Sermon
Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread
May 29-30, 1999
Pastor Donald Sheley

It's nice to see you in God's house on this beautiful day. We've had a wonderful day in worship. And I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles and join with me in a passage of Scripture that we have been studying now for some time. It's the Sermon on the Mount. We're in chapter 6. We have come to the 9th verse, and we have, over a number of weeks, taken the Lord's Prayer and we've just simply covered it phrase by phrase. We decided that it's a prayer that all of us have said since we were little children, and sometimes it is only words, and we just determined that we're going to understand what these words really mean that we pray. And so in Matthew 6:9, "In this manner, therefore, pray: 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. And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Friday I picked up a newspaper and I noticed down in the left-hand corner of the front page was what was called US Snapshots, a look at statistics that shape the nation, and the subject was, going to a higher power. And here was the question, what adults would ask a god, spelled with a small g, or a supreme being if they could get a direct and an immediate answer. In other words, what would be the questions that would be upon the minds of Americans if they thought that they had an opportunity to talk directly to God, their supreme being, and He'd give them a direct answer. 12% of them said, I'm not sure. I don't know what I would do. I don't know what kind of question I would ask. 6% said that they would ask the question; how long will I live? 7% said that they would ask the question; is there intelligent life elsewhere? 16% said they would ask the question; why do bad things happen? 19% said that they would ask the question; will I have life after death? 

But here to me was the phenomenal statistic, 34% said they would ask the question; what's my purpose for being here? What's the meaning of life? Aren't you glad that as Christians that would be one question we wouldn't need to ask? We have found that purpose in Christ. And part of our relationship with our wonderful Lord is the privilege of prayer, and so we're going to talk about the phrase in our prayer today, because we've come to this phrase, Give us this day our daily bread. But we've gone through various Scriptures and each Sunday we've spent just a brief time talking about the subject of prayer as a general subject. We've learned a lot about prayer.

I'd like for you to go with me to Hebrews 11:6. And here's what the writer to Hebrews says. He's talking about the subject of prayer, But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarded of those who diligently seek Him. Now, our English translation falls short of the full expression of the original, for the verb in the text is not simply to seek nor is it simply to seek diligently, but if we could read the intent of the original language it would be, He is a rewarded of them that seek and search out to the very end, that push the dimension of prayer to the ultimate. That's the purpose, that's the person that God will honor and that God will reward when they pray. 

Now in Deuteronomy 4:29, "But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I think one of the observations that we have made over the last few Sundays, as we've talked about this subject of prayer, that in these prayers mentioned in the Bible there's an intensity, there's a passion, there's a crying out in depth and agony of soul. Oft times, dimensions of prayer that very seldom become a part of our prayer life. So, again, I'd like to take you to the Scriptures to give you some illustrations of men who sought and searched to the ultimate to get God's attention. 

Go with me first of all to Job 23. And Job, you know, has gone through a difficult time. He's lost everything, his health, his family. He's going through this difficult trial of faith, and as the result, three people have come to be his supposedly comforters. Most of the time they're just his criticizers. And so he's responding now to one who has addressed him in this pitiful condition, and here's what Job says, Job 23, Then Job answered and said: "Even today my complaint is bitter; My hand is listless because of my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, That I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him, And fill my mouth with arguments. I would know the words which He would answer me, And understand what He would say to me. Would He contend with me in His great power? No! But He would take note of me. There the upright could reason with Him, and I would be delivered forever from my Judge. "Look, I go forward, but He is not there, And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; When He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him. A heart crying out for God. God, if I only knew where You were. I would come into Your presence and I'd start the discussion, but he said I looked behind, I looked before, I looked to my side, I couldn't find Him.

Look at his next sentence. But He knows the way that I take; When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. I may not have found Him like I would have liked to. I may not have been given the privilege to come into His very throne, but this one thing I know, He knows me and He knows where I am, and when He has finished the testing I'm going to come out as pure gold. A man who pushed his prayer to the limit where he had to come to the conclusion, God was still sovereign and all that was left to him was to trust God as He worked with him. 

