The Model Prayer (AKA “The Lord’s Prayer”) – Part 3.

In this third part of this series we take time to look at praying for our “daily bread”! Does this mean that the Lord has promised to provide only our bread, much like He provided for the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years with manna from heaven? Well the fact that He also provided quail, and the Psalmist referred to this provision as ‘the bread of heaven ‘ (Ps. 105:40), would suggest that ‘bread’ is just another way of saying ‘food’.

In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ, when responding to the devil’s temptation to turn stones into bread, quoted from Deut.8:3 (See Matt.4:1-4). We may wonder why Jesus would refer to this passage (Deut.8:1-5). There may be at least three reasons:

1. He knew He was being tested to see what was in His heart and whether or not He would obey the LORD’s commands.
2. That man only lives at God’s command, as do all living things (See Heb.1:3; Acts 17:26-28; and Ps.104:24-30). Man is “staying alive” because of God’s Word!
3. That Jesus was saying that we need spiritual food to sustain the inner man.

I believe all these are true, but I am focusing mostly on the last reason. Jesus had food that His own disciples did not know about (John 4:32), and He wasn’t referring to a secret stash of food hidden in His backpack. He referred to the food of doing His Father’s will (vv.34ff).

Later on in John’s Gospel, Jesus referred to Himself as ‘The Bread of Life’ that had come down from heaven, given by The Father (John 6:26-27,32-33, 35, 41-42, 48, 50-51, 58), and yet also said that His Words were Spirit and they are Life (John 6:63).

We who have been BORN AGAIN / REGENERATED start off our New Life in Christ ‘desiring the pure milk of the word that we may grow thereby’ having tasted that the Lord is gracious (See 1 Pet.2:2-3), and soon should move from only milk to needing solid food, as described in Heb.5:12-14).

The natural man, or the one who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit, because he has never been BORN AGAIN / REGENERATED, has no interest in spiritual matters and DOES NOT receive the things of the Spirit of God, NOR CAN he know them, because he lacks spiritual discernment (1 Cor.2:13-14).

Those of us who have been BORN AGAIN, by the work of the Holy Spirit (See John 3:3, 5, 7; Tit.3:4-6), and the Word of the Gospel (1 Pet. 1:22-25), love the Holy Scriptures because they not only make us wise unto salvation, but are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be COMPLETE, THOROUGHLY EQUIPPED FOR EVERY GOOD WORK‘ (2 Tim.3:14-17).

Let us therefore pray that the Lord would open our ‘eyes’, ‘the Scriptures’, and ‘our understanding’ (Lk. 24:31, 32, 45) to see Christ better, the Scriptures better, and we would have better understanding in all these things and therefore grow spiritually!

Michael Robson