March 29, 2026: Give Us Our Daily Bread - Matthew 6:11

So we think about the importance of Palm Sunday in the entrance

of our King Jesus into Jerusalem.

We continue to learn this day about the prayer that he taught

us to pray. Our King of Kings were crown of

thorns, and he will return wearing his crown, and every

knee will bow, and every tongue confess his name.

But this is our future hope and something we long for.

In the meantime, we pray together.

As a mode of review, we can see where we've been so far in this

series. We've talked about the address,

talked about our Father. This is a term of intimacy and

care and love. Our Heavenly Father who is able

to do all that we can ask and more.

We have talked about the first 3 petitions of the Lord's Prayer,

which are all God centred and God focused.

And by beginning with who God is and by praying for his

priorities, for His name, for His Kingdom and for His will, we

focus our hearts and minds and calibrate them with our Lords

and, and, and enter into a posture of prayer.

Now we are ready. Now we're ready to present our

needs and our requests that affect our daily life.

Very important to consider as we move into this second table,

this lower part of the prayer, and begin our petitions to

remember to whom we are praying, our heavenly Father.

And as we continue to go through this text, we'll just consider

what this means for us to say to Him.

Give us today Our Daily Bread. I'm probably not the only one in

here that has experienced stress related to finances, maybe

economic stress. The text has in mind our

subsistence, our very basic needs.

Many of us maybe have not lived in deep poverty, wondering where

our next meal will come from. But many of us can relate to

some types of economic stressors, scarcity, that this

can cause worry in our hearts and create associated

temptations for us. What's going to happen in the

future? What if I lose my job?

What will I do for my family? Very, very real need that is

raised. That is addressed by this first

petition. In the second part of the the

prayer, as in previous week weeks, I'm asking question

first, what does it mean? As we look at our exposition of

the text, we're going to carefully look at each part of

the text and also look at the relevant associated passages

that are behind this prayer as it is almost like a syllabus of

theology that we will work our way through together.

First, you can look at the prayer and see that it's saying,

give us this day. Who are we praying to?

Again, we're going to remind ourselves that we're praying to

a Father in heaven, somebody who is able and willing to give us

everything that we need. And this is very important for

us to remember. Jesus is obsessed with this

term. Father in this section of

Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount Matthew, chapters 5 through 7,

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

he mentions the Father 15 times. You thought I was a repetitive

preacher? Throughout the rest of the book

of Matthew, the word Father comes up dozens of times.

Very, very important theological concept that Jesus wants us to

step into and live from. It's not just in Matthew, it's

in all the Gospels comes up over and over again.

And John especially, who is this Father?

What can he give us? And it's an important thing to

understand. He is the one that will give us

this day, Our Daily Bread. We can look at the near context

that some of these other occurrences of Father and think

about what it means right before the prayer in verses 7 and 8,

Jesus says this. And when you pray, do not keep

up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they

will be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need

before you ask Him. You don't have to pray like

those pagans who don't have a heavenly Father, who repeat

themselves over and over and over again.

You have a heavenly Father. You don't have to keep repeating

yourself like that with those many words.

He's listening and He knows very assuring thing to hear.

If you look over on my Bibles in the next page, Chapter 7 down,

verses 7 through 11 says this. Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to

you. For everyone who asks receives.

The one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be

opened. For which of you?

If his son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone, or if he

asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your

children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven

give good gifts, give good things to those who ask him?

So the prayer is framed by these beautiful images of a good and

kind and loving Father. This is the one to whom we pray.

What are we asking for bread? At first you could say, well,

literally we're asking for bread, the stuff that you eat,

not just bread, but all of your food.

You need food every day in order to survive.

And so bread stands in for all of the things that we need to

survive. Not just food, but water.

Not just food and water, but clothes and shelter.

Like the text that was read. But it can also and would make

the people who hurt him consider the feeding of the Israelites

daily with daily bread from heaven.

You see this, this day, Our Daily Bread.

It's going to make them think of their Old Testament stories.

