Matt 7.7-12

a good father gives good things

(matthew 7.7-12)

Jason Procopio 

When I was a teenager I was invited to a friend’s house for a pizza party. Most of the kids from our church were invited. It was fun, we had pizza, we swam in the pool. The friend who had invited us was a girl whose name I won’t give here—let’s call her Marie. We all knew Marie, we’d grown up together. Her parents were long-standing and respected members of the church, her mother sang in the choir. We all liked her parents a lot; they were funny and inviting and talked to us like adults. 

Late in the evening I came into the kitchen to get something, and her mom was there cleaning up. When she saw me come in, and saw that we were alone in the kitchen, she stopped what she was doing and said, “Hey Jason, I wanted to tell you something.” I was curious, so I stopped what I was doing too. She leaned forward conspiratorially and said, “God told me something about you.” 

These are words that would have struck terror in any teenager in our church, because we were in a church in which messages from God came frequently (no one seemed to pay attention to whether they were right or not), and in which many of the teenagers (including myself) weren’t actually living for Christ—so if God were to say something about us, it definitely wouldn’t be good. 

But I was completely unprepared for what she said: “He told me you and Marie are going to get married in a few years.”

It took me a second to process what she was saying. “To each other?” was all I could think to say.

“That’s right—you will be married to each other.”

It wasn’t until we were adults that I learned what had happened. Marie (who was as horrified as I was to find out what her mom had said) had a crush on me at the time, and told her mom she had prayed we would get married. And her mom took her to Matthew 7.7 and read to her, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

I know that sounds like a joke, but she was absolutely serious. She had taken this promise from Jesus and turned it into a prophecy in her mind, which applied to that specific situation.

Obviously, I did not marry Marie. But I think you see what I’m getting at. Today’s text, like many in this sermon, has been misappropriated more times that we can count. It has been used by false teachers to justify the false teaching that if we have enough faith, God will give us anything we ask for—including multi-million-dollar cars and private jets (paid for by the Christians they have managed to con out of their money). It has been used to validate the most ridiculous kinds of prayers (like the prayer of a 14-year-old who had already picked out her mate—as if God might not have other plans for her, and for me).

But this text is so much better, so much bigger, than a simple affirmation of whatever prayer we want to pray.

A couple weeks ago Jesus spoke to us about anxiety. It was a text for those moments in life when we worry about the basic things we feel we need to live: in other words, in that text he was speaking of how to trust God in the midst of day-to-day anxieties.

This text is similar, but it is much larger, much wider, than the other. It speaks, not to those worries that any of us might have from day-to-day, but to the cataclysmic, earth-shattering moments of our lives, when it feels like the ground has opened up to swallow us. It speaks to us when life hits us with such violence that might be tempted to think that God doesn’t exist after all—or worse, that he exists, but hates us. 

And as if that wasn’t enough, it speaks of promises for the most important things in our lives, reassurances so great that, if we hold onto them with faith, the worst situations life could throw at us will not be able to crush us. It gives us perseverance great enough to weather the most violent and most dreadful storm. Life in a fallen world will get its licks in, but it will not prevail, if we take this text to heart.

A Good Father Gives Good Things (v. 7-11)

Jesus gives three imperative statements in v. 7-8, with three results we can expect. V. 7: 

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. 

Now of course, at first glance we can understand why some people would take this the wrong way. It does seem like Jesus is giving a broad exhortation to pray absolutely anything we want, and to expect that God will do that thing.

But we know from experience that this isn’t the case. Every parent of a small child knows that no matter how desperately they may pray for a good night’s sleep, sometimes that’s just not going to happen. That baby will sleep if she wants to sleep.

Clearly God does not give us absolutely everything we ask for, and that even goes for some things we think we really do need, like sleep. 

So what are we do make of this? Does it invalidate what Jesus says?

No, it doesn’t.  

Remember what we saw in chapter 6. From the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.9-13, to the command to not be anxious in 6.25-34, on to this text in v. 7-11, he reminded us over and over that we are to seek the most important things.

So when Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be give to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you,” he is not saying that if you ask for whatever you want, it will be given to you, but rather, that if you learn to ask for the most important things, you will absolutely receive them.

