"Prayer and Our Provision" Matthew 6:11 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning, Matthew 6, 1 verse, verse 11.

It's in the middle of the Lord's Prayer.

I want to begin by reading just the first half of the Lord's Prayer, the first four petitions, beginning in verse 9.

This is the word of God, Matthew 6, verse 9.

Matthew 6:9

Pray then like this.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

This is Jesus teaching us how to pray, and he teaches us in a way initially that is unsurprising.

If God in human flesh made his dwelling among us, if the very Lord of heaven came to earth and taught us how to pray, which is what is happening here, you would expect that instruction to be the kind of prayer that God hears and the kind of prayer that God desires.

After all, this is God who became man teaching us how to pray to God in heaven.

You'd expect that kind of prayer to be God-centered.

You would expect it to be exalted and not of this world, otherworldly.

And of course, this is.

The lessons here in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly in the Lord's Prayer, do not disappoint.

They're exactly that.

They are exalted and aimed towards heaven.

The Lord's Prayer begins by recognizing that God is in heaven and it moves on from there to recognize that God's priority is above us, that it's his kingdom that needs to come, not our own.

From there that God's will would be done and not our own.

And so you see a spatial priority, heaven over earth.

You see a personal priority, God before man, and you see a volitional priority, God's will over us, spatial, uh, volitional, personal.

All of it is exalting God and is very, very high and focused on God.

That's the kind of prayer you'd expect Jesus to teach us how to pray.

But then in the middle of the prayer, with the fourth petition, it feels like it takes a hard turn, like somebody else took over the phone call.

Because it goes from the highest heights of heaven to give us today our daily bread.

Nothing could be more mundane than help me eat my next meal.

And so you go from the most exalted, God-focused prayer language imaginable.

Get your prayers off of this earth and into heaven.

Stop exalting your own will and start exalting God's will.

Make God above you.

That's the first half of this prayer.

And that's exactly what you expect.

And then you just come rocketing back to earth here with, also I have to eat.

But that's where Jesus goes.

The middle of this petition is give us today our daily bread.

Now, of course, food is central to human life.

There is no human life without food.

And because it is central to human life, it is also central to the Bible's narratives.

Some of the first words God spoke to mankind were about food.

In creation, God speaks to the void.

You know, God speaks and creates the universe.

He creates light and he creates the planets and he creates the seas.

He's speaking to do that.

He speaks to himself.

He says, Let us make man in our image.

God is speaking to the persons of the Trinity.

They're speaking, communicating together.

But then once mankind is made on earth, once Adam and Eve are made, then God speaks to them.

And what God tells them is be fruitful and multiply subdue the earth, and then I've given you everything that grows from the ground to eat.

You get all the fruit, every tree with seed in its fruit, all the face of the earth will grow with things, and you get to eat those things.

It's no coincidence that God's first conversation with mankind is about our food.

It's also no coincidence that mankind's sin takes place around the table of food.

Sin enters the world, of course, in the conflict in marriage.

Sin enters the world as the devil attacks the marriage structure.

But like many conflicts in marriage, it plays out around the dinner table.

It becomes focused on are we allowed to eat this fruit?

Sin enters the world through food, through Adam and Eve rebelling against God.

And Jesus, by the way, carries this on in his own ministry.

So much of Jesus' ministry was around food.

His first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding feast.

It was at a feast.

Jesus, throughout his ministry, was accused with eating of eating with sinners and tax collectors, and there was enough evidence to convict him of that.

He often ate with sinners and tax collectors, and that was a big deal because in the Jewish mind, eating with somebody shows your relationship with them.

And Jesus went out of his way to invite the worst of the worst into homes to have meals with them.

Jesus' last night on earth, he spent with his disciples around the dinner table.

He transformed Passover into communion, the most elevated and exalted meal in the Jewish calendar.

Jesus took that over and explained how it was about himself and then transformed it into something new, communion.

And then ended the evening, by the way, by telling his disciples that he wouldn't eat a meal again until he ate this communion with them in heaven, in the kingdom.

He cast their eyes to the glories of the new heaven and the new earth.

He uses this promise of this future glorious meal to draw the disciples' hopes from this world into the next.

