Matthew 6:11

Following Jesus in Prayer - Part Three: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

by James Lincoln on January 22, 2006

 

Several months ago while saying my daily prayers and working my way through the Lord's Prayer I said, "Hallowed be Your name..." Then it dawned on me that I was repeating the words without really considering their meaning. I stopped, prayed again and said, "You know, Lord, I don't want to mindlessly recite things that I don't cherish and prize. Teach me more about this." So, I began to slow down and ask myself what each of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer meant, I wanted to know first what they meant to His disciples and then what they mean for us who pray them today. Two weeks ago we began to study this Prayer.

This morning we come to the third petition in Jesus' prayer. Jesus says to pray in this way, "Give us this day our daily bread." I want us to think about this in three ways. First, let's notice its order in the prayer. Second, we'll consider the literal meaning Jesus has in mind. Third, we'll consider what bread represents beyond the material and how Jesus applies it to Himself. Lastly, we'll consider how people responded to Jesus' claim to be the Bread of Life or Bread of Heaven.

God: The Gravitational Center of Prayer

The thing that strikes me the most about this piece of the prayer is where it is on the list. It's fourth, after He says to hallow or set the Father's name apart in your heart and after He says to pray Your Kingdom come and after we are to ask for God's will be done. This tells me that we can get to our wants and concerns too quickly in prayer. And if we get to our wants and concerns too quickly in prayer we'll end up making ourselves the focus of our prayers. Now, in a culture of Narcissism we can default to this without thinking. Do you remember Narcissus? He was that boy in ancient mythology that fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. He ended up wasting his life away because he couldn't tear himself away from looking at himself. Today Narcissus is hiding in the church. He's hiding behind the word "relevant." When people ask me to be relevant I like to ask them, "Relevant to whom?" Guess what? They never answer, "Relevant to God". Relevancy is almost if not always a reference to us and not God. And when we start demanding that we make ourselves the center of attention and not God we too like Narcissus will waste away.

It's just enormously tempting to run into God's presence with a list of things we want Him to do for us. Yes, The King's son can come to him at any time and ask Him to tie His shoes. But one would hope that the King's son would someday grow up and move on to more noble concerns, like concerns about His Father's kingdom and good will for His subjects.

Here's the deal, even though you've been wonderfully and fearfully made, you're just not sufficient enough to occupy the center of your prayers. You can't carry the weight of that focus. You are a contingent and created being. God is the only one who is sufficient for that place in your prayers. Jesus is saying that before you ever make much of the things you want, first make much of God who is the source of every blessing. Be sure to put that which is able to occupy the center or that which is most worthy, able, wise, most beautiful and glorious at the center of your prayers.

Augustine said that, we were made for God and the only way we can find rest is if we find our rest in Him. Jesus said, "Seek ye, first the kingdom of God and His righteousness all these things shall be added unto you." If we don't spend time adoring our Father, hallowing His name, honoring Him as our King and treasuring up His good will and purposes before our own then our own satisfaction and will can easily become the center of prayer which is really just another word for idolatry.

Jesus is calling us to anchor our personal prayer concerns to the reality of God's covenant with us as our heavenly Father and King to whom we owe every obedience and from whom flows infinite and extravagant tender mercies.

One reason I think people struggle with prayer is because they're just plain bored stiff praying. Here's why. You and your concerns are just not all that interesting as a focus of prayer. However, when you pray if you start to see and consider how breathtakingly beautiful God is in His holiness, wisdom, sovereign rule, goodness, grace and mercy and awesome plans for you and the world then you won't be bored. When you see God the way you see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful piece of music or art then you can't help but be will attracted to prayer. That is unless you have no hunger for real beauty, wisdom, grace and holiness. When prayer is just autobiography...well, no wonder you're bored.

So, you know what that means? That means that you must know something about God. It's no wonder people pray little today! Many read the Bible as a handbook for leadership, personal success or raising children or for having happy relationships and good health. And it does address these things. But the Bible is primarily about God. This is news to many. If you learned your catechism when you were young you would have learned the answers to 107 questions. The first question is, "What is the chief end of man?" And the answer is, "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever." The second is, "What rule has God given us whereby we may glorify Him and enjoy Him forever?" The answer is, "The Scriptures." Next question: "What do the Scriptures principally teach us?" Answer: "The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe about God and what duty He requires of us".

