Seeds for 06/26/2023 - Matthew 7:9-11
Scripture: 7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 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! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Observation: Growing up, the ultimate response to someone stating the obvious was: “Duuuhhhh!” Jesus seems to intentionally make as “duuhhh!” statements as He can think of in order to underscore the point. Only the cruelest parent would give a child a rock when asked for a fluffy biscuit. A snake when asked for a fish? Preposterous!
Since God is “your Father in heaven” (as we’ve been seeing throughout the Sermon on the Mount), we can compare Him to earthly fathers (or parents, the point here is the same). Only the most delinquent or disturbed among us mess up simple requests like these. God is infinitely greater, so “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”
God is trustworthy and good. We can know that what He gives will be good for us. Consider…
First, as James reminds us, “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father.” We are continually being blessed by God, who has grace for everyone. Every breath, every meal, every night of sleep. The basic provisions of our lives are His good gifts to us. The people we love and those who love us are gifts as well. So is our work, whether our profession or our volunteer service.
Second, God will not give lesser gifts than our earthly parents. It is God’s nature to be infinitely greater than His creatures. We may get exactly what we asked for. We may get what we least expected. But the point of Jesus’ comparison is not that we evaluate the reliability of the giver based on His job performance in answering prayers in the ways we expect and desire. Rather, we recognize the goodness of the gift on account of it’s origin—who gave it. If it comes from the Lord, it’s good for us.
Not everything that comes into our lives is from God. But some things that we didn’t ask for work out to be gifts after all. I must return again to Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” Rather than remove this mysterious ailment, God showed Paul that “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
The good news is that Jesus reveals in words and actions the goodness of the Giver’s heart. We can trust His goodness in giving.
Application:
What gifts have come from God that you recognized immediately as good?
What gifts from God did you recognize later as good?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, grant me a wise heart and receptive spirit, to appreciate your faithfulness as a Giver. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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