Remember when he goes to the Gentile lands?

There's no record of Jesus actually eating with the Gentile in his life, but when he did go to the Gentile lands, there was a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile woman, who came to him begging for a miracle, and Jesus said, You know, didn't I come just for Israel?

And he's being ironic there because he has left Israel because of their unbelief at this point.

He's in the Decapolis, the Gentile cities, he's out among the Gentiles.

And this woman says, Will you give me a miracle?

And Jesus says, I'm, of course I'm here for the Jews, right?

Nod, nod, wink, wink.

He's out in the Gentile world.

And she says, Yeah, but even the dogs can eat the food off the floor.

And Jesus says, I haven't seen this kind of faith in anyone in Israel.

She is exalted, and that exaltation that becomes a lesson about how Jesus is taking the gospel to the world.

The gospel's going to the nations, and he presents that through this concept of food, that even the Gentiles can eat the scraps that fall on the floor.

Our lives do revolve around food.

I've mentioned this a few times before, but we are constantly, we being human beings, are constantly planning what to eat.

You're thinking right now about lunch.

I know it.

Stop it.

You're going on a road trip soon.

What's the first thing you do?

You pack the snack bag.

Snack bags gotta be locked and loaded because you never know.

There could be no places to stop.

You plan a vacation and you think about where are we gonna eat, who's going to cook.

You're going to the outer banks, you Google what is the best cheeseburger in the outer banks.

And you will drive two hours to that best cheeseburger, passing like the second best and the third best and the fourth best, because you're like, you know what?

The second best cheeseburger in the outer banks could be across the street.

But I'm driving two hours away for the best one.

I'm on vacation.

I'm not gonna eat that gravel over there at the second best place.

Come on.

Our lives revolve so much around what we eat.

And that's because we're human beings.

Don't lose sight of the fact that for God, God doesn't need to eat.

God doesn't need to sleep.

Our earthly cycles, our sleep and our eating, are a constant reminder to us that we are not God.

We are dependent, we are creatures, and we need to receive sustenance.

Our body decays.

And so we feed it.

You need to be in better shape, you eat better food.

You'll still die, of course, but you'll eat worse food on the way.

We build our lives around food.

This is so different than God.

Psalm 50, verse 12, God says, if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you.

Psalms 50:12

Because everything in the world belongs to me.

And God were hungry, he could eat any cow he wants.

It's all his.

But he doesn't, because he doesn't need food.

I remember those tricks commercials when I was a kid.

They always have the rabbit trying to get the cereal from the kids, and there's always the refrain, silly rabbit.

Everyone knows that tricks are.

Yeah.

When you think of food, you want to say, silly Christian, don't you know that food is for people?

Food belongs to humans, not to God.

It's for us to eat.

He doesn't need it.

We are dependent.

We are frail.

We are needy creatures.

A baby needs grown-ups to make the bottle for the baby.

And you think, oh, I'm so beyond that because I can make my own bottle.

It's still a confession of your dependency, that you are in need of food.

And so it makes sense in it, the middle of the Lord's Prayer, when it goes from heaven to earth, that it focuses on food.

Because this is what the scripture describes.

Paul tells the Corinthians there's a category of things called the daily cares.

They are daily cares.

People need food.

It's something that people are concerned about.

This is a passage that's very easy to relate to in some sense, because nothing's more relatable than food.

You meet somebody from another country and you might say, Oh, I visited your country, and they'll immediately ask.

It's the first question somebody asks, no matter what country it is.

You say, Oh, I visited your country, and they'll say, Did you try this?

And it's food.

And the right answer is yes, and I loved it.

Not yes, and wow, not making that mistake again.

No, you don't say that.

Yes, I loved it, of course.

Because everybody relates to one another around food.

And so Jesus says, When you pray, pray for your daily bread.

In another sense, though, this is hard to relate to, because you know, the Israeli culture was an agrarian culture.

If it didn't rain, the wheat didn't grow and they didn't eat.

You know, if the wheat didn't grow, the the deer didn't eat, and the livestock didn't eat, and there was famine in the land.

And sometimes God punished Israel by withholding the rain and they died, and that was the way the world was.