Now, what are these “most important things”? He’s already told us, in the Lord’s Prayer: the most important things we can pray for are the glory of God’s name, his present and future reign on earth, provision for our daily needs, forgiveness of sin, protection from evil. With only one exception, these are spiritual blessings. (Luke, in his parallel passage in Luke 11.13, even goes so far as to equate the “good things” God gives us with the Holy Spirit himself.)

The most important things we could ask for are, for the most part, spiritual things, things that the Holy Spirit brings about in us, and not things that have to do with our circumstances or our situations. John Stott, in his commentary on this text, calls the inner work of the Holy Spirit “the comprehensive blessing of God.” If he is at work in us, then we always have what is truly essential.

Now, I know what some you might be thinking—most of us think it from time to time. We hear that God works to give us “every spiritual blessing” (cf. Ephesians 1.3), and we think, That’s great…but there are still a lot of other things I want, and even some things I think I need. We’d never dare say it out loud because it sounds like sacrilege, but if we’re honest, when Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you,” and we realize that he’s not talking about a comfortable paycheck every month, or a perfect spouse, or perfect health, it will be difficult for us not to feel disappointed.

Jesus knows this, so he goes further. He says (v. 9): 

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! 

I know I talk about my kids a lot, but today I’ve got a reason: this is the illustration Jesus gives, of a parent taking care of his children. And his illustration is very appropriate for my family. My kids are absolute fiends for bread. They are capable of buying a baguette, and finishing it in the five-minute walk home from the bakery (with their mom’s help). They are constantly asking for bread. And we give them bread. 

We give them other things too, that are even better for them. We feed them good food. We give them clothing. We take care of them when they’re sick. We hug them and kiss them and love them.

We do this, even though we’re bad parents. Every human parent is an imperfect parent. We get mad at our kids when they’re doing nothing but being kids; sometimes we think of ourselves first; we make mistakes and we need to ask for forgiveness. But even though we’re bad parents, we still know how to give good things to our kids.

God is a perfect parent; he is a perfect Father. If we, who are bad parents, know how to give good things, our heavenly Father will know how to do so infinitely better. Our heavenly Father knows what we need, and always gives us what we need: the comprehensive blessing of the Holy Spirit; the glory of his name; his present and future reign on earth; provision for our daily needs; forgiveness of sin; protection from evil.

We may feel disappointment when the things God gives us aren’t the things we wanted. But if we’re disappointed, it’s because we’re still not seeing clearly, like newborn babies who aren’t yet able to make out clear shapes. Our eyes are still adjusting to what is truly good. Tim Keller said it like this: “God always gives us exactly what we would ask for, if we knew everything that he knows.” As hard as it may be for us to believe, if we saw clearly and desired rightly, we would ask God to give us exactly what he does give us. 

The things God gives his children are always very, very good—even better than the things we think are good. If we who are bad parents know how to give good things to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give us good things when we ask him to give us good things! A good Father gives good things to his children.

A Good Father Doesn’t Give Bad Things (v. 9-11)

We saw before that Jesus’s statement in v. 7-11 is simple: a good Father gives good things to his children. If we learn to ask God for the things that he says are most important for us, he will absolutely give those things to us; if we learn to ask him for good things, to seek good things, we have the iron-clad promise that God will give us those good things.

That is the main point of this passage. 

But I know what a lot of you are thinking—it’s what most of us think of first thing when we talk about this subject: What about everything else? What about all the other things that also seem essential to us? Not superficial worries like how to pay the phone bill, but the big, life-altering worries we come across. The cancer diagnosis; or when the person you love the most absolutely destroys you; or when you’ve simply suffered through the steady onslaught of things which, on their own, are small, but which build onto one another over time until you just feel crushed under the weight of it all. What about all of those things?

Like I said before, answering that question is not Jesus’s main priority here; it’s not the main point he’s trying to make. We’ve talked about this many times in the past; it’s dangerous to come to the Bible with a question and expect the Bible to answer that question. Many times, it doesn’t (at least not in a way we find satisfying), because it’s not mainly concerned with that question. The Bible doesn’t answer all our questions; it tells us what questions we should be asking.

But in this particular case, something pretty wonderful happens. Because while this question of all these other worries is not Jesus’s main concern here, he answers it anyway. His explanation of why we should ask for good things—the things he has promised us—and why we should expect to receive them from God is incredibly simple, and yet incredibly wide, so that even if it’s not his main point to talk about all these other things, these things are covered anyway.

