Lords Prayer 4: “Daily Bread”

John 3:16-21; Matthew 6:11

March 26, 2005

“He’s got the whole world in His hands” video.

Isn’t it funny how we need a sneaker company (Adidas) to remind us that God is in control, and that we have nothing to worry about or to want for?

And that is our theme as we continue our series on the Lord’s Prayer today.

As we have learned over the past few weeks, the first half of this model prayer is God-ward—that is, giving thanks, glory, and honor to God. The second half focuses on us, the believer. So we move now from God’s glory to our good, as God provides for our needs.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a college phenomenon called “mailbox miracles.” 

Just when you needed money for tuition, rent or food, you would go to your campus mailbox to check the mail.  And there, among the ads and term papers you would find an envelope from some distant relative with a check inside.  Perfect timing! 

It was a miracle!  You may not have realized it then, but it was God taking care of your daily needs.

Of course, it didn’t’ work that way for everyone.  For some of us, when we needed money to make it through, God didn’t send a check, he sent a job!

But whether through mailbox miracles or through regular work, God provides.

The phrase from the Lord’s Prayer before us this morning is “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus doesn’t mean literally bread but the basics of life, our daily needs. When we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” we are saying that we trust God as the source to supply all the needs of our lives, and we affirm that God will take care of everything we need—after all, He’s got the whole world in his hands!

Notice first of all that this trust in God is for each individual day. In the first century, bread had to be made on a daily basis. The people hearing Jesus teach this prayer would understand.  They couldn’t just buy a couple loaves and put them in the freezer like we do today. This is a great analogy.  Like manna from heaven that comes once a day, God provides for our needs one day at a time.

Being aware of our need and daily dependence upon God keeps us aware of God’s blessings in our daily lives.  We need that reminder, because we have trouble seeing how blessed we are, and we have trouble thanking God for what we have, especially if it isn’t as much as someone else has.

Have you ever noticed that our concerns consistently outnumber our joys each week?

So God’s provision is daily, and we recognize that each day we have needs—physical and spiritual—that need to be met.  And so when you have your morning devotional time with God, it’s a good opportunity to reflect upon and address your needs for that day, and to thank God in advance for providing for them. 

Thank God for providing for you and really mean it!  Even for things we take for granted, like meals.  Sure, we might say grace before every meal but these prayers can easily become just a sanctimonious way of saying, “Let’s eat.” Some people’s idea of giving thanks to God for providing their daily bread is saying “Past the teeth, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes.”

So Jesus instructs us to ask God for each day’s provision.  But here’s a question: Why do you think that there is such emphasis on the immediate?  Does this mean that we don’t plan for retirement, or our estate? Does this mean we don’t concern ourselves with our future or education? Do we live for today, and say to heck with what’s to come?

No. For you see when you read the whole Bible it tells us to be prudent, wise, to set aside money and resources to give to the Lord, and to make plans, but not to worry about tomorrow because “each day has enough troubles of its own.”

How would your life be different if you did not have to worry about your material needs, and you lived in the faith and knowledge that your loving Father in heaven would provide your “daily bread” if you would only ask?

Perhaps the chief reason we “fear” the future is because we really don’t understand just how much God loves us and wants to provide for us. Consider the verses that follow this prayer in Matthew’s gospel.

Read Matthew 6:25-34.

Now, I know that most of the time we don’t think much about daily bread.  In fact, many of us are trying to eat less, not more.  But when our jobs are cut in a corporate downscale, or when a dip in the stock market threatens our retirement savings or when unexpected demands stretch our financial resources, it’s easy to worry about the future.  We know that God provides; we’re just afraid that he won’t be there for the crisis we are facing right now.

Well, Jesus is not saying that we should not plan what to feed our family tomorrow or make sure that we have clothes to wear.  He is saying that God will provide for us if we can place our uncompromised trust in him.

The need to worry is gone because God loves us more than flowers or birds and their needs are regularly met.

Here’s the thing: when we worry, our worry over the future is really just misplaced faith, because it’s faith in us and our ability, not in a loving God in heaven.

Friends, if we don’t ask God to give us what we need every day we will gradually succumb to the delusion that we can actually provide for these needs ourselves.

God wants our love and devotion, and even our dependence upon him for our needs.  God also wants to save us from ourselves.  If God provided for us in great chunks, we would tend to forget where everything comes from and think that we did it all our selves.  Or worse yet, that we deserve all that we have. 

Remember the joke about the woman who went to the mall and couldn’t find a parking place? Looking up to heaven, she said, “Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I’ll go to church every Sunday and give up all my bad habits.” Just then a parking place appeared. She looked up again and said, “Never mind. I found one on my own!”

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!  As Christians, those who have faith in God and God’s promises, we see God at work in even this simple situation, answering this simple prayer.

But those without faith in God deal with daily needs in a different way—sometimes by lying, cheating, or stealing.  Their usual quote is “God helps those who help themselves.”  Have you ever heard that?  And if it says that in the Bible, then it must be true and okay for what I’m doing, right?

Actually, that saying is nowhere in the Bible.  In fact, it is attributed to Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1757, long after the Bible was written. 

Instead, I like what Proverbs 30:8-9 says: “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.”

When we can acknowledge God as our provider, we understand how much God loves us.

Through faith in Christ, we know that God loves us more than we can imagine, and that God is willing to do whatever it takes to care for us.

Listen again to what some refer to as “the Gospel in a nutshell”, John 3:16-21.

In the first line, probably the most recognized, most quoted verse of scripture, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” replace the words “the world” with the word “me,” and let’s read it again together: “For God so loved me that he gave his only begotten Son.”

Friends, that is what God’s love and provision is all about; that is the reason we celebrate Easter—because God so loved—that is, loves—each and every one of us, that he sent his only son to come to earth to live, to be nailed to a cross to die, and then to live again, so that we could have everlasting life through faith in him.  Not because of anything we could ever do or earn, but because of what he did for us while we were yet sinners.

And if Jesus loves us so much that he would die for us, then why would we think that we can’t trust God to take care of our “daily bread”? 

After all, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35 ).

And so, when you pray, ask God for your “daily bread,” thank God in advance for providing it, and do not worry.  Because God does indeed “have the whole world—including you and me—in His hands.”