The Lord’s Prayer (5) Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

​“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.” (Mt 6:9-11)
 
Review
We’ve been talking about the Lord’s prayer, one of the teachings written in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.
 
In the last two sermons, we explored the meaning of the prayer “Your kingdom come.” The importance of understanding what the kingdom of God truly refers to can’t be emphasized enough because it affects every area of our lives as Christians.
 
We started to explore the prayer with a common misunderstanding about the kingdom of God. Even though the Bible widely uses the term ‘the kingdom of God,’ it is also called ‘the kingdom of heaven’ in the gospel of Matthew, which has caused some people to consider the kingdom of God as only a spiritual place where our souls will go after death.
 
But, we know that that view of the kingdom of God is wrong based on many passages in the Scriptures. Jesus, who first proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom of God, often used the verb ‘come’ rather than ‘go’ when He taught about the kingdom. He said,
 
℗ “The kingdom of God has come near.” (Mk 1:15)
℗ “…The kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Lk 17:20-21)
 
So, one of the important characteristics of the kingdom of God we should know is that it’s not a place we will ‘go’ because it already started to come on earth with the first coming of Jesus Christ, is coming now through His disciples who are devoted to following His will, and will perfectly come true on earth when He comes back, which means that we can and should experience the presence of the kingdom of God here in this world.
 
Then, what is the kingdom of God? We can find its definition in the Lord’s prayer. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10).
 
Here, we find the most important element of the kingdom of God, which is ‘God’s will.’ The kingdom of God can be simply defined as the realm where God’s will is done through His people.
 
The Greek word for kingdom is℗ βασιλεία (basileia), which basically means royal power, kingship, or sovereign authority. The kingdom God wants to build on earth is the kingdom where His will is achieved through His people. I said that that’s what the entire Bible story is about.
 
God created human beings in His image not only to have a relationship with them but for them to rule over all the creatures He had made. In other words, the garden of Eden was God’s kingdom where He reigned through His people.
 
But, they ended up failing because they refused God as their King and tried to make themselves like God by disobeying the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
 
However, even though they failed, God didn’t give up on building His kingdom on earth. At this point, God’s mission goes in two directions. The first direction is to solve the problem of sin. And the second is to continue to rule over the world through His people that He set apart. That’s what we read about in the Old Testament.
 
God ruled over the world through the people He had chosen, set apart, and consecrated: Israel. However, even though there were some great leaders in the Old Testament, the people of Israel ended up failing to achieve God’s plan.
 
So God sent His one and only Son to the world, Jesus Christ. He proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God. In fact, the majority of His teachings are related to it. Now, the kingdom of God started in earnest with the coming of Jesus. And it will perfectly come true on earth when He comes back in glory and reigns over the whole world with the authority given by God.
 
On that day, all those who believe in Him will join in His reign.
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (Rv 11:15)
 
And “[we] will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him…” (Rv 20:6)
 
This is the ending of the Bible. That’s the day we should be looking forward to as Christians. We should know that our salvation isn’t irrelevant to God’s greater plan to build His kingdom on earth.
 
God saved us not only because He loves us but also because He wants to build His kingdom on earth where His message is preached, His will is achieved, and His reign is proclaimed. We’re chosen and set apart for this specific purpose. So we should be very careful not to allow our faith and salvation to become individualized. That’s the reason we’re to be devoted to praying, “Your kingdom come, you will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
 
Give Us Today Our Daily Bread
Now, let’s move on to the next part of the Lord’s prayer—"Give us today our daily bread” (Mt 6:11).
 
It’s easy for us to overlook the importance of this prayer for a few reasons.
 
First of all, we may feel that this prayer is less important than the ones for God’s name to be hallowed, for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be done. Compared to these great prayers, we may think that the prayer for daily food isn’t that spiritual and thus doesn’t really matter.
 
Second, we may not feel the need to ask for our daily bread simply because we don’t really feel a lack of food in our lives. We live in one of the richest countries in the world. We may lack a few things, but none of us starve simply because we don’t have enough food to eat. So, we may not feel the need to pray for our daily food.
 
Nevertheless, I think it is still important for us to pray for our daily bread because it makes us understand and acknowledge our absolute need for God and thus rely on Him more.
 
Manna
Bread serves as a powerful symbol of God's provision for His people in the Old Testament. When Jesus taught to pray for daily bread, the audience would have immediately recalled how God fed their ancestors and helped them survive in the wilderness for forty years.
 
