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[Music] [Singing] Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

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On earth as it is in heaven. [Singing] "Of Days, Doe, and Dependence." A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music]

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Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to Matthew, the sixth chapter, beginning at the verse numbered five. "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

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But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word.

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Amen. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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The disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray." And Jesus answered, "After this manner, therefore, pray ye, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread." That sentence rather breaks the rhythm of things, doesn't it? Talking about the fatherhood of God. Talking about the majesty of the eternal.

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Talking about the significance of the kingdom. Talking about what God's will is and how we can experience the sovereignty of his leadership in our lives. Talking about high and noble and lofty things. And then suddenly inserted into the very midst of the prayer, this phrase,

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"Lord, be with us in the procurement of our groceries." That's literally what it says. And some people have not been able to tolerate the mundane nature of such a petition. And so they've tried to spiritualize it.

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St. Augustine, for example, said that the bread referred to is the bread of Holy Communion. And so what we're really praying is, "Lord, give to us in each day the sacrament of thy grace." And that's a very beautiful thought, but it's far removed from the sense of this sentence. Another has suggested that the bread referred to is the bread of life, which is the word of God.

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They think of bread in the sense that we think of it when we sing the hymn, "Break thou the bread of life, O Lord, to me as thou didst break the loaves beside the sea." And they translate the verse then in this wise, "Lord, give to us in each day the opportunity to study thy words."

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And that's a very beautiful and a necessary thought. But it is not true to the sense of this sentence either. And then there are those who say that the bread described in this prayer is actually the Lord himself. Even as we symbolize him in communion with the broken loaf,

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although the bread here speaks of Jesus, the bread of life, and what we are praying is, "Lord, be with us. Make thy presence known unto us in each and every day of our lives." And that certainly is a beautiful thought, and one which very much needs thinking in our days. For I'm convinced that there are many Christians who bear all kinds of unnecessary burdens

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in the course of their lives because they are not conscious, because they do not rest upon the presence of Jesus Christ. David Redding tells a wonderful story about a little black boy in northern Georgia who had it in his mind to be a doctor, but who recognized that the poverty of his situation

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would make such a desire almost impossible. And one night he fell upon the red Georgia clay in prayer, and he said, "God, if you'll enable me to be a doctor, I'll never say no to you again in all of my life." And God did.

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Through a series of circumstances, some miraculous and some near miraculous, this young man was enabled to procure the necessary education, became a physician, and went back to the same area in which he had lived to minister. And one night, not too many years after he had returned,

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about two o'clock in the morning it actually was, the telephone rang, and he was called to a home about two miles distant from his residence. Now he did not want to go. It's very uncommon, but it had snowed that night in northern Georgia,

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and the roads were well nigh impassable. He would have to go on foot and through a dark and rather dangerous and treacherous wood. And so he said he would not come, that he would come in the morning. And then he went to bed.

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And after he got to bed, he remembered the promise he'd made to God. So he got out of bed and put his clothes on, and started the two-mile walk through the woods. And about halfway through the woods, suddenly a man stepped out from behind a tree and said, "What time is it?" And he thought, "Uh-oh."

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He reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch, not knowing what was going to happen next, and he looked up to tell the time. The man was not there. He continued to the place where he'd been called and ministered to the people, and then returned by the self-same path.

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And about halfway through the woods, a man suddenly stepped out from behind the tree, the same man, and said, "Do you have a match?" And he thought, "I got away once, but I won't get away this time." And he reached into his pocket and he got the match, and as he lifted it,

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the man was nowhere to be seen. And so he returned home. And the next morning he read in the paper that several people in the neighborhood of that woods that night had been robbed and assaulted.

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And the one who had robbed them and assaulted them had been captured and was in jail. And he wondered if it was the same man. And so he went to the jail and confronted the man, and it was the same man that had stopped him twice. And he said, "Two times I was at your mercy.