Or, to put it another way, if one thing is true, its opposite is also true. If a good Father gives good things, that also means that a good Father doesn’t give bad things. 

Let’s look at v. 9-11 again. 

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! 

I mentioned my kids’ love for bread before. We do give them bread. But we don’t give it to them indiscriminately; sometimes we say no.

Why do we do this? Because if we gave them bread every time they asked for bread, it wouldn’t be good for them; they wouldn’t eat anything else. That may want bread, but fruits and vegetables are good for them. Again, we do what we do because we know how to give good things to our kids. 

This “knowing how” is very important; it doesn’t mean giving indiscriminately, without end, as much as our kids might want. It means being wise enough to dole out the good things in ways that are healthy. They may not be happy about that, but that’s because they’re kids, and they’re not interested in what’s good for them, they just want what feels good. In twenty years—or maybe thirty—they’ll understand, and they’ll be happy we did it this way.

But here’s what we have to remember: the things we give them today are still good things, and not bad. No matter what they think about it, no matter how they feel about it; the things we give to them are not bad things. 

And that’s the image Jesus gives us here. If my kids ask me for bread, I won’t throw a rock at them and say, “Here, enjoy your bread.” If they ask for fish, I won’t throw them a snake and say, “Fish this!” I may not give them bread every time—I may give them an apple instead—but I definitely won’t give them a stone. 

"God is a good Father: if we ask him for bread, he won’t give us a stone.” The first time I heard John Piper say that many years ago, it changed the way I saw prayer—and it was so obvious, staring me in the face the whole time. If we ask for bread, he won’t give us a stone. If we ask for fish, he won’t give us a snake.

We ask God for good things, and he gives us good things. And some of those good things—especially if they’re the things he’s promised us—he gives without measure.

But sometimes he withholds—not because he doesn’t love us, or because the things we asked for aren’t good, but because he wants to build something else in us, something better, that the good thing we asked for won’t give us. His withholding is working in us spiritual blessings which are better than whatever we asked for (treasures laid up in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy). A good Father gives good things to his children.

For instance, we go through a period where reading the Bible becomes difficult. It’s no longer the joy it once was; it’s hard; it’s laborious. So we pray that God will help us to enjoy it again…and nothing happens. It’s still difficult.

What are we to do in that moment? If we are obedient, we will press on; we will persevere. God allows times of spiritual dryness to teach us perseverance; and that perseverance, in the long run, yields even greater dividends than the easy and encouraging times we spent reading the Bible.

Or let’s go back to the example of sleep deprivation. Some of you know that our daughter Zadie suffers from night terrors; they happen about once a week on average, sometimes more. Kids who suffer night terrors aren’t quite awake, and not quite asleep—it’s like they’re sleepwalking, except with thrashing and hitting and screaming and biting, often for an hour or more.

This has been going on for three and a half years. We haven’t slept consistently well in three and a half years. We’re exhausted all the time.

But when sleep deprivation makes you see a number of things more clearly. You see that you cannot obey his commandments on your own (because you barely have the mental bandwidth to even think about his commandments; you can barely remember your own name half the time). You see that you cannot provide for your own need of rest. You see that if you’re going to remain faithful, you have no other choice but to trust him to give you these things—all other resources are sucked out of you.

In depriving us of easy sleep, God is actually giving us something better. He's giving us the opportunity to put ourselves in his hands and trust in his grace to do in us what we can’t do in ourselves; he’s giving us the opportunity to learn how to trust his strength in our weakness. Even in those moments, as difficult and frustrating and mind-numbing as they are, God is giving good things; he’s withholding a physical need in order to give us trust in his provision, and perseverance in obedience despite how we’re feeling—spiritual blessings which are far better, and far more important, than a good night’s sleep.

Or another example, which may be a little more difficult. Loanne and I have a dear friend who is our parents’ age; her kids are as old as we are. About fifteen years ago, her husband suddenly left her for another woman. “I don’t love you anymore, I love this woman instead, I’m gone.” He left, and moved in with this other woman. 

She was devastated. She held it together, but inside, it destroyed her. Everything she had built her life on—this family she had been living for—was gone. Her kids were adults now, so they had moved out; and now the only family she had left in her home was gone. 

The thing is, every day, she had prayed for her marriage. She had prayed for her husband. She had prayed for the health and happiness of their marriage. And this happened. She accepted his request for divorce, and carried on.

