We come this morning to Matthew 7, verses 7 through 11, as we're making our way through the Sermon on the Mount. And these verses contain a very sweet, sweet promise as we read it together. Ask, and it will be given to you.
Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him 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 Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Let's pray. Lord God, we come to you this morning as broken fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, but we come to a perfect Father in heaven. We come in need of your grace, grace to understand your word, grace to want to obey your word, and grace to do it. Holy Spirit of God, open our minds and hearts now to receive food for our souls today. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
You may be seated. Well, our text this morning is about prayer. Prayer is a wonderful means of grace that God has given to us.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism provides us with a clear definition of what prayer is. Question 98 of the catechism asks, what is prayer? And the answer is this, prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to his will in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies. Scripture commands us to pray. God promises to answer our prayers, and yet James tells us we have not because we ask not. We don't pray as we should. Why don't we pray as we should? We have the clear command of Scripture. We have the clear promises of God, clear instruction from the Lord on how to pray.
In fact, we have everything we need to be prayer warriors, to effectively and fervently pray. Why then do we not pray more than we do and with greater fervency and persistency and with greater expectation than we do? Part of the answer to those questions lies in the fact that we have underestimated the goodness of God.
We've underestimated the goodness of God. We don't offer up our desires and requests, our cares and wants to God in prayer, because frankly we don't apprehend the depth of his desire to give us good things. Now if your prayer life today is perfect and you have arrived spiritually, then this sermon is not for you.
But for the rest of us, Jesus includes these verses in his Sermon on the Mount in order to not merely command us to pray, but really to motivate us to pray. Christ wants us to understand the magnitude of the goodness of God towards his children, so that we will run to him with open hands, with all of our needs and failures, with all of our desires, with all of our lack and helplessness, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it brings him delight to come to our aid and fill us with every good thing. The fact of the matter is that the more we believe that God is good to his children, the more we will come to him in prayer. The more we believe that it is God who opens doors, the more persistently we will knock on his door.
The more convinced we are that he wants to be found, the more fervently we will seek him. If on the other hand we fail to come to God faithfully and persistently in prayer, it's because in some way we have failed to see him as good. And so Christ sets out to show in these few verses that persistence in prayer, fervency in prayer, faithfulness in prayer springs from the conviction that God is a good, good Father. So with these things in mind this morning, let's spur ourselves on to greater delight and faithfulness in prayer by considering the goodness of our Heavenly Father. Our text accomplishes this in three simple points, a command, an illustration, and a promise. First, we are given a command.
A good Father wants to be approachable, and so we're given a command, an imperative. Look with me again at verse 7. Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. And you'll notice that this is more than just a command, it's an invitation really, an offer to benefit from the vast reserve of God's benevolence. As we consider verse 7 and 8, let's ask first what is exactly being commanded, and the answer is prayer. Christ is commanding us to pray, but not just any kind of prayer will do. We're being commanded to persistent prayer, persevering prayer, determined prayer. And I think we see this in the repetition of the command. Ask, seek, knock.
Notice how each of these repetitions intensifies. First of all, there's asking. Asking implies an awareness of our need. One who asks for something needs something. A person who asks is someone who recognizes that they are in lack.
They need something. But then asking progresses to seeking. Seeking goes beyond merely asking. We can say that seeking is asking plus acting.
In other words, to seek something is to actively pursue it. Someone who wants peace of conscience, for example, may ask God for it, but if they desire it intently, they'll do more than just ask God for it. They'll pursue it. They'll seek how they might attain it. They'll study God's word to see what he has to say about it.
They'll seek the counsel of those who seem to possess it. This is seeking, and it goes beyond merely asking. It's indicative of a persistence in prayer. But then Christ uses the metaphor of knocking, and this seems to suggest even more persistence. If seeking is asking plus acting, then knocking is asking plus acting plus persevering. That is, you knock until the door is opened, until something happens.
You don't quit until you get an answer. The parallel passage to our text this morning is found in Luke 11, and listen to how Luke elaborates on this persistence in prayer. Luke 11 five says, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer from within, Do not bother me.
The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.
Knock, and it will be opened to you. The parable in Luke emphasizes perseverance, stick-to-itiveness. So what Christ is commanding us to do, what Christ is inviting us to do, is to pray and to pray persistently. Well, what motivation then is given to obey this command, this invitation to persistence in prayer? Verse eight answers that question.
