Daily Bread Series

Daily Bread

Matthew 6:11

Pastor Jefferson Williams

First Baptist Church of Chenoa

3-17-19

Roti

In America, we like bread. We use it in sandwiches and dinner rolls. We flock to Panera Bread Company and gobble up breadsticks at Pizza Ranch. And there is nothing as wonderful as the smell of freshly baked bread. (Except for oatmeal butterscotch cookies right out of the oven!)

But it isn’t until you travel outside the US that you understand how much bread is a every day, every meal staple for most of the world.

A couple of summers ago, I traveled to Trinidad and Tobago to speak at a pastor’s conference. I stayed with a local pastor and his family. The food is one of the things I remember the most from that trip.

Every meal was served with small flat bread called Roti. We rarely used silverware. You would tear a piece of bread off and pick up whatever food you were eating. It was awkward at first but I soon learned how to do it like a local “Trini.”

All over the world, humans eat bread. In nearly every culture on earth, bread is a basic part of life.

This morning, we have come to the part of the Lord’s Prayer that focuses on bread.

Review

The disciples watched Jesus pray and wanted to know God like He did. So they asked Jesus to “teach them to pray” (Luke 11).

Jesus responds by giving them a model prayer, just 57 words in the Greek and it takes 20 seconds to pray it. But for 2,000 years believers of every nation have prayed this prayer.

The majority of Christians do not speak English. The majority of Christians exactly speak Chinese. Let’s listen to the Lord’s Prayer in Chinese.

The Lord’s Prayer is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on God and uses the pronoun “Your.” The second set of petitions focus on earthly needs and uses the pronoun “our.”

In the preface of the prayer, we address God as “our Father in heaven.” We are adopted into God’s family as children when we put our full faith in trust in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross in our place for our sins. But we are not alone. We have a big family all over the world who are saying this pray with us.

Jesus begins the prayer by directed us to pray that God’s Name be hallowed, exalted, and revered. Then we pray that He would have His Kingdom come in me, through me, and through our churches. And the third petition is that God’s Will may be done on earth as it is already in heaven.

Then Jesus seems to shift gears and gives us the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer – “give us this day our daily bread.”

GIVE

Let’s just walk through each word and see what God wants to teach us.

We first ask God to “give” us daily bread. The word “give” here means to call for something to carried out effectively and with a sense of urgency.

Noticed we don’t ask God to sell us daily bread but ask Him to give us our daily bread.

It’s a recognition that God is the giver of everything good gift (James 1:17). He is the one that “owns the cattle on a thousand hills.” (Psalm 50:10)

When Jesus was teaching on prayer in Matthew 7, He said,

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11)

If we ask, we can be assured that He hears us and will provide. He is Jehovah Jireh – our God who provides.

David had seen this promise first hand:

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” (Psalm 37:25)

As a master cares for His servants, a general for his soldiers, the Father promises to take care of us.

So when we ask God to give us our daily bread, it is a prayer of total dependence on Him for everything we have.

US/OUR

Notice that it doesn’t say “give me” but “give us.” We pray with the realization that we are part of a worldwide kingdom.

We pray in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Philip Graham Ryken writes:

“As the word ‘our’ is plural it denotes a fellowship of love by which every believer prays not only for himself, but also for his family and for other believers that they might enjoy the necessities of life.”