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Matthew 7 · a question people ask

"Ask, and it will be given you" (7:7). Does that mean God gives whatever you ask for?

In the text

Here are the words, in their order. "Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you." (7:7). "For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened." (7:8). Then a father and his son: "Or who is there among you who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" (7:9), and "Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent?" (7:10). Then, "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!" (7:11). Jesus says the Father gives "good things" to those who ask him; he doesn't say here when, or how. Favor's Mark 11 asks a question like this one about another saying (Mark 11:24). These notes neither add to the words nor take from them.

The verses

““Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened. Or who is there among you who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent? 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 7:7-11 · World English Bible
“Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them.”
Mark 11:24 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Matthew 7

Matthew 7: Hears and does them

In Matthew 7 one Greek verb runs from 7:12 to 7:26 behind the WEB's do, produce, grow and does: the good tree produces good fruit, the one who enters does the will of his Father, and the wise man hears Jesus's words and does them. And "he taught them with authority, and not like the scribes" (7:29) is, in the Greek, the same words as the end of Mark 1:22.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions