[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning again, everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a beautiful rich time of worship so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as Kim said, there's nothing quite like being able to dedicate children to God at such a privilege to be able to do that, to see ourselves, not just as individuals, but a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is what we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are the family of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we come to week six of the Lord's prayer,
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said to us, this then is how you should pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our Father in heaven, hellowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven, let it come, your kingdom, let it be done your will on earth as in heaven and give us this day,
[SPEAKER_00]: our daily bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, as we open up your word together this morning, I pray that it would be bread and food to us in Jesus' name Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we move into the second half of the Lord's prayer to the fourth petition, one of the first things you might notice is that the pronouns shift from your or you, your name, your kingdom, your will to us and to our and to
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us, our sins as we forgive others, save us in the time of trial and deliver us from their evil one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important, I think, then, as we move into this next section in the prayer, to remember that the things that we are now praying about,
[SPEAKER_00]: a provision for forgiveness, for deliverance, could not happen unless the first three petitions are answered or are being answered.
[SPEAKER_00]: For unless God's name is hallowed, unless God's kingdom comes, unless his will is done, then there is no provision, there is no forgiveness, and there is no possibility of deliverance from evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: For although the first three petitions are the most important in the prayer, the second three petitions are the consequence or the outcomes of God's answer to those prayers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are what it looks like when in the world God hells his name when he brings in his kingdom when he establishes his rule and when he does his will.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the two great commandments, that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, which are related to the first half of the Lord's prayer, God's name, God's kingdom, God's will, and the second is like it, that you should love your neighbor as yourself, which relate to the second half of the Lord's prayer, because we are now dealing with realities of human life, ordinary realities of human life, and relationships,
[SPEAKER_00]: This part of the prayer is deeply relational, so the need for provision of course, feel forgiveness as we forgive others and for protection from temptation and evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in each of those petitions, there is both the legitimate prayer of course for our own needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm praying for what I need each day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also I'm being invited to pray here for the needs of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer is not just give me my daily bread, forgive me my sins, deliver me from evil, but it's deliver us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is we, it is our, it's not just individual, it's now relational and communal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just as concerned about others as it is about ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means in the fourth petition of the prayer, Jesus is teaching us number one that we cannot pray for our own provision or forgiveness or deliverance without also praying this for others as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this then broadens the scope of the prayer that if we're praying for the in-breaking of God's kingdom and will on earth and we know the heart of our Father in heaven, we will know then that this cannot only be about myself and my own needs, but about all people and all needs and all places where the evil one is still able to kill, still, and destroy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means that if we are longing for our Father's name to be hollowed and glorified as we open the prayer,
[SPEAKER_00]: cannot exclude a concern for the poor, for the orphans and the widows, for those trapped in slavery or tyranny or injustice.
[SPEAKER_00]: As James 127 says, the religion or the worship that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep one self from being polluted by the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you catch that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What honors God's name is not only our own personal righteousness, our own personal holiness, being kept individually from the moral pollution of the world, although that's very important, but also just as much our care for the vulnerable and for those who are in distress.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Jesus said in Matthew 25, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, whatever you did unto the least of these, you did it unto me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot divorce.
[SPEAKER_00]: how you treat and care for other people from your worship of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, that makes you a complete hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: So theologian downbruness says of the fourth petition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, our worship can be socially irrelevant and what he means is that it can be utterly disconnected from the real world, from the suffering and distress of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: As the prophets, by the way, accused Israel, love many, many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to read the most bracing chapter on that,
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is not biblical worship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Arunas says that the worship that Jesus teaches us to engage in is a force that makes for the flourishing of humanity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it doesn't, if it's just for our own personal benefit, for our own personal encouragement and joy, which is important, God cares about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if that's all it is, and I don't think that we have understood what it means to worship
[SPEAKER_00]: because the two cannot be separated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's in part what Jesus is teaching us in the fourth petition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us this day our daily bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having said that, the prayer is, of course, a teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: from Jesus that is telling us that God truly does care about our individual needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does care about them, and He wants us to pray about those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the second thing that the prayer teaches us is that Jesus is not satisfied when we pray only for the most important things God's honor rule and will, though they come first.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also, incredibly, in this prayer, gives equal time and equal permission to our ordinary human concerns to our deepest and most urgent human needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we have a good father who loves us and cares about us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, the fact that Jesus gives us the second half of the Lord's prayer at all teaches us that it is not selfish or somehow unholy to pray about our own physical social and personal needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it is Jesus command that we do these things that we pray for those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the prayer for bread in this petition, I think therefore, should remain first of all a prayer for bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: to spiritualise this as a metaphor for heavenly bread of the Word of God which the Church has done many times throughout history and regards to how this passage has been interpreted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true that Jesus said in John 4, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and that He Himself was the bread of life, all of that is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is not only what Jesus is talking about here, inviting us to pray for here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was still a human being who ate and drank.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus still needed real physical food and rest and a place to shelter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is possible for us in a reading of this passage to try and be more spiritual than God.
[SPEAKER_00]: As one commentator asked, why would the Jesus who fed the 5,000 not also want us to pray for our own needs and indeed for the feeding of the other 8.3 billion people alive on the planet today?
[SPEAKER_00]: And while Jesus says that this means that man, it does not live by bread alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not saying that man does not live by bread at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, we should pray for a spiritual bread, we should pray for spiritual food.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in fact, we have already been praying for those things in some degree in the first three petitions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's important, I think, to stress that in the fourth petition, we are really praying for physical bread, for physical provision, for the real physical needs, our own and for the needs of a hurting and unjust world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is becoming, I think, even more urgent, as we face it seems,
[SPEAKER_00]: increasing uncertainty in the world, whether that's economic, or in regards to peace and security among the nations, or of leaders who are bent on tyranny and the pursuit of unchecked power.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, included in this petition for bread is for peace and stability for bread costs money, and money requires work, and work requires good government and good business and good labor,
[SPEAKER_00]: and security.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as the great reform of Martin Luther taught in the 16th century, when we pray for bread, we are praying at the same time for everything that we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: for our bodily well-being, for the preservation of this life, such as food, drink, clothes, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, and goods.
[SPEAKER_00]: A godly husband or wife, devout children, definitely praying for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good workers, honest and faithful leaders, good government, good weather, peace, health,
[SPEAKER_00]: law in order, an honorable name, faithful friends, trustworthy neighbors, and that God may preserve us from all sorts of calamities, sickness, pestilence, tribulation, war, and revolution.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is why many have called the fourth petition, the political and economic petition, which follows directly on, of course, from they will be done, because if we think about it, it is surely God's will, that none should suffer, that none should go without food, that none are exploited, that none are homeless, that none are left without hope or help.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that we may live all of us in peace and prosperity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the Shalom that God had intended for his creation in the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shalom is such a rich and beautiful word that encompasses all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peace, blessing, prosperity, wholeness, and so much more.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you further consider that the very concept of righteousness, of things being right,
[SPEAKER_00]: In order, as they should be, that, of course, also includes within it the longing for justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, the fourth petition is not just asking us to consider the actual bread on our own plates, or in our own mouths and bellies, but also friends, how it got there, how it got there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything that works together to make that happen, politically, economically and socially.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the fourth petition, we are praying for our world to flourish and for everyone in it to have what they need and meaningful work to do and that the bread on our tables or the clothes on our back would not be the bread of a friction that has come to us by the suffering of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, though at times the church has over spiritualised this prayer, it has also been understood in taught through Christian history.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a prayer that truly addresses the whole of our physical and material and political and social and cultural existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in particular, that we must acknowledge the good purposes and blessing of God in our ordinary life, right, that everything we have depends on him, that it's a gift from him, that without his sovereign provision, we would actually have nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: For we bring nothing into this world and we will take nothing out of it, therefore all of our lives and everything we have is a gift of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Along these same lines, using somewhat denser theological language than we might be used to, the Westminster larger catechism, which is a kind of discipleship tool, written in 1674 asks this question, and by the way, I'll just let you in a little secret here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was intended as a discipleship tool for children.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we pray in the fourth petition?
