Ask, Seek, Knock

All these have to do with how we act towards others. vv3-5 “brother” - primarily about how Christ’s followers should respond to one another (see for example Phil 2 or Eph 4:32); v6 - “dogs” and “pigs” primarily about how Christians are to respond to those who are adamantly opposed or uninterested in the Gospel message - to hand them over to God in faith, walking away rather than persisting in dangerous and unfruitful pursuits.

7:7-11 turns in a completely different direction - how should we think about God?

Is He a tyrant, quick to anger and eager to smite? False religions have frequently seen gods and divine beings like they see their own rulers - powerful but petty, unpredictable, dangerous. Some people fear praying the wrong way, afraid God will punish them for their insolence. Or they try to act religious in just the right way to get on God’s good side so that He might decide to bless them in a moment of kindness.

Is the true God like that?

On the other hand, is He aloof and uncaring, too busy or occupied to worry about us? In Jesus’s day, many people saw God as far removed from the world, like a distant ruler managing the big picture. For them, prayer was sort of like trying to get the attention of a powerful and uninvolved stranger.

Others took this idea to the extreme, and said that God wasn’t a personal being at all, with no feelings or preferences or will. To these ones, God was a principle or an idea, an impersonal force. But an impersonal force isn’t really good in the way we think of goodness. You can’t say an impersonal force intends your good, because it can’t intend anything. For them, prayer isn’t about speaking to God but about tuning in to the nature of the universe and hoping you get the right frequency.

One thing you’ll notice about each of these ideas is that you can still find them in our day. And another thing you’ll notice about them is that in each case, the result of prayer is doubtful - it’s a shot in the dark, completely up to chance - and success or failure is entirely bound up in whether you happen to get the right prayer aimed in the right direction at the right time.

Is this how we should think about prayer? Is this how we should think about God?

Here in Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus introduces us to another kind of Good Judgment - what we might call the judgment of trust. How we should think about God deeply influences our understanding of prayer, and so Jesus puts things right by giving us an amazing picture of God that revolves around His nature. Not only is He personal, and involved, but He is good.

Jesus begins with a precept in verses 7-8.

I. The Precept: Ask/Seek/Knock because… (vv7-8)

Here’s verse 7 <<READ 7>>

The precept, or commandment, is that threefold statement in verse 7 - ask, seek, knock.

The threefold form makes us stop and take note of what He’s saying.

Illust: After His death and resurrection, when Jesus takes Peter aside in John 21, He asks Peter three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” And after Peter’s response, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you,” Jesus tells Peter “Feed my lambs.” The threefold question and call to Peter marked out the rest of Peter’s life as a shepherd of Jesus’s sheep, and to remind Peter and us that Jesus Himself had predicted Peter’s denial of Jesus and his restoration - on the night of His arrest, Jesus told him,

Luke 22:31–32 ESV

31 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, 32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Here the threefold format - ask / seek / knock - demands our attention.

Each command is followed immediately by and. There is no room for ambiguity here. Whatever follows that word “and” is a guaranteed result. Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.

But Jesus isn’t done. He reinforces the command in verse 8 with a reason for the precept, and again, He leaves no room for ambiguity.

He says, <<READ 8>>

The reason we are to ask, seek, knock is because everyone who asks receives. Whatever they are supposed to receive, nobody gets left out if they ask.

<<ARKANSAS CRATER OF DIAMONDS - only diamond mine open to the public, southwest Arkansas, Boy Scouts>> Sought, did not find

But Jesus says that the one who seeks finds, and it will be opened to the one who knocks.

But what are we to ask for and receive? What are we to seek & find?

The words “ask” and “seek” form bookends around chapter 6. In Matthew 6:5-15, Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, and in verses 7-8, He introduces the Lord’s Prayer by helping us re-orient ourselves when it comes to prayer. The

Matthew 6:7–8 ESV

7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Right there, Jesus sets His teaching over against every religion that stacks up rituals, and mantras, and formulas to try to get the attention of negligent gods, or to twist the arm of trickster gods, or sweet-talk volatile gods, or maximize positive energy.

