Plain living is most conducive to high thinking. It is easier always to
be a Christian in a peasant’s hut than in Cæsar’s household. For the
Christian life is a simple, spare—may I not say a severe life. Therefore
Christ warned us against riches when he said, “How hardly shall they
that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.” Therefore here He
teaches us to ask for simplest, barest necessaries—“Give us this day our
daily bread.”
Let me go on to notice further that in offering this prayer:—
(3) _We pray for others as well as ourselves._ How does the petition
read? “Give us this day our daily bread.” The prayer is in the plural,
not the singular. It is not “Give ME,” but “Give us” our daily bread.
Christ will not let us forget the fact of brotherhood. He will not let
us forget that we are members of a great family. He will not let us
forget what moderns call “the solidarity of the race.” We must pray _for
others_ as well as ourselves. Christ when He was on earth gave us an
improved edition of the commandments. Moses had ten commandments in his
code. Jesus reduced them to two. And the two commands in the code of
Christ were—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,”
and second, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now this
petition illustrates that second commandment, and embodies its spirit.
We are “loving our neighbours as ourselves” when we say “Give us!” This
is a prayer for our brother’s need, for our brother’s want. We are
remembering him, bearing his burden when we pray, “Give us this day our
daily bread.” When we uttered that prayer this morning we were praying
for the poor and needy everywhere—the poor in Bournemouth, the poor in
vast London yonder, the poor the wide world over. But, do you not see,
you cannot pray for the poor and needy and then turn a deaf ear to their
cry. The genuineness of this prayer must be proved in action. I often
ask God to bless the work of this Church, but I should simply be mocking
God if I left it there and did not at once proceed to put whatever power
and energy I possess into the work for which I have been praying. And so
I should consider I had prayed a sham prayer if, after saying “Give us
this day our daily bread,” I was not ready even at cost of sacrifice to
help to provide bread for those who lack. The gospel of charity and
mutual helpfulness is in the verse. At this blessed season appeals come
to us from all quarters on behalf of the orphan, the widow, the
friendless, and the poor. There are multitudes of our brothers and
sisters in bitter need. We have prayed “Give us this day our daily
bread,” making their cause our own. May not the true answer to that
prayer be, that God will bid us contribute to their need out of our
abundance and plenty? The best proof of the sincerity of our prayer
would be that we should go forth during this week and carry into some
desolate homes a little Christmas gladness and joy.
Yet again notice that in offering this prayer we pray:
(4) For what is _legitimately and honestly our own_. “Give us,” so runs
the petition, “our daily bread.” I do not think it is at all fanciful to
interpret this pronoun OUR, as Dr. Dods does, to mean that the bread we
pray for must be _our own_ and not another’s; that is to say, it must be
fairly earned and honestly come by. “Except a man work,” so says the
Scripture, “neither shall he eat.” The divine law is that the bread a
man eats should be bread won by his own labour. But there are plenty of
people in this world who try to live out of the labour of other people.
They are busy, as the saying is, “taking the bread out of other people’s
mouths.” They do this not simply by deception and theft and robbery—they
do it also by unfair competition, by false dealing, by bogus company
promoting, by stock-exchange gambling, by oppression, injustice and
wrong. There are those among us who devote their talents to the task of
drawing hard-earned money out of the pockets of English people without
giving value in return. They want to live and grow fat on the bread of
others, not on bread of their own earning. But what we have to pray for
is _our own_ bread, bread honestly and fairly earned. That little word
“our” stands there to warn us against all dishonesty, trickery, fraud,
injustice. The man of business must be able to say that every sovereign
of his profits has been gained by fair and honest trading. The artisan
must be able to say that every penny in his week’s wage has been earned
by good and faithful labour. The master who pays his men less than their
due, the man who wastes his master’s time, the shopkeeper who resorts to
sharp practices—in fact, any one who strives to get hold of money
otherwise than by fairly and squarely earning it, are all sinning
against the spirit of this prayer which teaches us to say, “Give us this
day _our_ daily bread.”
Just one word more before I close. I have said that the primary and
essential reference of this petition is to bread, this material bread
that nourishes the life of our bodies. But we need not exclude
altogether from our thoughts that spiritual bread, that Bread of Life,
to which the old Fathers saw reference here. Man does not live by bread
alone. Man is not a mere animal. God breathed into man the breath of
life, and he became a living soul. And the soul needs fit nourishment
even as the body does, and that fit nourishment the soul finds in Jesus
Christ. He is the “Bread of Life.” This petition is also the right
prayer for the hungering soul, “Give us this day our daily bread,” for
our souls need a daily supply. The supply of yesterday will not do for
to-day, any more than yesterday’s dinner will suffice us for to-day’s
work. You cannot live on the memory of past spiritual experiences. You
cannot live on the remembrance of blessed fellowship with your Lord held
long ago. You cannot live on the recollection of mercies received months
or years back. For every day you need a fresh gift of grace. The manna
of old only held good for one day. It had to be gathered fresh every
morning. The manna of one day grew corrupt and worthless before the
next. So it is with the bread of our souls. You must get it fresh every
day. For every day you must get new stores of grace. This is the prayer
for you and me, “Give us this day our daily bread.” GIVE! yes, this also
is a gift. You cannot buy “the Bread of Life.” Its price has never been
quoted in the markets. No money could purchase it. But what no money
could purchase is offered to you and me for nothing. God never sells.
