Beloved congregation, in our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord intended the Lord's Prayer, of course, to be a model prayer. And therefore, not only a prayer that we can pray in its own right, but also a prayer that teaches us how to pray and what to pray for. And because it was our Lord's intention in this prayer to teach us how to pray, I believe that he worded the prayer in such a way and its various petitions in such a way as to make this prayer very rich in the unspoken implications and acknowledgements and assumptions that we often make explicit in our other prayers. so that as we study the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, we more and more come to understand how broad in scope it is and how much it is that our Lord wants us to bring in prayer to our Father in heaven. The more we study it, the richer that prayer becomes to us. What I want to do tonight, people of God, is look at especially what the Westminster larger catechism has to say about this petition of the Lord's Prayer in question and answer 193. The Westminster catechism here draws out, I think, in considerably more detail than what we have in the Heidelberg Catechism, the various acknowledgments of this prayer and the various things that we ask for when we make this petition. The question is there, what do we pray for in the fourth petition? And the answer is this, in the fourth petition, which is give us this day our daily bread. Acknowledging that in Adam, and by our own sin, we have forfeited our right to all the outward blessings of this life, and deserve to be wholly deprived of them by God, and to have them cursed to us in the use of them. and that neither they of themselves are able to sustain us nor we to merit or by our own industry to procure them, but prone to desire, get, and use them unlawfully. We pray for ourselves and others that both they and we, waiting upon the providence of God from day to day in the use of lawful means, may of his free gift and as to his fatherly wisdom shall seem best, enjoy a competent portion of them, and have the same continued and blessed unto us in our holy and comfortable use of them and contentment in them, and be kept from all things that are contrary to our temporal support and comfort. When you look at that answer, you see that it falls basically into two parts. First of all, the things that we acknowledge in this petition, that is things that are not spoken directly, and things also that we are not specifically asking for, just things that we acknowledge as we come to God with this petition. Our Father who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread. And secondly, the things that we do indeed ask for, in that petition. So we consider this second petition of the Lord's Prayer under the theme, asking our Father in heaven for our daily bread. First, what we acknowledge, and secondly, what we ask. Now the first group of things that we acknowledge by this prayer have to do with our original fall into sin and the consequences of that fall into sin for ourselves and with respect especially, of course, to earthly things and to our daily bread. And there are three things basically that we can say about that original fall into sin. First of all, in this petition, we are acknowledging that in Adam, we have forfeited our right to all the outward blessings of this life. When God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden, and when he gave to them the commandment to eat of all the trees of the garden, including the tree of life, God gave to Adam and Eve at that time the right to eat the right to have their daily bread from the fruit of those trees of the garden, forbidding them only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When they sinned then, Adam and Eve lost that right. They lost the right to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden and God drove them out of the garden and placed angels in the entrance to the garden so that they could not return. He denied them the original right which he had given to them. They could not eat any longer of the fruit of the trees of the garden of Eden. And this points us to the truth that even today, people of God, we do not have a right to eat our daily bread or to receive our daily bread. We have no right to any of God's gifts. We have no right either to this gift, the right to eat of daily bread. Our only rights in the presence of God are death and dismissal from his world. So that's the first thing then that we acknowledge by this petition, that we don't have any right to our daily bread. But God continues nevertheless, doesn't he, to give it to us, generally speaking anyway. So the next step is this, that not only do we have no right to these gifts, but having them now, We deserve to be wholly deprived of them. Though God gave us the original right and took that right away from us, he did not immediately deprive us of our daily bread, but having that daily bread, we must still acknowledge that we deserve to be deprived of them. Death, as we said, was the sentence of God against disobedience. And through death, God removes us from the earth and takes us from all the good that we enjoy here. That is his just punishment of our sins, what we deserve because of our sins. And without his gracious intervention on our behalf, it's the inevitable end of all of us that we will be deprived of all these gifts of bread and other earthly things. But even then, of course, God does not deprive us of them, though we deserve that, not immediately anyway. And so we go one step further and we say, while we continue here, we deserve to have all of these good gifts cursed to us in the use of them. We have them. God does not choose to deprive us. And yet we deserve to have them cursed to us in our use of them. This is what God said to Adam, right? In Genesis 3, verses 17 and following, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Now let's notice, people of God, two things about that. First of all, because of our sin, God cursed the creation itself. He brought the creation into the bondage of