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Two times you stopped me there in the darkness of the woods. Others you robbed and assaulted. Why didn't you rob and assault me?" And the man looked at him. "Why, for the very obvious reason that both times when you came through the woods,

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there was somebody else with you." You see, he'd made a promise to God to never say no. And God had made a promise to him that "where you are, I will be." And although he was not conscious of the presence of his Lord,

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his Lord was visibly present to others. I could cite dozens of similar circumstances. And there are many folks who go through life unaware of the fact that they don't have to walk one foot of the journey alone.

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And that, you see, brings us to the sense of this sentence. Well, what Jesus is saying to us in this word of his is that we are to invite God right into the midst of the humdrum of everyday existence. That we are to invite him right down into the middle of the life which we are living.

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That we don't always have to pray about things like will and kingdom and temptation and evil and father and hallowed, but that we can talk to him about groceries. There are seven petitions in this prayer. That's not an accident.

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Seven is the Hebrew number symbolizing wholeness or completeness. The suggestion is here that the prayer is complete and whole in every way, and it is. And the center most petition of all, the one which rests at the heart of the prayer is this. God, be with me right where I'm living, at the table,

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and that where at my job where I earn what I put on my table. Be with me in my daily walk. Some people, you see, try to cubbyhole the Almighty. They try to fantasize God, to sketch him on the cloud bank of their imagination

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with the airbrush of wishful thinking. They try to build a board fence around God and say, "No trespassing except on Sunday mornings at 11." They attempt in one way or another through the witchery of words to compartmentalize life, to say, "This is the religious and this is the common.

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This is the sacred and this is the secular. This is the spiritual. This is the material." But Jesus says in this prayer, "God wants to come into every dimension of your experience. There is nothing sacred and there is nothing secular, for God is in all, and God will be with you in all.

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Pray that he'll be with you even in such simple things." That's the bread you eat. Did you notice in the scripture reading that Jesus says, "Go into your closet and pray? Close the door behind you," is the phrase he uses?

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In Jesus' day, there was only one room in the house that had a door, and that room was the larger, the pantry. So what Jesus was actually saying was this, "Go into the pantry, into that place where every empty jar speaks to you of your poverty,

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and every full jar speaks to you of someone else's poverty. Go into that place that is pregnant with the aroma of the earth, with the smells of vegetables and fruits and spices. Go into that place that is breathed round with the most common things of life,

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and there, right in the midst of that kind of life, pray. And your Father, who knows what things you have need of, will answer." The lady went to the doctor's, very hypertensive and nervous. The doctor examined her, gave her many tests.

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Then he sat her down and he said, "Now this is my prescription. I want you to get up 15 minutes earlier every day than you're used to, to spend the first five minutes reading scripture, and the next 10 minutes in communion and prayer."

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She said, "Is that all you're going to say to me?" He said, "That's all." And she exploded. "Do you mean to say that I came here and submitted to all of these examinations

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and tests and all you're going to give me is a 60-second sermon?" He said, "Yes, that's my prescription. It costs you $50 and you better do it." So she went home and she did it.

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It wasn't hard to get up 15 minutes earlier. It wasn't hard to spend five minutes reading the scripture. But that 10 minutes of communion and prayer and meditation, that was difficult. You see, the water in her well was very low.

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It took a long time to prime the pump of her spirit. But eventually, by God's grace, she did it. And in those moments of communion and intimacy, she got a new grip on life. This God who seemed to be distant and far off and removed, remote,

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suddenly came right into the midst of her everyday experience. And her hypertension went away and her nervousness was defeated. And she went to the doctor, still with a new health and vitality, and she said to him, "What would you call that disease I had?"

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He said, "You were God-hungry." There are so many folks who are going through life God-hungry. Oh, they're convinced that God is concerned about wars, that God is concerned about rumors of wars,

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that God is concerned about great social problems. But somehow or other, they've missed the vision that God is concerned about every dimension of their personal experience, even the little things, even the littlest of the little things.

