Do you have a difficulty in asking for help or favours? Some people do not have the least problem of approaching people for help.
Let’s ask Jesus to tell us how to handle this business of arking:
Matthew 7:8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
Matthew 7:9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
Matthew 7:10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?
Matthew 7:11 If you then, being 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!
Matthew 7:12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Let’s carefully look at the deeper meaning of these words:
Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Having set forth the lofty ideals of the kingdom of heaven (chs. 5:21 to 7:6), Jesus now turns for the remainder of His discourse to how citizens of His kingdom can make these noble graces part of their lives (ch. 7:7–12).
He leads His hearers to the dividing of the ways and calls their attention to the fact that citizenship in His kingdom involves great personal sacrifice.
Let’s read about these sacrifices. What does it entail:
Matthew 7:13 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Let us look at what the gospel of Luke has to say on this issue:
Luke 14:27 And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—
Luke 14:29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,
Luke 14:30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
Luke 14:31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
Luke 14:32 Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.
Luke 14:33 So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
One should not follow Jesus before counting the cost.
He warns against the philosophy and counsel of their pretended religious leaders, the wolves in sheep’s clothing
Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
Matthew 7:16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?
Matthew 7:17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Matthew 7:18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
Matthew 7:19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Matthew 7:20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
And then Jesus concludes with a most earnest appeal to live according to the principles of the kingdom (vs. 21–27).
Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Matthew 7:22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
Matthew 7:23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Build Your House on the Rock
Matthew 7:24 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:
Matthew 7:25 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.
Matthew 7:26 “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:
Matthew 7:27 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
Recognizing the impossibility for sinners, of themselves, to order their lives in harmony with the principles of the divine law, Christ points His listeners to the Source of power for Christian living.
All that citizens of the kingdom need is theirs for the asking. What they cannot do in their own strength can be accomplished when human effort is united with divine power.
Those who ask will not be disappointed (vs. 9–11). God is not sparing with the gifts of heaven; He does not deal with men in the way they deal with one another (vs. 1–6), but is gracious and merciful.
Matthew 7:9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
Not a father in the audience would for a moment be so heartless and cruel. And if, even in their human imperfection, they would not consider such a course of action, how much less likely was it that their Father in heaven would do so.
Matthew 7:11 If you then, being 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!
In His teaching Christ often made use of the device of appealing from the lesser to the greater; in this instance, from the love of human parents to the infinitely greater love of the heavenly Parent (see ch. 6:30). Jesus takes human nature at its best, and then points men to the incomparably greater character of God.
Give good things. Children generally have no inhibitions when it comes to asking for things. We need have no hesitancy in coming to the Giver of “every good gift and every perfect gift” (James 1:17).
The way in which the Christian treats his fellow men is the acid test of the genuineness of his religion.
1 John 4:20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
1 John 4:21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
The golden rule summarizes the obligations of the second table of the Decalogue, and is another statement of the great principle of loving our neighbour.
Only those who make the golden rule their law of life and practice can expect admission to the kingdom of glory.
Matthew 7:12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Our attitude toward our fellow men is an infallible index of our attitude toward God.
1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.
1 John 3:15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
1 John 3:16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Profound thinkers of other times and other cultures have discovered and stated the sublime truth expressed in the golden rule, generally, however, in a negative form.
For example, to Hillel, most revered rabbi of the generation before Jesus, these words are credited:
“‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour; that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof’” (Talmud Shabbath 31a, Soncino ed., p. 140).
The golden rule also appears in the Apocryphal book of Tobit (ch. 4:15):
“Do that to no man which thou hatest,” and in the Letter of Aristeas (ed. and tr. by Moses Hadas, p. 181):
“‘Just as you do not wish evils to befall you, but to participate in all that is good, so you should deal with those subject to you and with offenders.’”
It is worthy of note that Jesus transformed a negative precept into a positive one. Herein lies the essential difference between Christianity and all false religious systems, and between true Christianity and that which consists in the form of religion but denies the vital power of the gospel.
The golden rule takes supreme selfishness, what we would like others to do for us, and transforms it into supreme selflessness, what we are to do for others.
This is the glory of Christianity. This is the life of Christ lived out in those who follow Him and bear His name (see on ch. 5:48).
Matthew 7:12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
This is the law.
Christ emphatically denies that the principle set forth in the golden rule is something new; it is the very essence of the law, as given through Moses (the Torah), and what the prophets wrote, in other words, of the entire OT.
He who assigns the law of love to the NT alone, and relegates the OT to the oblivion of a worn-out religious system, makes himself a critic of the Master, who specifically declared that He came with no thought of changing the great principles set forth in “the law, or the prophets”
The entire Sermon on the Mount, from Matt. 5:20 to 7:11, is illustrative of this great truth. Having stated that He did not come to abolish the teachings of Moses and the prophets, Christ set forth in detail His attitude toward the law by magnifying it and making it honourable (see Isa. 42:21).
I feel so inadequate, so hopeless but Jesus said
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”—Matthew 7:7.
power will attend the gospel as in apostolic times.