If there was famine in Bethlehem, you had to move to Moab and get food.

Our world's not like that today.

If there's a you know a drought in California, you grow your food in Iowa, and if there's a drought in Iowa, you grow it in California.

That's the way our world works today.

You pay a dollar more for strawberries because it comes from a different continent.

But in their world, if it didn't, if the weather didn't cooperate, you would go hungry.

If you got hurt working, your family didn't eat.

There was no workers' comp.

Your family wouldn't eat.

And so this prayer for daily food is probably more immediate to the Israeli world than it is to ours.

You know, in the Israeli world, you're making your food every day.

They had some kind of refrigerations.

You could put food in water and keep it cold, or you could dry food and store it.

But for the most part, they were dependent upon daily food.

That's the repeated word.

If you look at verse 11, give us this day our daily bread.

It's a repeated word in English.

There are different Greek words, but in English it's repeated.

There's this daily need for this.

It's so immediate that we lose in our culture because we have a culture of abundance.

You know, we don't have daily bread.

You buy a loaf of bread every week, right?

You go to the grocery store and you look at the whole aisle, a thousand different kinds of bread, and you're looking for the one kind of bread you want.

Dave's bread, golden wheat with flaxseed.

And you look, and there's the Dave's bread white with flaxseed, or the Dave's bread golden wheat, but no flaxseed.

And you're like, what is this?

COVID killed the grocery store.

I demand to see the manager.

I need this certain kind of bread with the flaxseed and that wheat, and they're like, oh, we don't carry that.

Can I talk to somebody else?

Look in the back for the bread that I buy here every week.

We're so particular.

In the Israelite world, you need food or you die.

And so that's this prayer.

Lord, meet my needs.

God, you don't give rain, or the fig tree withers on toast.

I don't have any food at all.

So how do we relate to this passage in a world of abundance?

You know, it's a prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread.

I think more Americans are more likely to pray this.

Lord, keep from me today my daily bread.

Give me self-control, Lord, give me self-control.

Let me pass over the food for today.

Lord, I pray my refrigerator is locked.

Oh, it opens.

Well, the will of the Lord be done, I guess.

Our prayers are so different.

How do you relate to this kind of prayer?

Give us today our daily bread.

Well, let me give you three principles I think draw out and apply directly to us, even in our land of plenty, these principles and these lessons apply to us first.

It's a reminder that God gives food.

God is the one who gives food.

This is in the form of petition.

You're praying to the Lord, give us this day our daily bread.

This is a continual reminder that God gives.

The verb in this verse, verse 11, is the verb give.

It's the first word in English here.

It's an appeal to God.

God, give us this food.

And God is a giver.

He delights in giving things.

Jesus elsewhere in Luke's gospel compares this kind of prayer to a child asking his father for something.

And if what child is going to ask for an egg and his father gives him a snake?

How much better is God than a human father?

So, of course, if you're making an appeal for food, God is eagerly going to give it because God desires to give.

God designed the whole world, by the way, to give food.

The purpose of all life is to glorify God, but God made the functions of the earth such that it produces food that is good and tasty.

He designed plants that grow incredible things that taste good.

And there's so much just mystery and majesty in the way that God made the world.

He made a world with mangoes and apples and oranges and pomegranates.

You think of the pomegranate.

When I was in seminary, the student parking lot had a pomegranate tree that grew and hung over the fence.

And we claimed Deuteronomic Law that if the palm tree, if the pomegranate hung over in the parking lot, you could pass by and take the fruit.

We actually asked the owner and he said it was fine.

But it was a ritual in seminary to pull off the pomegranate and to open it up.

And every day, walking to class, me and my friends would invent new things.

We'd find new things in the pomegranate that were incredible, new ways to give God glory over just the intricacies of a pomegranate.

Like there's these little capsules in there.

The seed is inside the capsule and it brings in water and it's getting the water from the ground.

It's pulling out in California, it's pulling the water from the ground up to the roots, down to this, you know, the stem, into the little cellular, molecule, molecular capsules there, and it's hitting photosynthesis with the leaves, it's turning it into sweet sugar and stuff.

And biology teachers give lectures on this, but for me it's just juice.

It's incredible.

God did not need to make the world like that.

