Chapter 6 starts at 1:43:30.
“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Matthew 6:11-13
We now come to the second part of the pattern prayer. As the first part has to do with the interests of God, the second half deals with the pilgrimage of man; that is to say, it has to do with the needs of man in the days of his sojourn in this world. Its three petitions express the needs of these days of pilgrimage towards the Father’s home. It will be impossible to use these petitions when we reach that home. They express our present need in the listening ear of God.
If these petitions be intelligently apprehended, it will be found that they cover the whole of our possible requirements. We may break up the petitions, we may give expression in the hours of communion with God to the detailed and specific need of which we are conscious, but we cannot pray for anything which is not included in these requests.
In previous chapters we have dealt with the threefold fact concerning God which Jesus has revealed. He is King, Father, Shepherd. In that order men come into relationship with Him. Having submitted to His Kingship, they find Him to be their Father. Then as they begin to walk long the pathway which His will appoints, they experience His care as a Shepherd.
The part of the prayer at which we are now to look is the cry of children-subjects, asking for the privileges of the flock, for the care of the one great Shepherd. In it there are three petitions -
- Give us this day our daily bread.And Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, or, from the evil one.
As we study these three petitions we shall find that in each of them three sets of forces with which we daily come in contact are recognized. Every man upon the pathway of his pilgrimage has to do every day with God, with man and with the devil. That fact may be expressed in other words. We may say that we have to do with the upper world, with the world about us, and with the under world of evil. Every day we who are children of God have necessarily some dealings with God; every day we are in contact with our fellow man; and I do not think any one will dispute with me when I declare that for the saint of God there is no day in which he or she has not something to do with the spirits of evil. The three worlds are present in every one of these petitions, but in each petition one realm is referred to with special emphasis. To take the first, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That petition has to do pre-eminently with our relationship to God, our dependence upon Him; but we shall find recognized in it our relationship to our fellow man, and also our relationship to the spirits of evil. The pre-eminent note is our relationship to God. In the second petition, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors,” the principal emphasis is upon our relationship to our fellow men. The relationship to God is acknowledged and the relationship to the under world is evident. In the final petition, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” the principal emphasis is upon our relationship to the under world. Our relationship to God is also recognized and that to our fellow man is present.
When referring to the threefold fact of the heavenly order proceeding from the government of God we mentioned three words which are constantly repeated in the writings of John, “Life,” “Light,” and “Love.” The first of these three petitions is a cry for sustenance to God as “Life.” The second is a cry for rectitude to God as “Light.” The last is a cry for victory to God as “Love.” So that the threefold order, which we first are taught to pray may be established in the world, is recognized when we continue to pray about our own personal and individual needs.
In the economy of Jesus Christ, prayer never loses sight of the infinite relationships and the infinite values. Herein is the test for our praying. The moment prayer becomes request for something purely for self which may be spent upon personal lusts - or if you will have a milder word, upon personal desires - then prayer is outside the will of God. If I ask for sustenance it must be in a petition which recognizes that real life is related to the life of God. If I ask for rectitude it must be in a petition which recognizes rectitude as being in right relationship with the light of God. If I ask for succour, deliverance from the evil of the under world, it must be in a petition which recognizes the tender love of God manifesting itself supremely in its persistent determination that I shall be delivered from evil. So that all prayer is to be tested by its relationship to the infinite and eternal verities and values. Let us now take the petitions one by one. In the first, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we have the threefold relationship. First, it is a cry to God as “Life” for sustenance. There is also recognized the relationship to man. We cannot begin to pray this prayer alone; we immediately bring other’s with us into the place of prayer not as to bodily presence but as to social interest. That fact is true of the whole prayer, but specially true of the first petition. We have also the reference to the under world, because life fed with daily bread is made strong against the solicitation of the spirits of evil. The principal emphasis is, however, upon our relation to God. What then does this prayer mean, “Give us this day our daily bread”? What is daily bread? What did our Lord mean we were to pray for at this point? Let us omit the word “daily” for the moment, and read “Give us this day our bread.” Of what bread was He speaking? There are those who hold that this prayer simply has reference to the bread of the physical life, and there are thousands of people who use it only in that sense. There are other people, some of them gifted expositors of the Word of God, who hold that our Lord was not referring in any way to the physical bread but that this is wholly a spiritual prayer, and that therefore He is here referring to the sustenance of the spiritual life. I do not agree with either of these interpretations. I believe that when our Lord enjoins us to pray “Give us this day our bread” He means by the use of that word all that is necessary for the sustenance of the whole life, physical and spiritual. I believe that, because I never find Jesus dealing with men in compartments. He always dealt with the whole man, and when He taught us to pray this prayer He intended to teach us that we were perpetually to remember that we are absolutely dependent upon God for all that is necessary for the sustenance of our perfect and complete life. In Deuteronomy we read “Man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.” There, in these words He quoted in the midst of His own temptation, is His own recognition of the need of physical bread; and therein is His affirmation of the necessity for another bread, the Word proceeding out of the mouth of God. He Himself being the Word of God said, “I am the bread of life.” When this petition is presented we are asking God to give us the sustenance necessary for our whole life, that necessary for our spiritual, and that necessary for our physical life. The latter is secondary but it is necessary, and is as much supplied by God as is the sustenance for the spiritual life. The first petition of our need is one in which we ask our Father to supply all that is necessary for our complete sustenance “Give us this day our bread.”
