Rev. David Holwick O Lord's Prayer, #4
First Baptist Church (adapts October 6, 1996, sermon)
Ledgewood, New Jersey
May 5, 2013
Matthew 6:11
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I. How much do you consume?
A. There are big differences around the world.
Back in 2006, two researchers wrote a book about the kind of
food people around the world eat.
They asked 30 families from various countries to buy a week's
worth of groceries and display it for the camera.
A family in Darfur, Sudan, had grains, sugar and salt provided
by the United Nations.
They supplemented it with purchases of limes, onions, salt and
dried tomatoes.
A week's bill ran to $1.23 for a diet of congealed porridge
and soup.
They had this three times a day, seven days a week.
At the other end of the spectrum was a German family.
Their pile of breads, fresh produce, meat, beer, milk and pizza
came to a grand total of $494.19 for one week.
#33563
Take a look at your own grocery cart the next time you go to
the Shoprite supermarket.
I'll bet you are a lot closer to the German family than the
Sudanese family.
B. It can affect us spiritually.
Stephen Sorenson asked a visiting missionary from Haiti
how American Christians differed from Haitian Christians.
The missionary told him, "Most American Christians don't
need God.
American Christians have everything they need.
If they don't pray or read the Bible for weeks, it makes
little difference in their daily lives.
They still have food to eat, a place to sleep, regular
income.
They don't need to practice their faith every day."
For most Christians in America, this is absolutely true.
This missionary lived among some of the most impoverished
people in our hemisphere.
It seemed to give her a deeper understanding of how God
provides.
Sorenson was impressed with her firm trust in God to supply
what she and her villagers needed for daily living.
#3854
C. Jesus' world was more like Haiti.
1) They couldn't take food for granted.
a) Instead, many people obsessed over food.
b) In this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus mentioned how they
worried about food.
2) He tells us not to worry about it, but to pray for it.
a) It is the very first human-oriented sentence in the
Lord's Prayer.
b) Everyone needs food, so we should ask God for it.
c) We serve a God who wants to provide for us.
3) Do you think God will provide what you need?
II. Lay some bread on me.
A. Bread has been taken several ways.
1) I think Jesus is talking about physical bread here.
a) It doesn't have to be limited to bread, of course.
1> Any kind of nourishment is covered by it.
b) We are designed to need food to survive.
1> Some people have claimed they can live without
any food at all, for years.
2> They are all nut-cases.
2) Jesus understood our need, and provided for it.
a) One of his most famous miracles is the multiplying
of the loaves.
b) He did this because he saw the people were hungry.
c) God knows that we need physical food to survive.
B. Bread can also have a spiritual meaning. John 6:31-34
1) From the Old Testament prophets on, bread became a symbol
of spiritual nourishment.
a) When the Israelites wandered in the Wilderness and
got hungry, God provided miraculous manna.
b) It was physical food, but spiritually delivered.
c) They had to obey God exactly in order to keep getting it.
d) It was a great illustration of the Old Testament
principle that Jesus quoted to Satan:
"Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceeds from the mouth of God." Matt 4:4
2) Jesus made a special connection of bread with communion.
a) Passover was a meal that reminded Jews that God had
delivered them from their enemies.
b) Jesus made a further application that he was delivering
us from our sins.
c) In John's gospel he even calls himself the Bread of Life.
1> It is as if we have to eat Jesus if we want to have
salvation.
2> It is a metaphor, but he states it so harshly that
some people had their doubts and wondered if
he was calling for cannibalism.
3) How real is your relationship with Jesus?
a) Do you rely on him like you do on your food shelves?
b) If he was erased from your life, would anything really
change for you?
III. God's provision is for the here-and-now.
A. Too much of a good thing can be dangerous.
Pastor Jim Mooney describes God's wisdom in this.
If God gave you every thing you'd ever need for the rest of
your life all at once, how often would you talk to Him?
Not very often.
So he wants to provide it on a daily, moment-by-moment basis.
God is not going to give you everything you need for the next
2,000 years.
He'll give it to you one day at a time so you keep can keep
depending on him, so you look to him as your source.
