2022.08.21 Teach Us To Pray - Manna Today Gone Tomorrow

Teach Us To Pray - Forgive As I Say Not As I Do

Matthew 6:5-13 • Matthew 7:9-11

Today, we continue through our journey in the Lord’s Prayer. And the next line is so short, we often pass over it without really thinking about what it really says:

Give us this day our daily bread

I’m not a Baptist, but if I were, this passage is custom-made for a 3-point sermon.

You see it, right? No?!

Try this one...

Does that help?

Jesus gives us three truths in this one sentence.

First, “Give us”

God has a long record in this arena!

His rap sheet is deep:

Adam – it’s not good that man is alone

Isaac – God provided a ram

Noah – Warning and eventually protection

Joseph – brothers, Potiphar, Pharaoh, Brothers

Moses & Israelites – so many ways, but most obvious is MANNA {what is this?}

God is our provider!

In our culture, that so values self sufficiency … this may be the area we need to learn most from Jesus’ model prayer.

Our provision comes from our God. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.

Matthew 7:9–11 NASB 2020

9 Or what person is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 So if you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

Next is, “this day”

Ever walk in the boss’ office to ask for something, and walk in on a “bad hair day”?

We have lots of sayings about right timing:

Right time – right place

Like closing the barn door … after the horse is out

Don’t count your chickens … before they hatch

Don’t put the cart before … the horse

Every dog has … his day

For everything … there is a season

Joe Rosenthal

Most of us are at least slightly familiar with Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo from the Battle of Iwo Jima.

On February 23, 1945, Rosenthal took this picture of 6 Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. The photograph didn’t make it to American newspapers for 2 days.

Rosenthal dodged mines and bullets to crouch in a position inside the volcano’s rim as the Marines moved the flag into place … he snapped his picture, and was immediately convinced he missed it! But he HAD to have something to send back home to the newspapers!

click

So, he hurriedly posed a bunch of Marines beneath the flag to get something to send to the Associated Press.

But his timing was better than he thought.

click

Artist renderings of his photograph were almost immediately commissioned for War Bonds. A statue was immediately commissioned, although it wasn’t finished until 1954. The picture was put on a postage stamp before the war even ended. The Pulitzer Prize Board made an exception to their ordinary timelines in order to consider Rosenthal’s picture for the prestigious award just two months after it had been taken.

Timing is so important … but it’s not everything!

In telling us to pray “this day”, Jesus tells us...

We don’t have to wait for perfect or even good timing!

We don’t have to wait to ask!

Finally, “daily bread”

In the first section, I read Matthew 7, where Jesus tells us God will provide much better for us than we provide for our kids. Backing up just a bit in that passage, here’s what he said right before that statement:

Matthew 7:7–8 NASB 2020

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

How about James:

James 4:2b (NASB 2020)

You do not have because you do not ask.

Before anyone goes off the deep end with this:

Jesus and James are not telling us that God will honor greedy requests for whatever twisted ideas we have of prosperity.

I’d better get him off the screen...

Let me ask, “What is daily bread?”

What would this phrase have meant to the people listening to Jesus in person?

To a first-century Jew, ‘daily bread’ would likely have been taken as a reference to MANNA! Remember Manna? What do you remember about Manna?

It came every morning.

Gather only what you need for the day

It goes bad by the next morning (except, it miraculously kept for 2 days on the Sabbath)

You know how they knew it went bad after a day?

‘Cause somebody tried to collect a stockpile instead of what they needed for the day.

Daily bread is a reference to manna, and Jesus is telling us to stop worrying about what we’ll need tomorrow, or three weeks from now. He’s telling us:

Only ask for what we need!

In every sense, God meets the needs we have. We may have a myriad of unmet WANTS, but this entire prayer is trying to direct us to a simpler approach to God and to life itself.

Give us this day our daily bread

God is our provider!

The timing is always right for us to pray!

And we should ask God for what we need!

Teach Us To Pray - Manna Today Gone Tomorrow