It was impossible for a massive number of people to live in the wilderness where there’s nothing to drink or eat for such a long period of time. They would not have lasted even a week in the wilderness without God's help.
 
Because life in the wilderness was so hard, the people of Israel began to complain about all their difficulties and uncomfortable circumstances. They even said that it would be better for them to go back to Egypt where they had been slaves, because they at least had food to eat.
 
This is what the people of Israel said to Moses.
“If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Ex 16:3)
 
They forgot how hard it was to live in Egypt, and only recalled the good parts. So, rather than being thankful to God for His great deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they complained about what they didn’t have anymore which they had had there.
 
That’s what happens when we only see the difficult aspects of faith. If we only focus on what we should sacrifice and carry out as Christians, and not what we’ve received and will ultimately receive from God, we will easily become tired and exhausted, stumble in little trials, and lose gratitude toward God. Rather than giving thanks to God for the spiritual blessings we came to have in Christ, we will complain about the suffering and hardships we may face as Christians.
 
The people of Israel lost this perspective. Rather than remembering what great deliverance God had given them and relying on Him, they complained about relatively small matters without trusting in Him.
 
In response to these complaints, God promised Moses that He would give the people bread to eat every day. But He set a certain rule about this. God said,
 
“I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.” (Ex 16:4).
 
The rule was that the people of Israel had to gather only enough food for each day. If they gathered more than they needed for the day and spared the rest until the next day, it would be rotten.
 
The Israelites called the daily bread manna. While wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, God sent them manna everyday so that the Israelites could survive there without planting and harvesting. It means that the people’s survival was solely dependent on God’s provision.
 
Why did God make this complicated rule? He could’ve just given them enough food for a week or a month so that they didn’t have to go out to gather the bread every day. It might have been easier for both God and the people of Israel.
 
But still, God wanted them to follow this rule strictly. It meant that giving them bread to eat for survival wasn’t God’s only purpose in sending manna every day. There was a specific reason for this.
 
We can find the reason God set the specific rule about manna in Deuteronomy 8:3. Moses said to the people,
 
“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” (Dt 8:3-4)
 
Here, we find the reason, the special purpose in God having the people of Israel gather manna every day. By doing so, God wanted to teach them an important principle of life they had to know as His people. God wanted them to know that their lives were actually dependent on Him, not their own ability or power.
 
If God had given them all the manna they could eat for forty years at once and they had just stored it in a barn and taken it whenever they needed it, they wouldn’t have relied on God every day for their food.
 
They might have given thanks to God for the bread at first, but they would’ve quickly forgotten His grace and started to rely on what they’d stored in the barn more than on God for their survival.
 
So, what God really wanted them to learn by letting them go out to gather manna every single day was the fact that what really maintained their lives was God’s provision, not anything else. They had to know from experience that they could only survive in the wilderness because of God’s grace, guidance, and faithfulness so that they could rely on every word of God more than bread.
 
That’s what they learned when they gathered manna every day. They experienced God’s faithfulness and provision every single day by seeing God give them manna each day and gathering it.
 
Thus, they came to acknowledge that what really allowed them to live was not the bread itself, but the One who faithfully guided them and provided them with everything they needed.
 
And this principle applies to our faith lives as well. Even though we don’t go out to gather manna every day, we still need to know that what really enables us to live each day is not the food, money, or other things we have, but God.
 
What God teaches us through this story is not that material things don’t matter. God knows what we need because He is the One who designed and created us. But, what God really wants us to realize is that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
 
We can see the importance of knowing this principle and applying it in our lives by seeing how Jesus Himself was tested by the devil in the wilderness.
 
When Jesus stayed in the wilderness for forty days, He fasted and was very hungry. And the tempter came to Jesus and told Him to turn stones into bread. But Jesus told him,
 
“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4)
 
That Jesus was tempted in this way means that we face the same kind of temptation while living on earth. Jesus was tested so that He could understand us and help us overcome temptations and trials from the world and the evil one.
 
So, the story of manna and the principle behind it should serve as a model for all God’s people’s lives. Because we’re not short of many things, we are very vulnerable to the temptation to think that what sustains our lives is our own power, possessions, and abilities. We often feel a sense of stability in what we’ve achieved and stored.
 
It seems that many people, even Christians, go after money, love it, and even worship it because they think that’s what really enables them to do the things they want to do. In other words, money has replaced God. There’s nothing wrong with making and saving money itself, but we should always be careful not to rely on money more than God.
 
