Consumed:Give

 July 7 2024

Acts 2:44-47

One of the many things that catches people off guard about the church is that they never have stopped to consider that the early church began and grew without any kind of written Bible. I mean, we are so used to somehow believing that their just can’t be a church without first having a Bible in our hands. Yet as we have looked at what happened right there when the church began, we see that the sudden astonishing sprouting up of the church happened without any printed material, no Bibles, no tracts with the Roman road on them, nothing of the sort. In fact, it would be hundreds of years before there was anything resembling the Bible’s we hold in our hands. No, what the church had from the beginning was a prayer. You might say that the church has always had a prayer. This is at least what Luke is trying to get us to understand. Luke wants us to be sure that we know that the promise that Jesus made concerning the Lord’s Prayer, that this prayer will be made real to us by the coming of the Holy Spirit, this is what happened on Pentecost. This promise, found in the eleventh chapter of Luke, comes to life here in the second chapter of Acts. The only way to make sense of all the strange activity that happened there on Pentecost is by knowing that everything that is happening is God’s answering the fervent prayer of those disciples gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem. The prayer they prayed is what we know as the Lord’s Prayer which in Lukes account is pared down to its bare essentials. For Luke, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples is simply, “Father, may your name be holy, may your reign come. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts. And we will forgive the debts of others. And do not bring us to hard testing.” A mere few words yet they are words that bring down to us the power from on high that we know as the Holy Spirit. 

So, those first disciples, after being taught by the risen Jesus for forty days, were eager to know the Father as Jesus had spoke of him. They too wanted to love him and to be in a living relationship with him. The single burning desire of those gathered in that upper room before Pentecost was the cry for their Father. They desired that their Father’s name be holy, that his reign come. As this prayer is cried out, what becomes obvious is that each petition builds upon the other. Through the Spirit we are adopted into the Family of God, able at last to say, Abba, Father. The name of our Father is vindicated as being holy when we rise into the peace of Christ, this new life in resurrection power given to us at our baptism. In the power of the Spirit we are led into the freedom found in the truth and light of the body of Christ, the fellowship of the family, brothers and sisters crying out to God our Father.

So, with all of that being said, we at last are ready to discover how the Holy Spirit fulfills the petition of the Lord’s Prayer which states, “Give us this day us the fitting substance of bread”. Yes, this sounds very different than what we are used to praying yet this is the very best way to understand the intentions of Jesus when he taught this prayer. 

         You see, just as we may never have considered that the early church was gathering of people who had no Bibles, so too we do not often consider just what it is that we are praying for when we pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” At this point you might push back a little because does it not seem obvious that in this petition that we are just praying for our daily bread, you know, the things necessary for life? Yet, what has not been considered is that this daily bread, what we call our daily provisions, is this something we actually need to pray for? The reason I say what might sound like a strange question, is that Jesus taught that we can expect our Heavenly Father to give us everything we need even before we even ask for it. This is what Jesus says in the sixth chapter of Matthew, where speaking about all of our anxiety about our daily provisions, Jesus assures us that all of the things we need, the food we will eat, the drink that will quench our thirst, the clothes we wear, all of these concerns Jesus tells us are needs that our Heavenly Father already knows about. And isn’t  this what we should expect from this one we call our Heavenly Father? I mean, that’s just the way its supposed to work when you are a child in a nice, normal family. I mean, I never remember having to ask for something to eat, or for clothes to wear. I could expect that my parents would provide the necessities without my having to beg for them. So if that is the way it is in our earthly families why should it not even be even more so in God’s heavenly family. So, perhaps, if we can count on our Heavenly Father to provide all we need without our even having to ask for it, then maybe this petition in the Lord’s Prayer just might be asking for something far different then we think. 