[SPEAKER_00]: Answer, in the fourth petition, give us the state 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 curse to us in our use of them that neither they of themselves are able to sustain us,
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure we follow this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, or we to merit or buy our own industry to procure them, but prone to desire, get and use them unlawfully.
[SPEAKER_00]: 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.
[SPEAKER_00]: enjoy a competent portion of them and have that same continued and blessed unto us in our holy and comfortable use of them and contentment in them and be kept from all things at the contrary to our temporal support and comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Children were required to memorize these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to run a test next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: See how many of you can do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one more thankfully short of perspective, maybe found in the Heidelberg cut of Kism of 1563, which asks, what is the fourth petition?
[SPEAKER_00]: Answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us this day, Archery Brad, that is be pleased to provide us with all our bodily needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that we may acknowledge that now are the only source of all that is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then without they blessing neither our care and labor nor their gifts can do us any good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, may we withdraw our trust from all creatures and place it in the alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with this in mind, Darrell Johnson and his book on the Lord's Prayer,
[SPEAKER_00]: says that there are five main things that we are praying for when we pray for daily bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is of course, we're praying for actual physical bread, food in general, enough for our needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second is that we are asking for everything necessary for our healthy functioning in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Martin Luther taught, everything necessary for the preservation of this life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for a balanced diet for more than bread, for vegetables and meat and milk and for all that comprises a balanced diet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a prayer for weather patterns enabling crops to grow in abundance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for wisdom and strength for farmers who plant and nurture and harvest the crops.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for truckers who move the crops from the farms to the producing plants and then to the markets.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for CEOs of companies that oversee the movement of goods.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for grocery clerks and for those who stock the shelves.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a prayer for those who cook the food and serve the meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are asking the Father to attend to and sustain the whole process from the plating of seeds in the ground to the placing of baked bread on the table daily bread everything necessary for the preservation of life and as Jesus taught just a few verses after this in the Lord's prayer we should depend on this we should depend on God's goodness to provide us these things when we pray as He said in Matthew 625 therefore I tell you do not worry about your life what you're eating drink
[SPEAKER_00]: They're about your body, what you're where.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is life is not life more than food and the body more than clothes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the birds of the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do not sew or reap or store away in barns.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet they're heavenly Father feeds them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you not much more valuable than they?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can anyone of you by worrying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Add a single hour to your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do not worry, saying what will we drink?
[SPEAKER_00]: What will we wear for the pagans run after these things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all these things will be given to you as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow, we'll worry about itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each day has enough trouble of its own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is sometimes misunderstood or something that invites us into a kind of passivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though we don't need to do anything God will just take care of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is not what Jesus means here at all, and he also doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about or prepare for the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: What he means is very clearly, do not worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prepare for it, sure, work for the future, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what your life will mean tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: by what you attend to today.
[SPEAKER_00]: But don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let it drive you to anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do your work on other Lord with your labor and your talents and God willing your prosperity.
[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately recognize church that everything you have is a gift of God that it comes from Him and it belongs to Him so simply enjoy each day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each day's provision has a the gift that it is and continue to entrust your future into the goodness and love and sovereign power of your Heavenly Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in the end, in the end, there's only really one moment of time that we have any control over it all, and that is of course this moment right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is all you can ever attend to really, is this moment right now, which is why the prayer calls it daily bread, bread enough for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the third element is spiritual bread, which means everything necessary for living our lives in God's kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: and doing the will of God, which comes from the life of the Spirit within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the fruit of the Spirit within us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wisdom, courage, peace, patience, holiness, gentleness, faith, hope, and love.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are praying when we pray, give us this day our daily bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're saying, Holy Spirit, give me what I need today to live into your kingdom and to do your will, help me by your power, to live into the resources that you provide.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as much as this is a prayer for physical bread and physical needs, Jesus did also say that people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need both the bread of the hand, as it were, and we need the bread of the mouth, the bread of his word.
