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"Give us today our daily bread"
Praying The Lord's Prayer, Part 7
Matthew 6:11
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
March 30, 2003
Everything I do has spiritual connotations. Everything.
Whether I eat or drink or whatever I do, I must do it all for the glory of God. Whether I am doing my job, playing with my kids, kissing my wife, cleaning the yard, doing my taxes… Whatever I am doing has spiritual connotations. For the spiritual pervades it all.
All of life, then, becomes my altar. Every action I make, then, becomes a sacrifice-an offering to God. All that this physical body does is, in fact, a spiritual act of worship. As Paul urges his brothers and sisters,
"offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship."
(Romans 12:1).
Even the most mundane activity becomes a part of that living sacrifice. And we do it all in anticipation of something remarkable. One day, our physical life will be transformed into a physical-spiritual union, in which we will live in glorified physical bodies that will be supercharged with spiritual vitality, enabling us to worship our God in perfect union and relationship for all eternity!
We live today in anticipation of the grand banquet in heaven-when we will be eating food that satisfies completely with the One who satisfies completely.
Until then, we live our lives on earth. And as mundane as it may seem at times, and as horrific as it may seem at times, and as frustrating as it may seem at times, it is all meant to convey deeper, spiritual realities to those who will see life through the eyes of faith.
So Jesus teaches us to pray, "Give us today our daily bread" in Matthew 6:11. While some modernist commentators of the rationalist era see this as merely praying for our daily needs, I have come to the conclusion that there is a whole lot more going on here.
Later in this very chapter, Jesus tells his followers "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear." Why not? Because God will take care of our physical needs, we need to instead focus on something grander, beyond just the physical needs of our lives:
"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (see Matthew 6:25-34).
In other words, focus all your energies on the spiritual reality of God. The Kingdom of God that we will enjoy in the future is to be manifested in our lives TODAY!
How? By changing our perspective from being anxious about our physical needs to seeing our physical existence as a spiritual, sacramental life.
As was proclaimed by one who actually ate with Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." (Luke 14:15). We are to live as a part of the Kingdom Community today! We are to feast TODAY in anticipation of the feast TOMORROW. We are to live out our eschatology today-seeing all of life with spiritual eyes, so that we can realize that all we do and say and even eat is really a part of the spiritual reality of living in God's Kingdom.
That is why I "offer my body as a living sacrifice." That is why, as 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts it,
"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."
These are not just words, this is spiritual reality!
So Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread.
Think for a moment-can you think of a story where "daily bread" was important in the Bible?
Of course! When Moses led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery through the wilderness, God provided them with the daily bread of manna. God told Moses,
"I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day."
(Exodus 16:4)
But for what purpose? Why did God provide them with this sweet manna each day? Before finally entering the Promised Land, Moses reminds the People of God why they ate the daily bread:
"Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD."
(Deuteronomy 8:2-3)
Do you see it? "Daily bread" teaches us that when we surrender ourselves to humble obedience to God, we enter into a deeper faith relationship with God. We begin to actually
believe that what God says is the "God-honest truth," and begin the journey of living a life
seeking his kingdom and his righteousness.
Zoom ahead several hundred years to Jesus in the wilderness. It is Jesus' turn to be tested in the desert. As the perfect embodiment of Israel, he too was tested in order to show his heart. Would he succumb to his own fleshly yearnings, or would he humbly believe his Father's will is best?
We read the story in Matthew 4.
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
(Matthew 4:1-4)
Jesus tells the devil the same thing that Moses told the Israelites. Bread is important for our sustenance, but more important is the word of God. That is the priority! Jesus passes the test.
And he points us to what we are praying when we say, "Give us today our daily bread." When I pray every day before each meal, I am not just thankful for the fact that I have food (though that is important!), I am also aware of the fact that this physical bread points me to the
spiritual bread that I need for my daily sustenance. The bread of life is not merely made of flour and yeast. The bread of life is made of the Word of God!
Physical bread symbolizes the bread I eat when I trust in Jesus Christ for every one of my needs, desires, frustrations, anxieties, and fears.
Every time I pray for another day of bread, I am reminded that the hunger pangs I experience if I do not eat are a physical reminder of my spiritual hunger for the real, spiritual, supernatural "bread of life" which alone will bring lasting satisfaction.
This is illustrated best by an event that the apostle John recorded for us.
So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
"Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
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." (John 6:30-35)
Jesus is the ultimate bread. If you allow your heart to consume Jesus, you will begin to find the ultimate satisfaction. Jesus is the Word of God; Jesus is the Bread of Life. And man does not live on regular bread alone, but on the spiritual bread of the Word of God! Jesus is all that we need to find lasting satisfaction in our everyday life.
We need to start to see ourselves as living in the Kingdom of God right here and now! When we do so, we will begin to see all earthly things as holy things that can be transformed into opportunities to feast on God's presence.
When Jesus broke bread with the tax-collectors and sinners of his day, he transformed that ordinary meal into a God-event.
When Jesus broke bread with his disciples, and ate with them and fellowshipped with them and taught them, an ordinary meal was transformed into a God-event.
And on that last night, when he ate with them one final time, the bread he gave those disciples was not merely physical bread, but a lasting ordinance of eating with him in a spiritual way. It was earthly bread, made of flour and salt and water. But at the same time, he was telling them to allow it to mean so much more. Let it mean the Bread of Life.
Later in John 6, we read more of Jesus' words:
"I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (John 6:47-51)
Jesus is telling us that the person who believes in him is, metaphorically, eating the bread of life. Putting your trust in Jesus' giving his life on the cross for the world is eating the bread of life. When you put your trust in Jesus, you find that your spiritual hunger starts to be satisfied. Jesus tells us the truth: anyone who
believes has eternal life. Believing is eating the bread of life!
I pray for our daily bread, trusting in God that he will provide our everyday needs, but also trusting in God that we will have another, fresh supply of
Jesus in our day, for we do not live on bread alone but on Jesus, the Word of God.
The physical bread foreshadows that day when I will sit with Jesus at the great feast in eternity, in perfect fellowship with him. I am not completely there yet. I am still spiritually hungry on this side of his return in glory. I have
some satisfaction as I learn, each day, to trust more and more. I discover deeper satisfaction each day as I learn to feast on Jesus instead of on the fleeting, nutrition-less bread of this world.
But there will be a day when I will find complete satisfaction for my hunger.
This is why Jesus has us, on a very regular basis, partake of the Lord's Supper, or Communion. He wants to take something as mundane and earthly as bread and wine and transform those things in our hearts into something more-something that points to spiritual realities beyond what we are doing physically.
That, I believe, is what the Church Fathers meant by the Eucharist as being "sacramental." Not what the Roman church changed it into: some kind of Mass, some kind of re-sacrifice of Christ, some kind of means for salvation. No, it is sacramental in the sense that it points to the spiritual reality that arches over all that we do in the earthly realm. It is sacramental in that it reminds us that when we eat bread, Jesus is the "Bread of Life." And when we eat of him, that is, when we
believe in him, we find our spiritual hunger to begin to be satisfied. We are to do communion meals only until he returns, because when that day comes, we will eat in heaven forever in perfect fellowship with Jesus.
As Paul relates to his Corinthian readers,
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
(1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
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