Tuesday, 10 March Seeking the Messiah. Matthew 7:7–12
Well, this is another of those passages that cause us lots of debates. If it is taken on its own, at face value, we are likely to be very disappointed. Ask, and it shall be given to you… Let’s not imagine this promise to be like the Golden Tree in the Magic Garden, where, if only we know the Secret Incantation, we may obtain all that our hearts desire.
Fact: We have all asked God for things and not received them. Perhaps some of those things were not really worth our asking, like a fine day for a sports carnival, or a carpark. But some were rather more serious, such as the healing of a child or partner, the rescue of a business or a job to prevent serious financial and emotional difficulty, and so on.
Some people try to get God off the hook by giving him excuses when the asked-for blessing does not materialise:
He hasn’t given it yet, but he will. He’s just testing your faith.
He knows that it wouldn’t be good for us.
He has given it to us but we just haven’t accepted it yet, because we don’t have enough faith.
But these are just excuses. None of them would pass the pub test for a non-Christian whom we were trying to convince to become a Christian. In fact, to be bluntly honest about them, they all have the unmistakable odour of a snake-oil salesman.
For the person whose child has died of cancer, or whose family has been torn apart by divorce or total financial loss – to be told these sorts of excuses after they have earnestly prayed is like getting punched in the gut. In a book I wrote on this topic years ago, I gave the (possibly tongue-in-cheek) advice that if a grieving person receives any such advice they should give the advice-giver an immediate and powerful kick in the shins, while telling them that God will take the pain away if they pray for it hard enough.
We Christians have to be prepared to be honest about our faith and the Bible. We can't just make up fairy stories to suit our preferred narrative. The Bible has never done that.
To come back to the pub test, the punters down at the pub will reply that, on the basis of the evidence, one of two things must be true about this promise: 1) Jesus was wrong; or 2) the writer recorded his words wrongly or perhaps just made them up. In either case, they will say, taking another sip of their brown ale, ‘It’s all BS anyway’.
But I'm not happy with those two alternatives as being the end of the argument. If you recall our starting point in these reflections, we began with two assumptions: 1) Matthew is telling the truth; and 2) Jesus is to be trusted implicitly – he is always good and always true – no matter what
On this starting premise, there must be another way of reading this passage that does not merely put Jesus into the vending-machine-in-the-sky category. Now note carefully, please. I am NOT saying that we have to be clever enough to explain this passage away. I am saying that we have to be thoughtful enough as students of scripture to be able to explain it.
So let’s do what we should always do first. Let’s put the passage in its context.
You may not have been helped to do this if your Bible, like my NIV Bible, has carved it out from the rest of the chapter and given it a little title all of its own: Ask, Seek, Knock. This kind of ‘adding to the words of scripture’ can be very unhelpful – and is so in this case.
The context is this: it is contained within the Sermon on the Mount, which, as we have seen, is a long manifesto on how to live in (i.e. know the culture) of the kingdom of heaven. It is preceded by a teaching on how to deal with others in regard to wrongdoing and wrong thinking. The immediate previous paragraph was talking about wisely dealing with the truths of the Gospel and the kingdom among hostile audiences. A little bit further back (Chapter 6) it was talking about the wisdom of living well and seeking treasure in heaven. To glance ahead for a moment, the next paragraphs deal with the practical results of Gospel-preaching and finding wise pathways among dangerous situation.
A large component of the Hebrew Bible was known as the Wisdom literature. It was the section known generally as The Writings, the third section after The Law and The Prophets, which we heard Jesus talking about earlier. Wisdom literature included Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, but it also included most, if not all of the other 11 books in the section, including Psalms, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel and others
The definitive hero of wisdom in the Old Testament was Solomon. Many people think that Solomon asked God for wisdom, and God was pleased with his request and granted it. But that is not quite accurate. In 1 Kings 3:9, we read that Solomon asked: Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil… God subsequently gave to Solomon more general wisdom and also great riches because he was pleased with this request.
Now, what can we say about today’s passage from Matthew, with all this background in mind? Finally(get on with it, Graham!), here is how we may read it:
Our passage sits firmly in the context of a long reflection on wise living, on living well in God’s kingdom, on being thoughtful and wise in the speaking-out and living-out of God’s truth to a watching world. In this context, Jesus tells us that we can ask in confidence for God’s provision and he will most surely grant it.
We are free to ask, that is, for wise discernment in living the kingdom life well – both for ourselves and in the face of the watching world. This makes perfect sense in the light of the summary in v12 and the preceding and following sections. Live well. Do justly to others. Walk humbly. Love mercy. Ask God to help you with wisdom to live in this way – and he will answer your prayer. Seeking Jesus inevitably leads us to seek wisdom.
This passage was never intended to be used for a wish-list to spend on my own selfish desires. It is, rather, a wish-list to spend on the desires of the King. That is, after all, how we live around here; that is the culture of this kingdom. We may not live like earthly kings in wealth and easy comfort; but we are certainly to live as the Divine King would have us live – and he promises to help us do that.
Prayer: Thank you Lord Jesus Christ, that you care enough about my life in your kingdom to promise to give me everything that I need to live well in that kingdom. Help me, please, when I want physical healing or ease from financial burdens or grief, to know that you are closely with me in all those struggles, and that you will certainly use all of the things that happen to me in this harsh world to make me more like you, if I just ask you to. Amen.
