Matthew 6:11
August 14, 2005
Trevor Lee
When I was a child I thought that a lot of what happened at church was pretty boring. In fact, I have to admit that for a while I got in the habit of holding the order of service and as it progressed I would check off the things we had done. That way I could judge what percentage of the service we had been through and how long we had left. Of course you always had to factor in that the sermon would be really long. So even when it looked like you were half done you really weren’t because of the sermon. I think part of the reason that I got so bored was that there was a lot that went on that I didn’t understand. I guess that’s to be expected, but it was hard to get into things you didn’t understand.
There was one thing that I did really like though, and that was when we would all stand and say the Lord’s Prayer together. I liked it because I got it. Sure, it was a child’s understanding, but on some level I got it. I especially liked praying for God to deliver us from evil. It sounded like something from a Star Wars movie, but also knew that Satan was real and evil was real and I was glad to rely on God to save me from it. Despite my understanding of the Lord’s Prayer, there was one part that never meant much to me, and that was the part that said “Give us today our daily bread.” It wasn’t that I didn’t understand it, but I had three meals a day. We had lots of food in the cupboards and I couldn’t imagine there ever coming a time when I would actually have to pray for God to provide me with food for the day. So I recited the prayer but figured that part didn’t really apply to me.
As I grew older I gained a greater understanding of the various parts of the Lord’s Prayer. I learned more about what it meant for God to be our Father, what God’s kingdom and will entailed, what it meant to really forgive, and how I really did need God’s help in resisting temptation. But despite all of that I still never saw the part about daily bread as applying to me. I thought it was something people in distant parts of the world who were starving should pray, and I was sure it was meaningful to them, but not to me.
Some of you may feel the same way if you’re honest. This may be a part of the Lord’s Prayer that does not seem to apply to you. Maybe you even think it should apply to you, but you’re not quite sure how it does. And you’re right. This does apply to everyone. This is the prayer that our Lord Jesus offered to his Father as an example for his followers then and for the rest of history. This is a prayer for all of us. It is a prayer that we need to understand so we can pray it passionately together. So we can pray it with as much meaning as the original hearers found in it.
The words “give us today our daily bread” are a part of the prayer that carried a great deal of meaning for those who heard Jesus speak it. Most of those listening to Jesus were probably poor, peasant Jews who relied on a very measly daily pay to provide daily food for their families. But beyond their own poverty, there was a deeper level at which they would have identified with Jesus’ request to God for the provision of daily bread, and it had to do with their past. It has to do with the story of God’s provision of food called manna for their ancestors in the desert, and understanding the connection this phrase had with the manna can help us to understand it’s meaning for us.
What do you think of when
I say the numbers 9-11? I am guessing that at least 95% of us in this room are
taken to the horrible events of the terrorist attacks in 2001. When something
significant happens to a nation or group of people, whether terrible or
wonderful, it does not take much for their thoughts to go to that event.
Much like we have mental associations for “9-11,” the Jews had a mental association for the words “daily bread.” So when Jesus uttered these words in his prayer it would have taken the Jews listening back to an amazing time in their history. The time when God provided manna for them to eat in the desert when they had nothing else, that’s what we’re going to explore today. Over the course of forty years the Israelites found themselves in two very different situations that we can relate to today. And it is through looking at these two situations in the history of the nation of Israel that we can gain a better understanding of the deep meaning contained in the line, “Give us today our daily bread.”
Movement One: This is a prayer of hope for the needy.
The first situation in which Israel finds herself is found in Exodus 16. Please turn there with me if you have a Bible. The Israelite people are in the desert having recently been miraculously brought out of slavery in Egypt by God. It is about a month and a half after that amazing event, and already the people are getting restless. Look at verses 1-3. Apparently something has happened to their memories. If you recall, the Israelites lived very difficult lives in Egypt and were forced to do excruciating labor. But now when they think back to their days in slavery they seem to recall Egypt being like a resort. Not a month and a half after walking through the Red Sea on dry ground the people have already lost faith in God.
Despite this lack of faith and trust, God is about to do another amazing miracle to provide for his people. Read verses 4-5. And of course, God follows through on what he says he will do. Read verses 13-16. God wanted his people to trust him and have faith that he would provide. Verse 5 makes it clear that part of the reason God provides for his people the way he does is to test them. To see if they will follow his instructions and if they will learn to trust him. He does a couple things to ensure that the people will eventually grasp what he wants them to learn. First, God sets it up so that the people will not be able to deny that he is providing. There would be no way that the people could come up with some crazy explanation about how the bread was getting onto the ground. This is evidenced by the fact that they named the bread manna because they had never seen anything like it before. In Hebrew, manna means, “What is it?” Not only did it come in a way they could not explain, but the bread itself was something they had never seen.
