Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. Matthew (7:7-8) Here is one of the Lord’s greatest and most comprehensive promises to those who belong to Him, to those who are His children and citizens of His kingdom. In light of this great promise we can feel free to fully love others and totally sacrifice for others, because our heavenly Father sets the example in His generosity to us and promises that we have access to His eternal and unlimited treasure to meet our own needs as well as theirs. We can do for others what we would want done for ourselves (see v. 12) without fear of depleting the divine resources and having nothing left. Verses 7-11 make a perfect bridge between the negative teaching about a critical spirit and the positive teaching of the golden rule (v. 12). Even when we have been cleansed of our own sin—had the “log” removed from our eye—we need divine wisdom to know how to help a brother remove the “speck” from his eye (v. 5). And without God’s help we cannot be sure of who are “dogs” or “swine”—who are the false prophets and apostates to whom we should not offer the holy and precious things of God’s Word (v. 6). These considerations drive us to call on the Lord. Of the many things for which we should ask, seek, and knock, God’s wisdom is among our greatest needs. We cannot be discerning and discriminating without divine counsel from our heavenly Father; and the primary means for achieving such wisdom is petitioning prayer “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). God gives us many principles in His Word, but He does not give specific methods or rules for every conceivable situation. For one thing, situations keep changing and vary greatly from age to age and person to person. To give specific rules for every circumstance would require a giant library of volumes. But even more important than that is God’s desire that we rely on Him directly He wants us to be in His Word, and without being in His Word we cannot pray wisely or rightly. But even beyond our being in His Word, He wants us to be in fellowship with Him as our Father. Along with His perfect and infallible Word, we need His Spirit to interpret and illumine, to encourage and to strengthen. He does not want us to have all the answers in our hip pocket. The Bible is a limitless store of divine truth, which a lifetime of the most faithful and diligent study will not exhaust. But apart from God Himself we cannot even start to fathom its depths or mine its riches. In His Word God gives enough truth for us to be responsible, but enough mystery for us to be dependent. He gives us His Word not only to direct our lives but to draw our lives to Him. Here Jesus says, in effect, “If you want wisdom to know how to help a sinning brother and how to discern falsehood and apostasy, go to your heavenly Father. Ask, seek, and knock at the doors of heaven, and you will receive, find, and have the door opened.” Contrary to some popular interpretations, verses 7-8 are not a blank check for just anyone to present to God. First of all, the promise is valid only for believers. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus’ promises are addressed only to believers. A large mass of unbelievers, including some scribes and Pharisees, no doubt were in the multitude on the side of the mountain that day. In this sermon, however, Jesus always speaks of scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, false prophets, insincere followers, and all other unbelievers in the third person—as if none of them were the direct target of His words. On other occasions (as in Matt. 23) the Lord addresses such persons directly; but during this message all of His references to them are indirect. He gives this sermon to His disciples (5:1-2), with the crowd listening in. Everyone refers to those who belong to the heavenly Father. Those who are not God’s children cannot come to Him as their Father. The two overriding relationships focused on in the book of Matthew are those of God’s kingdom and God’s family. The kingdom concept deals with rule, and the family concept deals with relationship. In the Sermon on the Mount the primary focus is on God’s family, and we see repeated references to God as heavenly Father (v. 11; cf. 5:16, 45, 48; 6:4, 8-9, 26, 32) and to fellow believers as brothers (5:22-24; 7:3-5). The two greatest realities of Christian truth are that God is our Father and Christians are our brothers. Believers are the family of God. Paul speaks of the church as the “household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10) and as “God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). John repeatedly speaks of God as our Father (1 John 1:2-3; 2:1, 13; 3:1; 4:14; etc.) and of believers as His children (1 John 3:10; 5:2) and as each other’s brothers (1 John 2:9-11; 3:10-12; 4:20; etc.). Second, the one who claims this promise must be living in obedience to his Father. “Whatever we ask we receive from Him,” John says, “because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight” (1 John 3:22). Third, our motive in asking must be right. “You ask and do not receive,” explains James, “because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:3). God does not obligate Himself to answer selfish, carnal requests from His children. Finally, we must be submissive to His will. If we are trying to serve both God and mammon (Matt. 6:24), we cannot claim this promise. “For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:7-8). As John makes clear, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). To have confidence in answered prayer on any other basis is to have a false and presumptuous confidence that the Lord makes no promise to honor. Another possible qualification is perseverance, suggested by the present imperative tenses of ask, seek, and knock. The idea is that of continuance and constancy: Keep on asking; keep on seeking; keep on knocking.” We also see a progression of intensity in the three verbs, from simple asking to the more aggressive seeking to the still more aggressive knocking. Yet none of the figures is complicated or obscure. The youngest child knows what it is to ask, seek, and knock. The progression in intensity also suggests that our sincere requests to the Lord are not to be passive. Whatever of His will we know to do we should be doing. If we are asking the Lord to help us find a job, we should be looking for a job ourselves while we await His guidance and provision. If we are out of food, we should be trying to earn money to buy it if we can. If we want help in confronting a brother about a sin, we should be trying to find out all we can about him and his situation and all we can about what God’s Word says on the subject involved. It is not faith but presumption to ask the Lord to provide more when we are not faithfully using what He has already given.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:51:01 +0000
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