Why did he make a pomegranate tree?

Because it tastes so good.

He didn't have to do that.

He didn't make that for the birds.

He made it for you.

He could have made the world so that you eat dirt.

You wake up in the morning, dirt for breakfast.

Dirt, pour water in it, cereal.

And dirt is everywhere.

But he didn't satisfy us with that.

He made it with plants that give you incredible food.

The complexity that, you know, nations and states are trying to figure out how to desalinate the ocean to, you know, water their crops.

God invented the hydrological cycle that the ocean water evaporates into the sky and the clouds take the water from the middle of the ocean and desalinate it and bring it over the earth and drop it in California and drop it in Iowa so that your food grows and since you can eat and the water drops and goes to the rivers and back to the ocean, and the process repeats itself.

God made the world that way because God loves to give you good things.

And it's not just food.

But every commentator that I read agrees that bread here is a metonym for everything in life that you need.

It's not just bread.

It's bread and pomegranates and mangoes and the sunlight for the mango tree and the oxygen for your own lungs, the carbon dioxide for the tree, sun, air, water, food, all of it.

The joys of life are included in daily bread, laughter, family, everything that is brought to you by the Lord to make this life livable is what's meant by this.

All of it.

And God cares about all of it.

He gives you what is necessary for human life.

And he doesn't just give you the bare minimum.

He doesn't just say go graze in the dirt.

He gives you so much more.

We know all the omniwords that God is omniscient and omnipresent, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

But here's a new one for you: God is omnibenevolent.

He just is constantly good.

He's always over the top in his goodness, in his givingness.

He's philanthropic.

He's omnibenevolent.

He gives himself all the time.

And this gets to the very nature of God in Trinity, that the Father in eternity is giving all of himself to his Son.

And the Father and the Son are giving all of themselves to the Holy Spirit.

This is how the Trinity exists by giving.

And so it makes sense that in the world, God interacts with the world in the same way, by giving good things to us.

So when we pray to God, Lord, give me what I need to eat and let it be tasty, you're not asking for anything contrary to God's nature.

You're not having to twist God's arm to be a generous giver.

He gives by his own grace.

He gives because he himself gives.

God designed the world to give life to human beings.

And then there are those that take issue with that, that think that human beings are a you know a virus on the earth or sapping the earth of resources or destroying the earth by existing.

And you know, I have a reminder on my Outlook calendar.

June 21st, 2023.

That's on there because June 21st, 2018, a very famous climate change scientist said that within five years, human life would cease to exist unless we got population growth under control.

You have 10 days left if you're counting.

Ten days.

Now watch the Lord come back in ten days, and then I'll fully eat my words.

You know, the truth is the more people on earth, the more farmers there are to grow food, the more scientists there are to invent new ways to farm.

People are a blessing in that way because the earth is meant to be a blessing.

It's designed to give us food.

And so we receive it from the Lord.

Yes, there's famine in the world, but God made the world fully capable of feeding the people on the world.

There's famine in the world because people are sinful, and people steal from each other, and warlords steal food, and sin deprives people of food, and catastrophe comes, and we live in a sinful and fallen world.

Nevertheless, God designed the world to produce food.

Here's a passage I think that helps you understand that.

Proverbs 10, verse 3.

Proverbs 10:3

The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, but he casts away the sustenance of the wicked.

David says it this way.

David says, I've lived a long time, David says, and I've never seen the righteous go hungry.

A long time.

God is always giving us food.

And of course there's famine in the world.

Again, like I said, because there's warlords in the world, and because some countries in the world they won't eat the cows.

You know, they have massive starvation in the in the country, massive starvation.

And yet the cows wander, a cow eats enough food for seven people at least.

And cows wander around well fed, will the people die of starvation in the street?

That's why there's famine in the world.

Not a lack of resources.

But sin deprives people of life.

The point still stands though, even though famine exists, God will not suffer the soul of the righteous.

But he gives what is necessary for life.

So first, God gives.

Second, God hears.

God gives food, and secondly, God hears prayers.

This is coming in the form of a prayer.

This is Bracken verse nine.

Pray like this.

You're praying for God to give you daily bread.

So here's your basic.

Question.

