Chapter VI: “Daily Bread”

“Give us this day our daily bread.”—MATT. vi. 11

“Give us day by day our daily bread.”—LUKE xi. 3.

The petition which we are to study together this morning opens the second part of the Lord’s Prayer. Up to this point our petitions have all been concerned with God’s glory and praise. We have prayed “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Having thus observed the rule, “first things first,” having sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, we are now at liberty to pass on to secondary things, and to offer up to God petitions for personal blessings. And the first petition we are taught to offer is this, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We begin at the very bottom. We start the list of personal petitions with a prayer for “daily bread.”

Will you notice what a gracious light this petition throws upon the _condescension of God_? Our Lord is the high and Holy One, who inhabits eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly folk and lowly things. “The Lord thinketh upon _me_.” Whatsoever concerns me is of concern to Him. “Give me bread” is not too humble a petition to bring into the presence of the great White Throne. A one-sided notion of the majesty of God has led men oftentimes to feel that the ordinary little cares of a human life are quite too insignificant and trifling for Him to notice. “God is so busy,” they say; “He has so many things to think about, that we ought not to trouble Him with our little anxieties and worries. Such petty things are quite beneath the dignity of His attention.” That was exactly how the disciples felt long ago, when they were for driving away those mothers who had brought their little children for Christ to bless. They felt that the great Preacher, on whose lips vast crowds hung, ought not to be bothered about babies. They thought that Christ had so many things of importance to think about, that it was absurd to expect Him to take notice of little children. The same kind of feeling has possessed many of the men who have commented on this petition. Many of the old church fathers, and indeed many modern commentators, refuse to believe that this is a prayer for ordinary food, for mere bread. They cannot persuade themselves that a petition for so commonplace a thing as _bread_ could possibly find a place for itself in the Model Prayer. This is too trifling a request to trouble God about. So they cast about for some other than the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence, something which they imagine is more _dignified_, and satisfy themselves at last by saying that bread here means _spiritual bread_, food for the soul, the Bread of Life. But the simple and obvious meaning of the phrase is, after all, the true one. Erasmus, the great sixteenth century Grecian, thought a reference to physical food would be incongruous “in so heavenly a prayer.” But far from being incongruous, the prayer becomes more gracious and beautiful because this petition for bread is in it! The picture of Christ, which is given us in the Gospels, is all the more winsome for the story which tells us that He took the little children in His arms and blessed them; and the character of God becomes all the more beautiful when we see His love stooping even to caring for our commonest wants. “Give us bread.” This petition asks God to supply our primary physical wants. It is not an unworthy petition. It is not too trivial a request to bring to God; for God is not a God simply for great crises, supreme emergencies, tremendous catastrophes: He is a God for every day, and for the common events of every day. Our God is, shall I say, a Master of detail. He cares not simply for the movements of worlds and the policies of nations. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and He counts the very hairs of our head. Nothing is too small for God to notice; the commonest affairs of the commonest life are matters of concern to Him.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Will you notice!—

(1) That this prayer proclaims the fact of _our dependence_ upon God _for the very simplest of boons_. “Give us _bread_.” At first glance we might be tempted to think this was a poor man’s prayer; a prayer for the man who is face to face with hunger; a prayer for the man who does not know to-day how he is going to live through to-morrow; a prayer for the man whose balance at the bank has been exhausted, and whose last shilling has been spent; a prayer for the man whose cupboard is empty, and who has nothing in basket or store. “But,” we say, “this is not a prayer for a rich man; this is not a prayer for a man whose barns and storehouses are full; this is not a prayer for those who are nursed in the lap of luxury—the well-to-do, the affluent, the millionaire.” This is a prayer for Lazarus, not for Dives. But, as a matter of fact, I do not read that Jesus anywhere says that this is a petition the rich men need not offer. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, you will find that some of the prayers, _e.g._, the general thanksgiving and the prayer for all sorts and conditions of men—contain petitions which may be inserted or omitted according to the circumstances of the congregation. Such petitions you will find printed in italics and enclosed in brackets, and the instruction is given at the side, that such a petition is only to be used when any members of the congregation specially desire it. But this petition is not printed in italics. It is not enclosed in brackets. There is no instruction at the side to say, “This petition is to be offered by a congregation of the poor, but may be omitted by a congregation of the rich.” Oh no! there it stands in the body of the prayer. Before it you will find the command of Christ “When ye pray, say, Give us this day our daily bread.” There are no exceptions made. This is a prayer for all men, for the prince as well as the pauper, for the rich as well as the poor—“Give us this day our daily bread.”