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. He basically repeats verse seven but shows that at every point we are granted that which we persistently pursue. The motivation then to obey the command of verse seven is the fact that persistent prayer is rewarded. God is listening. He wants our prayers to succeed. He wants to honor persistent prayer by allowing it to achieve its intended result. One preacher said, Nothing excites us to prayer more than a full conviction that we shall be heard.
But, you know, just as confidence in God's goodness becomes a motivator in prayer, doubting that goodness easily demotivates us in prayer. Are your kids ever like mine? Sometimes when they want something, they'll preface the request with, Daddy, I know you'll probably say no, but can I have such and such? I often wonder why do they bother even asking if they already know the answer?
Evidently, deep down, they must believe that there's a chance that I'll say yes, and so they ask. Built into the very fabric of the father-child relationship is a father's desire to give good things to his child. It's true in the human realm.
It's true in the heavenly realm. God wants to be approachable and generous to his children, and so he invites us to be persistent in prayer and offers the motivating hope that persistent prayer will be heard and answered. Well, the good father also wants his children to be able to trust that he has their best interests in mind, and so we're given, secondly, an illustration, verses 9 and 10. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? Christ wants his disciples to understand the goodness of the heavenly father, and so as a master communicator, Jesus illustrates that goodness by pointing to an experience that all of his hearers were familiar with, the father-child relationship. Human fathers have their children's best interests in mind. Now, I think we need to acknowledge it's very likely that some of us here have not experienced the normal affection and concern that a father generally has for his kids. I think the high percentage of derelict fathers in our day demands that we at least acknowledge this for a moment. Some of you had or have unloving fathers, abusive fathers, unfaithful fathers, absentee fathers, and you'd be hard-pressed to see any connection between fatherhood as you've experienced it personally and goodness.
Those two things are at odds with each other. So let me defend Jesus' illustration first, and then I want to address those of you who have endured maybe a strained relationship or perhaps no relationship with your earthly father. First, the fact that there are bad dads in this world doesn't negate the fact that the natural inclination of a man is to protect and provide for those under his care. It's born into his nature. God put it there. And the devastation that is brought about when a father fails to be that protector and provider, the hurt that it causes his family simply proves the fact that fathers are meant to father. The fact that their failure in this area causes so much hurt proves the fact that their failure is an aberration.
It's not normal. So Jesus' illustration is very fitting. Human fathers are created to naturally desire and pursue the best interests of their children. Some of them don't, but this is the way God intends the relationship to work, and this is what we find in general.
We see it in the animal realm, we see it in the human realm, and ultimately we see it in the heavenly realm. Now, I recognize that just because this ought to be the case doesn't offer any comfort to those for whom it isn't the case. So let me just say to those of you here this morning who come from painful family situations, listen to what God's Word says specifically to you. This is Psalm 68 5. Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. You who have had negligent fathers or no fathers, abusive fathers, absentee fathers, have the privilege of experiencing fatherhood in a way that no human father can provide because God is father to the fatherless. So rather than let an illustration like the one Jesus uses here sour on you or make you resentful and bitter, let it instead drive you to the father of the fatherless and there experience his goodness and his love in a way that no human father could ever show.
Well, this illustration from the natural world seems to highlight a couple of things. Verse 9 illustrates that human fathers do not intentionally deceive their children. A child asks for bread, the father gives him bread. He doesn't give him something like a stone, something that may look like bread but cannot provide the nourishment the child needs. A good father wouldn't play that kind of a joke on his children. Verse 10 illustrates that fathers won't intentionally harm their children.
The child expects fish, the good father gives him fish, not something that will bring him harm or injury like a venomous snake. Human fathers will not intentionally deceive or harm their children. And the point Christ makes from this illustration is that if this kind of care and concern is characteristic of less than perfect fathers, that is of evil fathers, he calls them in verse 11, then certainly God who is morally perfect in every way will be a father who shows perfect care and perfect concern for his children. If human fallen fathers will not intentionally deceive their children, neither will our heavenly father. If human fathers will not intentionally harm their children, neither will our heavenly father. John Calvin said, God drops into the hearts of fathers a portion of his goodness.
But if the little drops produce such an amount of goodwill, what ought we to expect from the inexhaustible ocean? Would God who thus opens the hearts of men shut his own heart? God says in the book of Isaiah, though a mother forget her children, I will not forget you. So we see from this illustration that God, as a good father, always has our best interests in mind.
Christians, if this is true, if God is not malicious towards us or deceptive, if he truly has our best interests in mind and wants to bless us, we ought to come willingly and eagerly and frequently. When we pray, we're not approaching some big cosmic bully who's out to get us. We're not approaching some heavenly headmaster who could really care less about the children under his care. No, the image we're given is that of a loving father who wants his children to be provided for and protected, who wants his children to have whatever is in their best interest. I had a holy and healthy fear of my dad growing up. He was a strong disciplinarian.