Go with me to Genesis 3 in your Bible. And here's the story of a man by the name of Jacob. Now Jacob had been away from home for 20 years. You remember he cheated his brother out of his birthright. A birthright was that privileged position of the oldest son where he got twice as much as any other children in the family, plus the privilege of being the head of the home. And Jacob had robed that from his brother Esau, and Esau was angry. And as a result, Jacob ran away and he's gone for 20 years. He's been blessed. He has family now. He has vast herds, but God says to him, Jacob, it's time for you to get back home. And so Jacob knows even though he's got his family and all of his herds with him, he knows the day will come when he's got to meet his brother Esau face to face, and sure enough, he heard that he was coming with 400 men. Jacob knew that he was at a point of great decision. So what he did. He took his family and put them in a place of safety beyond the brook, and he decided this is the night we're going to settle this. God must not only change my brother, but He must change my situation. He knew his life could have been taken. 

Now I'm at verse 24. Let's read the story together. Then Jacob was left alone. You remember now his family is on the other side of the brook. He's left alone. And a Man. You notice the word Man is capitalized? So it's a personality. That Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Who was that Man? It was the angel of the Lord. Now when He saw that He did not prevail. In other words, the angel realized He was loosing the battle, because old Jacob wasn't going to give up. As a result He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said to Jacob, "Let Me go, for the day breaks." And old Jacob said. "I will not let You go unless You bless me!" I don't care if the sun is coming up. I'm going to hang on till You do something for me. I'm not letting You go. And it says that He said to him, "What is your name?" He said my name is Jacob. Jacob meant deceiver, conniver, cheat. That's what he was. 

And oft times the man's character was represented by his name. And thus, He said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. That night God changed Jacob. He made a new man out of him. He said no longer will you be called the conniver. Israel means you'll be a prince with God. Then Jacob asked Him, saying. "Tell me Your name, I pray." And He said, "Why is it that you ask about My name?" And He blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: "For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Just as he crossed over Penuel the sun rose on him, and he limped on his hip. Old Jacob never forgot that night where he wrestled with God. He took prayer to its ultimate and said, God, You're not going to leave me until You do something for me, and the rest of his life he hobbled on a hip out of joint ever to remind him of the prayer that he took to the limit. 

Go with me to another one. It's Genesis chapter 18. These experiences of men that wrestle with God and prayed intensely fascinate me. You'll notice the story is the story of Abraham, and Abraham has learned the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed. Two cities of sin. And now I'm at verse 20 in Genesis. And the Lord said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, "I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know." Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near. It's the picture of a man getting ready to do serious business with God in prayer. 

Now listen to it. What a prayer. He says, "Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? "Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? "Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" That's Abraham talking to God. God, You wouldn't be so unjust as to kill fifty believers in that wicked city, would You? That's beyond You, God. You're the Judge of the universe and You're going to do right. So the Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes." 

Then Abraham answered and said. You see he's pushing this prayer. Those that seek Me to the end. Those are the ones that are rewarded. Abraham answered and said, "Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: "Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five?" So He said, "If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it." And he spoke to Him yet again and said, "Suppose there should be forty found there?" So He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of forty." Then he said, this is Abraham, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose thirty should be found there?" So He said, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." And he said, "Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?" So He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty." Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?" and He said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten." 

Do you get the picture of a man pressing God? And I'm sure there's passion beyond dimension that's included in this prayer. He did not want those cities to be destroyed, and he pleads with God. Fifty? If not fifty, forty-five? If not forty-five, forty? If not forty, then thirty? If not thirty, then twenty? If not twenty, then ten? Then God said, if there're ten, I'll preserve the city. Now to me I find this brings it to an exceedingly interesting sacred moment, because I ask the question, why did Abraham stop his prayers at ten? God is answering him. Why didn't he get to five? Why didn't he take it to two? He may have saved the city. But what you learn when you deal with God in intense prayer, you can only take God to a certain limit, and at that point, you learn to surrender to His sovereignty. Remember, we have learned and observed that people would pray, and God knew that answer would not be good for them, but He answered their prayer and they lived with the judgment of the answer. And in this matter of intense prayer, where you're dealing with something with such agonizing soul as old Abraham was, God, fifty, no, maybe forty-five, no, maybe forty, then thirty, then twenty, ten.