corruption. That's what Paul teaches us in Romans chapter eight. verses 19 and following of that chapter. Apostle Paul is talking, of course, throughout this chapter about the glory of our salvation and preservation in our Lord Jesus Christ, but he also talks about the redemption of the creation. And in the context of that redemption of the creation, he mentions also the curse under which the creation fell because of us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption. See that? The creation is in the bondage of corruption and will be delivered from it into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. God has cursed the creation on our behalf, causing it to bring forth weeds and thistles and all these good gifts that we enjoy here. are perishing and will be completely destroyed in the final conflagration. But not only does God curse the creation itself, but he curses us in the use of the good things that belong to that creation. And this we can find in Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 15 and following, there God is, pronouncing a curse upon his people for disobedience to his law. And if you look at those curses you will see that basically he curses them in everything. Verses 15 and following, but it shall come to pass if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send on you cursing confusion and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do. That's the curse of God against sin. That he curses us in the use of all the gifts, the good things that belong to this creation. in our basket, in our kneading bowl, in our children, in our produce, in the increase of our flocks and herds, in our coming in and our going out, in whatever we set our hands to do, the curse of God is on us for our sins. And if you consult other scriptures on this matter, people of God, you see that other scriptures teach the very same thing. In Psalm 73, Asaph wrestles with the problem of the prosperity of the wicked. until God reveals to him the solution to that problem in his house. And the solution to that problem is Verses 16 and following, when I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end. Surely you set them in slippery places, you cast them down to destruction. Oh, how are they brought to desolation as in a moment, they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakes, so Lord, when you awake, you shall despise their image. And David talks about the same problem, essentially, in Psalm 37, doesn't he? Fret not, he says, because of evildoers. Fret not because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret. It only causes harm. So God curses the disobedient to his law in the use of all these good gifts of his creation. So we acknowledge then, first, that we don't deserve to have our daily bread given to us, that we have no right to it at all. Secondly, that we deserve to have it cut off completely And finally, that we have only a deserving to be cursed in our eating of it. Those things we acknowledge by this prayer. That God continues then to give these things to us as evidence of his goodness, and that he does not curse us in the use of them, is the evidence of his fatherly grace in Christ Jesus, our Lord. But we also acknowledge various things with regard to our present sin and our present state in this world in relation to this daily bread. We acknowledge that these gifts in themselves are not able to sustain us. That's a very important point that the scriptures make. In various ways, for example, they say, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The point that we have to understand here is that this daily bread that comes to us has its existence and its usefulness to us only by the daily active providence of God. He upholds all things by his word. And if for a moment he would withdraw his word from his creation, his sustaining word from his creation, the creation would simply cease to be. And so if he did not from day to day uphold us in our daily bread, we and that bread also would simply cease to be. But we have to recognize also, people of God, that he upholds his creation, not only in its individual parts, but he upholds the individual parts of his creation in all their individual characteristics, in all their interrelations, in all their unique places and uses in his creation. so that it's not only a fact that he upholds the sun in existence, but that it's also by his active providence that the sun rises and sets, that the grass grows and dies, that the rain falls, and that various grains and fruits and meats are good for us. If He did not, for example, daily determine these things, then we could never depend on anything in this world, people of God. What is food to us today might be poison to us tomorrow. So in the very act of our eating the same things day after day, in the very act of our breathing the same air day after day, in the very receiving of the same benefits from these good gifts of God. There is a dependence on our part on the sustaining providence of God every day. He and his government of the universe upholds all these things in their individual characteristics, in their usefulness for us and so on. what we call the laws of nature, are really simply this, consistencies in the work of providence. God does not deal arbitrarily with his creation, but establishes patterns of government in the creation so that we can, looking at that creation, say, this is a law of nature. But what we should mean by that is that this is God's consistent way of upholding and governing his universe. Bread is good for us today and will be good for us tomorrow because God, by his word, upholds and maintains it in its characteristics, those characteristics that are beneficial to us. He speaks his word. with regard to these things. Because he speaks his word, they continue to be as they are. So we acknowledge that these gifts in themselves cannot sustain us. The word of God is what sustains us. Secondly, we acknowledge that we cannot merit these good things. We've said already that we lost our right to them, that we do not deserve to have them, that