If God designed the world to give you food and you get food every day, you do get food every single day.

And God made the world to give you food, why are you supposed to pray for it?

After all, are you going to get it whether you pray for it or not?

You will.

Jesus said this earlier in Matthew 5.

You want to be like God, love your enemy.

God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, which is a statement about food.

The rain is there to water the crops.

And so Jesus says, God is going to give the righteous and the unrighteous an earth that produces food.

They all get it.

It's not just Christians that get a milkshake, non-Christians get milkshakes too.

God made the world that way.

So why do you pray for your daily food if you're going to get it whether or not you pray?

That's kind of the question here.

And I just jotted down a few reasons why you should pray, even though you're going to get your daily food anyway.

And I'll keep this list short.

I'm editing on the fly right now.

But the first reason you should pray is because God commands you to.

Period.

It shouldn't be more complex than that.

God tells you to pray for your daily food, so go ahead and do it.

A second reason to pray for is because God cares about it.

These are, as I mentioned earlier, what Paul calls the cares of life.

And God cares about the cares of life.

Pastor Joel Beeky, who pastors in a rural part of our country, tells a story of a farmer in his church whose farm burned down.

And it's a small town, and so he Joel sees the fire trucks going by and hears what's happening, and he drives over to the farm, and the farmer's barn with all of his crops and everything in it after the harvest is on fire and the whole thing burns down.

And Joel comes up to him and asks the farmer, let's let's pray for this.

Let's pray right now for this.

And the farmer tells him, No, no, I don't want to pray for this.

This is just material things.

This is just food.

This is just money.

We don't need to pray for that.

It's it's not worth it.

This is just material things.

And Joel Beakey asks the question.

He says, Is that the right attitude to have?

Is it a good attitude to have that you don't need to pray for material things?

Like it's almost like the material things are beneath the Lord.

He's high and lofty, and those material things are beneath him.

I don't think that's the right attitude.

I think this is in the Bible, Matthew 6, 11, to teach you the Lord does care about the daily needs of people.

He does care about your food and your job and your life.

We're probably not farmers here in Northern Virginia, so here's an illustration you might be able to relate to.

There was a Redskins football player at church that I was able to have dinner with, and he asked me if I would pray for his team to win on Sunday.

They were playing the Carolina Panthers, and he wanted me to pray that they would win.

And that caught me off guard.

I was like, look at the time.

And he asked, do you think God cares who wins the football game tomorrow?

I think, uh I don't know how to answer that question.

Honestly, I don't know how to answer that question.

And so he says, okay, let me try it this way.

Does God care about my job?

Like, yes, he cares about your job.

And he says, okay, pray that I'll have a job on Monday.

I mean, God cares about you and your food and how you feed your family.

We pray because God tells us to.

We pray because God cares.

We pray, thirdly, because it's a reminder of our frailty.

We are frail people.

And by praying every day, daily, we're praying here.

In fact, the word, the first word daily, is a normal word for day.

Pray for the daily, every day.

Pray this.

The second Greek word for daily is a very unusual word.

It's epiusio, which means like into your existence.

You're praying for the food that gives you your very existence.

It's a reminder that you are so frail.

So frail.

If God doesn't feed you, you don't have life.

You're so weak.

This is why prayer is foundational.

We are dependent creatures by God and we need his help.

Another reason to pray is because it helps us hold on to the Lord so tightly.

Somebody once wrote C.S.

Lewis a letter asking him why you should pray for your daily bread if God gives it to you anyway.

And the person kind of sarcastically asks, Isn't that one of those non-falsifiable things Christians say?

Like you pray for daily bread, great, you get it, prayer works.

You don't get it, you must not have prayed.

And the, you know, and the it's non-falsifiable.

And Lewis writes back a very perceptive answer because C.S.

Lewis has a gift of looking at things from the opposite side in a way that, you know, it's true, but you're looking at from underneath.

He writes back, quote, happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans lightly and works from moment to moment as to the Lord.

Notice that it is our daily bread that we are to pray for, not our long-term goals.

So he takes an opposite point here.

Jesus doesn't say, pray for your retirement.

He doesn't say pray for your inheritance that you'll receive from your parents that you'll give to your kids.

