feat of life. You can only learn to say “Thy will be done” through
struggle and agony and heartbreak. This old Book compares the agony
through which men must pass before they learn sincerely to pray this
prayer, to the agony inflicted by the plucking out of an eye or the
cutting off of a limb. Obedience to God leads to the land of blessedness
and peace, but the gate by which we enter—the gate of self-denial—is a
narrow gate, and we have to _agonise_ to enter in. God has a will for
each of us, and His will concerning us often clashes with our own. The
desires of the flesh and of the mind hanker after earthly comfort and
wealth and ease. God’s will concerning us is, that whatever the cost and
the pain, we should be clean and honest and true. Scarcely a day passes
but our desires and the will of God for us come into violent conflict.
To surrender our own wills, to make God’s will ours, means pain. It is a
dying. It is a crucifixion. But there are one or two considerations of
which I would like to remind you, which ought to make this surrender
easier for us. This is the first:—
(1) The will we are asked to make our own is _our Father’s_ will. “Thy
will be done!” Whose will? _Our Father’s will!_ After all, it ought not
to be very difficult to obey a father’s will, to fulfil a father’s
desire, even when that will runs counter to our own, for we know there
is _love_ in the case. Remember, you are not asked to obey a despot; you
are not asked to obey a tyrant; you are not asked to obey a
slave-driver; you are asked to do the will of _your Father_—your Father,
whose love is only to be measured by the Cross of Jesus Christ. It was
the remembrance that the will He was called upon to obey was His
Father’s will, that helped Jesus in the Garden. It was a hard thing for
our Lord to say “Thy will be done,” when He knew that involved the Cross
and the Grave; for Jesus, let me say it with all reverence, had all a
man’s feelings, and He shrank from the bitter agony and shame. He would
gladly have escaped the Cross and the Tomb. “If it be possible, let this
cup pass.” Then he remembered it was His Father who was bidding Him
drink that bitter cup. That thought steadied Him, gave Him courage, made
Him strong, He was ready for anything and everything that His Father
appointed. “The cup which the Father hath given me to drink shall I not
drink it?” We, too, shall be strong to make God’s will our own, when we
remember it is our _Father’s_ will. For our Father is love—love at its
best and highest. Mr. Spurgeon tells a story about a man who had in his
garden a weather-cock which had on it this inscription, “God is Love.” A
friend seeing it asked if it was meant to imply that God’s love was as
fickle as the wind. “No,” was the reply, “I mean that from whatever
quarter the wind may happen to blow, God is still love.” Bear that in
mind—God is love; the will you are asked to obey is your Father’s will.
Then, though that will ordain for us sorrow, sickness, pain, loss, we
shall have grace to say, “Thy will be done.”
The second consideration which I would impress upon you is this:—
(2) God’s will _ever seeks our highest good_. What else could any one
expect, seeing that it is _our Father’s_ will? How we who are parents
plan and scheme and contrive in order to secure a happy and prosperous
future for our children! In exactly the same way God plans and purposes
for us. He is always thinking upon us for our good. His will, says the
Apostle, is our sanctification. It is a good and perfect and acceptable
will. The very discipline through which He sometimes calls upon us to
pass is meant to build us up in patience and purity and faith. The boy
in school is apt to regard his lessons as a hardship. He would prefer
the field and the sunshine to the school-room and the desk. But in after
years he will be thankful he did not get his own way in the days of his
youth, for he will recognise _then_ that the hours he spent over his
Algebraic problems and his Latin declensions enriched his life by
contributing to the culture of his mind. We are scholars in God’s
schools. The discipline of the school is painful sometimes; but in later
years we shall be thankful even for our sorrows and losses and
bereavements, when we see how they have enriched our lives by
contributing to the culture of our souls. Yes, it will be easier to
embrace God’s will when we realise with the Apostle that all things work
together for good to them that love God.