I think that an understanding of the word “daily” will emphasize the accuracy of the interpretation I have given. There is difficulty here. As a matter of fact it is a word quite unknown in classical Greek, and it is a word which never occurs in the New Testament except at this point in Matthew 6 and in Luke 11 where our Lord took one or two petitions of the prayer and gave them to His disciples in answer to their request. It would be a fascinating theme for discussion and speculation as to where this word came from and what it really means. There are difficulties in tracing its root. You notice in the margin of the Revised Version this suggestion, “Give us this day our bread for the coming day.” If you have noticed it, you have felt how curious a suggestion it is. I want to speak with all due carefulness, and I do not speak without remembering that the marginal readings of the Revised Version express the opinion of a majority of the translators. Nevertheless, I do not think that the meaning of this word translated “daily” is “the coming day.” It is possible that it came from a root which means “to-morrow”; but it is equally possible that it came from a root implying “existence,” It is not for me to go into that particularly, but I do not hesitate to say my own belief is that the latter is the root from which this word “daily” came. “Give us this day our bread of existence.” Here is a piece of speculation which you may accept or forget as you like. I believe Jesus coined that word. You cannot find it anywhere else. Then of course there comes the question as to whether Jesus spoke in Aramaic or Greek, and again we are face to face with a question full of interest, and one which I do not pretend to be able dogmatically or finally to decide. Personally, I am of opinion that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and moreover that Jesus spoke a dialect of Greek which was common at the time. It is interesting to remember that Alford in his later editions adopted that view, although in the earlier issues of his work he had maintained the contrary. I believe therefore that Jesus coined this word “daily.” What He told us to pray was, “Give us to-day the bread we need for our existence”; that is, for our whole life, for the life which is physical, for the life which is spiritual.
Passing from that discussion of the mere words of the petition, let us think of its spiritual intention and meaning. We are to ask God every day for what we need for the sustenance of our life. There are two ways in which we neglect this petition. One way is that we pray it as though it simply referred to the bread which feeds the body, and forget that we need day by day to be fed by God with the bread which supplies our spiritual life. As God answers prayer for the bread of the body so He answers prayer for the bread of the spirit. How does God answer our prayer for the bread of the body? Not by its miraculous supply but by the gift of all such forces as are necessary to enable us in cooperation with Himself to obtain for ourselves by labour the bread we need. So with the spiritual bread. God does not succour the spiritual life of any man on his simple asking. Our spiritual life can only be maintained and sustained as we in personal labour for the meat that endureth, meditate in His Word day and night, feeding upon that Bread of Life which came down out of heaven from God.
The other side of the lesson is that we are not to forget in these days of incipient infidelity in the Christian Church, that the table to which we sit down every day is one He spreads. You have heard the old story of the man who met a boy in a village street carrying a loaf of bread. He stopped the boy and asked him where he got the loaf. “From the baker” was the reply. “Yes, that is right, but where did he get it?” “He made it,” said the boy. “How did he make it?” “With flour.” “Where did he get his flour?” “He ground the corn.” “Where did he get his corn from?” “He got it from the farmer.” “Yes, but where did the farmer get his corn?” “Oh, from God,” said the boy. “Then you got your loaf from God!” We have been very much like that boy. We have put God away back, behind the miller and the farmer, and have forgotten Him in the process. While we recognize the need of the intermediation of all these instruments, we are not to forget that it is God who feeds us with food sufficient for body and soul.
- Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,And back of the flour the mill;And back of the mill is the wheat, and the shower, And the sun, and the Father’s will.
This prayer brings me back every day as a dependent being to God, so that I have never any right to pray this prayer if I am saying in my life or by my actions, my own hand gets me this bread, my own cunning, wit and wisdom provide for me all I need of spiritual culture.