What happened over the next ten years was extraordinary. Rather than unceasingly lamenting the life she had lost, she looked up to the life she still had in Christ. And in her loss, in her suffering, she learned perseverance; she learned grace; she learned forgiveness—in a way she never would have learned it if her husband had stayed.

She knew this herself, but we all saw it several years later, when her ex got in touch with her for the first time in years. He had recently come back to faith in Christ, and realized what he had done. He was convicted by the Holy Spirit and horrified by his sin. So he came to her and asked for her forgiveness, which she had already given him a long time ago. They started talking again, and he slowly showed her what God had been doing in his life. And five years ago, our friend and her husband got married for the second time, with their children and their grandchildren and their brothers and sisters in Christ present to celebrate with them.

Friends, we rarely know in the moment why God decides to not answer some prayers we think are essential—like feeling blessed when you read your Bible, or getting good rest, or having a healthy marriage. But we do know this: if we ask for bread, he won’t give us a stone. If we ask God for good things, he will give us GOOD things. They may not be the good things we expected or asked for, but they will be good—infinitely better than whatever we asked for.

Giving Good Things to Others (v. 12)

Now we often think that’s the end of that passage—there’s a break in many of our Bibles—but it’s not the end; we still need the application. In the original Greek there is a linking word at the beginning of verse 12—it shows that what he’s about to say is a logical consequence of what he has just said. 

Jesus said (v. 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!  

This is what we hope to receive from God—good things, the best things, the things that are essential—and this is what he gives us, with perfect wisdom and generosity.

The question is, what will God’s wisdom and generosity produce in us? Here Jesus takes the benefits of this vertical relationship we have with God—our generous God who always gives us good things—and shifts it to the horizontal, applying it to our relationships with others.

V. 12:

SO whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 

This is a lot more than a simple truism we can teach to children. What we receive from God—understanding and wisdom and generosity, every good thing—gives us a clear picture of what we want. We receive good things from him; we want to receive good things from others. We receive understanding and wisdom and generosity from him; we want to receive understanding and wisdom and generosity from others.

And Jesus is saying that if this is what we get from God, and this is what we want from others, this is what we should give. And it should be natural to us, if we understand what God has done for us. The understanding and wisdom and generosity we receive from God makes us want to be that kind of person. When we receive grace, we want to become gracious (because grace is so clearly good). 

In so much of what Jesus tells here, we are passive. We are children, who depend on their Father to give them what they need. We can’t make it happen; we can’t force his hand; all we can do is ask, and trust that we will receive. All we can do is seek, and trust that we will find. All we can do is knock on his door, and trust that he’ll open it for us.

But when we passively receive such abundant grace from God, and understand his grace, something unexpected happens in us: we find we’re not passive anymore. We set to work, seeking his kingdom first, and knowing that he’ll give us everything else we need. And as we seek his kingdom, we find our activity extending further and further out. 

When we grow in our knowledge of God’s goodness to us, we find ourselves looking for opportunities to do good to others—to extend help where help is needed, to welcome those who are unwelcome elsewhere. 

So what do we do? We open our homes, and invite people to come in and eat with us and spend time with us. We go out to them, to give them help where it’s needed. We are open about our sin and our struggles, so that they might know it’s okay to be open about theirs. We are patient and forgiving with them, because we want nothing less, and because that’s exactly what God has given us.

It’s sort of scary to think of how much of who we are comes from how we were raised. Not all of it can be chalked up to upbringing, thank God…but a frightening amount of it is. I still find myself doing things the way my parents taught me to do them. I still surprise myself by saying things exactly the way my dad would say them. And I still find myself repeating mistakes that my parents made.

We are, at least in large part, a product of how our parents brought us up. That scares us if we’re parents—what foolish things am I teaching my children to repeat?—but it should also encourage us. Because even if we’re adults, and our mothers and fathers are no longer raising us, we’re still being raised by a perfect heavenly Father who gives good things to his children. As our parents have rubbed off on us, our heavenly Father is rubbing off on us too. He is consistently showing us what we want to receive—what the truly good things are—and he is constantly showing us what we want to become. So we can rest in the promise that the good things—the best things—we receive from our heavenly Father will not end with us; the good things we receive from him, we’ll learn to give them to others.