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7 The Provision of Prayer, Part 1
Matthew 6:11 Code: 2239
Turn in our Bible to Matthew chapter 6. We're continuing now after a break through the holiday season and the last couple of Sundays, we're continuing in our study of The Disciple's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, The Disciple's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6. May I read it to you again so that you'll have the setting for our thoughts this morning? Verse 9, "After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom Come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
Now our study this morning is going to concentrate on verse 11, a simple, familiar phrase, the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." The word bread opens up to us the simplicity, the commonness of this petition, and yet suggests to us a deep and profound meaning that demands our careful study. May I say this at the beginning this morning? I' m constantly being overwhelmed as I study this hour after hour, day after day, week after week, I'm constantly overwhelmed in the, in the depth of this prayer. Never in my life until I've done this series here have I ever really perceived what is in this prayer, in terms of s richness. In fact there was almost a resistance in my heart to ever preach this because it was such a masterpiece in and of itself, I, I didn't want to add any MacArthurism's to this profundity, it would be tantamount to, in my own mind taking a brush and fixing up a Rembrandt or getting a chisel and trying to help Michel Angelo a little bit with an angel he had carved, I would really be out of my league, and I felt a little bit the same way in wanting to approach an understanding of the Lord's Prayer, I almost felt like all I should do is read it and move on and let it speak in its own majestic simplicity. And yet as I thought about it there is a, there is such a power to it and such a presence in it and such a breadth that unless we perceive the fullness of what is here we will miss the simplicity of it, an so in a certain amount of ambivalence I have chosen to try to expand and analyze and enforce to your hearts the fullness of what this marvelous prayer really means. And we come here to what perhaps seems like the simplest of all, "Give us this day our daily bread," and we wonder if whether we need any thought about it at all and that only shows that we don't really understand all that's here, so let's approach it.
Thinking about bread kind of triggered my thoughts this week, I was reading in the newspaper about the fact that America trying to exert some pressure against Russia for her invasion of ... Afghanistan is deciding now to withhold billions of tons of grain from Russia, grain which was earmarked for the feeding of animals, animals which are earmarked for the feeding of people. And ah, because the grain production in Russia is down at least 20% and maybe more Russia is desperately in need of the grain that we can provide, not giving them this grain supposedly will have an impact upon them. It was interesting to me that we had that much grain to give away, or to sell, and as I began to examine this thought realized that we, we have more grain than we can possibly use, in fact if we don't unload this grain we don't sell Russia, it will drive the price of grain down so low that all the farmer's will go into a recession, we have so much surplus, and so the government I guess is going to buy the grain. Which means they will print more money and inflate all the rest of the money and we'll be in the same mess anyway but at least it'll spread it around and the farmer's won't have to bear the whole load. But we have so much grain. And as I was thinking about that, and there was an article in Time Magazine that I was given to read, I was aware of the fact that when you come to the statement, "Give us this day our daily bread," it may at first seem a little irrelevant to us. I mean when is the last time you prayed, Lord, I plead with You to provide for me a meal. I dare say your last prayer may have been more like this, Lord, please prevent me from eating another meal. Teach me self-discipline. Lord, I must lose weight. I not only have enough for me but several others. It does seem a little remote, doesn't it? I mean when is the last time we really got desperate about our food? You say, this, this message ought to be preached in Bangladesh or Cambodia or Sahara or somewhere but not in America ... this is irrelevant. But that only illustrates our lack of understanding of its marvelous truth. Do you know how much we have in America? Well, we have grain in America that is absolutely beyond our power to conceive, because of our technology, because of the richness of the soil, because of the sophistication of the machinery.
For example, we, we're not they're not working on uhm, new kinds of corn and grain, they are now tested in Mexico that recycle themselves and regenerate like grass does, that you don't even have to reseed them. Geneticists are now working on corn that will deposit back into the soil its own nitrogen and will save us something like 13 million tons of fertilizer which is made from natural gas and that'll save energy. They have now developed corn that grows with its ears instead of like this, like this and that means you can get them closer together and fields can double or treble their productivity. The equipment that we have, take for example one of the hundred thousand dollar monstrous combines can now spew out a hundred and eighteen thousand dollars worth of soy beans in a day, one of those machines. The U.S. crops, the result of near perfect weather and land and technology are beyond our imagination. Just to give you some idea of it, the corn alone would fill two million jumbo hopper train cars that would stretch thirteen times back and forth across the United States. And we have enough machines now, if they were all lined up wheel to wheel we could harvest Iowa in one day. And by the way, normally to harvest Iowa if you did it by human beings would take thirty one million people using sixty one million horses. Technology has given us incredible amount of productivity in terms of food. And to say, "Give us this day our daily bread," is a little remote, I mean I went shopping with my wife last night, and frankly there was bread adinfinitum adnauseam, in the store I was in, you could get any kind of bread in any color package you wanted. It didn't seem to me a major prayer request at the time. What does this mean to us then? What is this text saying to us? Or should we just preach a sermon and say, well you're going to have to imagine that you didn't have any and then if you can only imagine that you don't have any then imagine that you're desperate and imagine that you're praying for some. That's too unreal. Does this say anything to us? I think it does. Let's find out.
First of all you have to understand the context, the Lord is talking about prayer here because prayer is one of the elements of His kingdom, and Matthew, the whole Book presents Christ as King, all 28 chapters, chapters 5 to 7 present the characteristics of His kingdom or the standards of His kingdom or the principles of His kingdom, and one of those is prayer. And so Christ is presenting here the proper way to pray, the proper pattern for praying, and in this very simple prayer we have all of the necessary ingredients for prayer, if you want to pray accordingto His standard. And one of the elements of praying is to pray for our daily bread. Now that doesn't assume that we have it or don't have it, it's just there and we have to deal with it as it is. We need to know how to pray. Now in this prayer the Lord gives us a model for our prayers that is without equal in the Bible, and we've been through that, we've spent already six weeks on it and I don't want to go over and plow the same soil again but I do want you to know that this is a pattern for all your praying.
You know what I found myself doing whenever I pray, whether it's praying with the elders or praying at home or praying in the office' or praying ah, just wherever I am, driving, or with the Lord, or with somebody in a group or two people who are gathered, or whatever I find myself running my prayer along the skeleton of this passage, and touching base with each one of these principles, identifying with them it's ... and this is what I've prayed that God would make this the pattern of my praying so that my prayer would take on the character of Christ's prayer, and I hope that's happening in your prayer as well.But in this prayer we noted first of all two sections, the first one dealing with God, the second one dealing with man. The first one dealing with God's glory, the second one dealing with man's need.
First we saw three requests, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. (And) Thy will be done." And those focused on God and His glory; then we see three other requests focusing on man and his need, "Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." God then is the supreme issue here, and not until God is in the proper perspective can man pray properly about his own needs. Keep that in mind. First we see God's name, God's kingdom, God's will, and then we move to man's need. We cannot pray properly in regard to our own human situation until God is in the proper place. Now may I hasten to add this. That when we get to the second part of the prayer it doesn't set God aside, even though God is primarily exalted in the first half the second half all ... exalts Him also and does not set Him aside. For example, the fact that God gives us our daily bread, forgives our debts, and leads us not into temptation is an expression of His power and His grace. So God is brought to earth as it were, in the second part, now note this, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done (where?) in earth, as it is in heaven." How does God hallow His name, bring His kingdom, and do His will in the earth? By giving us our daily bread, by forgiving us our debts and by leading us in our lives. In other words it's as if the second half brings God into human life, brings God into the earth, brings God into human existence, so that these two are contiguous. It is not that the first three butter up God, the first three sort of flatter God and then we really lay it out as to what we want for our own sake, no. We are saying, God, glorify Yourself in our daily provision, God, glorify Yourself in our constant forgiveness, God, glorify Yourself in the leading and the directing of Your Spirit in our lives. God, be on display in Your world, that Your kingdom may come to earth. So it is not a setting aside of God, in any sense. Prayer is not buttering up God and then demanding certain things from Him.
My heart is continually grieved today in this movement in Christianity that goes about demanding things from God. A lady sent me a booklet and she said, You don't ... I don't think you understand the true resource we have in prayer, please read this booklet, and the booklet just goes again and again along this line of we have a right to demand things from God, because of who we are. That isn't the point of prayer, at all. We are to give God the privilege and opportunity of revealing His glory through the meeting of the deepest of human needs. But it is because we want God to be on display, not because we make demands on Him for our benefit. If prayer becomes man-centered and prayer becomes self-centered and prayer becomes selfish in any sense it ceases to be the kind of prayer our Lord said should be characteristic of His kingdom. And yet so many people approach God that way. We approach God in prayer to get something for us rather than to allow Him to glorify His name, and that's where we get confused. We plead with God for what we want, and when we don't get it then we begin to question God, whereas if we just allowed God the right to make the choice as to how He would reveal His glory no matter what He did we would then say, so let it be for Your glory, if that's what You choose as the avenue for Your majesty so let it be. But when we become self-centered in our prayers then we become questioning of God and then that is a serious sin. And we are pragmatists in our society, we, we are vending machine operators, we stick a quarter in and we want a product, for ourselves. And so consequently we treat prayer that way, in fact we treat a lot of things that way.
I think about giving so often, some people I know give in order to get, they heard a sermon that if you give to the Lord He'll return, press down, shaken together and running over, if you give to the Lord He'll give you back so many fold, and that's true, that's not why we give though, that's God's choice to do it. Why we give is that so that He can be glorified in His response no ... not so that me can get. It's like the lady who sent $5.00 to Bishop Sheen, and the next day she got a check for a hundred dollars in the mail, she won a contest. She told her young boy, she said, it's so wonderful, giving really works. Ah, to which her son replied, well if it worked so well the first time why don't you put the hundred back on Bishop Sheen and see what happens. It's like betting on a horse. You put a hundred dollars on Bishop Sheen. One writer says, if all the testimonies uttered during annual stewardship drives were to be believed tithing would be commended for its profit and taught as an investment principle in business administration courses. Now I think we do the same thing with prayer a lot of times too we, we use prayer as a way to get rather than an avenue for God to gain glory which is what John 14:13 says it's for.
Now let's look at the three petitions that give God opportunity to glorify Himself. First of all "Give us this day our daily bread." Speaks of physical life, physical life. Secondly, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Speaks of the mental life, and we'll get more into that next time. Thirdly, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." Is the spiritual life. Bread, that's our physical life. Forgiveness, that frees our mind from the anxiety and the pain of guilt, and the burden of sin. And leading us and directing us away from evil is the spiritual direction. By the way, bread takes care of the present, forgiveness takes care of the past, and help takes care of the future. So all the dimensions of life are covered and all the needs of life are covered. It's amazing, the marvel, the, the wonder of how God's infinite mind can reduce all there is of human need to three simple profound statements.
Now listen beloved, this whole prayer is set up to glorify God, the whole thing. "Our Father, which art in heaven," that's God's paternity as we have seen. "Hallowed be thy name." God's priority. "Thy kingdom come." God's program. "Thy will be done," God's purpose. "Give us this day our daily bread." God's provision. "Forgive us our debts," God pa ... God's pardon. "Lead us not," God's protection. And finally God's pre-eminence, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. Amen." All of it is for God's glory, don't ever forget that if you never learn anything else from this lesson learn that all your prayers are for God's glory, all of them are. Do you know something? Even when you stick food in your face it's for God's glory not for your sustenance primarily, did you know that? That's why it says in First Corinthians 10:31, "Whatever you do, whether, you eat, or drink, do it all (what?) to the glory of God." You say, how can eating food be to the glory of God? It is if you know where it came from, right? It is if you remember the source of your food. It is if you remember the capacity that you have to enjoy the flavor. 'It is if you're thankful to the one who provided the nourishment in it. Every single thing is for the glory of God, everything, and prayer nonetheless is for His glory. And so we come then to this thought that no matter what we ask it is for His glory that we ask it not, for our gain. We're not badgering God to make Him change His mind for us.
David Meyers says in a book called The Human Puzzle, "Some petitionary prayers seem not only to lack faith in the inherent goodness of God but also to elevate in human kind to a position of control over God. God, the Scriptures remind us is omniscient and omnipotent, the sovereign ruler of the universe, for Christians to pray as if God were a puppet whose strings they yank with their prayers seems not only potentially superstitious but blasphemous as well. When prayer is sold as a device for eliciting health, success and other favors from a celestial vending machine we may wonder what is really being merchandised, is it faith or is it faith's counterfeit a glib caricature of true Christianity?" Elton Trueblood said, "In some congregations the gospel has been diminished to the mere art of self-fulfillment, egocentricity is all that is left. And boy there is so much of that today in Christianity, where prayer is simply an ego centered, self-fulfilling, self indulging exercise to try to elicit from God what I demand. That's not right. All ... these petitions here, though directed at our essential needs are ways in which God's glory comes to earth, and makes itself manifest. And so J. I. Packer says, "The prayer of a Christian is not an attempt to ... force God's hand, but it is a humble acknowledgment of helplessness and dependence."
So with the right perspective then let's look at this petition, for God's glory, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is a basic need of man, the term bread beloved means all of man's physical needs, it's a broad term; it is a prayer for the physical need of man to be fulfilled. And that's a, that's a very obvious thing, but in our society it's somewhat remote because we have so much, so much. What does it really say to us? Let's find out. First of all I want to ... we're going to go through five points, two of them this morning and then three I think next time. But I want you to get these 'cause they're so important.
First of all the substance. What is the substance here? It's bread; see it there in verse 11? Bread. But it isn't just talking about bread in terms of a loaf of bread, "Give us this day our daily bread." Is talking about the physical, you see mancan't even be a spiritual being unless he is a physical one, right? God has to begin with the physical. It thrills me to know that God, the God who is the God of infinite celestial epochs, God who is the God of space, God who is the God beyond time, the God of eternity, God who is the infinitely holy God of the universe who holds all the whirling worlds and the spinning stars in the palm of His hand, that same God cares that my physical needs are met, that same God is concerned with the fact that I have a, a meal to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to rest. It thrills me that that God, that infinite eternal God has come to earth in terms of His caring love, and is concerned that the needs of my life in a physical way and your life be met, and He even sets certain conditions for them being met, we'll get into that next week. But bread is all of that physical area. Martin Luther had it right when he said, "Everything necessary for the preservation of this life is bread, including food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, wife, children, good government, peace." End quote. He saw all of the physical elements of life, the necessities but not the luxuries of life. I don't think that we can ask God for the luxuries of life based on this verse, but for the necessities. What He chooses to give us by way of luxury is at His gracious hand. But He promises to give us the necessities. You remember back in Proverbs chapter 30? The prop ... the ... the ... ah, Psalm ah, Proverbs 30 written by Agur? And in verses 8 and 9 he says, Lord, don't give me so much that I forget You, and don't give me so little that I steal and dishonor Your name. Just give me food that is convenient for me. I ... think that's the heart of this. It isn't self-seeking, give me more and more and more and more, it's just saying, Lord give me what I need.
But you say, John in our life we don't even have need, we don't even need to pray this. Yes we do. Because, now I want you to get this, this petition for us while not the desperate cry of one who's starving, this petition ... by the way I believe there are ... there's a pro ... there are promises in the Bible that indicate if a person is righteous God will feed that person, God is not going to willfully withhold provisions of life from a righteous child, the Bible says. So God is going to provide this for anybody, in whatever situation they are if they're righteous, within the purview of His will. So that anybody really could say, well the Lord's providing for me, I'm righteous, why do I need to pray? So that the essence of the prayer is really an affirmation that all our substance comes from God, it is saying, God, I want to let You know that You I realize are the source of my life, my food, my shelter, my clothing. It is that constant affirmation. It's for example when I ask the Lord to forgive my sin and cleanse my life of something. Well why do I ask Him to do that? Hasn't He already promised to forgive my sin? Yes, but He also said to keep on confessing it. And when I say to the Lord, Lord, lead me and guide me in a certain direction, doesn't the Bible say He will be my guide and He will be my leader and He will guide me in this way and in that way? Yes, but He wants me to affirm that I recognize that leadership in my life. And sometimes when I call out to the Lord I say, Lord, hear my prayer and answer, and don't I know that He will and always has? Yes, but He wants me to affirm that confidence because that exalts Him. I may not have to say, Oh God, I don't have any food for my family, where is it going to come from? But I will ever and always say, God everything I have and all that I share with those I love comes from Your good and gracious hand. And so for us it is an affirmation of the source of everything. A precious thing it is to know that, that our God cares about our physical needs. So bread is the staple of life. And though we may not always be on the edge of hunger we are always to be thankful for all of it comes from Him.
