Amen. As you're turning to the disciples' prayer in Luke chapter 11 this morning, it reminds you that that song is a simple prayer. In fact, it is a prayer from the Scriptures. And it serves as a reminder to what we've been considering over the past few weeks in looking at this pattern of prayer that the Lord gave to His disciples. How it should be grounded and centered in God first. And then our prayers for temporal needs will always be right. We, as we pray the things that we'll consider over the next couple of weeks with these earthly petitions, as long as we are truly seeking that His kingdom would be glorified and further, and that His will truly be done through these temporal things that we are praying, then we are probably praying as He would desire for us to pray. This morning, we come to the third petition in the model prayers given by Luke. It would be the fourth in Matthew's account. He shares thy will be done that we have not considered, but by way of your kingdom come. It's implied, as we saw last week. But this prayer, the first of the petitions of earth, or for our temporal needs, give us each day our daily bread. I would assume that this is probably the prayer or the part of the prayer that receives the most attention. As I was preparing the sermon, I wrote this line that I want to correct, because in examining my own heart, I found it was wrong. That's the way to start a sermon, isn't it? It is this petition that undoubtedly receives the greatest percentage of time in each of our prayers and in the overall number of our prayers. And my thought there was that is typically where we start our prayer. It's for praying for our temporal needs. But notice every time I have said that, I have used the plural, third person, our, us, as the prayer does. And I caught myself thinking. Have I really prayed this prayer outside of the context of the disciples' prayer with these words? Have I really come to the Lord and said, give us, or is it more, give me this day, my daily bread? And it's not that that is incorrect, as we'll see in a moment. But I would consider or reconsider what I said that most of our prayers are taken up, perhaps, with give me and not give us. So keep that in the back of your mind as we come to this particular petition this morning. Again, following the first two petitions that set the tone, focusing on the name of God, that it would be set apart, known as holy, and then the glory of our kingdom, or His kingdom. Because then, When our affections are rightly grounded, our prayers will be properly focused. It's in that context of God's kingdom and His will on earth that we ask for our provisions. That's the pattern. As James prayed earlier, man does not live by bread alone, as we'll consider, but by every word that comes from what? The mouth of God. Even with that little phrase, that little prayer, God, all the way back in the Old Testament, in first dealing with His people, yes, you need earthly provisions, but you need me and you need all of me for those provisions. So as we've asked over the past few weeks, when we do pray for temporal needs, are we doing so with the desire that God's kingdom be advanced and that He would be known and glorified? With that considered, we come to this petition, give us each day our daily bread. It's a request for God's provision, not simply for the dinner table, and I'm thankful that that's already been addressed in prayer, but for every need that we have in this life. The question from the shorter catechism concerning the Lord's prayer, or the moral prayer, Question 115 asks the question, what do we pray for in the fourth petition? And the answer is, in the fourth petition, which is, give us this day our daily bread, we pray that of God's free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life and enjoy his blessing with them. And so, as I mentioned earlier, we do probably focus on this part of the Lord's prayer, the model prayer, rightly or wrongly, in our lives more than any other. When we are facing financial struggles, we often go to the Lord. When there are family relationships or relationships on earth where there's tension, we commonly go to God and ask for peace. When there's difficulty at work, we ask for rest. time off, when there's sickness and pain, whether it be emotional or physical, we ask God for comfort and healing. And don't misunderstand, we ought to go to God for those things. And we ought to go often and ask for His provisions in and through these things. But we must go with godly motives and selfless purposes. That's what I want us to consider this morning. As we look at this third petition, give us each day our daily bread. And as we do so, remembering the pattern of the prayer, we'll see God first, us second. Heavenly, then earthly. His kingdom, then this kingdom. His glory first, and then our good. We'll do so by looking first at the provider of the gifts. or the providence of God, the Father himself, and then we'll consider the provision by way of application this morning. First, the provider. May we never forget the first word of the prayer, Father. It is the Father that we go to with this petition to give us each day our daily bread. Now in this, We must first of all recognize that this is a way of professing our utmost dependence on him for all things. Let's be honest, we live in America. Most of us have freezers that are full of stuff. Some have two freezers full of stuff. We have pantries full of stuff that we may never even remember that's in there, much less use, except to give it away, which that's a good thing as well, when we go through our spring cleaning time. We have not just an abundance of things, we live in excess in our nation. We, more than any other in the world, need to examine ourselves in this regard and just pay attention to the affluence that we have in our society. We need to pray this petition with that in mind that we already have probably more than we could ever need. Someone asked me earlier how the sermon went this week, and I said, well, I wish I didn't have to preach it because it really beat me up. When we come to the Father, give us this day our daily bread, are we coming with that understanding that we depend on Him for all things? Remember God's provision for His children in the wilderness, the manna from heaven. He gave them generously what they needed on that account, if you remember. Each day, what they needed. by day. When they tried to