Pastor Scott Andrews | July 13, 2025
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Luke 11:1-4 (Part 2)
We are learning how to pray. In our continuing study of the gospel of Luke, Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem. While He prayed throughout His ministry at key points, it’s understandable He would pray now, as the shadow of the cross is looming on the horizon. One of His disciples noticed Jesus prays, a lot, and said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray. So, Jesus did – with a prayer that is not so much a mantra to be recited as it is a pattern to follow. To be clear, He’s not necessarily telling us what to say, that is, what words to use, but the content and attitude with which we should approach God. Nothing wrong with praying these words – we did last week – but it shouldn’t be our only prayer.
Now, in this pattern, we began by learning we can actually call the God of the universe, the Creator of all we see, Father. We are His children. We saw He is Father in a few ways, first in that we are born of Him. He caused us to be born again. Last week – I used the word begot, which caused some confusion as Jesus is the only begotten Son. Very true. But when we see we are born of God, it’s the same word. But in order to keep the distinction that Jesus is the only begotten of the Father – eternally begotten – the translators used the words, born of God for us. That’s a better choice of words.
So, just as we have been born of our physical fathers, we have been born again of our heavenly Father. He placed His righteous seed in us so that His life is within through the Holy Spirit. And not only that, second, He adopted us – He chose us to be His children and adopted us, brought us into His family. He wants us to be His and invites us into His presence. Which led to a third truth about our Father – He is always there. Never distant, never removed, always present, always approachable. Further, in all that, I suggested, biblically, only those who have been born again into God’s family, can call God, Father.
Now, not only do we enjoy a Father/child relationship with Him; last week, we saw that He is also our holy King – that is, we enjoy a Sovereign/servant relationship with Him. As believers, as a church, more than anything in the world, we want His name to be hallowed, esteemed, revered among us. That is, we want His name to be treated as most holy – we want to put Him on display so others see the life of God in us.
Further, we want His kingdom to come to us – not only in the return of Christ, but right here, right now. We want God to reign in our hearts – to sit as rightful sovereign on the throne of our hearts. We also want to be kingdom people in that we obey our King, and we are about the business of expanding His kingdom. That is, we want to see other people – sinners like us – rescued out of the kingdom of darkness and delivered into the kingdom of light.
And we understand that is a declaration of war. Satan, you’ve had your way long enough. We are no longer your subjects – we are in rebellion to you and your ways. We want God’s kingdom and His will to be done around here. And by openly declaring our allegiance to God, the god of this world, Satan, and his evil forces, will oppose us. But the conflict that comes and the battles we face are evidence of the fact we are citizens of another kingdom – a heavenly kingdom. And victory is assured as our God leads us in the war. We will be victorious.
That was all great stuff, wasn’t it? Kingdom stuff. God is our Father. God is our King. We sing it, right? Some of you remember this old song:
Lead on O King Eternal,
the day of march has come;
henceforth in fields of conquest
Thy tents shall be our home.
Through days of preparation
Thy grace has made us strong,
and now, O King Eternal,
We lift our battle song.
An old song – a more contemporary way to sing it – in heavenly armor we’ll enter the land, the battle belongs to the Lord. No weapon that’s fashioned against us will stand, the battle belongs to the Lord. Onward Christian soldiers and all that stuff. We’re talking about the King and His kingdom, of which we are part. Hot dog, we’re moving out now – Stand up, stand up for Jesus and vanquish those unnumbered foes. Cool. We’re ready to storm the gates of hell, which, we know, will not stand against us. This is great stuff – what comes next? We get to the next line of the Lord’s Prayer, better, the disciples’ prayer found in Luke11, and it reads, “Give us each day our daily bread.”
What? What about the kingdom? What about storming the gates of hell? That’s a little anti-climactic, kind of a step down, isn’t it? Hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, we’re waging war, give us some bread. Really? I’d rather talk about God, the kingdom, authority, power, the gifts, things like that. What’s this about bread? It’s a little difficult to go from kingdoms to bread, even if we call it wonder bread.
