up. I’m sure if Jana were here, she would share the same sentiment. She would also remind me of perhaps some not so good memories, having nothing to do with you per se. She might remind me of that one-year anniversary that we had as a married couple, and which I had scheduled teen weekend for that Saturday. And while she was expecting, yeah, I know Rufus. We have to learn. While she was expecting to go out to eat that night after having served all day helping with the teen weekend, I had decided it’d be a better idea to play tackle football.

And at the time, Nick Blow was still in high school, and Justin Walters was in high school. And let’s just say that didn’t go so well for me. And she didn’t get to go out that night. So she reminded me that I grew a lot in the ten years that I was here, and some of you helped me in that, and I’m very much appreciative for that, and I’m sure she is as well.

If you put that in quotations, you erred.

And so our Lord says in verse 12 of chapter 7, and everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the law and the prophets. When you go to Matthew chapter 7, there are many who look at this chapter and see this as really nothing more than Jesus just adding several teachings that don’t really go together. They don’t go hand in hand. But Jesus had some things he wanted to say, and so he just kind of puts them out there. And I don’t deny that Jesus does cover quite a few things in Matthew the seventh chapter. I think when you look closely, you’ll see some cohesion of thought there. But when you come to verse 12, he makes it very clear.

1. Keep Asking, Keep Seeking, Keep Knocking

He explicitly says, What I’m saying to you now is because of what I’ve already said. He says there in verse 12, in everything therefore. Here’s why I’m going to tell you that you need to treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. It’s because of what I’ve already said to you. Now let’s just go back a few verses. What is it that the Lord has already said to them? Why is it that he needs to say, therefore, here’s what I want you to do in your treatment of each other. Well, you go back to verses 7 and 8. Ask and it’ll be given to you. Seek and you will find.

And he who seeks finds. And him who knock, it’ll be open. That’s the first reason Jesus is saying to us now in verse 12 to therefore treat each other as how you would be treated yourself. He makes this point about a relationship with God. An interesting thing in the text, I’m reading from the New American Standard. You will have a footnote in your text there, and your translation may do this as well. That literally it would read, keep asking. Keep seeking. This is not a one time action that you ask once, you knock once, you seek one time, but no, you are habitually, perpetually asking, seeking, and knocking. Now, we should probably also clarify what the Lord means when he says in verse 8 that everyone who asks receives.

We could make that passage walk on all fours as well to apply to anyone and everyone that ever asks something of God, they ought to expect to receive something. Well, Jesus already made it clear even in the Sermon on the Mount that that’s not the case. Go back to the sixth chapter in verse 1. As he is warning his disciples about how they practice their righteousness. He says in verse 1, beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. If your righteous actions are for the sake of others, and so that others can see how pious and how holy you are, you’ve already got your reward. Don’t expect to receive anything from God.

You’re not going to be receiving anything from Him. Your reward has already been given to you. He would also say in the seventh verse, when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetitions as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they’ll be heard for their many words. Well, what of course does Jesus mean? They’re not being heard. They have all these things that they say. They have all these words that they use, thinking that if we just pray long enough and we pray loud enough, God’s going to hear me. And Jesus says that what’s the point of it all? Don’t do that. They’re not going to be heard. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has a kind of person who is asking, seeking, and knocking.

Back once more to the fifth chapter. He says in verse 6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Again in verse 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. These are the everyone that Jesus is referring to now in the seventh chapter. Who is this everyone who asks, seeks, and knocks that God’s going to hear them and God’s going to reply? Those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Those who are seeking after God with their whole heart, they’re going to be heard. Perhaps even fulfillment of the prophets in Jeremiah the 29th chapter and verses 12 and 13. The Lord had foretold of a day when he says, You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. Now Jesus is saying, those days have come to pass. Now when you seek and you ask and you search for the Lord, you can be assured that God is going to answer, and what you are seeking, you’re going to find.

2. How Much of Our Prayers Are Asking for Holiness?

What is it that God is offering to us? Go back even to the fourth chapter as you see kind of the prelude to the sermon of what Jesus is doing at this time. It says in the fourth chapter in verse 23, Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. And of course, we come to chapter 5 and 6 and 7. And what we have here is a clear demonstration of what Jesus was proclaiming. Here is the gospel of the kingdom. And you start with those well-known beatitudes. And of course, what are those beatitudes have to do with? Here are the people who are in my kingdom. And just note what kind of people he says are there.