Jesus is not saying every day, pray for the long-term thing.

He's saying, pray what's for what's immediate, what you need every day.

Now, of course, Lewis isn't saying, don't pray for those long-term things.

He's just pointing out a fact that's easily missed that the middle of this Lord's Prayer, Jesus is teaching us to pray for the things you need every single day.

Because that makes you happy.

It makes you hold on to the Lord tight.

Here's the way I would say it: hold on to the Lord tight, hold on to the future loose.

And by praying for your daily food, it helps you hold on to the Lord tightly.

I mean, this is so helpful to have prayer in your family.

And this is why at mealtimes is just a great time to pray.

You as a family will be eating together.

So pause and pray.

And talk about the Lord around the table.

Talk about things you're reading in the Bible, talk about spiritual lessons.

You know, it doesn't have to be overly structured here.

You don't have to have an agenda for every meal.

But it's helpful to have conversations about the Lord.

The Lord doesn't eat.

He doesn't need food, but you can invite him to dinner anyway.

And you can have conversations about him, and you can start by praying.

I had somebody point out once that Deuteronomy says, pray when your belly is full.

Okay, pray before the meal and after the meal, both.

Pray.

Another reason to pray.

Very, very practical.

This is the most practical reason.

Because food tastes better that way.

Food tastes better when you're thankful for it.

And that's true with all of life.

You see this lesson basically, you learn it at first with little kids who they're presented with a new meal and they don't know that what the meal is, they don't like the meal and they cry about the meal, and blah.

And over time they learn, like, oh, I actually do like that food.

And then they're excited for it.

They walk in the house and they recognize the smell and it becomes one of their favorite meals.

They're eager for it.

The food did not change.

What changed is their excitement for it, their gratitude for it, and suddenly it tastes better.

That's true with all of life.

Things that you experience in life taste better when you are thankful to the Lord for them.

An ungrateful person has a sour taste in his mouth.

Proverbs 15, verse 17 says it this way.

Proverbs 15:17

I love this verse.

Better is a dinner of herbs with love than one with a stalled ox and hate.

So a stalled ox doesn't mean he ran out of gas.

A stalled ox means he's in the barn over there.

You've got a nice fat ox.

Would you rather have that for dinner or a side salad for dinner?

Now here's the catch.

The side salad, you'd have it with your family.

You'd have it with people you like.

The fattened ox, you'd have it with people you hate.

Which meal do you want to go to?

You want a Thanksgiving dinner with people that bug you, or do you want, you know, fast food with your family?

And this is the answer.

It's herbs with love over the Thanksgiving turkey with enemies.

That's the nature of food.

You pray for your daily bread, and the Lord provides it.

And that has an effect on your heart.

Proverbs 30 says this way give me neither poverty nor riches.

Feed me with the food that's needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, Who's Yahweh?

Lest I be poor and steal.

So Solomon says, pray in this way.

Pray that God would give you just enough food that you would be okay in life.

And of course, again, this is a metonym for all of life.

It's not just food, it's just your resources.

Pray that God would give you enough resources to make it by.

If he gives you too much, you'll think that you're responsible for all this.

You're not.

Everything you have is a gift of the Lord.

And if he gives you too little, you might be tempted to steal and profane God.

And so pray.

The solution is to pray.

So first, you pray for your daily bread because God hears prayers.

Secondly, because God gives good things to people.

And thirdly, because God gives his son.

God gives food, God hears prayers, and thirdly, God gives his son.

Prayer is designed to bring you into relationship with God.

The food is designed as a reminder that you are a sinner in a frail body.

Now I know fruit initially, remember, back in Genesis 1 was the things on the vines, and they were given to you because they taste good.

That had nothing to do with sin.

That just had to do with God's generosity.

But that wasn't bread.

Bread does not grow on trees.

It comes from trees, but it does not grow on trees.

If you see a loaf of bread going on a tree, something is wrong with that tree.

It takes work to make bread.

A lot of work.

Think of all the work that goes into a sandwich, grinding the wheat and making the bread and however the lunch meat comes from.

I don't even want to talk about that.

A lot of work goes into a sandwich.

The first use of bread in the Bible is Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Not one, not two, but three.

