We turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6 will continue our study on the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6, is the first time in the scriptures that we are told expressly how we are to pray. Jesus Christ gave this instruction. And no matter what our background might be, no matter if this is something that is overly familiar to us or not, this is how Jesus Christ commands us to pray. And he gives us this model, not to say that we must say these things verbatim. If you were paying careful attention when I prayed just a moment ago, I prayed through the Lord's Prayer. But I didn't exactly do it just as the words are verbatim, but I went point through point through it. And so you can at home and as well. Christ taught us how to pray, and what a good thing that was that God taught us how to speak to him. And it sets our priorities straight. It helps us know that God sees us, knows what we need, and cares about what we need. So it's a wonderful thing for us to do, and we've done so for a number of weeks now. And today we come to the fourth request, the fourth request in the prayer. Give us this day our daily bread. Let's pray. Father, as we get to look at your word again, And as we consider these very familiar words, we pray that you give us a freshness about it, that you allow someone who's never heard this to be struck with it, with the fact that you give this request. For those of us who know it well, for us to review again and understand the value of it again, and again commit our hearts to it. And Lord, this is significant. You didn't use many words when you taught us how to pray, so we ask that we would give our careful attention to you as we go through each one, as we do so today. We pray that Christ will be honored and glorified today, in Jesus' name, amen. How do you feel when you pull up to a red light at an intersection and you notice someone standing in the median with this cardboard sign in their hand? and they just stand there, sometimes looking at you. Many thoughts go through your mind, and I know that I've had this happen to me again and again, and things change in the car as the years go by because my kids get older and they begin to read. And all of a sudden I hear someone in the back pipe up and say, that person doesn't have any food! Because they could read all the words on that sign that the person was holding. You wonder, how do you feel when you see someone asking for help? Well, today we come to what someone has said is the most unprayed part of the Lord's prayer. We come to the second half of the prayer where we transition from the concern for God and his glory, where we talked about your name, your kingdom, your will, we transition to our needs. Give us, forgive us, deliver us. We come to the second half of the prayer, which is more personal. It's often the part of the prayer that when people pray, they're often praying for their own personal requests. So we're used to this kind of thing of asking God for the things we think that we need. But when we come to this first request, we almost wonder to ourselves, is this for someone else? I mean, is this for someone else on the other side of the world? Because Jesus teaches us to pray these words, give us this day our daily bread. And the truth underlying this request is that God gives us what we need to live. God gives us what we need to live. And Jesus takes very seriously our physical needs for life. There are things that keep us up at night, and those are the things that we need. And we wonder how we're going to have them. But Jesus knows about them, and he wants us to ask the Father about them. And as we consider this one request, I want us to consider it in two parts. The first, we'll focus on the one who provides. And the second will focus on the provision, the provider and the provision. So in two parts, Jesus first taught us to pray for divine blessing. Jesus taught us to pray for divine blessing because he begins by saying, as we pray to God, our father in heaven, give us. And there's to request give. It's an admission that we have need when we come to our heavenly father. You see, all live on God's welfare program. And God set up this program when he made the world. Genesis 1 verse 11, God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit. Verse 29, God said, behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food. Jesus set up the program at creation. He reaffirmed it after the flood, added to it. Chapter nine, verse three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. So there's a carnivore diet and a vegetarian diet, plants and animals. There are all part of what God has given us. It's part of his welfare system. You know, in our society, many people live on government welfare programs. Those who don't make enough are able to get some kind of support from the government for food, for shelter, for medical care. It might be due to lack of industry or inflation or job loss or retirement, disaster, divorce, disability, all kinds of things that bring people to the point that they need something. And there's a lot of people who are supported by welfare. The United States spends over a trillion dollars on welfare for over 70 million people in a year, according to one post that I read. That's a lot of money and that's a lot of people. Many people are supported by welfare. But note this, all people are supported by God's welfare program. There is no one who lives independent of God's creation. And that's how God set it up. so that there would be 100% participation in his welfare program. Psalmist said this, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season. David prayed in 1 Chronicles 29, all things come from you. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, what do you have that you did not receive? The point here, what we need to believe is that each and every good thing comes from God. Kids, that means each and every bite of food is from God. Whether it's a steak or the green beans, they're from God. What we have is from God. Believe that. I want you to realize that many people don't believe that. Instead, this is what they think. I put in the hours. I pulled the trigger. I put food on the table. That's what they would say. But the truth is that it's God who gives you the capacity to do those things. God gave you the strength to work. It says in the book of Deuteronomy chapter eight, beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. So since we're in the season of deer hunting, we might think, well, it was my skill. It was my gun. It was my targeting. It was my pulling the trigger. I did it all. I did the research. I'm the great hunter. Well, it's God who gave you the means for all those things. It's God who brought Bambi along. That's all God. You're living inside of his creation. So all these things that we do so that we can have our port of his program. So all we have is from God and the ability to get what we have is from God. And even the ability to enjoy it is from God. Remember back to COVID when we all got COVID. And one of those things that we happen to forget at times is when you got COVID, you lost your sense of taste. You couldn't taste anything. At least that was the case for me. And you had like no appetite when you couldn't taste anything. It was the strangest thing. But for that moment of my life, I realized even my ability to taste something is one of God's good gifts. And one day I'm sure it'll be that even the ability for my body to process everything I take in is a good gift of God. Everything that we have and enjoy is a gift of God. and it can be taken away. Even if we have, it can be taken away. Even if we have the ability to acquire, one day it might be taken away. Where we can't swing the hammer, where we can't pull back the bow, we can't enjoy the meal. All the good things we have come from God. Everyone exists on God's welfare program. Paul said in 1 Timothy 6, God richly provides us with everything to enjoy. That's the reality. That's the real world we live in. Now how should we respond to the fact that we're on God's welfare program? Well, we should lean upon it. We should lean upon it because Jesus taught us to pray, give us this day. In other words, our attitude towards God must be a day-to-day reliance upon him. It's a continual dependence. This prayer is something for each day because the words of the prayer is this day. God's provided for us in the past, and now we need to pray that God will provide for us in the present. Our idea of God needs to be that God knows our need, as we sing in the Christmas hymn, he knows our need. To our weakness he is no stranger. We need to believe, as Jesus said in the next chapter, chapter 7, verse 11 of Matthew, how much more will your Father who's in heaven give good things to those who ask him? God has provided in the past, and he stands ready, right now, he stands ready to provide for you today. So the way to respond to that is to seek God for his blessing by praying for it. I'm guessing, especially during the Thanksgiving season, that you probably bowed your head before you enjoyed your turkey dinner or whatever it was. We are usually pretty good about giving thanks for the things that we have, but it is altogether different giving thanks versus asking God for something. This is perhaps a different posture of the heart. When we come to God asking, we're acknowledging that we have need. When we come to God thanking, we're at least saying that it came from him. Hopefully we have the sense that we depend on what he's given us. But what we have when Jesus teaches us to make this request of God to give to us is that God wants us to sense our dependence upon him. He doesn't want us to think that we can go without. But one has said that we often ask not because we think we need not. I don't need to ask because I already have. He went on to say that prayerlessness is an expression of our meager confidence in God's ability to provide and of our strong confidence in our own ability to take care of ourselves without God's help. That's probably where most people in America are today. They never think to pray to God asking for things because they sorted it out by themselves, they think. But we can't live like that. We have to live believing that we exist on God's welfare program, and we have to lean into it. Just as someone has to, in a sense, humble themselves and ask for help of the government, God wants us to humble ourselves and ask of help from him. The prayer goes, by his blessings we are fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread. That's true. We are fed by his blessings and we must depend on him for our daily bread. He provides for us and that's what we have to pray for. So the first half of the message today has to do with God. Now he is the one who provides all things for us. That's the kind of reality we need to live in. Now let's consider the provision. The provision. Secondly, this morning Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread. Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread. Give us this day our daily bread, which means that we should pray for physical things, for physical needs. When it says bread, that's serving as one simple term for a whole list of things that support our well-being, that support living our life. It can include things like food, health, clothing, good weather. a home, family, a good government, peace, all things that make up us going through this life. Living life has requirements. Our life is very brief, but we cannot live our brief life without bread. We all need it. No one can get through life without certain needs being met every single day. And God knows that. and he's designed us like that. And Jesus taught us to pray for such things as those mundane things. So, but therefore by reflection and by application, we should never imagine that God doesn't care about the mundane aspects of our life. We should never think that daily bread is below God's pay grade when it comes to the kinds of things that God is willing to do. God will give us daily bread. Praying for it is not insignificant. He knows all the little things. So let's never think that he only cares about big stuff, big problems. No, he cares about the little things that get us through every day. Secondly, we should pray for those means to secure our daily bread. What are you talking about? You should be praying for a job if you don't have one. That's a good thing to do. Or young people, what should you do with your life? Because God intends you to eat by what you work with. You work, you get money, you eat. That's God's way. The Bible speaks against the bread of idleness, 2 Thessalonians 3. There were those who were lazy. They wouldn't work. And Paul said, those people shouldn't eat because they haven't worked. We're not to eat the bread of idleness. We're supposed to eat our own bread. We should not eat the bread of wickedness. Proverbs talks about the bread that is taken, it's stolen, gotten by wrong means. That's not how we should get our bread. Instead, we should labor for it. So when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, by extension, that means we're praying for a job. We're praying that we'll have opportunity to work for what we need. And sometimes, again, given it's deer season, sometimes that means that the gun will work and that Bambi will come and that it'll provide for us because that's what we need. When we pray, give us this day our daily bread for these physical needs We know that God cares for these things. We know that we need to get a job to secure these kinds of things. But when we pray, give us our daily bread, it means this is the kind of things that we should pray for ourselves and for each other. At the beginning of this series on the Lord's Prayer, I talked about the fact that Jesus taught us to pray corporately. We're supposed to pray together. We're supposed to pray not only for ourselves, but together for each other. And here it is. We are supposed to be praying for the comfort of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We want our needs met, and we want their needs to be met. We hope that they'll get a deer this season. We're praying for that. I have prayed for that. You've prayed for that for each other. I hope that no one's worried about deer hunting this season, but it is deer hunting season, okay? So I bring it up. None of these things are below God. This is how God supplies for us, and we have to lean into that, and we should be praying for other people in this regard. But perhaps we scratch our heads and say, really? We, Americans, should pray? Give us this day our daily bread? That's a joke. Daily bread? I have a refrigerator. I have a pantry. I have a freezer. I could live for a week, for a month, for a half year. Some of you know that you could live for a year on what you have. So we wonder, why should we pray for daily bread when we have refrigerators and freezers and pantries? Well, just stop and reflect on the fact that God has been so generous with you that you have a refrigerator and a freezer and a pantry. That just makes God very generous. He has given you more than you deserve. And he has probably given you even more than you've asked for. That just shows how good God is. That he has showered you with blessing. That you actually have something in the cupboard. But indeed, we ought to pray to God, even as Americans, for these things, because when we pray for these physical needs, we also need to be submitting our hearts to God, because we should be content with God's daily provision. Notice Jesus said, give us this day our daily bread. The scope of this prayer is what we need for our belly today, not what we hope for our barn. Let it be filled. I understand how our economy goes and that we do use freezers and refrigerators and a deer harvested now will last us for a season, I understand that. But you all understand and you know the stories that Jesus told of the person who just worked and worked and worked and then he had to buy, he had to build