[SPEAKER_00]: The words I have spoken to you says Jesus, they are full of the spirit and life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore the fourth thing that we're praying for is more of Jesus himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we're asking for more of Christ himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means Father, give us this day Jesus the bread of life as he said in John 6,
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 35, I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never go hungry, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do not only work, he goes on to say for food that spoils, but for food that enjoys for eternal life, which is the son of, which the son of Bam will give you, which of course is he himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: As he went on to say, later in John 6, I am the bread of life, while your ancestors ate the manor in the wilderness yet they died, but here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which people may eat and not die.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we pray, give us this day our daily bread was saying, Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: give us more of the life of Jesus, who wouldn't want to pray for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shape in us in every dimension of our lives, in our thinking, in our actions, in our emotions, in our character, in our righteousness, in glory, help us to see in our souls, all of who you are, Lord Jesus, your beauty, your grace, and your power.
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore, the fifth thing that we're praying for, we are, as we pray, the fourth petition takes us back to the second petition, your kingdom come,
[SPEAKER_00]: When we pray this, that final day, when we will sit at the Lord's table in his kingdom, at the wedding supper of the land, the great banquet feast of the saints, and we will
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are praying, Father, give us today, even as we worship and I felt like we experienced some of that earlier today when we were worshiping, Father, give us today a taste of the bread that we will eat in your presence forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: give us a taste of the food that we will partake of forever together around your table as brothers and sisters, a foretaste of the presence of that delicious bread of peace and joy and rest and wholeness forever and ever are men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are moments out there in worship, in prayer,
[SPEAKER_00]: in fellowship with other believers when we're reading Scripture, when something of that future banquet kind of appears before us and we eat of it together and it's beautiful and it gives a strength and courage to keep going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does anyone know what I'm talking about here?
[SPEAKER_00]: So Darrell Johnson says, what is it that Jesus teaches us to pray for in the fourth petition for physical bread?
[SPEAKER_00]: for everything necessary, for functioning in this world, for everything we need to live the kingdom life.
[SPEAKER_00]: for spiritual sustenance, for Jesus Himself, for something of the glorious future that we, when we shall never hunger again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now remember why Jesus teaches us the Lord's prayer, to free us from the burden of wondering if our prayers are acceptable to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is saying, here is a prayer that pleases my father, ask for all that is meant then by bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, do it boldly as Jesus is teaching us to pray in this prayer, with imperative verbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pray it boldly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Father loves it when He comes to Him before His throne and we ask Him for what we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: He loves it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He welcomes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is such a good Father that He hears us and answers us.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Jesus says in Matthew 7, if you then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give?
[SPEAKER_00]: give good gifts to those who ask him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can testify to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, I have seen God provide for me and for my family in miraculous ways over and over and over again, especially in our years when we were church-plating in Vancouver, one of the most expensive cities in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were planting a church among students and young adults in the university.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had no money, which meant we had no money.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were stretched financially all the time, but over and over again we would see God miraculously provide for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: People would shop at our door, hand us an envelope, and we get a letter, and inside that would be a check for like $10,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: That happened, I could probably say three or four times.
[SPEAKER_00]: right when we needed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one particular time I remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother was very sick and we weren't quite sure how we were going to get back to see her because we didn't have the money for the flights.
[SPEAKER_00]: We prayed about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We asked the Lord for what we needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very next day someone from our church turned up and gave us exactly the amount of money we needed to buy the tickets to go home.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen God do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know he is a good father, and when we trust him and walk by faith, he provides for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean we just sit around waiting for him to drop the money from heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do our best.