we deserve, in fact, to be deprived of them and to be cursed in our use of them. Well, what we're saying here, people of God, is that there's no way that we can restore to ourselves that right. However good or obedient we may be, we can never say that we have earned even our daily bread. We acknowledge this every day, of course, with respect to our salvation, with respect to the gifts of grace, but it's true also of our bread. We have no right to that bread, and we cannot merit by our work any right to it. We cannot bring ourselves back into the condition we were in in paradise, even with regard to our daily bread, and say, now I have a right to eat. Now I have earned. Now I have put God under obligation to me. He must give me my daily bread. There's no merit even in this. That merit is altogether gone and belongs entirely to our Lord Jesus Christ. We acknowledge in the third place, that we cannot procure these things by our own industry. We like to talk about the fruit of our labors, but there is no direct and inviolable connection between our labors and the bread that comes to us by means of those labors. It's possible to work without fruit, to labor without increase, to toil and sweat and get nothing. that we do get anything out of our labors is because our father crowns our work with his goodness. And this is the point that God makes to his people through his prophet Moses in Deuteronomy chapter eight, verses 11 and following. And notice how in talking to his people about this matter of getting their daily bread, getting the good things that they enjoy in the creation. God puts it all into the context of trust in him, of serving him as the only God, and says to them, essentially, if you do not trust me for these things, you are guilty of idolatry. Deuteronomy 8, verses 11 and following, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, his judgments, and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them. And when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, when your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who led you through that great and terrible wilderness in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water, who brought water for you out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know that he might humble you and that he might test you to do you good in the end. Then you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth. Beware, says God, lest you say that. Beware, lest you say that you can procure by your own industry the good things that you need to sustain your life here. You shall remember the Lord your God for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. And he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. We can't do it by our own wealth. We have to, every time our daily bread is given to us, we have to acknowledge this comes to us because God gives these things to us, not because of the might of our own hand and arm. In the fourth place, people of God, we acknowledge that we are prone even now after he has redeemed us by his grace, to desire, get, and use his gifts, our daily bread, too, unlawfully. We are prone to desire, get, and use our daily bread unlawfully. We are prone first to covetousness. That means, covetousness means that we tend to desire the wrong things. Things God has not given or things that we should not have. But it also means, doesn't it, to desire too much the things that God does give us. To desire too much even our daily bread. We're prone to set our hearts too much on the things of this world. And when we say to our Father in heaven, give us this day, our daily bread, we are saying, admitting, and acknowledging before him, we are prone too much to set our heart on these things. That's why that prayer is so limited in its scope. Give us this day, one day only, our daily bread. but we are also prone to getting them unlawfully. That is, we are prone to use unlawful means. to obtain these good things. We see this tendency in our children, of course, but it's in ourselves, too. There's the temptation to cheat, to steal, to defraud, to fight with others for the things that we want. And these temptations are very strong in us, especially if it involves something that we desire very much or something that we need very much, like our daily bread. There are some of us who are lazy and want to depend on government handouts and the goodwill of others. And some are greedy and want to be in the game for whatever they can get out of it. We're prone to getting these things unlawfully. And finally, we're prone to using them unlawfully. That is, once we have them in our possession, there are certain rules which God has given us for their proper use. He's established rules like tithing, for example, using them for his glory, using them out of love for him and for our neighbors. He's established for us the rule of moderation with respect to these things. He's told us that we must not abuse or waste his gifts. There's all kinds of rules that God has established for our use of his good gifts, and we don't want to obey those rules, and frequently do not. All these things, too, we acknowledge by this petition. That these gifts are not able to sustain us, that we are not able to merit them, that we cannot procure them by our own industry, and that we are prone to desire, get, and use them unlawfully. What then do we ask for? Those are the things we acknowledge. What do we ask for? We ask first that we may wait upon the providence of God from day to day. We've said that they come to us by his providence. So when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, we ask that he will give us patience so that we may wait upon him daily for these gifts. Now, when God gives us these gifts, people of God, that does not mean simply that he plops onto our plates bread every day in answer to our prayers. God uses means to give us this bread, doesn't he? And think for a moment about what that implies. If we are waiting upon the providence of God, think about the enormous scope of that providence in simply providing us with bread for