And it is thus a prayer for all, because all are absolutely _dependent_ upon God. We have nothing which we have not received. Every good and perfect gift cometh from above from the Father of Light, with whom is no variableness neither shadow cast by turning. In God we live and move and have our being. All men depend upon God, and they depend upon him for everything. For life, for breath, for vigour of mind, for strength of body, we all depend on Him. And nowhere is this utter dependence of man upon God more clearly seen than in the matter of DAILY BREAD. The possession of wealth is apt to blind us to the fact of our _dependence_. Men who are rich and increased with goods are always in danger of thinking they have need of nothing. Men whose affairs have prospered, like the rich fool in the parable, are always prone to think themselves secure and safe for future years, and say to their souls as he said, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” Why, we talk ourselves about a man who has private property which brings him in a few hundreds a year being “independent.” Independent of what? Independent of whom? It is not simply that wealth has a curious trick sometimes of taking to itself wings and flying away; it is not simply that life is full of instances of tragic vicissitudes of fortune; it is not simply that we see the supposed possessor of millions the friend of titled lords one day, figuring in the Bankruptcy Court the next. Even assuming that riches when made can be kept, of whom is a man “independent”? Why, though you had the wealth of the Rothschilds, you would still be as dependent upon God for mere _bread_ as the meanest pauper in Christchurch workhouse. For consider for a moment the facts of the case. All wealth in the last resort _depends upon the produce of the soil_. In these days, when civilisation is so complicated, this is a fact we are always in danger of overlooking and forgetting; but it is a fact, nevertheless, all wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil—the simple necessaries of life. Gold is only valuable for what it can buy—its power of purchasing what is needful for the support of life. But supposing for one moment that the earth did not yield her increase; supposing a summer should pass without a crop; supposing there should be no harvest of corn or fruit; supposing the world suddenly found itself without food, of what use would your glittering sovereigns be to you? Of what use would your railway shares and bank shares be to you? Of what use would your costly diamonds and precious stones be to you? You could not live upon them! They would be as worthless as the very dust of the street if there was nothing to buy! Yes, that is the simple truth; if the world should wake up in the morning to find itself absolutely without food, the man whose safe is stuffed with share scrip and whose plate-chest is crammed with gold and precious stones, would be in just as sad a plight as the poorest beggar in Bournemouth. In the last resort all men depend upon the produce of the fields; and the produce of the fields _is the gift of God_. Man cannot make food. He cannot create bread. With all his knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a harvest. God must GIVE it. And He gives the harvest _year by year_. Some things, as Dr. Dods remarks, God gives us once for all—our supply of coal and the various minerals and metals. But corn, food, and bread He gives us year by year, as if to emphasise the fact of our dependence upon him. I have read somewhere that when the month of August comes round the world is each year within two months of famine. The world’s granaries at that time contain only eight weeks’ supply of corn. How forcibly such a fact preaches the truth of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor alike depend for very life upon the harvest God shall give. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer for Job in his prosperity quite as much as for Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for Joseph amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite as much as for Jacob face to face with starvation in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich and poor, for the man who has his thousands as well as the man who has not a shilling; for we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God; what He gives us we gather, and it is only when He opens His hands that we are filled with good.

Now, let me pass on to speak, in the second place, of:

(2) The _modesty and simplicity_ of the request made in this prayer, “Give us this day our daily BREAD.” “Bread” that is what is asked for—the bare necessities of life. As T. T. Lynch quaintly puts it, “This is a prayer for daily _bread_, not for daily cake.” And as if to emphasise the modesty of the request, it is not for the necessities of a lifetime, but for the necessities of _to-day_ that we are to ask. “Give us _this day_ our daily bread.” The adjective which is translated “daily” is a word that has caused scholars no end of trouble. It is found nowhere else in literature, either sacred or profane, and there have been at least thirty different meanings assigned to it. But only two interpretations need be considered. One is that which we have in our familiar version of the prayer, “daily bread”; the other would make the word to mean “sufficient for my sustenance.” The old Syriac version translates it “bread for my need.” So that you will notice that whichever interpretation is adopted “human wants,” as Godet says, “are here reduced to the minimum.” We are to pray for _bread;_ we are to pray for only as much of that as will suffice for the day, or meet our present needs. The spirit of this petition is that of the prayer of Agur of old, “Feed me with food convenient for me.”

I cannot help feeling that our modern life, with its insatiable appetite for wealth and its love of luxury, stands rebuked by this prayer. Men in these days desire not simply enough for their wants; they desire more than enough—more even than they can use. They struggle and strain that they may get a superfluity; and the result is poverty at one end of the social scale, and luxury, extravagance and waste at the other. Now, I am not prepared to say that to acquire wealth is wrong. But I am prepared to say this, and in saying it I base myself on our Lord’s own words, wealth and the luxury it buys are perilous to the best interests of the soul. Rome was strong and vigorous and happy while her people lived simply, and her noblest sons thought it no shame to share in humble manual labour. But when wealth and luxury entered in, when her populace, despising honest toil, lived on the doles of the Emperor, and her nobles wasted tens of thousands of pounds upon a single banquet, Rome became weak, rotten, wretched.

On that hard, Roman world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.