[SPEAKER_00]: We invest our talents.
[SPEAKER_00]: We work for his glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the midst of that, when we find that we don't have what we need, we have a father who can provide what we need.
[SPEAKER_00]: And often it doesn't just drop out of the sky.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it almost never does.
[SPEAKER_00]: It almost always comes through other people
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I give me my daily bread and help me to provide for the daily bread of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the Stau Brunner puts it in his book.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not told to pray for daily cake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though we may be grateful, of course, when cake is given.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we are praying for here is what is needful.
[SPEAKER_00]: for us to live in God's kingdom and do His will, no more and no less than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is needful for us to live in God's kingdom and to do His will, no more and no less than that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that doesn't mean we'll all get the same thing, because there are a variety of ministries, a variety of gifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: God may enrich some so that they can provide for others.
[SPEAKER_00]: For others, they may live a life that is bordering on poverty as they trust the Lord to provide for their daily needs depending on what He intends to do with their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The danger of praying your will be done is that we have to open our hands and say, your will be done, not mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the heart of the prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is why the place of this petition in the prayer
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important, I think, that it comes before other, perhaps arguably more eternally significant needs, like forgiveness, or deliverance from temptation and evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like why didn't Jesus put those first?
[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't they the most important things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And in some respects they are, for the simple reason that while the urgency of the gospel, for forgiveness and deliverance from sin and death and the devil, are the most important things the world needs to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason Jesus puts in our basic needs first is because people cannot hear the gospel or properly hear it anyway or properly participate in the preaching of the gospel and the doing of God's will.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they don't have enough to eat, if they don't have clothes on their back, if they don't
[SPEAKER_00]: As James Two says in that great and unsettling chapter on faith versus works, what good is it my brothers and sisters?
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone claims to have faith, but has no deeds, can such faith save them?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he gives this example, suppose a brother or sister is without quotes and daily food.
[SPEAKER_00]: If one of you says to them, going peace, keep Mormon well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs?
[SPEAKER_00]: What good is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, faith by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the point he's making, the same that Jesus made in the parable of the sheep and the goats, and what good is it if we preach the gospel and claim to have faith, but it's to not participate or do nothing to alleviate the suffering of those and distress, our faith, including our preaching of the gospel, will be meaningless.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Dale Brenner puts it in his commentary on the Lord's Prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is a long point, but it's very powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to read this out to you in its entirety.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says this, we are taught to pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give us this day out bread, putting an urgency into the prayer, and a day by dayness, you know, economic dependence on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those of us who have never gone hungry
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus, we will rarely be able to pray this petition without saying immediately thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, few of us in the West can pray this prayer without guilt for being able to enjoy bread abundantly while such a large number in the world lives miserably.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hence this petition causes us also to pray, I am very sorry, and please show us what to do, and please help all those who bring bread to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: This petition forms a thorn in the flesh for its comfortable petitioners.
[SPEAKER_00]: No Christian can be content to have too much, while others have too little said William Buckley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something is wrong in world distribution.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something is out of joint economically.
[SPEAKER_00]: This petition should stick in the throat when prayed by full Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds us of the wretched of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: For while the most desperately needed thing, the most desperately needed bread in all the world is the preaching of the gospel and the hope of salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: This petition causes us to never forget that our preaching and our ministry must include the concern of those who are suffering the lack of basic needs, which means I think then challengingly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thankful that I'm in a church that cares about this, that our gospel preaching will be unfaithful when it fails to include a heart-rending concern that everyone has enough bread to eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fourth petition then is a prayer for both the bread of salvation and the bread of justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The petition for bread proceeds, the petition for forgiveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bruno goes on to say, if a person's can't stand up to follow Christ, a can't stand up to follow Christ, only when this stomachs have enough bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thus, the Christian church has never been able to live with a good conscience when she has not prayed and worked for bread in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fourth petition keeps the church's conscience next to the grindstone, a earthly reality, and teaches her never to be more spiritual or less physical than her Lord who gave her this prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is an overwhelming burden, I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, as I was preparing for this, I felt the weight of this in my own life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, have I lived in a way that is generous enough to give you glory?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have I done what is required of me in not only my preaching of your word, but in the living of my life, in my concern for those who lack basic needs?