Verse 3 of chapter 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Those who recognize that in the in and of themselves, in a spiritual sense, they have nothing, and they are utterly dependent on God and what he can provide for them. You go further, verse 4. Blessed are those who mourn. Here are those who recognize the wrong actions in their life, what this has done to their relationship with God. And now because of that, they mourn over those things, and they are changing their lives. Again, blessed are those who are gentle. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are their merciful. And you go on through the list. And then you come later in chapter 5. And Jesus has been talking about how they now ought to be practicing a righteousness which is far higher and exceeded even that of the Pharisees.

How so? You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. But I say unto you, everyone who has hatred for his brother in his heart is guilty of murder. Or will be subject to the counsel. You have heard that it was said to those of old you should not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who has lust in his heart for a woman be guilty of adultery. You go on through this rather lengthy list in chapter 5. You go into even pastures like you have heard that who said to those of old, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Here’s the point. What is it we’re seeking?

When you just read the Sermon on the Mount and the moral obligations of the Sermon on the Mount. And then you compare it to you yourself. Just how well you do in all those things. How merciful you are. How gentle toward others you are. How much you truly hunger and thirst for righteousness? How easily you get over a slight from an enemy. How hard it is to rid your heart of hatred and lust and all these other things that Jesus in the sermon says, to be in my kingdom, these things have to go. And every last one of us has looked at that sermon and we have seen not just one or two things, but handfuls of things that we say, I’m really struggling with that.

So, what should you and I be asking for? Or to put it another way. How much of our prayers are, in fact spent on asking God for various blessings? Be with this brother, sister, or family member who’s sick. Be with our country. May there still be prosperity in our country. May there be an atmosphere in our country where we can still seek after you. We ask for all these things. How much of our prayers are asking for holiness? How often in our prayers are we saying to God, God, help me to truly be poor in spirit? Help me, God, to realize in my life how I am absolutely nothing without you. God help me to truly mourn for my wrongdoings. Not just to move on past these things like our society would say, just, you know, you’ve made your mistakes, but we’re just moving on.

No, God help me to mourn over those things, so I won’t go back to them again. God help me to be gentle toward others, even those who I don’t necessarily think deserve it or maybe have not been gentle toward me. God help me be gentle toward them. God help me to be merciful. God help me to rid my heart of anger and hatred and lust. God help me to even love those who have made themselves my enemy. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. And God says, you’re going to find it. God is going to help you in those things.

3. Your Father Knows How to Give Good Gifts

You go further in Matthew chapter 7. After he has said that we should keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. He says in verse 9. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, you will not give him a snake, will he? 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 what is good to those who ask him. We already understand what Jesus is meaning here. Your father, the one whom you are asking of, seeking, knocking, he knows how to give good gifts. Just like a father would be able to give good gifts to his children, so your father.

Again in the prophets, it was even taken a step further than this. Isaiah 49 in verse 15. Isaiah 49, verse 15 says, Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? I cannot speak from a mother’s perspective. I know as hard as that would be from a father, and I know that connection may be just a little bit more intimate between the mother and the child. God’s saying, can a woman possibly forget her child? We would answer, of course not. God says, even these may forget. But I will not forget you. That’s Jesus’ point again here in Matthew chapter 7. You know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more so does your father know how to give good gifts to his children?

But that also helps us to understand what Jesus is getting at here. Because all of us, those of us who are parents, we understand that the truly good things we give to our children are not necessarily the things that they ask for. I’ve got good kids. My kids have varied interests. Our oldest one, sports athletically, I understand that he had a little friend understand this this week.

But we were over at the Caldwell’s house Saturday, and Tyler was wanting to play ball, and Tyler said, let’s play ball. Jared was reading a book, said, No, I’m reading this book. You can go play ball by yourself. Jared’s not going to play ball, but read a book, go look at an animal. Great. Ethan, play ball with you all day long. But both of them. If mom and dad would allow, they would forsake the book, they’d forsake the ball, and they go sit in front of the television all day long. Let’s play a video game. Let’s watch a movie. Let’s do this. We might do some of that. They will ask for these things all the time. I’m not going to give it to them all the time.

