7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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! Matthew 7: 7-11
Matthew 7: 7-11
Ask, and it will be given to you - Stop there, that and a bunch of jumping up and down on stage, with some clichés thrown in, that's a whole sermon for a Pentecostal prosperity teacher. That's a whole lifelong career for some. Next week it will be how "you have not because you ask not", and then it will be, "you didn't believe hard enough, you didn't hold on to your healing, you didn't write as big a check to my ministry as you should have." Is that what Jesus is saying here, does that fit with the rest of the sermon on the mount? If you are in a church like that, one that teaches the prosperity gospel, measures faith by bank account, come out of her. If it's on your tv then turn the channel. Go back and read Matthew six on how to pray, praying in God's will. That is part of this same Sermon on the Mount.
…2You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures. 4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.… James 4: 2-4
Kent Hughes gives an important caveat regarding this well known verse warning that...
The instruction in this text should not be lifted from its context (Ed note" see importance of context in accurate interpretation and valid application) in the Sermon and abused. All of us have heard this done. "The Bible says, 'Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.' Therefore, all we have to do is ask for it with faith and persistence, and we will get it. 'You do not have because you do not ask' (James 4:2). So go for it! Name it and claim it!" This view sees God as a celestial slot machine. Pull the handle enough times in prayer, be persistent, and you will get what you want! Such thinking is entirely wrong! A text without a context is a pretext. Isolating this text from its setting in the Sermon on the Mount is deadly. The broad context of the Sermon sets down the surpassing righteousness, humility, sincerity, purity, and love expected of those who are members of the kingdom of God. These virtues are beyond human attainment apart from God's grace. The broad context underscores our need. In the immediately preceding context (vv. 1-6) Jesus has shown us the danger of condemning other people as if we were judges. He also has told us to get the plank out of our own eye before we attempt to remove a speck from someone else's. His warning is, "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (v. 2). This standard is terrifying. Who is adequate for such things? How can we live up to such a high standard? We need to be cleansed. We need help and grace, but from where? Jesus answers, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (v. 7). This famous text is not carte blanche for our material desires. Rather, it tells us how to pray for the character of the kingdom in our lives. (Hughes, R. K. Sermon on the Mount: The Message of the Kingdom. Crossway Books) (Bolding added) - Precept Austin
For everyone who asks receives - Why do we ask? Because we don't have, remember, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness. God knows about the physical needs of His children, but there are things far worse to the spiritually reborn eye. After reading the sermon on the mount and hearing Jesus's own outline of prayer in Matthew 6, certainly all of us have reason for pause, and those being made alive, born again, see where they lack the most. When Jesus prays, He prays to the Father, and in accordance with the Father's will, desiring His kingdom. The Psalmist skips right to His greatest need, Create in me a clean heart Oh God and renew a right spirit within me. I deserve to be cast away, but please don't cast me away. Solomon was given, for all practical purposes, an open check, and what did he ask for? He knew he was going to be king over God's people, Israel, and what does a king need to decide justly, to rule effectively? Solomon realized a lack in himself, and he appealed to God for wisdom.
It may be a revealing exercise for some of you to find out how often in Scripture you are told to pray. You will be surprised to find how many times such words as these are given: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee” (Psalm 50:15-note). “Ye people, pour out your heart before Him” (Psalm 62:8-note). “Seek ye the LORD while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6). “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Mt 7:7-note). “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Mark 14:38). “Pray without ceasing" (1The 5:12-note). “Come boldly unto the throne of grace” (He 4:16-note). “Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8-note). “Continue in prayer” (Col 4:2-note). I need not multiply what I could not possibly exhaust. I pick two or three out of this great bag of pearls. - C. H. Spurgeon
…5One night at Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream, and God said, “Ask, and I will give it to you!” 6Solomon replied, “You have shown much loving devotion to Your servant, my father David, because he walked before You in faithfulness, righteousness, and uprightness of heart. And You have maintained this loving devotion by giving him a son to sit on his throne this very day. 7And now, O LORD my God, You have made Your servant king in my father David’s place. But I am only a little child, not knowing how to go out or come in.…
…8Your servant is here among the people You have chosen, a people too numerous to count or number. 9Therefore give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people and to discern between good and evil. For who is able to govern this great people of Yours?” 1 Kings 3: 5-9
…4Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But he must ask in faith, without doubting, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.… James 1: 4-6
The one who seeks finds - "Lord', I say after all of this, the beatitudes, God's bar for righteousness, 'I don't measure up, I'm unholy, I am the one with the plank in my eye, I am at a loss here, bankrupt." We ask for wisdom, but careful that we don't miss it when it comes. There is a collection of books called the Bible, that claims to be the inspired word of God. If this is true, then here is a good place to look. Don't walk past the wisdom that exceeds all the combined wisdom of man.