He was firm. He was old school in his parenting. He had a serious temperament, and I had great respect for him, still do. I can remember in my teenage years, I was living somewhat of a double life around my dad.
I'd behave and put on a spiritual air, but when he wasn't around, I would often compromise and dismiss the values and instruction that he had instilled in me. Well, this was eating at my conscience so much that finally I broke down one Sunday night after the evening service and confessed my failures to my dad. I remember being so afraid of disappointing him. I could hardly get the words out of my mouth. I was weeping. I was hiding my face. But, folks, when I heard my dad start weeping with me and say, It's okay, son.
I forgive you. My heart melted. A lot of affirmation followed that Sunday night talk with my dad.
A lot of discipline followed, too. But from that moment on, I knew there was an inseparable, unbreakable bond between a father's love and his son. People, that's the picture we're given of God. He loves us like a good father. When we ask for his grace, he's not going to give us false hope. When we ask for his mercy, he's not going to consume us with his wrath.
He is a good father. We come then to the fact that a good father wants to bless his children, and so we're given, thirdly, a promise in verse 11. And this is really the climax of the whole paragraph, verse 11.
It says, If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? Now, I want you to notice three things that qualify the promise in verse 11, and it's very crucial that we understand these qualifications. First, there is the bestower of the promise, the giver of the promise. Jesus says it's none other than your Father who is in heaven. This means that if God is not your Father, the promise of verse 11 does not belong to you. I think we saw a similar thing when we were looking at the Lord's Prayer back in Matthew 6. Any access we have to God and his promises is grounded in our relationship with him, our Father, which art in heaven.
If God is not your Father, you have no guarantee that he will accept you or your prayers. There's a very popular notion today that the fatherhood of God is universal. That is that every human being ever born possesses equal access to and relationship with God by virtue of the fact that they've been created by him. And all the gifts of God, his grace, his forgiveness, his saving love, are indiscriminately distributed to every individual without exception.
That sounds really good. But folks, the Bible never teaches that all men have equal standing before God. Ever since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, man's relationship to God has not been one of a child to a father, but of the guilty to a judge.
The Bible shows us that there's one way, and one way only, for this relationship to be reversed. And it comes through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. If this is true, then not just anyone can say, the God of heaven is my Father, but only those who have been adopted by God into his family through Jesus Christ.
John 1-12 says, to all who did receive Christ who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. So the bestower of the promise is the Heavenly Father. And if God is not your father, then you share no part in the promise given in Matthew 7, 7-11. You need to realize that you're running straight to a miserable and irreversible eternity. If that's you, then, beloved, repent and run to Christ, the only one who can bring us into favor with God and who enables us to call God Father. So the promise here is qualified by one's relationship to the bestower, the giver of the promise.
Is God your father? But notice the second qualification in verse 11, the benefit of the promise. Jesus says, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? The benefit of this promise is not that we'll get anything we ask for in prayer, it's that we'll get the good things that we ask for in prayer. It's a limitation on the promise, but a limitation that's for our own good.
Again, this qualification is crucial because it addresses a misunderstanding that I think is very prevalent in our day, a misunderstanding that was illustrated for me several years ago. I remember being a house guest of a man who believed God's will was to give people any material or temporal luxury that they desired and that a person's material prosperity and physical health was only limited by personal faith. Evidently, this man's faith wasn't very strong because at the time he was living in a rundown mobile home and wasn't in very good health. But you see, this idea that God will give us whatever we want or ask for without qualification denies the fact that sometimes we want things that are not in our best interest. Sometimes a luxurious life would impede our joy and contentment.
Sometimes a prolonged illness might prove to be one of the biggest blessings that we could experience in life. Christ isn't promising that we'll get whatever we want just by asking God for it. The benefit being promised is that God will not give us anything that is bad for us. He will only give what is good. In fact, a literal translation of verse 11 would be how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good?
Not good things, but good. This seems to emphasize the nature, the quality of the gift, more than the gift itself. We tend to focus on the gift, a job, a family, a solution to my problem. Jesus is focusing on the nature of the gift.
It is good and always good. God will not give us evil even if we ask for it. He will only give us what is good, but He will give good when we ask. You know, I praise God for this limitation to the promise because how often do we ask for things that would not be for our good? As I studied this passage last week, became convinced that this is indeed what Jesus is promising, I started to think about those times in the Old Testament when God seemed to grant requests to Israel that were not at face value good answers to their requests. I think they're asking for a king, for example, and how God said, OK, I'll give you a king, but you're going to regret it.
