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get God to give us exactly what we want every single time. Rather, Jesus is showing us who God is and inviting us to trust Him with what we ask of Him.
• God Gives Generously (v. 8): Verse 8 says, “Everyone who asks receives.” Everyone. It doesn’t say people who ask well, or people who ask nicely, or people who have been good. Everyone who asks receives. The reason is found not in the asker but in the Giver. God gives because it is in His nature to be generous. James 1:5 describes God as the one “who gives to all generously and without reproach.” He doesn’t judge your worthiness or begrudge your need. He loves giving. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:45, Jesus tells His disciples to copy the generosity and love of God, who “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
• God Gives Like a Father (vv. 9-11): God isn’t a bank, or a government agency, or a concierge. You don’t look for ways of bribing, or coercing, or ordering him to do what you want. God gives like a father. That means He is not mechanical or magical, but rather personal and motivated by love. It also means He is in control, not us. We come to Him humbly as His children, not arrogantly like His customers, or angrily like His employer. We ask but don’t demand. We ask and trust that our Father knows us, love us, and will bless us with what is good.
• God Gives What is Good (vv. 9-11): We are sometimes mistaken about what will fulfill our needs. We ask God for something because we think it is what we want. God knows when we are mistaken. That seems be what is going on with the analogy in verses 9-10 where Jesus says, “9 What man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?” What is the connection between stones and bread or between fish and snakes? Well, the style of loaves cooked in Judea in Jesus’s day looked like stones. There is also a kind of catfish that lives in the Sea of Galilee that looks a lot like an eel. Imagine a child pointing at a stone or an eel and saying to their father, “Daddy, can I have that?” The father is not going to give the child what they asked for, because they are mistaken. The father will give the thing that they actually need. The way that translates to us is that we don’t always ask for the right thing. James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives.” God doesn’t promise to give us whatever we want. He promises to give us what is good. He isn’t withholding good from us. He just sometimes knows better than us what will truly satisfy us. There is a line in the old hymn, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” that says, “Hast thou not seen, how all thy longings have been, granted in what He ordaineth.” God hears our requests, knows our needs, and gives
us what He knows will be for our good. In the midst of rejection or refusal, we need to be willing to analyze our own motives and trust the wisdom and love of God.
Free to Love (v. 12)
This section culminates with what is called the Golden Rule: Treat people the same way you want them to treat you. The Golden Rule is more than a nice bit of ethics. Jesus says that it is the whole point of the “Law and the Prophets.” Sin causes us to treat other people differently than we would want to be treated. Jesus tells us if we could live this out, we would fulfill the whole reason the law was given.
It should be obvious that the reason the law and prophets had to be given was because we can’t do it on
our own. That is the meaning of the “therefore” in verse 12. This rule isn’t a disconnected piece of moral philosophy. It is the culmination of what Jesus has been building up to in chapter 7 of the Sermon on the Mount. We judge, criticize, condemn, and tear each other to pieces. Why? Because we are jealous, envious, worried and afraid that other people have it better than us and that we are missing out on our change to be happy. When we realize we can submit our requests to God and trust Him to give us what we need, we will be able to live out verse 12.
Conclusion
Parts of the Sermon on the Mount are repeated in Luke’s Gospel as well. This passage has one interesting
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