_Thy will be done!_ Notice, God’s will is not simply to be endured or
suffered—it is to be done. In our every-day speech we have unduly
narrowed the scope and meaning of this petition. We talk about this
petition as if it were a prayer that God would give us the grace of
_resignation_. It is in times of bereavement that this phrase leaps to
the lips of men. It is upon tombstones that it is inscribed by sorrowing
relatives. Again do not let me be misunderstood. Suffering God’s will is
embraced in the scope of this prayer. To many of us the hardest part of
all is patient submission to the will of God. The man bereft of wealth,
stripped of all his possessions, flung back again into the poverty from
which by hard and persistent effort he had emerged, needs grace to say,
“Thy will be done.” The man who languishes upon a bed of sickness, who
lies there helpless while perhaps wife and children look up to him for
bread—he needs grace to say, “Thy will be done.” Those who have parted
with some loved one, who have seen father or mother, or husband or wife
or child, hidden from them in the dark cold grave, and who come home
again to miss the well-loved face and familiar voice—they need grace to
say, while their hearts are aching and their eyes are full of tears,
“Thy will be done.” Some of you know how hard it is. You find it
impossible almost to say, as Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, it is hard to be
submissive and resigned, and it is out of a broken heart the prayer
often ascends, “Thy will be done.”
But this prayer is much more than a prayer for the grace of resignation
and patient submission. The petition is not “Help us to _suffer_ thy
will,” but “Help us to do it.” This is not a prayer simply for the
invalid and the mourner and the bereaved; it is a prayer also for those
who are happy and well and strong. This is not a prayer simply for our
times of trouble and our days of deep distress; it is a prayer for all
times and every day. It is not every day, nor every month, nor even
every year, that we are called upon to _suffer_ God’s will, but not a
day, not an hour passes, but _we are_ called upon to do it. Do not
narrow the scope of this prayer. You prayed this morning, “Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven”? What did you mean by it? I will tell
you what you ought to have meant by it: “Help me, O God, to do what Thou
wouldest have me do, to be what Thou wouldest have me.” That is what the
prayer means. It means that we accept God’s plans and purposes as our
own, and resolve to realise them. You can pray no nobler prayer than
this, for in the doing of God’s will lies the secret of the perfect
life. We look at the life of Jesus—so beautiful, so pure, so perfect—and
we are lost in wonder and rapture. But the secret of that life is here:
Jesus from the beginning to the close of life was intent on doing God’s
will. He Himself let us into the secret. “I am come,” He said, “not to
do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.” “My meat and
drink,” He said, on another occasion, “is to do the will of Him that
sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” When a boy of twelve He had come
to the sublime decision that every moment of His life should be spent in
doing His Father’s business. Do not commit the mistake of thinking that
it was only in Gethsemane and the Judgement Hall and on Calvary that
Christ was doing the will of God. He was doing it during those silent
years at Nazareth. He was doing it when at school, He was doing it when
He was in the carpenter’s shop, mending the tables and chairs and
ploughs of the dwellers in Nazareth. He was doing it when He preached
the Gospel of the Kingdom in Galilee. He was doing it when sharing in
the festivities at Cana, and taking part in Matthew’s farewell dinner.
He was doing it when healing the sick and comforting the lonely and
lifting up the outcast. In fact, He was never doing anything else. Every
day, every moment, Jesus was doing the Father’s will, and the result is
the only perfect life the world has ever seen. And so, in our case, the
doing of God’s will is not something confined to our times of darkness
and sorrow; the doing of God’s will is a daily and hourly endeavour.
God’s will is really _done_ by us only when, to use the Apostle’s words,
“whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we do all to the glory of
God.” “Thy will be done on earth,” so runs the petition; the sphere in
which God’s will is to be put into effect is this earth of ours—its
business life, its public life, its social life, its family life. The
employer is doing God’s will when He treats those in his employment
justly and generously. The tradesman is doing God’s will when he buys
and sells honestly. The shop assistant is doing God’s will by being
diligent and courteous, and yet withal scrupulously straightforward and
true. The artizan is doing God’s will when he respects his employer’s
time, and does every bit of work as well as it can be done. Fathers and
mothers, brothers and sisters in the home are doing God’s will when they
strive to make home happy by their self-forgetfulness and ready
helpfulness. “Doing God’s will” means doing everything as we know God
would have us do it, making God supreme over every detail of human life.
