GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
The Lord’s Prayer Pat-IV, (Matthew 6:9-13)
4/13/2018
Stress and worry
break us down. They are the unseen
source of our headaches, backaches, heartaches and belly aches. They produce
everything from obesity to obscenity, from constipation to diarrhea, and from
impatience to impotence. They give us knotted stomachs, sleepless nights, high
blood pressure, low morale. They make
our tempers short and our days long. Dale Carnegie, in How to Stop Worrying and
Start Living notes, “You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat, you get
ulcers from what is eating you.”
What
are you worried about the most today? What is eating you up and keeping you
awake at nights? Has worry became a close companion, that doesn’t want to part
from you? What do most people worry about any way? What is the antidote for
worry? Is it possible to trust God for our daily needs? We have been studying the
Lord’s Prayer that our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples. The first three
petitions in this prayer were directed toward God. It began by establishing a
relationship between us and God as our heavenly father. We learned that God’s
name is Holy therefore it is to be regarded Holy. We learned that we are not only
to pray but also to work for God’s Kingdom to come and for his will to be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Today,
we will look at a very mundane concern. No matter who you are, where you come
from, most of your waking time is consumed with this concern. Jesus taught his
disciples to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Or bread for tomorrow or our
needful bread. Why did Jesus include this basic concern for food in this
prayer? Is Jesus encouraging passivity? Are we not supposed to work for food
rather than simply praying for it? How can we trust God to meet our basic
needs? What provisions did God make in the scriptures to meet our daily needs? Before
we go further, let’s look at the context in which the disciples were taught to
pray, “Give us this day our daily
bread.”
I.
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD:
Praying
for food was one of the most
common prayers in the households of ancient Israel. It was offered regularly
inorder to teach their sons and daughters to depend on God for their daily
food. I want us to pay attention to the words, it is “Our daily Bread, not “My
daily bread.” What would that teach us? The whole Lord’s Prayer was offered in
the context of a larger community. Unlike in our highly individualistic western
society, there is no individualism in the Kingdom of God. Citizens of the kingdom are encouraged not
only to look after your own interests and needs but also the interests and
needs of those who are less fortunate
We live in a land that is plentiful,
a land that flows with milk and honey to give you a biblical comparison, yet
millions in our country alone are suffering due to hunger. The 2014 study reveals that each year, the Feeding America
network of food banks provides service to 46.5 million people in need across
the United States, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors. So,
when we pray for our daily bread, we are also praying for all those who might
be struggling without food here in the USA and around the world.
This prayer is offered as a reminder
to be grateful, lest we forget where everything is coming from. This precisely
was the problem with the Israelites after they reached the promised land. God
had to remind them to be grateful and not to forget all that they had was from
God. Let’s consider these verses in Deuteronomy: Duet 8:3-4, “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you
with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that
man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of
the Lord. Your clothes did
not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” Think of the logistics of feeding and clothing
over 600,000 people for 40 years? Yet God did it!
This scripture tells us that man needs not only physical
bread but also the life-giving words of God in order to survive. God also reminded them to observe His commands and walk in obedience to him. He further
said, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the
good land he has given you.” How are we grateful for what God has given us?
Another reason for this prayer was
to teach the Israelite community then and, us today that God can be trusted for
our daily sustenance. Prov 30:8-9, “Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give
me neither poverty nor riches but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may
have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord? ‘Or I may become poor
and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” I think this a very healthy way
to pray to God. This would keep us from becoming greedy and run after wealth and
also from becoming thieves to survive.
Thousands of years later, a zealous
Jew named Paul who became a follower of Jesus Christ taught his young disciple
Timothy how to keep himself from the traps of the enemy. I Timothy 6:6-10, “But
godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the
world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be
content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and
a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin
and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some
people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves
with many griefs.”
Again, in this passage we see what
the two most basic needs of all human being are. They are food to eat and
clothes to wear. If we have them, we will be content. But we know how many us are
discontent, in spite of having plenty of food to eat and fine clothes to wear.
