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"LORD TEACH US TO PRAY"GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY BREADMatthew 6:11 with 25-34INTRODUCTION We are spending these seven weeks studying the Lord’s prayer as it is recorded in Matthew 6:9-13 because we want to pray more often and we want to pray better. Over the past four weeks we have seen that the prayer that God answers begins with asking him to make his reputation great in the world by causing Christ to reign as king in more and more lives so that his will is increasingly done on earth as the angels now and glorified believers in the future in heaven obey him. The first three petitions are really asking God to make us Christians and to enable us to live like Christians while we look forward to the return of Christ. We are asking God that he would, by the powerful work of his Holy Spirit enable us to see his glory in the life, suffering, death, resurrection and present intercession of Jesus Christ. The gospel as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4 is “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We want Jesus Christ to be the center of our attention and of our affections. All those who call God Father, know that in themselves they have no right to call God Father. We know that the only reason we have escaped hell and gained eternal life is because of who Jesus is and what he has done. He obeyed God’s law for us, suffered the death we deserve and has been raised from the dead and given authority over all, for us. So, we always pray that he would appear more glorious to us as our Savior and king. However, as the fourth petition of the prayer teaches us, we also are to ask God for what we need to live out the days he has granted to us on earth. We are looking forward to and praying for that day when faith shall become sight, when the glory of the Lord will fill the earth, when his kingdom will be fully realized here in the renewed heavens and earth, when every redeemed human will fully embrace and do his will. Yet, now we live in the in between time and so we ask him to provide us what we need in order to live here, beginning with asking him for our daily bread. Jesus uses bread as a symbol for everything we need to live on earth. Martin Luther, the great German reformer defines bread as, “everything required to satisfy our bodily needs, such as food and clothing, house and home, fields and flocks, money and property; a pious spouse and good children, trustworthy servants, godly and faithful rulers, good government; seasonable weather, peace and health, order and honor; true friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.” There is a question I want us to think about as it relates to Jesus’ command that we ask “our Father in heaven… to give us today our daily bread.” Why does our Father in heaven, who “knows what we need before we ask him” and who “gives all men life and breath and everything else”, command his children to ask him for their daily bread? Will he not provide if we do not ask? Or is it that if we ask he will give us more? Do you understand why I’m asking this question? The Bible everywhere says that God “opens his hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing.” He “sends his rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and makes the sun rise on the evil and the good.” As Paul tells idol worshipping, non-Christian, Greek people in the town of Lystra, “He has shown you kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons. He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Will he stop giving you food if you don’t pray? The answer to that question is no he won’t. God is not telling those whom he has made his very own children through the death of his Son that the only way he will provide for them is if they pray. He gives to everyone else without prayer but he’ll only give to us if we pray. Your having food to eat is not contingent upon your asking God to give you food. He gives to those who pray and to those who do not pray as an expression of his grace to all creation. Your Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask him. How many parents only give their children food when they ask but if they don’t ask they don’t give them food? Parents provide for their children whether they ask or not. This leads to another question. So, why in the world should I bother with asking God to provide for my bodily needs if he is going to provide whether I ask or not? Is it because if I ask, then I’ll receive more than if I didn’t ask? Is it like when children nag their parents long enough then they’ll get the game cube or the cookie before supper by merely wearing them out? I trust you know that is not true. If my having food, clothing and shelter is not dependent upon my praying and if I won’t be given more by praying, then why does Jesus command that we ask God to give us our daily bread? I think the answer to that question is contained in the second half of Matthew 6, which begins in v. 19 with Jesus saying, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.” Then in vv. 25-34 he commands that we not worry about our life. What I want to do is to show you how asking your Father to provide your daily bread is the necessary means for obeying the command to not worry about what you need to live on earth. The apostle Paul makes this connection explicit in Philippians 4:6-7 when he says, “Do not worry about anything but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” The fact is that either you and I are worrying or we are praying. These two things do not go together. True prayer is the antidote to worry. Jesus wants us to ask God to give us our daily bread so that we will not worry. This word that is translated worry actually contains two meanings. First, worry can be fear or panic