I wonder if anyone has ever really studied what is revealed about ourselves when we pray. How we pray, and about what we pray, probably reveal our souls and expose our true nature. This might be better than studying almost any other single thing in our lives. How selfish are you? That comes out quite quickly out of some people when they pray. How much pride resides in your heart? How much hatred? I read a news blurb in a Christian magazine this week about the legality of imprecatory prayers. Is it legal – or moral – to pray for judgment of those who hate or hurt us? How much of our prayers are tainted by hate? Our prayers state whether we recognize and realize our dependence upon the Lord. What percentage of your prayers are about God and His will. Watching your giving will not reveal as much about your heart as listening to your prayers. Watching how you work or how you treat your family, or how you relax may not reveal as much about your true nature as studying how you pray. These should be humbling thoughts.
In the Lord’s model prayer, things are suggested which teach us about ourselves.
For example, these words remind us of the UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” It wasn’t until I began studying this the other day, that I realized how much trouble the word “daily” was. The experts really struggle over the word, but fortunately we are not experts. I am told it is a compound word which is never again found in the Greek Bible – or in classical literature. Some say that the word “daily” refers to tomorrow, but that contradicts what the Saviour tells us later in this chapter – “Take no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take through for the things of itself.” In Luke 11, one of Christ’s newer disciples came to Him, asking for instructions on prayer. The Lord replied in a fashion very similar – but just a bit differently – to what He says here. “When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in Heaven, Hollowed be Thy Name….. “Give us day by day our daily bread.” For some reason or other, unlike the smart people, I don’t have a problem with the word “daily.”
I believe that the word “bread” isn’t talking about wheat, white or sour dough. In this case it is a reference to everything that we need to keep us alive – water, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, a bit of fat and all the rest. I guess that I’m too simple-minded to get caught up in the mental exercises of the experts. This is nothing more than “Lord, please give us today’s necessities.” Was this a part of your personal prayer meeting this morning?
What is the lesson contained in this thought? Isn’t the Lord is telling us to ask God for our immediate need, because we are dependent upon Him? This morning’s cereal was ultimately a gift from God. I think that it was John Gill who said, that bread is “ours by gift, even if it was possessed by labour.” How many places are there in this world where drought has robbed the soil of daily bread. That we have rain and the American Southwest does not, is a gift from God. How many times have farmers brought their seed to the point of ripening, but then a storm has washed away that growing season’s labor? And how many people don’t have the jobs and finances in order to buy the necessities of life? Lord, “Give us day by day our daily bread.”
The pronoun “our” doesn’t even begin to hint that these necessities are ours by right. It is just a declaration that we trust that God has laid aside some bread with our name on it. Perhaps it is also a declaration that we see that God has some bread laid aside for someone else. We aren’t interested in eating that man’s bread or his cake, but we wouldn’t mind having that which God has decreed for us. “Lord, we are aware that we don’t deserve even a crust of bread, but we ask that you pass, what you have set aside for us.”
Ultimately, this request returns to the idea that our life is not our own. We don’t have the means of maintaining our health, our strength, or our lives. I would assume that many of us would love to have the strength and vitality that we had twenty years ago. But no matter how much we exercise, and how well we digest the best bread that God gives us, we are not what we once were. Verse 11 is a declaration that we are entirely dependent upon Jehovah for every day of our lives. “Give us this day our daily bread.”
And remember that since this is a prayer, perhaps implied here is the fact that we deserve absolutely nothing from the Lord.
Another lesson which we draw from this ought to be that WORRY IS UNNECESSARY.
This might be a stretch, although I’m not so sure, especially in the light of other scriptures. But, the Lord doesn’t seem to encourage our praying for things away off in the future. It’s not that a young lady shouldn’t pray for a godly husband several years down the road. And there is nothing wrong with asking the Lord for continued good health, if at the same time we praise him for the health that He has give us. There is nothing wrong with making plans and even preparations for certain inevitable things. But what about those things which are not inevitable? “Lord, please, please, please don’t let me get cancer twenty years from now.” This sort of prayer doesn’t make sense, unless there is some special marker which precludes cancer. There is nothing wrong with praying for a safe trip, but is it scriptural or godly to repeat that prayer every couple of miles?
“Lord, I have my daily bread for today, but please don’t let me starve to death next year.” Such prayers do not glorify the Lord. “Give us this day our daily bread.” How much wiggle room is there in that request for doubt that the Lord will grant us that daily bread? Should we worry about whether or not the Lord will give us our necessary bread next month? I’m not sure that we should pray that the Lord keep us safe from the tornado, until we see a tornado bearing down on us. On the other hand, thankfulness that we don’t live in tornado alley, is always a perfectly acceptable.
Another obvious lesson is that WE ARE DEBTORS.
I grew up in the Anglican (Episcopalian) denomination which uses the “Common Book of Prayer” more than it does the Bible. From the Anglican version of the Lord’s Prayer, I learned verse 12 to read – “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Even though verses 14 & 15 give credence to those thoughts, that is not what the Lord tells us verse 12. The word “debt” in Greek means just what it usually does in English – it is a practical and legal obligation. The word is not a synonym for “sin” even though a great deal of debt is sinful. We may be indebted to someone, because we have failed to keep a covenant which we have made. We borrowed $10.00, and we have failed to return that $10.00 at the proscribed time. And perhaps privileges which we have received somehow create debts. Paul said, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.” Or we are indebted to someone through some other means – we have accidentally damaged his property. Perhaps we have even stolen something from him, and created a sort of criminal debt. There may be other ways that we incur debts with each other. Are children indebted to their parents? Are employees indebted to their employers? What if we deliberately refuse to repay our debts?