In fact, I’ll tell you, through the centuries, from the earliest days, theologians and Christian leaders have thought this verse must be a little out of place – it doesn’t belong here. Or maybe, they said, Jesus is not actually talking about real bread – you know, that stuff made of flour and yeast that we eat – He must be talking something much more important than that. Supernatural bread. Some have suggested it referred to the Bread of Life, others the miracle manna. Come on, this is kingdom stuff. One called it angel’s food. The church father Origen, writing in the third century, suggested the word daily means supersubstantial – give us each day our supersubstantial bread. Surely that didn’t refer to toast. Jerome saw it as referring to the Lord’s Supper. That sounds so much more spiritual.
Augustine suggested it must be talking about spiritual food – yeah, that’s it – give us each day our daily bread – the Word of God. That sound better. Some modern authors think it has to do with the “messianic banquet in the coming age,” that is, by praying for our daily bread, we’re praying for Jesus to come. That sounds good, anything sounds better than muffins or Twinkies.
Guess what? While it’s possible it’s talking about really spiritual stuff, most agree it’s talking about plain old bread – real food. Some suggest, it speaks metaphorically of all the physical things of life we need to survive. That stuff we need every day or we go hungry. That stuff we need every so often or we die. Seems so base, so common. We have seen God as our Father, we have seen Him as our King. This morning, I want to talk to you about God our Provider. You see, it is true, we enjoy a Father/child relationship. It is true, we enjoy a Sovereign/subject relationship. But it is also true we enjoy a Benefactor/beneficiary relationship. He is Yahweh-Jireh, the Lord our Provider. Of what? Everything that we need, even in the physical world.
I really don’t have an outline for us this morning. I just want us to break this verse apart by considering its implications. But let’s begin by rereading the Lord’s Prayer as Luke records it in Luke 11:1-4.
We move in the first verse of the prayer from the purely Godward, vertical focus to our personal requests – our needs – the need of daily provision, the need of daily pardon, and the need of daily protection. We will take these one at a time over the next few weeks, starting with our need of daily bread. And let’s be honest, the first thing we see is about daily bread is a personal challenge. This is hard for us. I struggled with this passage – what am I going to say about bread – particularly to people who have not only daily bread, but most of you wouldn’t have to go to the grocery story for a week if you didn’t want to. Pray for daily bread, like it comes from Him? No, I’ve got that covered.
Why do people have such a problem seeing this as real bread? And if we see it as real bread, why is it so ho-hum to us? Ok, give us each day our daily bread, now let’s move on. Why is this a challenge? Several reasons came to mind:
- First, bread seems so petty. We think God has too many other things to worry about than bread. I mean, come on – He’s got an entire universe to run. He’s gotta keep stars from running into each other, planets rotating on their axis. He’s way too busy – don’t bother Him about bread.
And even if we’re able to accept the truth that God is concerned for us, we normally think He’s only concerned about spiritual stuff. You know, spiritual realities, the heavenlies, the kingdom and saving people and healing people. God doesn’t really care about my diet, my clothing, my plumbing, my health, does He? We compartmentalize our lives into the sacred and secular – and God’s only concerned about the sacred – He doesn’t care if my pipes are busted or if my car doesn’t start. He’s way too big for that stuff, right? God, You take care of my spiritual life, I’ll take care of my physical life – the material.
- Another problem is it feels kind of selfish to ask for things. I mean, really, there are other people who have a lot more needs than I do – what about the people starving in Africa – who am I to ask God to meet my basic needs? And we beat ourselves up for asking for physical blessings. And sometimes, maybe, way down deep, we just have a hard time believing God likes us and wants to give us things. I don’t deserve it – I haven’t earned it. Maybe, just maybe, we have a hard time believing God loves us and just wants to give gifts to His children. Listen, Jesus going to talk about real bread and fish in the parables that follow.
- A third problem may be this. I’m way too spiritual to bother God with petty things like bread. I’m beyond that – let Him take care of other people’s physical needs – I’ll just talk to Him on a spiritual level – the things He and I really care about. I’m beyond bread. And we think we’re so spiritual. And Jesus tells us – you need to ask for bread. Here’s a sneak preview – you need to understand that God provides all things for you. Jesus is reminding us of our ongoing, daily dependence on our Father. We have a tendency to trust our own ability to provide for our daily needs, and to take what God gives for granted. Or think that we’ve somehow produced all by ourselves.