Notice the social character of this prayer. Have you ever taken the trouble to write out the personal pronouns in the first person? If you have, you will have discovered that there is not one in the singular from beginning to end, - our, us, our, us, our, we, our, us, us. They are all plural. You cannot pray that prayer by yourself. You cannot pray that short petition by yourself. I remember a friend of mine, a deacon in one of my former churches, on a certain Harvest Festival, came to me in my vestry and said - there was a deal of humour in him, there always is in saintly men, - “Well, Pastor, I suppose you won’t use the Lord’s Prayer to-night. We are going to thank Him for having supplied our daily bread, you won’t ask Him for it?” I replied that we should certainly use the Lord’s Prayer that night, and that by so doing we should put ourselves into fellowship with all hungry souls. It is “us” and “our,” not “me” and “mine.” When we come into God’s presence to ask for the supply of our own need we are to remember in loving sympathy the need of all those who have not yet received.
There is another suggestive fact about this prayer. There is only one nominative case in it. There are four objective and four possessive, but only one nominative. Do you not know that the nominative is the most popular case. Men like to talk in the first person singular, nominative; but the nominative is only here once. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The only right in this prayer to be the subject of a sentence is that of the loving heart who forgives some other man. The prayer is a social prayer from beginning to end. The social quality is manifest in this first petition as it asks for sustenance not for “me and mine,” but for “us and ours.”
The relation to the under world is also recognized here. The man fed, physically and spiritually, is the man most likely to be strong against the solicitations of evil. That is why men are perfectly right when they tell us that we insult a hungry man when we offer him a tract about heaven. The first thing is to feed him, not simply because he clamours for bread, but because a fed man is one the devil does not like. It is the hungry man the devil attacks. If that be true physically, it is pre-eminently true spiritually. My brother see to it that when morning breaks you go to God for sustenance for your spiritual life. That will make you strong against the allurements of the devil. So many people turn out to face the temptations of the day spiritually unfed, spiritually hungry therefore, and they are attacked by all kinds of enticements of the enemy. It is the man fed by God, spiritually and physically who is likely to overcome in the hour of temptation.
In the second petition will you notice that the relation to God comes first. It always does even if the emphasis is not there. We are to ask forgiveness - this is the one petition to which most people object, and some attempt to escape from the prayer because of it. I am not particularly surprised that people criticise this petition more than any other. It is a very difficult one to pray, but let us remember that when Christ gave this prayer in His Manifesto, He commented only upon this petition. “For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” So we must neither get away from this petition, nor indulge in that criticism which attempts to accommodate it to our own failure. I had been speaking on this subject in an American city, and afterwards received a letter from a lady who was greatly perturbed because I had put special emphasis upon the fact that Jesus distinctly tells us we are to ask for forgiveness when we have forgiven. She said that for years she had changed the form of that petition for she had been afraid of it, and had said, “Forgive us our debts, and we will forgive our debtors.” She asked if I did not consider this to be sufficient. I replied that God never does business on the basis of a promissory note. We must get our forgiving done before we can ask for forgiveness. That prayer is the prayer of the children of God, not of the men outside. I do not go to the man outside who has never given himself to God and tell him that if he will forgive everybody, God will forgive him. God begins by forgiving us of His own free grace without any condition. The unforgiven man can be forgiven now, without any condition except that he believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will blot out the sins of such like a thick cloud. When that is done the soul enters the Kingdom, and now Jesus superimposes upon His own subject as the condition for forgiveness that he should be forgiving. If we are unforgiving, in the necessity of the case God will not forgive us. There is no escape from it. Is not hatred the most dastardly and heinous of all sins - hatred, the thing that contradicts the essence of God which is love? If in my heart there is bitterness and malice and revengefulness what is the use of confessing other sins and expecting to be forgiven, nursing the while the most damnable sin? We who are children of God, subjects of the King, flock of the Shepherd, cannot be forgiven unless we forgive, for our refusal to forgive is the deepest and worst sin of all. I speak with such emphasis because I think the Church of Jesus Christ is cursed by an unforgiving spirit. Men and women are sitting down at the table of the Lord who do not speak to each other. We are unforgiving in our theological controversies. The sin for which Moses was excluded from the earthly promised land was that “He spake unadvisedly with his lips,” he manifested a provoked spirit in a righteous cause. A righteous cause, but an angry, unforgiving man; and God shut him out of the land of earthly promise. For evermore Jesus Christ is saying to us every day, “Come and have your Father’s forgiveness for trespasses, but do not ask for that until you have forgiven the man who has trespassed against you.” What is trespass? For notice, in the actual text our Lord used the words “Debt” and “debtors” and in the exposition which follows. He used the word “trespasses.” What then is debt, trespass? There is a common quality in our Master’s use of the two words which helps us to understand it. Trespass is intentional error, or wilful transgression. Trench has said the word means falling where one should have stood upright, whether one could help it or not. There of course arises the whole question of sin and of what sin is. We still believe that the whole meaning of the New Testament evangel is that a man need not sin wilfully, but we still maintain that so long as we walk the pathway of the earthly pilgrimage, in comparison with God’s high ideal we are as trespassers, coming short, so that of our best service we have to say “we are unprofitable servants.”