Seek (2212) (zeteo) means to attempt to learn something by careful investigation or searching, to desire to have or experience something or to try to obtain something from someone. Seeking is asking plus acting, implying earnest petitioning coupled with an active endeavoring to fulfill needs. When you seek something, you rearrange your priorities so that you can search for what you desire until you find it. Do you prioritize prayer? - Precept Austin
Puritan Thomas Manton wrote that "If we don’t receive by asking, then let us seek; if we don’t receive by seeking, then let us knock." - Precept Austin
Arthur Pink has a well reasoned explanation of why Jesus mentions prayer at this point and note that his analysis also relies heavily on the context...
What has been suggested above concerning the scope of our present passage will be the more apparent by viewing it in relation to its whole context. From Mt 5:20, onwards, Christ had presented a standard of moral excellence which is utterly unattainable by mere flesh and blood. He had inculcated one requirement after another, which it lies not in the power of fallen human nature to meet. He had forbidden an opprobrious word, a malignant wish, an impure desire, a revengeful thought. He had enjoined the most unsparing mortification of our dearest members (Mt 5:29, 5:30). He had commanded the loving of our enemies, the blessing of those who curse us, the doing good unto those who hate us, and the praying for those who despitefully use and persecute us (Mt 5:44). In view of which the Christian may well exclaim, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Such demands of holiness are beyond my feeble strength: yet the Lord has made them—what then am I to do?
Coming nearer still to our passage we find that in the opening verses of chapter 7 Christ gave two apparently contradictory commands. First, He says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged:” abstain from forming harsh estimates and passing censorious censures on your fellows. Second, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs:” discriminate sharply between the clean and the unclean, that you may not be guilty of obliterating the line which God has drawn between the righteous and the wicked. But to steer safely between such rocks as these requires not only spiritual strength but spiritual wisdom, such wisdom as the natural man possesses not. What then is the poor believer to do? The Lord here anticipates this difficulty and meets this perplexity. He is well aware that, in our own wisdom and strength, we are incapable of keeping His commands, but He at once reminds us that the things which are ordinarily impossible to men can be made possible to them by God. - Precept Austin
…10As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. 11There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”… Romans 3: 10-12
To the one who knocks it will be opened - This reminds me of the woman in Christ's parable who finally gains favor with an unjust judge, and with this persistence we shall win over heaven. How much more so even, for our God is just.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18: 1-8
Will give him a stone - God knows you need bread (food) to eat, and He is not cruel or indifferent to His children, so when you ask for something that is good, He's not going to give you something bad instead, for spite. "Here, chew on this stone, now quit crying and be thankful."
Spurgeon writes "Our Lord will give us the real thing. Sometimes we should be quite satisfied with the imitation of it. And sometimes we have to wait and be prepared for the reception of the real thing; it is infinitely better for us to wait for months than immediately to get ,a stone; better to wait for a fish than the next moment to have a scorpion. There were some in the wilderness who asked to be satisfied, and they were so, with the flesh of quails. They got their stones, they got their scorpions. But the Lord's people may sometimes find that they have to wait a while. ,God will not give to them that which is other than good for them."
Ask for a Fish, given a serpent - Now, I like snakes, so I wouldn't be terribly alarmed, but this is meant in the worse sense. A snake would be an unclean animal, so they wouldn't even be able to eat it by their dietary laws. It also represented danger, as in the deception of the serpent in the garden, and those that bit Israel in the wilderness. But now, we who ask for things, often ask for the serpent, calling it a fish, a need, a deserved thing. I hear that a lot from my generation to the present one, they even sell to us this way, "you need a vacation, no one is more deserving of this than you, you owe it to yourself." So, we often come to God demanding these "needs", that we "deserve", and sometimes He says no, but we try for it anyway. Many times, in our lack of trust in God, we ask God to bless an alternative that we came up with, like Abraham did. God promised Isaac, but Abraham, in unbelief, ran with plan B, Ishmael, and then asked God to bless what was basically the fruit of his unbelief and disobedience. This created a lot of turmoil. We need to wait on God, and we need to realize that some things we want are not good for us, and God uses some difficult things in our life to test and grow us.
…17Abraham fell facedown. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah give birth at the age of ninety?” 18And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live under Your blessing!” 19But God replied, “Your wife Sarah will indeed bear you a son, and you are to name him Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.… Genesis 17: 17-19
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