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I was in a church in Michigan on one occasion, a very fancy church, and a sexton was showing me about the church. It was the middle of the week. And in the chapel, he showed me a silver cross that was encrusted with jewels.

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And they had a kind of a black burlap sack over this cross. And I said to him, "Is the church in mourning?" It is, you know, the custom in some churches to deck a cross with rough burlap when there is mourning.

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"Oh, no," he said, "we keep that on there to keep the dirt away from the cross." And I thought about that. To keep the dirt away from the cross? My friends, the cross was God's coming into the dirt.

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The cross was God's coming right down into the midst of all the dirt, the filth, the busyness, the disturbance, the confusion, the hate, the violence, the prejudice, the bigotry, the selfishness, the ugliness of life, and getting His hands dirty.

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If the cross wasn't dirty, if the cross wasn't stained with the blood of God's own Son, then we are of all men most miserable. Look at the life of this Lord of ours. Now potentially this Christ could see to the outermost reaches of creation.

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No galaxy was beyond His pen, no nebula beyond His minute examination, and yet this Christ of ours sees a woman on the street who's lost her only son, and He goes and gives to him the gift of life again. Now this Jesus of ours potentially knows everything there is to be known.

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He knows everything that has ever happened. He knows everything that is occurring. He knows everything that will ever happen. All knowledge is His, and yet when He's sitting in a synagogue on a Saturday morning,

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He looks out and He notices a boy with a withered hand. He says, "Son, come here. I want to look at that." And the boy comes up and He puts His arm around the boy so the boy won't be afraid, and then He takes that great hard calloused carpenter's hand of His,

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and He grasps the twisted, almost animal-like hand of this boy, and the power of His hand flows into the lifelessness of the boy's hand, and he's made whole. Now here's this Jesus of ours out by the Sea of Galilee,

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and there are multitudes of people there, and He's preaching. He's talking to them about the destiny of their souls. He's talking to them about the most important thing in life or outside of life, and suddenly He stops and He says, "You know, it's getting late,

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and I wonder if these people have enough to eat." And He turns to His squad of followers and He says, "Do you see to it that all these hungry people are fed? And they're amazed."

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So He does it Himself with five loaves and two fishes. Always, you see, moving into the littlest things and showing. You see, what I'm trying to say to you is this. If there's anything in your life that's big enough to concern you,

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it's big enough to concern God. How is it with you parents? Do you insist that your children come to talk to you only when they've got really important matters to discuss?

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Isn't it true that your greatest delight is in the fact that your children do come to talk to you, no matter what they come to talk to you about? And you then weigh the things that they bring to you, and you assist them in the midst of all of their hopes and dreams articulated in their stumbling words.

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Well, now, if we, being evil, so know how to listen and delight in everything that our children say to us, how much more is this true of God, the God who loves us to the uttermost? Jesus says, "Pray, give us this day our groceries." This day, notice.

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There's no suggestion here that we're to do any stockpiling. Walter Lute has suggested that some people pray for enough bread for 200 years, but God is smart enough to know that in 200 years they'll have no teeth. It's a very interesting thing, this constant emphasis on today.

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Jesus doesn't suggest, you see, that we're to be thinking about tomorrow, just today. The Greek word is ahapoxlegomena, mark that down. That means it's the word which appears only once in Scripture, only one instance. These fooler guys who are sitting down here, they know what this means.

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I won't ask them to translate. The word is epiusias, and we only have one other illustration of it being used, and that's not in Scripture. It's on an ancient papyrus, and unfortunately we've lost the papyrus.

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It's always seemed amazing to me, but we did it. In any case, this papyrus was a shopping list. Some lady had scribbled down the things that she wanted to remember at the store, and beside the word "bread" she'd written "epiusias," which means "bread for today."

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Don't forget to get the bread for today. And that's what Jesus says to it. That's the reason God, you know, in the wilderness said to the Israelites, "Just take enough manna for today."

