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.”
This little two-letter word is what drives ministries like Samaritan’s Purse to provide food, especially bread, to those who are hungry and suffering. It’s why the food pantry exists and why The United States sends billions of dollars in aid to countries hit hard by famine or catastrophe.
An old Latin American prayer goes,
“O God, to those who have hunger, give bread. And to those who have bread, give a hunger for justice.”
In the West, I fear we really don’t pray this prayer like they do in other parts of the world.
DAILY BREAD
We are to pray with and for each other that God would provide us with daily bread.
What does this mean?
The Greek word translated daily bread is only used here in the New Testament and was not known in any Greek literature. Many commentators in the early church didn’t really understand how they should translate it and decided that Matthew had literally made this word up.
That was until 1947 and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In an innocuous list of grocery items, researchers found this word. In this context, it seems that the Wycliffe had it right when he translated it “daily bread.”
Your version might have “bread for the coming day.” It’s the same idea. Whether you are praying in the morning or the night before, you are asking God to meet your needs over the next 24 hours.
Jesus lived in a time where there were no refrigerators, or walk-in freezers. People were obsessed with food and had a lot of anxiety about where their next meal would come from.
Bread would be made daily and it would not keep.
Not like today. Here’s a picture of a Happy Meal that’s the same after 13 years!
Latter in this same chapter, near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus confronts this fear head on:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 7:25-26)
Jesus said we should trust our heavenly Father to provide our daily bread.
Before we dive into what it means by bread, let me point out something that we may miss that his listeners certainly wouldn’t have.
Manna Time
When Jesus mentioned “daily bread,” every one of the disciples would have immediately been taken back to Hebrew school and flannel graphs of Moses and the children of Israel.
After the Israelites came out of Egypt, they started to complain and were afraid that they would starve to death in the middle of the desert.
They actually wished they were back in Egypt!
“If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3)
God calls the whole assembly together:
That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded:
‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”
The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them. (Exodus 16:13-20)
They were to gather each day early in the morning and on the sixth day they would gather twice as much because there wouldn’t be any on the Sabbath.
The idea of “daily bread” was burned into the collective consciences of the Israelites.
Jesus directs us to pray every day and for one day at a time.
Give me Bread or I Die!
So what does this mean? It means several things.
1. Jesus was talking about actual bread, which is fuel for the body.
Adam and Eve ate in the garden. They knew hunger but not want.
When Jesus rebuked the devil in His wilderness temptation, He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3, “man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Matthew 4:4)
Man shall not live on bread alone. Jesus understood that in order to live, we needed bread. In fact, in His incarnation, He ate a lot of bread.
It’s something that binds us all together. We all get hungry. And we all need bread.
This prayer reminds us of the process by which we receive our food. It is a prayer for the farmer who plants the seed, the trucker that transports the bread, the grocer that stocks the bread, and those that cook bread.
2. Everything necessary for functioning in this world.
Martin Luther painted with broad strokes when he wrote:
Daily bread can mean “food, drink, shoes, house, home, animals, money and goods, Godly spouse, devout children, faithful leaders, good government, good weather, peace, health, law and order, a honorable name, and faithful friends.”
3. Everything necessary for living the kingdom life. The Holy Spirit provides us wisdom, courage, strength, perseverance, holiness, clear vision, faith, hope, and love.
4. It points to the bread that we will eat in the soon coming day. Remember we are to pray for God’s Kingdom to come. We are living in between Jesus’ two comings. He is coming back and will usher in His Kingdom and we will take our seat at the Great Wedding banquet.
When Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer, He is giving us a template to pray in such a way that the Father loves to hear. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to ask for our daily necessities.
A Prayer of Worship
Praying give us this day our daily bread is an act of worship. It is saying to God that you need Him, that you cannot make it without Him, that you believe in His Power and His promises and you trust Him to meet your needs for today.
I’m indebted to Alan Carr for some of the thoughts in this section.
1. Confession
We live in a highly individualistic culture. We “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and “climb the corporate ladder.”
But in reality, we are fragile, dependent beings. The human infant is one of the most dependent beings on the planet. She cannot do anything for herself. She must trust someone to take care of her needs.
Jesus used a gardening metaphor to describe our relationship to Him:
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5)
We are saying to God that we understand that we cannot meet our needs, but You can! And we are asking for forgiveness when we forget that.
2. Confidence
Dallas Willard, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, wrote:
“Today, I have God and He has the provisions. Tomorrow it will be the same. I will have God and He will have the provisions. So I simply ask God today for what I need today.”