Do you remember how the children of Israel were fed miraculously

every day, manna on the ground, They would gather it.

They would eat this bread fed daily.

Every day they are fed directly by God, by miraculous provision.

In this prayer, as we pray, it reminds us in some way that we

are fed by God in ways that are just as needy and just as

dependent. Give us this day.

Our Daily Bread focuses on one day at a time.

It reminds us that we're not praying for all of what we need

for our whole life, for a whole future, all those things that

worry us about our scarcity, but to take one day at a time,

praying daily for Our Daily Bread.

This idea, this bread, this daily bread.

Give us this day. Our Daily Bread would make them

think, as I said, of the children of Israel being fed

daily by God in the desert. But Jesus used that to refer to

Himself not only for physical needs, but for spiritual needs.

The text is in John 6, beginning in verses in verse 30 and

continuing. So they said to Jesus, What

then? What sign do you do that we may

see and believe you? What work do you perform?

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written.

He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not

Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father 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.

They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in

me shall never thirst. So the text in this prayer in

this petition has most particularly in view our daily

needs, literally our food and our shelter and our clothing.

But by extension, and we follow our Lord in making us think

about Our Daily Bread. I also refight referencing him

directly for our spiritual needs.

This is an appropriate way to think and interpret the prayer.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread.

Finally, let's look at these plural pronouns once more to

remember, friends, that we are not just praying for our

individual needs. We're praying for the church

families needs. We're praying for our

community's needs, which include unbelievers.

We're caring and praying for the world's needs.

Christians care about hunger. They care about alleviating

hunger in as much as we care about delivering spiritual food

in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and his person.

We also care about delivering to hungry bellies literal food just

as our Lord fed the multitudes. Give us this day Our Daily

Bread. Help them, Lord, help them.

Use me to help them. Question is then after we've

kind of looked at what this means, we can kind of think

through some practical ways to pray it.

How do we pray it? And as I've said every single

week, we're not going to lose sight of Jesus as we are praying

this prayer to our Father. We're going to pray through the

agency, through the name of the Son.

The only reason I can pray our Father is because I am in

Christ. The only way I can pray for Our

Daily Bread is because I've been given daily bread by the Bread

of Life. It was ever nourishing not only

my body, but my soul as well. And we can consider that we're

not only praying to the Father in the name of Jesus, we're

playing by the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is called living

water. You remember the story Jesus at

the well, this thirst that we have is not only a physical

thirst, it's a spiritual thirst. And Jesus says, if you ask me,

I'll give you living water and you'll never thirst again.

It's a reference to the Holy Spirit.

So when we come to praying this for praying to our Father

through the name of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, the living water

that is running like a river through our heart and our soul.

He intercedes for us. He groans for us with words that

cannot be uttered. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we

pray together, We pray together with the Holy Trinity.

We pray together as a church family as well.

But some practical things that we can consider as we go deeper

into the application of how to pray this, how it's going to do

surgery on our hearts and continue to form us into the

image of the Son by the Holy Spirit.

What does this prayer do to me? What does it do to you?

Well, first, it forces me. It forces me to consider

contentment. How do we pray it?

Hopefully with contentment. See, my friends, we have deadly

sins that are warring against our hearts and our souls, sins

of gluttony and greed. We have cares and concerns and

worries. And all I have to do is take you

briefly back into the Garden of Eden to just think briefly with

me for a second of what started this whole mess in the first

place. The slandering snake took a shot

at God himself, slandered his fatherhood.

God is holding out on you. There's more and it's delicious

and it's good for knowledge. And so even to her husband, with

him, Adam, instead of receiving a gift from the Heavenly Father

that they had all around them, everything that they could ask

for or imagine his good gifts from their Heavenly Father

instead, the one thing that's prohibited, the one thing that

it was specifically not given them for their daily bread, they

reached out and took. Animated by gluttony, animated

by greed, animated by believing a lie from the serpent that God

isn't as good as he says he is. And friends, this is living in

all of our hearts. We have greed that wrestles with

contentment, that's wrestling with gluttony.

