Give us this day
Lately, in my sermon listening, the topic of the Lord’s prayer has been a consistent topic of discussion or mention. Specifically, when it says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11). Again, today I heard it and decided this would be a great mediation verse. And God spoke. So here we go.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Starting off, I think most of us would interpret this verse as in that God shall supply all of our needs. I think we’d be biblically sound in that assessment due to its context and according to scripture. (Philippians 4:19). Let’s go a little bit deeper though. When I really studied this verse, I was keenly aware of the symbolic nature of the term “bread.” In Exodus 25:30 it talks about the construction of the Tabernacle and God’s instruction for everything to be placed in it. This Tabernacle was going to be the dwelling place for God. In verse 30, it says, “And you shall set the showbread on the table before Me always.” John 6:35, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. My take on this particular portion of the Lord’s prayer is that the daily bread we should be striving towards each day is Jesus. Our physical needs of food and water is the physical manifestation of our need of a savior, Christ Jesus, who is the bread of life and whose blood by which we have been saved. Furthermore, this lets me know that life cannot be done apart from our Jesus. We must walk into each day as Him. We must walk like Jesus. We must talk like Jesus. We must heal, we must deliver, we must prophesy, we must call forth those things which are not as though they were (faith). Aside from the fact that Jesus is God, I’m on the thought process that Jesus is God because he was drawn out from God. For example, Woman cannot exist apart from man. Both were shaped from their original but exist and function in different ways. Jesus’s mission was to redeem us from the power of death. So, Jesus had to walk in a power greater than death to destroy it. The power behind Jesus’s ministry was the Holy Spirit. In the interest of mankind Jesus had to surrender part of His divinity so this could be said of Him. “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus after being baptized. The Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to complete his Father’s will by being the foundation for the new covenantal relationship between God and man when He, the spotless Lamb gave His life for all mankind. Thus, our present assignment as the body of Christ is to preach the Good News of what Jesus did that day.
During the Last Supper, Jesus is surrounded by His disciples. The scriptures state that, “Jesus took bread, blessed, and broke it, and said, Take, eat; this is My body.” He then gave everyone a cup and said, “Drink,…for this is My blood of the new covenant.” (Matthew 26:26). In John 16:7, Jesus is telling His disciples that He must go so that He may send them the “Helper,” whose name is the Holy Spirit. This reminds of me when Jesus and the disciples had to feed the five thousand. After the disciples realized they were unable to meet the sustenance of the crowd, Jesus told them to bring the five loaves and two fish. From there, Jesus looked up to “heaven, blessed, and broke” the loaves to give to the disciples to feed the five thousand and all ate and were full. Jesus foreshadowed His death through the breaking of the bread that day. But of also the infilling of the Holy Spirit when people ate and were full.
The ultimate purpose of the Holy Spirit is to always point to Jesus.
“And you shall set the showbread on the table before Me always.” (John 6:35.) Stay tuned for part 2…