- No doubt the biggest problem we have with this asking God for daily bread is this – we live in America. We are the breadbasket of the world. People ask us for help. We don’t need to ask God for daily bread. Let the Christians in Ethiopia and Haiti pray this prayer. We’ll take care of our own needs. As a matter of fact, we’ll be the answer to the Ethiopians’ and Haitians’ prayers!
The truth is, we feel quite self-sufficient when it comes to meeting our daily needs. Further, most of us have no idea what it means to need daily food. In the context of this prayer, Jesus was talking to a group of people who literally lived from hand to mouth. They didn’t have refrigerators and pantries – even if they did, they would have been empty. They didn’t have next week’s groceries – many of them didn’t even have tomorrow’s bread. When they worked, they got paid at the end of the day – a day’s wages. And they would buy food to see them through that day.
By the way, you might be interested to know, when Jesus says to pray, give us each day our daily bread, that could be translated, give us tomorrow’s bread today. Could it be they were actually praying for food security? Again, we have trouble understanding this – we have tomorrow’s bread – and if we don’t, we’ll buy it. We’ll stop at McDonald’s or Taco Bell.
Listen, for many of them, to be sick for a day or two and miss work was terrible – to be sick for a week was disastrous. You see, while we worry about things like whether we have enough money to make the car payment or if we’ll be able to put enough money away to buy the boat, they worried whether they’d have enough to buy today’s or tomorrow’s lunch. When’s the last time you went to bed hungry, not because of a fast – but because you hadn’t eaten that day?
So we have no idea what it means to pray, give us each day our daily bread. In fact, a literal rendering of that verse would be, Give us the bread necessary for each day this very day. We don’t have it – we need it – so the first place we go to find our needs met is to our Father. There’s a real element of need here. Jesus was teaching not a spiritual dependence upon God with these words, but a physical dependence. God, without you, we die. He wants us to understand that we need our Father, for everything. What is it you need right now, that you’ve been perhaps too proud to ask God for?
So what does that look like for us, here, in America? Let me encourage you with several truths:
- First, can I encourage you that the God who created this world – who sustains it with His mighty hand – the God who has everything under His control – cares about you. I’ve got good news for you today – He cares whether you eat, whether you drink, whether you’re clothed, whether you’re sheltered. The mighty God of the universe, who owns it all, runs it all, cares about you. Rather than being a mundane prayer we pray at mealtime – God, thank you for this food – we can be encouraged that God does care about my daily bread. And He really does provide it. While He’s running a universe that’s bigger than we can even figure out – God cares about you.
And I believe there are some people here this morning who need to hear that God doesn’t just care about “spiritual” stuff. No, He knows where you are – He knows how much food you have and don’t have – He knows what you’re facing, physically, materially. He knows if you need a job, He knows if your car is about to quit, He knows if your bank account is in the red. He knows, and He cares. And you can ask Him, and He will do what is best for you. Do you believe that today? Trust God who owns everything with your physical needs.
- Secondly, this verse tells us it’s okay to ask for our physical needs to be met. That’s not selfish, that’s not wrong. In fact, it’s right, because it demonstrates dependence – not proud independence. There may be times when our physical needs are not met simply because we do not ask – we have not, because we ask not. Ask, that you may receive.
Now, I need to say, there is a significant difference between need and greed. James 4 tells us there are times we ask and do not receive, because we ask with wrong motives, so that we can spend it on our own pleasures. We ask, not for needs but for the perks, for wants. And there are people out there who are convinced that the only thing God cares about is making Christians comfortable and cozy. Healthy and wealthy. That He’s like a spiritual Santa Claus, and if we’re good enough, He’ll give us all kinds of wonderful gifts and toys.
He’s like a celestial vending machine. I put in the coin of praise, pull the lever of prayer, and out comes the gift – which is really all I was after in the first place. And if we butter God up, He’ll give me everything I want. Who knows – put in enough praise and you might just get a Mercedes.