There's sometimes in the agony of our soul, we're dealing with an issue in our own lives and we come to that point where we know from now on it's time for us to let God take over. We can't take the prayer any further, because if we do, we may regret the answer. You say, Pastor, I don't know what you're talking about. Can you give an explanation? Yes, I can. For 38 years, folks, I've lived with an agony that I'll live with till I go to my grave. And I'll tell you about it. As a young minister, 38 years ago in this church, a lovely family, a husband and wife and three children. I loved those folks very, very much. They were strong. They were great encouragements to me as a young pastor, and one day he came to me and I noticed that there was a lump that was growing on the underneath of his skull. You could just see it there. The skin was beginning to... And he said to me, Pastor, he said, I have tumor of the brain. And he said, we're going to have to be going to the hospital. So he went to the hospital and they diagnosed it. I watched it as they tried to drain it, and finally they sent him home and gave him ninety days to die. 

And I remember going out to his house. I still remember the address. Gordon had come home from the hospital and I watched a man begin to deteriorate, and I loved him so much I sat out in my car one day and I said, God, if you'll give me that cancer, I would rather die and let him live. He's got three children and they need their daddy. God never answered that prayer, but I meant that. I meant that with all my heart. And I'd go there day after day and I'd watch this friend of mine deteriorate, and finally his tumor had gotten so possessive of his whole body, and he called me and he said, Pastor, I want you to bring along the communion because I think this will be our last time for communion. So I took the communion elements along with me, and I remember filling the cup, and then I tried to put it into his shaky hand. And I did, and I got the fingers around it, but as he's lifting that cup to his lips, the juice in the cup began to splash over his face. I'll never forget that. I was so torn inside. I walked out to my car and sat there for an hour or two and prayed. I said, God, You will not, You will not let this man die! 

I wish I had never prayed that prayer. I'll tell you why. God didn't let him die, but he lived as a man deficient of much of his mental abilities. He lived with an anger that was deep inside of him because of all of his inabilities. And this anger became part of the atmosphere of the home, and in that anger three children grew up to hate the God that he said he believed in. And I pray for those children every day. But I wish I hadn't prayed that prayer because maybe God, if that prayer had not been answered, he would have died, gone on to heaven and the children would have had an opportunity to grow up in a home of joy and peace and love. And I'll tell you the reason why that is so indelibly written across my mind and my heart, because that has been one of the lessons I learned early in my ministry. You don't push God, and demand God beyond the place of His sovereignty. And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, I resent these preachers who get on the air and tell you that you can tell God to heal you, and if you're not there's something wrong with you or your faith. That preacher is a liar. It's not true. 

God's going to heal who He wants to heal. He's a sovereign God. You don't demand God to heal anybody, and He's going to do what He wants to do. And there comes that place in your prayer where you say, God, not my will but Thine be done, and you leave it in His hands. And as soon as you do that, we've learned that then comes the moment of peace. You say, Pastor, I've never gone that far in my prayer. There will come a moment, there will come a time in your life, if prayer becomes intense and becomes agonizingly personal, you'll wrestle that deep with God. And it will mark you as it did old Jacob. He limped the rest of his life. 

Prayer, it's the profoundest experience that you and I can be involved in. It's heart to heart, face to face, with God almighty. Prayer is more than words. Prayer is more than just saying this particular prayer, Our Father which art in heaven. Praying is that agonizing with God with the matters that concern you deeply, your family, your own soul. Things that are deeply meaningful to you. That prayer that becomes very agonizing, that's where you take your prayer only so far to 10 then you stop and say, God, from here on it's in Your hands. Now we come to this prayer today, Give us this day our daily bread. And when we pray that, there are a number of things I want you to remember about this part of the prayer. First of all, to me it's an amazing thing that God, the Creator of all the universe, would be so interested in the little things that concern us, even our daily bread. 

I ask the question in my mind, why is it in verse 8 Jesus says, your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him? So I ask my mind, I say, if that's true then why is it necessary that I pray. If He already knows what I'm going to ask Him, why is it necessary that I pray? Maybe you've asked the same thing? So I went to the ancient writings of old John Calvin. He wrote a book 500 years ago called 'The Institutes Of Religion'. He was the great pastor of Genoa back in the year, I think, 1563. And old Pastor John answered the question for me. He said, but some will say, does He not knoweth how to monitor what our difficulties are? What is meat for interest? So it seems is some measure superfluous to solicit Him by our prayers as if He were winking or even sleeping until aroused by the soul of my voice. Those who argue this way attend not to the way of which the Lord told us to pray. It's not so much for His sake as for ours. He wills indeed it is just that due honor be paid Him acknowledging that all which men desire or feel to be useful and to pray to obtain, is derived from Him. But we pray for this reason, first of all, it is very much in our interests that we be constantly supplicating with Him. 