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Some of them went out and took more, you know, and it wrought it. God would much rather have the manna wrought than men wrought. You see, what happens to people when they start storing things up is they start to depend on what they stored up

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and not on the God who gave it to them in the first place. I stood beside a Salvation Army lassie one time at Christmas time. She was beside one of those little pots you throw the offerings into, that very worthwhile organization.

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And I stood there for about 20 minutes talking with her, and I noticed and commented to her that all the people that came by that looked to me like they were really loaded and would make a generous contribution didn't give a nickel.

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And the people who came by whose circumstances were, at least to all observation, very simple and unluxurious, these are the people who regularly contributed. And she turned to me and she said a single sentence.

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I've never forgotten it. She said, "Ladies in fur coats never give anything at all." I thought a lot about that. Individuals, you see, who build up great stockpiles of bread, of groceries,

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of all the things that they need in life, tend, you know, eventually to begin to depend upon those things and not upon the God who gave them. And, my friends, you have a very unsophisticated view of God.

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If you think God isn't just as interested in your money as he is in your morals, if you think God isn't just as interested in your wealth as he is in your worship, if you think for one moment that he's more interested in your prayer book than he is in your pocketbook,

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or more interested in your hymn book than he is in your bank book, God is concerned about every dimension of our lives. He says to us, "I will come into every dimension of your life, but I'll come today.

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Don't worry about tomorrow. Be concerned about today, the needs of today. There I will meet you, and in these needs you will find abundance, and with that abundance you are to bless others."

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For you notice, this petition in the prayer is plural like all of the other petitions. It does not read, "Give me this day my daily bread." It reads, "Give us this day our daily bread," and so it immediately has a social dimension.

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And what Jesus is saying to us in this prayer is this, "Ask God to be with you in life, and promise God that in receiving his blessings you'll share them with others. For as soon as you start praying for a man,

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give us," that's "give to others as well as myself," "our," that is "to others as well as myself," "our daily bread." As soon as you start praying for another man, you are obligated to serve him.

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You dare not pray for somebody you're unwilling to help yourself. What kind of gross hypocrisy would it be to ask God to do something for a man which you have the capacity to do for that man and are unwilling to do? That's a blasphemous prayer.

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To pray this prayer then is not only to beseech a blessing, it's to make a commitment. It's to intercede for another, and as soon as you intercede, you've made a promise to be God's instrument

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in the life of that one for whom you've lifted your prayer. I suppose the most oft-repeated illustration in the history of preaching is this one, but it's so perfect it needs to be said again and again. You've probably heard it dozens of times

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about the man who bought the farm, an area of barren and unproductive land, and he worked on it very diligently, and at the end of five years, he had turned it into a very productive, profitable farm, beautiful in every way. And his minister came to visit him and he said,

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"You know, Jim, you and God have done a wonderful job with this piece of land." And Jim said, "Well, I guess that's so, Reverend, but you should have seen it when God had it all by himself." Well, there are many illustrations that can be drawn out of that little story,

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but surely one of those illustrations is this, that when God and man work together, things happen. God gives the land. God gives the innate capacity of the land. God gives to the man the mind to think. He gives to the man muscles to work.

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He gives to the man health of body and mind in order that he can work. Man responds by using the land, by using his health, by using his mind, by using his muscle. And when God and man work together, great things happen. Well, when you pray this prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread,"

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you're pledging yourself to work with God to meet the needs of men. The needs of men, you see, do not exist because the world does not have enough. Take bread, for example. There is enough food on the earth for everyone who lives upon the earth.

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The problem is not one of supply. It's one of distribution. Too many have too much, and so too many have too little. And here, you see, is where we become involved in this act of service and in this prayer we pray. Here is where we commit ourselves to the service of others.

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And don't sit out there and say to me, "Please. Please don't sit out there and say to me, 'Now, Reverend, you know the church is not a welfare agency.'" I really think that you belittle yourself when you say that. And I think you insult me when you say that.