He says to you, and to me, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” God is not any of those other things. The true God, the living God, the God who made you and me and everything, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And He knows what you need before you ask.

Jesus then goes on in chapter 6 to teach the Lord’s Prayer, which begins “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.” And then we are to ask, “Your kingdom come.”

And the central ask of the Lord’s Prayer for us is for our Father in heaven to forgive our sins.

The word “Seek” in Matthew 7:7 is the other bookend in chapter 6. After teaching on prayer, trusting that our Father knows our needs, Jesus says beginning in

Matthew 6:25–33 ESV

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 6:33 and Matthew 7:7 are the only places where Jesus commands us to seek anything. But the word comes up again in the same parable we looked at last week in connection to verse 6 - the parable of the pearl of great price. <<SUB “SEEKING” per Greek>>

Matthew 13:45–46 ESV

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

The context of verses 7-8 make it clear that the Kingdom of God is the object Jesus is calling us to ask for, to seek after. Even the command to “knock” points us in this direction. It is the Kingdom that Jesus says we cannot enter without a righteousness greater than the scribes & Pharisees back in 5:20. It is the Kingdom of God and eternal life that Jesus likens to a narrow gate, later in 7:13-14. When Jesus warns against false believers, He says

Matthew 7:21 ESV

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, we’ve seen that the Gospel is the Good News of the Kingdom of God, brought to us in Jesus Christ, the King of Kings.

And we are to ask for the Kingdom, to seek the Kingdom, to knock at the gate to the Kingdom.

And Jesus says that everyone who asks receives.

ILLUST: We often misunderstand the commandments of God, believing they keep us from living life to the full. At the heart of every sin is the same rebellion that Adam and Eve indulged. Eve looked at the tree, Genesis 3 says, and saw that it was good for food and a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, and so despite the fact that God had commanded them not to eat of it because in the day that they ate of it they would die, she took and ate, and gave some to her husband, and he ate. And death entered the world.

The commandment held out life, and joy, and peace. But they chose death and sorrow.

Jesus commands that we ask, seek, knock. That we come to God the Father by faith in Jesus as our King, our savior, precisely because everyone who does so will receive.

II. The Picture - “which of you…?” (vv9-10)

Jesus then uses a word picture in verses 9-10 to set up his larger point. <<READ vv9-10>>

Bread and fish were two staples for Jesus’s audience. At the feeding of the five thousand, you’ll remember that the boy who brought his food to Jesus had five loaves and two fish.

And Jesus holds out his own audience as an example. Who on that mountainside would play such a cruel joke on his own son? Who would intentionally hurt his child in this way? Surely the vast majority of parents, for all our faults, for all our moments of selfishness, would never do such a thing. And this is Jesus’s point.

In the most common of a child’s needs, we respond. There is nothing more common for a parent than to feed their child.

When they’re born, they do almost nothing but eat, cry, sleep, and poop.

When they hit a growth spurt, all of a sudden, you start wondering where they hide it all. The other night, I watched a giant pork chop disappear as if by magic.

And it’s not a coincidence that Jesus mentions food in the context of our own requests to our heavenly Father.

When we read from Matthew 6 earlier, Jesus told us

Matthew 6:31–33 ESV

31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

In John’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, in John 6, the day after Jesus miraculously feeds the crowd, they find him again. He responds to the people,

John 6:26–27 ESV

26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

And in verse 35,

John 6:35 ESV

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

And in verse 40,

John 6:40 ESV

40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Do you see how the themes of the Kingdom and eternal life, and the goodness of the Father fit together yet? Here is a picture of an earthly father, providing what his child needs most, without a thought that he would ever do otherwise.

The challenge we face is in the fact that it feels like we get a raw deal again and again. When you lose your job, or get sick, or your family is falling apart, or your friends seem to have vanished without a trace, or you can’t escape the voice in your head that tells you you’re not good enough, or you’re surrounded by fear or isolation or anxiety over how you can possibly pay the rent or the grocery bill or the credit card bill, or anxiety over a million other things, just like Adam and Eve, just like the Gentiles panting in pursuit of earthly needs,

We’re afraid that the fish might be a trick. The bread might be a trap. Or worse yet, there might not be any bread after all.