First, that our heart might always be inflamed with the serious and ardent desire of seeking, and loving, and serving Him as the sacred anchor of every necessity. Old Brother Calvin says the reason why we pray is that's God's way of communicating. It's that daily. It's keeping that ardent love relationship alive. Prayer is our channel to God. That's why we pray. Secondly, he says that no desire, no longing, whatever that we are ashamed to make Him the witness enter our minds while we learn to place all of our wishes in His sight. John says the reason why we pray, is when we're voicing our petitions we want to make sure that they are in harmony with His will. God allows us to hear what's on our own heart, and then He lets us to see that in the heart of God as it relates to God's will. And lastly, that we might be prepared to receive all of His benefits with true gratitude and thanksgiving while our prayers remind us that they proceed from His hand. The reason why we pray is we pray today, and tomorrow we rejoice with thanksgiving because of the answer we got. It's simply the way of communicating daily with God. That's why we pray. And it's not optional. Every Christian must pray. 

Now we come to this prayer. I want to just take three words today, give us daily. Let's take them. The petition begins with the word give. And as soon as I recognize that I'm now beginning to ask, I realize that all that I have, all that I am, all that I possess, comes from the hand of God. Now I'm arrogant if I think otherwise. In fact, old Paul talked to the Corinthians and he said, why are you so arrogant? You act as if everything you got, you did yourself. Why don't you admit that everything you got was given to you from God? You say just a minute Pastor. All right, we're here and we're alive and we breathe because there's oxygen in the air. What would we do if God turned off the oxygen tanks for about five minutes on this old earth? We'd all be nobody. So the very fact that the breath that we breathe is a gift from God, and how infrequently do we thank Him for it?

We complain about all the smog and the fog, but we don't thank Him for the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the sunshine that rains upon us. These are all gifts from a gracious God and if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have anything, ladies and gentlemen. And this first petition reminds me that I am totally, completely, dependent upon God and His grace, and I deserve nothing outside of His grace. Give. I think that what it does, it deals with our ingratitude, that first word because realizing that all that we do get comes from the gracious hand of God should fill our hearts daily with thanksgiving. Secondly, us, give us. No, you say, it's give me my daily bread. And no it doesn't say that. That's the way we pray it. Sit down at the table and we say, give me this day my daily bread. And this petition says just a minute there's no room for selfishness in this prayer. That's why Jesus said, give us. 

How big is the word us? It's as big as the world itself. And immediately when I pray this prayer, I realize that I'm a part of a world community that there are needs out there and sometimes my sufficiency can become the answer to someone else's need. For me to sit down and say at my dinner table and say give us this day our daily bread, I should stop right there and say, that us includes the neighbors down the street who've been without a job for three months. What have I done to alleviate their need? This is selfish for me to sit here at my table with sufficiencies, the cupboards full, and the refrigerator full, and I'm saying, give me this day my daily bread. When Jesus said, no, every time we see that plate of food, we should be reminded of our responsibilities to a hurting world. I watch people walk into restaurants and sit down, and as soon as the waitress gives them their meal, they jump into that like a bunch of pigs. And I almost get angry. I see you arrogant people. You didn't have the time nor the thanksgiving to lift your hearts and say, God, You're the giver of all good things. Thank you for this food today. We act as if we earned it and God had nothing to do with it, and yet He says, when you pray just remember your table is bigger than your front room.

You know what it does; it now opens up this whole area of generosity. I've always maintained it is absolutely impossible to be selfish and to be a Christian. You can't do it. You say, why do you say that? Go with me to a passage of Scripture I've referred to frequently. Matthew 25. I get haunted with this passage every time I read it, in the sense it makes me really look deep in my soul. Jesus is talking. He's about ready to go to the cross. Look at what's heavy upon His mind. It starts actually in verse 31 where it speaks of Him as the Judge of the nations. But let's come to verse 41. "Then He will also say to those. Well, let's go back to verse 40, "And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.' So it's the King, King Jesus who's talking. 

