Pastor Melinda Song
26 & 27 November 2022
One good thing that came out of the uncertain season was that it drove the church onto its needs. We came to the highest authority to plead the case for the salvation of our nation. It is easy to pay lip service with platitudes like “we have to trust God” but it is in prayer that we show our true dependence on God.
Welcome back to church! This has been the most tumultuous, stressful, and historical week in Malaysian history. When we went to do our civic duty as good citizens last week we did not expect such a dramatic turn of affairs that involved the political parties, the people, and even the rulers.
Today we are continuing to look into the Lord’s Prayer and I’d like to invite all of us to stand and pray this passage with me.
Matthew 6:9–13 (NKJV)
9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Our text today is v. 11, “Give us this day our daily bread.” With this petition, the Lord’s prayer turns a corner. The one word that characterises the first half of the prayer is “your” whereas the word that characterises the second half of the prayer is “us.”
In prayer, we are, to begin with, the things God is most concerned about then pray for our own concerns. The pattern of all divine revelation is from heaven and then to earth, “On earth as it is in heaven.”
In the Catholic Catechism, which understands the Prayer as 7 petitions, this 4th petition is the middle petition. In other words, to ask for our daily bread cuts the Lord’s Prayer at the centre between two spiritual states – God’s holiness (“hallowed be Thy Name”) and our sinfulness (“forgive us our trespasses”). God meets us here first, in our human frailty, even as He wants us ultimately to be concerned with our souls. Because the body affects the soul.
There are different ways of understanding daily bread, and we can start by assuming that daily bread is exactly what it says it is. Bread may be bread, but bread is rarely served alone.
The Greek word for bread is here used with the wider meaning of “food,” i.e., anything for the sustenance of the body of which bread is a principal part. So bread also symbolises the necessities of life representing all our physical needs – food nourishes our bodies, gives us strength to work, earn a living, puts food on the table, clothes on our bodies and a roof over our heads.
IT IS A REMINDER THAT WE ALL HAVE DAILY NEEDS
In one sense this petition resonates with all of us. When it comes to food we all have to eat to live, although some of us enjoy it so much that we live to eat. Most cultures build relationships and celebrate around food making food a favourite topic of conversation.
In another sense, there is also a disconnect for most of us. Most of us, if not all, do not go to bed hungry. If anything, obesity is a cause for concern and most of us have to pray, “Lord, help me to lose weight.”
Furthermore, bread is not our staple food but for the Jews bread forms the basic part of the meal. And bread is always an OT symbol of God’s provision for them. The allusion is to manna, what is called in the Book of Exodus “bread from heaven” (16:4).
They would be reminded of the days when God delivered their ancestors from Egypt. After seeing all the miracles, after experiencing God’s provision and protection and deliverance, they complained to Moses. They said,
“If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate food, all the food that we wanted, but you’ve brought us into this desert to starve to death!”( Exodus 16:3)
In verse 4 the Lord responded to their faithless complaining by saying,
“I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow My instructions.”
In the morning, just as God promised, “there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost appeared on the ground” (v 13 and 14). They called it “manna,” that simply means “What is it?”
Every day God sent them this bread from Heaven, and on the day before the Sabbath, He told them to gather enough for two days so they wouldn’t have to work on that day that was to be set aside for rest and worship.
The amazing thing about manna was that it could only be eaten that day. If they ever gathered more than their daily needs the leftovers would spoil. By living from day to day, they learned to literally trust God every day to provide.
Because of their history when they heard Jesus tell them they should learn to pray, “Give us THIS DAY our daily bread,” they remembered that for 40 years as their heavenly Father had provided for the needs of His people.
Praying “this day” calls us to radical trust in our God who promises to give us what we most need, on this day and all of our days. We are to live in daily dependence on God’s provision and not worry about the future. As Jesus later commanded, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matt. 6:34).
Associated with the mention of THIS DAY is DAILY BREAD.
In the Greek original, the word bread comes first, for bread is what the petition is all about. A literal translation might go like this: “Our bread for the coming day, give us today.”