Or the incident where Israel was tired of manna. They were hungry for meat and began to murmur against Moses, and so Scripture says that God gave them their requests but sent leanness to their soul. Do these incidents and others like them contradict the Sermon on the Mount? Do they undermine this guarantee that every gift from God is a good gift? I think that perhaps the best way to understand these Old Testament incidents is by first recognizing that the Old Testament covenant community, just like the church today, was a mixed bag.
There were saved Israelites and lost Israelites, elect and non-elect, regenerate and unregenerate. This being the case, we would expect that those Israelites who were wicked and in rebellion against God would incur the judgment of God on themselves when they prayed the prayers of faithless men. At the same time, I think we find that there are times when God chastens his children in love by granting a desire that may cause immediate harm, but if that's the case, we can rest assured that ultimately the outcome will always be for the good of his child. That's the whole point of Hebrews 12, isn't it? Which says that God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So the promise of Matthew 7 holds true.
God will not give evil to his children. His answers to prayer will always be for the ultimate good of his child even though sometimes those answers may cause immediate pain and hardship. So the benefit of the promise is that our requests of God are filtered through his perfect wisdom, and he answers our prayer by giving us only what is good.
Notice in the third qualification the beneficiaries of the promise. Jesus says, How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him, to those who ask him. Now, God doesn't need to be informed of what we need. He's omniscient. He already knows. But he has seen fit to so order things that he moves to our aid when we ask him.
He wants to be asked. And I think this accomplishes two things. First, it makes us recognize our dependence on him. Without him we can do nothing, and so we pray. Secondly, it brings him glory when he does answer the prayer.
People are able to see him work through the prayers of his people, and this brings him honor and praise. The benefits of prayer are reserved for those who pray. Again, what did James say?
He said, You have not because you ask not. So God's promise to answer prayer is limited by these three qualifications. It's reserved for those who know God as Father through faith in Christ. It doesn't guarantee us anything and everything we ask for, but assures us that God will grant whatever is for our ultimate good.
And finally, it is reserved for those who ask. The benefits which God as a good father desires to pour out on his children are given to those who ask for them. In these verses that we've looked at this morning, we're given a command to pray. We're given an illustration to convince us that God truly does have our best interests in mind, and we're given a promise that when we pray, God will give us all things necessary for our ultimate good. Christ includes this paragraph in his Sermon on the Mount, I believe, in order to teach us to be persistent in prayer, fervent, faithful in prayer. And our perseverance in prayer will be in direct proportion to our conviction that God is a good father who wants to give good things to his children. This leads me to ask the question as we close, why don't we view God as a good father who wants to give good things to his children? And maybe it's because we really don't desire what he calls good. You know what kinds of things God considers to be good? Well, from this very Sermon on the Mount, we discover that it's things like poverty of spirit, hunger and thirst after righteousness, persecution for following God, the ability to stand up as a beacon of light in the face of a hostile, cynical culture, the willingness to be misunderstood and overlooked by men and affirmed only by the God who sees in secret. These are the kinds of good things God wants to give his children. I'm afraid the reason we don't ask for them is all too often because we don't want them.
We're so blinded by the pursuit of our own comfort and leisure, our own safety and prosperity that we don't give thought to the things that really matter. Brothers and sisters, spiritual growth is a fight. Advancing the kingdom of God on earth is a fight. Matthew 7, 7 through 11 is an invitation to take up the weapon of prayer and get in the fight, and this will call for a firm, unwavering confidence in the goodness of God. If we doubt God's goodness, we'll question his involvement in our lives, and if we begin to question his involvement in our lives, we'll soon resent what he's doing in us, and those who resent God's work in them will not pray, will not fight, and will not grow. Persistence in prayer springs from an overwhelming conviction that God is good.
If we could learn to trust that our Heavenly Father truly desires what's best for us, if we could learn to love what God loves, if we could ask and beg and seek and knock down the door, if we had to, in order to receive all the good things that he has promised. Let's pray. Father, forgive us for being a prayerless people, which is to say forgive us for doubting your goodness. Forgive us for ignoring the promises of your word. But God, please don't leave us where we are. Continue to help us grow. I pray that your people in this congregation would experience the joy of a persevering life of prayer, and may we experience the awe and delight of answered prayer. Please do it for the sake of your glory among us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