Paul wrote these words of promise:
“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19)
Notice He promises to provide for our needs not our greeds.
George Muller, is one of my heroes. He was a man of bold faith and an unshakable confidence in God. He was a missionary and evangelist (traveled to 42 countries) was the coordinator for the orphanages in Bristol, England, which cared for over 100,000 children.
His journals are a treasure of answered prayer after answered prayer. Here’s one:
One morning, all the plates and cups and bowls on the table were empty. There was no food in the larder and no money to buy food. The children were standing, waiting for their morning meal, when Müller said, “Children, you know we must be in time for school.”
Then lifting up his hands he prayed, “Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat.”
There was a knock at the door. The baker stood there, and said,
“Mr. Müller, I couldn’t sleep last night. Somehow I felt you didn’t have bread for breakfast, and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So I got up at 2 a.m. and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it.”
Mr. Müller thanked the baker, and no sooner had he left, when there was a second knock at the door. It was the milkman. He announced that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the orphanage, and he would like to give the children his cans of fresh milk so he could empty his wagon and repair it.
3. Contentment
We live in a pathologically greedy world. The 13-year-old girl stands in front of a closet full of clothes and complains she has nothing to wear. The 35-year-old husband stands in front of a refrigerator full of food and says there’s nothing to eat.
Many chase after wealth and end up like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The “precious” is always just out of reach.
The writer of Proverbs 30 asked God to keep his heart in check:
“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: 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. (Proverbs 30:7-9)
Paul wrote this to his young protégé Timothy:
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. . (I Tim 6:6)
And Paul himself had learned the secret to life:
“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:10-13).
4. Hilarious generosity.
We have been blessed with much. Much more than we ever need.
God is generous. When Jesus changed water into wine, He made so much that there was no way the whole party could never drink it all.
Last year, I prayed a silly prayer, out loud. I was sitting in my little office in my house in Pontiac and I asked God for a comfy chair, a recliner that I could read in.
Ran a 5k in November here and was entered into a drawing. I didn’t think anything about it. When I walked into church, someone said, “Hey congrats on your chair.” I said, “what chair?” It turns out I won the grand prize – a…wait for it…comfy chair!
Paul describes God as able to do more than we can ask or imagine!
James, when talking about how our faith should lead to action, gives this scenario:
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:15-17)
There is something wrong with our faith when we see needs, have the resources to meet those needs, yet ignore those needs.
I was doing hospital visits this week and came across this quote on an office door:
“A pessimist…sees a glass of water as being half empty. An optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty.” – G. Donald Gale
Oprah Winfrey started a school in Africa and pumped 40 million dollars into it. Someone asked her why she didn’t do that in Chicago and she replied, “When I ask girls in Chicago what they want, they say a phone or Playstation. When I ask girls in Africa what they want, they simply want the opportunity to go to school.”
Speaking of school - I’m am so thankful and honored to be the pastor of a church that has such a generous attitude.
When Rod preached a few weeks ago, he mentioned two thirteen-year-old twins named Keerthana and Sitara. They are orphans that live at the orphanage that Project Nehemiah runs in India. Last week, I challenged us to send these two girls to school. We needed $2,000 for both of them to attend school. I am so excited to tell you that those two young ladies will be headed to school because of this churches generosity!
The Bread of Life
There is one more aspect of bread that would have been apparent to His disciples.
Where was Jesus born? Bethlehem, which means “house of bread.”
In two separate miracles, He fed 4,000 and 5,000 men (not including women and children), with…bread.
In John 6, Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then casually strolls across the Sea of Galilee to the other side. The crowd showed up and wanted more food. This frustrated Jesus:
“Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:26-27)
The people asked for a sign:
So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
“Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:30-35)
He takes up the theme again:
“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:48-51)
This completely confused the crowd and that is why some of them accused Christians of being cannibals! But He was obviously talking about communion.
Do you know Jesus as the bread of life? Are you spiritually hungry for more?
Bread in Hand
After the Korean war, there were thousands of orphans to care for. Orphanages provided them with plenty of food, clean clothes, and a safe environment. But what the workers noticed was that the children became very agitated at night and had trouble sleeping.
When they talked to them they discovered that no matter how much they had eaten that day, they were anxious and afraid that they wouldn’t have food the next day.
The workers came up with an idea. As they put the children to bed, they placed a piece of bread in their hand. This wasn’t to eat. It was to remind them that God would provide bread for them tomorrow. Nearly all the children slept through the night clutching that piece of bread.
