Matthew: Praying to a Good Father

So this week, my five-year-old she scored her first soccer goal.

Soccer game, big deal for her, big deal for us, big family event.

And when it happened, uh it she was she was just standing in the right place.

The ball comes in front of her, bam, right in the goal, and she had this look like did that just happen?

What happened?

What do I do now?

Because this hasn't ever happened for me before, happens to other girls on the team all the time, but has not happened for her.

And so just look a surprise and then joy, and then arms are up and starts running, and I was out on the field uh helping coach, and so I got to meet her out of the half half field and just give her a pat on the back and gave her a hug.

Now it wasn't the only time last week that I hugged her.

Uh a few nights ago, Christy was out for work, and so she was out working, so that meant that night I had uh dinner time and bathtime and bedtime, book time and bedtime and all that.

And so I get all of them into bed, get the three into bed, and then out comes the five-year-old.

And I know she's playing me.

Dads, we know, right?

When this happens, we know what's going on.

I know she's in bed and she's zinking, mom's not here.

Let's see if I can play dad.

And she can, like it works, right?

She comes out, she comes out, and the world is ending.

The world is over, the world is ending, it's tears, it is sadness, it is it is everything in life is breaking down because she misses mom.

And the thing that will help this huge problem is for me to hug her and hold her, and she gets to watch TV with me for a few minutes.

This is the thing that solves the problem.

And so, of course, I fine, that's fine.

So she climbs up and I hug her.

And still, there's another time, there's one other time that I hugged her this week, and it was it was after she had done something wrong.

She had done something that she was ashamed of and she was embarrassed, and she came and she confessed after the confrontation occurred, and she was sorrowful, and I hugged her.

Now, also this week I heard this podcast about this uh Buddhist lady who lives in India.

She grew up in India, and as a little child, at this point she's older, she's 50 or 60 years old.

She's like the Billy Graham of Buddhism, just so you know, that's that's her.

She has a whole campus and schools, and she has a whole thing going.

She's she's Billy Graham.

All right, so as a child, she be she began to hug street beggars and just hug them, just affirm them.

And then as she gets older, she begins to go on these tours all around the world, and first just in living rooms, and she'd go around and she would meet in living rooms, and other people would come.

Her name's Ama.

Other people would come, all these people would come, and just in living rooms, she would just she would hug people, she would just embrace them.

And and then now she travels around on these tours with 250 people to run these events where thousands and thousands and thousands of people show up to be hugged by her.

And all she does is she hugs them and she says, Daughter, darling daughter, you are so loved.

Son, you are so loved.

And I'm listening to this, I'm going, thousands are showing up for that.

I mean, I'm listening to them going, thousands and thousands of people are showing up to be hugged by a lady, just a lady, in my point of view, just like a lady, just like a lot of ladies in here, if you decide to start hugging people and affirm them, like she's just like any other human being in the world and she's hugging people, thousands and thousands of people are showing up to be hugged.

Like that's how needy, that's how needy we are.

Why are people showing up?

Or, or, or, why is that hug from your granny?

Or why was that hug from your grandpa so good?

Or why do we want romantic love so badly?

Because we're all wondering, is there a non-judgmental, compassionate presence in this world that will have me?

That will not just hugs when I score goals, but also hugs at other times in my life.

Now, Jesus tells a story in Luke 15.

If you've been around church, you've heard it before.

It's the prodigal son, the prodigal God story.

And I love this story in Luke 15.

And for us in this text this morning, this text about prayer, but this text about prayer coming from the fact that we're praying to a father, this Luke 15 helps open our minds to Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

And so this story to catch you up, if you're not from church world and church is new to you, there's a family, there's a father, a dad, two sons.

The younger son comes to dad and says, Hey, I want my share of the inheritance.

I want it now.

I don't want it when you die, I want it now.

I mean, this this is this would be appalling to the father because basically it's saying, like, I don't even want to wait.

