Mountain View Baptist Church

[This sermon is one of a series entitled "Sermon on the Mount, Concentrating on the Beatitudes," which is being preached on Sunday mornings by Pastor Tim Senter.]

Last week we discussed the dog and the swine. Before that, we talked of the beam in one eye compared to the speck in another. We identified a speck as possibly being the remnants of a beam. There is one spiritual application of this that we should all understand. Any unbeliever that tells a believer how to live has a beam in their eye. The believer may very well have beams too, but unbeliever’s lost condition is a beam that regularly beats the believer in the face. Whether dog, swine or just needing the gospel to be converted, the unbeliever has a beam that regularly disrupts the life of the believer.

Another aspect of this analogy that we did not cover is that Jesus is talking about a singular beam and speck focused upon a specific challenge. Truly, if we looked at our lives objectively and compared them to scripture, we would have enough Douglas fir sticking out of our face to build a new three-story log cabin. None of us has just one beam or even one type of beam. Further, none of us has just one speck, if we have a speck. Many misconstrue their personal beams as specks. Only in the spiritual world can a bit of saw dust become a 2x12x16 pressure treated (to make it long lasting, we would not want it to deteriorate in our eye now would we, that would be annoying) floor joist. We so often find this happens though when dealing with our worldliness. We can make a mountain out of a molehill without really trying at all.

Today we move to a solution to these problems. We find ourselves faced with several questions:

• How do we judge not?
• How do we deal properly with others?
• How do we not make that speck into a beam?
• How do we identify the dog and swine?
• How do we distinguish them from the rest of the world?

The answer to all of these things, in a nutshell, is something so simple that no one ever does it in earnest. Everyone fails at it. No one really has a prayer life like Polycarp who is said to have had deep calluses on his knees. We pray.

Please look at Matthew 7, verses 7 and 8. The simplest things elude us so frequently we must often wonder how we make it through this life. The baseball player when, found to be making some fundamental mistakes, is urged to “go back to the basics.” The Christian likewise, must be urged to do the same. When we fail in our testimony to others, we automatically attribute it to their heart. What about our prayer life? A lack of prayer may very well be a symptom of a far greater heart issue. Still, we need to go back to the basics. How were you saved in the first place? Every one of us who is saved has at one point bowed to the Lord Jesus and begged Him to save us from our sins. Every Christian has, at one point, prayed for salvation, calling upon the name of the Lord to be saved (Rom 10:13).

Once again we come to a piece of scripture that many say is detached from the subject of all that was before. I have seen this passage depicted in movies, where Jesus speaks as He is walking among the crowd on the mount. Alert, He is supposed to be sitting (Matt 5:1). Further, it is depicted as a loving, caring and sensitive moment of encouragement to pray for things in life, and God will provide them. Theatrically Jesus is always speaking to the depraved, indicating they just need faith for survival. This passage has been used pejoratively by the atheist for millennia. The subject has not changed – help others properly but first look at yourself.

Many see this passage as a golden promise for answered prayer. It is that; however, it is much more as well. If we limit this passage to things which we might think we want to ask God for, we remove the whole point in Jesus’ sermon. I am going to take a little different direction with respect to what we should be praying about according to His Sermon on the Mount.

Once again, review of a few ideas is in order to encourage our understanding.

1. Chapter and verse divisions are not divinely appointed. Many believe they are, but they are not. For instance, many suspect that the first to introduce this type of division for the Old Testament was the Babylonians during the captivity in 586BC. The five books of Moses were divided into 154 sections. It was later grouped into 54 sections with over 600 subdivisions for reading. For the New Testament, the Council of Nicea in AD 325 divided it into paragraphs. However, it was not until after Jerome (347-420 AD), an Antiochian priest, translated the entire Bible (Old and New Testaments, Hebrew and Greek texts), into Latin (language of the Roman Empire), did we have one large book in a single language. Then, the Archbishop Stephen Langton (1150-1228 AD) actually divided the text into the scheme we use today. The numbering system used for your scriptures was developed only 800 years ago.
2. Manuscript writing was not done in paragraph and sentence form all the time. Manuscripts were solid masses of words that were many times just continuously written without breaks or spaces. Many times, they were in all capital letters.[i] I have taken the liberty of posting some images of those manuscripts. As you can see, they can be very difficult to read.[ii]

