The Model Prayer, Part 2
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The Manifold Grace Of God
As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
4 Petitions
4 Petitions
Give Us: This Day Our Daily Bread
God’s Provision - Manna in the wilderness
This Day - live by faith day by day, not yesterday’s faith or tomorrow’s faith. But today’s.
Daily Bread - what we need for the moment. What is necessary for now.
this was a rare Greek word used in the Egyptian papyri of a master giving a slave enough food to accomplish an assigned task.
also a Greek idiom “for necessary food for today” (the bread of our necessity)
God told Moses to collect enough bread just for that day.
When they measured it with an omer, he who had gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack; every man gathered as much as he should eat.
“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
This is in context of physical needs like food, clothing, and shelter.
And this petition is ultimately a reminder that all good things, even our ability to work and earn our food, comes from God’s hand and is a form of His grace in a physical way.
The Israelites complain and God pours out His grace.
But this phraseology can refer to both physical sustenance and what stands behind the sustenance.
Though we live on bread, we must not ascribe the support of life to the power of bread, but to the secret kindness, by which God imparts to bread the quality of nourishing our bodies.
John Calvin (French Reformer); William Pringle
That quality is of a spiritual nature, then.
That kindness, again, is His grace toward us.
Unmerited favor.
Jesus then connects the two thoughts of physical bread and spiritual sustenance when in the desert being tempted by Satan.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes out of the mouth of God.
And of course Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3 when God tells the Israelites that the purpose of the manna was to teach them to trust God’s word.
In the end it’s trusting God to supply whatever need we have physical or spiritual.
Daily grace is to the heart what daily bread is to the body.
John Piper
This bread needs to be eaten daily.
Part of this petition is a response on our part to do what we need to do.
God provided the manna, but they still had to go and collect it and eat it.
Nourishing our bodies and nourishing our souls needs to be a daily task.
If we don’t eat our bread daily, we will be malnourished by tomorrow, sick in a week, and dead in a couple months.
Similarly, we can starve our soul without spiritual sustenance.
Today’s bread will not do for tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s bread collected today, will become yesterday’s bread spoiled and of no use.
God told Moses to not leave any of it until morning.
But they did not listen to Moses, and some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul; and Moses was angry with them.
The bread was meant to be eaten now, and not stored up for tomorrow.
We can’t save up the grace that God give us for today and use it tomorrow.
For example, “I won’t have time to read a chapter of the Bible tomorrow. So I’ll read 2 chapters today.”
Or, “I won’t have 10 minutes to pray tomorrow, so I’ll pray 20 today.”
As God provided for me today, I need to come to Him tomorrow.
It is new every morning.
Saying Grace before a meal.
Lord, Grace Us With Our Daily Bread, And I Will Graciously Thank You And Partake Daily Of It.
Forgive Us: Our Sins As We Forgive Those Who Have Sinned Against Us.
The rest of these petitions are connected by “and” and therefore are linked together in more than one way.
It is not just enough to take the grace of God for ourselves in material things, but we need to embrace the grace of God in other ways.
And these other expressions of grace must be embraced daily as well.
What else do we need daily? God’s Forgiveness
We need to come daily and seek the Lord’s grace for forgiveness.
In coming daily to seek forgiveness, we in essence are preaching the Gospel to ourselves every day.
We are reminded that apart from God’s grace, there is no forgiveness of sins.
We are reminded that God is the one who provided the way through Jesus Christ.
We are reminded that we can’t earn it and don’t deserve it.
And in the end we end of praising and thanking God for what He has done for us.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Secondly, forgiveness is not seeking God for tolerance of our sins.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as ‘tolerance’. Being forgiven doesn’t mean that sin doesn’t matter. On the contrary: ‘forgiveness’ means that sin does matter—but that God is choosing to set it aside.
NT Wright
Forgiveness is free to us, but came at a great price.
He “set it aside” by laying it on His Son to bear His wrath on our behalf.
But just like the first petition, there is a response on our part.
We need God’s grace for our own sins to be forgiven, but even more so, we need His grace to forgive other’s sins daily.
Just like God set our sins aside, so we, too, need to do the same for others.