Wealth is as perilous as ever it was. Luxury still corrupts the soul. Plain living is most conducive to high thinking. It is easier always to be a Christian in a peasant’s hut than in Cæsar’s household. For the Christian life is a simple, spare—may I not say a severe life. Therefore Christ warned us against riches when he said, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.” Therefore here He teaches us to ask for simplest, barest necessaries—“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Let me go on to notice further that in offering this prayer:—

(3) _We pray for others as well as ourselves._ How does the petition read? “Give us this day our daily bread.” The prayer is in the plural, not the singular. It is not “Give ME,” but “Give us” our daily bread. Christ will not let us forget the fact of brotherhood. He will not let us forget that we are members of a great family. He will not let us forget what moderns call “the solidarity of the race.” We must pray _for others_ as well as ourselves. Christ when He was on earth gave us an improved edition of the commandments. Moses had ten commandments in his code. Jesus reduced them to two. And the two commands in the code of Christ were—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and second, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now this petition illustrates that second commandment, and embodies its spirit. We are “loving our neighbours as ourselves” when we say “Give us!” This is a prayer for our brother’s need, for our brother’s want. We are remembering him, bearing his burden when we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we uttered that prayer this morning we were praying for the poor and needy everywhere—the poor in Bournemouth, the poor in vast London yonder, the poor the wide world over. But, do you not see, you cannot pray for the poor and needy and then turn a deaf ear to their cry. The genuineness of this prayer must be proved in action. I often ask God to bless the work of this Church, but I should simply be mocking God if I left it there and did not at once proceed to put whatever power and energy I possess into the work for which I have been praying. And so I should consider I had prayed a sham prayer if, after saying “Give us this day our daily bread,” I was not ready even at cost of sacrifice to help to provide bread for those who lack. The gospel of charity and mutual helpfulness is in the verse. At this blessed season appeals come to us from all quarters on behalf of the orphan, the widow, the friendless, and the poor. There are multitudes of our brothers and sisters in bitter need. We have prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” making their cause our own. May not the true answer to that prayer be, that God will bid us contribute to their need out of our abundance and plenty? The best proof of the sincerity of our prayer would be that we should go forth during this week and carry into some desolate homes a little Christmas gladness and joy.

Yet again notice that in offering this prayer we pray:

(4) For what is _legitimately and honestly our own_. “Give us,” so runs the petition, “our daily bread.” I do not think it is at all fanciful to interpret this pronoun OUR, as Dr. Dods does, to mean that the bread we pray for must be _our own_ and not another’s; that is to say, it must be fairly earned and honestly come by. “Except a man work,” so says the Scripture, “neither shall he eat.” The divine law is that the bread a man eats should be bread won by his own labour. But there are plenty of people in this world who try to live out of the labour of other people. They are busy, as the saying is, “taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.” They do this not simply by deception and theft and robbery—they do it also by unfair competition, by false dealing, by bogus company promoting, by stock-exchange gambling, by oppression, injustice and wrong. There are those among us who devote their talents to the task of drawing hard-earned money out of the pockets of English people without giving value in return. They want to live and grow fat on the bread of others, not on bread of their own earning. But what we have to pray for is _our own_ bread, bread honestly and fairly earned. That little word “our” stands there to warn us against all dishonesty, trickery, fraud, injustice. The man of business must be able to say that every sovereign of his profits has been gained by fair and honest trading. The artisan must be able to say that every penny in his week’s wage has been earned by good and faithful labour. The master who pays his men less than their due, the man who wastes his master’s time, the shopkeeper who resorts to sharp practices—in fact, any one who strives to get hold of money otherwise than by fairly and squarely earning it, are all sinning against the spirit of this prayer which teaches us to say, “Give us this day _our_ daily bread.”

Just one word more before I close. I have said that the primary and essential reference of this petition is to bread, this material bread that nourishes the life of our bodies. But we need not exclude altogether from our thoughts that spiritual bread, that Bread of Life, to which the old Fathers saw reference here. Man does not live by bread alone. Man is not a mere animal. God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul. And the soul needs fit nourishment even as the body does, and that fit nourishment the soul finds in Jesus Christ. He is the “Bread of Life.” This petition is also the right prayer for the hungering soul, “Give us this day our daily bread,” for our souls need a daily supply. The supply of yesterday will not do for to-day, any more than yesterday’s dinner will suffice us for to-day’s work. You cannot live on the memory of past spiritual experiences. You cannot live on the remembrance of blessed fellowship with your Lord held long ago. You cannot live on the recollection of mercies received months or years back. For every day you need a fresh gift of grace. The manna of old only held good for one day. It had to be gathered fresh every morning. The manna of one day grew corrupt and worthless before the next. So it is with the bread of our souls. You must get it fresh every day. For every day you must get new stores of grace. This is the prayer for you and me, “Give us this day our daily bread.” GIVE! yes, this also is a gift. You cannot buy “the Bread of Life.” Its price has never been quoted in the markets. No money could purchase it. But what no money could purchase is offered to you and me for nothing. God never sells. God is a king, He gives. Buy? No, you cannot buy, Can you buy pardon? Can you buy peace? Can you buy redemption? Can you buy heaven? No, you cannot buy; but what you cannot buy God will _give_. Listen, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Listen again, “Everyone that thirsteth let him come and take of the water of life freely.” Listen yet again, “The gift of God is eternal life.” Giving! This is royal giving. Hungering souls come to God—come to God for the Bread of Life. There is in the Father’s house enough and to spare; why hunger ye any more? Why spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Your father is waiting to give you all you need. He is only waiting to hear you say, “Evermore give us this bread.”