God also sets it up so that his people will be forced to rely on him every single day. Notice that he tells the people to only gather as much as they needed for one day, except the day before the Sabbath when they were allowed to gather what they needed for two days so that they could rest on the Sabbath. Some people even try to start a manna savings account in case God forgets to provide someday, but God will have nothing to do with that. Read verses 19-20. He wants his people to obey him and to trust him daily, and he sets things up in such a way that they have no choice. He is giving them daily bread. And this is why when Jesus said the words “daily bread” the Jews listening would have thought about the manna. They would have remembered the 40 years in the history of their people when they received bread from heaven. Like the people listening to Jesus, the Israelites of that time were very needy. And they found hope in the provision of God.
This line of Jesus’ prayer is a prayer of hope for the needy. Those who trust in God can hope in him for their provision because he is a God who provides. God provided the Israelites with what they needed to survive each day, no more, no less. But the point is that God provided. I know there are some here today who are in great need. You know what it is to live paycheck-to-paycheck or even meal-to-meal. You worry about being able to provide for you kids. You worry about getting sick because you can’t afford health insurance. Pray this prayer with passion because God is the great provider. Place your hope in him. Learn to trust him as the Israelites did over time.
But there are some of us here today who cannot understand this prayer in that way. Many of us are not in daily need. This aspect of the prayer may not seem to apply to us, but it does.
One of the interesting parts of the story of the manna is found in verses 17-18. When I first read this I thought, did God supernaturally empty or fill everyone’s manna basket to the exact level it was supposed to be? After all, the provision of the manna was pretty supernatural in the first place, so why not? Or maybe everyone was just following God’s instructions perfectly so some had larger families than others, but they all just gathered what they needed. Then I came across an interesting passage in 2 Corinthians 8 that helps shed some light on what happened among the Israelites.
In this passage Paul is talking to the Corinthian church and
urging them to follow through on a promise they had made the year before to
give some money to another church. At the end of this section he says this:
read 2 Corinthians 8:13-15. Everyone had enough because the Israelites learned
to share. Those who were physically able to gather more than they needed shared
with those who were not able to gather what they needed. God’s people all had
enough because they provided for each other.
I know that this world
has a tremendous amount of need and that we will never be able to meet all of
it, but we can do something.
Illustration: Pastor Nelson was meeting with a young man in our church for lunch this week. They went to Chipotle (who can blame them) and when they got up there to order, the young man asked for his burrito to go. Pastor Nelson joked, “What, we’re supposed to have lunch together and you’re going to take off? The young man responded, “No, I decided a while back that whenever I went out to eat I would buy a meal for someone else. There is a homeless man who is outside my building and I am going to take my burrito to him.”
We will all have to draw
the line somewhere on what we give, we cannot meet every need. Not even close.
But the problem is that too often we do not even ask God how he might like to
use us to provide for someone else. It is true that we cannot meet all the
needs of the world. But are we even
asking ourselves if we are doing what God would want us to be doing to provide
for others. We have to at least ask the question.
Transition
So this prayer has
meaning for us first of all because it is a prayer of hope for the needy. For those in need there can be a real hope
in God who is the source of all provision. And if we are to truly pray this
prayer, then we are asking that God would use us to make it a reality for those
who are needy and we have to be open when he guides us to do so, even if it
means sacrifice. But there is another way in which this prayer carries a great
deal of meaning for us. We have looked at the first situation in which Israel
found herself and seen through that this is a prayer of hope for the needy. Now
we come to Israel’s second situation. And this brings us back to the story.
Movement Two: This
is a prayer of reminder for the seemingly self-sufficient.
Israel wandered the
desert for 40 years, day in and day out gathering and eating the manna that God
provided every morning. While it was novel at first, I’m sure they would have
liked some variety! But the point is that for forty years they were forced to
rely completely on God; to learn to trust him. It is now the end of the 40
years and the Israelites stand ready to move into the land of Canaan. This is
the land that God has promised to give them, and by now they have learned to
trust that God will do what he says far more than they had 40 years earlier.
And Canaan is a land far different from the desert. The soil in Cannon is very
fertile and ideal for raising crops and animals. I can only imagine that the
Israelites were extremely excited to enter a land where they would be able to
settle down and have abundance. It is at this point in Israel’s history that
Deuteronomy 8 is written. While I’m sure the people are ecstatic about their
move into Cannon, listen to what God says about it. Read Deuteronomy 8.
As much danger as there
was in the desert and as difficult as it must have been, there is even greater
danger and difficulty awaiting the Israelites in Cannon. God spent 40 years
teaching his people to be constantly and consciously dependant on him, and now
there is the danger that wealth will ruin all that they have learned.
