Ask, Seek, Knock
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be open 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 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 gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:7-11
As I’m sure you know, these verses are part of the Sermon on the Mount. They follow right after verses that challenge hypocrites in the church, those people who are quick to point out other people’s faults while ignoring their own. I’ve been thinking a lot about that kind of hypocrisy this week. I think that’s because my social media, probably like yours too, has been full of people criticizing and name calling others who hold differing political or theological views. It has grieved me to see friends treating one another in this way. And it was noticeable to me that most of those criticizing others rarely or ever admitted to faults of their own.
That led to me reflect on my own attitude toward others and searching my heart to see if I do the same thing. Am I quick to notice other people’s sins and errors and weaknesses while ignoring my own? Reflecting on that led me to meditate on Matthew 7:1-6 about judging and being more concerned about the speck in my brother’s eye than I am about the log in my own. You know the passage.
Thinking about that passage led me to check out James Montgomery Boice’s commentary on Matthew. But rather than continue thinking about hypocrisy, my own and others, reading Boice led me to think about the fatherhood of God, which is a much better thing to meditate on.
Boice wrote that if we understand Jesus’s teaching on hypocrisy here in Matthew 7, and what Paul wrote in Roman’s 14:10-12, we will want to “turn from hypocrisy” and want to “build others up rather than tearing them down.”
Then Boice went on to ask an important question. “But how do we do that, especially when we are usually blind to our faults and so inclined to hypocrisy?” He continued, “We will never be able to overcome this failure ourselves….The only way we can live out the Sermon on the Mount is by appropriating the new life of God, which we receive as we come to faith in Jesus Christ and as we learn to ask God for the right inclinations and the power we must have to pursue them.”
And that’s why Jesus followed the verses on hypocrisy with the passage quoted above about prayer.
While there are many things that could be said about those verses there are two that have been my focus as I’ve meditated on that passage.
The first is what these verses teach us about God. Boice wrote, “First, they teach that if we are Christ’s disciples, having entered by faith into the kingdom of heaven, then we have God as our Father, and the God who is our Father is generous and giving.” Our God is not stingy. He is gracious, kind, and generous. Sit with that thought for a while. Our God is not stingy. He does not withhold from you good things that you need. He is gracious, kind, and generous. He gives abundantly to his children.
A second thing this passage teaches me is that though God is a good Father, a generous Father, who knows what I need, still I must ask. Boice wrote, “God cares for us even if we do not ask, as an earthly father cares for even unresponsive children. But God wants us to have a personal relationship with him, and for that to happen, we must communicate with God in prayer. God gives, but he gives even more when we ask.”
Doesn’t it thrill your heart to think on these things? It does mine. God is a good Father to me, a generous Father. He invites me, he wants me, to come to him in prayer, to bring my needs and requests to him. And he delights in giving good things to those who ask.
I started off with my heart troubled by the hypocrisy and nastiness I see from friends on my social media feeds but was led instead to meditate on the goodness and generosity of God. That is much better by far.
Much love, Barry