It means buying and selling, keeping ledgers, serving at the counter,
teaching at the desk, toiling in the fields, sitting in the council
chamber, casting a vote, taking our pleasure, sharing in social joys,
and doing all this for God. This is what we pray for when we say, “Thy
will be done.”
Look at the qualifying words that follow: “as in heaven so on earth.”
Heaven supplies the pattern for earth. I have just two words to say
about the way in which God’s will is done in heaven—(1) It is done
_cheerfully_. Saints and angels find their highest joy in doing God’s
will. If earth is to be like heaven in this respect, we must obey God
cheerfully. God wants no grudging service. Our obedience must be glad,
willing, free. God’s will can not be done by us as it is done in heaven,
until we can say sincerely, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God, yea,
Thy law is within my heart.” (2) It is done by ALL. You will look in
vain in the heavenly land for the disobedient and the refractory and the
rebellious. Heaven is perfectly happy, because all its people are
perfect in their obedience. Before earth can be like heaven, God’s will
must be done by ALL. It is done to-day only by a FEW. There are
multitudes who rebel against Him. When these return to their allegiance,
the day of God will break.
_Thy will be done!_ This petition calls our attention to the most crying
and urgent need of our day, the need of a simpler and more implicit
obedience. It is not more knowledge of God’s will that we want, but
grace to put in practice what we know. What is the use of coming here
to-day to hear God’s will declared, if to-morrow in our business life,
we deliberately flout and reject it? I venture to say this, that if
to-morrow and the following days we only did what we know our Lord
desires us to do, we should revolutionise the life of this town. And
will you suffer me to remind you that it is not to those who make a
profession and parade of religion that heaven is promised, but to those
who faithfully and loyally obey. “Not every one that saith unto Me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth
the will of My Father which is in heaven.”
VI
“Daily Bread”
“Give us this day our daily bread.”—MATT. vi. 11
“Give us day by day our daily bread.”—LUKE xi. 3.
The petition which we are to study together this morning opens the
second part of the Lord’s Prayer. Up to this point our petitions have
all been concerned with God’s glory and praise. We have prayed “Hallowed
be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Having thus observed
the rule, “first things first,” having sought first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness, we are now at liberty to pass on to secondary
things, and to offer up to God petitions for personal blessings. And the
first petition we are taught to offer is this, “Give us this day our
daily bread.” We begin at the very bottom. We start the list of personal
petitions with a prayer for “daily bread.”
Will you notice what a gracious light this petition throws upon the
_condescension of God_? Our Lord is the high and Holy One, who inhabits
eternity, and yet He stoops to lowly folk and lowly things. “The Lord
thinketh upon _me_.” Whatsoever concerns me is of concern to Him. “Give
me bread” is not too humble a petition to bring into the presence of the
great White Throne. A one-sided notion of the majesty of God has led men
oftentimes to feel that the ordinary little cares of a human life are
quite too insignificant and trifling for Him to notice. “God is so
busy,” they say; “He has so many things to think about, that we ought
not to trouble Him with our little anxieties and worries. Such petty
things are quite beneath the dignity of His attention.” That was exactly
how the disciples felt long ago, when they were for driving away those
mothers who had brought their little children for Christ to bless. They
felt that the great Preacher, on whose lips vast crowds hung, ought not
to be bothered about babies. They thought that Christ had so many things
of importance to think about, that it was absurd to expect Him to take
notice of little children. The same kind of feeling has possessed many
of the men who have commented on this petition. Many of the old church
fathers, and indeed many modern commentators, refuse to believe that
this is a prayer for ordinary food, for mere bread. They cannot persuade
themselves that a petition for so commonplace a thing as _bread_ could
possibly find a place for itself in the Model Prayer. This is too
trifling a request to trouble God about. So they cast about for some
other than the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence, something
which they imagine is more _dignified_, and satisfy themselves at last
by saying that bread here means _spiritual bread_, food for the soul,
the Bread of Life. But the simple and obvious meaning of the phrase is,
after all, the true one. Erasmus, the great sixteenth century Grecian,
thought a reference to physical food would be incongruous “in so
heavenly a prayer.” But far from being incongruous, the prayer becomes
more gracious and beautiful because this petition for bread is in it!