But Jesus sets up verse 11 by jamming the gears in our brains that lead us down all those dark paths. You wouldn’t do this horrible thing, would you?

And then He gives us the key to the Good Judgment of trust in verse 11.

III. The Promise - “...how much more will your heavenly Father...” (v11)

<<DON’T READ 11 YET>>

Throughout verses 7-11, Jesus has kept the emphasis on the word you. Ask and it will be given. To whom? To you. Seek and who will find? You.

Which of you would give your son a stone?

And now He says, <<READ v11>>

Jesus sets up a point of comparison here between you and your heavenly Father. He uses the phrase “How much more” several places in the Gospels, and other New Testament writers do the same thing. The idea is that however certain, or complete, or good the one thing is, the thing you’re comparing it to is not just more certain, or complete, or good, but supremely certain, or complete, or good.

Matthew 6:26 ESV

26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Hebrews 9:13–14 ESV

13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

So Jesus invites you to consider: How likely is it that a parent will feed their own child?

And he introduces a wrinkle into our logic: He says, “If you then, who are evil...” Jesus has no interest in sugar-coating our moral state. He’s already told us that it is those who are poor in spirit who are blessed. He sees right through you and me. He knows how selfish we are. He knows how we justify our own faults. He knew on that day on the hillside in Galilee that some of his hearers were adulterers, and cheats. He knows that some of you cheated someone this week. He knows what websites you looked at yesterday. He knows it all. And if you, in spite of all of that, 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?

How much more will He do it? Infinitely more. Assuredly more. Guaranteed, absolutely, without doubt, He will do more.

Because He is supremely good, supremely true, completely perfect.

Which brings us back to verse 7 and the true shock of all: Jesus says that you who are evil must seek His Kingdom, and you who are evil will find it.

you who are evil must ask for the bread of life, and you who are evil will receive it.

Absolutely. Without exception, every single one who responds to Jesus in faith will be saved.

The Good Judgment of trust is a recognition that we are actually in no place to evaluate God, but instead that we are called to believe His promises.

And chief among the promises of the Sermon on the Mount is the very first one:

Matthew 5:3 ESV

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Kingdom People are the ones who have looked at themselves and agreed with Jesus: I need nothing like I need the Holy Spirit. And in Luke 11, when Jesus teaches on many of these same topics again, instead of saying “how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him,” He says, “how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” The poor in spirit come to Jesus recognizing that their only hope is that another has paid their debt, and receive in return the saving presence of God - His Holy Spirit - and his Kingdom. The Good Judgment of trust recognizes the vast gulf between our own moral character and the perfect holiness and righteousness of God, and sees that it is forgiveness that we need. So we must ask, seek, and knock.

For six weeks, we looked at the Biblical idea of the atonement - the work of God to reconcile the world to Himself.

1 Peter 3:18 ESV

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

The centerpiece of the Gospel of the Kingdom is that in Jesus Christ, God has done what we could never do. Our redemption was planned in eternity past - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit knew exactly how sinners would be redeemed. At just the right time, the Son, through whom all things were made, took on human flesh and was born as one of us, but without sin. He walked in perfect obedience to His heavenly Father’s will, and died a sinner’s death - nailed to a cross - exactly according to plan. But He had no sins of his own. His death was for our sins - as our substitute - so that everyone who calls upon His name would be forgiven. So that everyone who asked would receive.

The author of life was laid in a tomb. But the third day, He was raised to new life, according to the plan that He had foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures and in His own teaching, and He now lives forever, the King of Kings, and He will return at the end of the age to judge all flesh, and establish His Kingdom as an everlasting Kingdom where death will be destroyed forever, and everyone who believes in Him will share in His eternal life.

But Jesus also warns us that those who refuse His command to ask, seek, knock, will not receive forgiveness, or life, or the Kingdom. Those who will not come to Him, poor in spirit, hungering & thirsting for His Righteousness, will remain under judgment. And you, who are evil, will bear your own judgment. Separated from the joy of the Kingdom forever.

He says to you today, “Ask, and it will be given to you."

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