Because I know there are things that are better for them. I try to be careful when I talk about the prayers that we offer to God and what we ask for. Because even here in the Sermon on the Mount, you have clear precedence in chapter 6. When Jesus is talking to us and urging us not to worry. You know, do not worry about what you’ll wear, do not worry about what you will eat. God who provides for the birds of the air, God who clothes the lilies of the field, God is going to provide for you. And I firmly believe that. And maybe even study the history of God’s people in the church, sometimes God’s providing that because of his people. How many poor saints were there in the book of Acts?

And yet God is providing for them through his people. Yet God is still providing. And so, because of that, the very fact that we ask God for various physical things is not wrong. We ought to ask God. He wants to hear. And so we ask God for things which we believe God would surely want to grant this request. I believe that God does not want us to suffer. And so we pray and we pray and we pray for those who are undergoing some kind of illness. And yet God does not always respond in the way which we would desire.

Nor am I saying that God is the reason why any individual dies. But I do sometimes wonder does God not answer all those prayers? Some of them anyway. Because he wants us. He wants us to continue to rely on him. And if every time we had some illness and we pray to God and there was the instant fix, how quickly would we forget that God truly has something better in store for us anyway? We pray for economic prosperity. We pray for enduring financial hardship. Again, do I believe that God cares about those things? Sure, I do. But maybe sometimes God doesn’t respond in the way that we think he should. God doesn’t give the better job. God doesn’t increase the income. Life is still a struggle for some day to day.

And maybe that’s because God knows that many of us, if not most of us, we don’t handle prosperity well. It goes right to our head, and we forget about God at all. Janet was involved in a Bible study in Tampa, and she was actually teaching this particular lesson on Sarah. And it was a pretty good lesson. She was reading it to me, and I was looking through it, and of course she was going through Bible text, but the particular author of this workbook that the class was using made this point of Sarah of how, you know, Sarah and looking at the promises and the blessings of God, Sarah just had to wait and be patient, and then God ultimately gave to Sarah and Abraham all that he had promised.

And he certainly did.

Jonathan Edwards was a famous denominational preacher back a couple of centuries ago. And how the mother of Jonathan Edwards had gone through similar circumstances and didn’t know she’d ever have children. And well, she just waited on the Lord enough. And then not only did she have this gospel, well, preacher, Jonathan Edwards, but she had all these other kids that traced her line and said that this many doctors and this many lawyers and this many professors and this many preachers all came from this woman because she waited on the Lord. And I read stories like that, and what it caused me to think is, okay, that happened for one person, but what about all the other people that you and I meet day to day, and they’ve been waiting on the Lord a long time, and they haven’t gotten any of that stuff.

And sometimes we equate these Old Testament stories where God is preparing a nation for the Messiah to come, and we wonder, why are we getting the land? Why aren’t we getting all the prosperity like Abraham got or like Jacob got? Why don’t we have those things? Because God says, I’ve got something better. And the good things that I am now offering you in the gospel are truly the riches of God. As Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You and I are wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations because of all the things that God has now given to us in Christ.

4. Treat Others How You Want Your God to Treat You

He says, You seek, you ask, you knock. And your Father, who knows how to give good gifts, he’s going to grant them to you. And so we come to verse 12. In everything, therefore. Therefore, what?

Because you have a father who wants you to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. And because you have a Father who knows how to give good gifts to his children, therefore, you treat others how you would want to be treated. And although Jesus did not put it exactly this way, I do believe the main thrust of his idea in this verse is not simply you treat others how you want other people to treat you, you treat others how you want your God to treat you. You want your God to allow you to keep seeking and asking of him. You want your God to give you good gifts.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. How is it that you and I are going to receive mercy from our God? We are merciful to others. The sixth chapter, verse 12. As Jesus is giving this moral prayer, emphasizing the kinds of things that we ought to pray to God about always, and he says in verse 12, forgive us our debts, as we has also forgiven our debtors. The forgiveness of God hinges on how I treat others. The forgiveness of my God hinges on whether or not I am going to forgive others as well. Coming to the seventh chapter and beginning in verse 1. Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you’ll be judged, and by your standard of measure, it’ll be measured to you.

You do not want God judging you harshly, judging you hypocritically. Therefore, don’t judge others in that way either. Throughout this sermon, Jesus has been making this point time and again. You base your treatment on others of how you want God to respond to you. And if you want your God to be merciful to you, then you be merciful to others. If you want God to forgive you of your sins, you forgive the sins of others. If you want God to be merciful in his judgment of you, you be merciful in your judgment of others. If you want God to grant you those truly good things, then you treat others and how you would want them to treat you. But let’s think just a little bit closer about this golden rule and how it is oftentimes viewed and almost interpreted within our society.