Now that takes us to the second thought, the second feature of this verse. First the substance is bread, and secondly the source is God. And I just want to talk about that for a minute because I think it's important.
You know we tend to think that we provide everything for ourselves, I make my living, I earn my wages, I buy my bread, you know, what do I owe God, right I'm carrying my own load frankly. That's the way ... if we don't say that that's kind of the way we operate. For example when is the last time you said, Lord, for my daily bread I thank You, for the fact that I have food to eat and clothes to wear and a shelter over my head, I thank You, that I have a bed to rest in, that I have enough physical strength to know You, to perceive You, to live life, in a way that is rich and meaningful. Well, that's what He's after here. God cares about the little things, God is involved, God knows when a sparrow hops; God knows the number of hairs on your head, and everything there is in this world He knows and controls and orders, for us so that we are always to be thankful.
You know we live in a day, it's interesting that it's almost paranoid, people are so fearful that they're going to lose, they're going to lose their existence because of the pollution of the resources, right? We're afraid of, of nuclear reactors messing up our environment, we're afraid f polluting our seas with sewage and our rivers and lakes, we're afraid of overcrowding population, we're afraid of smog and air pollution, we're afraid of breaking up the ozone around the earth, we're afraid of polluting space with all of the garbage and metal that's floating around, we're afraid of polluting our bodies with chemicals, we are afraid of all of this and with all the money we have and all the resources we have man knows that he is the always on the brink of devastating his environment to the point where he has no resources. Which ought to drive him to the recognition that God upholds the whole thing. You know there's going to come a day in the Book of Revelation when God turns out the lights in the heavens, when God turns the rivers to blood, when God has the whole world go crazy, when the sea swallows up all of the ships and kills all the fish, when literal devastation sweeps the, the world. The sun goes black and the moon doesn't give its light, and all the resources are gone and in Revelation 18 the whole economic system collapses and music stops because there's no song to sing, and then it won't matter what you have, it won't be worth a nickel because none of it'll buy anything cause there won't be anything to purchase to preserve life. And man knows the potentiation of that. But man never makes the jump to the fact that if it weren't for the fact that God upholds all things by the word of His power, everything would fall apart.
You know that scientists realize that when all their calculations are done, andall of their examinations are done there is an unknown element in the universe that makes it all hang together in constancy and science doesn't even have a name for it. And it's God. Everything we have is from God. It is God who brings the rain to make things grow, it is God who cycles the seasons, it is God who produces the minerals in the soil to make the earth fertile, it is God who gives us the natural resources to propel ourselves around, it is God who provides for us the animals from which we make our clothing and the synthetics that come from petroleum, etc, etc, that once came from animals. It's God, who made it all. And so my daily bread, the necessities of physical life are all from God and so part of my prayer should ever and always be, "Give us this day our daily bread." God we recognize You as the giver of all physical necessity.
You know, just think about it from the food standpoint, we don't have time to go into everything but just think from the food standpoint. Go back to Genesis chapter 1 for a minute and look how God has given us food. Genesis 1:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Now listen here, God could have designed that we all just eat mud. Mud for breakfast, mud for lunch, and mud for dinner, all our lives and that everything was grey. But God is a God of marvelous variety, isn't He? I mean look around you there's none two of us alike, and the colors, and you go outside and the world of color is almost unending. And why would there not be the same variety in food? And so He says in 29 and here is the key, "I have given you every (every) herb bearing seed, every tree, every beast, every fowl, every thing that creepeth, every green herb. And God saw every thing, and said it's good." Good for food, good for men's physical life. God is a God who put into His world such an incalculable world of wonder and variety that ... and of course man corrupts this, doesn't he? And it becomes a fetish for him to eat in a variety of ways, but it's nonetheless the good gift of God to give us an incredible amount of variety in life, and it's all there. And God has wonderfully and graciously provided for us.
Now go from there over to First Timothy chapter 4 and I'll show you a comparative Scripture and tie the two together. In spite of what God has given, and by the way God did give special dietary laws to Israel but set them aside in Acts chapter 10 so they're no longer in existence but God did give them special dietary laws for awhile in order to keep them on a certain diet so they couldn't easily intermingle with the pagan nations and corrupt their purity, that was His design. But when Israel ah, stopped obeying and was set aside for the cause of the church then the dietary laws were also set aside according to Acts 10, Colossians also says the same thing, "Let no man judge you in those matters." But there are still people who come along and they want to draw lines and tell you you can't have this or you can't have that and you have that in First Timothy 4, somewho gave seducing spirits, and the doctrines of demons, come along and they say you shouldn't get married and you shouldn't eat certain foods. And we know there are some who believe that it's more holy to be unmarried and not to eat meat on certain days and that, and there are many ways that that has been illustrated in history. But it says, "God has created these foods, to be received with thanksgiving by then who believe and know the truth." God has provided this incredible world of food for us, to express our thanks to Him, we who believe and know the truth. The rest of the world just indulges itself without a gratitude at all.
Now look at verse 4, "For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it is received with thanksgiving; (now watch) For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." Now what does that mean? First of all, how are all these foods sanctified by the Word of God? Very clearly, in Genesis 1:29 to 31 God's Word said, it is all good. That sanctified it. Here the Word of God says, verse 4, "Every creature of God is good." And again the Word of God sanctifies it, so it is sanctified by the lord of God. Now how is it sanctified by prayer? When it is received (verse 3) with thanksgiving." Verse 4, "When it is received with thanksgiving." The Word of God sanctifies it and you sanctify it when you thank God for it. Do you really thank God for your food? You say, aw, listen we wouldn't have a meal without a prayer. You know those little quick things that are rather unconscious and indifferent and you just rattle them off to make sure the duty's done. Are you really thankful? Do you really see God as the source, of everything? Listen, God has given us a marvelous variety of foods, we should be so thankful, the foods have been sanctified already by the Word of God and they are doubly sanctified when you say thanks to God. When you are saying thanks to God for your provision on a daily basis to meet your physical need you are fulfilling the spirit of "Give us this day our daily bread." Realizing that God is the source of all of that, and beloved that isn't selfish is it, because that gives Him glory, doesn't it? Have you ever stopped to think about everything God's given us to eat?
Just, let me talk about that for a minute. Food is close to all of us, and we're all into that, obviously every generation has been it's an absolute necessity. But do you know the variety is amazing even in the Bible. I was just going through some verses to try to put together a little biblical menu for you so here it comes. First of all God has provided plant food. Now under the plant food there are several categories, first, grains, and if you study the Bible you'll find the fields of Palestine for example produced wheat, barley, millet, spelt, those are just different kind of grains, and then there's a term corn, and corn doesn't mean the Indian maize that we call corn it is simply a, a term, a general term for all of that kind of grain that was used ah, because that kind of corn that we have today wasn't even known in those days, it refers to cereal grains. So they had all these grains now according to Isaiah 3:1 and many other passages, they would take the grain, they would crush the grain, and ah, when it was crushed they would then make it into a flour, they would make it into bread and they made it into all kinds of different breads. This was very much a part of their life.
Another thing I found interesting was that they would take the kernels of the grains and they would leave them in the sun on a stone to dry and get them real parched and then they would salt them and that's what they had for snacks, kind of like you go in the health food store, you know, and they have all those little bags of that salted grains, you can buy soy beans or whatever, I don't know all that stuff but, it's ah, it's similar. They had their snack foods, their little crunchy stuff. They also had nuts according to Genesis 43:11 God provided nuts. Ah, also vegetables uhm, I found as I looked through the Scripture cucumbers, leeks, that's some kind of like an onion, melons, onions, garlics, beans, lentils, bitter herbs, mint, dill, cumin and then in Jeremiah 6:20 it talk about sweet cane which is probably sugar cane. And you know how much sugar means to all of us, to flavor everything we eat. That was made by the Lord, you have to remember that, in its natural state. Fruits also are apart of God's plant foods, we have in the Bible grapes, raisins, olives, figs, pomegranates, apples and then what Jeremiah and Amos call summer fruit and we're not just too sure what it is, and those may only be family names and there may be endless varieties of those. Then you come to animal foods that the Lord provided. And I'm just talking here about the land of Israel to say nothing of going all around the world, but in the animal foods you have first of all the flesh of animals that's provided for us to eat, there's nothing wrong with eating meat folks, it's not spiritual to be vegetarian. If you're a vegetarian and you prefer that, that's wonderful, that's fine. Ah, if you're a meatatarian and you just want to eat that all the time that's okay too, it's not a biblical issue. You're not more spiritual if you don't eat meat, but God has provided oxen, sheep, goats, ah, for Israel and their pork has even been provided though they were restricted from eating it ah, and that restriction has been removed in Acts 10 as I said. They preferred lamb if they had their choice, the Bible talks about the stalled ox, that was the ox they put in the stall and they didn't let them run around to get tough muscle they just wanted them fat and juicy, and that's ah, that's kind of like the fatted calf too, and they also had by the way in Deuteronomy 14:5 there's a list of seven animals that could be hunted for food, interesting. Fish, and they had four types of insects according to ah, Leviticus 11 that they enjoyed. Now I don't know how they served those insects. I've seen chocolate covered ants in a, in a store or something but I don't know maybe they had those real crunchy too and just threw them in with their nuts and stuff, I don't know. But ah, there was also, ha, you know, whatever turns you on, right? They also had fowl, ah, different kinds of fowl that they ate and you can study the Scripture and you'll find in First Samuel 26 they ate partridge, in Exodus 16 they ate quail, in Leviticus 12 they ate pigeons, in Genesis 15 they ate turtledoves and in Matthew you find chickens running around crowing from time to time and I'm sure they had a purpose for them as well. And so there were fowl provided by the Lord in an abundant array.
And then you go from animal products in flesh to the animal products that come through the, the dairy process, and you have milk. They actually ate ah, they actually ate byproducts of the milk, they hadwhat was called curds in Genesis 18:8 which is butter, they had cheese Job tells us, ah, they had eggs from chickens, they had honey, they had milk from the cows, from the goats, from the sheep, and they even drank camel milk which doesn't sound too interesting, but they did. I, I was in Egypt once and I know I got a camel burger that wasn't what they said it was but I know that's what it was. And the Lord also provided, the Lord also provided a tremendous amount of condiments to flavor their food. There was as I said the sugar that came from the, the cane, ah, there was salt, mint, anise, all kinds of seeds, mustards, cumin, and all of these kinds of herbs and things that were used to flavor the food.
Now it is thrilling to me to see that God has provided such an incredible abundance of all of this for us, in fact when God said to the children of Israel, You're going to go to a certain land; God put his finger on one characteristic of that land and set it apart as a land of what? Milk and Honey, and what God was saying is, It is a land where there will be a physical bounty. And by the way folks, when you go to Israel today you'll be amazed to see that that is true. Israel is fertile, it is one of the most fertile lands in all the world, and God knew that when He sent His people there. God provides an incredible abundant variety of those things needed to meet our physical life requirements. You know I was thinking of illustrating, I don't have time to illustrate a whole lot of this but you just should study some of the, some of the incidents in the Old Testament where they were eating and see all of the stuff they had, it is amazing. Abigail made haste, just get this, how'd you like to cook this up wives? She took two hundred loaves, that's a good start, now those are probably smaller, two skins of wine, animal skins, big huge things, five sheep dressed, I mean how'd you like to have a ... to cook five sheep, five measures of parched grain, a whole bunch of those little crunchy grain things, a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs packed them on her animals and took off. Now that's, that's kind of exciting. Boy, I don't know what all was going to happen but I know the folks would enjoy all of that. And you can go into Second Samuel, First Kings and all and you can find all these things that were provided for food.
Now where did it all come from? God made everything, didn't He? Everything. Every single thing. It's fun when you try to tell your kids that, you know and they don't understand, well, God didn't make hamburgers or God didn't make hot dogs, they don't understand that all the things are made up of the component parts of what God made. Even our clothing, we are dependent on the animals for our clothing. We're dependent on the plants for our clothing. And people say, well, I, I have a polyester dress, you know there's no animal or plant. Am, but that's made from I think a petroleum product which is ... comes from the earth and God made that too. You don't have anything, nothing, you don't eat anything, you don't wear anything, and you don't live in anything that didn't come from this earth, and every element of it was coming from the creative hand of God. And it is the height of indifference and ingratitude not to be daily recognizing that, and affirming that God is a God who is active daily in upholding His world so that it supports our physical needs. How grateful we should be for God's gracious daily loving provision. Did you know that God even, this is amazing, God has set up a network that's so incredible, God has to have in His whole system food for man, but in order to have food for man He has to feed the food that feeds man, do you realize that? And so God has to feed the animals and the plants and there has to be minerals and other animals and other plants and the whole cycle is just to provide for man. The Bible says for the plant eaters there's herbage, for the ox there's grass and straw, for the horses there's barley, for the birds there are seeds, for the locusts there are plants, and God keeps the whole cycle going. And by the way, rain is a gift from God, did you know that?
And if God shut off the heavens nothing would grow, and if the grass didn't grow and the plants didn't grow, the animals wouldn't eat and if the animals didn't eat you wouldn't either and we'd all be dead, so if it doesn't rain the whole thing goes down. But God upholds the world and keeps the rain falling. All we have is from God's hand.
You say, now wait a minute, I earn my money. Just remember, if you have the ability to bend your back, if you have the ability to open your mouth and talk and make a living, if you have the ability to think and make a living it's God who gave you that capacity and that facility, and by the way the money you got from the bank was made out of stuff that God created. The paper came from trees and the coins camp from minerals. You don't have ... there isn't anything; there is nothing in the world that God didn't create. Talk about dependence folks, we are dependent on God. First Chronicles 29:14 says, "All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee." Anything you ever give God back is something He gave you to start with.
Thomas Watson that great Puritan with a heart for God wrote this, "If all is a gift from God, do you see the odious ingratitude of men who sin against their giver, God feeds them and they fight against Him, H e gives them bread andthey give Him affront. How unworthy is this? Should we not cry shame on him who had a friend always feeding him with money and yet he should betray and injure that friend. Thus ungratefully do sinners deal with God, they not only forget His mercies but they abuse them, as Jeremiah 5:7 has said, "When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery."
Oh, how horrid is it to sin against a bountiful God, to strike the hand that gives." In Deuteronomy 32:15 it says, "Jeshurun became fat, and rebelled." You know something? The more you have the less grateful you are, true? We need to be careful in our society. You say this verse doesn't apply to us? Maybe it applies to us more than it applies to people who have very little, because they tend to express this gratitude and petition, we don't, we don't. Because we have too much. We are dependent on God beloved for every single thing we have, it is God who gives us our physical supply. Next time you pray, remember to affirm that all your physical needs are met by God, and ask Him humbly to continue to do it that His name may be glorified in your prayer of thanksgiving. Well, I wanted to get a little further but we'll do that next time. Let's pray.
Father we've just really introduced the beginning of this wonderful and significant statement but we've certainly touched the most important part, that it is from Your hand that we receive everything. Oh Lord, may we be ever thankful, may all that we possess of the physical be sanctified not only by the Word of God but by thanksgiving in our prayers, as Paul said to Timothy. Lord make us thankful. Lord may we know that we do not do anything of our own selves, that we have absolutely no resources unless You give them to us. May we know that You made everything, You uphold everything. "That every good and perfect gift comes down from you." And Lord may we be the kind of people who stand in the place to receive the promise, and may we return Your gift each day with our gratitude. For Your glory may the world hear us giving thanks and know that we take no credit for ourselves for anything, but give You all the praise, be glorified Father in Your abundant supply of our physical need. We pray in Christ's blessed name. Amen.