That's our war in our heart and our soul.

And we need the Spirit of living God to do surgery on us.

As we meditate upon His Word and we think about our lives and our

Father, we can look at these words together.

Contentment has two sides, worry on one side and greed on the

other. The text says do not be anxious

and talk about that for a second.

Some people actually have like a clinical level of anxiety.

When you reassure them and tell them it's going to be OK, it

actually backfires and gets worse.

They need a special type of care for the rest of us who are not

dealing with that levels of anxiety.

The rest of us have worry. We have anxious thoughts that

are not clinical. They need to be reassured and

these texts are so reassuring as we consider our Father providing

for our daily needs. Listen to what it says.

Look carefully Chapter 6, verse 31.

Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat or

what shall we drink or what shall we wear?

For the Gentiles Seek after all these things, and your heavenly

Father knows that you need them, but seek first the Kingdom of

God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added

to you. The Lord wants people, even

people who are living hand to mouth or paycheck to paycheck,

to be living with a sense of security in the Father's

provision. He's talking about an old theme.

Look with me at Proverbs 30. Sorry, this is what we just

read, Proverbs 30, verses 8 and 9.

Proverbs 30:8

The writer of the Proverbs recognizes that it's spiritually

dangerous to be too poor, because you're going to be

tempted to do things, even to feed your own family, like

steal. But it's also spiritually

dangerous to be too rich. There are hazards on both sides

of the road. So he asked Lord, just just put

me in the middle. Just put me, put me right in the

middle. Look what he says.

Give me neither poverty nor riches.

Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full

and deny you and say, who is the Lord?

Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

There's something good about the middle.

There's something that helps us to trust the Lord with a certain

amount of scarcity. So we continue to pray and mean

it. Give us this day Our Daily

Bread. So we're observing and aware of

the people who are in greater need around us so that we can

help them as well, which we'll get to.

But on the other side of this worrisome problem, there's a

greed problem that I already talked about.

And I just want to ask you some kind of surgical questions for a

minute, because greed and gluttony can kind of be hard to

notice. You think that it applies to a

certain type of eater or a certain type of rich person, but

it actually applies to all of us.

Hone in particularly on greed. These are questions, diagnostic

questions that help us ask whether or not we're struggling

with greed. Friend, do you find giving

difficult? Does tithing seem like a waste

at Christmas? Do you struggle with your

attitude when you're buying gifts?

When you go out? Do you hate tipping?

Do you have excessive tax angst? No, it's that time.

Do you spend inordinate amounts of time shopping and browsing?

Do you feel dissatisfied with your own possessions and long

for the day when we'll finally have the money?

Do you feel a bit sad after you go to a richer community and see

nice things that you can't afford?

Does it make you feel sad inside?

Do you size up potential dates based on their wealth,

appearance, or actual? Do you size up the people around

you based on their wealth, appearance or actual?

What comes out of your mouth? What do you love to talk about?

Salaries, price tags, stuff, deals.

Are you tempted to spend money that you don't have?

Are you overly concerned or worried to the point of

suspicion about getting ripped off?

Are you worried or suspicious or concerned about becoming

unemployed or having too low in an income or having to shop at

resale stores with those people? Do you hate the rich?

Are you personally proud of your own frugality and your own

stewardship when other people would just describe you as kind

of tight and stingy? Are you tempted to cut corners

to save money? And would you rather have your

husband or wife work a bunch more jobs in order to have a

higher standing of living than spending that time together with

your children? It's all kinds of ways that

greed can kind of hide in our hearts.

And we push against that when we pray.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread.

The Lord pushes against it. The Holy Spirit animates our

affections and rekindles our thoughts towards Him and his

riches so we can look up and have a different type of frame

all together, hopefully with contentment.

Contentment. But lest we think that praying

this prayer means that we should just sit back and relax and let

the food just sort of fall into our mouths, I'm ready.

Lord me, me, that the Lord is somehow recommending some sort

of passivity. Then we have another deadly sin

we have to deal with, which is the deadly sin of sloth.

