The Golden Rule - Do Unto Others as you Would Have Done Unto You

Matthew 7: 12-13

12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Introduction.

Let me make a couple of observations before we kick off today.

This passage has been telling us how God delights in answering prayer, what it is definitely noy telling us is that we have to overcome any unwillingness of Gods part to answer our prayers. God is God is a loving father that wants to answer our prayer. He delights in doing that. He has a different purpose in us coming repeatedly to him in prayer and that is to develop patience in us, and teaches us when we get the answer we need and at the time when we are ready to receive it. The point is God delights in answering our prayers. In the act of prayer we acknowledge that we can’t go it alone, but when we ask our father answers, when we seek, we will find our father’s face, because when we knock, a father, not a servant opens the door”. God is your father if you have trusted in his son and he wants you to come to him, and he delight in taking you and sitting you on his lap and listening to what you have to say.

Let me make another observation. The father wants to gives us ‘good’ things. I think that’s the key to this first part of the passage is that it is meant to encourage us to pray and to be persistent and fervent in our prayer. But at the same time, he gives us ‘good’ things. He doesn’t give us stones and serpents, he gives us bread and fish, he gives us good things, the things we really need. The next thing I am about to say is absolutely critical. God gives us what we need, which is not necessarily what we think we want.

If we asked for strength that we might be do great things in life he might first want to make us weak so that we learn to obey. He also might give us grace instead in order that we might do better things. 

If we ask for wealth in order that we might be happy; he may withhold it so that we can become wise. If we ask for power so that we might have the praise of men, he might give us weakness that we might feel the need of Him. If we ask for things/stuff, that we might enjoy life; He might teach us that we were given life that we might enjoy the things we already have.

Here hear me well, God can’t wait to answer your prayers, and He will do so as soon as you get in line with what he wants to give you. He wants to give you things that benefit you, and that’s not always the things we think benefits us. That’s the point, so let me go camp on this solid ground for a moment because I want to pursue this and try and help us understand how to pray.

Back in the middle of the sermon on the mount if we go back to the Lord’s prayer, he says, “give us this day Our Daily Bread”.  That fits this perspective perfectly, doesn’t it. There are physical needs that you need to sustain life, and God gives us that and the proof of that is that we are alive today. But what else is in the Lord’s prayer, does it ask of us? “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those as trespass against us. The daily spiritual need we need to have met is to have our sins forgiven every day.

Let me take another passage in second Corinthians chapter 12. Paul said he had a thorn in the flesh, and he asked God to remove it three times and God said no, I’m not going to remove the thing that is painful for you, but I’ll give you grace and power to undergo this trial you are now facing. Paul’s response was, well if that the case, then I’m going to glory in my sufferings because then the power of Christ will rest upon me.

Listen friends, this thing I know above everything else, that God wants to give us is grace. To know the fact that we are saved by grace through faith, and that was not of yourself it was a gift of God lest you think you can boast about it. That’s what it means when we say we are saved by grace. The Christian life is all about the way you approach God. If you come and say I can’t solve this problem, this thing is beyond me, I can’t save myself, that’s grace and that’s what Christian living is all about. It’s grace that enables us to “Come boldly to the throne of grace that we might find mercy” (Heb 4: 16). Knowing you blew it, knowing you need mercy and grace to help you in your time of need, because the biggest problem you need to solve in this life, is you. To solve us, we need grace.  I think the best thing we can ask for in prayer is the grace to acknowledge that God forgives your past, your present and your future. That’s God’s grace.

I wish to tell you a story by way of illustration. When I was little the kid and the children in the area I lived arranged to have a go kart race down a hill which formed the entrance to a new housing development called “Edenvale”. I suppose we were all around 8-10 years old. 

Some of the dads got involved and started to develop plans to design and build some very sleek machines. My dad was away on Mission at the time which was always the case, so my brother and I teamed up with my next-door neighbor a lad the same age as me and we tried to build a go-cart.

It was hopeless, it fell apart or broke when we sat in it. But them we saw an old silver cross pram in his shed and simple took the body off and just leaving the bottom part of the frame and wheels intact we set inside it an old wooden orange box which wedged perfectly between the frame and the wheels.

It ran so smoothly; you wouldn’t believe it.

On the day of the race, 4 teams turned up, one of those teams was a local surgeon and his son who had just gone to the store and bought a top of the range go cart with pedals and 3 gears.

The race began it was done in elimination with 2 semi-finals a play off and then the final. My brother got into the final, before the final started someone in our time thought it would be a good idea to pray. We came second at the end one of the dads asked, what did you pray for. We prayed that we would win we would win we said.