This would be like you going to your dad and saying, Hey, I want all your money.

Just give me your money.

I don't care about you, give me your money.

I don't want a relationship with you, just give me the money, and I'm not even willing to wait till you die.

And this is what the son does.

So the father gives him the inheritance.

This is Jesus teaching this parable for us to understand about God.

And so this son, he takes the money and he runs off to a foreign country, right?

And we read in Luke 15, he gets there and he just starts spending the money.

He's running through it, and life is good.

I mean, it is it is parties, it is women, it's more parties, it's more women, it's stuff, and then you know what happens?

The money starts to run out.

And then the parties go away and the women go away, and the stuff go away.

And then he's broken financially, he's broken morally, he's broken emotionally, he's broken spiritually.

He has nobody.

There's nothing left.

He's starving to death.

It says that he's gotten hired out to a farm and he's looking at the pigs.

The pigs are eating food.

He's looking at what the pigs eat, and he's longing for that.

He's at the end of himself.

He's at the bottom.

And then it says, I love this in Luke 15, it says that he came to his senses.

It's like he he remembered.

He remembered his dad.

He remembered his father, and he thinks, he thinks, perhaps dad will take me back.

Maybe Papa will take me back.

I wonder if he'd still love me.

And so he forms a little speech, like, I've sinned against you in heaven, I'm not worthy to be your son, make me like a hired man.

We could we read it in Luke 15, 20 through 24.

And he arose and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, he starts on his speech, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, right?

It's like he the the son didn't even get to get into the speech and earn his way back in.

The father, but the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fat and calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

He's gonna throw a party for this boy.

For this my son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found, and they began to celebrate.

So here's what this parable teaches us God's heart is for you.

It's for you without regard to what you have or have not or will or will not do.

So point number one is this before we even dig into Matthew 7, God should be understood as a loving father.

This is what Jesus wants us to understand God as.

That's why this is the dominant metaphor Jesus keeps using is a papa.

Now, to be philosophical, it's a metaphor.

And so the metaphor does not bound God.

The metaphor of father does not bound God, it doesn't encompass God.

If the metaphor bound God, like a box, then the metaphor is just religious idolatry.

But the metaphor is just, it's one metaphor.

That's why when you read scripture or one name, right?

You read scripture, you read one name, or you get one metaphor about God, and you go, yeah, like I get that, but what about this?

The reason for that is that none of it bounds God.

He's too vast, he's too expansive.

But Jesus keeps coming back to this one.

Like, hey, if if you need one, if you need a metaphor, think about a papa.

So we have this papa on that porch and he's waiting for this messy, inadequate, broken down, nothing to offer child, and he runs and he hugs them.

Not when he scores the soccer goal, not when he earns his way back in, but while he's still undeserving.

And this is what we need.

This is what we need.

This is why people are showing up to the Buddhist lady of going on hugging tours, is because we need to be loved and accepted from outside of ourselves, not based on our past, our current, or our future record, but based on, based on, this is what humanity needs, what we need, based on the Father's love for us, God's love for us, known in Jesus.

And this is the picture Jesus keeps painting for us.

This unconditional acceptance.

Now I know maybe you're here.

The idea of father's hard for you.

You didn't have a good dad.

And maybe your father never accepted you, maybe your father never hugged you, never held you.

Maybe you feel like, do you remember Cameron from Ferris Wheeler's Day Off?

The profound film?

Profound.

He's beating the tar out of his dad's classic Ferrari at the end of the movie.

And he's just beating the tar out of this car.

And anybody who loves cars at all, it's just painful to watch.

And he's beating it, and he's just kicking in, he's kicking it, he's beating it, and he's saying, Who do you love?

You love a car, who do you love?

You love a car, and he's yelling at his dad, but his dad's not there, but he's yelling about his dad, and the car eventually crashes through a window down into a ravine, and Cameron's standing there and he's dazed, and he's like, What am I gonna do?

