Lord's Prayer:
Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Bill Hybels, in his book Too Busy Not to Pray, starts out the book this way. These are the very first words he wrote, “Prayer is an unnatural activity. From birth, we’ve been learning the rules of self reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seeded values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. The people in the fast lane, determined to make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption.”

I think Hybels may just be on to something there. We are an independent lot, are we not? We like to be self sufficient. How hard is it for you to ask for help or assistance from somebody else? I wonder how many backs have been strained and how many discs have slipped because we’ve lifted things we shouldn’t because we “didn’t want to bother anyone else.” How many of us have climbed precarious heights, have reached out at difficult angles, just so we could trim the tree branches or we could paint the top peak on our home because “no need to hire someone to do it. We can do it all on our own.”

Don’t we pride ourselves on the fact that we raise our children to be independent? In fact, as parents, don’t we see that as one of our chief responsibilities, to make sure our children grow up, they move out on their own, they’re self-reliant, they’re able to take care of themselves and make it in the world? We’re an independent lot. We like to be self reliant. And so the whole idea of asking for help or assistance is just kind of a foreign concept to us.

Maybe that helps explain why prayer is usually not our first line of defense but it’s the last resort. How many times have you heard it said, “Well, we’ve tried everything else. I guess the only thing to do now is pray.” Isn’t it funny, though, when you go through the New Testament, the person who is praying the most is Jesus? As you read through the gospels, we see Jesus going off in the morning or Jesus going off at night or Jesus stopping at the synagogue to pray, to speak to His Heavenly Father. Now this is the same Jesus who is the Son of God, the same Jesus who has all power and all authority and all knowledge, the same Jesus who cast out demons, who makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. This all-powerful Jesus, this self-sufficient Jesus and yet more than anyone else, He takes time to pray. Beyond that, He teaches us that we’re to pray. In fact, He commands us to pray. He says, “Ask. Seek. Knock.” This is something you should be doing. And then He gives us a model prayer. We call it The Lord’s Prayer but He gives a model for what prayer should all be about. Prayer is of such importance as we ask God and we seek God out as we look for help in our lives.

This morning as we continue on our series of messages on The Lord’s Prayer, there’s a shift in The Lord’s Prayer of the Fourth Petition. Up until this point, we’ve been focused on God, focused on who God is and our relationship with God. Now we shift our focus onto ourselves and the things we’re asking of God for ourselves. We first had to establish we have a heavenly Father, a loving Father who indeed has our best interest at heart so now we can approach Him and we can ask Him for things.

And so in the Fourth Petition, we say, “Give us today our daily bread.” We’re saying, “God, we are depending upon you. We’re looking to you for everything we need for this life.” You might call the Fourth Petition of The Lord’s Prayer our “Declaration of Dependence.” And our Declaration of Dependence has three aspects to it. The first thing we’re praying in this Petition is we depend upon God for everything we have. We’re depending upon God for everything we need for this life and so we pray, “Give us today our daily bread.”

Now maybe it’s never struck you as unusual. It has me at times. We’re praying that God would provide our daily bread, so God would give us the food we need for today. Well, I don’t know about you but if I were to go home right now and if I were to open up the pantry, it would be just chuck full of food. And if I went to the freezer, it would be just about up to the top. And if I go to the refrigerator, usually I have to move a bunch of food to get at the particular food that I want. And you see all that food was purchased with the money I earn doing my job. So to say, “God, I need you to provide my daily food,” it seems to me, at least on this point, God, I’m doing alright. I’m doing okay. I’m earning a living. I’m buying the groceries. I have a pantry full of food. Do I really need to ask God to give me my food, my daily bread? Well, if you’ve ever thought that way, then you might be comforted to know you’re not alone. In fact, we can go back several thousands years to find out that God’s people have always thought that way. Moses, talking to the Israelites, said this, “You may say to yourself my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” So the people back then and the people today are saying, “Listen, I go to work everyday. I put in 40, 50, 60, maybe 80 hours this past week. I’ve earned my paycheck, done my job. Therefore, I have my income. I have enough to provide food for my family and for myself. So I’ve accomplished that. Moses goes on, though. He says, “But remember the Lord your God for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms this covenant.” Well, that’s a different story, isn’t it?

You have to think about it just a little bit more. Who gave you the strength to get up on Monday morning and go to work? Who gave you the intellect and the knowledge so you could perform your duties? Who gave you the gifts, the skills, the talent so you could earn a living? Who blessed you so you could be in this country and you could live in this land of abundance? Really, who is responsible for everything you have? Who gives you the very air you breath whereby you can live and you can go out and make a living and earn a paycheck and put food in the pantry? You see, when you really look at it, we’re depending upon God. We’re depending upon God for everything we have.

When we say The Lord’s Prayer, “Give us today our daily bread,” we’re talking a little bit more than just about the P&J sandwich we had for lunch yesterday. We’re saying, “God, we need you to provide for everything we have in this life.” Martin Luther when he wrote the Small Catechism, tried to get at that. He wrote an explanation for each one of the petitions to try to dig a little bit deeper so he answers the question for us in the Small Catechism, “What is this thing called ‘daily bread?’” Now if you were in confirmation, maybe you remember that. If not, why don’t we read it together right now as a review. This is what daily bread is. Read it with me. “What is meant by daily bread? Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and need of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors,” and if that’s not enough, “and the like.” He covered all the bases, did he not? He says, “If I missed something in my little list of things you need for life,” he says, “and the like.” His point is everything we have. If you really think about it and you trace it all back, everything we have comes from God. We are dependent upon God for all we have.

