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The Lord`s Prayer lll | |
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Mike Uptin
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07 Mar 2010
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| Old Testament | Exodus 16:1-30 |
| New Testament | Philippians 4:10-20 |
| Gospel | Matthew 6:5-15 |
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Let me begin with a quote from Tom Wright in his book “The Lord and His Prayer”:
The danger with the prayer for bread is that we get there too soon.
We come to prayer, aware of urgent needs, or at least wants. It’s tempting to race through the Lord’s Prayer, as far as ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, so that we can then take a deep breath and say ‘Now look here: when it comes to daily bread, there are some things I simply must have.’ And then off we go into a shopping list. To do this, of course, is to let greed get in the way of grace.
So it has been good to take two weeks to consider the first bit of the Lord’s Prayer and to remind ourselves of what our priority in prayer should be – the Father’s reputation, the Father’s kingdom, the Father’s will. Let’s never again rush over those first words in a hurry to get to ‘give us today our daily bread’.
But having spent the time on those first words we now move on to
Our Father in heaven give us this day our daily bread.
It is important to understand what we are saying here so let’s walk through this word by word.
Our Father in heaven
Like all the other clauses of the Lord’s Prayer, this one is tied to the first four words – Our Father in heaven. And it is good to be reminded of who we are asking and what it means to ask him for our daily bread.
We are reminded again that we rely entirely on Him – Our Father. We ask him for our daily bread and he provides. Nothing that we receive is not by his hand. Everything that comes to us comes from Our Father in heaven.
Give
It will be David’s birthday in a month. I expect that he will get presents given to him. People will give him presents without any thought of getting them back. People will not expect to bargain with David regarding his presents. David will not have to do anything for these presents except turn 6.
So we come to Our Father in heaven and we ask him to give something to us. We are not asking him to enter into negotiations with us. We are not coming to him with something that we can swap. We don’t come to God saying “If I do this and this and this then you will provide bread.”
We use a simple word, a child’s word – give.
We use a desperate word, a beggar’s word – give.
In this one word we recognize that it all depends on our Father’s generosity. Sure we will work and earn and save and plan to provide for ourselves – but we recognize that in the end it all comes because of our Father in heaven on whom we rely entirely.
Us
Us includes those for whom we are responsible – our family. When I pray these words I am thinking of Sandra and David and not just of myself.
But it is broader than that because we are responsible for a broader group of people. In the book of Acts we read of the early church coming together and sharing everything. As they prayed ‘give US this day’ it also meant the church family. We need to remember our Christian brothers and sisters who need God’s provision. What God gives in answer to our prayer is for us to share with others – with one another here today; with missionaries like Maggie and Jane and Todd and Amanda.
But it is broader than that again because it is impossible to pray for daily bread without being aware of the millions who didn’t have daily bread yesterday, don’t have any today and, in human terms, are unlikely to have any tomorrow. This is not a selfish, give me what I need prayer. Praying that God will give us our daily bread is a prayer that what we receive we will share with those who don’t have. We don’t simply say to the clients of SPACC – go and pray this part of the Lord’s prayer and sort it out with Him!!! We, who have been given answers to this prayer by our Father in heaven, see that we are called on to share that provision with others.
This Day our Daily
The writer of Proverbs has a great spin on these words:
Proverbs 30:8-9 – Give me neither poverty or 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.
Then I wake up on Monday and say – Lord I need to get through today and I need your help and provision to do it.
And then again on Tuesday and Wednesday and so on.
Maybe God answers this prayer by giving us investments that earn enough income for us to get through each day – but this phrase of the Lord’s prayer reminds us to remember that it is God who does it and not us.
And although we pray ‘this day’ we need to take this prayer in the context of what we have seen previously. We pray ‘give us bread’ within the setting of the earlier petitions for God’s honour, his kingdom and his will. We pray ‘this day’ but we pray for our desires to be satisfied in God’s way and God’s time.
Bread
The word bread is commonly used in the bible to refer to basic human needs: food, shelter and clothing. So when we pray this prayer we are certainly asking for God to supply our physical needs. He is our Creator and our Sustainer and he delights to feed us each day. And so we can come to him asking for specific things – we don’t need to be worried about asking for what we honestly need right now because that is not trivial to God. He has asked us to ask for it in prayer.
Knowing that God has asked us to pray this prayer gives us confidence that he will answer it. We need not be anxious about things because God will provide our daily bread.
However when we look at the whole Bible the image of bread refers to more than just basic human needs and I think there is a good argument to suggest that when we pray ‘give us today our daily bread’ we are also praying for spiritual nourishment.
bread broken, is (in some sense) also part of what we ask for in our daily bread.
So let me conclude by mentioning two words:
Contentment and Thankfulness
Those who are doing the Lenten bible studies will spend some time talking about this during the week. But it is important to see that we are not asking God to give us stacks of stuff. In the desert in Exodus God was training his people to be satisfied with what he provided each day. In Philippians Paul is urging the church to be satisfied or content with what God has provided.
“By teaching us to ask for bread (basic necessities), rather than cake (desirable luxuries), Jesus is teaching us to be content with a modest standard of living. This is a petition for our needs and not our greeds! (Coekin p 123)
But I have to say that discontent raises its head in many ways – and not just with physical desires. Sandra spoke to her group about her passion for shoes and sunglasses. I was brought face to face with one of mine during the week. At the world day of prayer I got talking to Father Dan from the Catholic Church and Stu Cameron from the Uniting Church and they were talking about congregation sizes in the thousands – and I started to get discontent with my lot here. I wanted a megachurch. But God drew me back to this part of the Lord’s prayer and said – I will provide for you; you be content with the wonderful people that I have placed you amongst and get on with being a faithful leader in that place.
This part of the Lord’s prayer is a reminder that we should be content but it is also a reminder that we should be thankful.
Let me pray in that way now.