I pity the man who tells me he cannot pray this prayer because he never trespasses. I pity him because of his dim comprehension of the real meaning of holiness and of sin. To the man who walks in light there is no day when he does not find it necessary to confess his trespasses. Let us not forget this flaming scorching word of the Master, that we are not to ask for forgiveness until we have forgiven. “If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift.” I wonder how many people would have to stay away from church next Sunday if they were true to this word. We had better stay away, and get right with our brother before we come to the altar. “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Loving forgiveness of my brother is the condition upon which I, a child of God, may ask His forgiveness.
What relation has all this to the underworld of evil? When we forgive those who have wronged us, we have gained the mightiest victory possible over the devil. In that day when we trampled on our pride and sacrificed what we speak of as our rights, when we triumphed over pride and lovingly forgave the man who had sinned against us, we know we were conscious of God as we had never been before, and we were conscious of victory over the enemy as we had never been. There is nothing God loves and the devil hates more than a man who can forgive.
We come to the last of these petitions. “And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” “Bring us not into temptation,” that is the language of the cautious heart, of the man who recognizes how terrible an experience temptation is. But there is something more important than that I should be delivered from temptation, and that is that I should be delivered from evil. If I can only be delivered from evil by passing through temptation, then that I be delivered from evil is the supreme matter. In that remarkable passage in Luke just before the Gethsemane experience and again just after it, the Lord said to His disciples, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation.” He was passing down to temptation then. As I watch Him in Gethsemane I hear the echo of temptation, “Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done.” That is the echo of temptation. I have heard that before. I heard the enemy say to Him long ago in the wilderness, “There are the Kingdoms of the world which you have come to possess. Your pathway to them is one of suffering and shame. Fall down and worship me and I will give them to you. Get to your goal by a short cut.” Here is the old method. Be very afraid of any easy method to anything. I hear it again later on, not as before in the open attack of the foe, but through the subtle word of friendship. When Jesus at Caesarea Philippi mentioned the cross, Peter said, “Not that. Lord I That be far from Thee. Keys, yes; crowning, yes; building, yes; but not the cross!” Christ said to him, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me; for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.” In the garden of Gethsemane the devil comes no longer in open attack, no longer in the guise of a friend, but in the shrinking of His own soul. “If Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me.” Therein is the philosophy of this petition, “Bring us not into temptation.” We are to be afraid of temptation. We are not to be foolhardy, treating it as of no account. We are to shrink in its presence with that cautiousness which makes for courage. But the more important thing is that we should be delivered perfectly from evil. “Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That is to be my prayer every day to God who governs in hell as well as in heaven. Recognition of the force of temptation and its subtlety will make me pray, “Bring me not into temptation,” but the deepest passion of my whole life will be - “deliver me from evil.”
What relation to other men is suggested in this last petition? Peter writing to Christian people said, “Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” Why were they to be sober and watchful? “Knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the world.” Let the light of that fall upon this petition. When we are face to face with the evil one and with temptation, we are not fighting a lonely battle, we are part of a great host. Our brethren are being tried also. If we win, they win in a greater measure. If we lose, we shall halt the whole battle and retard the final victory. I sometimes think if we could say this to young people as it ought to be said we might help them. Are you fighting against temptation? Remember it is not a lonely battle you are fighting, you are part of a great host. If you lose, if you are beaten, if the enemy overcomes you, the whole army of God is halted in its onward march. If you win, you hasten the coming of the Kingdom. The same sufferings are being accomplished in your brethren. Upon this stress and strife of the saints depends the hastening or retarding of the Day of God. So we are to pray together “Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” We fear the process, but there is a deeper passion than the passion for escape from testing, it is the passion for deliverance from evil. That is the great and final thing.
In conclusion, let it be noted that He who taught the prayer has in its second half, as in the first, guaranteed the answer. Am I to pray for the bread of life? He bends over me and says, “I am the Bread of Life.” Am I to pray for sustenance of the physical life? He whispers to me, hear the tender promise, “All these things shall be added unto you.” Am I to pray for forgiveness Through His name is forgiveness preached. But how am I going to forgive the man who has injured me? The Spirit of Jesus is the spirit of forgiveness. If I am yielded to Him He is yielded to me. If I give my whole life to Him He will give His whole life to me. If I have Jesus for my own I shall be able to forgive, so that He will answer this very prayer and make possible its answer in the high court of God’s own judgment hall. As to temptation, “He was tempted in all points like as we are, sin apart.” And “In that He Himself hath suffered being tempted. He is able to succour them that are tempted.”
So in this pattern prayer He shows me what to pray for as He opens before my astonished vision the whole realm of prayer. I end as I begin by saying that if we can pray this prayer with spiritual intelligence and earnestness we pray all prayer.