that we are not going to be provided for or that we are going to lose something we value. Worry in this sense is that dread or anxiety that keeps us up at night, that gives us ulcers, that makes us crazy. It is walking down that imaginary dark path in our mind where danger lurks at every turn. It is imagining the bad things that will happen in the future, which creates fear. However, the other way that this word is used is seen in vv. 31-32. In v. 31 we are told, “do not worry” about food, drink, clothing. Then in v. 32 Jesus says, “for the pagans run after all these things.” Here worry is better translated as “concern” or “preoccupation” or “passion”. The pagans are preoccupied with obtaining these things and we are not to be preoccupied with them. It doesn’t only mean fear or anxiety but what it is that we are preoccupied with, what consumes our time and attention, what we are passionate about. So when Jesus commands us not to worry he is commanding us to not be afraid or anxious about the necessities of life and not to be preoccupied with them. Asking our Father in heaven to give us today our daily bread is the primary way God has given us to fight off worry. I want us to examine 6:25-34 to see three things we need to keep in mind while we are praying that God give us our daily bread so that we are not consumed with worry over the necessities of life. MAIN POINT Worry withers when we ask God for our daily bread while…I. Perceiving God’s purpose (v. 25) God has given you life and given you your body. You did not give these things to yourself. You did not create yourself, not your life or your body. Every sane person knows this but hardly anyone ever thinks about it. Most everyone goes through life simply assuming that it is his or her right to exist. You and I had absolutely nothing to do with our own creation. God, before time began, decided that you would exist at this time and in this place with these parents and this life situation. Then God created you through your parents at exactly the precise moment he intended to do so. Existence is a gift. When God gave you life and when God gave you a body, why did he do it? Did he give you life so you could spend all your time trying to gratify the sensual pleasures that you have? If you get three square meals a day will you be living out the purpose for which God made you? If you eat the best food, sleep in the softest beds, drink the finest wines, will you have fulfilled the purpose for which God gave you life? If you wear the most fashionable clothes, the most stunning jewelry, will you have used your body for the purposes for which God gave it to you? If you drive the best car, live in the nicest home will you have accomplished what God gave you life to do? Look at this stack of catalogs I brought from home. (Show a few of them.) Every single one of these catalogs is appealing to you and I to act as though if we eat well and dress well and live comfortably, then we have fulfilled what it means to be human. We live in a culture obsessed with the idea that having the highest quality food, clothing and shelter is the purpose of life. Every person in here knows, intellectually, that having all this stuff is not what life is about. However, every person in here worries about whether or not he or she is going to be able to live at the level to which they’ve become accustomed. In other words, our concern for the amount & quality of the food we eat, the style of the clothes we wear, the kind of furniture we have in our homes, the kinds of cars we drive shows that we believe the reason God gave us life and bodies was to have these things. Am I saying that if you care about the kind of clothes you wear or the style of car you drive that you are in sin? Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. Whether your desire to dress in fashion is a violation of this command of Jesus is not for me to say. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is if it bothers you to not have a certain style of whatever or if you worry about not being able to keep up the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to, then just maybe you believe having these things is what life is about. If you are happy whenever you get something new, then maybe you believe life consists in these things. If you spend the bulk of your time thinking about and working to afford and obtain the necessities and luxuries of this life, then just maybe you believe that life consists of these things. And if you believe that, you are very sadly mistaken. Life is about so much more than what you eat and what you wear and what you drive and where you live and where you vacation. Now Jesus doesn’t tell us what life is about or why God gave us a body in this verse. That’s still coming. He does tell us here that having enough to eat or the highest quality of food or dressing in style is not why God made us and so if that’s what you’re concerned about, you are definitely not concerned about God’s purposes for life. If every day I ask God to give me my daily bread then I won’t fall into the trap of believing that to have food, clothing and shelter is what life is about. I will ask my father for what I need and then forget about it because he will give me what I need. If he doesn’t give it to me, then I don’t need it because he is my father in heaven who knows what I need before I ask him. If I don’t ask him daily for what I need to live then I am going to be living to obtain these things. In other words I will act as though life consists in having food, clothing, shelter, etc. You are either praying for daily bread or living life in pursuit of daily bread. Worry withers when we ask God for our daily bread while…