The United States is the
home of the never-ending pursuit of wealth. Money is needed to buy bigger and
better and more things. Wealth is needed to have a comfortable retirement. And
riches are essential to having a sound portfolio. This is the American way, get
as much as you can and keep it. The interesting thing is that there often seems
to be very little difference in the church. This despite the fact that wealth
carries some extreme danger for those who are serious about following Jesus.
Just like the Israelites, as we gain wealth we will be in danger of taking the
credit. Read verse 17. Clearly
forgetting God and his provision is not something a Christian should take
lightly.
Proverbs also talks about
the dangers of wealth. Read Proverbs 30:8-9. Here again is the prayer for daily
bread and the danger that wealth can lead to forgetting our dependence on God.
I think it was wealth that caused me to see little value in this line of the
Lord’s Prayer as I was growing up. I did not recognize that I was dependant on
God for provision. My parents both had
steady jobs and we always had enough in the cupboard and the fridge. It was not
God who was providing our daily bread, it was my parents. And this is the exact danger God warns the
Israelites about in Deuteronomy 8. That
they will see themselves as self-sufficient, without need of God. And that’s
what I thought. I depended on my parents and they depended on their jobs. And
according to most standards, I did not even come from a wealthy family.
The hard thing is that I
tend to think about all the athletes and CEOs and televangelists as the wealthy
ones, but the reality is that I am rich. Nearly all of us are rich. I know you
probably don’t need a lecture about how rich you are, but I don’t think we realize
it very often. Part of the reason for
this is that our culture is constantly telling us that we’re not making enough,
we don’t have enough, we can do better.
Illustration: Michelle and I just moved into a townhouse
at the end of June. Before that we had been living in a one-bedroom apartment,
which meant that our newborn son was sleeping in the living room. We had two
major paths that ran through the apartment, the rest was littered with baby
paraphernalia and sports equipment. So it was a relief when we moved into our
townhouse. It has about as much space in the closets as we had in our entire
apartment before. When we were at the closing, we were talking to our realtor
about the new place and he said, “This is going to be a really nice starter place
for you. You can be there a few years,
build up some equity, and then move into something a little bigger and better.”
As I reflected on that statement I realized that’s the way we live. Nothing is ever big enough or good enough.
Everything is a step on the way to something more and better. This townhouse
has enough space that we could comfortably live there with three children, but
it’s just assumed that if it’s your first place then it’s a starter. You always look to take another step up.
Even when people, usually
in church, want us to think about how blessed we are we’re usually told to
compare ourselves to the starving people in Africa or the homeless on the
streets of the cities of India, but that just seems like a silly comparison.
They are so far away. They seem like a video clip, not real people. But I
compare myself to the guy across the street that has a house instead of a
townhouse and drives a BMW instead of an Oldsmobile. I’m always trying to take
that next step up. I’m always trying to become a little wealthier. I am
desiring something very dangerous.
Illustration: I have always hated snakes. I don’t know
what it is about them, but I just hate to be anywhere near them. If for no
other reason I can always fall back on the fact that Satan is portrayed as a
snake in Genesis, so they can’t be good right? Well, one time I was at the zoo
and we went to one of the animal shows they do where the eagle lands on the
lady’s arm and the sea otters do their tricks. Well at this particular show there
was also a guy who brought out a gigantic snake. He then invited people to walk
by and touch it. The huge, brown, scaly mass slowly slithered around his body
and he kept moving like an awkward dancer to stay free of becoming entangled. I
choked down my fear and walked past him, just brushing the top of the snake’s
body as I passed. I can’t say I enjoyed it. And I was glad that it was that man
who was handling the snake, not me. In fact, it was probably good it wasn’t
anyone else who was there that day, because I think someone who was not trained
with the snake might have been injured or killed.
For Christians, having
wealth is like being a snake handler. There are some people who are able to
have wealth and use it in ways that will serve to advance the Kingdom of God in
ways that it would not be advanced without them. It is good that there are
people who are capable of working with wealth and not being controlled by it,
but I think only a few called people should do it. Because for Christians,
having wealth is like handling a snake, unless you know what you’re doing it
can kill you. It can keep you from depending on God.
Because just like the
Israelites God wants us to be fully dependant on him each day. Not to just give
lip service to his provision but to actually understand that he provides. What
if we all started finding ways to make ourselves dependant on God? What if we
chose to give sacrificially to the point that God had to provide for us? What
if instead of comparing myself to the guy across the street I started comparing
myself to the family with two kids who lives in the apartment complex down the
street and I realized how blessed I am to have what I have? What if I actually
asked God how he would like me to use the resources he has blessed me with?
Maybe we could come to a point where we could confess together Deuteronomy
8:18, that we are wealthy because God has given us the ability to produce it.
We are dependant on him.