the day. What goes into the putting of a loaf of bread on the shelf in the grocery store? There's the delivery of the bread to the grocery store and the men and the machines necessary to get it there. There's the making of the bread and the wrapper into which the bread goes at the bakery. There's the delivery of the ingredients to the bakery. There's the making of those ingredients, the flour, the yeast and the salt and so on. There's the delivery of the supplies to those who make the ingredients. There's the growing and the harvesting of the supplies, the fertilizer and the sunshine and the rain that are necessary for the ingredients to grow. And then people of God on top of this, the sustenance and health of all the people involved in this process. All of this is directed by the providence of God. It's all under his government, all under his care. And the bread ends up on the shelf in the grocery store because he, by his providence, step-by-step along that whole way, guides and governs it so that we may have our daily bread. He makes the sun shine and the rain fall. He makes the materials available for the machines that men use to harvest them. He makes the... men and so on that are necessary for the making of the bread. He gives men the cunning and strength to invent and build and use the machines. In fact, the whole long succession of events that we call the supply chain is governed and guided by the providence of God. God uses all these means to accomplish his purpose of giving to us our daily bread. When we ask for our daily bread then, we're not just asking that God put bread on our plates by some sort of miracle, but we're asking that God sustain this whole immensely complex web of things and events and people so that we may receive that bread from his hand. And on the other hand, there's all that goes into our purchase of the bread, There's our need for the bread in the first place, which is part of God's providential government. There's the money that we need to buy the bread. There's the hand in the eye that we have to take the bread from the shelf, the job that's necessary to earn the money, the sleep for restoring us so that we may work. at our jobs, the degree of strength and health we need to go to the store to get the bread, the eating that must precede the going to get it, the training in all the ways of our culture and in the use of the automobile and a thousand other things, people of God. And all these too are under the providential direction of God. In asking for our daily bread, we are asking that God continue to maintain and guide all of these things as well, so that we may obtain and eat it. What I'm trying to show you, people of God, is that when we ask for daily bread, we're asking for an immense amount of things to happen, aren't we? We're asking for all these different parts of God's providence that happen all over the world and in various places through the world that guide machines and that guide the sun and the rain that produce the crops and so on. We're asking that God maintain that all. And we're expressing to him in this petition our absolute dependence on his ability and his willingness to continue to do that for us. Getting bread isn't a simple thing for us. In our culture anyway, in some cultures, it may be simply a matter of going to the field and getting grain and preparing it and so on. That's too under the providence of God. But in our culture, this is a hugely complex process. And all of this is governed by the providence of God. And when we want to get our bread from the grocery store, we're saying to God, please, God, maintain your providence with respect to all these different things that make it possible for us to get this bread. Genesis 43 illustrates the point. There was a famine in the land of Canaan and Jacob's sons had to go down to Egypt to get their bread. Jacob says to his sons there in those verses, take double money in your hand, take back in your hand the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it was an oversight. Take your brother also and arise, go back to the man and may God Almighty give you mercy before the man that he may release your brother and Benjamin. If I am bereaved, I am bereaved. That had to do also with the getting of bread, of course. May God Almighty provide you bread through this man. Notice too that Jacob there speaks of lawful means. For the providence of God does not do away with the use of lawful means. When Jacob's sons went down into Egypt to get bread, they didn't just walk down there and ask for it. They took money in their hands. They used lawful means to get their bread. In fact, they went so far as to take double money so that they could pay for the bread that they hadn't paid for the first time, not through any fault of their own. They were intent on using the lawful means that God had established for them to obtain their bread. There are some passages in the New Testament also which show us these lawful means. In Ephesians chapter four, verse 28, for example, Paul exhorts the Ephesian Christians, let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. And 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 11 and 12 as well, basically the same point there in that chapter. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now, those who are such, we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread. Those are the lawful means that God has given for us to use. We work, we work to get our own bread. Now, of course, there are some occasions on which that's not possible. There are some who cannot use that normal means of getting bread. Their lawful means of getting bread may well be the generosity, especially of God's people and of God's church. But we also ask in this petition then, people of God, that he will give these things as his gift. We use lawful means. They come to us by His providence. We use the lawful means. They come as gifts. That's the next thing. Our labor does not earn for us the right to have that bread. We're acknowledging, we said, that we deserve to be cut off from His presence and driven out of His world, that we deserve to have this bread taken away from us. So when we ask for that daily bread, we're saying we can only ask it on the basis of your kindness and your goodness. We cannot say we have put you under obligation to us. We can only ask that you give it as a gift. He has obligations to us, but only such obligations as he has imposed on himself. There are no obligations that we can impose on him. And so we come to him with empty hands, promising nothing except what he has already given and relying entirely on his generosity. We ask, in addition, that he will, in answer to our prayers for daily bread, exercise his fatherly wisdom That's especially clear from the use of the word our. We speak of our daily bread in this prayer. Give us this day our daily bread. We do not speak of our daily bread because we can claim that there's anything that belongs to us in ourselves. But he has appointed to us a portion. That's what we mean when we say, give us this day our daily bread. Give us that portion of bread which you have appointed for us today. It may be more or less than we need. It may be something we like or it may be something we dislike very much. But we are little children and He is our Father in heaven. And therefore, in this petition, people of God, we subject our desires and our wills to Him. And we ask that He, in some cases, overrule our requests and say, no. You ask for something. You ask for sufficient bread for today, for example. And I tell you, no, I'm not going to give you sufficient bread for today. It would not be good for you today to have your daily bread. And we submit ourselves to that, knowing that he is wise and we are not. In other words, when we pray for our daily bread, we want the ultimate determination of what we should receive to rest with him rather than with us. We pray. for a competent portion. But what that competent portion means, this is the fourth thing then, what that competent portion means, people of God, is what we need to fulfill our calling and our duty for that day. That's the point of Proverbs 30. Give me neither poverty nor riches, Solomon says there. Feed me with food convenient for me, convenient for me. That is convenient for me to do what is necessary for me to do today. And there are two things in that. First is, of course, that we have a pretty good idea of what that competent portion means. So much rest, so much work, so much relaxation, so much food, and so on. And that's what we ask for. It's what we think we need. And we ask that we may be kept from all things contrary to our temporal support and comfort. But at the same time, we are saying to God, our judgment in this can go badly astray. We are very little children, and you are our all-wise father. You know better than we what we need. And if it is in your good pleasure to give us today insufficient to sustain life, then that is what I need for the day. If it is not enough for me to have the strength to do my work, that too is what I need for the day. If God wants me to go to work hungry and to come home even hungrier, we are saying, He gave to me today my daily bread. my competent portion. It was not enough to satisfy my hunger. And if it continues this way, it will not be enough to keep me in life. But that is my competent portion for today. That's what Habakkuk means in chapter three of his prophecy. When he says, though the fig tree may not blossom nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Give us this day our daily bread, people of God, means I'm not ultimately going to be the determiner of what I need or what I get. It means that we leave it in the hands of our Father in heaven, who may give us nothing for the day, who may lay us up on a sickbed for the day, unable to work and unable to eat. These things are our portions for the day. The portion is not what we think we need, but what he knows we need and gives. Finally, we ask that we may use our portion for the day in holiness and with contentment. It's not easy to be content when we don't have everything we want. And there are many things that we want. It's especially not easy to be content when we don't have enough bread for the day, though I think there's probably no one here who knows what that really means. But we resolve to be content. That's what Habakkuk means, isn't it? When he says, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. There's no possibility of contentment and of joy without contentment. That's what David means when he said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. One final point then, we pray for ourselves and for others. Give us this day our daily bread. Even here in this matter, the simple matter of our daily bread, we're not concerned just with ourselves. nor just with our own families. We pray this petition, people of God, with all those who make this their sincere prayer and heartfelt desire. We pray, give us, that is all of us, who are coming before you with this petition throughout our lives and every day of our lives. Give us this day our daily bread. And it will vary from person to person. We will look around us and we will see God has given to him much more than he has given to me. And that's okay. That's his daily portion. This is ours. And we are content and will not envy. In some then people of God, there are basically three things we need to know about what this petition means. First, that we're wholly undeserving, even of our daily bread. undeserving of the least of His gifts. Secondly, we need to know that we are completely incompetent to get it for ourselves. And thirdly, we need to have a childlike trust in our Heavenly Father, that He will always, always without fail, give us what is necessary for us to serve Him, while life lasts. Whether it be little or much, matters not in the least. He will always give us what is necessary to serve Him while life lasts. And so we dare to pray, and we dare to put our trust in Him. We dare to come to our Father in Heaven and say, give us this day our daily bread. He's willing and he's able. Let us say amen to God's word.