[SPEAKER_00]: But how can we possibly meet the needs of a hungry world?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we approach this?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think here again, we need to remember that the whole tone of the prayer is for us to, we're asking the Father when we pray, that God would do in and through us,
[SPEAKER_00]: What only God can do now doesn't mean we don't have a part to plan it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course we do but at the end of the day we're asking for God to do the impossible to do a miracle in us and to provide for others through us in miraculous ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a supernatural dimension to this prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just how do we figure out the problems of a hungry world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is first of all are saying
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, teach us in your wisdom and give us the power together in your spirit to do these things because we can't come up with solutions in our own natural thinking and abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're asking God when we pray this to do the impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we ask, I think, we are empowered to participate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not an obligation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has never been an obligation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the minute we feel this as guilt, as a weight that we have to carry in order to please God, we are not understanding this correctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not an obligation that is meant to where you down, that you carry with shame and guilt.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is an invitation that you're called to step into, enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: as you trust in the power and provision of the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is an invitation nonetheless, to step into God's generous flow, His heart for the world, where we'll see God's miraculous abundance at work in our lives and in the solutions of the world's problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, we are asking the Father to do in and through us
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think Paul puts this so powerfully in second Corinthians 9.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each of you should give what you've decided in your heart to give, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not an obligation, it's an invitation, what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly, not under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves someone who steps into this with joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is able, he or Paul is saying, he is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, the cares about your needs, you will also abound in every good work, so you'll have an overflow that you can give to others for
[SPEAKER_00]: and increase your story of seed, and I've heard many prosperity preachers over the years twist this into something that demonic, but this is not about your story of seed itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so that you will enlarge the harvest, the God through you will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that word mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: It can mean both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything in order, what is right, but also does anyone know, justice?
[SPEAKER_00]: The same word in Greek can mean righteousness or justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: In large, the harvest of your justice is another legitimate way of translating this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not about your personal holiness.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is about you participating with God in giving glory to his name through the way you live in the world and how you treat other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 11, you will be enriched in every way so that you can have a really big bank account and an awesome superannuation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in what Thanksgiving to God, it will result in the Lord's
[SPEAKER_00]: because that's how the Lord's prayer opened.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the most important thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, in the way that I live, in how I use my money and my resources, help me to trust you so that I can have what I need and be generous to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I pray that as I do that, I wouldn't get the glory, you would get the glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be your name that's hellowed in all the earth, and that all people will look to you, maybe through my good deeds, yes, and amen, but they will give glory to God on the day that you return.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is not an obligation, but an invitation to experience the abundance of God so that we can be generous, do what it is we've been called to do, live into the kingdom of God and do the Father's will, as I said, no more at no less than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or as Jesus said, in a very simple summary of the heart of the fourth
[SPEAKER_00]: freely, give, let's stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Invite the band to come on up, Lord, I thank you that you are a good father, who cares about us, and not just us, all people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And surely, when we pray this prayer, one of the first things we think of is, yes, Lord, but what about all those people
[SPEAKER_00]: Even maybe if they've prayed this prayer, and maybe Lord, it is the case, therefore that you are calling us to be the ones who are the answer to this prayer for others.
[SPEAKER_00]: So help us, Lord, to trust you, help us to live into the fourth petition with joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to step into the generous flow of your abundant heart for the world, and that in our preaching of the gospel, we would not just think about of that as something intended to save our souls, but also to attend to the needs of our bodies in Jesus' name, Amen.