And we’re dependent upon God on a daily basis. We pray in the petition, “Give us today our daily bread.” That word daily gave theologians a lot of problems there for awhile. They really didn’t understand what that word daily meant. It wasn’t until they found an open pirus that had basically the day’s grocery list on it, the things that would not be good for more than one day, daily was used. So if you can think about it, whatever you need for just one day. Now that’s going to be a little bit hard for us to comprehend, too. Long gone are the days when we go to the supermarket and we buy just what we need for that day. No, no, no, no. We stock up. We have cupboards full. Beyond that, at least living here in Des Moines, we have Sam’s and the Costco so when we go there, we grab a shopping cart that’s about as big as a VW and we walk through the aisles and we don’t buy just individual items. We buy cases of items and we put them in the cart. And then when we go to check out, we have to write out a second mortgage on our home to pay for all of this stuff and then we have to load it in our truck and we have to take it home and the worst case of all is where are you going to put all that stuff? I mean after all, how do you store 200 rolls of toilet paper? We have abundance. We don’t buy just for the day.

But there’s an important lesson here. Give us today what we need for today. I call it God’s stress relief. God wants to relieve us from some of the anxieties we have in life. Most of our stress and most of our anxiety centers around the fact that we’re worrying about the future. We’re concerned about the what if’s and the maybe’s about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. So we say to ourselves, “Will I have enough money for retirement? Will I ever get married? Will the kids make it through school? Will they be successful? Will my health hold out? Will I still have a job next fall?” We waste so much time on the what if’s and the maybe’s about looking towards the future. We say in this petition, “God, I’m just going to worry about today. And I’m going to rely on you to provide for today.”

Jesus reiterated that point, the same Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble on its own.” In this petition, we’re saying, “God, I’m depending upon you day by day. I’m not going to worry about next week, next year.” I don’t mean being irresponsible. I’m talking about anxiety and stress. We’re saying, “God, you’re going to be there. You’ve always been there and you’ll be there again.” This is such an important point that God demonstrated this point for 40 years in the lives of the people of Israel. If you remember back at the Old Testament, they’re in the desert for 40 years and God provides for them manna every morning so they have something to eat. And God says, “Now just pick up enough manna you need for one day.” Well, some of the people, of course, said, “Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to store up.” So they stuff a few more in to make sure they were all set maybe for the next two or three days. Problem was, they woke up the next morning, all the manna they collected the previous day, it was moldy. It was nasty. You couldn’t eat it. God was making the point. “Rely on me every day. You can trust that tomorrow morning when you wake up, there will be manna on the ground.” In this prayer, we’re saying, “God, I rely on you. I’m depending upon you every day that tomorrow morning when I wake up, you’re still going to be there. You’re still going to provide for me.” We’re depending upon God daily.

We’re also depending upon God to say no. I know that sounds a little bit strange but it’s true. We’re depending upon God at times to say no to our request. Now to get at that point, we have to talk a little bit about the difference between wants and needs. I know you’ve heard that before. There’s a difference between something you want and something you need. Let me start off by saying there’s nothing wrong with wants. Every single one of us has wants in our life. I have things I want in my life also. And as long as it doesn’t go over to being sinful, that we’re starting to covet things or doing sinful things to get them, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting the blessings of God. But it is important to understand the difference between a want and a need.

A need is something you have to have to survive. So, for instance, I need food and water to live. I do not need steak and lobster and a fine wine. I need shelter. I do not need a 4,000 square foot house that cost a half a million dollars. Now there’s nothing wrong with the steak and lobster and there’s nothing wrong with the half a million dollar house. If God has blessed you that way, that’s wonderful. But just to understand the difference between the two, the difference between a want and a need.

And, frankly, at times, we get them confused. In this petition, we’re saying to God, “God, I’m relying upon you to keep it straight. I’m relying upon you, God, to know what’s going to be a blessing and what’s not going to be a blessing, what’s a need and what’s a want.” He put it this way. When Jesus was teaching about prayer, we read it a few moments ago, “Which of you if his son asks for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake?” You see, I shudder to think how many times I thought I was approaching God with what I considered to be a need but in effect I was asking not for bread but I was asking for a snake. In other words, I thought it was going to be a blessing in my life but God knew it was going to be a curse in my life and so God said no.

We do the same thing with our children, do we not? They ask for all kinds of things and they consider they need them. But as parents, because we love them, we can see that’s not going to be the best thing for them and so we say no. Sometimes they get angry. Sometimes they pout. Sometimes they don’t talk to us. Does that change our mind? No. We love them. We want to protect them so we won’t give that to them. In the same way, our heavenly Father, we can approach Him with confidence, confidence that He will say no at times because we’re depending upon Him to do that, that He knows what will be a blessing in our life and what will turn out to be a curse in our life so we pray, “God, give us today our daily bread. I’m depending upon you, God. I think this is what I need for my life and I’m earnestly praying for it but I’m depending upon you, God, to know whether it’s really the right thing. I’m depending upon you, God, to know whether you should say yes or whether you should say no.” We’re that dependent upon God.

It’s a little bit hard for us. We like to be independent. We like to be self sufficient and at the risk of sort of being oxymoronic if that’s the name, we are dependent upon God so we can be independent.

When we pray this petition and you say, “Give us today our daily bread,” maybe somewhere in the back of your mind you can say to yourself, “This is my Declaration of Dependence on God.” Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church