However, there is a move in the church today that says the Scriptures are not primarily about God. They say that theology is ivory tower stuff. They say that we need to, "Get real!" I think therein lies the problem. When God isn't real He ceases to be relevant. When God isn't real to us then we aren't interested in Him. Who are we interested in? Us! So, today the Bible becomes a handbook for leadership, success, happiness, financial success or health and how to have good relationships at home, at work and in the world. In a good attempt to make the Bible practical God gets pushed into the background and we and our concerns find their way to center stage. This is a failed strategy. Oh, not because it doesn't attract thousands of people. It fails because as creatures we're not sufficient enough to be at the center of our lives or prayers. So when you pray make sure that your prayers orbit around God and the gravitational pull of His will, the beauty of His holiness, His plans, His loving kindness, His rule and the beauty and wonder of His love and grace. Learn to pray like David who yearned to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. If you do there is no way you could be bored.

It's a Prayer for Our Material or Physical Needs

Now, Jesus does call us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." So, once we get our relationship to God straight once we get clear Who and what belongs at the center then Jesus calls us to cry out to Him every day for whatever we need for that day. God delights that we should bring our daily needs up before Him. Bread does have a literal meaning. The bread of the Passover, the manna in the wilderness and feeding the five thousand were all designed to meet real physical hunger. By calling us to pray this way Jesus was validating the goodness of the material world. So, Christianity is not a call to escape the material world as if it was evil and wicked in and of itself. Or that our daily needs and desires are wicked. Instead His kingdom includes our daily needs both physical and spiritual.

Sadly, church history is filled with stories of those who have rejected the beautiful and the good in pursuit of God. They have rejected marriage, sex, parenthood, the imagination, food, wine and the beauty of God's creation. Some have even rejected the self. But this self-made religion doesn't do any good. In fact, the lesson of Colossians is that it can even heighten fleshly temptation.¹ Asceticism feeds the flesh by starving it. It makes restriction where the Bible doesn't. And therein lays its lack of faith.

Daily bread represents our physical needs. And our daily needs point to God's generosity, His goodness and His sustaining grace. Our daily needs remind us of who God is and who we are. That is why fasting is a good thing in the season of abundance. It reminds you how dependent you are on God. We need to be reminded often that we don't make the air we breath, or create the food we eat or make sure that the earth doesn't move too far away or too close to the sun so that we don't freeze or fry.

C.S. Lewis loved to write about daily needs and desires. He taught that a need or a desire cannot be an end in itself. A need or a desire always points us to a satisfaction. So, God's kingdom includes our daily needs/ bread because the need can't be satisfied without God. So, the promise of the kingdom includes our daily needs. God uses them so that we will turn them into prayers for Him to satisfy according to His will and His timing. You'll never escape this. You will always be the creature and God will always be the Creator. So, Jesus encourages us to ask God to give us our daily bread or the daily material and physical necessities of life. He's honored to be asked and honored to give. Scripture is full of people who brought their deep natural longings into the presence of God and found them answered by being taken up in His purposes like Elijah, Jacob, Hannah, Naomi and Ruth.

When we do ask God for our daily bread we're also asking that our needs and desires be satisfied in God's way and in God's time. So, it doesn't trivialize prayer at all to ask God for our daily bread or daily physical needs, for things like health and things critical for life...that is provided we don't ask for more bread than is wise or good.

And therefore, as God's representatives on the earth we work to affirm the goodness of the material world. Because Jesus created the universe and holds it together, therefore it's important, real and a reflection of Himself. We don't seek to escape it. Therefore, you fight for justice as much as you do for free markets. You heal bodies and the environment and you feed the hungry and you enjoy sex and sports and you stop people like Hitler, Stalin, Molosovisch, Sadam Husein and Osama Ben Laden.

Heaven: A Palpable Future

Also, praying for our daily bread points us to a future when death and sorrow will be no more. But that means that the future also includes those needs as well and doesn't look down on them². Our future with God in the new heavens and the new earth will be a physical and palpable future. In Christ God has promised us resurrected bodies like that of Jesus' resurrected body. Even though Jesus could rearrange the molecules of a building so that He could pass through locked doors, He also ate fish sticks with His disciples. So, He promises us a future when He will perfectly and consistently satisfy them all without any pain or suffering or death or sorrow.

The prophets envisioned that future day. They said that the wolf will lie down with the lamb; the leopard with the kid, the lion will lie down with the calf and a baby will play in a cobra's den. The new heavens and the new earth will be a palpable reality, not some Plantonic separation between ideas and the material world.

"On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines. 7 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. 9 In that day they will say, "Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation." Isa. 25:6-9

The deserts will flower, the mountains will run with wine, and yet there won't be any alcoholism. Weeping will cease and people will work in peace and work to fruitful ends. Lambs will lie down with lions...All nature will be fruitful, benign, and filled with wonder upon wonder³. We will dance, sing, eat and drink, not bored lying around on some cloud playing a harp - unless of course it's your calling and great joy to play the harp.

Joni Erickson, a paraplegic, was once in a service when the minister asked everyone to kneel down and worship. Tears came to her eyes because she couldn't do it. And when she bowed her head she remembered that when she sees Jesus her body will be like His raised up and functioning with all its faculties. She writes this.

