Luke 11:9-10 - Exposition

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall he opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Then the Lord—taking advantage of the state of mind into which his strange words had brought his hearers—made, as Professor Bruce well points out, the solemn declaration on which, and not on the parable, he desired the tried soul to lay the stress of its faith: "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you," etc. Jesus here pledges that those who act in accordance with this counsel shall find the event justify it. This statement, that those who pray to God shall surely be heard, rests absolutely on Christ's authority. It is not given as a fact which is self-evident, but as a fact which he, the Speaker, knows to be true. The man in bed is pictured in the parable as utterly selfish, regardless of his poorer neighbor's wants and sufferings. So God seems to us often, as we pray to him day after day, month after month, and our prayer receives no answer; he merely appears to us then as a passionless Spectator of the tragedies and comedies of time. "Children," said the Savior," the selfish man of my story yields to constant importunity. Think ye God, who only seems to be deaf to man's pleading voice that he may deepen his faith and educate his soul—think ye God is not listening all the while, and will not in the end, in all his glorious generosity, grant the prayer? Only pray on."