The first example, an epistle of Paul dated 180-200 AD, you can see, seems to come from a book. This is the Chester Beatty Papyrus codex of the Pauline Epistles,which is the earliest book of Saint Paul’s letters in existence. It bifolds and has a center line. It also looks like the margins line up as well. You notice that all the edges are severely tattered. Look at the writing though. It is all block letters and runs continuously. This was from a codex, which was the first book or bound form of putting pages together. These pages are from completely different books. One is from Romans 11 and the other is from Colossians 1. It is rather like taking a page out of the middle of a book where that page is one sheet of paper but was printed page numbers 12 on one side and 25 on the other. Our Lander Journal, as are most newspapers is printed this way with large contiguous sheets.

The second picture is a single sheet of another manuscript. The Bodmer Papyrus is a collection of approximately fifty Greek and Coptic manuscripts was purchased by M. Martin Bodmer of Switzerland in 1955-56, and has been dated around 200 A.D   This is part of the gospel of John. This has much the same characteristics as the letter of Paul and clearly displays the all capital letter printing of the time as well as the large block of continuous printing. There is also little or no punctuation involved. Most punctuation is the same in Greek as it is in English. Periods are periods, commas are commas but colons and semi-colons are a dot raised to the middle of the line and a question mark is a semicolon instead of our traditional “?.”

In the third example, we see a very worn specimen. This is not part of scripture though we have fragments like it that are copies of many epistles. This is a Greek papyrus that is a part of a legal document provided to Sarapion, governor of the southern nome of Sebennytos. It is from the first century and really is only a piece of a glossary. This was a citizen’s grievance filed with the Governor. Again, it is somewhat clear that mostly caps were used to write and depending upon penmanship, it was somewhat legible.

The final example is from a very famous Codex, Codex Vaticanus. It contains a complete copy of the scriptures except the first part of Genesis, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Revelation. This is obviously a more organized book and even here we note some corrections in the margins. It still displays the capitol block lettering as normality during the day. There are more spaces for sentence structure apparent, but still no divisions of paragraphs, chapters or verses.

When we come to a passage then, we have to make some decisions concerning the breaks in the words for paragraphs and understand that some of those breaks, and especially the chapter and verse breaks, are quite subjective. In Sunday services an additional handout was given to the congregation. These two sheets are from the same book essentially. One is electronic, one is hardback. They both have different paragraph separations.[iii] This is caused by one of two things. First, the paragraph separations can be subjective even within the same versions. We can see this in the examples of manuscripts we have passed out that are simply blocks of text. The writers did write with cohesion, thought and organization. There is sentence structure and paragraph thought division, but the separation of these exact thoughts is still determined by the translator who is human and therefore somewhat subjective. Second, it could simply be a mistake in the transference of the edition from one form to another – printed to automated. Whatever the case may be, it shows man makes mistakes or judgments that may change appearance, but should not change the original intent.

Asking, seeking and knocking is not just about prayer for things, it is about prayer to change the heart. We may think we have been brow beaten into submission to change for Christ. Many in fact say this is the problem with Christianity – that it concentrates too much on what horrible people we are, and on prohibitions or restrictions if you will. That is why we frequently see promises in scripture such as, “ask and it shall be given to you, seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” and we run with it like a gleeful child with a new toy. The truth is, great scriptural promises are truths we should lean on, but this is still about changing your heart not your social status, level of success or checkbook balance. Many have struggled to balance the promises in this very scripture with the truths of life. Pray for a million dollars and see if it comes. It probably won’t. Like the whining child we say, “But the Scripture says,” and we go through contortions to justify it, as if to say, “Well, that was just not God’s will for you.” If we take the promise and twist it, it certainly will not fit God’s will either.