Maybe you shouldn’t have prayed to win the man said, asking God to help you win doesn’t seem fair. Maybe you should have prayed that you just did your best, or that God would help you not to be cry or be angry if you lost. Maybe God just wants to answer our prayer by making sure we don’t cry when we lose. Maybe God just wants give us grace to handle what life throws at us.

I’ve said this passage contains 2 points and the two points are, First, pray and keep praying. Persist in prayer, don’t give up, pray fervently. 

Second point is to pray for the ‘good stuff’, the right stuff, godly stuff, godly things to happen for you.

Pray for as long as it takes for the really good things to come to pass. I Came to the Lord, at 13, by 19 was so far back-slidden I was up to my neck in the miry clay. But by 29 I was called back into service by the power of the Holy Spirit.  At 17,18.19 I must have seemed almost lost to father, yet he prayed faithfully persistently and fervently that I might come to faith. I gave my testimony at lighthouse, sometimes it would be worth hearing Paula’s, and how the Lord in the final season of her life brough her mother and father to faith. Her dad just months before his death. Her mum just days.

Let me for today close by giving another example.

A man named Howard Hendricks he is well known all over the United States as an academic professor and a Christian educator. 50 years as a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and one of the main inspirations behind a huge Christian Mission called, promise keepers.

His father didn’t know the Lord and it caused him a lot of pain to know that although he had helped 100’s of others not only discover but find out a lot more about Christ, yet he had never been able to help his father find his way to God. In one of his more recent books he writes, and I quote,

The phone rang one day, and I greeted a young pastor from Arlington VA, called Brian Hartman. What are you doing, he asked. I replied nothing special, are you sitting down asked the voice on the other end of the phone. Why, he said your father just trusted Christ this morning. What, you gotta be kidding me I blurted out. Such an inappropriate response from me really. Ever since I received Christ as a boy my concern has been for the salvation of my family and loved ones. On repeated occasions I have broached the subject of the gospel with my dad, but his response was less than interested. My father has always been a very important person to me I imitated him consciously in many ways but I always felt we weren’t really ever close friend, but he was important in my life because of the impact he made me. He was a military man; he had seen action both in WWII and the Korean War, but never really spoke about it.  In my adult life I would become very sensitive to his spiritual needs and my family and I prayed for him, but at times I’m afraid my faith stuttered. His response was always the same, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll work it out with God at some point”. It felt as if he believed God could be manipulated like the Pentagon officials he had to deal with towards the end of his military career.

God brought a man into the life of my father it was this guy called Brian Hartman who although I didn’t know him he new of me and had attended conferences I had spoken at and had heard me talk about my father’s spiritual need. Some months later Brian who was as driving the church bus down the street having discharged all of his passengers he saw a man standing on the corner who reminded him uncannily of Howard Hendrix the man he heard speak at the Pastors conference. He backed up the bus stop got off and went over to the man and ask are you by any chance Howard Hendricks father. It’s easy to imagine the startle response, I could envision my father’s critical once over this with his steel steely blue eyes. Yeah, he said, are you a student of my son. That encounter began a friendship, engineered by the spirit of God. Brain undoubtedly sensed my father’s hesitancy when he discovered that he was a professional religious person, as he saw it. Brain never invited him to attend church, he simply suggested that the met for coffee once a week, which then sometimes Howard’s dad would occasionally drop by his office for coffee, an extra day here and there. As an ex-military man himself Brian patiently he endured endless repertoire of war stories, but eventually discovering that dad had been diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. 

Months later Brain was at his bedside, in the hospital, Mr. Hendricks, he said, “I’ll be leaving shortly for a holiday” would you let me tell you an important story Brain had earned his hearing, through 2 years of weekly coffee and chats, and my father agreed. He began simply to relate the interview between Jesus Christ with Nicodemus as recorded by the apostle John. At the conclusion dad accepted Brains invitation to receive Jesus Christ as his personal savior. After doing it he stood up at the side of his bed and saluted, and said, “I’m now under a new commander and chief, he said. That was the night Brian called and said your father has accepted Christ.

The next and last time I saw my father alive I could not believe he was the same man. His frame was wasted, and he was more weak than I’d ever known, but his faith was strong. In accordance with his specific provisions in his will Brain conducted a small military funeral in Arlington cemetery where the gospel of Jesus Christ was presented to a small group of family and military attendants. As the gun saluted his final farewell I knew God had vindicated my 42 years of prayer and my father was safe with the Lord.

Pray, don’t give up, if it takes 42 years, don’t give up for God wants us to be persistent. God also want to answer our prayers and bless us with the desires of his heart and the thing we really need that are in His will. We have the privilege of being allowed to approach our father God in prayer, to talk to him and to keep praying, to be like Jacob, I will not turn you lose until you bless me.