The picture of Christ, which is given us in the Gospels, is all the more
winsome for the story which tells us that He took the little children in
His arms and blessed them; and the character of God becomes all the more
beautiful when we see His love stooping even to caring for our commonest
wants. “Give us bread.” This petition asks God to supply our primary
physical wants. It is not an unworthy petition. It is not too trivial a
request to bring to God; for God is not a God simply for great crises,
supreme emergencies, tremendous catastrophes: He is a God for every day,
and for the common events of every day. Our God is, shall I say, a
Master of detail. He cares not simply for the movements of worlds and
the policies of nations. He notes the fall of a sparrow, and He counts
the very hairs of our head. Nothing is too small for God to notice; the
commonest affairs of the commonest life are matters of concern to Him.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Will you notice!—
(1) That this prayer proclaims the fact of _our dependence_ upon God
_for the very simplest of boons_. “Give us _bread_.” At first glance
we might be tempted to think this was a poor man’s prayer; a prayer for
the man who is face to face with hunger; a prayer for the man who does
not know to-day how he is going to live through to-morrow; a prayer for
the man whose balance at the bank has been exhausted, and whose last
shilling has been spent; a prayer for the man whose cupboard is empty,
and who has nothing in basket or store. “But,” we say, “this is not a
prayer for a rich man; this is not a prayer for a man whose barns and
storehouses are full; this is not a prayer for those who are nursed in
the lap of luxury—the well-to-do, the affluent, the millionaire.” This
is a prayer for Lazarus, not for Dives. But, as a matter of fact, I do
not read that Jesus anywhere says that this is a petition the rich men
need not offer. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, you will find
that some of the prayers, _e.g._, the general thanksgiving and the
prayer for all sorts and conditions of men—contain petitions which may
be inserted or omitted according to the circumstances of the
congregation. Such petitions you will find printed in italics and
enclosed in brackets, and the instruction is given at the side, that
such a petition is only to be used when any members of the congregation
specially desire it. But this petition is not printed in italics. It is
not enclosed in brackets. There is no instruction at the side to say,
“This petition is to be offered by a congregation of the poor, but may
be omitted by a congregation of the rich.” Oh no! there it stands in the
body of the prayer. Before it you will find the command of Christ “When
ye pray, say, Give us this day our daily bread.” There are no exceptions
made. This is a prayer for all men, for the prince as well as the
pauper, for the rich as well as the poor—“Give us this day our daily
bread.”
And it is thus a prayer for all, because all are absolutely _dependent_
upon God. We have nothing which we have not received. Every good and
perfect gift cometh from above from the Father of Light, with whom is no
variableness neither shadow cast by turning. In God we live and move and
have our being. All men depend upon God, and they depend upon him for
everything. For life, for breath, for vigour of mind, for strength of
body, we all depend on Him. And nowhere is this utter dependence of man
upon God more clearly seen than in the matter of DAILY BREAD. The
possession of wealth is apt to blind us to the fact of our _dependence_.
Men who are rich and increased with goods are always in danger of
thinking they have need of nothing. Men whose affairs have prospered,
like the rich fool in the parable, are always prone to think themselves
secure and safe for future years, and say to their souls as he said,
“Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry.” Why, we talk ourselves about a man who has
private property which brings him in a few hundreds a year being
“independent.” Independent of what? Independent of whom? It is not
simply that wealth has a curious trick sometimes of taking to itself
wings and flying away; it is not simply that life is full of instances
of tragic vicissitudes of fortune; it is not simply that we see the
supposed possessor of millions the friend of titled lords one day,
figuring in the Bankruptcy Court the next. Even assuming that riches
when made can be kept, of whom is a man “independent”? Why, though you
had the wealth of the Rothschilds, you would still be as dependent upon
God for mere _bread_ as the meanest pauper in Christchurch workhouse.