And if you are familiar with the Bible, you know that Genesis 3 is significant because that's when sin enters the world.

Bread comes in with sin.

And it comes in this way.

God says, now because you sinned, it is going to be hard work to make bread.

By the sweat of your brow will you get your bread.

Did Adam and Eve even know what bread was at that time?

Probably not then.

It would take him a couple hundred years to figure that out, probably.

Cain seemed to have figured it out.

You get the grain and you gotta grind it, and maybe they ground their first grain, and like, well, that tastes gross, and they put it on fire.

They're like, better.

And then it rains, and oh, bread.

Somebody write that recipe down.

It just took some work to invent, and then some work to make.

Bread is a reminder that we are sinful.

And God, of course, will give us bread, make give mankind bread, but bread is representing our relationship with the Lord.

And you see this play out throughout the Old Testament.

I said earlier that God made the world designed to give food.

The world is supposed to give food to people.

Well, there's some obviously exceptions to that.

If you're out in the wilderness of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, or you know, where Egypt and Jordan and uh Israel and Saudi Arabia all kind of joined that whole massive wilderness out there, that place doesn't give food.

You can look as far as the eye can see, there's no plants anywhere.

There's nothing that grows out there.

And that's where God brought the Israelites.

And when he brought them there, he gave them food from the ground.

Manna came up every day for them in the wilderness, and they ate the manna, and the manna was only good one day, got maggots in it the second day, except on Friday.

Friday's manna was good for two days.

And God's designing the whole calendar that way, so they learned that the manna points them to worship.

Food points them to worship.

Six days of food, that seventh day is a day of worship.

God still feeds them, He gives them the manna for their worship, He fuels the worship.

Hard to worship God with the grumbly tummy.

I know that.

You're thinking that right now, but stay with me.

Manna was designed to point them to God in the way God provides himself.

So that they would learn.

They're in the wilderness for 40 years as they're getting the Torah.

They're supposed to learn that man does not live on bread alone, but instead by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

God gives people bread, but he does not give them bread alone.

He also gives them his words, which point to himself.

And you are supposed to value his words over the bread alone part.

Jesus makes this point so clear.

Jesus comes to earth.

God in human flesh, God takes on the Son of God, takes on a human nature, becomes a true human being, and lives his life on this planet and lives a sinless life.

He never ever sins.

And then he uses his sinlessness as a platform to teach the people about a right relationship with God.

And he tells them that he is the bread of life.

And he's not subtle about this.

Let me put this on the screen.

John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

This is Jesus' teaching.

He says, Truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, speaking of the wilderness wanderings, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.

So he says, You're all obsessed about the manna.

Keep in mind, this conversation with Jesus in John 6 is happening in the plains of Galilee.

They've got wheat growing around them.

Remember, wheat doesn't become bread.

They're hungry out there.

Wheat becomes bread, but it doesn't, you know, you've got to work at it.

They're hungry out there listening to Jesus teach.

They're concerned they don't have food out there in the wilderness, and Jesus tells them that he is the true bread, and they're obsessed about manna.

Jesus is reenacting the manna.

They're out in the wilderness, and he is saying, I'm the bread that God gives you.

The bread of God is the one who comes from heaven, not from the earth in the wilderness, but from heaven right here.

And he gives life to the world.

And they hear that.

And they said to him, sir, give us this bread always.

They're listening to Jesus and saying, okay, we want that bread.

We want that manna that never grows rotten.

The old manna, that was 24 hours.

This manna you're talking about, that's forever.

And Jesus says, I am that bread.

I am the bread of life, he says.

Whoever comes to me will never hunger, who never believes in me will never thirst.

Do you get what Jesus is doing here?

He's saying, You are so concerned about the daily bread.

I am something more important than that.

Now, this is not pitting the physical against the spiritual, as if God only cares about the spiritual and the physical.

Oh no.

This is Jesus using the physical to catapult to the spiritual.

He's saying, of course, bread is important.

That's why God gave it to you in the wilderness.

Of course, bread's important.

That's why it's a metaphor here for himself.

He is the word of life.

And they didn't understand.

They went away angry at him.

Angry because he wasn't feeding them.

