GOD’S ABUNDANT PHYSICAL PROVISIONS
MATTHEW 6:11
In his magisterial work The Institutes of the Christian Religion, the sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin remarked that we can never truly know ourselves without first coming to know the character of God. As Calvin famously stated, “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”1 God is our starting point in every theological and spiritual endeavor. God’s character and glory are our first frame of reference.
Up to this point, the Lord’s Prayer has revealed a great deal about the character of God. We have seen that for those who are in Christ, God is a caring Father. Jesus emphasized God’s transcendence and omnipotence by observing that he is “in heaven.” He established the worth of God and the value of his glory by teaching that God’s name should be hallowed. Finally, Jesus emphasizes that God is king—the sovereign Lord who will bring his kingdom to every corner of the earth.
Indeed, the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer paint an awesome portrait of God. In light of these truths, Jesus’ subsequent turn to consider our own needs—“Give us this day our daily bread”—serves as a clear and unmistakable reminder that we are merely creatures; God is the creator. We are needy; God is the provider.
God has designed humans to be dependent. From the moment of birth, we rely on the kindness of others to meet our needs. We need our parents to feed us, dress us, and even train us to sleep. Even as we grow older, we remain tremendously needy. We depend on others for relationships. We need communities in which to live and work. We depend on the government for safety and security. In other words, there is no such thing as the “self-made man.” We have no sufficiency in and of ourselves, and we delude ourselves by believing we can be truly independent of others. Luther once reminisced that our physical needs remind us that we are but creatures composed of dirt. Our lives are frail, fragile, and wholly dependent on the goodness of God.
The petition “give us this day our daily bread” reminds us of our dependence on God for even the most fundamental needs of life. The contrast with the depiction of God given earlier in the prayer is striking. He is glorious, hallowed, in heaven, and omnipotent. We, on the other hand, are incapable of even getting basic sustenance without his help. In these words, then, Jesus teaches us to exalt God while humbling ourselves. The radical God-centeredness of the prayer continues. Man’s pride has no place before the throne of God.
PHYSICAL NEEDS IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE
We are dependent on God. Even prior to the fall, humans needed God to provide for them. Adam needed God to provide Eve to fulfill his need for a relationship. Adam and Eve could tend the garden, but only God could make it grow. Sin did not create our dependence; we are dependent simply because we are creatures.
Even though Adam and Eve were dependent before the fall, their only experience was one of surplus and abundance. They never knew a day of scarcity. After the fall, however, their experience was quite different, as is ours today. Our default experience is no longer abundance but scarcity. Food must be produced by the sweat of our brow, and its existence is never certain. Thus, after the fall we become even more dependent on God for our daily sustenance. We are no longer merely creatures in need of provision; we are sinners in need of the Creator’s mercy.
In Christ we come to understand the character of God, and we can be confident that God will provide for us. As Jesus teaches us in this very prayer, God is our heavenly “Father.” As a Father, he cares about our physical needs. Jesus reiterated this point in Matthew 7:9–11:
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
THE DIGNITY OF THE BODY AND OF PHYSICAL NEEDS
Jesus’ focus up to this point in the Lord’s Prayer has been on the greatness and grandeur of God, yet with the words “give us this day our daily bread,” he moves from the clouds of heaven to the trials and troubles of our own dusty streets and dirty kitchens. He profoundly rejects any view that devalues the body or sees physical needs as somehow unspiritual or even sinful. Paul referred to people with such views as those “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim. 4:3).
We need not be surprised by the earthiness of Jesus’ prayer here. The Father cares not only for great things, such as advancing his kingdom in the world, but also for small things, such as feeding his children. Further, Jesus shows us that all of life must be lived before the face of God. Our lives are not divided between spiritual activities and earthly activities. Rather, every activity must be lived for the glory of God. Even our appetites are to be brought before the throne of grace. J. I. Packer expressed this point quite beautifully:
The Bible opposes all long-faced asceticism by saying that if you enjoy health, good appetite, physical agility, and marriage in the sense that you have been given them, you should enjoy them in the further sense of delighting in them. Such delight is (not the whole, but) part of our duty and our service of God, for without it we are being simply ungrateful for good gifts. As Screwtape truly said (with disgust), “He’s a hedonist at heart”: God values pleasure, and it is his pleasure to give pleasure. Well did some rabbis teach that at the judgment God will hold against us every pleasure that he offered us and we neglected. Do we yet know how to enjoy ourselves—yes, physically too—to the glory of God?2
Regrettably, we often do not recognize just how dignified our physical needs are until we witness true deprivation and scarcity. German theologian Helmut Thielicke once described the horrors of World War II and explained that one of the most terrible realities of the war was widespread deprivation and starvation. He reminded his readers that we should never undervalue physical needs, observing that a hyper-spiritual theology that ignores physical needs has never had to come face-to-face with the horrors of deprivation. Thielicke is right. Those who believe providing for or praying for physical needs is somehow undignified have never witnessed refugees fleeing from a war zone with nothing more than the clothes on their back.3
Jesus dignifies our physical needs by teaching us to petition God on matters as seemingly insignificant as the food on our plate. You may have heard the following quote, often attributed to Samuel Johnson, “He who would deny the stomach will soon be thinking of nothing but the stomach.” As we all know, the more we try to deny the necessity of food, the more urgent the need becomes.