Well there's some exciting things for you to learn about practical things in regard to this as we study next Lord's Day, and I'll be looking forward to that, I hope you will too.
8 The Provision of Prayer, Part 2 Matthew 6:11 Code: 2240 It's a great joy this morning to come back to Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 13, I would draw your attention to that passage in the Bible. I'd like us to have a word of prayer as we begin.
Father we commit the next moments to You and ask that You would be our teacher. We desire to be nothing more than a clear channel through which You speak. May Your truth be uncluttered with human error or embellishment, and may we hear You speak to us, and may we be filled with wonder at Your power and Your grace to us. May we know better how to pray because we've shared this time, in Christ's name. Amen.
Learning how to pray is very important. Learning how to pray is learning how to commune with God, I can't think of anything more important than that. In fact it's so important that the Scripture says, "We're to pray without ceasing." "We're to pray always." And if we are to pray always and pray without ceasing, and if prayer is communion with God, and if "the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Then effective prayer is very, very important. How fitting it is that we really know how to pray then. How tragic it would be to spend a lifetime missing the right way to commune with God, and there is that possibility, you know? For according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 8, "The Spirit has to make intercession for us often, because of our infirmity of the flesh, which means that we don't know how to pray as we ought." So here we are with this incredible resource of prayer to commune with God and to tap the divine resource. And we are to be engaged in that at all times, and yet how often the flesh inhibits the legitimacy and the rightness of those prayers. And I dare say that if we could be taught to pray by anyone the one that we would choose would be our Lord who knew best how to commune with the Father; and that is precisely what we have in Matthew 6:9 to 13. We have Jesus instructing us to pray, and giving us the elements and the ingredients in a proper prayer perspective. I don't know how you have responded to this series as we've been involved in it but my own heart has given great attention to it in my study because I, I sense here as you do in the gospel record as you study the words of Christ particularly that you are being taught literally by Christ Himself. If we had announced that Jesus was to be our teacher this morning and He were to stand in this place I dare say we would listen and we would hear with attentive ears that injunction that faces us in verse 11 for this day, "Give us this day our daily bread." And we would want to know all that there was to know about the meaning of that great wonderful statement. Well, He's not here in one sense but in another He is. He's not here in terms of the limits of my flesh but He is here in terms of the unlimited truth of His Word, and so we will be attentive to what His Word has to say for us and to us.
Let's read again verses 9 to 13 so we have the setting. "After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
Now remember will you? As we approach again this passage that Jesus is contrasting His standard of prayer with that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And basically just to sum it up in a simple statement Jesus' standard of prayer focuses on God while their standard of prayer focused on themselves. In verse 5, Jesus said, "You love to pray standing in the corners, and at the wide parts of the street, in order to be seen of men." In verse 7 He says in effect, You use vain repetition like the pagans do, as if you could cajole God or badger God into giving you what you want. Verse 8, You assume that you have some information to give God that is not at His disposal, were it not for your particular involvement. So that your attitude and your action and the very form of your prayer is all focused on you. And in contrast to that Jesus says, when you pray everything is to be focused on Him. "Our Father," is God's paternity. "Hallowed be thy name." Is God's priority. "Thy kingdom come." Is God's program. "Thy will be done," is God's purpose. "Give us this day our daily bread." Is God's provision. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Is God's pardon. And so forth. Everything focuses on God. That's the way prayer ought to be. Prayer is not for me, it's for Him, it's not for my getting it's for His glory. And we've been learning that as we've been moving through this tremendous prayer. In fact the first three petitions, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."Put the whole prayer in perspective that nothing of petition regarding ourselves is even introduced until God is in the prior place. I ask nothing hat does not hallow His name, I ask nothing that does not bring in His kingdom in some element, I ask nothing that is not the expression of His will.
Now, having established that we move then from those elements related specifically and directly to God to those which relate to human need, and we come to verse 11, "Give us this day our daily bread." Now we're going to look at five features, and we've already seen the first two, and just to remind you of them, five features of this simple petition. First of all the substance that is requested, what is it, it's bread, "Give us this day our daily bread." And you'll remember that we suggested to you that the concept of bread here is really a symbol for all of our physical needs. Probably encompassing the three basic needs food, clothing, and shelter. Bread then sums up the physical need, the temporal need; the basic necessities of life were of little use to God in accomplishing His ends and His goals in this life if He does not meet our basic physical needs to keep us alive. And so commensurate with His usefulness of us in this, is kingdom as He brings it into the earth is the necessity to supply our physical need. Now, the second thing we talked about, not only the substance but the source. The assumption of the petition is that the source is God, He's implied behind the verb, "Give us." We look to God as the source of everything. We went into this in great detail three weeks ago in our last study. In one sense I regret that we've had this interval and in another sense I don't because I've been able to really clear my thinking on this particular verse in the meantime, and so I think maybe there's more to be said now of meaningful truth than would have been two weeks ago. But God is the source of everything. You don't possess anything that He didn't provide, He is the Creator and the Sustainer and the Preserver of the entire universe, everything that we have is from His hand, everything. And so the source is God and the substance is bread.
The first petition then that rises from the heart of a child of God to the Father is that petition surrounding physical need, there's nothing wrong with seeking God's face in regard to that, as long as the motive is that through it His name be hallowed and through it His kingdom come and through it His will be done. He is the one w o desires to meet our physical need. And of course we know from James 1:17, "That every good and perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." We know from First Timothy chapter 4, "That all things are to be received with thanksgiving, for the word of God and our prayer of thanks sanctifies them." God has given us everything good to enjoy. We said then last time that the idea of the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." Is not simply the prayer of a beggar, though it could be a prayer of one who has nothing for the very next meal, but it is also the acknowledgment of all of us that it is God who is the source of every physical provision. For some people it might be, Lord, I don't have something to eat for my next meal I ask You to give me my daily bread that You may be glorified in the provision. For us it may be, Lord, You have supplied so much and I thank You and I acknowledge You as the source and I ask You to continue to provide with such graciousness, that Your name may glorified. So whether you do not have and you ask to receive or whether you have and you ask to continue to receive the petition is the same, it recognizes God as the source.
Now what is the supplication? It's the verb, give, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is the heart of the petition and this is kind of what we want to major on this morning. Now what right do we have to ask God for this? Do I have some reason or rhyme to say to God, Give me my daily bread Father. Is there a basis on which that petition is valid? Well the only basis would be that God had promised to do that, right? That God had promised to meet my physical needs. And if He's made that promise then I have a right to ask Him to fulfill it. And that is precisely the promise that He has given us. Turn with me to Psalm 37, and I want to set in your mind a basic consideration that we're going to talk about that I hope will be helpful to you in understanding how God desires to Meet your physical needs. Now I don't believe that God is bound, mark this, to meet the physical needs of everybody. I believe there are some conditions, there are some conditions, and we'll see this repeatedly as we move through this morning. But I don't believe that God is bound to meet everybody's physical needs. Let's look at Psalm 37 beginning at verse 3, "Trust in the LORD, and do good;" now that simple statement is profound folks, because it encompasses the significance of salvation. Salvation is believing God, resulting in good works, right? "Faith without works is dead." So simply saying, "Trust in the LORD, and do good;" is just like summing up soteriology, summing up the doctrine of salvation, believing, and the result of that true faith is good works.
Now then, if you are one who believes and that believing is manifest faith, then you have the promise that "you will dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be (what?) fed." Isn't that great? Now that's pretty practical. I think that some of us feel that most of the promises of the Bible have to do with spiritual truth, and that is true, but never to the exclusion of the physical, we would be little spiritual good to the lord here in the world if He didn't meet our physical need. And by the way if you need a New Testament comparison go to Second Corinthians chapter 9, don't turn to it now but just write it down, Second Corinthians chapter 9 it talks about how we are to give, "Not grudgingly, or of necessity; but because the Lord loves a cheerful giver. We are to sow not sparingly, but bountifully. And God is able to minister bread for your food, and to make your fruits of righteousness abound." In other words when you give to God and invest in God's kingdom God will not only provide spiritual fruit, but He will provide says Second Corinthians 9 bread for your food. The physical provision of God is a biblical promise. Now further on in verse 4 it says, "Delight in the LORD." Then it says, "Commit your way unto the LORD." Then in verse 7 it says, "Rest in the LORD." And then in verse 8 it says, "Cease from anger, and forsake wrath." And it goes through this, and it makes a comparison between the righteous person who does this and the unrighteous. "The unrighteous man shall be cut off," verse 9. Shall be cut off. "The wicked," verse 12 is mentioned, and then in verse 13, "The Lord will laugh at him; for he sees that his day is coming." In other words, for the righteous there is promise, for the unrighteous there is judgment. Now go down for a moment to verse 18, "The LORD knows the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. And they shall not be ashamed in the evil time;" now watch, "and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied." Isn't that great? The promise of the provision of God for His own people in a time of famine, though the unrighteous may perish, the righteous will have provision. Verse 20, "The wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD be like the fat of lambs. They shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away." That kind of fat really burns, and that's the way it is with the wicked. God has no obligation to provide for them, but for us He does.
Now I don't think it's necessarily always going to be a feast, but then after all Proverbs 15:17 says, "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred." When the relationships are right it doesn't have to be fancy. Let me give you an illustration of this if I can, I hadn't really intended to use this but I want to take the time to do it here, First Kings chapter 16, I think this is a graphic illustration of the principle that God provides for His own, in the midst of a famine. The history of Israel in the divided kingdom was a tragic history, they had all bad kings, and it seemed as though they went from bad to worse until finally they culminated in the most wretched of all of them by the name of Ahab who was the son of Omri. And in First Kings 16 verse 25 we find that Ahab takes over for his father Omri when Omri dies, and Ahab takes the throne and reigns in Israel 22 years, and Ahab brought 22 years of problems frankly to that land of Israel, he married that wretched woman Jezebel who worshiped Baal and brought in all the Baal worship and reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal in verse 32. "And Ahab made an idol; and he did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." And the nation sunk into the pits of unrighteousness. As, a result of it verse 1 of 17, "and Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word."
In other words God says that's it for the provision for Israel. No rain, no crops, no crops no food, no food, famine. But in the midst of it, verse 2, "And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, get thee from here, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook, Cherith, which is before the Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there." Isn't that unbelievable? Commanded who to feed him? The ravens. God organized the ravens to bring food to His prophet, why? Because the wicked may perish, but in a famine the righteous will be preserved. For God makes promises of physical provision for His own. "And the ravens (verse 6) brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook." Well the brook eventually dried up, and the prophet needed something to eat and so "The LORD said to him, go to Zarephath, and belongs to Sidon, and dwell there; and I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee. And he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, the widow was gathering sticks. And he called to her, and aid, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink." Now that's coming on pretty strong to the little widow who's picking up the sticks as if she was supposed to know who this was, but apparently the Lord had kind of prepared her heart as verse 9 indicates, "And as she was going to fetch the water, he called to her, and, aid, by the way, Bring me, a morsel of bread in your hand." Now hat introduced a severe problem. "She said, As the LORD, thy God, liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and, I'm gathering two sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die." That's it, we have enough left to make one little cake, my son and I are going to split it and then die of starvation. "And Elijah said into her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said. But make me of it a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and then, afterwards, make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not be used up, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain on the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, and he, and her house, did eat for many days. And the barrel of meal as not used up, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Elijah." Isn't that tremendous? That barrel just stayed full all the time, and that cruse of oil just stayed full all the time and they just kept eating and God miraculously fed that widow and her son and that prophet in the midst of the famine, why? Because God was bound, by His promise to His people that one who trusts in the Lord and does good will be fed. And I really believe that sometimes we forget that God is concerned for the physical provision, and that we can claim that promise at His good and gracious hand.
Go down in Psalm 37 again if you left there, I wants to kind of climax this wonderful truth, verse 22 says, "For such as are blessed by him shall inherit the earth; and they who are cursed by him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, and he delighteth in his way. And though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the LORD upholds him with his hand." The whole idea here is a righteous man is cared for by the Lord, and then the climax of it is so wonderful in verse 25, and David says this, "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed (doing what?) begging bread." David says, I've been around a long time and I have never seen the righteous forsaken and His seed begging bread, why? Verse 26, "Because God is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed." Verse 27, that's good reason to "Depart from evil, and do good." The promise of God for physical supply. God feeds His own beloved. I, I've even read in the Bible about God sheltering His own if He has to grow His own private gourd over his head, just to keep the sun off him. And the Lord said in Luke 18:28 to 30 that none of you has left father, and mother, and houses, and brother to follow Me. But that I'll give all of that stuff to you, manifold times in this life and in the life to come. I believe God has provided houses and lands and fathers and mothers and homes for His own, in this life as well as the life to come.
Now, this is a tremendous thing beloved to know that God is a God who has promised to give us physical supply. Imagine if you were outside the knowledge of God and you had no such claim on God. Imagine for Example Irasima DeSilva who lives in a favela in Brazil, favela's that I myself have seen which are indescribable paper, cardboard slums built on the sides of the hills of Rio in Sao Paulo. Sometimes I think, she said, if I die I won't have to see my children suffering like they are. Sometimes I think of killing myself because
I see them crying hungry and there I am without a cent to buy them bread. Stan Mooneyham of World Vision tells the heart rending story of a visit to the house of Sebastian and Maria Nociamento, another poor favela family in Brazil. He describes the house as one room lean-to with a thatched roof and sand floor, one stool, a charcoal hibachi and lour cots which were potato sacks filled with straw. He says, "My emotions could scarcely take in what I saw and heard, the three year old twins lying naked and unmoving on a small cot were in the last act of their personal drama, mercifully the curtain was coming down on heir brief appearance, malnutrition was the villain, the father is without work and both he and Maria are anguished over their existence but too proud to beg. He tries to shine shoes and Maria can't talk about their existence, she tries but words just will not come. Her mothers love is deep and tender and the daily deterioration of her children is more than she can bear." End quote. And God is not bound to those who do not trust Him and do good. Oh God may in His gracious and sovereign choice feed the unrighteous on occasion, but He's not bound to that. And someday all of those who are wicked will go hungry. Luke 6:25 says, "Woe to you that are full now! For you shall hunger." God is bound only to the physical provision of those who are His own children.
In India, men forsake their wives and their children just to find food. Families commit suicide together. Mother's throw their babies into the swirling waters of the Ganges and watch them die as an act of sacrifice to their gods because they're going to die of malnutrition anyway, and if they die of malnutrition there's no religious virtue boundup in that and so they'd rather drown them so at least the gods can be appeased as long as they're going to die they might as well gain some religious end. But you know something? With all of the problems and the struggles and the famines of our world, the issues beloved are not really the fact that the earth can't provide food, that isn't the case at all. Indira Ghandi herself says, there is enough resource in India to feed that nation entirely and then export two thirds of all that it produces. Some of us think that the world can't produce food for mankind, that isn't true, do you know something? If ... I was reading this week that the more people we have in the world the more productivity we have because man is a productive being. I was reading also this week that you could put the entire population of the world in the state of Montana that leaves a lot of space left. Fifteen % of the harvestable land on the globe is being used for that and only half of that every year. Our problem is not a lack of resources, our problem is not too many people; there are less people per square mile in New York today than there were 50 years ago. The resources are there, but what cuts people off from those resources is a spiritual issue. And I'll get into that in a moment, because if they were brought into the knowledge of God, I believe God has made a world that could provide for them. In Psalm 33 backing up from 37, verse 18 says, "Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him, upon those who hope in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine." Now it's amazing to me that God would literally, as a general rule sort out His own people in the midst of a famine and preserve them. Now He may not do it with ravens or like Jesus, feeding Him with angels or He may not shelter them with a gourd that grows up over their head, usually He feeds His own people with other of His own people, doesn't He? But God takes care of His own in the midst of a famine. Chapter 34 Verse 10, Psalms, verse 9 says, "Oh, fear the LORD, ye his saints; for there is no lack to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing." They're not going to go hungry. What a wonderful exciting promise from God.
In Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths." And what is the result of it? Verse 8, "It'll be health to your navel, and marrow to your bones. Honor the LORD with your substance, and your first fruits of all your increase; and your barnswill be filled with plenty, and your presses will burst out with new wine." God makes physical provision, for our needs in His gracious care as a loving Father for His children. Proverbs 10:3, "The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, but he casts away the substance of the wicked." God then, I think makes it abundantly clear in the Scripture that He is committed to the care of His people.
You say, well John you're talking about Old Testament principles. No, I'm not, look at Matthew 7:7 and we'll get over into the New Testament for a moment. Matthew 7, then I want to illustrate it to you. And what does it say? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;" and we usually equate that with spiritual things, in fact that verse is used often of someone coming to Christ and asking for salvation. Then it says in verse 8, "For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened." But just exactly what Christ is referring to is indicated in verse9, "What man is there of you whom, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? And if then, you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?" And what is the illustration of the good things? It's bread and meat. God is concerned with giving the very basics of life to His people, just as a father would be to his own. And that follows right on the heel of chapter 6 verse 25 and following, and what a marvelous text that is, which says you don't need to be worrying about what you eat or what you drink or what you wear, God takes care of that, you just seek first the kingdom and everything else will find its rightful place.
Now listen, there have been times when feeding and shelter and clothing has been a supernatural act of God, but usually God meets the needs of His people through His other people. So that where you have a Christian community you have that interchange. And also through the fact that a child of God has such a high view of the value of man, that he seeks not only to meet his own needs but the needs of others. In James 2:16 for example it says, if somebody comes in and they're naked and destitute, and you pat them on the back and say, brother, I hope the Lord meets your needs, it's questionable whether you're really regenerated. And in First John 3 it says, that if a brother comes a long, and he has a great need and you close up the bowels of your compassion toward him, how dwelleth the love of God in you? In other words it is almost the, the innate response of one who knows God that he supplies the needs of others. Further, that he will be engaged in work that will supply his own needs. And we'll see more about that in a minute. Now let me spread this out and give you some illustrations of this. God has a ... has given us a, a literal global illustration of this truth. That where in the world you have Christian heritage and Christian roots, you have a high view of human life, and where you have that high view of human life you have a great supply for those people. In the parts of the world where there are no Christian roots you have a low view of human life, and there you have great famine and poverishment.
For example, nations that have been under the influence of the gospel, nations that have known Christian teaching have a high respect for the value of man as created in God's image, and the object of divine redemption and they are not as prone to suffer the hunger and the deprivation as are non-Christian nations. Now there may be isolated illustrations where these things are not always the case but in general far and away this is clearly the truth. Take for example America, America is a nation founded upon Christian principles, and Christianity gave to this country a high view of human life so that we were committed from the, from the Bill of Rights right on out to meeting the needs of people, and here we are today in 1980 we're still concerned with the minimum wage law, we're concerned with equality for everybody, equal education, equal pay for equal work, and on and on and on. We've very deeply concerned that everybody have medical care, that everybody be on a welfare system who doesn't work so that their needs are met, where did we get that? Our humanism never gave it to us. Our humanism would obliterate the part of the population that's unneeded. The abortionists, they would just wipe out human beings, the people who advocate euthanasia and the people who want to just shelve the others that are a detriment to our society and control birth and say who gets born to whom. So those people aren't the ones who gave us a high view of man. America, in the midst of its atheism and its humanism and its immorality and its departure from Christian truth still can't shake the residual impact of a high view of man that came from the Word of God even though they'd never acknowledge that's where they get it. And even the ungodly in our nation, like those in First Corinthians 7 are sanctified by the believers, and receive the benefit.
Take on the other hand India, because India is probably the most influential nation in the world because India is the place where Hinduism is born and Hinduism basically spawned all of the network of religions that engulf the entire Orient, the entire East. For example Hinduism is the source of Shintoism, Buddhism, Johneism, Sickism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Tauism, it is the source of all of the guru's and the mystical religions and the Eastern religions and occult, all of that stuff is spawned out of Hinduism which of course is the basic religion of India. And the whole network of religious heritage, the entire legacy of Hinduism in the Orient is deprivation. Because the view of man is so low, they do not believe that man is created in God's image, that that is anything significant at all for ... in the first place they believe their gods are sinful. The natural resources of India can meet the needs of India, there's no limit on their resources, but it is their religion that as trapped them. Let me show you why. Six out of ten people in Calcutta live on the street, six out of ten, without food, without shelter, without clothes. And in India there are six hundred and sixty million people, fifteen million die every year, twenty seven million are born, they just keep getting more and more people and that means more and more people living on the streets. Is it because they don't have any food? No. Let me tell you why. They worship as many as three hundred and thirty million deities. Everybody's got his own. The one supreme deity that sits on the top of the pile is the deity who comes by three names depending on how he manifests himself or she, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva are the three different names of this supreme deity. But under that come all these plethora of gods. Now the gods are personified in the cows of India, all right? The cows are the incarnations of the gods. That's where we get the phrase sacred cow. They then become the center of worship. Everything which comes from a cow is sacred, including itsdung and its urine, and by the way if you were to see a pious low classed ... low, ah, cast Hindu on the streets catching the urine of a cow in his hands and sipping it you wouldn't be surprised, if you understood the religion, because that's rather common. To kill and eat a cow is worse to a Hindu than cannibalism, because a cow is a deity. And cows eat 20% of the food supply of India. By the way they have rest homes for old cows, who cease to give milk. They don't have rest homes for old people, just old cows. Every cow eats enough for seven people, and the cows in India ah, number two hundred million. That means that they eat enough food to feed one billion four hundred million people. That means that India produced enough food, so that if you just moved the cows out or better ate them you could move everybody into India from the continent ofAntarctica, Australia, Africa and Europe and everybody from most of the other nations of the world and everybody would have more to eat than the people in India have now and they have enough. Fifteen % of all the food supply of India is eaten by mice, and nobody kills mice either, because you might be killing your grandfather.
Let me tell you how you've saved in the Hindu system. You're saved by stopping your births, they believe in reincarnation soyou're just born over and over and overand over and over and over. And nirvana, or the state of nothingness that you desire to reach is when you don't get born anymore because you've gone as high as you can go and you enter into nirvana. And so they are constantly being cycled through these births. Now the ... you can be being born in the animal kingdom or the people kingdom, and that's why they have the cast system because you keep wanting to get higher and higher in the cast system. If you drop down into the animal kingdom because you've done some bad things while you were a human, there are eighty four thousand different levels of animal kingdoms that you can go through to get out of them again. And so all of the animals, you see, are somebody reincarnated o n his way up or down. You don't want to kill an animal, because you might be messing up the cycle of karma, by pushing someone else into another life that is not intended for them and you'll be in trouble and you'll be a, an animal next time around.
Salvation then comes through this endless cycle of births until they reach nirvana. The social effects of this are beyond description. You see a poor, destitute, wretched, individual with nothing and you don't meet his need because the only way that person can get from that level to the next level up is to do penance at that level, and so you leave the person in that situation because that's their karma, and if you relieve their penance, if you relieve their situation then you have taken away the penalty they are supposed paying for, they're not going to get back at the next level, do you see? So there's no regard for human life at all, when you see a beggar a typical Hindu response is, I wonder what he did to deserve that? I hope he can work himself out of it. So you see, what has deprived India is not a lack of food supply, what has deprived India is paganism. Without a Christian heritage, without the, the power of God in that society through the influence of believing people there is no proper view of man as created in the image of God and that is his own damnation God feeds His people. And God also feeds those who aren't even is people when they hang around with His people. Apart from belonging to him there's no guarantee that there's any supply.
Now, all I'm trying to get you to see is that the problems in the world are not the problems of a lack of resource, and I'm going to talk more about that when we get to chapter 6 later on, there's plenty available for us in this world. I'm not sure that I believe all of these people who are prophets of doom telling us we're running out of food, and I'll tell you why in a few weeks. But I do know this, there isn't ever going to be enough for the world of people who don't know God because God is the source, you see?
Now, look with me for a minute at Matthew 6:25, and I just want to be very specific about this text although we'll cover it in the future in detail. Since God says, look just say, "Give us this day our daily bread." And move on, the idea that we don't need to spend a lot of time on that is really planted in our minds. God, now watch this, God does not want us to preoccupy ourselves with the physical. Physical preoccupation, physical need is the lowest level of human need. The need for physical resource is the lowest level of human need; God does not want us occupied on that level. So He is saying, I will take care of that. "Therefore, (verse 25) I say to you, Don't you worry about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; or what you shall put on." Your health, as such. He takes care of the birds verse 26, He takes care of the lilies verse 28, 29, He takes care of the grass verse 30. "Then why are you (in verse 31) worrying about what we'll eat? What we'll drink? Or what we'll be clothed with?" Watch verse 32, "For all these things do the pagans seek."
You see this is life without God, it is on the physical level and that's all it is. "But your Father knows you have need of these things." God knows that He must supply the physical needs, that's going to be taken care of. Verse 35, "You seek first (what?) the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall (what?) be added." You let God take care of the low level of human need, the physical, He says, you get your mind on the spiritual. God doesn't want us dealing on the low level. Paul says, "Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth." It's the same idea, I believe that the reason God says, I will take over this area, if you'll just acknowledge that I'm the source of it, I'll take over this area so that you don't have to get stuck at that level, and you invest your life in the kingdom and in the matter of righteous and all the rest of that stuff will take care of itself, as I deal with it. That's a tremendous principle people, the world the pagans seek after the human level the physical level. We don't because God promises to supply that for us. How does He supply it?
Well, two ways, basically, one ... and this is the first way, Genesis 3:19 ... "Man is to earn his bread by the sweat of his face." Now we're not supposed to say, Oh, I'm busy being spiritual and I'm waiting for the ravens. See. That's not the idea. Could you grow me a gourd, Lord, it's warm out here, need some shade. No. We have a high enough value of ourselves and of our own life before God to be obedient to Him and to work, do what we need to do, to feed ourselves and to stay healthy. We are to work. We're not just sitting around. In fact, I Timothy 5:8 says, "If a man doesn't provide for his own household he's worse than an infidel." So we are to work. We are to be committed to that kind of involvement. And then, I think Paul really hits the nail on the head in II Thessalonians where he says in chapter 3 and verse 10, this: "For even when we were with you we commanded you this that if any would not work neither should he," what? "Eat, you don't work, you don't eat. We hear that there are some who walk among you disorderly working not at all but are busybodies. Now then, they that are such command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. So there is the commitment, then, that we work and eat our own bread. But there's a beautiful balance to that. There are some who can't work, who are infirmed or who have needs or for whatever reasons and then we also have to meet their needs as well. And so there is almost a balance here. While on the one hand Paul's heart goes out to those who are in need to the point where he'll scour all over Asia Minor collecting money to take back to the poor saints of Jerusalem and he will be involved energetically in the promotion of a collection to meet the needs of poor people but at the same time he has no sympathy for someone who is simply poor because they won't work. So, God will supply our needs through our own efforts and through the generosity and the graciousness and the goodness and the kindness of others around us.
Now, beloved, it's a wonderful thing to know that God is going to supply our physical needs. But I have to add one other footnote. Somebody will invariably say, well, what about in Hebrews 11 when you have all of those people who are the saints of God of the highest order of whom the world was not worthy and they were persecuted, slaughtered and they went without places to sleep and they had no place to rest and they had no food and they were destitute, forsaken and naked and so forth? Doesn't that contradict the whole deal? No, this is pretty simple really. God only supplies your needs until it's time for you to die. That's all. And then He may choose that the way you go home to Him is through the lack of the sufficiencies. But until that time in His sovereign plan your needs will be met. And only God knows the specific dimension of what those needs are. God takes care of the physical until such a time as the physical life ends. And then we enter into an abundance that's inconceivable.
It's very much like Matthew 18 where it talks about little children. And it says, "Their angels do constantly watch over them." Now you know there are some people who think ... Well, you know, every child has a guardian angel. And so mothers will say sometimes to me is it true that my little child has a guardian angel? Well, it may be true based on that passage in Matthew 18. Then the question often comes, well, what about when a child dies? Does that mean the guardian angel was asleep on the job? No, the guardian angel only fulfills his function until the sovereignty of God deems that life should end. You see? In other words, God says, MacArthur, you have so much time in My sovereign plan and you're called to a task. Now if you will set your heart and your mind on My Kingdom and My righteousness and the things above I will meet your physical needs. And I believe that with all my heart. So that the preoccupation in my life is not the physical. And when the Lord sees fit to remove the physical protection I'm going to go out of existence in this world but I'm going to enter into a fullness of existence in the next world that will give me a supply of eternal resources like I've never dreamed of. And so when we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," what are we saying? We are trusting God as the source to supply all the physical needs of our lives and we are affirming that because we are His children and because we are walking in righteousness and walking in obedience and walking in a willing submission to His will we know that He will take care of all those things. And we lift up our hearts in gratitude while setting our affections on things above.
So, what is it that we seek as substance? Bread. And who is the source? God. What is our supplication? Give ... let me give you two other finals. The seekers, who are the seekers? Us I can't help but stress that "give us" not give me my daily bread. Because the church of Christ is not isolated. The use of the plural precludes all selfishness in our prayers. And I really believe the prayer; "Give us" just embodies all the Christian community. It is saying, in effect, that I could never have an abundance while my brother had less than enough. Right? It just encompasses that whole concept of sharing. And so the substance is bread and the source is God and the supplication is give and the seeker is us and finally the schedule. "Give us," how often? "This day," this day. Exact meaning of this concept is simply bread for the coming day. In its simplicity, in its moderation in its very beauty it is an expression that says one day at a time, Father, I accept Your provision. It stresses the contentment that comes when we live with a day by day confidence in God and don't worry about the future.
Let me give you just a little hint. Most Christians who worry, worry about what hasn't happened. That's right. Because they're not too sure God's going to provide their daily bread tomorrow.That's doubting His word. This doesn't mean you don't save. You've got to be like the ant, Proverbs says, plan for the future. This doesn't mean you don't plan. But it does mean you're content to trust God to meet your need in the future. We say Oh, what's going to happen when that comes to pass? Oh, what if this? Oh, what if that? We only ask for physical provisions for this day.
Prayer then, beloved, focuses on God as the one who supplies. It acknowledges that He is the source of all our physical needs and it teaches us to live one day at a time in the confidence that He will meet these needs. What a great, great, petition it is. I trust as we pray every day we will pray in confidence that we can focus on the spiritual levels because God is graciously caring for the physical. Oh, don't get bogged down in the physical. Don't get your thought patterns at that level. Don't lose your joy and your opportunity by getting all wrapped up in the mundane. Set your affections on things above. Seek ye first the Kingdom and let God take care of the rest.
You know, let me just say this in closing because I think it's so important. A lot of talk today about feeding the hungry and feeding the poor. But you know what I believe? I believe that's good and necessary. But I believe it's better to give someone Jesus Christ than to give them food. If I give a man food he'll be hungry the next day. If I give him Jesus Christ God will take care of him from there on through eternity. That's most needful. And one of the things we can promise to you is thatGod will take you under His watch care as a loving Father when you enter into a relationship with His Son. That's a glorious treat. Let's pray.
Father, we realize our utter dependence on You. We realize that if You so willed it we would have no daily bread. You could withhold the sun and its influence. You could stop the rain. You could make this land absolutely barren so that the farmer with all his modern implements and chemicals couldn't raise a crop. You could blast that crop if You wanted to. We are absolutely in Your hand. And I guess, Lord, one of the follies of this twentieth century is the stupidity of thinking that we have acquired a certain amount of knowledge and so we're independent of God. Father, we can't live a day without You. Nothing would continue were it not sustained and kept by You. Give us this day our daily bread. Teach us that it's a good thing at least once a day and I guess the oftener the better, to remind ourselves that our times and our health and our home and our clothes and our food are good gifts from Your gracious hand that come constantly to the one who trusts in the Lord and does good. And so teach us to give ourselves to the spiritual and know You'll meet that other dimension. And may we know that even that work that we do is a spiritual offering to You when it's done for Your glory. Thank You, Lord, for all that You've given us and for just opening to us the fullness of these truths, continue to teach us as we search the Scripture in Christ's name. Amen.
