Theme: When You Prayer . . . Bread or Bailout
Has it really sunk in what has happened this past year in the economic crisis? Do you realize that this year in America, our government will borrow more money in 2009 than in the entire previous two hundred year history of our nation combined? Our national debt this year will now reach twelve trillion dollars.
How much is 12 trillion dollars? Twelve trillion is a twelve with twelve zeros behind it. To get an idea of how much twelve trillion dollars is let’s say you’re a business person and you started a business on the day Jesus Christ was born. Christmas day two thousand and nine years ago. You’re not a very good businessman so every day your business loses money. So every day you are goingmillionsof dollars in debt. Do you know how many millions of dollars you would have to have lost every day since Jesus birth to equal one trillion dollars? Well I did the math. Without adding in the interest you would have to go in debt $16364714.94. That’s how much a trillion dollars is. And our nation is twelve trillion dollars in debt.
Then a few months ago our Congress approved our first eight hundred billion dollar bailout. Who’s going to pay for that bailout? You and I are! We’re going to pay for it with taxes. You don’t just borrow it; somebody’s got to pay for it. In taxes we’ll have to pay for it.
So I figured since you and I are paying for it, we ought to know the definition of “bailout.”Here is want I found. The definition of the bailout
- To dip (water) out of a boat, as with a bucket. To clear of water by dipping (usually fol. by out): to bail out a boat.
- the act of parachuting from an aircraft, esp. to escape a crash, fire, etc.
- to give up on or abandon something, as to evade a responsibility:
- to bailout means to pay for the freedom of someone who belongs in jail. There might be an application there!
- To bailout means to rescue someone from the consequences of their stupidity.
Then I found an interesting thing. When you add the word “up” to the word “bail” as they do in Australia it means:
- bail up, Australian. a. to confine a cow for milking, as in a bail.
- to force (one) to surrender or identify oneself or to state one's business.
- to waylay or rob (someone).
So any way you want to look at this to bail out or bail up is not a real good term. No wonder people are worried and anxious and town hall meetings are out of control. If you don’t know God, you ought to be worried. Really! If you don’t have a personal relationship with God, there’s every reason in the world to be worried. We haven’t been in this bad a shape as a nation economically in our entire lifetimes. In seventy years – since the Great Depression.
But there is an answer to your anxiety. We are looking at the Lord’s Prayer in these weekends together. We started a few weeks ago with “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.” We asked the question: Whose Your Daddy? We talked about the character of God as a Heavenly Father. We discovered that a lot of people’s problems are really not with God but with their earthly father. Then they lay what the experienced with their earthly father on God. We discovered that God is competent, consistent, caring, and compassionate as a Father.
Then couple of weeks ago we looked the phrase that Jesus taught us to prayer in the Lord’s prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We discovered that prayer does not begin with petitions for what we need or want. It does not begin with believing God for something. It begins with bending our will to His will. We discovered that when we bend our will to God’s will, we are able to release control of things we cannot control - people, circumstances and things. We learned that we can learn to accept what we cannot change and become relatively content in this life And then we learned that we can release the future and not obsessively worry about it.
Now we come to the part of the prayer in which Jesus taught to ask God for our needs. It’s only six words, Matthew 6:11 “Give us today our daily bread.”
But what does Jesus mean when He teaches us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Well in the bible “bread” is a metaphor for several things. It is first a metaphor for our physical needs. We need air, water, food to live. So bread means anything that you need to live in this world and sustain physical life. That includes money and job.
Bread obviously is the universal staple food. You can find it in every single culture. It may be one of the oldest foods known to mankind. Bread. It’s not that hard to make. You just get some flower, some water, and add heat to it. You can find bread in every kind of culture. So it’s a universal staple.
I read this week that sixty seven percent of kids don’t like crusts. So bakers are trying to figure out a way to make a crust-less bread so moms don’t have to cut the crust off.
Do you remember when there was not much more than Wonder bread? You could take an entire slice and smash it down into a little ball about the size of marble and pop it in your mouth. I read this week about one guy who discovered as kid that you if you took the crust off of Wonder bread and you smashed it down you could actually use it like silly putty and put it on the Sunday comics and pull it up and it had the image on it. Maybe that is why they called it Wonder bread.
