God is not only a great Giver, but He is sometimes a great Hider of His gifts. The subject to which the text applies pre-eminently, as the context shows, is the matter of the soul's welfare, and the things that accompany salvation. The promise is not, "Seek, health and ye shall find it. Seek fame, seek fortune, and ye shall find them;" but the whole discourse bears on the kingdom of heaven and the righteousness thereof, and the promise of the true and faithful witness is tantamount to this: "Seek God, and ye shall find Him. Seek His friendship, and He will not refuse it. Seek the Holy Spirit, and He will not withhold it."
I. Seek knowledge. To true religion a pre-requisite is a certain measure of enlightenment.
II. More especially, as comprehending the best knowledge, and as the most effectual means at once of reassurance Godward and of all progress in goodness, seek the Saviour. Seek not only to know about Him, but seek confidence in Him; seek to know Him as your own. Come boldly to the throne of grace; come, and you will obtain mercy now, and will find help in all your future times of need.
III. Seek certainty. Give all diligence so as to attain a full assurance of sin forgiven, and of your own acceptance in the Saviour. Dark shadows of apostasy will flit across your path, and your energies will be paralyzed by dreary forebodings. So cry to the Captain of salvation to deliver you from the hand of this enemy, and as for life, as for heaven, watch against his furious onsets or sudden surprises. And if you have any doubt as to the reality of your religion, solve the doubt by becoming definite and decisive now. You know who is the rightful claimant of your services; therefore, take up the cross, deny yourself, and follow Christ.
J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 351.
I. In considering these words I would first inquire to whom such exhortations are rightly addressed. Now, it is to be remembered that these words occur in that great discourse of our Lord's which is called the Sermon on the Mount. And for the right understanding of that great embodiment of Christian morality, and of its relations to the whole body of Christian truth, it is, I think, very needful to remember that the Sermon on the Mount is addressed to Christ's disciples, that it presupposes discipleship and entrance into the kingdom, and has not a word to say about the method of entrance.
II. Consider in what region of life these promises are true. They sound at first as if they were dead in the teeth of the facts of life. Is there any region of experience in which to ask is to receive, to seek is to find, and in which every door flies open at our touch? If there be, it is not in the ordinary workaday world that you and I live in, where we all have to put up with a great many bitter disappointments and refused requests, where we have all searched long and sorely for some things which we have not found, and the search has aged and saddened us. But yet it seems that the distinct purpose of our Lord is to assert that the law of His Kingdom is the direct opposite of the law of earthly life, and that the sad discrepancy between desire and possession, between wish and fact, are done away with for His followers. The region in which we receive this great and liberal charter of entire response to our desires is simply and only the spiritual region in which the highest good is.
III. Note on what conditions the promise depends. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Nov. 20th, 1884.
References: Matthew 7:7. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 340; Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., pp. 29, 71; S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 146; H. M. Butler, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 33.