In Jesus Holy Name May 6, 2007
Text: Matthew 6:11 Easter V - Redeemer
“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread….”
4th in the Series: “Prayer: Connecting to Our Father”
Bill Hybels in his book: “Too Busy Not to Pray” begins with these words: “Prayer is an unnatural activity. From birth we have been learning the rules of self reliance and self sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of such deep seated values…. It is an assault on independent living. To people in the fast lane determined to make it our own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption.”
“Prayer is alien to our proud human nature. Yet somewhere, someplace we all reach the point of falling on our knees, bowing our heads and fix our attention on God and pray.”
We pray because by intuition or by experience we know that intimate communication with god comes only through prayer. Someone has said that when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works. Skeptics may argue that answered prayers are only coincidences, but as an English Archbishop once observed: “It’s amazing how many coincidences occur when one begins to pray.”
When we pray: “Give us this day our daily bread” it is a prayer of dependency. We trust that God, our Father, is our provider. Deuteronomy 8:17 challenges our self sufficient culture with these words: “You may say to yourself, ‘my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth and confirms his covenant.” In other words: you have the ability to provide for your family. Where does that ability come from? God!
Give us this day our daily bread…..means daily, not next week, not next month, bread today. It is a prayer of sufficiency.
When the children of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt, they found the Egyptian army pursuing after them. All of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots followed them to the sea. They were blocked facing certain death. Moses stretched out his hand and the sea parted allowing the terrified band of Israelites to cross to safety.
When the Egyptian army of chariots and horsemen followed… the sea collapsed over them and they were all destroyed. (Ex. 14) then Moses and the Israelites sang this song: “I will sing to the Lord for he is highly exalted, the horse and rider he has hurled into the sea.”
Their daily struggles were not over. How would hundreds of thousands of people be fed every day? How would their livestock be fed and watered in the wilderness? They were traveling to Mt. Sinai through a desert! They grumbled. They lost hope.
Ex. 16:4 “then the Lord said to Moses. “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day…”catch the phrase?” Each day the people should go out and gather enough “manna” for that day. On the 6th day they are together twice as much as they gathered on other days. The bread from heaven “was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.” (Ex. 16:31) the Lord said to Moses and to the children of Israel: “Then you will know that it was the Lord who supplied you meat in the evening and bread in the morning.”
The Lord gave them “daily bread” for 40 years, until the day they entered the Promised Land. And so we pray: “Give us this day, our daily bread.”
Martin Luther makes a very important observation in his Large Catechism. “When you pray for ‘daily bread’, you pray for everything that is necessary to enjoy daily bread. You must expand your thoughts to more than flour or the flour bin…for if God did not cause the grain to grow and preserve the field, we could never take a loaf of bread from the oven to set on the table.”
“This petition includes everything that belongs to life. Food and clothing, house and home, but also peace and concord in our daily business including our civil and political affairs. Though we receive from God all things in abundance, we can not retain or enjoy them in security and happiness unless he gives us stable and peaceful government.
The bible teaches us that we serve a God who is simply looking for opportunities to pour out his blessings on his children. It’s as if God were saying: “What good are my resources if I don’t have anyone to share them with?”
Let me ask you: How many of you love your children? God has called himself our Father. “In love, God predestin4ed us to be adopted as his children… now if we are his children, then heirs of God and co heirs with Christ.” (Ephesians 1:5; Romans 8:16-17)
Most fathers love their children. They want to be generous with their children, that is why Jesus said, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will you give him a snake? If you, then, who 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?” (Matt 7:9-11)
As one time I subscribed to a theological journal produced by Dallas Theological Seminary. Today, it’s one of the best evangelical seminaries in the country. But at one time, it was almost bankrupt. All the creditors were ready to foreclose at twelve noon on a particular day. That morning, the founder of the school met in the president’s office to pray that God would provide. In that prayer meeting was Harry Ironside. When it was his turn to pray, he said in his candid way: “Lord, the bible says you own the cattle on a thousand hills. Please sell some of them and send us the money.”
A few minutes later, a cattle rancher strolled into the business office. “Howdy!” He said to the secretary. “I just sold two carloads of cattle over in Fort Worth. If feel that God wants me to give this money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check,” and he hand it over.