God is a king, He gives. Buy? No, you cannot buy, Can you buy pardon?
Can you buy peace? Can you buy redemption? Can you buy heaven? No, you
cannot buy; but what you cannot buy God will _give_. Listen, “Ho, every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,
come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price.” Listen again, “Everyone that thirsteth let him come and
take of the water of life freely.” Listen yet again, “The gift of God is
eternal life.” Giving! This is royal giving. Hungering souls come to
God—come to God for the Bread of Life. There is in the Father’s house
enough and to spare; why hunger ye any more? Why spend your money for
that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?
Your father is waiting to give you all you need. He is only waiting to
hear you say, “Evermore give us this bread.”
VII
“Forgiveness”
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors.”—MATT. vi. 12.
“And forgive us our sins; for we ourselves also forgive every one
that is indebted to us.”—LUKE xi. 4.
My exposition of the Lord’s Prayer brings me this morning to speak a few
simple words upon the two great fundamental facts of the Gospel—man’s
need of forgiveness, and God’s willingness to bestow it.
The petition immediately preceding this one is the prayer for daily
bread. We are absolutely dependent upon God for our very existence; so
our Lord teaches us to ask God for the food—the material bread that is
to sustain our physical life from day to day. But “man shall not live by
bread alone.” There is another hunger than hunger of the body—there is a
hunger of the soul; and what the soul hungers for is pardon,
forgiveness, and the peace forgiveness always brings. So when we have
prayed for bread we have not come to an end. We have another prayer to
offer. We have a larger request to make. We have a greater boon to
ask—“Give us this day our daily bread, AND forgive us our sins.”
The question has often been asked, “Is life worth living?” By some the
question is answered without reservation in the affirmative, by others
in the negative. For myself, I am not prepared to answer either “Yes” or
“No.” My reply would be, “It all depends.” Life, it seems to me, is not
worth having if it be not lived in the sunshine of God’s smile. Life is
not worth having if God’s face is turned away from us. Life is not worth
having if our sins interpose themselves like a black frowning cloud
between us and the Eternal Light. To make life worth living, life must
be made happy and blessed and peaceful, and before life can be made
happy that barrier of sin must be removed, and we must walk in the light
of God’s countenance. The prayer for bread is a prayer for _life_—for
mere _existence_. But mere existence may be a doubtful boon. To some the
prolongation of life simply means the prolongation of misery. Why should
men pray for the continuance of a life which is radically wretched?
There are multitudes in our world more inclined to pray for swift death
than for long life. They say, with Charles Kingsley, “The sooner it’s
over, the sooner to sleep.” No, it is not mere life, it is not life at
any price, but it is the blessed, the peaceful life we want. So we go on
to pray for a gift greater far than the gift of bread; we go on to pray
for that which alone can make life tolerable, welcome, really worth
living; we go on to pray for mercy, pardon, reconciliation, peace.
“Father, forgive us our sins.”
“Sin” is an ugly word, a word that stands for the ugliest, most terrible
fact in the universe of God. The world was fair and bright till sin
entered it; all its wretchedness is the result of sin. Man was pure and
happy till sin entered; his foulness and broken-heartedness are the
result of sin. The Bible looks at this terrible fact of sin, and fails
to find a single word large enough to describe it in all its many
aspects of horror. It employs various words for this one terrible thing
according as it views it from different standpoints. Looking at it from
the standpoint of the true end of human life, sin is a “missing of the
mark.” The chief end of man is to glorify God. The sinner fails in that.
He misses the mark. Sin from this point of view means _failure_,
_defeat_, _disaster_. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of Law,
the Divine Law written in the nature and on the conscience of man, and
brands sin as _lawlessness_. Every single sin is a _trespass_, a
transgression, and overstepping of the bounds. The Bible looks at sin
from the standpoint of prudence, and stigmatises sin as _folly_—the most
stupendous and senseless of all follies. The sinner is a man who, for a
few moments of delirious excitement, barters away his immortal soul. The
Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of God, and sin then becomes
disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from Matthew, it becomes
“_debt_.”
Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in its effect upon
ourselves. We think of the blight it brings upon human character and the
ruin it makes in human lives. It is terrible to us because it always
brings a curse with it. We fear and dread sin, not always because of its
own intrinsic horror, but because of the penalties it inevitably
entails; so that all too often our very fear of sin has its roots in
selfishness, and springs out of self-love. I want to say to you that we
shall never see sin in its naked horror, we shall never see it in its
awful hatefulness, until we look at it from another standpoint. We sin
not against ourselves alone, but _against_ God. David, in the great
crime of his life, had sinned against Uriah, whose blood he had caused
to be shed, and against Bathsheba, the partner of his sin, and against
his own soul; but when under the faithful speech of Nathan he was
brought to see that awful sin of his in its true light, he lost sight of
himself, and Bathsheba and Uriah; he could only think of the God he had
flouted and outraged and grieved, and this was the agonised cry that
broke from his lips, “Against _Thee_, Thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in _Thy_ sight.” Then comes in the enormity of sin. It is sin
_against God_! Let me illustrate what I mean from our ordinary human
life. Say that a son who has been loved at home and has been the pride
of his mother’s heart, falls into disgrace and is brought up in the
police courts charged with some shameful deed. If such a son has any
sensibility at all, his sin will appear hateful to him, not so much
because it has brought disgrace and loss of liberty to himself, but
because away at his home a mother’s heart is well nigh broken with shame
and grief. That will be the keenest stab of pain such a lad will suffer.
It is the picture of his heart-broken mother that will make him loathe
and despise and hate his sin. It is then we shall see the hatefulness of
sin, when we occupy David’s standpoint, and say, “Against Thee, Thee
only have I sinned.” Even though sin entailed no loss to the sinner,
involved no penalty, brought with it no curse, it would remain still
utterly loathsome and hateful if we only realised that every sin of ours
caused grief and pain to the heart of the eternal God, our loving Father
in heaven.
Now that is the point of view from which sin is regarded in this prayer.
It is _against God_! Matthew uses the word “_debt_.” As Dr. Morison
says, “When we sin there is something in our act for which we become
_liable_ to God. Formerly He had a claim upon us; now He has a claim
_against_ us.” The sins of our past history are included in this word
“debt.” They have not done with us, though we try to persuade ourselves
that we have done with them! Ah! what a relief it would be if we could
only be sure that sin when once committed was over and done with for
ever! But it is not so! These sins of ours enrol themselves in a great
book of accounts; not one is omitted; not one is overlooked; not one is
forgotten. Do we try to persuade ourselves that somehow or other the
sins of the past have been lost sight of? Do we try to flatter ourselves
that they have been buried in the dust of the years? That is a vain
hope. There are no mistakes, no omissions in the eternal account books.
The ink of those books never fades. There every sin is enrolled. There
you see them—a long, black, damning list. That is your DEBT. Sins of
commission—the evil words we have spoken, the evil deeds we have done,
they are all there. Sins of _omission_ are there as well. In fact, I
fancy that it is to sins of this class that the word “debt” specially
points. “Debt” is something we OWE. In relation to God it is something
we owed to Him and failed to pay. So it stands here for the many things
we ought to have done, which we have left undone.
There are some of us who perhaps flatter ourselves that we have never
committed any flagrant sin. We are not blasphemers; we are not
drunkards; we are not profligates; we have never committed theft or
adultery or murder; we have never been guilty of any crime that has
brought us to public shame; and on the strength of that we are half
inclined to think that the name “sinner” is not applicable to us. But
notice how this word “debt” lays hold of even the most respectable of
us. There are certain things we _owe_ to God. We owe Him reverence. Have
we given it to Him? We owe Him obedience. Have we given it to Him? We
owe Him service. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him our heart’s best
love. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him the first place in our
thoughts and affections. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him complete
self-surrender. Have we given it to Him? Ask yourselves these questions.
Probe your hearts with them. Face them frankly and honestly. Have you
given God perfect obedience, the best love of your hearts, the first
place in your lives? Oh, how such questions humble us! How they cover us
with shame and confusion! Looking back over my own life, I can see how
my years have been marred and disfigured by my failure to give to God
what He has a right to expect. I can see that I have not reverenced Him
as I ought; that I have not obeyed Him as I ought; that I have not
placed Him first, as I ought. When I begin to ask myself if I have done
what God expects from me, my pride all disappears, my heart is pierced
as with sharp swords, my self-satisfaction is torn to shreds, and I am
humbled to the dust; for as I look back every day tells its tale of
things left undone which I ought to have done, and these sins of
omission rise up before me—a mountain load of debt which I owe to God.
