Dr. Barclay with Something to Think About - DAILY BREAD

DAILY BREAD

After an expression of the desire for God’s will to be done, the first request in the Lord’s Prayer is this:

Give us this day our daily bread. 

(Matthew 6:11)

Considering that in the time this was written, at least most, if not all, people would have a daily ration of bread, why would a request be made for something readily obtained? Was it because of the fact that manna was given daily during the passage through the desert that bread was to be requested on a daily basis or is there something else in the meaning here? Asking the Lord to ensure our food every day certainly is important considering how, at present, so many people, now more than ever, have problems obtaining their daily sustenance.

But as we all know, bread in the Bible has more than one meaning. In the Book of Deuteronomy it states that:

…man shall not live by bread alone; 

but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of Lord. 

(8:3)

and this is repeated again in Matthew 4:4 and in Luke 4:4. So, man is not to live by material sustenance alone, i.e., not by merely fulfilling material needs and wants.

Jesus, in fact, stated the same thing when He said that:

“I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, 

and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. 

(John 6:35)

So, if Jesus is The Word as in John’s gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God…

…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us… 

(John 1;1,14)

And also the bread as in John 6, then does the passage in Matthew 6 refer to the material bread or the spiritual bread or to both? Are we not to live by both the physical and the spiritual on a daily basis? If such is the case, then our daily bread refers to both our physical nourishment and our spiritual Word.

Just a further way of looking at our daily bread and at the same time also something further to think about.