Inevitably someone will offend or hurt us today.
As we have been forgiven, we can go and forgive others.
what God has loosed in our lives, we can loose in others.
This is not because we can merit mercy by mercy or forgiveness by forgiveness, but because we cannot receive the mercy and forgiveness of God unless we repent, and we cannot claim to have repented of our sins if we are unmerciful towards the sins of others.
John Robert Walmsley Stott (English Preacher)
“Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offenses of others, it proves that we have minimized our own”
Finally, forgiveness brings peace. Peace with God and Peace with one another.
The Chosen - how many times must I forgive my brother - 7 times? Peter and Matthew.
Father, Today, Give Me The Grace To Forgive As You Have Forgiven Me
Lead Us Not: Into Temptation.
God’s Intervening Grace on our behalf.
Peirasmos
Testing for the purpose of destroying vs. testing for the purpose of strengthening.
Satan tests/tempts to get us to fail or fall.
God tests to prove our mettle. He does it to grow and mature our faith.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
The testing of our faith develops endurance
The testing of our daily bread.
Will God send manna this morning?
Will God’s grace be enough to sustain me?
Will God still forgive even if I sin again?
Perseverance - hypomene - the ability to bear up under trial.
The trials burn away any impurities in the believer’s faith. What is left when the trials have ended is purified, genuine faith, analogous to the pure gold or silver that emerges from the refiner’s fire.
Wayne Grudem
But, God does not tempt, period.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
If God doesn’t tempt, and would seem to imply he’s not going to put us in a position to be tempted, and if trials are a good thing to make us more like Jesus, then why are we praying, “Lead us not into peirasmos?”
First of all, grammatically - this phrase means, “Do not even begin this action.” And that would be, in context, “Do not begin the action of failing the trial or falling to temptation.”
CC Torrey translates this as “...keep us from failing under trial.”
However, with the angle of temptation, it embraces the thought:
Do not allow Satan the opportunity to destroy us either through trial or temptation.
So, lead us not into..., but, if like Job, God allows it for proving our faith and refining our character, then do not allow the devil to win.
It’s a petition for God’s intervention on our behalf.
If we start to stumble, intervene, Lord.
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.
Finally, if we connect daily faith and daily grace from earlier and incorporate both definitions of peirasmos - the thought here in this petition then expands to:
God, Give Us The Necessary Grace So That Today’s Trials Do Not Become For Us Occasions Of Spiritual Temptations.
Deliver Us: From Evil
Debate - evil or evil one. I stand with evil one.
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
Deliver Us: “to snatch from danger” - has more of the meaning of drawing to oneself than merely rescuing from someone or something.
It’s God drawing us to Himself.
When we are faced with evil or the Evil One, we need to ask God to draw us close to Him.
In our moments of weakness in trial, God’s grace comes to help us in our time of need.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
I think about walking with my kids when they were little and then maybe getting into a possible problem, I’d pull them in closer to me.
About 1/3 of the Psalms describe God as a shield, refuge, rock, or fortress.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me, For my soul takes refuge in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge Until destruction passes by.
We are protected by God’s power, not ours.
who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
for a little while - only temporary.
God will not try you longer than is necessary.
This, too, will pass.
Such is the nature of our trials that while they last we cannot see the end.
Martin Luther (Founder of the German Reformation)
if necessary -
God will only do that which is necessary.
Your trial is necessary to what God is doing in and through you.
distressed - sorrow and grief caused by the trial.
When We Are Faced With Evil Or The Devil Pursues, God, Draw Us Close To You. Keep Us Safe And Let Your Grace Be Sufficient In My Weakness.
Summary:
Lord, Grace Us With Our Daily Bread, And I Will Graciously Thank You And Partake Daily Of It.
Father, Today, Give Me The Grace To Forgive As You Have Forgiven Me
God, Give Us The Necessary Grace So That Today’s Trials Do Not Become For Us Occasions Of Spiritual Temptations.
Today, When We Are Faced With Evil Or The Devil Pursues, God, Draw Us Close To You. Keep Us Safe And Let Your Grace Be Sufficient In My Weaknesses.