DEBT! what a terrible word that is to every true and honest man! There
are multitudes who would prefer to bear privation and poverty rather
than run into debt. The workhouse is bad enough, but better the
workhouse than “debt.” But will you suffer me to say that “debtors” we
all of us are? “We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
We have come short—we have given God less than His due; He has a claim
against us; we are “in debt” to Him. And the debt is one that cannot be
expressed in the figures and coinage of earth. It is a debt that money
can never pay. I have heard sometimes of men who, when they have found
themselves in financial difficulties, have called their creditors
together, and have said to them, “If you will but give me time, I will
pay you all in full”; and from time to time we read in our newspapers of
honourable men discharging with interest debts they had incurred years
before. Can we do something like that with this debt we owe to God? Can
we work it off in the days and years that are to come? I cannot hold out
to you any hope of doing that. Work as hard as you like to please God
to-day, when the day is done, what will you have to say? Just this, “We
have been unprofitable servants—we have only done what we ought.” Only
what we ought—there is no margin, nothing over, which you can apply to
the reduction of the old debt. The arrears of obligation are untouched.
May I venture to say that, before night comes, by some sin or other, you
will have added to the debt? It would be as easy to bale the ocean dry
as to hope by your own efforts to pay this debt. It would be as
easy—nay, it would be infinitely easier—to count the sands of the
seashore than to remove this mountain load of obligation. Try your best,
and you will fail as Paul failed, as Luther failed. Spite of your best
efforts the debt—that crushing debt—goes on increasing. Well, what can
you do? _You_ can do nothing! _Sin_ past and present, _sin_ of
commission and omission, _sin_—that long, black, damning record that
stands against your name in the eternal account book—what can you do
with it? How can you remove it? How can you blot it out? How can you
bury it out of sight and mind? How can you erase out of the book that
fatal story? You say you must have something done, or that debt will
strangle you. What can you do to be delivered from this body of death?
My brother, you can do nothing; you cannot pay the debt, you cannot blot
out the sin, you cannot erase the record from the book. Do your best,
and at the end you will be “in debt.” But you say, “Can nothing be done?
Am I, then, doomed to ruin and to death? Is there no way of paying this
debt?” Here is the gospel in a nutshell. Here is the good news, old as
the centuries, but new in your ears and mine to-day. Something _can_ be
done! _You_ can do nothing, _I_ can do nothing, but God, the God against
whom we have sinned, He can do everything. He can remove that mountain
load of debt. He can blot out that fatal record in the book. He can
erase every entry. He can bury our sins out of sight for ever. We can
never pay that overwhelming debt; but HE, He can give us our account
back with “Settled” written at the bottom of it. Oh yes, here is the
Gospel: Sin in man, but forgiveness in God; debt in man, but mercy in
God. “Where sin doth abound there grace doth much more abound.”
Listen, as to what God will do with your sins and mine! He will cancel
the debt! He will blot out the handwriting that was against us and put
it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross of Christ! He will erase that
fatal record in the book! He will remember our sins against us no more.
As far as the east is from the west, so far will He remove our
transgressions from us. Listen to His invitation and His gracious
promise, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though
your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be
red like crimson they shall be as wool.” This is the Gospel—this is the
good news. There is something greater, stronger even than the sin of
man, and that is the grace of God. I can see a limit to human sin. I can
see no limit to the Divine mercy.
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to pardon all my sin.
Yes, there is mercy with God! There is forgiveness with Him! The wonder
of the world still is that the God against whom we have sinned is the
One who will take our sin away.
All souls that were, were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.
That remedy was the Cross of Christ. It is He, the sinless Jesus, who
has cancelled the debt. “He died for us according to the Scriptures.” It
is His pierced hand that shall blot out the record of our sins. It is in
His life-blood that we are to be washed free from every stain. It is at
the foot of His Cross our sins are to be buried. Christ the sinless one
is the Lamb of God. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,
and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is the
Gospel. There is a debt against us we can never hope to pay. But God for
Christ’s sake will cancel it. There are sins which crush us with their
weight and burden, but God for Christ’s sake will take them all away.
There are stains upon us—black and deep and foul; but the blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. Just as the snow descends from
heaven and hides all the grime and filth of earth underneath its mantle
until the whole surface is one pure glistening white, so God will let
His mercy cover us; He will clothe us in righteousness until every stain
is covered and we stand forth whiter than snow. God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their
trespasses. The Cross proclaims that there is forgiveness with God. And
I want to preach the free glad Gospel of the Cross to you this morning.
I want to say to you sin-stricken, perishing, dying men and women, there
is forgiveness with God. There is nothing which His mercy cannot do.
There is no sin too great, no guilt too black for Him to pardon. A poor
criminal in Scotland, as he went forth to his place of execution kept
crying out, “He is a great Forgiver. He is a great Forgiver.” Yes, He is
a great Forgiver! Let us men and women, ruined and undone by sin, praise
God, for He is a great Forgiver. His tender mercy is ever upon us. In
God’s mercy is our hope. And the Cross is the pledge of pardon which
stoops to the lowest and most vile. The Cross, the Cross—the bitter,
shameful Cross; the glorious, radiant Cross; our most jubilant songs
arise from the Cross—
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
His flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.