“Give us today our daily bread.” Matthew 6:11
“Even bread, the most basic of survival rations, comes by God’s daily provision (Psalm 104:14-15; 27-28), and is thus a proper subject for prayer rather than to be taken for granted. If this is true even for bread, how much more for all our other physical needs…
This petition would remind a Jewish hearer of the provision of manna in the wilderness, enough for each day at a time, except for an extra supply when the following day was a sabbath (Exodus 16:4-5).To ask God for such bread “today” is to acknowledge our dependence on God for routine provision.
In modern Western culture where the provision of food is usually planned and assured for good time ahead, such immediate dependence seems remote from our experience. In many other parts of the world it is not so…Similarly for Jesus and his disciples during their itinerant mission, the daily provision of material needs could not be taken for granted…
The instruction not to worry about material provision in vv. 25-33 (which seems equally remote from most modern Western experience) is dependent on all such needs having been trustfully committed to God as this prayer requires. Jesus himself had to depend on God for food rather than taking the matter into his own hands (4:3-4).”
R.T. France in The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT; Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2007) 248-249.
France spells out the significance of this aspect of the Lord’s Prayer — it points to daily dependence on God — and rightly notes that such a posture is a foreign concept for most Westerners. Notice again his last line: “Jesus himself had to depend on God for food rather than taking the matter into his own hands.”
A couple days ago one of my former students (who reads these daily meditations) resonated with the Thomas Merton quote — “Money has demonically usurped the role in modern society which the Holy Spirit is to have in the Church.” — and asked that I expound on this idea more fully.
Merton is saying that since we, in modernity, have plenty of money, we’ve been fooled into thinking it’s the power for ministry. The temptation of control, or taking matters into our own hands, is the temptation that France notes here that Jesus resisted, and the condition Merton warned us about. We too must resist it.
To explore this verse from the Lord’s Prayer more fully, here’s a link to a sermon I preached on it at Bear Valley Church on January 17, 2016.
Also for further reading on resisting the temptation of control, subscribers to daily meditations can simply reply to this email with the word “CHOICE” and I will freely email you an ebook edition of my ECFA Press book, The Choice: The Christ-Centered Pursuit of Kingdom Outcomes.