bigger and bigger and bigger barns. And all he did was work for more and more and more. And Jesus said, that man was so foolish. He just lived to accumulate. And when we bring ourselves to simply pray to God, I need the bread for today. What that does to our spirits, when we see that we have a refrigerator that has food in it, it helps us know God's given us what we need for today. And I need to believe that's enough. I can't spend my life covetous for what I don't have. I can't live my life wishing I always had more. God has given me what I need for today. And today might be my last day. And the fact that God has given me food on this my last day, praise the Lord, that's all that I need for today. I don't need more. This is very much against our commercial aspect of Christmas, where we always have a sense of needing more. Jesus taught them to pray for daily bread. We're not supposed to be anxious about tomorrow. At the end of this chapter he says in verse 25, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink. Verse 34, therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow. We can't be consumed with what if and what about tomorrow and how am I gonna get that? That's how the Gentiles live, the people who don't know God live. Jesus says don't live like that, but it is so easy. You think back to the people of Israel, they're wandering through the wilderness, so many people. We're trying to figure out how are you gonna feed hundreds of thousands, millions of people? I mean, you can't just slaughter the herds because it won't last very long. How are you gonna feed all those people? And then God answers the request and says that I'll provide you with manna every day, except the Sabbath day, you'll go out and you'll collect and eat what you get. Don't store up any more for the next day, except on the last day before the Sabbath day when you get two portions. And then they see the manna from heaven. They go out and collect. They're all filled with their daily bread. But you remember how some people thought, let's save some for tomorrow. That is so easy to understand. Maybe we won't have any tomorrow, so we better save it up. And you know, God was disappointed with them because he had told them point blank, I will provide for you every day. So trust me, trust me. Their act was one of unbelief. So perhaps we think, thousands of years later, are we supposed to save? Are we supposed to store away? Of course we are. We're supposed to save, we're supposed to invest. God always talks about sowing and reaping and he encourages us to sow bountifully. He wants us to use the gifts that he's given us. He wants us to exert ourselves. But even as he has said that, he has told us again and again that we must not be consumed with our physical needs. Paul says, we have food and raiment. If we have food and raiment, with these, we will be content. Yeah. What we know about ourselves is that we struggle to think we have enough. we think that there's something so good that we would have if we could but have that. If we could just have a little bit more, oh, life would be so good. When God wants us to think we have what we need, life is good. God is good. Sure, save for a rainy day. Sure, take responsibility for those who are in your care and don't leave them in a lurch. Be responsible. But don't be consumed about these physical things, because God knows about them. He wants to answer our requests. As we think of this request, it might seem mundane. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us, kind of sounds like you're just asking God, give me, give me, give me, give me. It's like kids before Christmas, give me. That's not the spirit of this request. The spirit is, Lord, I rely on you. every day for what I need to get by. I depend on you. It's like you stand there in the median. I need help. God, will you please give me daily bread? And when you do this, it's putting yourself before God in a certain posture, that you depend on him and you need him. And when he does give you what you need for a day, That's enough. This is how the world works, and it should work. This is what Christ commends us to do. God, please give me the daily bread that I need. That's how Jesus taught us to pray, and that's how we must pray. Let's pray together. Father, we think of what Jesus said, and Perhaps there was someone who listened to Jesus who was just struck by the fact that Almighty God cared about what was on their table, and they just praised God that he even thought of them. And Lord, perhaps there was those who are very hungry, and they found in that moment, Lord, thank you for giving the answer because we really need it, and we do believe that you'll give it. Lord, we pray for ourselves because basically no one here is starving and is in any threat of starving anytime soon. But Lord, we must never think that we don't depend on you. What we have, how we get it, and how much we can enjoy it is all dependent on you. So Lord, teach us who have so much to still depend on you, to be the most thankful people of all, to not be covetous, but to be the kinds of folks who extend ourselves, who give, and who want to use the great wealth that we've received for you and for your kingdom in the few short days that we live on the earth. Lord, give us wisdom, and thank you for teaching us to pray in this way, in Jesus' name, amen.