II. Pondering God’s providence (vv. 26-30) In verses 26-30 Jesus doesn’t command us not to worry, but he commands us to intently watch the birds and to pay careful attention to the flowers. What Jesus is asking us to do is to pay attention to God’s providential care of his creation. “God’s providence” is a phrase that has little meaning to most modern Christians. It was, however, a phrase that formed the center of most Christian’s lives for most of Christian history. Modern Christians, due to the influence of the naturalistic world-view of our modern culture have largely forgotten it. We think that because we can explain something of how the natural world functions, then we have understood what is going on. The Bible is full of statements about God’s providential care of his creation. Psalm 135: 6-7 says, “The Lord does whatever he pleases in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths. He makes the clouds rise from the ends of the earth, he sends lightening with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.” Paul in Acts 17: 25 says that “God…gives all men life and breath and everything else.” In Acts 14: 17 he says, “He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their season. He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” It is this foundational doctrine to which Jesus is pointing us in vv. 25-30. He tells us to look at the birds and the flowers and to think about what we see. When we look at birds what do we discover? Well, birds don’t till the ground or plant seeds or harvest grain or store their grain in barns, yet they never go hungry. God always makes sure they have enough to eat. But how does God do this? Birds do not simply sit still and open their beaks and food pours in, with no effort on their part. I love chickadees. There is no greater experience in life than to be standing in the woods on a frosty morning in November and to have a flock of 4 or 5 chickadees land on the trees around you. They hop from branch to branch, making their song, cocking their heads from side to side, pecking at the bark on the twigs and branches to shake loose sleeping insects. They are very methodical about it, going up one side of the tree and down the other. It’s what they do throughout the day. What they don’t do is sit still on a branch immobilized by the fear that when they hop from twig to twig, they won’t find any food. What they don’t do is lust after the bugs their fellow chickadees are eating. What Jesus is telling me is that when I see these chickadees flitting from branch to branch, eating insects, God is feeding them. God is providing for them. Their efforts to find insects is successful because God causes them to work and he makes sure they find the bugs. At the end of v. 26 he asks a rhetorical question, “Are you not much more valuable than they?” The answer to that question is obvious. The personal, creator God made all that exists and made man in his image to represent him and to rule over and care for creation. According to Genesis 1 we human beings are the pinnacle of creation as we are the only creatures made in the image of God. Jesus knows that God made the world and everything in it and that he made mankind as his representative and steward over his creation and so he argues, if he takes such good care of birds, which you rarely think about, won’t he take care of you? How does v. 27 relate to what he has just said? It is anther rhetorical question with an obvious answer. “Who can add length to his life by worrying?” The answer is, “no one.” Why does he ask this question? How does this relate to what I learn when I watch the birds? What Jesus is pointing to here is that just as you have no control over the time of your birth so you have no control over the time of your death. God controls both. Worry and anxiously striving to eliminate all risk from your life will not add a single moment to the length of life that God has ordained for you. Spending your life absorbed with obtaining the pleasures of this world will not keep you from dying. One of the things you discover from watching birds is that they die. Birds have flown into our picture window and died. We’ve all found baby birds that have fallen from nests and died. Adult birds die of disease and accident and by the hands of hunters and other predators. So we too will one day die and our anxious striving will not alter that fact. Now, Jesus is not teaching a passive fatalism here. Birds seek food and find safe nesting places and fly south for the winter and roost in good cover. But they don’t add to the life God has given to them by worrying. God has an appointed time for your death and your children’s death and you cannot alter it by anxious risk management. We are way more valuable than birds for whom God provides and over whose life and death he rules, so relax in his care. Jesus makes a similar argument in vv. 28-30 (read them). Jesus begins with a question. He asks, “Why do you worry about clothes?” We are obsessed with being “in style”. Jesus isn’t condemning worry about having clothes, but about having the “right” clothes. He is condemning our obsession with having the latest style, driving the coolest car, living in the most fashionable home. Jesus commands us to observe and think about flowers. What do we discover when we look at flowers? We discover that with no effort on their part they are more attractive and beautiful then the most well-dressed people in the world. Solomon, to a Jewish person, was the height of wealth, fashion and style. To live like Solomon was the Jewish daydream, just like to live like some celebrity is the daydream of millions of people in the world. Yet, for all their style and “coolness”, they cannot compare to the beauty of a simple flower. And the flower put forth no effort to get such beauty. God merely clothed it with beauty as an expression of his grace and creativity. The other thing you discover when looking