Give Us This Day our Daily Bread

1 Timothy 6:6-8

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What can’t you get enough of? For me, it’s the cheese biscuits at Red Lobster. When I order at Red Lobster, I am not only ordering constantly those baskets of cheese biscuits, but before I leave the restaurant, I am literally stuffing my pockets with those cheese biscuits. I can’t get enough.

How about in our life? What are the things we can’t get enough of? Paul says

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. (1 Timothy 6:6-8)

Will we, though? Will I really be content if I just have enough to survive? I don’t want to survive. I want to thrive. Today we tell ourselves that we have a right to happiness. We have a right to over abundance. I have a right to the big house, the car, the boat, the cabin, the lake, and the list of things I need to be happy goes on and on and on. And even if I don’t have enough to supply all those things, what I tend to do is put it on the credit card and pierce myself with more and more griefs. Why? All because I just can’t have enough.

It’s interesting, even the most pious among us, we might say that I don’t really need to be rich. I don’t need a lot out of life. I just want enough so I don’t have to always worry about my finances. I just want enough so that I can buy the things I need to get and not have to worry about running out of money in the bank. But it’s interesting, what are we really asking for? We’re asking for enough so I don’t have to ask God for my daily bread. I want enough so I can be comfortable enough to forget about God and not have to go to him day after day and ask him and trust in him to provide.

And what I find is nothing exposes that idolatry of our own goods and wealth more than economic hardship. Stock markets as they start to crash and as we look with question at our financial future. We start to worry. When Jesus talks about worry he directs his disciples to the birds. He says, aren’t these birds, aren’t these sparrows worth only a few pennies? And what Jesus is telling us is when we face hardship and we worry and we ask how much and we wonder about the cost of things Jesus is telling us, we’re really asking the wrong question. We really need to ask him how much are we worth?

And Jesus is always ready with that answer. Jesus tells us you are worth so much more. You are worth so much the Prince of Heaven left heaven’s throne to come down here. Jesus took and embraced our poverty. He wore the rags of our sins to give us the riches of his righteousness. You are worth so much to Jesus he suffered and died on the cross and laid down his life to make you his own.

If that isn’t enough, the Bible promises that God wants to open His pierced hands and satisfy the desires of every living thing. You hear that? Jesus wants to satisfy your desire. And what’s amazing about this is every example from the Bible where God gives in his abundance. God doesn’t just give enough, he gives an over abundance, whether it’s the manna from heaven, the quail, the water from the rock, the widow’s flower and oil, the great catch a fish, the wine in Cana, feeding of the 5000. Or even the forgiveness of sins.

God doesn’t just give enough, he gives more than enough. He gives in abundance. He satisfies the desires of every living thing. And the reason God does that is he wants us to lift up our eyes away from all the things of this world and to fasten our minds and our hearts for our souls to hunger after the bread of life from heaven. The bread of this world, even the cheese biscuits at Red Lobster go bad. But Jesus is the bread that endures to eternal life. And in heaven, he’ll open the great treasuries of his heart to satisfy the desires of every living thing, to satisfy your desires for all eternity. This is what we pray for when we fold our hands and pray. Give us this day our daily bread. Amen.