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Doesn’t this imply that life is a web of inter-related relationships? I am a debtor to some people, including my neighbor, and he is a debtor to others and so on, and so on. Yes, I was indebted to my parents, but since they have passed away, has my debt disappeared? What about those people who taught me this and that – doesn’t my possession of that knowledge make me a debtor to them, or perhaps to others who need what I know? I have been given gracious gifts by various people around me, don’t those gifts make me a debtor? For example, there have been occasions when people were graciously hospitable to me. I may never have the opportunity to be a blessing to those same people, returning the favor. But doesn’t that debt mean that I should be hospitable toward others? I know that there many not be legal precedent to take a man to court for such things, but is there such a thing as a moral debt?
Quite obviously, this prayer is in regard to debts that we have with Jehovah. That raises an interesting question – is it possible to actually repay God for anything that we owe Him? He gives us our daily bread. Is it even remotely possible to return that gift? Can we meet a need in God? He gave us our physical lives, so what does that mean in regards to the debt that we have? Then we come to our spiritual lives, and the immeasurable, incalculable debt that generated. How many divine miracles have there been in your life so far? We have no way of knowing. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
When it comes to the Lord, there is not really any way possible to be out of debt. So ultimately, to what does this plea dissolve? Is it, “God be merciful to me a debtor, and I will be merciful to those who owe so much to me.” Try as we might to serve, glorify, and repay God for His grace towards us, it will never match what we have been given. Admit your inability, your poverty and constant need. It is not a shameful thing, to do all that you can to please the Lord and then ultimately to say once again, “God forgive me for my ongoing debts.”
Verse 13 reminds us of our SPIRITUAL WEAKNESSES.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This statement takes us into an area of Biblical controversy. In what ways does God lead us into temptation? Let me quote A. T. Robertson – “Bring” or “lead” bothers many people. It seems to present God as an active agent in subjecting us to temptation, a thing specifically denied in James 1:13. The word here translated “temptation” means originally “trial” or “test” as in James 1:2 God does test or sift us, though he does not tempt us to evil. No one understood temptation so well as Jesus – for the devil tempted him by every avenue of approach to all kinds of sin, but without success. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus will say to Peter, James, and John: “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” That is the idea here. Here we have a “Permissive imperative” as grammarians term it.” In other words, God may permit our temptation, either by sin or through some other test, but Jehovah will never directly entice us to sin.
Jamison, Fassett and Brown put it this way – “We incline to take (this) as a prayer against being drawn or sucked, of our own will, into temptation, to which the word here used seems to lend some countenance – “Introduce us not.” This view, while it does not put into our mouths a prayer against being tempted – which is more than the divine procedure would seem to warrant – does not, on the other hand, change the sense of the petition into one for support under temptation, which the words will hardly bear; but it gives us a subject for prayer, in regard to temptation, most definite, and of all others most needful. It was precisely this which Peter needed to ask, but did not ask, when – of his own accord, and in spite of difficulties – he pressed for entrance into the palace hall of the high priest, and where, once sucked into the scene and atmosphere of temptation, he fell so foully. And if so, does it not seem pretty clear that this was exactly what our Lord meant His disciples to pray against when He said in the garden – “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation”? Peter should have prayed, “Lord, lead me not into temptation” before he entered the enemy’s compound. Peter’s temptation was permitted by God, but the Lord did not incite the sin.
Here is John Gill’s commentary on this verse – “We are not here taught to pray against temptations at all, or in any sense, for they are sometimes needful and useful; but that they may not have the power over us, and destroy us. There are various sorts of temptations. There are the temptations of God; who may be said to tempt, not by infusing anything that is sinful, or by soliciting to it; but by enjoining things hard and disagreeable to nature, as in the case of Abraham; by afflicting, either in body or estate, of which Job is an instance; by permitting and letting loose the reins to Satan, and a man’s own corruptions; by withdrawing his presence, and withholding the communications of his grace; and sometimes by suffering false prophets to arise among his people…. There are also the temptations of Satan; which lie in soliciting to evil, suggesting hard and blasphemous thoughts of God, and filling with doubts and fears; which are cunningly formed by him, and are very afflictive. There are moreover the temptations of the world, which arise from poverty and riches, from the men of the world, the lusts of it, and from both its frowns and flatteries: add to all this, that there are temptations arising from a man’s own heart. Now, in this petition, the children of God pray, that they may be kept from every occasion and object of sinning; from those sins they are most inclined to; that God would not leave them to Satan, and their own corrupt hearts; nor suffer them to sink under the weight of temptations of any sort; but that, in the issue, they might have a way to escape, and be victorious over all. “
Would it have been a sinful thing for Job to have arisen from his bed on those days of disaster in his life and begged God, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”? The temptation to sin became apparent. While it was God’s will to lead him into those trials, in the sense that Jehovah gave Satan permission, God answered Job’s request by enabling him to endure those temptations without great sin. Was it Job’s strength or moral character which gave him such self control? No, it was entirely of God. And this is one of the lessons of Jesus’ model prayer – we are so weak. Without the Lord’s blessings we would all be more like Peter than Job.
“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”