at flowers is that they are very temporary. The people who lived in our home before us planted 4 or 5 varieties of Tiger Lilies along the fence. There are orange, yellow, pink and purple flowers. They are absolutely stunning in their beauty. Where are all those beautiful lilies now? They are decomposing in the landfill. Jesus’ argument is pretty straight forward, if God clothes flowers, which are so temporary, with such beauty, won’t he make sure that you have enough clothing? If he takes such good care of such insignificant things as flowers, most of which are never seen and without any effort on their part, won’t he take good care of you? All of this worry about and pursuit of food and risk free living and style shows a heart that doesn’t trust God. All of our anxiety shows that we believe we are on our own, that it is up to us to provide and protect. Really, our anxiety is a form of pride. We believe that our work creates wealth and minimizes risk. When we worry we treat God with contempt and put him on the margins of our lives and act as if he has nothing to do with what we have or don’t have. So Jesus commands us to look at God’s creation and think about how God takes care of it. The creation is preaching to us that God is an excellent provider and in absolute control of everything. So we should relax and trust himand quit living in such anxiety and stress. The primary way we express this dependence upon God and our lack of worry is by asking him to provide our daily bread just as he provides for the birds and clothes the flowers. We ask him to provide and protect so that we do not live as though our work is providing and protecting. We work but free of fear and pride and greed. Worry withers when we ask God for our daily bread while…
III. Pursuing God’s promise (vv. 31-34) In verses 31-32 Jesus pulls the curtain all the way back and shows us why he is so opposed to worry. In verse 31 he forbids worry again and shows it for what it is. Worry is frantic about life on this planet. Worry is panic and fear that I won’t be able to live a happy life here. Worry is being obsessed with the pleasures of this life. Do you here the “frantic-ness” in the three questions? “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?” What is going to happen to us? How will we ever be able to make it? We’re going to lose everything! I’ve got to have that video game, that computer, that car, that gun, that blouse, that house if I’m going to make it. Have you ever felt that panic, that overwhelming desire to have some new thing? I have. As many of you know we were on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ for 20 years. We were responsible for raising all the finances to pay our salary, benefits and ministry expenses during all those years. Each month we would get a report at the end of the month recording who had sent money into our account with CCC and telling us our end of the month balance. Getting our printout was usually a time of great anxiety. We only got paid if there was money in our account. Panic would often rise up in me as I saw that a particular investor hadn’t sent money for 2 or 3 months. Or if our account balance was close to zero or in the negative. Guess what, even though I often was in panic, we never went hungry, we always had clothes to wear and a place to live. God always took care of us, but that didn’t stop me from often being frantic at the end of the month. Now in v. 32 Jesus says that this kind of frantic worry or passionate obsession is wrong for two reasons. First, when you worry, you are acting like a non-Christian who is living only for what he can get out of this life. When we worry we are acting as though the only thing that matters is what we eat and what we wear. The non-believer lives for life in this world and when we worry we are declaring that the only life that matters is the one right here. Worry proves that what we are running after is money and the life that money can give us. Second, when you worry you are treating your heavenly Father with contempt. Parents, how would you feel if you discovered in your child’s room a box full of food that your child was hoarding. When you asked them why, he says, “I just know you’re going to quit feeding me and so I’m storing up food to eat when you quit fixing meals for me.” Or how would you feel if your child complained non-stop about the food you gave her and the clothes you provided and the home she lived in? When children worry about their next meal or complain about the quality of your provision does it not call into question your character and your love? That ‘s exactly what we do when we worry and complain. That is exactly what we do when we don’t pray. Asking God to give us our daily bread is the primary expression of our faith that he is, through Jesus, our loving Father who knows what we need and is eager to provide all we need. Verse 33 is the climax of this whole passage and the main point to which Jesus is driving. What you worry about shows what you are seeking. The main reason worry is wrong is that it shows a heart that is not seeking after God and his ways but is seeking after something else and you and I were made to seek God. There are 4 questions we need to consider if we are going to be impacted by what Jesus is commanding here. What does it mean to seek something? (Why do you seek what you seek? What does seeking look like?) Seeking is part of being a human. Everyone is seeking all the time. There is nothing wrong with being a seeker, the issue Jesus puts in front of us is the object of our pursuit. Students seek to get the best grades they can, homeowners seek to have the best looking lawn they can get, hunters seek the best hunting experience possible, shoppers seek the best deals, car buyers seek the nicest car that will fit in their