Daily Bread

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Daniel 7:13-14
• Hymn — O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin — Psalm 51:1-4
• Assurance of Pardon — Psalm 51:17
• Confession of Faith — Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 125
• Scripture Reading — Luke 8:16-25
• Hymn — Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Hymn — Day by Day
• Sermon
• Hymn — Children of the Heavenly Father
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26

Sermon Title: Daily Bread

Scripture: Matthew 6:7-11, 31-34

I. We Are Bodily Dependent Children

• A. The fourth petition — "Give us this day our daily bread" — is intentionally ordinary, following the lofty heavenly petitions of the Lord's Prayer, resisting the error of over-realized eschatology.

  1. Over-realized eschatology seeks to pull future kingdom realities into the present, leading to asceticism or radical activism.
  2. Colossians 2:20-23 warns that self-made religion and severity to the body have no value against the flesh.

• B. Spiritual kingdom truths are realized not by denying bodily existence but by living into our creaturely dependence.

  1. The Heidelberg Catechism (Q&A 125) teaches that neither our care and work nor God's gifts can do us good without God's blessing — a direct refutation of practical deism.
  2. God is not merely the "first cause" who sets nature in motion; he must continually bless secondary means for them to function as means of blessing.

• C. We receive daily provisions as "kingdom come" children — in moderation, as a guard against idolatry and as protection of our hope in the eternal abundance of the marriage feast of the Lamb.

  1. Israel in the wilderness illustrates the danger: grumbling for a feast rather than receiving manna was an over-realized eschatology that led to idolatry.
  2. The Lord's Supper pictures this rightly — a small foretaste of the abundance we will enjoy face to face with Christ at the marriage feast.

II. We Are Time-Oriented Children

• A. From creation, man was made to live and work within time — day by day under the expanse God set in the heavens (Genesis 1:1).

• B. Ecclesiastes 3:13 teaches that eating, drinking, and taking pleasure in toil is God's gift to man.

  1. "Lean into your creaturehood. Live into your temporality. Dig into your toil." — there are gifts found in the ordinary grind of daily work.
  2. "God seeks what has been driven away" — whatever is lost or disappointing in this world of thorns and thistles will be restored, because God will restore the years the locusts have eaten.

• C. The Lord's Prayer does not promote escapism from daily life but brings meaning and purpose to it.

  1. Colossians 3:17 — "Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus."
  2. A data- and poll-obsessed culture seeks meaning in what is subject to constant change; creatures of time need the permanence of eternity as their stability.

• D. Creatureliness and time are not evil — they were present at the very beginning and were always meant to find their meaning in the eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

III. We Are Eternally Bound Children

• A. Throughout Scripture, God uses created things as metaphors pointing to himself — rock, refuge, sun and shield, vine, shepherd, bread, cornerstone, light, lamb, lion, dove, fire, wind, water.

• B. All of creation is one grand signpost pointing back to the eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  1. Even language itself — letters as symbols — points to God who is the eternal Word, the one who gives meaning to all words.
  2. Ephesians 4:6 — "There is one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."
  3. Colossians 3:11 — "Christ is all and in all."

• C. Daily bread eaten in faith becomes a cosmic event — every ordinary act of eating, drinking, working, and resting is a signpost to eternal glory.

  1. As we eat daily bread, our hearts turn to the one who is the eternal bread from heaven giving eternal life.
  2. As we enjoy spouse, children, friends, water, rest, work, and seasons of life, each points upward to the triune God who is our highest good.
  3. Whatever we do — whether we eat or drink — do it to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), knowing nothing is wasted in the permanent and eternal decrees of God.