Some questions we could ask (and this will not be an exhaustive study) are:

1. Is this context driven?
2. Is there a change in subject?
3. Does there appear to be some reason Jesus is moving from one focus to another.
4. Is there solid evidence for His movement?
5. Could this be a transitional point where Jesus is moving from an introspective focus to a more general discussion about our spiritual life?

The answers to these questions are found in studying the scriptures before and after verses 7-8 to see if there is any connection.

Having already reviewed verses 1-6, we need only look at the scriptures which follow. Looking briefly at verse nine, we find that Jesus is again pointing to the heart of man. In verse nine He asks the rhetorical question, “What man is there of you, who if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?” Verse 10 is of the same illustrative material. It addresses the heart of a man who will love his family and not treat them with evil, but rather give them the things that are good for them. This is still a challenge: to look at our hearts and see others with a level of understanding correlated to our own propensities. If this is the case, there is no reason that our Savior would jump to a new subject amid the oration He is giving. We will look at verses seven and eight in this light – we are still considering our own hearts in light of the issues being discussed. We first ask, seek and knock on doors that address the issues in our hearts before we look at others with judgmental eyes bulging with beams that may browbeat people.

I. Ask, seek, knock (Verse 7)

Many times we look at things, read things and re-read things and they seem to say, clearly, what every one else says they say. For instance, I agree with everyone who reads this passage that it is about prayer, talking to God, asking things of Him, seeking the answers to questions and knocking on doors of opportunity. However, in those general terms, man frequently branches out from there to be all inclusive, and I have to disagree based on our brief analysis of verses 1-6 and 9-10, as well as the overall tenor of the Sermon on the Mount that begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” First some scriptural basics.

The words “ask,” “seek” and “knock” in verse seven are all imperatives. These are commands. It is good, generally, to ask for, seek and knock on the doors of opportunity for Christ. This scripture commands us to ask for, seek and knock on the doors that will change our hearts, help others through testimony or just develop us into better servants of God. This is the focus of this passage.

We mentioned before the idea of going back to the basics. That has been the focus of the entire introduction – back to the basics of salvation and back to the basics of the Word of God. When we go back to our salvific basics, we first asked God to save us, we sought His Son for salvation, we knocked on the door to heaven and asked to be let in through the shed blood of Christ. It is in and through this shed blood that our dead works are cleansed and we may serve the living God (Heb 9:14). We ask for our sins to be cleaned white as snow (Is 1:18). Jesus here is saying we should do this again, and again, and again. This is not asking and seeking Jesus for salvation, but for Christian living – to change us into Christians more and more. The prayer Jesus refers to here asks God’s forgiveness for our sins, seeks His great grace and love for everyday spiritual and physical existence, and knocks on the door for opportunities to witness of Him.  This is the focus of this passage and what Jesus is encouraging.

The passage is obviously talking about prayer. The passage is imperatival in nature, commanding us to pray. It does not say specifically what to pray for; context demands that prayer here is for our Christian heart to change. We are to ask to not be judgmental, to seek the beam in our own eye, and to knock on the door to help others, not shove it open. It could for instance say, “Ask for God to change your heart, seek the removal of the beam from your eye and knock on the door of opportunity to help others, and that door will open to you” but it does not say that. However, in context where we are discussing introspective spiritual self-assessment, we must conclude that this is exactly what Jesus is encouraging us to do.

We must ask God to give us a new heart (Psalm 51:10). We have established in prior studies that a new heart exists within the believer that is alive and able to hear the Holy Spirit urging change within (Jn 7:38; 16:8-11), and He sanctifies or changes us to become Christlike (Rom 15:16; 1 Cor 6:11). Even the saved soul falls to temptation, and commits sin. The change we ask for and seek to implement is the same repentance that David seeks in Psalm 51. We too should seek this clean heart to change us. We must tap into His power in our lives for the balance of boldness, love and self-discipline (2 Tim 1:7). Properly attuned to the Holy Spirit in prayer, asking specifically for our hearts to change, we can seek opportunities to be bold in witness and testimony, therefore knocking on the doors of opportunity in Christ, for Christ.