budget, workers seek the most fulfilling job and/or the best pay they can get, athletes seek to win, parents seek to raise responsible kids, fans of Seinfeld seek to watch as many reruns as possible and the list goes on. Why do people seek what they seek? All of us seek what we seek because we believe that to obtain what we seek will make us happy, will increase our pleasure. You only seek what you love, what you believe will make you happy. Why don’t I seek to be a good golfer? Because being good at golf is not necessary to my happiness. Why do I seek to spend time with my children? Because I believe it is necessary to my happiness to have a good relationship with my kids. We seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness because we believe that to belong to Christ’s kingdom, to be ruled by Christ and to have his righteousness is the best thing in the universe. What does it mean to seek God’s kingdom? Seeking God’s kingdom means that I believe that to experience Christ’s rule in my life in greater ways is a good thing. It means I believe that belonging to the kingdom of God is the best thing in the universe. It means that I am concerned that more and more people come under his rule. It makes me happy to see others living in submission to Christ and so I use my time and resources to help others understand who king Jesus is and why it is a good thing to submit to him. To seek God’s kingdom is to care about missions and about missionaries. It is to care about whether my children and my family and my neighbors are going to live in the kingdom of God. I ask God to give me my daily bread so that the interests of his kingdom are advanced, not my kingdom. I ask for what I need, knowing that what I think I need may not be what my king knows I need. Therefore, my prayer for daily bread is prayed in submission to the will of the king. Like a child who gladly accepts her parents “no” because she trusts the wisdom and love of her parents so we seek God’s kingdom when we ask for daily bread, prepared to accept God’s no to our request. What does it mean to seek God’s righteousness? There are two ways to think about the righteousness of God. First, the righteousness of God is that righteousness he gives to every believing sinner for the sake of Christ. It is to be justified, to be declared not guilty but perfectly righteous by God as a gift of his grace. We seek that righteousness by trusting in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for us. We seek the righteousness that God gives through Christ by resting in his work for us, not laboring to gain God’s favor by our efforts. Second, we seek the righteousness of God when we seek to live as Jesus teaches us to live. We believe that to belong to Christ and to live like him in this world is infinitely better than obtaining all the pleasures this world can provide. In this sense it is to get up every day and say to yourself, “Self, today you are in a war. Either you will seek to find your happiness in God today or in the things this world provides. So self, today we will begin by seeking God in his word and seeking to live in that righteousness that Christ has given.” Praying for God to give me my daily bread is my statement that the righteousness of God is the source of my security, not the size of my paycheck or the kind of car I drive. Does this verse mean that if I seek God’s kingdom he will provide a middle-class American lifestyle for me? No, because of v. 34. What I want you to notice about v. 34 is the last phrase, “each day has enough trouble of its own.” Wait just one minute. I thought Jesus just said that if we seek first his kingdom he will provide all we need for life. What does he mean each day has its own trouble? If I live seeking his kingdom doesn’t he promise to eliminate the trouble? The answer is absolutely not. The promise Jesus makes is that he will provide us all that we need to seek his kingdom and his righteousness for as long as he gives us life on this earth and in whatever his providential care for us determines we need. If your ambition in life is the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God, then whether you eat steak or rice is of little consequence. Whether you drive a 2004 Suburban or a 1990 Ford Escort matters little to you. Things are tools to be used in service to Christ, they are not what life is about. When we pray that God give us our daily bread we recognize that what God gives is what we need. We are not looking for a certain amount of stuff but to have the stuff we need to glorify his name. Prayer for daily bread keeps us fixed upon his kingdom and righteousness, not the daily bread, because we are trusting him to give us what we need, we are not frantically trying to provide ourselves with what we need. The apostle Paul prayed each day that God would provide his daily bread. According to his own testimony in Philippians 4 he lived a content life, whether he had plenty or had very little. In fact in 2 Cor. 11:27 he tells us, “I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.” Paul’s passion was the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God. He trusted his heavenly father to provide all that he needed to keep him alive for as long as he wanted him to live. He knew that sometimes that meant being hungry, thirsty, homeless and without clothes to wear. Paul knew that God loved him not because of the quality or quantity of food and clothing he provided but because Christ had come and lived and died for him. He sought the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God and trusted God to provide him with the necessities of life as he saw fit by asking him to give him his daily bread. Worry withers when we ask God for our daily bread while…
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2004 John Swanson. |