May I tell you this morning that God is not supremely concerned about our wants, but He does care about our needs. Which goes with this statement – He’s not supremely concerned about your happiness, but your holiness. Now, He may, just give us some wants, some of those perks in life. And we have certainly enjoyed our share of them in this country. But nowhere in the Bible do we find the prosperity doctrine that many churches teach today – that God wants you to be rich. Rather, He promises to meet our needs, and it’s not selfish to ask for our needs to be met.
With a proper balance. Proverbs 30:7-9 states the balance:
7 Two things I asked of You,
Do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep deception and lies far from me,
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
9 That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God.
We pray for daily bread, our needs to be met. And we pray that God would deliver from two extremes – poverty, which would tempt us to steal, and excess, which would tempt us to deny our dependence on God. Instead, the prayer is for daily bread, that God in His wisdom would give what is appropriate.
Then, the words of Jesus in Matthew 6 will be meaningfully met in our lives:
25 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
27 “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin,
29 yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
30 “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!
31 “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’
32 “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
- A third truth is this – notice the first word in the verse – give. It’s in the present tense, so we keep asking, and He keeps providing. I also want you to understand it is God who gives us what we need – even the bread. That throws self-sufficiency right out the window. It is God who gives us food. It is God who gives us clothing and shelter and everything else we need for life. James 1 tells us that every good thing and every perfect gift comes from above – from the Father of lights. While we have a tendency to think we are the ones providing for all our needs – it is really God who is doing it.
In fact, whether they realize it or not, it is God who provides these things for all humankind. Acts 17:24-25 says this: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;” God, in His common grace, in His common benevolence and love for His creation, provides all things for the people of the earth.
And let me tell you something else. Earlier I said we feel pretty self sufficient. In fact, we even feel spiritual about that. What do I mean? We think we’re doing pretty good when we take care of our own needs and God and the church don’t have to help us. You know, we have a benevolence fund to meet the needs of others, and I give toward that fund. To help the less fortunate – those who aren’t able to help themselves. And we’ve made a virtue out of being self-sufficient.
Now, it is true that we are to work to provide our own way. That’s biblical. Paul told the Thessalonians to work and eat their own bread, and that a man who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat. But the truth is, even the ability to work for bread is a gift from God.
All this demonstrates a very important principle: God provides for our needs through our work, and through the benevolence of others when we’re unable to work. Which is why we’re commanded to give to the poor – to those who have needs. James 1:27 says this, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress,…” James 2:15,16 says, “If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?” The very clear idea is that God meets the daily food needs of others through His people.
The point is this. It doesn’t matter whether God provides for our daily bread through our work or through others – He’s doing it. We’re totally dependent upon Him. That’s what this verse is all about. Which means we shouldn’t feel superior to others because we make more than them, and we shouldn’t feel inferior because we make less than them. God’s the one doing it – not us.
Do you think that would change the way prayed? For the mundane thing like food before mealtime? God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food, now – let’s chow. If we really understood that God was the one providing for all our spiritual and physical needs, even daily bread – do you think it would change the way you prayed?
Give us each day our daily bread. You know, to say those words implies that we pray daily. Every day, we recognize, God is Yahweh-Jireh – He is our provider and gives us everything we need. He wants us to ask, because it expresses our dependence upon Him, and it reminds us how much we need Him.
I want to close this morning with this final thought. Do you know that every time Jesus said, “O ye of little faith?” that He was saying it in response to the disciples’ lack of faith in providing for a physical need.
Did you know that? There are five times when Jesus says, “O ye of little faith,” and every time it was when the disciples didn’t trust Jesus for their physical needs. One of them is in Matthew 16 where the disciples were concerned about bread. And Jesus had to remind them about taking the five loaves and two fishes and feeding thousands of people. How many baskets full did you pick up. Don’t worry about the bread. You want to be a spiritual giant? You want to be a man or woman of faith? Then trust God for your physical needs. You’re not being spiritual by trusting yourself, or by being self-sufficient. You’re actually being self-deceived. By praying every day, give us each day our daily bread, you are trusting God for bread. And you are proving yourself to be a person of faith.