"Just before the wedding feast of the lamb, I will drop down on grateful knees and then I am going to be on my feet dancing. Can you imagine the hope that this gives someone with a spinal chord injury like me or the hope this gives to someone who is manic-depressive? No other religion promises new bodies and a new material universe. Only in the gospel of Christ can people hurting like me find such an enormous hope."

Beloved, all of the physical pleasures and tangible joys of this world, all rolled up together, will only amount to a piece of lint compared to the tangible and physical joys of the new heaven and the new earth and serving the Lord with new bodies unaffected by sin. If this is what we have waiting for us shouldn't that reality rearrange some of our priorities? Praying for our daily bread points us to a future when death and sorrow will be no more. But that means that our future includes those needs and doesn't look down on them.

Finally, since God Himself is the deepest object of our hunger, Jesus' prayer is ultimately calling us to ask to be fed by Him.

When Jesus fed the five thousand on the Golan Heights in John 6 He was preparing them for a greater claim. The next Sabbath in the synagogue at Capernaum (6:59) He said, (It's a long sermon so I'll only read parts).

"Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. 27 "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal." 28 They said therefore to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" 29 Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent." ... 32 Jesus therefore said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. 33 "For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world." 34 They said therefore to Him, "Lord, evermore give us this bread." 35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. 40 "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." 41 The Jews therefore were grumbling about Him, because He said, "I am the bread that came down out of heaven... 51 "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh." 55"For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 56 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. 58 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever." 59 These things He said in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum.

Jesus' argument is that outside of faith in Him, we all have an irremediable and unquenchable hunger and thirst. There's a craving in our hearts for God that cannot be satisfied by anything on this planet or anywhere else in the created universe. And our frantic pursuit outside of Him will only end up making us even more thirsty.

To illustrate what it means to believe in Him, Jesus used the metaphor of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. I believe that He's speaking metaphorically not sacramentally⁴. He doesn't mean that we literally eat his flesh or drink His blood. He's using language the same way we do. We say that we devour a good book, drink in or ruminate on an idea, chew over a matter, swallow a story hook line and sinker. My mother used to say, "Give me some sugar." She didn't mean that literally. She meant that she wanted to hug me. At times we may even have to eat our words. When Jeremiah heard God's words and said, "Your words were found and I ate them and they became to me a joy and a delight." (13:16). He didn't mean that he literally ate the words. He meant that he desired and treasured up the word of God in his mind and heart the way a starving person devours a meal⁵. Augustine said, "Believe and you have eaten."⁶ Jesus said,

"I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." He said, "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever."

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread", we are ultimately saying that the deepest object of our hunger is God Himself and that we are asking to be fed by Him. We're asking that God would satisfied our souls with His wisdom, goodness, grace, loving-kindness, holiness, grace and tender mercies.

Of course this infuriated the Pharisees. They knew when Jesus said, "I am the bread that comes down from heaven" that He was claiming to be God's exclusive Son the revelation of God the Father. And they hated Him for saying it. So, here's what they did. They used the same words of accusation that were brought against the rebellious son in Deut. 21:20. They said, "You're a drunkard and a glutton."

When Jesus claimed to be the bread of life, fed the five thousand a feast, when He attended banquets and spoke often about banquets and feasts, the Pharisees accused Him of being a rebellious son who deserved only to be executed. After Jesus fed the five thousand and refused the crowds who came to make Him a king by force He told them to work for the food that doesn't perish and to believe in Him and they left Him to follow Him no more. Jesus the asked His disciples if they wanted to leave also. Peter said, "Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and come to know that you are the Holy One of God." How about you?

Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." Do you believe?

Jesus said, "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." Will you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ today and find Him to be the One who can satisfy the deepest yearnings of your soul?

Jesus is more than sufficient for any need you will ever have. If you bring yourself to Him and He doesn't give you the thing you ask for then you didn't really need that thing. And it would not have produced the hope, joy and peace you thought it would. He is the bread of life and He promises, "My God will supply all your needs in Christ Jesus". He will never fail to be true to His word. If He did not spare His only son will he not give us along with Him all things?

"For every desire that you find in a creature there is a satisfaction. Fish desire to swim; there is water, birds get hungry; there are worms. Babies get thirsty; there is milk. Men and women have sexual desires and there is sex. And if I find that there is a need that nothing in this world can ultimately satisfy, it must be that I was built for another world." C.S. Lewis

The question is "Are you seeking the most critical and essential things?" Are you seeking His kingdom first? Don't settle for anything less than the bread that satisfies for eternity. Come to Jesus today. Eat the offer of a bread that will satisfy your soul forever. He is the living bread. Lord, give us this day our daily bread. Amen.

"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. Isa 55:1-3