hoard it, or when they tried to take in more than they needed, what happened? It rotted. It stunk. It became something that was odorous, not just to them, but more so to the Father who gave it. There's certainly something for us, I think, in our current condition, in our life in America, in these world of conveniences that we need to consider. Are we truly depending on God for all things? The parable that's given in Luke chapter 12 speaks of building ever bigger barns. For what reason? To store up the planting. God giving more than had been expected. That man goes out and builds more and more and more. And hoards it. And that parable is given to instruct us that often our hearts are in the wrong place when it comes to our dependence on God. And that parable ends with a shocking surprise for that man. What it means here, at the least, is that in all of our asking, give us this day, our daily bread, with all of our financial planning and all the worries that may go with all of that, all of those things will come up short if we don't realize that the Lord is the supplier of not just all things, but just what we need, when we need it. He supplies one day at a time. We distance ourselves from Him now when we don't plan. Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying don't plan for the future. What I am saying is don't plan for the future with no regard for today. We'll see that later in Luke's Gospel, and it's also set forth in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. We must plan, but we must not fret over his provisions for the future. That can leave us in bondage. Don't worry what tomorrow will bring. Don't be anxious for tomorrow, for today is enough for itself. So, we're back to trusting him. The one who started the prayer, Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, addressing Him as both holy and all-glorious. Are we trusting in Him? And let me add, this is not an abdication of our responsibility to work. Paul said, don't work, don't eat. He said it on two or three occasions in 2 Thessalonians and again in 1 Timothy. But we must work, or we should work, and we should work diligently. And we should work properly. And we should do so to provide for ourselves and for our family. But we do so remembering that it's the Lord that blesses our work. In fact, it's the Lord that blessed us with the work in the first place. So on the one hand, we have to trust in God's benevolence. We must trust that God is who He says He is. He is our Father, and He knows what we need, just when we need it, and we trust that He'll provide. And on the other hand, we ought to be industrious, doing good, hard work, so that we can provide for our families. As R.C. Sproul put it, God typically works through means, And He normally provides through means of our labor. So when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, it is not a prayer for laziness. It's not a prayer to just let go, let God, I'm His child, and He's going to bless me. We have responsibility as well. And that comes under this thought of Him being the provider and depending on Him at all times for all things. So when you examine yourselves, are you depending on yourself or are you depending on Him? And then a second aspect of God as our provider in this is it leads us to acknowledge His grace as the giver of all things. His grace as the giver of all things. Give us each day our daily bread doesn't mean that we should be careless with our money. or future, but it does mean that in our planning, we need to ask, are we being good stewards of what he has given to us? Recognizing that he's the one that's given to us, yes, to serve our needs, but the needs of all others as well. This is, after all, a petition. We must ask. believing that He is a good Father that will answer the prayer. He has promised in Matthew 21, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive it if you have faith. There's the balance again. If you're asking with godly motives and with selfless purposes, He is going to answer your prayer. That's a promise from the Father. We'll see the same thing in Luke 11 a little later. Ask and you will what? Receive. And then it goes on in Luke, as it does in Matthew, to describe the good Father in heaven. If we ask for a fish, do we think he's going to give us a serpent? Or if we ask for food or bread, do we think he's going to give us a rock? And then he uses the illustration of our earthly fathers that we touched on in that first message. Even we sinful fathers. wouldn't do that to our own children. How much more may our sinless Father, the One who is holy, look out for our good? Why would we expect Him to act worse than us? He's a good Father. He provides for His children, and He gives us all things by His grace. Again, R.C. Sproul wrote, this simple request has much to teach us. First, notice that Jesus didn't teach us to pray that God would sell us our daily bread or render it to us in exchange for our service. Instead, in this petition, we manifestly ask God to give us something. We ask Him to give us daily bread. We are so needy as to be destitute, but He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. So we go to Him as beggars asking for His charity. Scripture assures us that we can depend on Him to respond to such requests, for He is a giving God. Every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights. God gives His gifts in order to provide for the needs of His people, for He is a God of providence. We know that often those that go to God in prayer, petitioning these things, really desire the gift, but not so much the giver of the gift. They want the blessing, but not the blessor. If we follow the pattern of this prayer, we won't fall into that trap. And may I just say, to use his good gifts and his numerous blessings selfishly is to fall short of God's purpose for those gifts. And to fall short of the glory of God, last time I checked, is sin. Simply put, it's sin to abuse the good gifts that the Father has given us to glorify Him. Saint Augustine wrote, He loves thee too little who loves anything as well as thee which he does not love for thy sake. What Augustine was saying is it's a sin to love anything more than God, but it's especially a sin to love something and not use it for his sake, or for thy sake, as he put it. So that's the provider, God the Father, used to profess our dependence upon Him and acknowledge His graciousness in giving us His good gifts. But then secondly, the provision itself. Give us this day, or each day, our daily bread. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on what he means by bread. Simply put, all things necessary to maintain our present life on this earth. Not just the dinner table, as we said earlier, but our clothing, our health, anything that we're asking for these days. But he does use the term bread, and illustratively it works. Some of you may have been on mission trips outside of the United States. And most everywhere else in the world that we go that doesn't have the affluent situation that we do often has to go to the market each and every day. Now, some of that's born out of communism. The communist bloc departments didn't have room for any type of storage. And so when I was in Ukraine shortly after the fall of communism there, I can remember every day Looking out the window in that little cell block of an apartment, if you will, and watching them go for their daily breath. And I asked one day, the secretary at the seminary where I was working, you know, I understand the purpose. There's not really room to store it, but is there anything else that drives people to go each and every day? She said, yes. Not only is it we don't really have room for storage, but it's so that we use and partake of all that we gather in. I thought that was an interesting answer. No leftovers is what she was saying. When we were in Morocco, same type of situation. Not so much with the people that we were staying with, but for most of the people In the area that we were in, the daily market was a necessity. Fresh bread every day. I will confess, I liked the fresh bread every day. But it was so that they would not oversupply. The bread would very quickly go to waste if not eaten. The provision that we see with this petition each day our daily bread guards against free things. Now I would really ask us to examine these three areas this morning. First, give us each day our daily bread guards against self-sufficiency. We sort of touched on this in addressing our utmost dependence on God. But when this prayer is properly prayed, it not only indicates our dependence on Him as the giver of all things, But in that, it cultivates humility. We live, again, in an affluent society. All of us here today have more than many in our own town, most in our own country, and certainly the rest of the world by comparison. We must understand that this affluence can lend us or tempt us to both pride and self-sufficiency. This prayer corrects that pride. It corrects self-sufficiency. Charles Spurgeon, in another place, in another sermon, said, there is no trial like prosperity. There is no trial like life affluence. We know what he means. We who have much often take the giver for granted. We who have much often live for ourselves, or to use the terminology of our culture, get all we can and sit on the can. Mine, mine, mine. That's what affluence breeds. There is no trial like prosperity. And why did he say that? Because Spurgeon knew, even in his own day, 200 years ago, he knew in your assumed self-sufficiency, you're tempted to think that you really don't need to depend on God as much as you thought you did. Or you're tempted to think more highly of yourself and your skills and your provisions than you ought. Does this not go all the way back to the garden? As Stephen was sharing on Wednesday evening, the thought struck me when he was talking about the sin of our first parents. And he didn't elaborate on it at all, but he just noted that they had all of the trees in the garden that they could freely eat of. Think about that. They had more than they could ever need. In fact, Eden was prepared for them. so that they would have absolutely no needs whatsoever. Environmentally, physically, everything was provided for them. And they had it all, in abundance, every tree of the garden, except one. And that bred apathy, self-sufficiency. It was the bait, if you will, that Satan used in approaching them, that we'll come back to in a moment. This prayer, when we pray it properly, humbles us. When we pray, give us each day our daily bread, we're confessing, if you don't, Lord, we won't have it. And if we don't have it, we trust we're not supposed to have it. You're a good Father. If everything we have is a gift from above, a good gift, we've got to be careful we don't take credit. That we give Him the credit. That we're not arrogant and boastful, as we read earlier, with those things that He has given to us. He knows what you need better than you do. Agree? He knows what you need better than you do. emphasizing need, not want, but need. We must trust Him. And prayed properly, this will breed humility. We won't take credit for what He and His grace has supplied to us. Secondly, not only does it guard against self-sufficiency, but it guards against self-centeredness. This is where we come back to noticing the plurality or the corporateness of the prayer. He says to pray in this way, say, give us each day our daily bread. Not give me, but give us. There's a recognition that it's not just our need that ought to be considered in the prayer. We're not the center of God's universe. When we pray with others in mind, starting with God, and then others in mind, it will lead us away from self-centeredness, or let's call it what it is, pride, and it will give us a generous mindset. A mindset of thinking of others first. Brothers and sisters in Christ who may be in need. Our family members, our friends. fellow members in the congregation. So it opposes self-centeredness and it lifts up generosity as we pray for others that we might give to them and for them. Again, as we examine ourselves in this, there's one particular area that we can do this. How is your giving? Not just to the church, but certainly that. But how is your giving? This says, go to your Father and ask for Him to give. What should be the attitude of our heart in asking Him to give? So that we can what? Give it away. It's not ours. It's His to begin with. We must be good stewards of what He has given to us. And again, here's where I had to beat myself up. understanding the affluence of our culture. Often when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, we're really praying, God, I'll help others, and then we ask that he would restore us back to our place of affluence. Is that not what we're praying? Do we not examine all of our stuff first, and then give it away? Rather than just trusting that if we give it away, He will provide. Now, I'm not saying give away the farm. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. The Bible doesn't teach that we ought to give everything away, go live in a cave, because that would be to disobey in other areas. But what I am saying is, when you pray, are you praying, keep me here and I'll be faithful? You see. Are we truly praying that His kingdom would be advanced when we pray, give to us? Are we praying that His will be done when we say, give to us? Praying this prayer guards against self-centeredness in our materialistic affluent culture. And then third, not only does it guard against self-sufficiency and self-centeredness, but it also guards against self-glorification. At the end of the day, to get all you can, sit on the can, is idolatry. Idolatry. The Chairman's Catechism asks the question, number four, how can you glorify God? And the answer is simple, by loving Him and doing what He commands. Later on, question thirty, what is meant by transgression? Answer, doing what God forbids. In other words, not doing what He says. We're not glorifying Him. What was the sin of our first parents? And the answer is eating the forbidden fruit. The question I always ask the children is why do you think that Adam and Eve desired the forbidden fruit? The Bible answers the question. They wanted to be like God. That is idolatry. They ate the forbidden fruit because they bought the bill of goods that Satan was selling in his deceit, that to do so they could be like God. And guess what? God said that. That in the day they ate of the fruit, they would surely die, and that they would be like us, knowing what? Good and evil. The good Father's desire was for them not to know evil. See what we do when we take of the forbidden fruit? It's idolatry. But in the context of each day I daily bread, consider what his own children, the nation of Israel, did with the bread. There are some stark words. In Jeremiah 5, 7, God asked the question, how can I pardon Children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods." In other words, they've given themselves to what? Idolatry. And how is that idolatry defined? When I fed them to the full. That's God speaking. When I provided for them not just what they needed, but even more. When I was a good father to them. When I had given them all that they could use in a lifetime. What did they do with it? They committed adultery and shrewd to the houses of whores. That's what they did. Idolatry. Later on, the proverb that we read earlier Proverbs 30. What was his request? Remove far from me falsehood. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me. That was his request. Give me this day my daily bread. Only what I need. Why? Proverbs 39. Lest I be full and deny you. and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of God. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Years before this man ever knew this prayer would exist, he's praying the disciples' prayer. Give me just what I need, because if you give me more, I know what's going to happen. Remember, he started with, I'm ignorant, I'm stupid, I know myself in this way. And he didn't even really know the depth of his own evil, and neither do we. But his prayer was wise. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I deny you. And say, who is the Lord? Lest I say, I don't really need you. That was the folly of a man named Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, some years ago, that had the famous three words that most of us, that's all we know about Nietzsche, God is dead. I remember the billboard said, Friedrich Nietzsche said God is dead. God says Friedrich Nietzsche is dead. But nonetheless, why was he saying that? The Industrial Revolution brought with it an entire idea of self-dependence. For Nietzsche, this idea of God, or what he called Superman, was really no longer needed in our society, because why? We had everything that we needed now in the Industrial Revolution. Well, take that and notch it up to the nth degree with our technological age, and the Internet, and all the things that we have at our disposal. Our society no longer has in their minds any need for a God who provides for us because we're fine on our own. Lest I be fool and deny you and say, who is the Lord? I profane the name of my God. I think we get a greater understanding now of why we have all of these warnings given in Scripture concerning the rich. God never says it's a sin to be rich. In fact, when rich people serve Him for His own glory, aren't we grateful? He never says it's a sin to be rich. What He does say is just understand this, that with He who has much, much is required, and it's very difficult in comfort to acknowledge your dependence upon Him. So this morning I close with a question. Are you delighting in the good providences of God and glorifying Him with those gifts? Or to ask it the way, the first question of the confession. Are you enjoying Him rightly and are you glorifying Him rightly with what He has given you from above? Again, not just our bread, but everything that He's given us on earth. We are to be good stewards. And when we aren't, we trust that He will discipline us and bring us back in to wine with His desire for His children. Give us each day our daily bread. Do you believe He can do that this day? Father, we thank you. Confessedly, not often enough. Confessedly, sometimes flippantly. Not really thinking about to whom it is we're thanking. So this morning, Father, I pray that in these moments that we have examined our own hearts, you have given us more than we need. Most of the rest of this world is content with so much less. And so, Father, help us to be wise stewards with what you've given us. Trusting that, yes, we should be wise builders and examine what we have, but yet, Father, not hoard it. Because it's as we give away that we truly express our belief that You will sustain us in just what we need to serve You. Father, again, this begins with our relationship to You as our Father, which comes only through Your Son, the bread of life. And so, Father, this day we pray for all that are in this place, that they would receive that bread, And having received that bread, Father, then we can trust you to take care of us day by day, moment by moment. And as we'll see next week, we ask you to forgive us when we fail to do so. It's in the name of Christ we pray.