But he Bible also says that bread is a metaphor for healthy relationships. Bread is the symbol of fellowship, intimate relationships. The bible talks about “breaking bread together.” Acts 2:42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship and the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” So it’s a part of fellowship. So we need relationships, a family, a church family. We need each other to be able to live in the way that God created us to live. So Jesus here is teaching us to pray for healthy intimate relationships.
Bread also is a metaphor for our spiritual needs. We need salvation from sin that we can have a relationship with God and spend eternity with Him. We need forgiveness. We will talk more about this in a couple of weeks. We need transformation. We need to be changed. That is why Jesus came to earth. He knew we were spiritually dead and separated from God - that we need a Savior. He became that Savior through His death on the Cross and His resurrection to new life. He said: “I am the Bread of Life.” A few days before going to the cross, Jesus met with His disciples and celebrated the Jewish Passover. In that ceremony there was always the breaking of the bread and the prayers of thanksgiving for God’s provision of life’s needs. But on this particular night Jesus changed the whole ceremony. When he broke the bread He said: This is my body (this bread) is my body which is broken for you.” He was saying that He is the bread of life that when broken on the cross provides the way of salvation that brings us into right relationship with God and restores us to new life so that we can please God and not have to be stuck in our sins.
So when Jesus teaches us to ask for bread, He is teaching us to ask for what we need physically - food water, money, job to live life in this world, what we need relationally and emotionally - a sense of belonging and connectedness and what we need spiritually - salvation.
Most of the time we are asking God for physical needs - things we think we need to have to live in this world. But how often do you ask God to give you healthy relationships, intimate relationships? Have you asked God to give you spiritual life - to save you from your sins, to make you a new person, to forgive you and change you?
When we begin to ask God for this kind of bread in these three areas of our life, Jesus instructs us by the words: “Give us this day our daily bread,” to realize three things. It can be summed up in three words: source, trust and share. Let’s look at it.
- God is the Source of Bread.
The word “give” indicates that we are asking God to give us what He has to give. He is the source of the gift of life physically, relationally and spiritually. All of life is a gift from God. He provides everything that we need in every area of our life.James says: “Every good and perfect gift is from God above.”Philippians 4:19 says: “God will supply all that you ever need from his glorious resources in Christ Jesus.”
Psalm 104 says this “The ocean teams with life of every kind both great and small. Every one of these depend on you to give them daily food. You supply it and they gather it.”Notice that last phrase: “you supply it and they gather it.” God supplies, but we have to respond to God’s supply. We need to receive it, gather it. God provides, but we must participate by doing something as well. It is not automatic.
In the Old Testament there is the story of the children of Israel being delivered from Egyptian slavery and led by God out into the desert on the way to the Promise Land. In the desert they ran out of food. Moses went to God and said: “We don’t have any food.” That is serious business when over 2 million people have no food. So God supplied manna. Do you know what manna means? It means: “what is it?” It was called this because when the people first saw it they said: “What is it?” It as the supply of food that God gave to the people each day to meet their physical needs. But the even though God supplied it like dew on the ground each morning - the people had to gather it. They had to go get it.
That is a lesson that some people have to learn. God will provide a job, but you have to work. You have to go get it. You have to gather. God does not just drop it in your lap.
God provides healthy relationships, but you have to connect and cultivate those relationships. If you run, hide, or isolate yourself then it is not God’s fault - He has provided, but you must participate.
God provides a way of salvation, but it is not automatic either. Just because Jesus died on the cross to save all of us, does not mean that all are going to be saved. God has provided, but we must accept the provision, receive the gift of salvation.
So God is the source of the bread of life physically, relationally and spiritually. We are invited to ask for Him to give us this bread. But then we must receive it, gather it, connect with it and accept it. If you choose not to you will die physically, emotionally and spiritually.
- We need to learn to Trust God for Bread
Notice that this prayer says:“Give us ‘this day our daily bread.’” Circle “this day” and “daily.” We are here asking God to give us what we need for today and for the future days - daily needs. Notice the Bible does not say, “Give us this day our monthly bread.” It doesn’t say, “Give us this day our annual bread.” It doesn’t even say like a paycheck “Give us this day our weekly bread.”
