“The God Who Gives Good Gifts”
Matthew 7:7-12
Sermon Series: “Audience Of One”
Introduction: Let me set up the message with a quote by James Montgomery Boice. He writes of this passage, “If a young man wants to ask his father for something, he will pattern is request on the nature and the temperament of his father. If the father is ill- tempered and stingy, the young man will ask for little. He will take care to present his need in the most winsome and unobjectionable manner. If the father is good-natured and generous, the child will present his need openly and with great confidence. It is the same spiritually. If a man prays, he will pray in harmony with his view of the God to whom he is praying. If the gods are capricious, as the Greeks believed, then men will come warily and will be on their guard. If the god is vengeful, a man will be fearful. If God is gracious, as Jesus Christ declared the true God to be, then the one who believes in him can come boldly. And he will not fear to ask for good gifts of the One who is declared to be his Father. It is this that gives the full measure of importance to the verses which form the next section of the Sermon on the Mount, for the verses contain the Lord‟s declaration that God is indeed gracious to those who are his spiritual children.”
1. God is a trustworthy God who gives good gifts to His children (v. 8-11). D.A. Carson has written, “What is fundamentally at stake is man‟s picture of God. God must not be thought of as a reluctant stranger who can be cajoled or bullied into bestowing his gifts (6:7-8), as a malicious tyrant who takes vicious glee in the tricks he plays (vv. 9-10), or even as an indulgent grandfather who provides everything requested of him. He is the heavenly Father, the God of the kingdom, who graciously and willingly bestows the good gifts of the kingdom [this is an important point because the prayers that Jesus promises will be answered pertain to spiritual things] in answer to prayer.” Kent Hughes writes of the illustration in verses 9-11, “The illustration is deliberately absurd. In the Galilean setting for the giving of the
Sermon on the Mount, the people were familiar with the flat stones by the shore that looked exactly like their round, flat cakes of bread, and with fish (more likely eels) that looked very much like snakes. Can you imagine your son coming to tell you he is hungry and you give him a stone instead of bread? „Here son, enjoy!‟ you say mockingly as he cracks his teeth. „Oh, you didn‟t like that? Here, have a fish,‟ and you give him a harmful snake or eel. No first- century father would be as ignorant or cruel. Today we cannot always be sure. Nevertheless, the illustration holds. God always gives us what is good.”
2. Therefore, His children are to pray with persistence and confidence (v. 7) [see also Luke 11:5-8].
A. Persistence: The commands in verse 7 are present imperatives in the Greek so the verse literally reads, “Keep on asking and it will be given to you; keep on seeking and you will find; keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.” It is telling us to pray for spiritual things with passion and persistence.
B. Confidence: Because of who God is and what He promises, we can pray with confidence, knowing that He will answer and do what is best. John Newton wrote in a hymn a long time ago, “Thou art coming to a King; large petitions with thee bring; for His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.”
3. Because we can trust our Heavenly Father to take care of us, we can treat others right in the right way instead of striving for our own way (v. 12). This is what is commonly called the Golden Rule. Basically, Jesus is telling us to treat others the way we want to be treated. However, I think there is a deeper truth that he is communicating here because “therefore” connects this command to what He was teaching in the previous verses. He is telling us that we can treat others in the right way, no matter how they treat us, because we can trust God to take care of us. This is hard to do in the real world. However, if we believe that God is taking care of us, we don‟t have to scheme and use people to get ahead.