B. Jesus puts the focus on today.
The word "daily" is an interesting word.
This is the only time this Greek word is used in the entire
Bible.
When the scholars were translating the Bible into English they
couldn't find this word anywhere in Greek history.
It wasn't in Plato, Homer, the Iliad, or Aristotle or any other
Greek classical literature.
They thought maybe Jesus just made it up.
Nobody was sure they had it right.
In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves in
southern Israel.
These incredible manuscripts established the accuracy of the
transmission of the Bible over many centuries.
Scholars also found this word "daily" on some of the parchment
fragments.
The fragments were nothing special, just grocery lists.
They were lists of items that were perishable, things that you
couldn't store for more than a day.
In those days they didn't have refrigeration.
You had to go to the store every day for things like milk,
fruit, Klondike Bars.
Those were items that didn't last.
So scholars finally had some outside support for what the word
"daily" meant.
Give us this day our daily ration ... not enough for tomorrow...
not enough for the next week, but for today.
That's how God wants you to live.
One day at a time.
That's what it means to live by faith.
Sermon #15964
IV. It is not just for us.
A. The Lord's Prayer is communal, and so it this request.
1) It is not "my" daily bread, but "our."
2) We should want everyone to be provided for.
B. Jesus wants us to have a generous spirit.
1) I think this principle has become ingrained in our culture.
a) That is why we ship grain to Haiti and North Korea
and Somalia.
b) It may not be our fault that they are starving, but
it would be our fault if we are callous.
2) Remember the little boy who shared his loaves with Jesus.
V. When we have faith, God will prove himself.
A. God provides, sometimes miraculously.
During the winter of 1940 Josephine Kuntz' husband, a house
painter and textile worker, was temporarily unemployed
because of the weather and a seasonal lay-off.
It was a difficult time for the family.
They literally had no money.
Their eighteen-month-old daughter, Rachel, was recovering from
pneumonia and wasn't doing well.
The doctor insisted Rachel eat a boiled egg each day, but
even that was beyond their means.
"Why not pray for an egg?" suggested a young friend.
They were a church-going family, but the idea of actually
praying for their needs was something they had never really
considered.
Josephine wasted no time.
On her knees she prayed that God would provide an egg each
morning for her daughter.
Later that morning Josephine heard some cackling coming from
the hedge fence in front of their home.
Among the bare branches sat a fat red hen.
She had never seen this hen before and had no idea where it
came from.
She just watched in amazement as the hen laid an egg and then
proceeded down the road.
In a moment the hen was gone but an egg sat in her yard.
What do you do under such circumstances but thank God?
The next day Josephine was startled once again to hear cackling
in the hedge.
The red hen came by every day for over a week and repeated this
routine.
Each day little Rachel had a fresh boiled egg.
The little girl got better, the weather improved, and
Josephine's husband went back to work.
"The next morning I waited by the window and watched," Josephine
says, but the little red hen did not return.
#2556
1) Do you think God would do this for you?
2) Have you ever asked him to?
B. Remember who it comes from.
1) We are asking God to give it to us.
2) Be sure and thank him when he does.
3) Be grateful for your bread, your life, your salvation.
4) God is good!
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 2556 “Praying For An Egg, Dynamic Preaching (www.sermons.com) Disk,
Summer 1993 "A". Original source is “The Little Red Hen” by
Josephine M. Kuntz, SNOWFLAKES IN SEPTEMBER, (Nashville:
Dimensions for Living, 1992), pp 29-30.
# 3854 “Give Us Today Our Daily Bread,” Stephen W. Sorenson, Discipleship
Journal, #62, March/April 1991, page 29.
#33563 “The Differing Dimensions of Daily Bread,” Wit And Wisdom by
Richard G. Wimer, October 31, 2006. Original source is
Penisula Daily News, December 28, 2005.
Sermon #15964 “God’s Antidote To Your Anxiety,” by Rev. Jim Mooney,
Crenshaw Church Of God; Wheeler, Mississippi,
http://www.sermons4u2.org
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
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