This look over his face.

But see, he's he's tired of not being loved, so where all that anger's coming from.

And he's tired of being afraid because he hasn't been loved.

And then to quote the great Cameron Fry my father will come home and see what I did.

I can't hide this.

He'll have to deal with me.

I don't care, I really don't.

I'm just tired of being afraid.

Right, so we'll take any attention in reaction to not being loved.

And we're all wishing we were loved better by somebody.

And for some of us, that's really big and we've compartmentalized that and shoved it pretty deep down, and you think it's over, it's back there, but it just creates unhealthy coping mechanisms today.

Because the question never leaves.

Is there someone?

Is there a presence, a non-judgmental, compassionate presence who will love me for me?

Even when I mess up.

Now think about all that, and now listen to Matthew 7, verses 7 through 11 again.

Matthew 7:7–11

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks, receive, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be open.

Or which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Papa who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

And that's the word there, fathers, paters, father.

It's the general term for father.

Now, father is used fifteen times, that word pater, fifteen times in the Old Testament and the New Testament, 245 times.

See, Jesus is trying to teach us something.

That on this side of Jesus, where Jesus is the sacrifice, that we don't have to pay for our own sin, but he takes on our sin and gives us his righteousness, on this side of Jesus and the new covenant.

We say the metaphor is a dad.

That's the best metaphor for you to grab hold of.

If you need a metaphor, that's the one.

It won't bound them.

But it's the best one.

245 times.

Do you have a good Monday?

Monday?

Halloween?

Maybe you're against Halloween?

Fall festival, if you're more comfortable with that, I don't know.

Some of us need fall festival.

That's fine.

We can do fall festival.

Anybody celebrate Reformation Day?

Anybody big on Reformation Day?

There we go.

One, two.

We can do it.

Rob.

Rob dressed up as Martin Luther, very proud of him.

Or give him a bonus at the end of the year.

Our church will for that.

Great behavior.

Y'all know what the Reformation is?

499 years ago, let me tell you, it's a lot bigger than the fun you had on Halloween.

It's bigger than what will happen Tuesday.

I can guarantee that.

Because 400, it shaped what will happen on Tuesday to the truth.

It shaped Western civilization.

It shapes you.

499 years ago, this guy, Martin Luther, is reading the scriptures, which is sort of new for just regular people to read the scriptures back then.

He's reading, and the church at the time is selling forgiveness.

That's how work things is becoming, is you pay to be pay monetarily to be forgiven by God.

And he's reading it, and he's going, oh no, no, no.

This is no, this is justification before God by grace through faith.

And he writes this big document, his 95th thesis, he writes this thing, and he nails it on a church door, and the reformation begins.

And so if you have any connection to your heart being relieved by grace, this reformation is everything to you.

So next year, 500 years celebration.

On Halloween Day, it would be five years.

We're all going to dress up as Martin Luther, all of us.

I'm kidding.

Weird out our neighbors, read them theological documents.

And here's what we got out of the Reformation.

We don't have a God demanding us to pursue Him as to be accepted.

That's not what it is.

That's not what the scriptures teach.

We don't have a God demanding us to pursue Him as to be accepted.

We have a God who pursues us, and we know this in Jesus, so we are accepted.

That's a huge difference.

We are justified by grace through faith.

So point number two, we are regarded by this loving father as a loved, secure child.

And we are secure because it's based on his word and not ours.

Point number three, as a loved, secure child before a loving father, we can ask and we can seek and we can knock.

As a loved child before a loving father, we can ask and seek and knock.

So two conversations from this past week stood out as I wrote this sermon.

One was I bought a downspout and some light bulbs at Home Depot.

And so I was in line, and the cashier, she's very pleasant, but she was struggling.

She was struggling with the guy had like an American Express gift card, and she didn't realize, neither of them realized like the code on American Express on the front of the card, not the back of the card.

