The Gifts of our Father

Matthew 7:7-11 (ESV)
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. [8] For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. [9] Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? [10] Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? [11] If you then, who are 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!
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more wil your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Jesus doesn’t hesitate, he says you are evil. It doesn’t matter that you care for your children, you are still evil. This isn’t how we normally think of evil. Evil is a word we reserve for major events this year. It regained circulation with 9/11. We use it to describe those who carried out the holocaust. But we would not think of using it to describe the average father giving his son a peanut butter sandwich.
But Jesus does. Being evil does not prevent us from doing good things, and giving good gifts to our children. But it does prevent us from being good. It is a fact of life according to Jesus. He says it with confidence, you are evil. And who of us would say that we are good. Sure we do good things here and there. The majority of people in this world are people we would consider good people. They raise families, care for their children, go to work and otherwise lead law abiding lives. They probably even donate to charities and look out for the welfare of their neighbors. They are not what we consider to be evil. And this would describe the people within earshot of Jesus’ preaching.
Yet these people who do these good things, would be lying if they told you they didn’t have the propensity to do evil. Despite all the good we might do, we still sin. We harbor grudges against people, often our own spouses and other family members. Jealousy consumes us. Hatred, and adulterous thoughts inhabit our hearts. Sometimes we sin and don’t even realize that what we do is sin! But then reading God’s word we are convicted of things we have done daily since youth. Perhaps it is the horoscopes in the paper we like to indulge in.
And then we know too, that if we didn’t have the capacity to do evil, evil wouldn’t happen. We are as capable as Bin Laden to do evil. We know this about ourselves. We restrain ourselves. But the evil is there.
Despite this we know to give our children good gifts. Our Father in heaven has no capacity for Evil. It tests his patience to even tolerate evil in this world. Yet he tolerates it that others might hear of his son who died for them, that hearing they may have faith and be spared the end that surely must come to such a wicked place as this world. And we are his children. He knows better what is good for us than we do, and he gives us those things which he knows are good according to his will. So Jesus is right to tell us to ask.
How often has God answered these prayers for us, in ways that we only later understood. But daily he gives us our daily bread. Daily he showers us with the grace of forgiveness in his Son Jesus Christ that dies that we might live. And daily he gives us the sun and the rain, and all that we need to live this life. And when all is done in this world, and our bodies can no longer cope with the sin and death within us, he gives to us eternal life in heaven. So ask and you will receive, seek and you will find the good gifts of our Father in Heaven.