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Matthew 6:11 Code: 2239
Turn in our Bible to Matthew chapter 6. We're continuing now after a break through the holiday season and the last couple of Sundays, we're continuing in our study of The Disciple's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, The Disciple's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6. May I read it to you again so that you'll have the setting for our thoughts this morning? Verse 9, "After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom Come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
Now our study this morning is going to concentrate on verse 11, a simple, familiar phrase, the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." The word bread opens up to us the simplicity, the commonness of this petition, and yet suggests to us a deep and profound meaning that demands our careful study. May I say this at the beginning this morning? I' m constantly being overwhelmed as I study this hour after hour, day after day, week after week, I'm constantly overwhelmed in the, in the depth of this prayer. Never in my life until I've done this series here have I ever really perceived what is in this prayer, in terms of s richness. In fact there was almost a resistance in my heart to ever preach this because it was such a masterpiece in and of itself, I, I didn't want to add any MacArthurism's to this profundity, it would be tantamount to, in my own mind taking a brush and fixing up a Rembrandt or getting a chisel and trying to help Michel Angelo a little bit with an angel he had carved, I would really be out of my league, and I felt a little bit the same way in wanting to approach an understanding of the Lord's Prayer, I almost felt like all I should do is read it and move on and let it speak in its own majestic simplicity. And yet as I thought about it there is a, there is such a power to it and such a presence in it and such a breadth that unless we perceive the fullness of what is here we will miss the simplicity of it, an so in a certain amount of ambivalence I have chosen to try to expand and analyze and enforce to your hearts the fullness of what this marvelous prayer really means. And we come here to what perhaps seems like the simplest of all, "Give us this day our daily bread," and we wonder if whether we need any thought about it at all and that only shows that we don't really understand all that's here, so let's approach it.
Thinking about bread kind of triggered my thoughts this week, I was reading in the newspaper about the fact that America trying to exert some pressure against Russia for her invasion of ... Afghanistan is deciding now to withhold billions of tons of grain from Russia, grain which was earmarked for the feeding of animals, animals which are earmarked for the feeding of people. And ah, because the grain production in Russia is down at least 20% and maybe more Russia is desperately in need of the grain that we can provide, not giving them this grain supposedly will have an impact upon them. It was interesting to me that we had that much grain to give away, or to sell, and as I began to examine this thought realized that we, we have more grain than we can possibly use, in fact if we don't unload this grain we don't sell Russia, it will drive the price of grain down so low that all the farmer's will go into a recession, we have so much surplus, and so the government I guess is going to buy the grain. Which means they will print more money and inflate all the rest of the money and we'll be in the same mess anyway but at least it'll spread it around and the farmer's won't have to bear the whole load. But we have so much grain. And as I was thinking about that, and there was an article in Time Magazine that I was given to read, I was aware of the fact that when you come to the statement, "Give us this day our daily bread," it may at first seem a little irrelevant to us. I mean when is the last time you prayed, Lord, I plead with You to provide for me a meal. I dare say your last prayer may have been more like this, Lord, please prevent me from eating another meal. Teach me self-discipline. Lord, I must lose weight. I not only have enough for me but several others. It does seem a little remote, doesn't it? I mean when is the last time we really got desperate about our food? You say, this, this message ought to be preached in Bangladesh or Cambodia or Sahara or somewhere but not in America ... this is irrelevant. But that only illustrates our lack of understanding of its marvelous truth. Do you know how much we have in America? Well, we have grain in America that is absolutely beyond our power to conceive, because of our technology, because of the richness of the soil, because of the sophistication of the machinery.
For example, we, we're not they're not working on uhm, new kinds of corn and grain, they are now tested in Mexico that recycle themselves and regenerate like grass does, that you don't even have to reseed them. Geneticists are now working on corn that will deposit back into the soil its own nitrogen and will save us something like 13 million tons of fertilizer which is made from natural gas and that'll save energy. They have now developed corn that grows with its ears instead of like this, like this and that means you can get them closer together and fields can double or treble their productivity. The equipment that we have, take for example one of the hundred thousand dollar monstrous combines can now spew out a hundred and eighteen thousand dollars worth of soy beans in a day, one of those machines. The U.S. crops, the result of near perfect weather and land and technology are beyond our imagination. Just to give you some idea of it, the corn alone would fill two million jumbo hopper train cars that would stretch thirteen times back and forth across the United States. And we have enough machines now, if they were all lined up wheel to wheel we could harvest Iowa in one day. And by the way, normally to harvest Iowa if you did it by human beings would take thirty one million people using sixty one million horses. Technology has given us incredible amount of productivity in terms of food. And to say, "Give us this day our daily bread," is a little remote, I mean I went shopping with my wife last night, and frankly there was bread adinfinitum adnauseam, in the store I was in, you could get any kind of bread in any color package you wanted. It didn't seem to me a major prayer request at the time. What does this mean to us then? What is this text saying to us? Or should we just preach a sermon and say, well you're going to have to imagine that you didn't have any and then if you can only imagine that you don't have any then imagine that you're desperate and imagine that you're praying for some. That's too unreal. Does this say anything to us? I think it does. Let's find out.
First of all you have to understand the context, the Lord is talking about prayer here because prayer is one of the elements of His kingdom, and Matthew, the whole Book presents Christ as King, all 28 chapters, chapters 5 to 7 present the characteristics of His kingdom or the standards of His kingdom or the principles of His kingdom, and one of those is prayer. And so Christ is presenting here the proper way to pray, the proper pattern for praying, and in this very simple prayer we have all of the necessary ingredients for prayer, if you want to pray accordingto His standard. And one of the elements of praying is to pray for our daily bread. Now that doesn't assume that we have it or don't have it, it's just there and we have to deal with it as it is. We need to know how to pray. Now in this prayer the Lord gives us a model for our prayers that is without equal in the Bible, and we've been through that, we've spent already six weeks on it and I don't want to go over and plow the same soil again but I do want you to know that this is a pattern for all your praying.
You know what I found myself doing whenever I pray, whether it's praying with the elders or praying at home or praying in the office' or praying ah, just wherever I am, driving, or with the Lord, or with somebody in a group or two people who are gathered, or whatever I find myself running my prayer along the skeleton of this passage, and touching base with each one of these principles, identifying with them it's ... and this is what I've prayed that God would make this the pattern of my praying so that my prayer would take on the character of Christ's prayer, and I hope that's happening in your prayer as well.But in this prayer we noted first of all two sections, the first one dealing with God, the second one dealing with man. The first one dealing with God's glory, the second one dealing with man's need.
First we saw three requests, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. (And) Thy will be done." And those focused on God and His glory; then we see three other requests focusing on man and his need, "Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." God then is the supreme issue here, and not until God is in the proper perspective can man pray properly about his own needs. Keep that in mind. First we see God's name, God's kingdom, God's will, and then we move to man's need. We cannot pray properly in regard to our own human situation until God is in the proper place. Now may I hasten to add this. That when we get to the second part of the prayer it doesn't set God aside, even though God is primarily exalted in the first half the second half all ... exalts Him also and does not set Him aside. For example, the fact that God gives us our daily bread, forgives our debts, and leads us not into temptation is an expression of His power and His grace. So God is brought to earth as it were, in the second part, now note this, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done (where?) in earth, as it is in heaven." How does God hallow His name, bring His kingdom, and do His will in the earth? By giving us our daily bread, by forgiving us our debts and by leading us in our lives. In other words it's as if the second half brings God into human life, brings God into the earth, brings God into human existence, so that these two are contiguous. It is not that the first three butter up God, the first three sort of flatter God and then we really lay it out as to what we want for our own sake, no. We are saying, God, glorify Yourself in our daily provision, God, glorify Yourself in our constant forgiveness, God, glorify Yourself in the leading and the directing of Your Spirit in our lives. God, be on display in Your world, that Your kingdom may come to earth. So it is not a setting aside of God, in any sense. Prayer is not buttering up God and then demanding certain things from Him.
My heart is continually grieved today in this movement in Christianity that goes about demanding things from God. A lady sent me a booklet and she said, You don't ... I don't think you understand the true resource we have in prayer, please read this booklet, and the booklet just goes again and again along this line of we have a right to demand things from God, because of who we are. That isn't the point of prayer, at all. We are to give God the privilege and opportunity of revealing His glory through the meeting of the deepest of human needs. But it is because we want God to be on display, not because we make demands on Him for our benefit. If prayer becomes man-centered and prayer becomes self-centered and prayer becomes selfish in any sense it ceases to be the kind of prayer our Lord said should be characteristic of His kingdom. And yet so many people approach God that way. We approach God in prayer to get something for us rather than to allow Him to glorify His name, and that's where we get confused. We plead with God for what we want, and when we don't get it then we begin to question God, whereas if we just allowed God the right to make the choice as to how He would reveal His glory no matter what He did we would then say, so let it be for Your glory, if that's what You choose as the avenue for Your majesty so let it be. But when we become self-centered in our prayers then we become questioning of God and then that is a serious sin. And we are pragmatists in our society, we, we are vending machine operators, we stick a quarter in and we want a product, for ourselves. And so consequently we treat prayer that way, in fact we treat a lot of things that way.
I think about giving so often, some people I know give in order to get, they heard a sermon that if you give to the Lord He'll return, press down, shaken together and running over, if you give to the Lord He'll give you back so many fold, and that's true, that's not why we give though, that's God's choice to do it. Why we give is that so that He can be glorified in His response no ... not so that me can get. It's like the lady who sent $5.00 to Bishop Sheen, and the next day she got a check for a hundred dollars in the mail, she won a contest. She told her young boy, she said, it's so wonderful, giving really works. Ah, to which her son replied, well if it worked so well the first time why don't you put the hundred back on Bishop Sheen and see what happens. It's like betting on a horse. You put a hundred dollars on Bishop Sheen. One writer says, if all the testimonies uttered during annual stewardship drives were to be believed tithing would be commended for its profit and taught as an investment principle in business administration courses. Now I think we do the same thing with prayer a lot of times too we, we use prayer as a way to get rather than an avenue for God to gain glory which is what John 14:13 says it's for.
Now let's look at the three petitions that give God opportunity to glorify Himself. First of all "Give us this day our daily bread." Speaks of physical life, physical life. Secondly, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Speaks of the mental life, and we'll get more into that next time. Thirdly, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." Is the spiritual life. Bread, that's our physical life. Forgiveness, that frees our mind from the anxiety and the pain of guilt, and the burden of sin. And leading us and directing us away from evil is the spiritual direction. By the way, bread takes care of the present, forgiveness takes care of the past, and help takes care of the future. So all the dimensions of life are covered and all the needs of life are covered. It's amazing, the marvel, the, the wonder of how God's infinite mind can reduce all there is of human need to three simple profound statements.
Now listen beloved, this whole prayer is set up to glorify God, the whole thing. "Our Father, which art in heaven," that's God's paternity as we have seen. "Hallowed be thy name." God's priority. "Thy kingdom come." God's program. "Thy will be done," God's purpose. "Give us this day our daily bread." God's provision. "Forgive us our debts," God pa ... God's pardon. "Lead us not," God's protection. And finally God's pre-eminence, "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever. Amen." All of it is for God's glory, don't ever forget that if you never learn anything else from this lesson learn that all your prayers are for God's glory, all of them are. Do you know something? Even when you stick food in your face it's for God's glory not for your sustenance primarily, did you know that? That's why it says in First Corinthians 10:31, "Whatever you do, whether, you eat, or drink, do it all (what?) to the glory of God." You say, how can eating food be to the glory of God? It is if you know where it came from, right? It is if you remember the source of your food. It is if you remember the capacity that you have to enjoy the flavor. 'It is if you're thankful to the one who provided the nourishment in it. Every single thing is for the glory of God, everything, and prayer nonetheless is for His glory. And so we come then to this thought that no matter what we ask it is for His glory that we ask it not, for our gain. We're not badgering God to make Him change His mind for us.
David Meyers says in a book called The Human Puzzle, "Some petitionary prayers seem not only to lack faith in the inherent goodness of God but also to elevate in human kind to a position of control over God. God, the Scriptures remind us is omniscient and omnipotent, the sovereign ruler of the universe, for Christians to pray as if God were a puppet whose strings they yank with their prayers seems not only potentially superstitious but blasphemous as well. When prayer is sold as a device for eliciting health, success and other favors from a celestial vending machine we may wonder what is really being merchandised, is it faith or is it faith's counterfeit a glib caricature of true Christianity?" Elton Trueblood said, "In some congregations the gospel has been diminished to the mere art of self-fulfillment, egocentricity is all that is left. And boy there is so much of that today in Christianity, where prayer is simply an ego centered, self-fulfilling, self indulging exercise to try to elicit from God what I demand. That's not right. All ... these petitions here, though directed at our essential needs are ways in which God's glory comes to earth, and makes itself manifest. And so J. I. Packer says, "The prayer of a Christian is not an attempt to ... force God's hand, but it is a humble acknowledgment of helplessness and dependence."
So with the right perspective then let's look at this petition, for God's glory, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is a basic need of man, the term bread beloved means all of man's physical needs, it's a broad term; it is a prayer for the physical need of man to be fulfilled. And that's a, that's a very obvious thing, but in our society it's somewhat remote because we have so much, so much. What does it really say to us? Let's find out. First of all I want to ... we're going to go through five points, two of them this morning and then three I think next time. But I want you to get these 'cause they're so important.
First of all the substance. What is the substance here? It's bread; see it there in verse 11? Bread. But it isn't just talking about bread in terms of a loaf of bread, "Give us this day our daily bread." Is talking about the physical, you see mancan't even be a spiritual being unless he is a physical one, right? God has to begin with the physical. It thrills me to know that God, the God who is the God of infinite celestial epochs, God who is the God of space, God who is the God beyond time, the God of eternity, God who is the infinitely holy God of the universe who holds all the whirling worlds and the spinning stars in the palm of His hand, that same God cares that my physical needs are met, that same God is concerned with the fact that I have a, a meal to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to rest. It thrills me that that God, that infinite eternal God has come to earth in terms of His caring love, and is concerned that the needs of my life in a physical way and your life be met, and He even sets certain conditions for them being met, we'll get into that next week. But bread is all of that physical area. Martin Luther had it right when he said, "Everything necessary for the preservation of this life is bread, including food, a healthy body, good weather, house, home, wife, children, good government, peace." End quote. He saw all of the physical elements of life, the necessities but not the luxuries of life. I don't think that we can ask God for the luxuries of life based on this verse, but for the necessities. What He chooses to give us by way of luxury is at His gracious hand. But He promises to give us the necessities. You remember back in Proverbs chapter 30? The prop ... the ... the ... ah, Psalm ah, Proverbs 30 written by Agur? And in verses 8 and 9 he says, Lord, don't give me so much that I forget You, and don't give me so little that I steal and dishonor Your name. Just give me food that is convenient for me. I ... think that's the heart of this. It isn't self-seeking, give me more and more and more and more, it's just saying, Lord give me what I need.
But you say, John in our life we don't even have need, we don't even need to pray this. Yes we do. Because, now I want you to get this, this petition for us while not the desperate cry of one who's starving, this petition ... by the way I believe there are ... there's a pro ... there are promises in the Bible that indicate if a person is righteous God will feed that person, God is not going to willfully withhold provisions of life from a righteous child, the Bible says. So God is going to provide this for anybody, in whatever situation they are if they're righteous, within the purview of His will. So that anybody really could say, well the Lord's providing for me, I'm righteous, why do I need to pray? So that the essence of the prayer is really an affirmation that all our substance comes from God, it is saying, God, I want to let You know that You I realize are the source of my life, my food, my shelter, my clothing. It is that constant affirmation. It's for example when I ask the Lord to forgive my sin and cleanse my life of something. Well why do I ask Him to do that? Hasn't He already promised to forgive my sin? Yes, but He also said to keep on confessing it. And when I say to the Lord, Lord, lead me and guide me in a certain direction, doesn't the Bible say He will be my guide and He will be my leader and He will guide me in this way and in that way? Yes, but He wants me to affirm that I recognize that leadership in my life. And sometimes when I call out to the Lord I say, Lord, hear my prayer and answer, and don't I know that He will and always has? Yes, but He wants me to affirm that confidence because that exalts Him. I may not have to say, Oh God, I don't have any food for my family, where is it going to come from? But I will ever and always say, God everything I have and all that I share with those I love comes from Your good and gracious hand. And so for us it is an affirmation of the source of everything. A precious thing it is to know that, that our God cares about our physical needs. So bread is the staple of life. And though we may not always be on the edge of hunger we are always to be thankful for all of it comes from Him.