What Scripture clearly teaches us is that the true reason we can maintain our lives is not because we have saved a lot, but because God sustains our lives every single day, gives us the power to live, and provides us with all the things we need for our lives.
 
That’s why it’s important for us to continue to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Mt 6:11), because this prayer allows us to humble ourselves before God and reminds us of the truth that what really maintains our lives is God’s faithfulness and grace that He gives us every single day.
 
So, this part of the Lord's prayer teaches us to come to God with humility, asking him to provide what we need and to sustain us day by day. And, this prayer is firmly based on the truth that God loves us, cares for us, and provides us with all we need with his faithfulness and grace.
 
Spiritual Food
But, this prayer isn’t only about physical food. This prayer has a spiritual aspect as well. Just as we need food for our physical survival, we also need spiritual food to be healthy and grow spiritually.
 
The apostle Peter said, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation” (1 Pt 2:2).
 
Paul also encourages us to be “nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching” (1 Tm 4:6b) so that we can “be a good minister of Christ Jesus” (1 Tm 4:6a).
 
Moreover, Jesus also introduced Himself as spiritual bread for the world. He said,
 
“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (Jn 6:48-51)
 
Here, Jesus compares manna, the physical bread that the Israelites ate in the wilderness, with the spiritual, living bread coming down from heaven, which refers to Himself.
 
Physical bread is important in our lives because it helps us live a healthy life here on earth. But spiritual food, the living bread, is way more important than the physical kind because it is related to eternal life.
 
Jesus said that the purpose of Him coming into the world was to give us this spiritual bread so that we can eat it, grow from it, and live forever.
 
We should know that we have not only physical needs, but also spiritual ones. And, our spiritual needs are designed to be met only in our relationship with the heavenly Father, since He alone is eternal.
 
But, tragedy occurs when we try to fill our spiritual needs with something else, which never works. How can finite things fill the desire for eternity that God has set in our hearts?
 
So, as Christians, we’re to be fed spiritually by God every day. Just as the people of Israel went out to gather their manna every day, we should continually go before God’s presence every single day to receive His grace given through His word. Only the presence of God and His word can nourish our spirits and give us strength to live each day without stumbling.
 
That’s the spiritual food we should seek every day. And, only those who desperately feel the hunger and thirst in their souls will try to find it every day.
 
So, again, it’s important for us to continue to be devoted to praying for our daily bread because this prayer allows us to know our absolute need for God’s presence and His word and makes us seek Him more desperately.
 
Going to church and listening to a sermon once a week can never be enough for our spiritual growth. If we only listen to God’s word one day a week and leave ourselves in the world for six days, we won’t be able to keep our faith and we will drift away from Jesus without even noticing it. God’s people need to be nourished by His word every single day. That’s how we work on our salvation and faith with trembling and fear.
 
Remember that after one day, the manna God gave the Israelites started to decay, which means that the grace we received yesterday can’t feed us spiritually today. We always need grace every day.
 
God wants to give us his spiritual food every single day. He wants us to eat it and grow spiritually. So, we should pray this prayer every day, asking God to fill us with His living bread and give us His voice every day in our lives. That’s how we can maintain a close relationship with our heavenly Father.
 
I hope that all of us here realize the deep meaning of the prayer “give us today our daily bread” so that we can always be humble before God and rely on Him more than anything. And I pray that we can see our spiritual needs that only God can satisfy so that we can be more desperate in seeking His word, and be nourished and strengthened by it every single day.
 
Let’s pray.
 
[Closing prayer]
Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this precious time to learn what we should pray for through the Lord’s prayer.
 
As weak human beings, we easily forget that You alone are the true Provider of our lives. We tend to think that what we have is from our own ability without realizing that even our ability is from You. In fact, there’s nothing we have that doesn’t come from You. Even our breath comes from Your grace that You give us each day.
 
So Lord, please open our hearts and help us see You working in our lives so that we can humbly proclaim that all we have is from You and that we can’t live a day without You.
 
Oh Lord, we ask that You would fill us with spiritual food every day. Please see the deep desperation of our spirits and fill them with Your living bread. Give us the desire to love Your word and let us listen to Your voice through it so that we can seek You and be nourished by Your word of truth every day.
 
We thank you for Your faithfulness and all Your provisions for us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
 
[Reflection Questions]
1. Why do you think it is important for Christians to pray for daily bread? Why do you think it is essential for Christians to go before God’s presence on a daily basis?
 
2. What does daily bread represent to you personally? What are some practical things you can do to have it every day?