The secretary knew that it was a critical hour. So she went into the office and gave the check to the president of the seminary. When he looked at the amount, it was for the exact amount of money they needed to pay the debt. Then he recognized the name of the cattle man on the check. Turning to Dr. Ironside, he said: “Harry, God sold the cattle! Praise the Lord!”.
(FROM Sermon Central Marc Axelrod “Asking God to meet our needs in Prayer” Matthew 6:11)
Many of us have pressing personal needs and serious problems but we many not be bringing these to God in prayer, daily. So I ask why? Way down deep do we believe God has the power to do anything about our problem, our personal needs? Or do we find ourselves saying… “My gosh, the world is big and millions of Christians are praying…surely their needs are greater than mine.” The fact is …. God is able and interested in your needs and mine. He is interested in the needs of His church, here and everywhere.
We must remember that creating planets and raising the dead is not a problem for God. He waits for us to place our faith in His power. God is omnipotent. God has not changed. He is not growing old and his power waning. He is the everlasting Lord. He is able to control nature, change people and circumstances. He is able to give us our daily bread. “He is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.” (Eph. 3:20)
You and I know in our heads the theological truth that God is omnipotent. But until we own it in our heart we will be faint hearted in our prayer life. A prayer warrior is one who is convinced that God is omnipotent and is able to meet any need.
When the children of Israel were dying of thirst in the wilderness, God told Moses to strike a rock…. And water came forth. When Peter was in prison, chained to two guards and 14 other guards stationed at his cell and prison doors, the first Christians prayed for his release. (Acts 12:7-16) In the middle of the night an angel woke Peter us. The chains fell off. The angel led him out of the prison. Peter thought he was dreaming. Once outside, when the fresh air in his face, the angel left. He went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the Christian community was praying. He knocked on the door.
A servant girl, name Rhoda heard his voice. She was so excited that she failed to open the door but ran and told the others that Peter was at the door. They said, “You are out of your mind.” Peter kept knocking. “When they saw him, they were astonished.” (Acts 12:16)
Those 1st century Christians were no more inclined than contemporary Christians to think God would miraculously re arrange circumstances in answer to prayer, but they prayed anyway. God rewarded their incomplete faith not with a vision but by altering history. He is able.
If you are not a Christian yet, Jesus invites you to “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your soul.” (Matt 11:28-29)
If you are a child of God…. You can pray about anything. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6)
Friends: How does the prayer that Jesus taught begin? “Our Father….” Never forget you are a child of God. He created you. He loves you.
Maybe your “daily bread” is a need for guidance, health, housing, a good government, a happy marriage, or maybe you are tired or rundown, and the daily bread you need is for energy.
Luther was right when he wrote: “that daily bread doesn’t just refer to food. In this prayer for daily bread it stands for all the physical things we need for life; everything that nourished for life. Food. Drink. Clothing. House. Yard. Fields. Cattle. Money. Possessions. A devout spouse. Devout children. Devout employees. Devout and faithful rulers. Good government. Peace. Health. Good friends. Faithful neighbors.
God desires daily dependence on Him. He is our provider. When God provided the Israelites manna in the wilderness, did you know that if they collected more than they needed for the day it would spoil over night? God wanted them to realize that they should trust Him to provide for their daily bread.
The ultimate “bread’ is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” I am the bread of life. The human heart has a deep desire and appetite to worship. The human spirit needs to know if there is life beyond the grave. Our most basic need and one of God’s greatest gifts is the gift of forgiveness. It is Jesus who fills the spiritual hole in the human heart.
“The head of a large English mental hospital has been quoted as saying, ‘I could dismiss half my patients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness.’ For we all have a skeleton or two in some dark cupboard, memories of things we have thought, said or done, of which in our better moments we are thoroughly ashamed. Our conscience nags, condemns, and torments us.”
In our hearts we know that Paul is right when he says: “the wages of sin is death” but he goes on to complete the sentence… “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ.” A holy and righteous God accepted the death of Jesus on the cross as a “full and perfect sufficient sacrifice, a satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.” That my friends is “Objective Justification”. If you place your trust in Jesus, then that “objective justification becomes “Subjective Justification”, your personal possession.