Now that takes us to the second thought, the second feature of this verse. First the substance is bread, and secondly the source is God. And I just want to talk about that for a minute because I think it's important.
You know we tend to think that we provide everything for ourselves, I make my living, I earn my wages, I buy my bread, you know, what do I owe God, right I'm carrying my own load frankly. That's the way ... if we don't say that that's kind of the way we operate. For example when is the last time you said, Lord, for my daily bread I thank You, for the fact that I have food to eat and clothes to wear and a shelter over my head, I thank You, that I have a bed to rest in, that I have enough physical strength to know You, to perceive You, to live life, in a way that is rich and meaningful. Well, that's what He's after here. God cares about the little things, God is involved, God knows when a sparrow hops; God knows the number of hairs on your head, and everything there is in this world He knows and controls and orders, for us so that we are always to be thankful.
You know we live in a day, it's interesting that it's almost paranoid, people are so fearful that they're going to lose, they're going to lose their existence because of the pollution of the resources, right? We're afraid of, of nuclear reactors messing up our environment, we're afraid f polluting our seas with sewage and our rivers and lakes, we're afraid of overcrowding population, we're afraid of smog and air pollution, we're afraid of breaking up the ozone around the earth, we're afraid of polluting space with all of the garbage and metal that's floating around, we're afraid of polluting our bodies with chemicals, we are afraid of all of this and with all the money we have and all the resources we have man knows that he is the always on the brink of devastating his environment to the point where he has no resources. Which ought to drive him to the recognition that God upholds the whole thing. You know there's going to come a day in the Book of Revelation when God turns out the lights in the heavens, when God turns the rivers to blood, when God has the whole world go crazy, when the sea swallows up all of the ships and kills all the fish, when literal devastation sweeps the, the world. The sun goes black and the moon doesn't give its light, and all the resources are gone and in Revelation 18 the whole economic system collapses and music stops because there's no song to sing, and then it won't matter what you have, it won't be worth a nickel because none of it'll buy anything cause there won't be anything to purchase to preserve life. And man knows the potentiation of that. But man never makes the jump to the fact that if it weren't for the fact that God upholds all things by the word of His power, everything would fall apart.
You know that scientists realize that when all their calculations are done, andall of their examinations are done there is an unknown element in the universe that makes it all hang together in constancy and science doesn't even have a name for it. And it's God. Everything we have is from God. It is God who brings the rain to make things grow, it is God who cycles the seasons, it is God who produces the minerals in the soil to make the earth fertile, it is God who gives us the natural resources to propel ourselves around, it is God who provides for us the animals from which we make our clothing and the synthetics that come from petroleum, etc, etc, that once came from animals. It's God, who made it all. And so my daily bread, the necessities of physical life are all from God and so part of my prayer should ever and always be, "Give us this day our daily bread." God we recognize You as the giver of all physical necessity.
You know, just think about it from the food standpoint, we don't have time to go into everything but just think from the food standpoint. Go back to Genesis chapter 1 for a minute and look how God has given us food. Genesis 1:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps on the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Now listen here, God could have designed that we all just eat mud. Mud for breakfast, mud for lunch, and mud for dinner, all our lives and that everything was grey. But God is a God of marvelous variety, isn't He? I mean look around you there's none two of us alike, and the colors, and you go outside and the world of color is almost unending. And why would there not be the same variety in food? And so He says in 29 and here is the key, "I have given you every (every) herb bearing seed, every tree, every beast, every fowl, every thing that creepeth, every green herb. And God saw every thing, and said it's good." Good for food, good for men's physical life. God is a God who put into His world such an incalculable world of wonder and variety that ... and of course man corrupts this, doesn't he? And it becomes a fetish for him to eat in a variety of ways, but it's nonetheless the good gift of God to give us an incredible amount of variety in life, and it's all there. And God has wonderfully and graciously provided for us.
Now go from there over to First Timothy chapter 4 and I'll show you a comparative Scripture and tie the two together. In spite of what God has given, and by the way God did give special dietary laws to Israel but set them aside in Acts chapter 10 so they're no longer in existence but God did give them special dietary laws for awhile in order to keep them on a certain diet so they couldn't easily intermingle with the pagan nations and corrupt their purity, that was His design. But when Israel ah, stopped obeying and was set aside for the cause of the church then the dietary laws were also set aside according to Acts 10, Colossians also says the same thing, "Let no man judge you in those matters." But there are still people who come along and they want to draw lines and tell you you can't have this or you can't have that and you have that in First Timothy 4, somewho gave seducing spirits, and the doctrines of demons, come along and they say you shouldn't get married and you shouldn't eat certain foods. And we know there are some who believe that it's more holy to be unmarried and not to eat meat on certain days and that, and there are many ways that that has been illustrated in history. But it says, "God has created these foods, to be received with thanksgiving by then who believe and know the truth." God has provided this incredible world of food for us, to express our thanks to Him, we who believe and know the truth. The rest of the world just indulges itself without a gratitude at all.
Now look at verse 4, "For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it is received with thanksgiving; (now watch) For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." Now what does that mean? First of all, how are all these foods sanctified by the Word of God? Very clearly, in Genesis 1:29 to 31 God's Word said, it is all good. That sanctified it. Here the Word of God says, verse 4, "Every creature of God is good." And again the Word of God sanctifies it, so it is sanctified by the lord of God. Now how is it sanctified by prayer? When it is received (verse 3) with thanksgiving." Verse 4, "When it is received with thanksgiving." The Word of God sanctifies it and you sanctify it when you thank God for it. Do you really thank God for your food? You say, aw, listen we wouldn't have a meal without a prayer. You know those little quick things that are rather unconscious and indifferent and you just rattle them off to make sure the duty's done. Are you really thankful? Do you really see God as the source, of everything? Listen, God has given us a marvelous variety of foods, we should be so thankful, the foods have been sanctified already by the Word of God and they are doubly sanctified when you say thanks to God. When you are saying thanks to God for your provision on a daily basis to meet your physical need you are fulfilling the spirit of "Give us this day our daily bread." Realizing that God is the source of all of that, and beloved that isn't selfish is it, because that gives Him glory, doesn't it? Have you ever stopped to think about everything God's given us to eat?
Just, let me talk about that for a minute. Food is close to all of us, and we're all into that, obviously every generation has been it's an absolute necessity. But do you know the variety is amazing even in the Bible. I was just going through some verses to try to put together a little biblical menu for you so here it comes. First of all God has provided plant food. Now under the plant food there are several categories, first, grains, and if you study the Bible you'll find the fields of Palestine for example produced wheat, barley, millet, spelt, those are just different kind of grains, and then there's a term corn, and corn doesn't mean the Indian maize that we call corn it is simply a, a term, a general term for all of that kind of grain that was used ah, because that kind of corn that we have today wasn't even known in those days, it refers to cereal grains. So they had all these grains now according to Isaiah 3:1 and many other passages, they would take the grain, they would crush the grain, and ah, when it was crushed they would then make it into a flour, they would make it into bread and they made it into all kinds of different breads. This was very much a part of their life.
Another thing I found interesting was that they would take the kernels of the grains and they would leave them in the sun on a stone to dry and get them real parched and then they would salt them and that's what they had for snacks, kind of like you go in the health food store, you know, and they have all those little bags of that salted grains, you can buy soy beans or whatever, I don't know all that stuff but, it's ah, it's similar. They had their snack foods, their little crunchy stuff. They also had nuts according to Genesis 43:11 God provided nuts. Ah, also vegetables uhm, I found as I looked through the Scripture cucumbers, leeks, that's some kind of like an onion, melons, onions, garlics, beans, lentils, bitter herbs, mint, dill, cumin and then in Jeremiah 6:20 it talk about sweet cane which is probably sugar cane. And you know how much sugar means to all of us, to flavor everything we eat. That was made by the Lord, you have to remember that, in its natural state. Fruits also are apart of God's plant foods, we have in the Bible grapes, raisins, olives, figs, pomegranates, apples and then what Jeremiah and Amos call summer fruit and we're not just too sure what it is, and those may only be family names and there may be endless varieties of those. Then you come to animal foods that the Lord provided. And I'm just talking here about the land of Israel to say nothing of going all around the world, but in the animal foods you have first of all the flesh of animals that's provided for us to eat, there's nothing wrong with eating meat folks, it's not spiritual to be vegetarian. If you're a vegetarian and you prefer that, that's wonderful, that's fine. Ah, if you're a meatatarian and you just want to eat that all the time that's okay too, it's not a biblical issue. You're not more spiritual if you don't eat meat, but God has provided oxen, sheep, goats, ah, for Israel and their pork has even been provided though they were restricted from eating it ah, and that restriction has been removed in Acts 10 as I said. They preferred lamb if they had their choice, the Bible talks about the stalled ox, that was the ox they put in the stall and they didn't let them run around to get tough muscle they just wanted them fat and juicy, and that's ah, that's kind of like the fatted calf too, and they also had by the way in Deuteronomy 14:5 there's a list of seven animals that could be hunted for food, interesting. Fish, and they had four types of insects according to ah, Leviticus 11 that they enjoyed. Now I don't know how they served those insects. I've seen chocolate covered ants in a, in a store or something but I don't know maybe they had those real crunchy too and just threw them in with their nuts and stuff, I don't know. But ah, there was also, ha, you know, whatever turns you on, right? They also had fowl, ah, different kinds of fowl that they ate and you can study the Scripture and you'll find in First Samuel 26 they ate partridge, in Exodus 16 they ate quail, in Leviticus 12 they ate pigeons, in Genesis 15 they ate turtledoves and in Matthew you find chickens running around crowing from time to time and I'm sure they had a purpose for them as well. And so there were fowl provided by the Lord in an abundant array.
And then you go from animal products in flesh to the animal products that come through the, the dairy process, and you have milk. They actually ate ah, they actually ate byproducts of the milk, they hadwhat was called curds in Genesis 18:8 which is butter, they had cheese Job tells us, ah, they had eggs from chickens, they had honey, they had milk from the cows, from the goats, from the sheep, and they even drank camel milk which doesn't sound too interesting, but they did. I, I was in Egypt once and I know I got a camel burger that wasn't what they said it was but I know that's what it was. And the Lord also provided, the Lord also provided a tremendous amount of condiments to flavor their food. There was as I said the sugar that came from the, the cane, ah, there was salt, mint, anise, all kinds of seeds, mustards, cumin, and all of these kinds of herbs and things that were used to flavor the food.
Now it is thrilling to me to see that God has provided such an incredible abundance of all of this for us, in fact when God said to the children of Israel, You're going to go to a certain land; God put his finger on one characteristic of that land and set it apart as a land of what? Milk and Honey, and what God was saying is, It is a land where there will be a physical bounty. And by the way folks, when you go to Israel today you'll be amazed to see that that is true. Israel is fertile, it is one of the most fertile lands in all the world, and God knew that when He sent His people there. God provides an incredible abundant variety of those things needed to meet our physical life requirements. You know I was thinking of illustrating, I don't have time to illustrate a whole lot of this but you just should study some of the, some of the incidents in the Old Testament where they were eating and see all of the stuff they had, it is amazing. Abigail made haste, just get this, how'd you like to cook this up wives? She took two hundred loaves, that's a good start, now those are probably smaller, two skins of wine, animal skins, big huge things, five sheep dressed, I mean how'd you like to have a ... to cook five sheep, five measures of parched grain, a whole bunch of those little crunchy grain things, a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs packed them on her animals and took off. Now that's, that's kind of exciting. Boy, I don't know what all was going to happen but I know the folks would enjoy all of that. And you can go into Second Samuel, First Kings and all and you can find all these things that were provided for food.
Now where did it all come from? God made everything, didn't He? Everything. Every single thing. It's fun when you try to tell your kids that, you know and they don't understand, well, God didn't make hamburgers or God didn't make hot dogs, they don't understand that all the things are made up of the component parts of what God made. Even our clothing, we are dependent on the animals for our clothing. We're dependent on the plants for our clothing. And people say, well, I, I have a polyester dress, you know there's no animal or plant. Am, but that's made from I think a petroleum product which is ... comes from the earth and God made that too. You don't have anything, nothing, you don't eat anything, you don't wear anything, and you don't live in anything that didn't come from this earth, and every element of it was coming from the creative hand of God. And it is the height of indifference and ingratitude not to be daily recognizing that, and affirming that God is a God who is active daily in upholding His world so that it supports our physical needs. How grateful we should be for God's gracious daily loving provision. Did you know that God even, this is amazing, God has set up a network that's so incredible, God has to have in His whole system food for man, but in order to have food for man He has to feed the food that feeds man, do you realize that? And so God has to feed the animals and the plants and there has to be minerals and other animals and other plants and the whole cycle is just to provide for man. The Bible says for the plant eaters there's herbage, for the ox there's grass and straw, for the horses there's barley, for the birds there are seeds, for the locusts there are plants, and God keeps the whole cycle going. And by the way, rain is a gift from God, did you know that?
And if God shut off the heavens nothing would grow, and if the grass didn't grow and the plants didn't grow, the animals wouldn't eat and if the animals didn't eat you wouldn't either and we'd all be dead, so if it doesn't rain the whole thing goes down. But God upholds the world and keeps the rain falling. All we have is from God's hand.
You say, now wait a minute, I earn my money. Just remember, if you have the ability to bend your back, if you have the ability to open your mouth and talk and make a living, if you have the ability to think and make a living it's God who gave you that capacity and that facility, and by the way the money you got from the bank was made out of stuff that God created. The paper came from trees and the coins camp from minerals. You don't have ... there isn't anything; there is nothing in the world that God didn't create. Talk about dependence folks, we are dependent on God. First Chronicles 29:14 says, "All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee." Anything you ever give God back is something He gave you to start with.
Thomas Watson that great Puritan with a heart for God wrote this, "If all is a gift from God, do you see the odious ingratitude of men who sin against their giver, God feeds them and they fight against Him, H e gives them bread andthey give Him affront. How unworthy is this? Should we not cry shame on him who had a friend always feeding him with money and yet he should betray and injure that friend. Thus ungratefully do sinners deal with God, they not only forget His mercies but they abuse them, as Jeremiah 5:7 has said, "When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery."
Oh, how horrid is it to sin against a bountiful God, to strike the hand that gives." In Deuteronomy 32:15 it says, "Jeshurun became fat, and rebelled." You know something? The more you have the less grateful you are, true? We need to be careful in our society. You say this verse doesn't apply to us? Maybe it applies to us more than it applies to people who have very little, because they tend to express this gratitude and petition, we don't, we don't. Because we have too much. We are dependent on God beloved for every single thing we have, it is God who gives us our physical supply. Next time you pray, remember to affirm that all your physical needs are met by God, and ask Him humbly to continue to do it that His name may be glorified in your prayer of thanksgiving. Well, I wanted to get a little further but we'll do that next time. Let's pray.
Father we've just really introduced the beginning of this wonderful and significant statement but we've certainly touched the most important part, that it is from Your hand that we receive everything. Oh Lord, may we be ever thankful, may all that we possess of the physical be sanctified not only by the Word of God but by thanksgiving in our prayers, as Paul said to Timothy. Lord make us thankful. Lord may we know that we do not do anything of our own selves, that we have absolutely no resources unless You give them to us. May we know that You made everything, You uphold everything. "That every good and perfect gift comes down from you." And Lord may we be the kind of people who stand in the place to receive the promise, and may we return Your gift each day with our gratitude. For Your glory may the world hear us giving thanks and know that we take no credit for ourselves for anything, but give You all the praise, be glorified Father in Your abundant supply of our physical need. We pray in Christ's blessed name. Amen.