When Jesus says consider the birds, they don't labor or spin.

He's not telling you to do nothing, not even telling you

to, that you should never save up your money or prepare for a

rainy day. All of that is wise advice.

But when it becomes obsessive, when we're kindled with fear and

worry, that's what he's pushing back against.

And he wants us to be working appropriately with diligence, to

provide for our needs and for those around us with diligence.

Look at this text from Ephesians chapter 4, verse 28, which is a

Ephesians 4:28

text I'll actually use for this and the next one because it's

two parts. Let the thief no longer steal,

but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands.

Be diligent, friends, work hard. That's one way the Lord provides

for your daily bread through your job.

However, not everyone can have everything that they need, and

it's up to those who have to share with those who don't.

Let's be honest and let's be generous.

How do we pray this prayer? We pray not only with

contentment and diligence. We also pray with benevolence or

with generosity. Remember the second part of that

text? Let the thief no longer steal,

but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands.

Why? Purpose statement?

So that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Perhaps you yourself don't experience a lot of scarcity,

but we live in a county that's in the bottom 10% of all of

Indiana for food security. As high as 18 to 20% of people

in Grant County don't have what they need, food insecurity.

How are we going to, as people who have more, share with those

who have less? Well, one way that we can do

that is to be aware of the needs and be aware of the mechanisms

in our community to help with those needs.

I'm very, very glad and thankful that here at UCC, we have a

partnership with Helping Hand and once a month on Communion

Sunday of all times, we remind people that we've got this sack

of a month program and you can you can fill it with groceries,

bring it to the church, and we'll make sure it makes it to

where it needs to be, that the food pantry shelves are stocked.

It's an important thing. I'm thankful for your

generosity. Also on Communion Sundays, you

see the elders collect a benevolence offerings, usually a

cash offering of some sort because they're aware of needs

even within our church family and people who don't have

everything they need or they come across a hard time, so

thankful for their wisdom and their care and to distributing

those funds because that is gospel work.

And one way this prayer is actualized when we pray give us

this day Our Daily Bread. It's that the Lord uses us to do

that for folks. We get to be his hands and feet

and it's like Jesus feeding the multitudes.

It's beautiful. It's also important to think

about this benevolence, this generosity, reversing the stingy

heart. If you struggle with that, if

you struggle with that, that this, this giving can really

help reverse the polarity of your heart.

I struggle with this my whole life, and sometimes I still do.

Hard to do the tip at the end of the meal, hard to buy the gifts

at Christmas time. Doesn't feel like a happy thing

to do. I don't have a happy heart.

I don't have the cheerful heart that the Bible's talking about.

I remember. I remember a time after Deidre

and I were first married and we were so poor.

School loans, all the stressful bills and we were learning about

budgeting and how to handle our finances and setting up all the

lines and trying to do what the people told us to do to, to give

our money to the church. But also we had another line

which just had to do with benevolence, like helping people

in need that was separate from our church giving certain

amount. And so we're, we're doing the

budget and seeing the little numbers grow and all the little

lines and listening for needs. And we were able to help out a

few people. And then one time there was some

in there and we didn't know what to do.

And we were out to dinner on date night and say, hey, Deidre,

you know, there's some, there's money in that benevolence line.

We don't, we're not aware of any needs right now.

I've heard of people anonymously paying for other people's food

in a restaurant. What if we did that?

And for some reason, because the money was already designated, it

felt like fake money. It felt like Monopoly money.

And it changed my heart from feeling like this is really

hard. I don't want to do this.

Grumble, grumble, grumble too. Oh, who are we going to surprise

with a special secret gift today?

So we kind of scanned the restaurant and we look for the

table that had the fewest people sitting at it, that one.

And we we told our server as they came over, like, look, we

want to we want to pay for those people too, but they we don't

want them to know. Tell them, don't tell them who

we are. And I think, you know, I was

going to church it up. I maybe I wrote John 316 on a

piece of paper. I said Christians did this

server got a big smile on her face.