So Jesus, if you remember, cuts across the lake.

He goes off from there on the lake, cuts across the Sea of Galilee, and they ran around to the other side and ambushed him there.

And Jesus says, What are you doing?

They say, We want you to, you know, remember he miraculously fed them the day before.

They want more of that food.

And Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

Don't you understand?

And he gets in the boat, and that's when he leaves Israel, by the way.

He gets in the boat and goes to the decapitus, leaves the Jews at that point to go to the Gentiles.

Do you remember the conversation on the boat?

This is one of the craziest conversations of the Bible, Matthew, or Mark chapter 8.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

They're sailing after all of that.

They're sailing on the boat.

And the disciples look at each other and start grumbling that they forgot bread after all that.

Because they weren't expecting to leave so suddenly.

Now they're on the boat across the Sea of Galilee.

It's what going to be a couple hour boat ride max.

And they're grumbling that they don't have bread on the boat after all that just happened.

And so Jesus hears them.

It's a small boat.

Jesus hears them and says, I'm sorry, what?

What are you talking about?

They said, We don't have bread.

And Jesus says, You need to beware of the bread of the Pharisees.

That'll kill you.

And they say, We don't have any bread at all.

Like they're saying, the bread of the Pharisees sounds good to us right now because we're hungry and we don't have any bread at all.

And this is where Jesus has like a messianic meltdown on them.

Mark 8, he says, How is it possible that you don't understand?

It becomes pop quiz time.

He says, A few days ago, when I fed 5,000 men, did anybody go hungry?

After that, when I said fed 4,000 people, was there food left over?

How much food was left over?

It's pop quiz time.

He's saying, How many baskets did you pick up, Peter?

How many did you get, Andrew?

You had so many baskets left over.

And now you're saying you don't have any food?

Let me read it exactly so you don't think I'm exaggerating.

He says, How is it possible you're talking about that you have no bread?

Do you really not yet perceive or understand?

Are your hearts that hard?

He asks them.

You don't want to be asked that question by Jesus.

Are you that stubborn?

How's it possible?

You have eyes, Jesus says, and yet you're not seeing this.

You have ears, but you're not hearing me.

Do you seriously not remember when I fed 5,000 people?

What's the lesson from this?

He ends it by saying, Do you see yet?

Do you understand yet?

And they don't they don't answer.

They just got dressed down by Jesus.

They they don't have any answer.

The bread of life is given to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

You need daily bread to live your life.

Pray for that.

And God gives it to you because he's so generous.

But he gives you something so much more important than that.

He gives you himself.

Jesus Christ is the bread of heaven who comes to earth to forgive you of your sins.

Who dies on the cross bearing the penalty for your sin.

Who, as he goes to the cross, says, This is my body given for you.

So that you can receive Christ through faith and have your sins forgiven.

This is my blood shed for the forgiveness of many.

So you can put your faith in Jesus Christ and have your sins washed away by the blood of Christ.

Not literally washed away by the blood of Christ, but the idea is that his death is the punishment for your sin.

So you can have forgiveness of sins, so you will never die eternally.

You will, of course, die physically.

Physical bread will run out and you will die physically and your body will go into the grave, but your soul will never die if you've eaten the bread of life.

If you have faith in Christ, his blood forgives you of your sin.

Though your body die, your soul will be with him forever and ever.

That's the bread of life.

So much better than the manna, so much better than the bread he multiplied in the wilderness, so much better than the daily bread that he gives you.

Pray for daily bread.

You need to eat.

I understand that.

But that can't be what drives your life.

You have to be driven by the bread of life who is our Lord Jesus Christ.

God, we're thankful that you have given us yourself, the person of Jesus Christ, who is the bread of life, came from heaven to make his dwelling among us, who offers salvation for all who would believe.

I pray for people here today and now that maybe have never placed their faith in you.

I pray that today they would give their lives to you, our Lord and Savior, that we confess their sins and receive Christ.

We know that three days after you died, you were resurrected, showing that you are the resurrection life.

You're not just the bread of life, you're the resurrection in the life.

So whoever has their faith in you, though he tastes death in this world, will not taste death in the next.

God, we're thankful that you gave yourself so that we can live.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.