Ask God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit to reach into your heart and change you. Seek that change at every opportunity. Knock on the doors of opportunity but do not barge through them with wild abandon. There is a rather unique thing about large, long boards. If you have ever carried one on your shoulder, you will understand where I am going. If you try to go through a doorway with a long board on your shoulder, unless you do it carefully and are very mindful of that board the entire time, you will hit the wall either in front or behind or both. I am sure many of you have experienced running right into a door before too. It stops you, and sometimes it hurts. Knock gently, lovingly and carefully on those doors of opportunity.

We learn again a very interesting truth now in verse eight. If we are first to ask for God’s help with our own heart, then we are to seek the true change that is needed in our heart (this is the really tough part by the way). Finally, we look to love others with the things we learn though our changed heart.

II. Having asked, sought, and knocked (Verse 8)

Once we have asked, sought and knocked, we have to wait. Doors do not immediately open to our calling. There are things on the other side that need preparation.

Have you ever visited someone and, when you arrived and knocked on the door, you heard major hustling and bustling behind it? That is because although you knocked, the environment on the other side of the door was not ready for you. You might even stand there and think, “I wonder what they are doing in there?” How often has your mind wondered to the negative? “Are they doing something in there they would be ashamed of?” In the extreme, there is this one, “Are they axe murders and are trying to get rid of the evidence real quick?” The bottom line folks is that the space on the other side of the door is not ready for you, so stop all the imagination and get with the program of asking, seeking and knocking. God does the same thing. We can be all ready to walk up to that door and apply our knuckles to the wood, or rap the door knocker or whatever is there; but God may not have finished preparing what is on the other side so, back off! Be patient. You may hear all kinds of strange noises going on, even some chainsaws running wild, but don’t let your imagination get the best of you.  Just let God do the work. In fact, it may be a good time to “go back to the basics” again and ask for more heart adjustments. Seek again that change because it may not have properly taken to your heart the first time. The change you requested may very well not have taken root.

By the way, at this point when you are knocking, you should already have asked and sought. The beam in the eye is the individual running up to the door and rushing through it without the appropriate preparation. Jesus is talking of other things now, not just our over zealous attitude to fix others. He is telling us there is not just looking at yourself, but downright preparation in yourself that needs to take place, and He has to have time to work. Yes, God is sovereign and could affect the change with a spoken word. However, the testimony of God’s word is that He prefers to work though the will of man. What a glorious God we have that can work with something so messed up, confused and ever changing as man’s will to affect His perfect end. Though He can complete His work whether you barge in through the door or not, God here gives you the opportunity to first ask about yourself, seek to change yourself and politely knock on the door to help others.

Equally, after having asked and sought, the door does not have to be about others. How many have thought of this possibility? Consider a beam’s-worth of problems that is in your own eye. That beam can be chopped off right at the base, no problem. However, we normally grow gradually, we normally mature gradually, and we normally change gradually for Christ. That is how we are sanctified. Sanctification is a process by which God the Holy Spirit makes us pure, holy and more separated unto Him on earth in preparation for heaven (Rom 15:16). If we ask in truth and seek Christ in truth, then we admit knocking on the door truthfully can be just as much about us than it can be about someone else.

The question for everyone here today is, are you truly asking God to change you. Jesus’ sermon begins with the promise of contentment with a poor spirit because of a promised inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven (Rom 6:23b). This is done first at salvation where we ask God to save us, seeking His Son for salvation and knocking on the door to heaven. There is contentment in mourning as we receive comfort from the Holy Spirit concerning our empty condition (Jn 14:16-18).  Contentment in meekness originates from knowledge that there is earthly inheritance (Ps 37:11). Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, will be satisfied and experience great contentment (Gal 5:16-23). Christians seek the pure righteousness of God; their souls crave it as a great delicacy in the feasts of heaven. The merciful will receive the mercy they request. Exercising forgiveness (Matt 6:14) in life provides for this mercy and results in reciprocation. Seeking the mercies of God becomes a byproduct of giving mercy. Knocking on the door of mercy may not always result in merciful situations, but when one begins with the mercy of a poor spirit, they have great potential to receive mercy from even the haughtiest of spirits. Asking for a pure heart as David did in Psalm 51 provides for the revelation of God. God is revealed in purity, and in activities that encourage purity. Finally, asking for the strength to encourage peace gives contentment as we seek peaceful ends to all situations in our lives. Our hearts are humbled to produce these ends and the doors to the ends are opened as our hearts are changed for Christ.