Dan felt a little less stingy. And when it came to tipping the

server, Why? I'm always trying so hard at

this math to make sure it's not. It's exactly 15% to the penny.

Get a calculator out. Why does that matter?

What if it was 20%? What if it was 30%?

I'm going to go to war with my greed.

I'm stingy and tight. It's mine.

Is it? Is it?

Give us this day Our Daily Bread.

So with benevolence. Benevolence, and may you enjoy

the joy of giving as an aspect of being a way, a conduit from

through which God's resources flow.

Jesus had compassion on the crowds.

He knew that their bellies were hungry.

And he said to his disciples, give them something to eat.

And they're like, but we don't have anything at all.

He said, well, what do you have? Well, that guy's got just this,

some bread and fish. He's like, give it to me.

He takes the bread and fish and he gives thanks and he says,

pass it out and you know what? And multiply it and multiply it

again and again and again and again and again and again and

again. Take that, disciples.

That's what I think about your scarcity mindset.

Live with benevolence. My last with is with gratitude,

and you're going to hear Pastor Dan talk a lot about gratitude.

It's at the center of the Christian life.

This thankfulness is like a well inside of your heart that should

be brimming ever with praise. I know Saints like this.

So they're going through horrible health concerns,

they're going through all kinds of scarcity and yet, and yet

there's genuine Thanksgiving coming out of them.

And I, I don't have any way to explain it except for the gospel

of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that's flourishing in

their, in their heart, in their life.

And you seek to comfort them or empathize with their sorrow.

And you're trying to like do all the things as a good Christian

friend and they'll, and they'll just say stuff to you.

That's like, thank you. I appreciate your concern.

And it is hard. And I don't want to like ignore

the fact that this is really painful and it's a type of

suffering. But let me tell you something,

Dan, Jesus is with me in a way that I've never experienced

before in this part of the prayer where it says, give us

this day, Our Daily Bread. It means something different to

me than it did before because I'm experiencing need on a whole

nother level and I'm grateful. I'm grateful.

Interesting too. Gratitude also has a type of

delight embedded. And I want to show you this

text, and we'll get close to closing here.

Text from first Timothy chapter 4, verses 3 through 5.

1 Timothy 4:3–5

Paul here is pretty miffed about people in the local church that

are trying to be killjoyce with God's good gifts.

Cut it out. Don't do that.

There's people there who forbid marriage and require abstinence

from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving by

those who believe and know the truth.

For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be

rejected if it was, if it is received with Thanksgiving, for

it is made holy by the word of God.

Look closely. Oh, I'm sorry, you can't look.

Hopefully you're looking at your Bibles.

That's better for is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

It's the closest thing that we have to a proof text to why

people should pray before their meals to give thanks, right?

That you actually in some way make the food holy by having a

moment of gratitude with this prayer.

That's probably the text that that tradition's built on.

And it's super important as extension of the Lord's Prayer.

You're praying over your food. Give us this day Our Daily Bread

to be grateful. Lord, thank you.

I, I can't feed myself. I don't plant and sew and put

stock the shelves at the grocery store.

And here's this meal. Thank you Lord, thank you.

Receive it with Thanksgiving, receive it with delight and go

and try to find other people who you can help with their need who

very rarely experience such blessing with gratitude.

So those are our 4 hows. It's not an exhaustive list.

It's a list. Contentment against worry and

greed, with diligence against sloth, with benevolence, being

generous to those around us, and with gratitude, ever thanking

our Heavenly Father for His kindness to us, most

particularly in the gift of His Son, whom we will remember and

celebrate this Holy Week. So to conclude, our heavenly

Father provides everything we need one day at a time.

I've been concluding with an opportunity for us to pray

together the Lord's Prayer. When we get to the part about

sins or debts or trespasses, we've been saying trespasses.

If you don't know the prayer, it's OK.

You don't have to say it, but you can just listen.

But the rest of us, you may join me now.

Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy

Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our

trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever

and ever. Amen.