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I'm perfectly aware of the fact that the church is not a welfare agency. And I'm perfectly aware of the fact that you're aware of the fact also. But my brother and my sister, you simply cannot talk to a man about the state of his soul if his stomach is knotted with hunger.

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You cannot talk to a man about the things that are eternal if he's bent over with pain because of the things that are temporal. Of all the concerts that I've ever attended, and I've attended a pile of them, of all the concerts I've ever attended, the one I looked forward to the most

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was one of the world's three great orchestras was performing under one of the world's most distinguished conductors, and I couldn't have picked a program that would have pleased me more. Every composition on the program was one of my favorites.

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And I went that night, I looked forward to it for months, I went that night and I sat down, I was there a good hour early, and about 20 minutes before that concert my right foot started to hurt. And I didn't know why.

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And it so happened that I was developing unconsciously at that moment the only boil I've ever had in all my life. And it was right on the sole of my foot, in a tight shoe, in a hot auditorium.

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And I agonized through that night. I couldn't get up to leave because I was with others, and I didn't want to take away the pleasure of the evening from them. I couldn't tell you what happened there that night.

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The greatest orchestra in the world, one of the greatest conductors playing some of the greatest music, and I didn't hear any of it because I was so caught up in the agony of this foot. I can remember it still.

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Now how can we expect an individual who cannot see because he's blind and we have the capacity to give him sight, how can we expect that man to see glory if we won't help him see light? When we go to a man and talk to him about the bread of life,

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he'll never hear us. If he's so weak he can't even reach out to pick up the-- indeed, if there's nothing there for him to pick up of the life that he needs to hold body and soul together.

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Why do we have medical missions? Why do we commit ourselves to the meeting of the needs of men? Because we know you've got to meet a man here before you meet him here. The two go together.

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Evangelism always walks on two legs. It's not a peg-legged thing. And so what Jesus is saying to us in this prayer is this. Yes, God is interested in every dimension of your life

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and he's interested in every dimension of every other man's life. And that means when you meet a man that's thirsty you give him to drink. And when you meet a man that's hungry you give him to eat. And when you meet a man that's alone you go and put your arms around him.

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And when you meet a man that's afraid you're standing-- --through the field. And she wrote a poem about it. The poem only has eight lines and it goes like this.

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"Oh, why do you walk in the fields wearing gloves, missing so much and so much? Oh, fat white lady whom nobody loves, why do you walk through the fields in gloves,

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where the grass is soft as the breasts of doves and shivering sweet to the touch? Why do you walk through the fields in gloves, missing so much and so much?"

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Well, I don't know why the lady walked through the fields in gloves. Maybe she was allergic to grass. Maybe she was going to a party that night, didn't want to stain her hands. Maybe she was cold.

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But this I do know and you know it too. Grass is as soft as the breasts of doves and it is shivering sweet to the touch. And she was missing a great deal

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when she walked through the fields in gloves. Sometimes you meet a person who will hold out their hand and they'll say, "Pardon my glove." And we will.

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But life doesn't pardon our gloves. You see, if you go through life with your hands and your heart all wrapped up, you never experience the shivering sweetness of it, the sweetness of its pain and the sweetness of its beauty,

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the sweetness of its need and the sweetness of its hope. So Jesus says to us, "Pray. God, take off your gloves and come right down into the shivering sweetness of my life.

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And God, I'll take off my gloves and I'll go into the softness of other people's lives. I'll put three fingers to the wrist of life and listen and feel the pulsing beat of a very needy world."

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And God says, "That's good." And together we'll walk the valley of life hand in hand. That's what it means to pray.

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Give us this day our daily bread. Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou art so great that Thou canst be concerned with little things. And we pray that the same love that meets the needs of body and soul in man

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might be found in us to the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. And that Lord bless you and keep you. That Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. That Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you

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and give you and all those whom you love right in the valley of your days His peace.