Seeking Eternal Values in a Material World (Matthew 7:7-11)

Jesus is now beginning to wind up his sermon by helping those who seek after the Kingdom of God to understand how to live in a world with temporal material values while still anticipating the Kingdom with eternal values in view.

Remember he told us in chapter 6 to seek the kingdom of God as a priority and God would supply all our needs.  All of our material resources should be used and invested with an eternal perspective whether it is discretionary spending or it is being used for our daily necessities.  The world values the wrong things.  It values having wealth and material possessions because that is what we can see.  Jesus says these things do have value in that they can be used and invested in a way that makes an eternal difference.

The world does not generally value eternal things.  At best it undervalues them.  So in our last study, we saw how Jesus compared that kind of perspective with giving pearls to a pig.

Did you notice this progression in thought and action regarding our material possessions?  1)  We need God’s perspective.  2) We need to carefully share that perspective with others and now 3) We need to value the things God has entrusted to us and use them wisely.  Let’s look at our passage, Matt 7:7-11.

This is a familiar passage but we mainly hear it discussed as an encouragement to ask God for things we need.  And that is certainly true.  We are to ask, to seek, and to knock and the result is that we will be given, we will find, and it will be opened.  Some have commented – correctly – that this should be translated “ask and keep on asking,” “seek and keep on seeking,” and “knock and keep on knocking.”  This is indeed a persistent action.  So, yes, we need to be persistent in prayer.  I don’t want to underplay that one bit.  But notice that in Jesus’ explanation we are petitioning God the Father.  We have a relationship with Him.  So Jesus compares our persistent asking, seeking, and finding with a child going to her parent because there is a relationship there of love and trust.  We can be persistent with a parent and not feel like we are being impertinent or presumptuous because this is Dad!  And Jesus says that such a parent will NOT give us something evil but good! 

There is a danger here that Jesus is highlighting for us.  We might actually undervalue something precious that God gives us.  Why else would Jesus have to remind us that our own earthly parents (who He reminds us are actually evil) will always give us good things so how much more will our Heavenly Father!  [By the way, even evil people sometimes do good things!  We are all born evil but even before we met Jesus, we still did some good things.  We are evil because we all come short of God’s glory.]  God’s answer to our cries for help is always to give us something good.  But sometimes we are tempted to act like the pigs who turn on their keepers who try to give them pearls instead of that delicious slop we so desperately wanted.  This is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden!  God had surrounded the first couple with good things and even warned them about the one dangerous item in their garden.  But they believed the serpent’s lie that God was withholding good from them.  And they trampled on His warning only to discover they had fallen for a lie.  They had undervalued God’s goodness in what He had provided.

Remember Esau!  He despised the birthright of God’s blessing that God had promised to His father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham.  But his twin brother Jacob valued it.  Later in his life Esau wept bitterly about how he had traded God’s blessing for a bowl of soup—just because he was hungry.  Here is Jesus’ question to you and me:  Do we despise something He has given us?  Or do we value God’s provision even though it may not look particularly great when comparing it to what others might have?  Unbelievers surround us and they naturally despise the precious promises given to us in the Word of God.  They don’t value the same things you do.  But what about you?  What about what you have in terms of this world’s goods. 

One more word about eternal values.  God is the One Who measures out what is ‘good.’  Corrie ten Boom learned that fleas were good at Ravensbrück because they kept the guards from discovering the Bible study!  Ravi Zacharias tells how a Christian prisoner in North Korea learned how latrine duty was good because that was where he discovered discarded pages of the Bible!  Good is never measured by my expectations!  It is measured by God’s.

© 2018 Eric Thimell