Well, I use American Express, so I was able to say, hey, it's on the front of the card.

And he leaves and I step up and she's like, Oh, it's my first day, thank you.

I'm like, hey, no problem.

I hope you have a good day.

And bam, bam, bam, out the door, right?

Like I was pleasant to her, she's pleasant at me.

There's a transaction, out I go.

Now, what I didn't ask is like, why is this your first day?

Did you lose a job?

Why do you have do you oh you have to go why do you have to go back to work?

Is this depressing to you?

Is this like a really sad day to you to have to be here?

Or is this exciting?

Like, is this so exciting to you to land this job?

Didn't do that.

It was transactional.

It was a transactional conversation.

Now later in the week, my friend Jonathan calls me.

He says, Hey, I need to talk to you.

It was a voicemail.

He said, I really need to talk to you the next couple days.

And so then I call him back the next day and we talk, and he says, Hey, um, I had this new opportunity come up for a job.

I'm gonna be leaving the church, leaving the church he founded, which is village church, the church that helped us start.

He's leaving that church to go to a church in Houston.

And he said, Man, it's been unfolding over time, and he kind of plays it out for me over the phone.

And I'm and I'm going, This is this is awesome.

This is exciting.

Like, this is exciting how all this lined up.

And if you know what, if God calls him away, he's gonna call somebody into that church.

So I'm not worried about that.

And he's worried about that, he's expressing his heart, all the anxiety tied up in that.

He's moving his family, his kids, the stress for his children.

You know, he's gonna let down all these people at his church.

I mean, all of this, right?

It wasn't a transactional conversation.

As I get to say, Jonathan, if God's calling you somewhere else, God will call somebody into that church.

Hey, Jonathan, your kids, be really patient with them.

Just listen to them.

They're teenagers.

They're gonna be really, they're gonna be mad.

They're gonna be mad for a while.

Just give them time.

And Jonathan, you know what?

I'm really proud of you because you pastored that church really well.

And this job sounds really great for you.

It wasn't transactional.

It was it was like a family.

It was like two brothers talking.

See, we can relate in like a transaction, or we can relate like a family.

Transactional is a conditional relationship.

What you have and how you behave, it's about doing, it's about if you perform and to perform so that you get something.

But family's different, or at least it should be.

It should be.

It's about unconditionality, it's about who you are.

It's about the fact that you're in, you're in, you're safe.

And it's about your being, it's about your identity.

It's about the fact that you are already accepted.

And so when it comes to prayer, it's family.

You're not praying in transaction, you're you're you're praying to a father.

That's why Jesus teaches us.

How much more the fact that your father will give you good things?

And I love this text.

Ask, seek, knock, right?

It implies that it's not always easy.

I mean, sometimes dad's on the couch and you get to like find him right away, but sometimes he's working in the closet in the back of the garage, and it takes you forever to find him to ask something.

You have to seek him out, you've got to go knocking, you gotta go.

I mean, that's what it implies here.

And the point here is that God doesn't always seem immediately close.

But we still knock and seek, and we still ask.

And the promises is that he hears.

And your awakening, my awakening to our secure status is the very thing that opens up willing dialogue of what's really going on.

Wednesday night we had an elder meeting, we have a monthly elder meeting and talk about the church, and we talk about ministry, we're talking about congregational needs and what's going on with people, we talk about money, we talk about the future, we talk about all sorts of stuff.

We got into a kind of a good, good conversation, like a heated, good conversation.

At one point I got really opinionated, I got very opinionated.

And I think I ranted at one point.

Maybe I got preachy, that's possible, that can happen.

Um, and the elders were just gracious and they let me rant a bit.

And then the next morning I woke up and I and I was just wondering like how much of that was good and how much was selfish.

Now, how I understand God and my position before him means everything in this moment.

Or maybe it's a worse moment.