IT IS A REMINDER OF OUR DAILY DEPENDENCE ON GOD
It is here that we encounter the most difficult word in the entire prayer. The controversy comes from doubt over what exactly the Greek word used for “daily” means.
The word is the Greek term epiousion.
- The Lord’s Prayer is the only place it appears in the entire New Testament (Matt. 6:11; Luke 11:3).
- The Lord’s Prayer is the only time this word is found in popular Greek literature (cf. Matt 6:11, Lk 11:3).
Scholars have debated its meaning for centuries. The best translation is probably the one William Tyndale gave in 1525, and which English Bibles have used ever since: “daily bread.”
This translation was confirmed in 1925 when archaeologists discovered an ancient Egyptian papyrus with the word epiousion. The manuscript was an account of daily rations, almost like a grocery list.
More recently scholars have found a papyrus from someone who ran errands to Alexandria to get some provisions. The person was writing down exactly what things to purchase for the day.
In both cases, the word seems to be an adjective meaning “of the day that is coming.” If we pray it in the morning, we are asking for provision for the day. If we pray it at night, we are asking for the next day’s provisions.
Many scholars believe this DAILY request for bread is not one of excess, but rather one of sustenance. “Give us today just enough to meet our needs.” One of the earliest translations of the Lord’s Prayer into old Syriac (a language that very closely parallels the Aramaic language Jesus spoke and predates English by centuries), reads “give us today the bread that doesn’t run out.” It includes the bread of today, it includes the bread of the future, and enough to keep us alive–– all that we need.
The fear of not having enough in the right now is a basic human fear that can destroy a sense of joy in the present and erode hope for the future. In this ancient Syriac translation we are praying, “Give us bread for today and with it give us confidence that tomorrow we will also have enough.”
In the ancient world, labourers were paid on the very day that they worked. The pay was typically very low, and it only provided enough to purchase food for that day. It was almost impossible to save money. It is to such day labourers that this prayer is given giving them great hope.
In contrast, most of us will never experience starvation or malnutrition or the inability to feed our families basic nourishment like bread. So it can be hard for us to understand a prayer that frees us from the DAILY fear of not having the basics to sustain life.
We pray before our meals, but we very rarely honestly pray for our meals – in the sense that if God doesn’t provide we don’t know where our next meal is coming from. So does it make any difference whether we pray this or not?
Yes, it does. This is all the more reason that we need to pray this petition to remind us that God is our provider and that we are dependent upon him.
Interestingly there is a Swedish custom of praying AFTER meals as well as before, based on…
Deuteronomy 8:10 (NIV84)
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
Although bread is the main focus of this prayer, there are two other important words in this little phrase in the Lord’s Prayer
GIVE us this day our daily bread
IT IS A REMINDER TO THANK GOD FOR HIS GIFTS
God did not create self-sufficient people. The word “give” is a reminder to us that the most basic necessities of life are gifts from God. When was the last time you thanked God for some of the simple small things in life? Life, health, nature, good friends, the church, etc. His consistent goodness erodes our ability to see how good and amazing God is to us.
God made us have needs so we could look to him to supply them. Because we have needs, we innovate…we invent…we reach out to others…we produce…we do what God originally told Adam to do in the garden: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over…every living thing” (Gen. 1:28).
To enable Adam to do that God provided, saying: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat” (v.29).
Man’s problem was that he couldn’t see how God was the ultimate source of his provision. James 1:17 says that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Since God is the one who meets our needs. Therefore, we don’t need to be anxious or worried about the future.
Notice Jesus teaches us to ask for bread, a basic sustenance that anyone would need. He doesn’t say to ask for steak or dessert. When we ask God for bread, therefore, we are not asking for extravagance.
Popular Christianity has taught that God wants to make every person wealthy. That is not biblical for the majority of Christians throughout the centuries have been poor and that includes Christ and the disciples.
God promises to meet our needs and tells us to pray for them (Matt 6:33, Phil 4:19). Although it’s not necessarily wrong to pray for wants, God wants us to learn contentment with having only our needs met.
The book of Proverbs gives us a very good prayer to pray:
Proverbs 30:8–9 (NIV84)
8 …give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 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.
Very often we come to God with our greeds rather than our needs. This then becomes the source of our discontent.