For consider for a moment the facts of the case. All wealth in the last
resort _depends upon the produce of the soil_. In these days, when
civilisation is so complicated, this is a fact we are always in danger
of overlooking and forgetting; but it is a fact, nevertheless, all
wealth in the last resort depends upon the produce of the soil—the
simple necessaries of life. Gold is only valuable for what it can
buy—its power of purchasing what is needful for the support of life. But
supposing for one moment that the earth did not yield her increase;
supposing a summer should pass without a crop; supposing there should be
no harvest of corn or fruit; supposing the world suddenly found itself
without food, of what use would your glittering sovereigns be to you? Of
what use would your railway shares and bank shares be to you? Of what
use would your costly diamonds and precious stones be to you? You could
not live upon them! They would be as worthless as the very dust of the
street if there was nothing to buy! Yes, that is the simple truth; if
the world should wake up in the morning to find itself absolutely
without food, the man whose safe is stuffed with share scrip and whose
plate-chest is crammed with gold and precious stones, would be in just
as sad a plight as the poorest beggar in Bournemouth. In the last resort
all men depend upon the produce of the fields; and the produce of the
fields _is the gift of God_. Man cannot make food. He cannot create
bread. With all his knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a harvest.
God must GIVE it. And He gives the harvest _year by year_. Some things,
as Dr. Dods remarks, God gives us once for all—our supply of coal and
the various minerals and metals. But corn, food, and bread He gives us
year by year, as if to emphasise the fact of our dependence upon him. I
have read somewhere that when the month of August comes round the world
is each year within two months of famine. The world’s granaries at that
time contain only eight weeks’ supply of corn. How forcibly such a fact
preaches the truth of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor alike
depend for very life upon the harvest God shall give. “Give us this day
our daily bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer for Job in his
prosperity quite as much as for Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for
Joseph amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite as much as for
Jacob face to face with starvation in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich
and poor, for the man who has his thousands as well as the man who has
not a shilling; for we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God; what
He gives us we gather, and it is only when He opens His hands that we
are filled with good.
Now, let me pass on to speak, in the second place, of:
(2) The _modesty and simplicity_ of the request made in this prayer,
“Give us this day our daily BREAD.” “Bread” that is what is asked
for—the bare necessities of life. As T. T. Lynch quaintly puts it, “This
is a prayer for daily _bread_, not for daily cake.” And as if to
emphasise the modesty of the request, it is not for the necessities of a
lifetime, but for the necessities of _to-day_ that we are to ask. “Give
us _this day_ our daily bread.” The adjective which is translated
“daily” is a word that has caused scholars no end of trouble. It is
found nowhere else in literature, either sacred or profane, and there
have been at least thirty different meanings assigned to it. But only
two interpretations need be considered. One is that which we have in our
familiar version of the prayer, “daily bread”; the other would make the
word to mean “sufficient for my sustenance.” The old Syriac version
translates it “bread for my need.” So that you will notice that
whichever interpretation is adopted “human wants,” as Godet says, “are
here reduced to the minimum.” We are to pray for _bread;_ we are to pray
for only as much of that as will suffice for the day, or meet our
present needs. The spirit of this petition is that of the prayer of Agur
of old, “Feed me with food convenient for me.”
I cannot help feeling that our modern life, with its insatiable appetite
for wealth and its love of luxury, stands rebuked by this prayer. Men in
these days desire not simply enough for their wants; they desire more
than enough—more even than they can use. They struggle and strain that
they may get a superfluity; and the result is poverty at one end of the
social scale, and luxury, extravagance and waste at the other. Now, I am
not prepared to say that to acquire wealth is wrong. But I am prepared
to say this, and in saying it I base myself on our Lord’s own words,
wealth and the luxury it buys are perilous to the best interests of the
soul. Rome was strong and vigorous and happy while her people lived
simply, and her noblest sons thought it no shame to share in humble
manual labour. But when wealth and luxury entered in, when her populace,
despising honest toil, lived on the doles of the Emperor, and her nobles
wasted tens of thousands of pounds upon a single banquet, Rome became
weak, rotten, wretched.
On that hard, Roman world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.