That was the core message of the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It
is about continual day by day dependency on God our heavenly Father, who is
loving and mindful of our daily needs.
He is also willing, and more than able to provide whatever our
needs may be. Over the years of walking with God I can firmly attest to this
truth that God can and is willing to provide the needs of His children. How do
I know? Because the Bible tells me so, and also I have personally experienced
God’s providential care over and again in my life. He is trust worthy.
II. GOD’S PROVISION FOR HIS CREATION &
MANKIND
Let me share a few principles of
God’s provision from the passage we read in Matthew 6th chapter, and
then I will conclude with a couple of personal stories. After giving the
disciples a class room teaching on prayer Jesus took them out on a field trip
to show them how this prayer, give us this day our daily bread practically
works. Vs 25-28, “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it
follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether
the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than
the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the
clothes you hang on your body.
Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a
job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him
than birds…Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and
look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite
like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby
alongside them.” (The
Message).
Jesus admonished his disciples to
consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and learn from them.
He taught them a principle of simple trust by saying, “If God could take care
of the birds and the lilies in that fashion, how much more he will take care of
you.” The key principle to receiving food, water, clothing and whatever other
needs from the father is seeking God’s Kingdom
and his righteousness first. What does that mean? Seeking God’s Kingdom
means to keep God, his kingdom values, and priorities utmost in our mind.
It also means doing the right thing even when it hurts.
When we do these in all honesty and earnestness I guarantee you that you will
have God’s provision, meeting your needs, sometimes your wants and desires as
well. If you could ask any missionary who had been in the mission field serving
God in another country about God’s provision, they will have plenty of stories
to tell you of how God met their needs.
Here are a couple of my stories.
Very early in Youth With A Mission I
learned this principle of Seeking God’s Kingdom first. You have heard me share
how God provided two “Rotis” when I was hungry. This was another food story:
Once I was teaching in a Discipleship Training School in the Northern Part of
India. That base was going through financial challenges. They didn’t have money
to buy meat, and other extra stuff. Our only staple food was rice and beans for
five days. I could sense the grumbling in the camp, like the Israelites, “do we
have to eat beans and rice every day?
It was Friday, during my class I
said, let’s write on the board all we were thankful to God for. We filled up
the entire board with things that we were thankful to God and began to praise
God. As we were praising, one of the local church young man came to the class
and said, “My mother is inviting all of you for dinner.” Oh, you can hear the shouts
of rejoicing. To cut a long story short, that evening we had a feast, we ate to
our hearts content. The lesson of this story is, when you grumble perhaps all
you get is, “beans and rice,” may be not even that, but when you are grateful
and praise God, you will get to your heart’s content.
Here is another story! As a young Christian I always took
great comfort in this scripture, Psalm 37:25, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous
forsaken or their children begging bread.”
This scripture tells us that God
will not forsake those who seek Him, and also, He will provide for their
children as well. This was when we wanted to send our eldest daughter Joanna to
a Christian school in Boston.
The non-refundable admission fee was nearly half of my pay
check. We wondered how in the world we will every pay the rest of the school
fees. But we trusted God and took a huge step of faith and paid the
non-refundable fees. Thank God she got the admission; we were able to pay the
school fees during the high school years, not only for her but for both of her
sisters as well. We give praise and glory to God, at end of this month Joanna
will be graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont. God’s faithfulness
endures to all generations
In closing, what are you worried
about today? What is keeping you awake. The antidote for worry and anxiety is
trust and gratefulness. Jesus is here encouraging us to ask the father to give
us our daily bread and not to worry about tomorrow. When you are down with
stress and worry all, you need to do is to look at the Birds, and the lilies,
and be assured that you are more precious in the sight of God and your heavenly
father knows your need and He will provide.
In James 1:17, we read, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from
the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting
shadows.” Our God is
the same yesterday today and forever, he never changes. Therefore, with
confidence let’s pray: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be your name.
‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ‘Give us
this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven
our debtors. ‘And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. For
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.!
