Matthew 7 – Ask, Seek, Knock

Let’s read Matthew 7:7-11:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!“

It’s not entirely clear whether these verses were intended to follow on from the previous one regarding holy things and unclean animals, or whether Jesus was introducing a new theme in his teaching here.

Michael J Wilkins in the NIV Application Commentary suggests: …Jesus is now drawing the ‘sermon on the mount’ to a close. In these verses, he focuses on the source of the disciples’ stability as they learn to live a true kingdom life in this fallen world.

Advice for living

It’s vital for us to remember that Jesus’ teachings weren’t just a collection of wise sayings or interesting pieces of information.

They were intended to transform his listeners into an entirely new way of thinking, to enable them to start an entirely new life.

Not only that but he gave practical advice on how to live that new life, describing many of the challenges that would need to be faced, and the correct attitude with which to face them.

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, then obviously you will already know this. But it’s so easy to overlook! I’ve seen so many people whose first instinct is to try to link verses like these to other verses elsewhere in the Bible, or to deduce hidden meanings behind the Greek words, instead of asking the most important question: what was Jesus actually trying to say to the people sitting in front of him in this very moment?

What practical advice was he trying to give them in terms of how they ought to live their lives as followers of his?

Ask, Seek, Knock

He used the three verbs ‘ask’, ‘seek’ and ‘knock’ to describe how we ought to approach God when we wish to ask him for something.

Some people have suggested that he used these three words to describe prayer as an ongoing activity, one which might increase in intensity from first, simply making a request, to second, actively pursuing a response, and finally third, persistently calling for attention in order to check in on the status of our request.

Others have suggested that each verb might reflect a different type of request.

To ask would be to simply make a plea for something we know we need.

To seek might be to ask for God’s help when we’re not even sure what it is we need, but we trust him to know and to get it right.

To knock might be to realise the thing we need is in some way inaccessible to us, and to request God’s help in opening up the way so that we can acquire it.

Either way, it seems clear Jesus was talking about prayer, and the attitude with which we ought to approach it.

Prayer

Perhaps he wanted to remind his listeners that God isn’t an impatient deity who will be angry if we disturb him, or a distant and uncaring one who will ignore us. Instead, he is our Father – he wants to hear our prayers and is always willing to give us good things.

God doesn’t need us to perform some ritual before he’s prepared to listen. He doesn’t need to be persuaded by either the quality or quantity of our prayers. All we have to do is ask.

Again, that might seem obvious to anyone who’s read the Bible, but people who have had a difficult relationship with their dad, or who were once part of some other religion which has a very different view of God, often struggle to truly grasp the simple reality that he loves you as his own child.

Jesus encouraged his listeners to imagine themselves in the position of a parent, and think about what they would do if their own child were to approach them to ask for something they needed. Whether you have children or not, it’s an easy question to answer.

Bread and fish

Bread and fish would have been the staple diet for most people in that time and place, so it would have been commonplace for a child to ask their parents for either. A modern equivalent might be your child asking for a sandwich or asking you to make dinner because they’re hungry.

Giving a child a stone instead of bread might seem like an odd image, but apparently in that culture bread was often made into small rolls that were roughly the size and shape of a stone, and might be mistaken for one. No parent would give their child something that looked like food but which would only disappoint them when they tried to sink their teeth into it.

Likewise, his reference to a snake instead of a fish might have been based on the existence in that area of an eel-like type of fish that could be mistaken for a snake. No parent would give their child something that looked like food but might actually cause them harm.

His point was that God won’t answer your prayer for something good by giving you something that appears to be what you asked for, but instead is either worthless or likely to cause you harm. God will answer our requests for good things.

And yet….

There are three important points to clarify here.

Firstly, Jesus said “If you then, even though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children…”

Any time we interact with God, we must remember who and what we are. By calling us “evil” Jesus didn’t mean that everything we do or think is wicked and godless, but rather he wanted to emphasise how we are in comparison to God. God is so far above us in moral terms that even our best attempts to show love to our children can’t match up to him. God loves you so much more than you could ever possibly love your own children.

R T France in the New International Commentary on the New Testament puts it this way: God’s care is of course far more than even the best human parent can give, but it is never less. The point is not that human parents are incapable of cruelty or neglect of their children, but that our inbuilt assumption of what parenting ought to be like is a valid pointer towards the greater parental concern of the heavenly Father.

This is such an important point in our day and age, when many people have forgotten the gigantic gulf that exists between us and God. So many seem to take for granted that God loves us, almost to the point that he’s legally obliged to care for us as if he’s some celestial nanny or foster parent.

Secondly, these verses should not be read as a promise that God will always give us what we ask for. The example of the child asking for bread or fish suggests that Jesus had in mind requests for the essentials of life, not for luxuries or frivolities.

Furthermore, as we’ve already explored in the last few weeks, God’s promise of always giving us what we need is not a promise that we’ll always have enough to survive or be happy. It’s a promise that we’ll always have what we need in order to remain faithful to him, even if that means our life now coming to an end.

If God doesn’t answer your prayer in the way you hoped for, it will always be because he had a good reason for doing so. You may never understand what that reason was – you may simply have to trust that God knows best and always does what’s best.

Thirdly, it can be easy to fall into a mindset of thinking that it doesn’t make sense to ask God for our daily essentials. Doesn’t he already know what we need? Doesn’t he already know when we need it? Hasn’t he promised that he loves us? What’s the point of asking for something that we trust him to give us anyway?

Again, we can look to the example of our own children. Whenever one of my kids says to me “Daddy, I’m hungry, when’s dinner?” it’s not because they think I will forget to feed them or that there won’t be any dinner unless they ask for it. It’s their way of showing that they trust me not only to provide for them but to provide something that’s good for them. It’s their way of saying “I have this need and I trust you to fulfil it because I know that you love me.”

As Jesus said, none of us are perfect parents, but even so, if our children can see us in the way they do, surely we can see God the same way.