Luke 11:3. "3 Ways in Which God Provides Us With Daily Bread."

In this episode on Luke 3, Tim delves into the ways God provides for our daily needs, drawing on biblical teachings from both the Old and New Testaments. In Proverbs 30:8-9, Agur prays for neither riches nor poverty but only his daily bread, illustrating a balanced reliance on God. This sentiment is mirrored in the Lord's Prayer, where Jesus teaches his followers to ask for their daily bread, emphasizing dependence on God's provision. The contrast between Herod's lavish, self-indulgent feast and Jesus' miraculous feeding of the five thousand further underscores the idea that true sustenance and abundance come from divine, not earthly, sources.

He provides through creation itself, as seen in the natural growth of food and the sustenance offered by the earth. Parents feed their children, employers pay wages, and governments sometimes step in to ensure people’s needs are met. These layers of provision all trace back to God’s overarching care. Even our ability to work and earn a living is viewed as a gift from God, intended not just for personal gain but also to enable us to help those who are less fortunate, fostering a sense of communal responsibility.

Tim concludes by highlighting the importance of sharing and mutual support within the Christian community. Just as the food for the feeding of the five thousand came from one boy’s offering and was distributed among many, believers are encouraged to share their resources with those in need. This act of sharing reflects God’s provision through community and emphasizes that both those who have plenty and those who have little depend on God’s grace.

This Sunday sermon, based on Luke 11 verses 3, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on July 28, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)             

Transcript

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, who is able to bless you abundantly. 

Amen.

In the Old Testament, there’s an excellent book we call Proverbs. It’s full of reflection on the way the world is and how therefore a Christian should live in the world as one who is not of the world. It’s a book of wisdom. Young people in particular, men or women, would always profit from committing the wisdom of Proverbs to memory.

In chapter thirty of Proverbs, there’s a collection of sayings from a wise man named Agur. One of his sayings deals with our theme today, that of God providing for our material needs. Agur says this in Proverbs thirty verses eight and nine. “LORD, give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” In other words, Agur says, “God, give me only what I need each day. Don’t give me overmuch, or I will forget that I rely on you. But don’t give me too little, so that I’m not tempted to dishonor your name by stealing. Give me what I need for daily life, Lord.”

Right before the feeding of the five thousand, we’re told of an event that shows Agur’s wisdom in his first proposition. In Mark six, starting at verse fourteen, we hear that King Herod, who had arrested John the Baptist some time before, was throwing a lavish birthday party for himself. The tables were groaning under the weight of the food, the wine was flowing freely, the entertainment was of the sort which rich and powerful men often indulge in. In the course of these festivities, a dancing girl requests that Herod give her John’s head on a plate. And so one of God’s prophets is beheaded, and his head brought out for everyone to see. All the riches of this life are available to these partiers, but that which would grant them the riches of eternal life, the Word of God, this they silence.

In contrast, we have the event we read about today, the feeding of the five thousand. Herod is able to throw an extravagant party for his guests, yes indeed! But at most, we should suppose around a hundred people were invited as guests, plus servants. Christ feeds a crowd fifty times larger, without the weeks or months of planning that Herod’s debauchery required. He shows himself to be superior to Herod; he shows that he is superior also to the prophets who came before him, such as Elisha, whom we read about in our first reading. Indeed, later on, when Jesus remarks on this miracle with his disciples, he gives himself the credit for providing it. This would make him a blasphemer of the highest order, save that he is the Son of God, the Word who from eternity was with God and is God. 

When Jesus taught his followers to pray, with the model prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer, he taught them to bring the same request to God which Agur spoke in Proverbs thirty. “Give us each day our daily bread.” Don’t give us too much, Lord, so that we are not tempted to live like Herod. But answer our needs, Lord, that we may never dishonor you.

The feeding of the five thousand shows that our Savior has the power to do exactly that. He can, with a young boy’s lunch, provide five thousand men with dinner and have leftovers to boot. He certainly can give us what we need for each day, and indeed he promises to do so. God Provides Us With Daily Bread in Three Ways. He uses those who are over us; he empowers us ourselves; and he uses those who are around us.

Over every person, of course, is God. God the Creator and Sustainer of all life rules over all things. Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Every person benefits from God’s simple love for his creation. He causes wheat and corn to grow in the fields, he makes the fish in the sea and the animals on the earth, all of which he provides to us for our sustenance.

Jesus’ miracle here, as he feeds the five thousand, emphasizes for us that God intends to feed us through the things he has made. If God can miraculously multiply the loaves and fish to feed five thousand, he could go one step further and simply fill everyone’s bellies miraculously. No food passing over their lips, no chewing and swallowing; simple satiation, disconnected from any visible mechanism. God created the world from nothing, after all; he can certainly make a person full from nothing!