Look at verse 41, "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Well, who goes there? Look at the next verse. 'for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 'I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.' "then they also will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirst or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?" "Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." 

Who goes to hell? The selfish and the self-centered. Jesus made it very clear, didn't He? Thus, when I sit down at my table and I say, give us. It should immediately penetrate my soul, I have no right to sit at this table and be selfish with what I have when my sufficiencies could help someone else who has less than I have. You say is that Christianity? Ladies and gentlemen, that's Christianity and there's no room for selfishness at the table. You never pray, give me my daily bread. It's always us, and that us includes you, as far as I'm concerned, at my table. Daily. The word daily reminds us of the whole philosophy of Christian living. You say, what do you mean? Jesus said listen, why do you worry about tomorrow? I take care of the sparrows. I watch where they fall and I observe them, and if I watch over the sparrows, I'm going to watch over you.

The other day I was at a place up in the lake county and I noticed that all of these sparrows were there by the hundreds. I went to look and find their nest and I stood there and thought for a while. The God of heaven is watching these little sparrows, and He watches everyone that falls. Jesus said, look at, we only live a day at a time. Why do you take thought for tomorrow? Tomorrow has all the problems that it can handle. If you just live today, that's all that's important. And you know, I'm 67 years old, and I can't tell you how many years I've wasted worrying about what would happen tomorrow that never happened. I almost kick myself in the britches. Why do I waste so many days worrying about tomorrow when I could enjoy today, because I have found that 90% of what I worried about for tomorrow never happened, and I wasted a day worrying about it. Stupid me. But Jesus said we only live one day at a time. We have not guarantee of tomorrow. And as the result, all we have to ask Him for is today's bread. And God laid that out very clear.

Do you remember back in Exodus? The children of Israel had just come out of the land of Egypt, and as the result, they're complaining to God and saying God, I'm sorry God; we can't go shopping out here. There're no supermarkets. And verse 4 says that God said, all right, Moses this is what you tell them, we'll take care of it. We'll turn on the ovens here in heaven. We'll cook the bread. We'll deliver it right to the front door of the tents. And that's exactly what He did. The history of the nation where it says for forty years God daily allowed the manna to fall and the quail to come, daily. But there's something very interesting about that. You couldn't get greedy. You could never gather enough for tomorrow because if you did, when the day was over if you hadn't eaten all that you had gathered, it began to rot and stink in your tent. Of course, the day before the Sabbath they gathered enough for the two days. 

But God laid down the law teaching that whole nation, I'll take care of you, you're Mine. I'm your God, and one day at a time is all we need to be concerned about. You know, if we could only learn that. And that's why this prayer, give us this day our daily bread. We have a tendency to worry about what's going to happen five years, retirement, those are things we should plan for, but I mean, to worry about them, nonsense. And let me put in one sentence here. When it comes to January 2, 2000, it will be the same God on the throne who is on the throne December 25, 1999. You say, what are you saying Pastor? I'm asked all the time; don't you worry about 2YK, K2Y? I don't even know how to spell it. I say why? Why should I? I'm a child of God almighty, and He's my heavenly Father, and I don't care if all of the computers blow up and all the lights go out. It doesn't make a difference to me. He's going to take care of me, and I believe that. And I see all of these Christians getting so scared running off to the mountains. God have mercy on their unbelief. If you really mean this prayer, it's a day-to-day relation with an almighty God who has all the power of the universe, and He loves us intensely, and He'll take care of us. Do you believe that?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, somehow we're trying to grasp the meaning of prayer. We're exploring as many areas as we can, and we're trying to understand, to realize that prayer is much more than just words. It's a heart doing intense business that's going to count for eternity. Would You intensify our prayer life dear God? Some of us have been so lax. So lax, not concerned about so many things that really should be capturing our attention in the prayer closet. And as we pray this prayer, give us this day our daily bread, may we never forget that You're the source of everything, and that we have the Christian responsibility to share with others. You didn't teach us to pray, give me my daily bread. And then Father, forgive us for all the unbelief that plagues our life with fear because we are so worried about the things of tomorrow, the future, which there's not a thing most of us can do about it. Give us a contentment. Give us a peace. Give us a tranquility of spirit that the world will look on and know we have a wonderful heavenly Father caring for us. Thank you Jesus. And we said? Amen. God bless you folks. God bless you.