Luke 11:9-10 And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.… The illustration of the egg and the scorpion is not to be found in the parallel passage of St. Matthew. It introduces no new thought, but only strengthens the emphasis of what has been said already. It may be observed that the stone represents to us useless gifts, the serpent and the scorpion, things which are actually pernicious. If human fathers would not give either the one or the Other to their children, it is inconceivable that our Father in heaven will mock the prayers of His children who call upon Him. And if He does not mock them, what will He give in answer to His children's prayers? In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord says that He will give "good things"; here the language is more definite, "the Holy Spirit." The comparison of the two suggests that the best things which we can ask of God are spiritual blessings; we may ask many things which seem good to us, and they may not really be good; but the Holy Spirit is a perfect gift; it must always be well for us to ask for it; it can never be to our detriment to receive it; therefore, while we are cautious how we ask for other gifts, we may always be instant in prayer for greater and still greater influences of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts. (Bishop H. Goodwin.)You foolish, ignorant children of the great Father in heaven doubt and mourn because the things you pray for are often denied you; but put yourselves, for a moment, in God's place, so far as to consider the prayers of your little children to you — children whose folly, as compared with your wisdom, is as nothing to your folly when compared with God's wisdom. 1. Your child comes to you one day hungry, and begging for bread, and, seeing a round, flat stone by your side which bears some resemblance to a loaf, he asks you for it, not for food, but for stone, supposing it to be bread. You do not give it him, but you take him by the hand and lead him home, where there is bread in plenty. The child is hungry, and as you lead him on he is not only hungry, but grieved and sad. "My father," he says, "whom I have been taught to love and trust, will not even grant me such a simple necessary as a loaf of bread to appease my hunger." You do not give him the thing he prayed for, but are you not fully answering the child's prayer? What he prayed for really was bread, and it is bread that you are about to give him; the cause of the child's grief lies simply in his own childish mistake about the stone. 2. But Christ takes a further case, and not quite a parallel one. Your child, hungry again, comes to you as you wander through the meadow by the river, and asks you for a fish; and seeing a shining thing by yon which he takes to be a fish, he asks you for that, that he may get his hunger satisfied. Again you refuse him, and again he is grieved and perplexed at your refusal as you lead him to the well-spread table at home; but this time you have led your child not merely, as before, from a stone, which would simply have failed to satisfy him, but you have refused him a serpent, which would have poisoned him. 3. And now, Christ would say, these are just the kind of prayers which are constantly rising up from us to our Father in heaven, and the seeming want of answer to which awakens in us such constant doubt and murmuring and complaint. (1) A stone may look very much like a loaf to a little child, and health or wealth may look very like peace of mind to us; but what if God knows better than we do? (2) A serpent may look very like a fish to a child, and worldly prosperity in any form may look very much like well-being to us; but what if God knows that prosperity would be to us, net only like a hard stone to a hungry child, utterly unsatisfying and quite harmless, but like a venomous serpent that has a deadly sting? That is just what prosperity has been to many a man — it has poisoned his soul. And that, we may be very sure, is what prosperity would be to us, if God denied it to us. 4. We have been considering hitherto the denims of God to our prayers, for it is they assuredly which perplex us most. But does God merely answer our prayers by denying them? Is it His care merely to shield us from harm, without bestowing upon us any actual, positive good? Not so. "Every one that asketh receiveth. Not only is the foolish request denied, but some real and bountiful blessing is actually bestowed. If you refuse the stone or the serpent to your child, still you do not leave him to starve. If ye then... Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" "Yes," you say, "the Holy Spirit; but look at our manifold daily needs as they throng together in our morning prayers; will this one gift of the Holy Spirit supply and satisfy all these?" Not all your desires, for you desire stones and serpents, which would break your teeth and poison your life; but all your needs the Holy Spirit can supply; and, more than that, in no other way, except through the Holy Spirit, can your needs be supplied in that bountiful way in which God delights to supply them — in the way, that is, which enriches your spiritual life at the same time, and by the same means as your natural life is enriched. (W. F. Herbert.)The common articles of food on the shores of the Lake of Tiberius were fish, bread, and eggs. The poor look for nothing else to-day. (E. Stapler, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. |
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