God created us as embodied creatures with physical needs such as food, water, and shelter. Furthermore, he even gave his benediction over the physical world when he called everything that he had made good.
Food, rightly received, functions as a constant reminder of the greatness of God and our need for his goodness and provision. Unlike us, God will never grow hungry or need sustenance. Humans on the other hand are in need of constant provision. God made us this way so that we would rely on his providence and kindness, regularly remembering that we are not master of our own fate—only he is. As the old hymn reminds us, “I need thee every hour.” Our hunger serves as a reminder of that truth several times a day.
Jesus highlights our regular dependence on God by teaching us to pray for our “daily” bread. This word shows us that we ought not pray for opulence and riches, only for the needs of the day. Further, this word teaches us to pray for our needs every day, seeking God’s provision in our life hour by hour. In sum, the word daily here teaches us to train our hearts to depend consistently on God, rather than just in times of need.
AN OLD TESTAMENT ILLUSTRATION
The account of Israel wandering in the wilderness provides a helpful illustration of just how God cares for the daily needs of his people. In Exodus 16:4–7, the Lord told Moses that he would provide bread from heaven with the requirement that they gather only enough to meet their needs for that day, except, of course, the double portion gathered on Saturday to prevent work on the Sabbath. The Lord intended for the Israelites to gather a day’s portion to “test them” (Ex. 16:4). Even in the wilderness we see the Lord teaching his people to depend on him for daily provision for the most basic needs and, of course, to not rely on themselves.
Yet, even as the Israelites grumbled against God’s provision of bread, he continued to graciously provide for them. Exodus 16:11–18 states that in the evening, quail “covered the camp,” and in the morning the people would be filled with bread. Verses 17–18 indicate that God’s provision was perfect for each person who had gathered bread. As verse 18 says, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.”
These passages point to God’s loving, gracious provision for his people—even for a people characterized by sin and grumbling. The final words attest to the character of God’s provision: “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.” In other words, God’s provision for each family was according to its need. God’s provision was perfectly sufficient in each and every case.
The same is true for God’s new covenant people today. We may never experience great riches, but we can be confident that God will provide for us—though sometimes his perception of what we most need may be different from our own. As Israel stood at the edge of Canaan after forty years of wandering, Moses was able to look at the congregation and say, “Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years” (Deut. 8:4). Not only did God’s provision meet the needs of the day, he met the needs of every day of the journey. Like the Israelites, when we finally enter into the heavenly Canaan we will be able to look back over the course of our lives and affirm these same truths. At times God may not provide for us in the way that we think is best. But we will always find that he provides for us according to his infinite love and care.
BREAD OF EARTH, BREAD FROM HEAVEN: ECHOES OF ETERNITY IN JESUS’ PETITION FOR BREAD
Before leaving this request we should note that, in a tangential way, this request also reminds us of our daily need for the Lord Jesus. Moses reminded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8:3 that the reason God let the Israelites go hungry for a time before providing them with manna was so that they might learn that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” This passage teaches us that God designed physical needs to point to our deeper spiritual needs. Our need for daily physical sustenance is a faint echo of our daily need of spiritual sustenance and satisfaction from God. This was true for ancient Israel and is true for Christians today. The only way that we will taste the goodness of God’s provision is by living according to what comes from the mouth of God.
This is why Jesus regularly referred to himself as the “bread of life,” the true manna sent from heaven (John 6:35). He is God’s ultimate provision for our spiritual lives. Each day, as we pray for our daily bread, we should be reminded of our daily need for Christ to forgive our sins and empower us for obedience. Each time we pray for daily bread, we should recognize our deeper need for the bread of life—the only one who can truly satisfy.