5. You Have to Be Proactive in Treating Others

Because we live in a society now, and this has not always been the case, but because we live in a society now where it’s become so much more fragmented and so much less knit together. We don’t have tight-knit communities anymore, not for the most part. What most of us want from others is we just want to be left alone. And sometimes we treat the golden rule in that way. That as long as I do no harm to someone else, then I’m doing good for them. So we again we kind of turn the golden rule into just don’t do any harm, leave people alone, they’re going to be fine, and you’re going to be fine, because honestly, that’s what most of us want from our neighbors. Just, well, you be you, and I’ll be me, and you go on your merry way, and I’ll go on my merry way, and you’ll be fine and I’ll be fine.

And there are some who would like God to treat them that way as well. At least they say that. They would say that rather than be held accountable to the will of God, why not God just leave us alone. And what they don’t realize is that there is going to come a time when God does just that. When God does leave alone those who want nothing to do with him. We have a word for that. It’s hell. God having no involvement with them anymore. God, the giver of every good and perfect gift, is no longer there, no longer present. And so man is left in existence away from God. You don’t want God to leave you alone. You and I don’t want God to simply refrain from harming us.

No, we want God to bless us, not simply to refrain from cursing us. We want God to love us. Not simply not to hate us or be indifferent toward us. We want God. We need God to love us and bless us. That’s what we want from Him. It’s what the golden rule then comes around to saying is you have to be proactive in how you’re treating others. If you want your God to bless you, to act in your favor, to give you these good gifts that he has to provide to you, then you as well must be proactive and seeking out the needs of others around you. And by the way, that’s what we’ve been talking about all week. How is it that we can do that?

How is it we can be devoted to one another? And all that comes to not just sitting back, not just waiting to see, is there possibly ever something I may do? But no, you actually being engaged in people’s lives, finding out where the needs are, what the needs are, getting to know each other enough so you can know what those needs are, and then you actively taking part in their lives because you want God to treat you in that same way. In everything, therefore, treat people the same you want them to treat you. Or again, as I’m interpreting it here, treat them the same way you want God to treat you. And he concludes it by this. For this is the law and the prophets.

6. For This Is the Law and the Prophets

When he was asked, what is the great commandment? And of course he replied, you know, the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. The second is likened to it. Shall love your neighbor as yourself. And he says in verse 40, this is the law and the prophets. It says the same thing in chapter 7 and verse 12. Treat others as you would have them to treat you. For this is the law and the prophets. We of course know that in Matthew 22, Jesus is quoting from two Old Testament passages from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and also from Leviticus 18. Those two great commands.

When we consider that our God wants us to ask, seek, and knock. When we consider that our Father is willing and able to give us these truly great gifts, that engenders love toward him. That’s what motivates from us to love this God with all of our heart, with all of our mind, and with all of our soul, because this God cares for us. And therefore, if we love this God, we are to love each other. We are to treat each other in the same way we would desire to be treated. For this is the law and the prophets.

Not in particular service that we render to him, not necessarily by singing hymns of praise, not necessarily by devoting periods of worship to him, which we should do and will continue to do. But so much of our devotion to God is actually seen in our devotion to each other. That our love for God is fully seen, not in the things we say about God in this life, or even in me, the actions that we take with God fully in view, but the things we do for each other, the being devoted to one another, the encouraging one another, the being at peace with one another, the serving and washing each other’s feet. That’s where our love for God is seen. This is the law and the prophets.

Conclusion

I thank you so much again for the opportunity to be with you this week, to share these things from the gospel with you. These things are meaningful to us because we have a relationship with a common father. We are able to call each other brother and sister for that one reason and for no other reason. That we have a Father in heaven who has deemed us lovable enough, even though we were not lovable at all. Worthy enough, even though we were not worthy at all. He deemed us to be the recipients of the blood of his son.

And therefore in a relationship with each other. We extend an invitation in the night. You can be a part of that same family. You can have a relationship with the same God, to have Him as your Father, and to have all these saints as brothers and sisters in Christ. And then spend the rest of our days fulfilling the law and the prophets by loving the Lord our God with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind, and by loving each other. Would you respond to the gospel? Believing in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, repenting of your wrongs, being baptized to have your sins forgiven. If so, why don’t you come as we stand and as we sing?