When the Israelites
prepared to enter this new land, where they would have what they needed, God
gave them a physical reminder of his provision for them. Read Exodus 16:32-34.
The lesson God taught the Israelites through the manna was not an unimportant
lesson. It was so important that God instructed them to place the jar of manna
in the Arc of the Covenant, the most holy place that anything could be kept.
This was the box that people could not touch directly because they would die.
And God has them place the jar of manna in this most holy place. God took the
Israelites’ continued conscious dependence on him very seriously, and he does
the same with us today. For the seemingly self-sufficient the prayer, “Give us
today our daily bread,” is a prayer of reminder. A reminder that we are
dependent on God. A reminder that God gives us the ability to produce abundance
and wealth. A reminder that all we have is his and we must be willing to use it
as he calls us. A reminder that he is the source of our provision and we can
trust him.
And just like the
Israelites we need to be constantly reminded that we are dependant on God?
Illustration: Before we moved to Denver, Michelle and I were able to save up some money. We knew that we would move somewhere for me to go to seminary as soon as she graduated from college, so after we got married we tried to start saving whatever we could. We felt pretty good about what we had been able to save in the two years we had in Indiana, and while we knew we would have to get some loans, we thought our savings would help to minimize that. About a week before we were scheduled to move to Denver our car started making some rattling noises. They persisted so we took the car in to have it checked out. Now, I have nearly no knowledge about cars, so I can’t tell you what was wrong, but I do know it cost nearly $2000. And the same day that we found out about that one of the tires on our other car went flat and couldn’t be repaired, so we had to get new tires. The next day, in a moment of driving brilliance, I drove over a curb and popped one of the new tires we just got. We then had to deal with the expenses of getting a moving truck, paying for gas, staying in a hotel on the way, and getting everything we needed once we arrived in Denver. I then had the privilege of spending a small fortune on books for my first semester. So in two weeks we went from feeling comfortable about our savings to thinking we would have to pay for all of my school with loans. And of course at that point we turned to God. We knew that we were fully dependant on him to make it in a new city away from all our friends and family.
One week before school began the financial aid officer at the seminary called me into her office and asked me some questions about my degree and what I planned to do after seminary and then gave me some papers and told me to fill them out. As I looked through the paperwork I realized I was applying for a scholarship that would cover all of my tuition. I went through the process of filling it out, and on the first day of classes I found out that I would not be paying for any of my tuition for my three years of seminary. Michelle and I praised God for his provision. I wish I could say we never forgot it. As I think back on our life since we came to Colorado, it amazes me how God has continued to force us to rely completely on him as he did with the Israelites in the desert. It seems that God has kept us in a place where we always have enough but very seldom do we have more than that. And as I reflect on that I think it might be because God wants Michelle and me to learn to trust him and to be consciously dependant on him. He wants to teach us the same lesson he taught the Israelites in the desert.
For me, this prayer is a
reminder that I am dependant on God.
Conclusion
Unlike what I believed as
a child and young adult growing up, the prayer for God to give us our daily
bread is not just something to recite meaninglessly and get on to the parts of
the prayer that move us. This is a prayer of hope for the needy and a prayer of
reminder for the seemingly self-sufficient. It is a prayer asking God to
provide for our needs and asking him to use us to meet the needs of others. It
should serve as a reminder to us that we are not self-sufficient, no matter how
much it may seem like we are. Whatever we have, we have it because of the
graciousness of our Father.
Israel knew what it was
to be in need and to rely on God physically for their food everyday. Their hope
for provision was in the Lord. Israel also knew what it was like to have
abundance, and God called on them to remember his provision and their
dependence on him. Unfortunately, the abundance of Israel did cause them to
forget God. The history of the nation of Israel between their time in the
desert and the time of Jesus is riddled with stories of turning away from the one
true God to false gods over and over again.
They would turn to God in their time of need only to turn away again
once they thought they had it under control. That hurts, because it reminds me
too much of me.
Remember the jar of
manna? The jar that was placed in the Arc of the Covenant so that the
Israelites would never forget their dependence on God? That jar stayed there.
No one took it and threw it away so that the people would forget their God.
Over time they just stopped remembering what it stood for. That jar of manna
was the symbolic means of keeping the Israelites on their knees before their
God confessing their complete dependence on him. And they forgot it. We need to
find ways to learn the lesson the Israelites forgot. Maybe you can remember your
dependence on God through sacrificial giving. Maybe you can remember your
dependence on God by allowing him to use you as a means of providing for
others, and thus answering their prayer for their daily bread. Maybe when you pray “Give us today our daily
bread,” you can allow the significance of it to flood over you, to drive you to
your knees and confess your complete dependence on your God. Whatever it is,
you must not forget. What will be your jar of manna?