God takes care of the needs today and for the future. Our responsibility is to trust Him. The opposite of trust is to worry. When I am say “worry” we are not referring concern or some feeling of anxiety that comes with some crisis in our lives. We feel it when we lose a job, our financial security. But obsessive worry that is circular and all doom is the problem.We are not to be obsessed with worry.
Jesus says in Matthew 6:31-34, (NLT): “So don't worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. 32Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, 33and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern. 34"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today.”
Philippians 4:6&8 “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need, thanking him for all he has done… And fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about these things that are pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and worthy of praise.”
In this passage he gives us the four steps to trusting God for today.
1. Worry about nothing.
Why is worry such a big deal? Why does God say “I don’t want you worrying?” Every time you worry you’re saying, “God, I don’t believe your promises. God, I don’t really believe you love me. God, I don’t believe you’ll take care of me. God, I don’t believe you’ll meet all my needs. Father, I don’t believe that you’re going to take care of me and do all the things you promised to do.”
If my kids when they were small came to me and said, “Dad, we’re worried about the house.” You guys don’t have to worry about it. I’m going to pay for the house. “Dad, we don’t think you can do that. And Dad we’re worried about whether we’re going to have a meal tonight.” Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it taken care of. “Dad, we don’t think you’re competent to take care of that.”
When you worry you are acting like an orphan. You’re acting like you don’t have a spiritual Father in heaven who cares. Who said, “I will give you whatever you need if you’ll trust me and you’ll ask. If you’ll depend on me.”
The Bible says, “Don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.”
2. Pray about everything.
He says here’s the alternative: I don’t want you worrying. I want you praying. Worry about nothing, pray about everything.
Everything? Yep! Every single thing. God says here’s what you can do in life. You’ve got two choices. You can worry or you can pray. And every day you’re doing one or the other. Every time you worry, you’re not praying. And every time you pray you’re not worrying. So you’ve got two choices. You can either pray or panic. Or you can worry or you can worship. You’re always going to be doing one or the other in life. Talking to God about it or talking to yourself.
But prayer can change things. If you prayed as much as you worried, if you prayed about all the things you worried about you’d have a lot less to worry about. Those are your alternatives. He says worry about nothing. Instead, pray about everything.
Romans 8:32 “Since God did not spare even his own Son for us [in other words he sent Jesus to die for us] but he gave him up for all of us, won’t he also surely give us everything else?” God solved your biggest problem when he sent Jesus to die for you. Your biggest problem was getting you into heaven. Paying for all your sins. Righting all your wrongs. If God loved you enough to send Jesus to die for you, don’t you think he loves you enough to take care of all these other problems? Every other problem in your life is small potatoes after salvation. Once he’s come and saved you, everything else is insignificant by comparison. So he’s saying don’t worry, pray about everything. If God cared enough to die for you then he’s going to care enough to take care of all your needs. Pray about everything.
The third thing he says in this verse is
3. Thank God in all things.
No matter what happens in this recession, no matter what happens in 2009, no matter even if you lose your job, no matter even if you lose your house – in all things he says give thanks.
Circle the word “in.” It doesn’t say, “For all things give thanks.” It says “In all things give thanks.” You don’t have to be thankful for bad things in your life. You should never be thankful for evil. You don’t have to be thankful for cancer or a car accident or a rape or war or abuse or any of those other bad things in life. That would be sick! God doesn’t say be thankful for everything. There’s a lot of things that we hate in life, we dislike in life. But God says in everything give thanks. Why? Because I know that God’s going to take care of me. I know he’s going to meet my needs. I know he’s going to help me. I know that if I don’t worry but I trust him, I see him as my source and I trust him one day at a time, he’s going to take me through this. So I thank God in all things.
This past four weeks there are have been a lot of challenges that I have faced, just like you. I was all stressed out the other day, when I realized that I had many things to be thankful for in the midst of it. New location - answer to prayer; healthy grandson; answer to prayer in a man who lost his job got the job back. But that takes some discipline. It did not change the stressors, but it brought a new perspective to my life. We learn to thank God in all things. This leads to the fourth thing