But God wants us to understand, every time he feeds his people, that we are a part of the world he made. Humans are not separate from the created world. We are a part of it. When God fed the Israelites with manna in the wilderness, that was about as close as he ever got to totally working outside the world that exists. The manna arrived in the morning, and no one could explain how. But still, they had to eat it - physically eat it, mash it with their teeth and digest it. Every feeding miracle in the Bible reminds us that we are a part of God’s creation, not something separate from it.

God wants us to remember that, because it also reminds us that he is above us. He creates the food which we eat. It’s given to us from above. But it comes to us “from above” in other ways also. When we are born, God provides us with parents who feed us. If you would put a newborn baby in the lushest natural garden, a place where clean water flows past bushes and vines overflowing with fruit and vegetables, that baby would die. It needs parents who will give it the food which they have received from God.

In other ways, even as we grow older, we still receive our daily bread from above. Again, of course, everything comes from God. Even if you are a hunter-gatherer living in the jungle, you receive your daily bread from God above. But if you are employed, your daily bread comes from above you, given by God through your employer. Throughout history, governments have taken an interest in ensuring that their populations have food during times of scarcity, or to alleviate the financial strain that can face families with young children. Behind all such things is God’s hand, ensuring that his children have what we need for daily life.

The second way in which God provides our daily bread is through ourselves. If we have the ability to work and be gainfully employed, God uses that as a means of delivering our daily bread to us. This still occurs under his provision. We have very little control over the circumstances of our lives. You could imagine someone born three hundred years ago with the physical gifts to play in the NBA. He could earn millions through his labor today. Instead, he spends his working days as a farmhand who’s regularly called on to reach the top shelf.

Imagine another person, someone with serious physical disabilities, who today could find employment in a white-collar field. In Jesus’ time, they would have lived as a beggar. 

Yet a third person, we can imagine, has all the gifts needed at the right time to be gainfully employed. Yet they are diagnosed with a severe illness which keeps them from leaving home, and which exhausts them to the point that they can’t concentrate to work remotely. 

All these hypotheticals simply to make us remember, we don’t have the control over our lives that we think we do. At any moment, any one of us who’s currently able to earn a living could enter that third category, could lose our ability to work and provide for ourselves. Even the ability to earn our daily bread through our work is still a gift from God above. 

But if we are able to exercise that gift - if we are able to work for our daily bread - we should do so. In both of his letters to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul says as much. First Thessalonians chapter four: “We urge you, brothers and sisters, to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” Likewise in Second Thessalonians: “We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.”

If God gives us the ability to work for our daily bread, God would have us use that ability. There are two reasons for this. One - it should teach us to rely on God. No matter what your gifts are, no matter what your occupation is, work of any type shows us, regularly, that we are not truly self-sufficient. We always need to learn. We notice, if we’re paying attention, that our success in the workplace is not always tied to our effort. Often the only thing we can control is our own actions. We learn that we must leave the rest up to God.

The second reason for which God would have us work to earn our daily bread is that we might be able to share with others. This is Paul’s point in our second reading today: “God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion.” 

God gives us the ability to work not only so that we might provide for ourselves, but so that we might care for others. If the only place you direct the gains from your work is your pocket - or your own stomach - you have no moral high ground over the person who doesn’t work at all. Both are a fundamentally selfish course of action. What Paul says in our second reading is also taught in the letter of James: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”

God does not tell his people that the one who is able to work should work so that they can make sure their own physical needs are met, while everyone who is unable can count on divine provision. No! Everyone in the family of God relies on the divine provision of our Father above. The person who works and the person who cannot work both rely on God to provide. This leads us into the last way in which God provides us with daily bread: He provides it through those around us.

What we heard in our second reading comes after Paul has already made a request from the Corinthians. He wants them to take a special offering that will be used to relieve other Christians who are undergoing difficulty. Here is how he describes his intent with this offering, chapter eight verse thirteen: “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need.” 

When God calls on Christians to use the abilities he has given them to work for their daily bread, he wants us to understand: This is how he will provide for those who cannot work for their daily bread. 

All of these lessons are taught through Christ’s miracle as well. The food which is used for the miracle comes from one who has and is shared with those who have not. God provides our daily bread through those around us. Yet Christ very pointedly raises the loaves and fish to heaven and gives thanks to God above for them. Then they are distributed by the apostles, who are charged with directing the people. Both of these points teach us that God provides for our daily bread from those above us. And finally, in the end, the apostles, who have done the work of coordinating and distributing among the crowd, each collect a full basket of food for themselves. God provides daily bread through the work they have done.

God promises that we will have what we need for each day. He uses a variety of means to deliver it to us. At times, laziness leads us to reject his provision, when he calls on us to work for our bread. At other times, pride leaves us with empty stomachs, because we don’t want to rely on others. And in every moment, lovelessness threatens to divide those who have and those who have not. May the Spirit of Christ banish all such sinful attitudes from his church, and may he instead bring us together in love and thanksgiving in every season of life. God grant it for Jesus’ sake; Amen.