Well there's some exciting things for you to learn about practical things in regard to this as we study next Lord's Day, and I'll be looking forward to that, I hope you will too.
8 The Provision of Prayer, Part 2 Matthew 6:11 Code: 2240 It's a great joy this morning to come back to Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 13, I would draw your attention to that passage in the Bible. I'd like us to have a word of prayer as we begin.
Father we commit the next moments to You and ask that You would be our teacher. We desire to be nothing more than a clear channel through which You speak. May Your truth be uncluttered with human error or embellishment, and may we hear You speak to us, and may we be filled with wonder at Your power and Your grace to us. May we know better how to pray because we've shared this time, in Christ's name. Amen.
Learning how to pray is very important. Learning how to pray is learning how to commune with God, I can't think of anything more important than that. In fact it's so important that the Scripture says, "We're to pray without ceasing." "We're to pray always." And if we are to pray always and pray without ceasing, and if prayer is communion with God, and if "the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Then effective prayer is very, very important. How fitting it is that we really know how to pray then. How tragic it would be to spend a lifetime missing the right way to commune with God, and there is that possibility, you know? For according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 8, "The Spirit has to make intercession for us often, because of our infirmity of the flesh, which means that we don't know how to pray as we ought." So here we are with this incredible resource of prayer to commune with God and to tap the divine resource. And we are to be engaged in that at all times, and yet how often the flesh inhibits the legitimacy and the rightness of those prayers. And I dare say that if we could be taught to pray by anyone the one that we would choose would be our Lord who knew best how to commune with the Father; and that is precisely what we have in Matthew 6:9 to 13. We have Jesus instructing us to pray, and giving us the elements and the ingredients in a proper prayer perspective. I don't know how you have responded to this series as we've been involved in it but my own heart has given great attention to it in my study because I, I sense here as you do in the gospel record as you study the words of Christ particularly that you are being taught literally by Christ Himself. If we had announced that Jesus was to be our teacher this morning and He were to stand in this place I dare say we would listen and we would hear with attentive ears that injunction that faces us in verse 11 for this day, "Give us this day our daily bread." And we would want to know all that there was to know about the meaning of that great wonderful statement. Well, He's not here in one sense but in another He is. He's not here in terms of the limits of my flesh but He is here in terms of the unlimited truth of His Word, and so we will be attentive to what His Word has to say for us and to us.
Let's read again verses 9 to 13 so we have the setting. "After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."
Now remember will you? As we approach again this passage that Jesus is contrasting His standard of prayer with that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And basically just to sum it up in a simple statement Jesus' standard of prayer focuses on God while their standard of prayer focused on themselves. In verse 5, Jesus said, "You love to pray standing in the corners, and at the wide parts of the street, in order to be seen of men." In verse 7 He says in effect, You use vain repetition like the pagans do, as if you could cajole God or badger God into giving you what you want. Verse 8, You assume that you have some information to give God that is not at His disposal, were it not for your particular involvement. So that your attitude and your action and the very form of your prayer is all focused on you. And in contrast to that Jesus says, when you pray everything is to be focused on Him. "Our Father," is God's paternity. "Hallowed be thy name." Is God's priority. "Thy kingdom come." Is God's program. "Thy will be done," is God's purpose. "Give us this day our daily bread." Is God's provision. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Is God's pardon. And so forth. Everything focuses on God. That's the way prayer ought to be. Prayer is not for me, it's for Him, it's not for my getting it's for His glory. And we've been learning that as we've been moving through this tremendous prayer. In fact the first three petitions, "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."Put the whole prayer in perspective that nothing of petition regarding ourselves is even introduced until God is in the prior place. I ask nothing hat does not hallow His name, I ask nothing that does not bring in His kingdom in some element, I ask nothing that is not the expression of His will.
Now, having established that we move then from those elements related specifically and directly to God to those which relate to human need, and we come to verse 11, "Give us this day our daily bread." Now we're going to look at five features, and we've already seen the first two, and just to remind you of them, five features of this simple petition. First of all the substance that is requested, what is it, it's bread, "Give us this day our daily bread." And you'll remember that we suggested to you that the concept of bread here is really a symbol for all of our physical needs. Probably encompassing the three basic needs food, clothing, and shelter. Bread then sums up the physical need, the temporal need; the basic necessities of life were of little use to God in accomplishing His ends and His goals in this life if He does not meet our basic physical needs to keep us alive. And so commensurate with His usefulness of us in this, is kingdom as He brings it into the earth is the necessity to supply our physical need. Now, the second thing we talked about, not only the substance but the source. The assumption of the petition is that the source is God, He's implied behind the verb, "Give us." We look to God as the source of everything. We went into this in great detail three weeks ago in our last study. In one sense I regret that we've had this interval and in another sense I don't because I've been able to really clear my thinking on this particular verse in the meantime, and so I think maybe there's more to be said now of meaningful truth than would have been two weeks ago. But God is the source of everything. You don't possess anything that He didn't provide, He is the Creator and the Sustainer and the Preserver of the entire universe, everything that we have is from His hand, everything. And so the source is God and the substance is bread.
The first petition then that rises from the heart of a child of God to the Father is that petition surrounding physical need, there's nothing wrong with seeking God's face in regard to that, as long as the motive is that through it His name be hallowed and through it His kingdom come and through it His will be done. He is the one w o desires to meet our physical need. And of course we know from James 1:17, "That every good and perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." We know from First Timothy chapter 4, "That all things are to be received with thanksgiving, for the word of God and our prayer of thanks sanctifies them." God has given us everything good to enjoy. We said then last time that the idea of the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread." Is not simply the prayer of a beggar, though it could be a prayer of one who has nothing for the very next meal, but it is also the acknowledgment of all of us that it is God who is the source of every physical provision. For some people it might be, Lord, I don't have something to eat for my next meal I ask You to give me my daily bread that You may be glorified in the provision. For us it may be, Lord, You have supplied so much and I thank You and I acknowledge You as the source and I ask You to continue to provide with such graciousness, that Your name may glorified. So whether you do not have and you ask to receive or whether you have and you ask to continue to receive the petition is the same, it recognizes God as the source.
Now what is the supplication? It's the verb, give, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is the heart of the petition and this is kind of what we want to major on this morning. Now what right do we have to ask God for this? Do I have some reason or rhyme to say to God, Give me my daily bread Father. Is there a basis on which that petition is valid? Well the only basis would be that God had promised to do that, right? That God had promised to meet my physical needs. And if He's made that promise then I have a right to ask Him to fulfill it. And that is precisely the promise that He has given us. Turn with me to Psalm 37, and I want to set in your mind a basic consideration that we're going to talk about that I hope will be helpful to you in understanding how God desires to Meet your physical needs. Now I don't believe that God is bound, mark this, to meet the physical needs of everybody. I believe there are some conditions, there are some conditions, and we'll see this repeatedly as we move through this morning. But I don't believe that God is bound to meet everybody's physical needs. Let's look at Psalm 37 beginning at verse 3, "Trust in the LORD, and do good;" now that simple statement is profound folks, because it encompasses the significance of salvation. Salvation is believing God, resulting in good works, right? "Faith without works is dead." So simply saying, "Trust in the LORD, and do good;" is just like summing up soteriology, summing up the doctrine of salvation, believing, and the result of that true faith is good works.
Now then, if you are one who believes and that believing is manifest faith, then you have the promise that "you will dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be (what?) fed." Isn't that great? Now that's pretty practical. I think that some of us feel that most of the promises of the Bible have to do with spiritual truth, and that is true, but never to the exclusion of the physical, we would be little spiritual good to the lord here in the world if He didn't meet our physical need. And by the way if you need a New Testament comparison go to Second Corinthians chapter 9, don't turn to it now but just write it down, Second Corinthians chapter 9 it talks about how we are to give, "Not grudgingly, or of necessity; but because the Lord loves a cheerful giver. We are to sow not sparingly, but bountifully. And God is able to minister bread for your food, and to make your fruits of righteousness abound." In other words when you give to God and invest in God's kingdom God will not only provide spiritual fruit, but He will provide says Second Corinthians 9 bread for your food. The physical provision of God is a biblical promise. Now further on in verse 4 it says, "Delight in the LORD." Then it says, "Commit your way unto the LORD." Then in verse 7 it says, "Rest in the LORD." And then in verse 8 it says, "Cease from anger, and forsake wrath." And it goes through this, and it makes a comparison between the righteous person who does this and the unrighteous. "The unrighteous man shall be cut off," verse 9. Shall be cut off. "The wicked," verse 12 is mentioned, and then in verse 13, "The Lord will laugh at him; for he sees that his day is coming." In other words, for the righteous there is promise, for the unrighteous there is judgment. Now go down for a moment to verse 18, "The LORD knows the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. And they shall not be ashamed in the evil time;" now watch, "and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied." Isn't that great? The promise of the provision of God for His own people in a time of famine, though the unrighteous may perish, the righteous will have provision. Verse 20, "The wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD be like the fat of lambs. They shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away." That kind of fat really burns, and that's the way it is with the wicked. God has no obligation to provide for them, but for us He does.
Now I don't think it's necessarily always going to be a feast, but then after all Proverbs 15:17 says, "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred." When the relationships are right it doesn't have to be fancy. Let me give you an illustration of this if I can, I hadn't really intended to use this but I want to take the time to do it here, First Kings chapter 16, I think this is a graphic illustration of the principle that God provides for His own, in the midst of a famine. The history of Israel in the divided kingdom was a tragic history, they had all bad kings, and it seemed as though they went from bad to worse until finally they culminated in the most wretched of all of them by the name of Ahab who was the son of Omri. And in First Kings 16 verse 25 we find that Ahab takes over for his father Omri when Omri dies, and Ahab takes the throne and reigns in Israel 22 years, and Ahab brought 22 years of problems frankly to that land of Israel, he married that wretched woman Jezebel who worshiped Baal and brought in all the Baal worship and reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal in verse 32. "And Ahab made an idol; and he did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." And the nation sunk into the pits of unrighteousness. As, a result of it verse 1 of 17, "and Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word."
In other words God says that's it for the provision for Israel. No rain, no crops, no crops no food, no food, famine. But in the midst of it, verse 2, "And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, get thee from here, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook, Cherith, which is before the Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there." Isn't that unbelievable? Commanded who to feed him? The ravens. God organized the ravens to bring food to His prophet, why? Because the wicked may perish, but in a famine the righteous will be preserved. For God makes promises of physical provision for His own. "And the ravens (verse 6) brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook." Well the brook eventually dried up, and the prophet needed something to eat and so "The LORD said to him, go to Zarephath, and belongs to Sidon, and dwell there; and I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee. And he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, the widow was gathering sticks. And he called to her, and aid, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink." Now that's coming on pretty strong to the little widow who's picking up the sticks as if she was supposed to know who this was, but apparently the Lord had kind of prepared her heart as verse 9 indicates, "And as she was going to fetch the water, he called to her, and, aid, by the way, Bring me, a morsel of bread in your hand." Now hat introduced a severe problem. "She said, As the LORD, thy God, liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and, I'm gathering two sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die." That's it, we have enough left to make one little cake, my son and I are going to split it and then die of starvation. "And Elijah said into her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said. But make me of it a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and then, afterwards, make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not be used up, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain on the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, and he, and her house, did eat for many days. And the barrel of meal as not used up, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Elijah." Isn't that tremendous? That barrel just stayed full all the time, and that cruse of oil just stayed full all the time and they just kept eating and God miraculously fed that widow and her son and that prophet in the midst of the famine, why? Because God was bound, by His promise to His people that one who trusts in the Lord and does good will be fed. And I really believe that sometimes we forget that God is concerned for the physical provision, and that we can claim that promise at His good and gracious hand.
Go down in Psalm 37 again if you left there, I wants to kind of climax this wonderful truth, verse 22 says, "For such as are blessed by him shall inherit the earth; and they who are cursed by him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, and he delighteth in his way. And though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the LORD upholds him with his hand." The whole idea here is a righteous man is cared for by the Lord, and then the climax of it is so wonderful in verse 25, and David says this, "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed (doing what?) begging bread." David says, I've been around a long time and I have never seen the righteous forsaken and His seed begging bread, why? Verse 26, "Because God is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed." Verse 27, that's good reason to "Depart from evil, and do good." The promise of God for physical supply. God feeds His own beloved. I, I've even read in the Bible about God sheltering His own if He has to grow His own private gourd over his head, just to keep the sun off him. And the Lord said in Luke 18:28 to 30 that none of you has left father, and mother, and houses, and brother to follow Me. But that I'll give all of that stuff to you, manifold times in this life and in the life to come. I believe God has provided houses and lands and fathers and mothers and homes for His own, in this life as well as the life to come.
Now, this is a tremendous thing beloved to know that God is a God who has promised to give us physical supply. Imagine if you were outside the knowledge of God and you had no such claim on God. Imagine for Example Irasima DeSilva who lives in a favela in Brazil, favela's that I myself have seen which are indescribable paper, cardboard slums built on the sides of the hills of Rio in Sao Paulo. Sometimes I think, she said, if I die I won't have to see my children suffering like they are. Sometimes I think of killing myself because
I see them crying hungry and there I am without a cent to buy them bread. Stan Mooneyham of World Vision tells the heart rending story of a visit to the house of Sebastian and Maria Nociamento, another poor favela family in Brazil. He describes the house as one room lean-to with a thatched roof and sand floor, one stool, a charcoal hibachi and lour cots which were potato sacks filled with straw. He says, "My emotions could scarcely take in what I saw and heard, the three year old twins lying naked and unmoving on a small cot were in the last act of their personal drama, mercifully the curtain was coming down on heir brief appearance, malnutrition was the villain, the father is without work and both he and Maria are anguished over their existence but too proud to beg. He tries to shine shoes and Maria can't talk about their existence, she tries but words just will not come. Her mothers love is deep and tender and the daily deterioration of her children is more than she can bear." End quote. And God is not bound to those who do not trust Him and do good. Oh God may in His gracious and sovereign choice feed the unrighteous on occasion, but He's not bound to that. And someday all of those who are wicked will go hungry. Luke 6:25 says, "Woe to you that are full now! For you shall hunger." God is bound only to the physical provision of those who are His own children.
In India, men forsake their wives and their children just to find food. Families commit suicide together. Mother's throw their babies into the swirling waters of the Ganges and watch them die as an act of sacrifice to their gods because they're going to die of malnutrition anyway, and if they die of malnutrition there's no religious virtue boundup in that and so they'd rather drown them so at least the gods can be appeased as long as they're going to die they might as well gain some religious end. But you know something? With all of the problems and the struggles and the famines of our world, the issues beloved are not really the fact that the earth can't provide food, that isn't the case at all. Indira Ghandi herself says, there is enough resource in India to feed that nation entirely and then export two thirds of all that it produces. Some of us think that the world can't produce food for mankind, that isn't true, do you know something? If ... I was reading this week that the more people we have in the world the more productivity we have because man is a productive being. I was reading also this week that you could put the entire population of the world in the state of Montana that leaves a lot of space left. Fifteen % of the harvestable land on the globe is being used for that and only half of that every year. Our problem is not a lack of resources, our problem is not too many people; there are less people per square mile in New York today than there were 50 years ago. The resources are there, but what cuts people off from those resources is a spiritual issue. And I'll get into that in a moment, because if they were brought into the knowledge of God, I believe God has made a world that could provide for them. In Psalm 33 backing up from 37, verse 18 says, "Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him, upon those who hope in his mercy, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine." Now it's amazing to me that God would literally, as a general rule sort out His own people in the midst of a famine and preserve them. Now He may not do it with ravens or like Jesus, feeding Him with angels or He may not shelter them with a gourd that grows up over their head, usually He feeds His own people with other of His own people, doesn't He? But God takes care of His own in the midst of a famine. Chapter 34 Verse 10, Psalms, verse 9 says, "Oh, fear the LORD, ye his saints; for there is no lack to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing." They're not going to go hungry. What a wonderful exciting promise from God.
In Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths." And what is the result of it? Verse 8, "It'll be health to your navel, and marrow to your bones. Honor the LORD with your substance, and your first fruits of all your increase; and your barnswill be filled with plenty, and your presses will burst out with new wine." God makes physical provision, for our needs in His gracious care as a loving Father for His children. Proverbs 10:3, "The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, but he casts away the substance of the wicked." God then, I think makes it abundantly clear in the Scripture that He is committed to the care of His people.
You say, well John you're talking about Old Testament principles. No, I'm not, look at Matthew 7:7 and we'll get over into the New Testament for a moment. Matthew 7, then I want to illustrate it to you. And what does it say? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you;" and we usually equate that with spiritual things, in fact that verse is used often of someone coming to Christ and asking for salvation. Then it says in verse 8, "For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened." But just exactly what Christ is referring to is indicated in verse9, "What man is there of you whom, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? And if then, you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?" And what is the illustration of the good things? It's bread and meat. God is concerned with giving the very basics of life to His people, just as a father would be to his own. And that follows right on the heel of chapter 6 verse 25 and following, and what a marvelous text that is, which says you don't need to be worrying about what you eat or what you drink or what you wear, God takes care of that, you just seek first the kingdom and everything else will find its rightful place.
Now listen, there have been times when feeding and shelter and clothing has been a supernatural act of God, but usually God meets the needs of His people through His other people. So that where you have a Christian community you have that interchange. And also through the fact that a child of God has such a high view of the value of man, that he seeks not only to meet his own needs but the needs of others. In James 2:16 for example it says, if somebody comes in and they're naked and destitute, and you pat them on the back and say, brother, I hope the Lord meets your needs, it's questionable whether you're really regenerated. And in First John 3 it says, that if a brother comes a long, and he has a great need and you close up the bowels of your compassion toward him, how dwelleth the love of God in you? In other words it is almost the, the innate response of one who knows God that he supplies the needs of others. Further, that he will be engaged in work that will supply his own needs. And we'll see more about that in a minute. Now let me spread this out and give you some illustrations of this. God has a ... has given us a, a literal global illustration of this truth. That where in the world you have Christian heritage and Christian roots, you have a high view of human life, and where you have that high view of human life you have a great supply for those people. In the parts of the world where there are no Christian roots you have a low view of human life, and there you have great famine and poverishment.
For example, nations that have been under the influence of the gospel, nations that have known Christian teaching have a high respect for the value of man as created in God's image, and the object of divine redemption and they are not as prone to suffer the hunger and the deprivation as are non-Christian nations. Now there may be isolated illustrations where these things are not always the case but in general far and away this is clearly the truth. Take for example America, America is a nation founded upon Christian principles, and Christianity gave to this country a high view of human life so that we were committed from the, from the Bill of Rights right on out to meeting the needs of people, and here we are today in 1980 we're still concerned with the minimum wage law, we're concerned with equality for everybody, equal education, equal pay for equal work, and on and on and on. We've very deeply concerned that everybody have medical care, that everybody be on a welfare system who doesn't work so that their needs are met, where did we get that? Our humanism never gave it to us. Our humanism would obliterate the part of the population that's unneeded. The abortionists, they would just wipe out human beings, the people who advocate euthanasia and the people who want to just shelve the others that are a detriment to our society and control birth and say who gets born to whom. So those people aren't the ones who gave us a high view of man. America, in the midst of its atheism and its humanism and its immorality and its departure from Christian truth still can't shake the residual impact of a high view of man that came from the Word of God even though they'd never acknowledge that's where they get it. And even the ungodly in our nation, like those in First Corinthians 7 are sanctified by the believers, and receive the benefit.
Take on the other hand India, because India is probably the most influential nation in the world because India is the place where Hinduism is born and Hinduism basically spawned all of the network of religions that engulf the entire Orient, the entire East. For example Hinduism is the source of Shintoism, Buddhism, Johneism, Sickism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Tauism, it is the source of all of the guru's and the mystical religions and the Eastern religions and occult, all of that stuff is spawned out of Hinduism which of course is the basic religion of India. And the whole network of religious heritage, the entire legacy of Hinduism in the Orient is deprivation. Because the view of man is so low, they do not believe that man is created in God's image, that that is anything significant at all for ... in the first place they believe their gods are sinful. The natural resources of India can meet the needs of India, there's no limit on their resources, but it is their religion that as trapped them. Let me show you why. Six out of ten people in Calcutta live on the street, six out of ten, without food, without shelter, without clothes. And in India there are six hundred and sixty million people, fifteen million die every year, twenty seven million are born, they just keep getting more and more people and that means more and more people living on the streets. Is it because they don't have any food? No. Let me tell you why. They worship as many as three hundred and thirty million deities. Everybody's got his own. The one supreme deity that sits on the top of the pile is the deity who comes by three names depending on how he manifests himself or she, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva are the three different names of this supreme deity. But under that come all these plethora of gods. Now the gods are personified in the cows of India, all right? The cows are the incarnations of the gods. That's where we get the phrase sacred cow. They then become the center of worship. Everything which comes from a cow is sacred, including itsdung and its urine, and by the way if you were to see a pious low classed ... low, ah, cast Hindu on the streets catching the urine of a cow in his hands and sipping it you wouldn't be surprised, if you understood the religion, because that's rather common. To kill and eat a cow is worse to a Hindu than cannibalism, because a cow is a deity. And cows eat 20% of the food supply of India. By the way they have rest homes for old cows, who cease to give milk. They don't have rest homes for old people, just old cows. Every cow eats enough for seven people, and the cows in India ah, number two hundred million. That means that they eat enough food to feed one billion four hundred million people. That means that India produced enough food, so that if you just moved the cows out or better ate them you could move everybody into India from the continent ofAntarctica, Australia, Africa and Europe and everybody from most of the other nations of the world and everybody would have more to eat than the people in India have now and they have enough. Fifteen % of all the food supply of India is eaten by mice, and nobody kills mice either, because you might be killing your grandfather.
Let me tell you how you've saved in the Hindu system. You're saved by stopping your births, they believe in reincarnation soyou're just born over and over and overand over and over and over. And nirvana, or the state of nothingness that you desire to reach is when you don't get born anymore because you've gone as high as you can go and you enter into nirvana. And so they are constantly being cycled through these births. Now the ... you can be being born in the animal kingdom or the people kingdom, and that's why they have the cast system because you keep wanting to get higher and higher in the cast system. If you drop down into the animal kingdom because you've done some bad things while you were a human, there are eighty four thousand different levels of animal kingdoms that you can go through to get out of them again. And so all of the animals, you see, are somebody reincarnated o n his way up or down. You don't want to kill an animal, because you might be messing up the cycle of karma, by pushing someone else into another life that is not intended for them and you'll be in trouble and you'll be a, an animal next time around.
Salvation then comes through this endless cycle of births until they reach nirvana. The social effects of this are beyond description. You see a poor, destitute, wretched, individual with nothing and you don't meet his need because the only way that person can get from that level to the next level up is to do penance at that level, and so you leave the person in that situation because that's their karma, and if you relieve their penance, if you relieve their situation then you have taken away the penalty they are supposed paying for, they're not going to get back at the next level, do you see? So there's no regard for human life at all, when you see a beggar a typical Hindu response is, I wonder what he did to deserve that? I hope he can work himself out of it. So you see, what has deprived India is not a lack of food supply, what has deprived India is paganism. Without a Christian heritage, without the, the power of God in that society through the influence of believing people there is no proper view of man as created in the image of God and that is his own damnation God feeds His people. And God also feeds those who aren't even is people when they hang around with His people. Apart from belonging to him there's no guarantee that there's any supply.
Now, all I'm trying to get you to see is that the problems in the world are not the problems of a lack of resource, and I'm going to talk more about that when we get to chapter 6 later on, there's plenty available for us in this world. I'm not sure that I believe all of these people who are prophets of doom telling us we're running out of food, and I'll tell you why in a few weeks. But I do know this, there isn't ever going to be enough for the world of people who don't know God because God is the source, you see?
Now, look with me for a minute at Matthew 6:25, and I just want to be very specific about this text although we'll cover it in the future in detail. Since God says, look just say, "Give us this day our daily bread." And move on, the idea that we don't need to spend a lot of time on that is really planted in our minds. God, now watch this, God does not want us to preoccupy ourselves with the physical. Physical preoccupation, physical need is the lowest level of human need. The need for physical resource is the lowest level of human need; God does not want us occupied on that level. So He is saying, I will take care of that. "Therefore, (verse 25) I say to you, Don't you worry about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; or what you shall put on." Your health, as such. He takes care of the birds verse 26, He takes care of the lilies verse 28, 29, He takes care of the grass verse 30. "Then why are you (in verse 31) worrying about what we'll eat? What we'll drink? Or what we'll be clothed with?" Watch verse 32, "For all these things do the pagans seek."
You see this is life without God, it is on the physical level and that's all it is. "But your Father knows you have need of these things." God knows that He must supply the physical needs, that's going to be taken care of. Verse 35, "You seek first (what?) the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall (what?) be added." You let God take care of the low level of human need, the physical, He says, you get your mind on the spiritual. God doesn't want us dealing on the low level. Paul says, "Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth." It's the same idea, I believe that the reason God says, I will take over this area, if you'll just acknowledge that I'm the source of it, I'll take over this area so that you don't have to get stuck at that level, and you invest your life in the kingdom and in the matter of righteous and all the rest of that stuff will take care of itself, as I deal with it. That's a tremendous principle people, the world the pagans seek after the human level the physical level. We don't because God promises to supply that for us. How does He supply it?
Well, two ways, basically, one ... and this is the first way, Genesis 3:19 ... "Man is to earn his bread by the sweat of his face." Now we're not supposed to say, Oh, I'm busy being spiritual and I'm waiting for the ravens. See. That's not the idea. Could you grow me a gourd, Lord, it's warm out here, need some shade. No. We have a high enough value of ourselves and of our own life before God to be obedient to Him and to work, do what we need to do, to feed ourselves and to stay healthy. We are to work. We're not just sitting around. In fact, I Timothy 5:8 says, "If a man doesn't provide for his own household he's worse than an infidel." So we are to work. We are to be committed to that kind of involvement. And then, I think Paul really hits the nail on the head in II Thessalonians where he says in chapter 3 and verse 10, this: "For even when we were with you we commanded you this that if any would not work neither should he," what? "Eat, you don't work, you don't eat. We hear that there are some who walk among you disorderly working not at all but are busybodies. Now then, they that are such command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. So there is the commitment, then, that we work and eat our own bread. But there's a beautiful balance to that. There are some who can't work, who are infirmed or who have needs or for whatever reasons and then we also have to meet their needs as well. And so there is almost a balance here. While on the one hand Paul's heart goes out to those who are in need to the point where he'll scour all over Asia Minor collecting money to take back to the poor saints of Jerusalem and he will be involved energetically in the promotion of a collection to meet the needs of poor people but at the same time he has no sympathy for someone who is simply poor because they won't work. So, God will supply our needs through our own efforts and through the generosity and the graciousness and the goodness and the kindness of others around us.
Now, beloved, it's a wonderful thing to know that God is going to supply our physical needs. But I have to add one other footnote. Somebody will invariably say, well, what about in Hebrews 11 when you have all of those people who are the saints of God of the highest order of whom the world was not worthy and they were persecuted, slaughtered and they went without places to sleep and they had no place to rest and they had no food and they were destitute, forsaken and naked and so forth? Doesn't that contradict the whole deal? No, this is pretty simple really. God only supplies your needs until it's time for you to die. That's all. And then He may choose that the way you go home to Him is through the lack of the sufficiencies. But until that time in His sovereign plan your needs will be met. And only God knows the specific dimension of what those needs are. God takes care of the physical until such a time as the physical life ends. And then we enter into an abundance that's inconceivable.
It's very much like Matthew 18 where it talks about little children. And it says, "Their angels do constantly watch over them." Now you know there are some people who think ... Well, you know, every child has a guardian angel. And so mothers will say sometimes to me is it true that my little child has a guardian angel? Well, it may be true based on that passage in Matthew 18. Then the question often comes, well, what about when a child dies? Does that mean the guardian angel was asleep on the job? No, the guardian angel only fulfills his function until the sovereignty of God deems that life should end. You see? In other words, God says, MacArthur, you have so much time in My sovereign plan and you're called to a task. Now if you will set your heart and your mind on My Kingdom and My righteousness and the things above I will meet your physical needs. And I believe that with all my heart. So that the preoccupation in my life is not the physical. And when the Lord sees fit to remove the physical protection I'm going to go out of existence in this world but I'm going to enter into a fullness of existence in the next world that will give me a supply of eternal resources like I've never dreamed of. And so when we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," what are we saying? We are trusting God as the source to supply all the physical needs of our lives and we are affirming that because we are His children and because we are walking in righteousness and walking in obedience and walking in a willing submission to His will we know that He will take care of all those things. And we lift up our hearts in gratitude while setting our affections on things above.
So, what is it that we seek as substance? Bread. And who is the source? God. What is our supplication? Give ... let me give you two other finals. The seekers, who are the seekers? Us I can't help but stress that "give us" not give me my daily bread. Because the church of Christ is not isolated. The use of the plural precludes all selfishness in our prayers. And I really believe the prayer; "Give us" just embodies all the Christian community. It is saying, in effect, that I could never have an abundance while my brother had less than enough. Right? It just encompasses that whole concept of sharing. And so the substance is bread and the source is God and the supplication is give and the seeker is us and finally the schedule. "Give us," how often? "This day," this day. Exact meaning of this concept is simply bread for the coming day. In its simplicity, in its moderation in its very beauty it is an expression that says one day at a time, Father, I accept Your provision. It stresses the contentment that comes when we live with a day by day confidence in God and don't worry about the future.
Let me give you just a little hint. Most Christians who worry, worry about what hasn't happened. That's right. Because they're not too sure God's going to provide their daily bread tomorrow.That's doubting His word. This doesn't mean you don't save. You've got to be like the ant, Proverbs says, plan for the future. This doesn't mean you don't plan. But it does mean you're content to trust God to meet your need in the future. We say Oh, what's going to happen when that comes to pass? Oh, what if this? Oh, what if that? We only ask for physical provisions for this day.
Prayer then, beloved, focuses on God as the one who supplies. It acknowledges that He is the source of all our physical needs and it teaches us to live one day at a time in the confidence that He will meet these needs. What a great, great, petition it is. I trust as we pray every day we will pray in confidence that we can focus on the spiritual levels because God is graciously caring for the physical. Oh, don't get bogged down in the physical. Don't get your thought patterns at that level. Don't lose your joy and your opportunity by getting all wrapped up in the mundane. Set your affections on things above. Seek ye first the Kingdom and let God take care of the rest.
You know, let me just say this in closing because I think it's so important. A lot of talk today about feeding the hungry and feeding the poor. But you know what I believe? I believe that's good and necessary. But I believe it's better to give someone Jesus Christ than to give them food. If I give a man food he'll be hungry the next day. If I give him Jesus Christ God will take care of him from there on through eternity. That's most needful. And one of the things we can promise to you is thatGod will take you under His watch care as a loving Father when you enter into a relationship with His Son. That's a glorious treat. Let's pray.
Father, we realize our utter dependence on You. We realize that if You so willed it we would have no daily bread. You could withhold the sun and its influence. You could stop the rain. You could make this land absolutely barren so that the farmer with all his modern implements and chemicals couldn't raise a crop. You could blast that crop if You wanted to. We are absolutely in Your hand. And I guess, Lord, one of the follies of this twentieth century is the stupidity of thinking that we have acquired a certain amount of knowledge and so we're independent of God. Father, we can't live a day without You. Nothing would continue were it not sustained and kept by You. Give us this day our daily bread. Teach us that it's a good thing at least once a day and I guess the oftener the better, to remind ourselves that our times and our health and our home and our clothes and our food are good gifts from Your gracious hand that come constantly to the one who trusts in the Lord and does good. And so teach us to give ourselves to the spiritual and know You'll meet that other dimension. And may we know that even that work that we do is a spiritual offering to You when it's done for Your glory. Thank You, Lord, for all that You've given us and for just opening to us the fullness of these truths, continue to teach us as we search the Scripture in Christ's name. Amen.
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