Sermon 46-"The Lord's Prayer 3"
Proverbs 30
Psalm 23
Luke 1
The first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer focused on God:
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Even so, in our prayers, we must keep our focus on God.
We must remember that in all that we pray,
we are praying that God's name would be sanctified;
we are praying that the Kingdom of God would come;
we are praying that God's will would be done.
But now we are turning to ourselves.
How should we pray for ourselves?
In the second three petitions, we pray that God would provide all that we need.
What do we most need?
It would do well for us to pay attention to this,
because our Lord Jesus Christ is telling us what we need!
There are three things that Jesus says we need:
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts
And lead us not into temptation
daily bread
forgiveness of sins
and deliverance from temptation
We'll be looking at these three things over the next couple weeks,
starting with "give us this day our daily bread."
Jesus himself helps us to understand what this means later in the Sermon on the Mount.
As we've seen,
the Lord's Prayer is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount,
and each petition must been in the light of the rest of the sermon.
1. Our Daily Bread as a Part of the Coming of the Kingdom
So look over at Matthew 6:25-34.
Give us this day our daily bread
is intimately bound up with "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
and all these things will be added to you."
Q. 104. What do we pray for in the fourth petition?
A. In the fourth petition, which is, Give us this day our daily bread, we pray that of God's free
gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing
with them.[220]
We have just prayed, "thy kingdom come."
We have just prayed, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
and then we ask for our daily bread.
We must see that our daily bread is a part of the coming of the kingdom.
What is "our daily bread"?
Some have said that this is our ordinary food,
while others have said that this is a reference to spiritual nourishment,
especially seen in the covenant meals of the OT and now in the Lord's Supper.
I have to say that the primary referent is plainly our ordinary food.
Matthew 6 certainly connects "our daily bread"
to our ordinary sustenance in verses 25-34.
Jesus warns us against setting our hearts upon the things of this world.
If our hearts are set upon the kingdom of God,
then our first priority must be the coming of that kingdom.
Our catechism rightly says that in this petition we pray
"That of God's free gift we may receive a competent portion
of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing with them."
It is not merely in the Lord's Supper-or other "spiritual" things-
but it is in all our daily affairs that the kingdom of God comes.
As we saw a few weeks ago when we were going through the sacraments,
God takes the ordinary and imbues it with spiritual significance.
He takes ordinary water and uses it to signify our spiritual cleansing.
He takes ordinary bread and wine and uses it to signify our spiritual feeding.
He takes ordinary speech and uses it to proclaim the glories of his holy name.
Mary's song in Luke 1 helps us understand the role of "our daily bread"
in the coming of the kingdom.
You can see the same basic pattern of the petitions in her prayer
that you find in the Lord's Prayer:
1. Hallowed be thy name
(Read 1:46-49)
2. Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done
(Read 1:50-52)
3. Give us this day our daily bread
(Read 1:53)
4. Forgive us our debts/deliver us from evil
(Read 1:54-55)
The difference is that Mary is giving thanks to God for what he has done.
But as Mary rejoices in the coming of God's kingdom (v51-52),
she sees that the coming of the kingdom includes both
the humiliation of the mighty and the exaltation of the humble.
Those who exalt themselves will be humbled.
Those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Mary's song is rooted in numerous Old Testament prayers.
Most notable, perhaps, is Hannah's song from 1 Samuel 2.
We saw a couple weeks ago that Hannah also "exulted in the LORD."
Her response to the birth of Samuel forms the pattern for Mary.
Mary likewise rejoices in the salvation of her God.
Both speak of the holy name of the LORD.
Both speak of the LORD exalting the poor and humbling the mighty.
But Mary draws on the language of a dozen Psalms in these 10 verses.
This is one reason why, ever since I came here,
we have been singing 2-3 Psalms every Sunday morning.
You may not have noticed it when we were only singing out of the Trinity Hymnal,
but nearly half of our singing for the last 3 years has come from the Psalms.
I hope that this has the same effect on you that it had on Mary.
This young woman (probably a teenager) had been singing the Psalms from childhood.
And it shows.
When her cousin Elizabeth says to her:
"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!"
calling her "the mother of my Lord,"
Mary's response is to break forth into song.
She understands what God has done,
and as she reflects on the message of the angel,
she understands that the kingdom of God is coming-through her child.
And she declares that as the kingdom comes,
the hungry will be filled with good things.
"Give us this day our daily bread."
We could have sung many Psalms that speak of this:
Psalm 34:8-10 "O taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing."
Or Psalm 84:11 "For the LORD God is a sun and a shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly."
Or Psalm 104:27-8 "These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things."
Or Psalm 145:15-16 "The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing."
But I chose the most familiar:
Psalm 23:5 "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies."
Because Mary is not only talking about how God provides food for all creatures.
Mary is talking about how God provides for the poor and the needy.
And Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount,
is concerned for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
In other words, we are not talking primarily about God's providential care for all his creatures,
we are talking about the coming of the kingdom of God.
When Jesus feeds the five thousand, it is not to "wow" people with his divine power.
When Jesus feeds the five thousand, it is to signal the coming of the kingdom.
He is fulfilling what his mother said:
"He has filled the hungry with good things."
He is the one who feeds the poor and hungry.
When the kingdom of God comes,
the people of God are fed with their daily bread.
This is why James speaks of "true religion" as consisting in caring for widows and orphans.
When the kingdom of God comes, the poor and needy find an advocate.
When we pray, "give us this day our daily bread,"
we pray not only for ourselves, but also for others.
Indeed, it is hypocritical to pray "give us this day our daily bread"
and then neglect the poor.
2. Our Daily Bread as a Call to Contentment
Our second point is not really a separate point.
"Our daily bread as a call to contentment" simply means "seek first the kingdom of God"!
But this is perhaps one of the most important applications of the fourth petition.
Our catechism refers to this as being content with "a competent portion."
Proverbs 30 says this nicely:
"Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die:
remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?"
Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God."
This is the other aspect of "Give us this day our daily bread."
Not only is it, "give me enough for this day,"
but it is also, "do not give me too much for today."
How much is too much?
The simple answer is that "too much" is when you deny the Lord!
If we have enough to provide for our household,
then that is enough.
Certainly that may include being prepared for contingencies,
but the point is that we must beware of the feeling that we are self-sufficient.
As you pray, "give us this day our daily bread,"
there should be a genuine sense of dependence upon God.
You should recognize that you need God's provision.
Because in the end,
God's provision of our daily bread points us as well to his provision
of our spiritual sustenance.
"Give us this day our daily bread" speaks first and foremost to our physical food,
but physical food itself points us to the one who is the living Bread
who came down from heaven.