Maybe you belittle your wife, maybe maybe you uh you lose your job, maybe you do something to lose your job, maybe you belittle your husband, maybe you yell at your kid, maybe maybe it's lust or greed, and you give in to that thing again.

And then what if God's demanding or controlling or uncaring?

See, if so, in that moment, in that moment, if God is one of those things, you will inevitably not speak your heart.

You can't, you can't risk it.

Can't risk it.

So you'll have to hide.

You'll have to pretend.

If he's not a father, you have to pretend.

You have to hide.

If it's transactional, when you screw up, you have to hide.

You have to pretend.

So prayer can never be honest.

It can never be real.

But if he's a good father, he's patient, he's caring, he's fully accepting, he's the dad we all wish we had.

This is good news for us.

We can bring whatever burden we have, even if it's selfish, just to voice it, to begin that process.

Even in the voicing, there'll be transformation.

But we can bring it, we can bring the confession.

We can bring the request.

Maybe you're here, you say, right, okay, I get it.

I get it.

I'm tracking with you.

I get all that.

But when I do this, you'll say, when I do this, because I've done it, and I don't get anything.

Like I've asked and nothing happens.

Like I asked for an opportunity and it didn't happen.

I asked for relief.

I got no relief.

Right?

I mean, the good thing here is the text actually implies you won't get everything you ask for.

Verses 9 and 10, a good father won't give his kid a stone or a serpent.

Even if you ask for it, even if you ask for something you think is good for your life, if it's not good, the text is saying you won't get it.

So don't be surprised when you don't get it.

I ran into this quote this week by Mark Galley.

He's an author and he's an editor at Christianity Today, which is a magazine.

And here's what he says: here's the lesson I have learned from Jesus.

A lesson reinforced by four decades of failed prayers.

It doesn't matter how I feel when the worst seems certain.

Jesus didn't say ask when you feel hopeful.

He just said ask.

And he said it will be given.

Once we announce our desire to God, it's his job to deal with it.

Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires.

It's putting what we desire into the hands of a loving, if inscrutable, God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.

See, if faith in prayer is transactional, you go, I've been behaving, been paying my dues, and now I'm praying and I'm getting nothing.

Well, there's only a couple reactions on the back side of that.

The back side of that is uh I'm just gonna distance myself because this isn't working.

Or I must be unworthy because the transaction's not working.

So I must not be living up to something, and so you'd live in guilt.

If it's transactional, faith is transactional, which is not, but if it is to you, that's where you end up.

But if it's family, which is what this text is talking about, is how Jesus is painting the picture for us over and over again.

Our response to unanswered prayer is the humility of a child that knows the child is accepted in the family.

You go, okay, okay.

Papa sees something I don't see.

Papa knows something I don't know.

And I'll keep asking and seeking and knocking.

See, what's going on here is this one true God, your creator, the creator, is just showering you with value based on Jesus' work for you.

And it's not transactional, it's family.

You are the darling child.

And he's saying, I wouldn't give you that.

Even if you ask for that stone or that serpent, I wouldn't give you that.

You mean too much to me.

I won't give you that.

You know what?

Go ahead and ask for it, but let go.

And I'll give you what's good.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you ask and seek and knock as beloved children before a loving father.

And may you speak those burdens of your heart, not to manipulate heaven, but in humility before him, for he is non-judgmental and compassionate for you.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that you give us metaphors, pictures for us to begin to understand what you are like.

We thank you that in Jesus we know what you are like.

We thank you for the gift of Jesus that our sins are taken away, our shame is taken away, and we are made right.

We are adopted as your children, secure in the family, relieved of having to work our way into justification and rightness with you.

Would you help us to know this more?

Would you help us to understand this metaphor of father better, that you are papa for us.

You are a good dad.

Forgive us for all the ways that we rebel, we self-save, we refuse to let you into areas of our hearts and our lives.

And would you this morning call us deeper into your good news that you are enough?

You are enough for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

We serve communion each week here at Redeemer.