This petition reminds us to be humble and content with God’s provision. If he gives us more, praise God! If he gives us just enough, praise God! If we seem to have less than enough, pray in faith. He is faithful to his promises. God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory (Phil 4:19).
IT IS A REMINDER OF GOD’S FATHERLY CARE FOR US
It is the Father’s pleasure to take care of the needs of his children. Remember that we are praying to our Father in heaven, who loves us in Jesus Christ. The petition for daily bread thus implies a promise that our Father will provide whatever his children actually need.
The great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, learned about God’s fatherly care from his own experience as a father. He wrote in one of his journals:
I am taking my children with me, and I notice that it is not difficult for me to remember that the little ones need breakfast in the morning, dinner at midday, and something before they go to bed at night. Indeed I could not forget it.
And I find it impossible to suppose that our heavenly Father is less tender or mindful than I…. I do not believe that our heavenly Father will ever forget His children. I am a very poor father, but it is not my habit to forget my children.
God is a very, very good Father. It is not His habit to forget His children.
The promise of God’s fatherly provision includes everything that is necessary for our survival in the here and now. Whatever we truly need, God invites us to bring our requests to him.
IT IS A REMINDER TO CARE FOR THE NEEDS OF OTHERS
There is another word that is so easy to miss: us. Jesus didn’t say we should pray, “Give me this day my daily bread,” but rather, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
The Lord’s Prayer begins with the plural “Our,” and the last three petitions are
also in the plural—our daily bread, our debts, and deliver us. Jesus worded it this way to broaden our focus to include the needs of others.
We wake up knowing that we would be able to eat today. But that’s not the way it is for hundreds of thousands of people in our nation and world. And this portion of the Lord’s Prayer is meant to help us foster compassion for the throngs of people on our planet whose entire life is a fight against starvation.
In this petition, we must lift up the needs of others—bringing them before our gracious God. We ask God not only to bless others by meeting their needs but also to make us a blessing to others and share what we have. If we are to pray this prayer honestly, we must be willing to become part of its answer.
Therefore, we must feed the hungry. We must show hospitality to the homeless. We must send some of our bread to our brothers and sisters who have nothing to eat.
Life is more than the physical and temporal and Jesus tried to teach people this lesson after he fed the five thousand. They were so impressed with this miracle that they wanted to sign up for his permanent meal plan. “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread” (John 6:34).
John 6:35 (NIV84)
35 Then Jesus declared, “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.
Jesus is the bread
Jesus was speaking spiritually, of course. He was saying that what he did on the cross offering his own body and blood for our sins – is the food and drink of eternal life. Like manna in the desert, Jesus is all we need, and that having him, we lack nothing!
We need Jesus more and more each day, and therefore, we should hunger and cry out for more of him. James 4:8 says to draw near to God and he will draw near to us. One of the ways we draw near God is in prayer—seeking to know him and his presence more.
God’s Word is our bread
In Matthew 4:4, Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God’s Word is our bread.
Just as the Israelites fed on manna daily, so we must spend time daily in the Word of God. We strengthen our spiritual lives by feeding on the Word of God
Jeremiah 15:16a (NIV84)
16 When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight,…
Job 23:12 (NIV84)
12 I have not departed from the commands of his lips;
I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.
Like David, we should constantly petition God would open our eyes to see wonderful things from his law (Ps 119:18).
Doing God’s will is our bread
In addition, Christ uses food, in general, to refer to doing God’s will. In John 4:32 and 34, he said to the disciples, “I have food that you know nothing about; my food is to do the will of the Father and finish his work” (paraphrase).
This takes us back to the third petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Knowing , loving and doing the will of God is the key to an effective life.
SO what is this bread we are asking for? We’re asking for more of Jesus, his Word, and his works.
CONCLUSION
In the fourth petition, we recognize our dependence upon God for all resources. He is the provider of life, breath, and everything else. We must daily humble ourselves before God in prayer—trusting him to meet our needs and that of others.
Take a few moments to thank Him for His provision-for the good things, and the hard things. Thank Him for the joys of life and the trials. Tell Him You trust Him to provide what You need most.
LOGOS 