Ladies and gentlemen let me encourage you to ask for heart change regularly and always before you approach a door of opportunity to witness or testify to another about heart changes you recognize that they need. Let me encourage you to first seek the heart change in yourself that you suspect they need by seeking God in prayer about these very things. Finally, when you have sought the humility of God’s purity and righteousness in your own heart, knock on the door of opportunity for change either for you, or for the brother or sister in Christ about whom you are so concerned. You never know, the Lord may have you both in mind. The scripture says, “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” We might say, for every one that honestly asks for heart change, receives it; and he that seeks those things that will change his heart will find them; and to him that knocks on the door to change hearts, it will be opened.

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[i] There are over 5,300 known ancient Greek manuscript copies (MSS) and fragments of the New Testament in Greek that have survived until today. Counting an additional 10,000 Latin Vulgate and over 9,300 other early manuscript versions in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, and Ethiopic, totaling over 24,000 surviving manuscripts of the New Testament. Small changes and variations in manuscripts affect none of the central Christian doctrines, nor do they change the message. Tertullian stated that by 150 A.D., the Church in Rome had compiled a list of the New Testament books matching our list of today. We have 32,000 quotes from before 325 AD, from Irenaeus (182-188 AD), Justin Martyr (before 150 AD), Polycarp (107 AD), Ignatius (100), Clement (96 AD) and many other second and third century fathers. All but eleven verses of the New Testament could be reconstructed through their writings alone. The Muratonian Canon Fragment dating from 170 AD lists the same New Testament that we have. See the Ante-Nicean Fathers, a 32 volume Encyclopedia of the writings of the Early Church, by Eerdmans Publishing. Or on the Internet see the Early Church Fathers. Therefore, none of the discussion concerning these manuscripts is intended to question their authenticity or veracity as the true Word of God. Great men of God endeavor to analyze and translate the myriad of manuscripts to provide the best possible current transcripts such as Nestle-Aland’s 27^th edition of Novum Testamentum Graece. The comments in this sermon are in no way intended to denigrate their efforts or their abilities for they are far above this pastor’s language abilities. Men of God who translate know that it is man’s fallibility that intrudes upon the perfection of scripture.

[ii] The preface from the translators to the readers of an early 1611 version reads, “A man may be counted a virtuous man, though he have mad many slips in his life, (else there were no virtuous, for in many things we offend all,) also a comely man and lovely, though he have some warts upon his hand, yea, not only freckles upon his face, but also scars. No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For whatever was perfect under the sun, where Apostles or apostolick men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand?” The 1611 translators admit their human frailties can affect a translation, but it will not change the Word of God.

[iii] Note to the web reader: in services, this paper was passed in a protective cover. There was one blue and one white page in a single sleeve. The blue page was a copy of the Nestle-Aland 27^th edition Novum Testamentum Graece (New Testament in Greek) hardback book form showing chapter seven verses 1 through 19. On the reverse side was a white page. It was an excerpt from the Nestle-Aland 27^th edition Novum Testamentum Graece from Matthew much the same except it was taken from an automated copy with morphological tagging by William D. Mounce as it comes in Accordance® software for Mac®. This excerpt shows verses 7:1-11. Concentrating on the break at chapter seven verse seven, the hard back shows a paragraph separation, the automated copy does not. This could be a simple error in transposition from hardcopy to automated format. It also displays the decisions translators have to make to present material in a more readable fashion.