         Perhaps we should understand this petition, “Give us this day our daily bread”, as being a sort of statement of faith whereby we are stating that we believe that God will be the sustainer of our life, today and always. Yet we have already vindicated God’s name as holy, so we abide in the peace we have in the resurrection of Christ. If our eternity is secure then we have to ask ourselves just why should we have any uncertainty about the present? You see, if the prayer builds one petition upon another then what also happens is that each previous petition proves as a test as to whether our thoughts on the following petitions are true or not. So far all we know is that what is normally assumed about what we pray when we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”, does not seem to be what Jesus had in mind when he taught his disciples so long ago.

         Maybe  the best way to discover just what this petition is all about is to look at how the Holy Spirit fulfilled this petition. There is no doubt that Luke wants us to see for ourselves how the Holy Spirit has taken this petition and done something far more than one could ask or imagine.  Luke uses this phrase, “day by day”, that is used in the Lord’s Prayer to mark off this last section of the second chapter of Acts.  Luke is saying this, “day by day”, found here at the end of Acts 2 is to be compared to the, “day by day”, found in his Lord’s Prayer which is very interesting. Now above this section of the second chapter of Acts that is marked off by this phrase, “day by day”, is one of couple of sentences that causes us with our modern sensibilities to squirm because it speaks of being together, having all things together, of selling all of one’s possessions and belongings, and then giving to everyone as anyone had need. But what Luke wants us to understand is that this common life is directly connected to these, “day by day”, activities of those who who had been consumed by the holy fire. It was these day by day activities, this was the Spirit moving among the early church, answering their cry to, “Give us…”

         As we look at how the Holy Spirit led those early believers, we see that he first led them to attend the Temple together. The Temple of course, was the place of worship, yet further, the Temple was a place of sacrifice because the worship of God was only possible through the blood, the life standing in place of the sinful self. It is quite understandable then that Luke also mentions that the Holy Spirit led these new converts to continue to be about the breaking of bread. They were to remember Jesus, how Jesus was the bread of life who was given for the life of the world. They were to also remember how his blood was poured out upon the mercy seat to be the way home to the Father. As they gathered around their tables for communion they also shared their food, doing so as Luke tells us, with exceeding exuberance. In the Greek, it is the kind of joy that makes you jump and shout but I’m unsure how you do that when you eat, but nonetheless, fun was had by all. Then Luke uses a word only found here and nowhere else, a word which literally means, without stones. Now Luke uses this word in conjunction with hearts so anyone who knows their Old Testament knows where Luke is going with all of this. Back we go to the thirty-six chapter of Ezekiel , and as we read, further past the part where God says he will vindicate his name, there we find the promise God makes with his people, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh…”. Luke was saying that here were those people Ezekiel had spoke of, the very people of God who had undergone this holy surgery, their hearts of stone had been taken out, gone for good, now replaced with a hearts that pulsated in the power of the Spirit, able to love with a new love. Now all their hearts could do was to praise God and give grace to all people. Is it any wonder that the Lord added day by day, the number who were being saved?

         So after we read Luke’s account in this second chapter of Acts it is clear that this petition we normally know as being, “Give us this day our daily bread”, is not fulfilled by the Holy Spirit in any way that we would have considered. What actually helps us to understand how the Spirit fulfills this petition is to look again at what Jesus really said, words that are difficult to make sense of yet this understanding is very important us in our search for what we are praying for. The words Jesus spoke were more like this:, “Give us this day, us the fitting substance of bread”. After you say it one time you see why they stuck with “daily”! But you have to wonder why Jesus chose such odd phrasing when he taught his prayer? Perhaps what might help us to understand this petition better is to consider just what it is that we are we asking our Father to give to us? What if we were to put put the emphasis on us instead of bread when we prayed this petition? What if we asked our Heavenly Father to give, us, this day, that our desire is for us to be something akin to the right amount of bread, something that could be for someone else just what they need for life? You see, when we know that each petition builds upon each other then as we have entered into a love relationship with our Heavenly Father and have experienced the wonderful peace of Christ, the Son of God, and we find a freedom that is ours in the Spirit of truth, what we may not have realized is that we have been caught up in the very life of God-Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This life of God is quite simply a life of giving. The Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son. The Father gives the Spirit through the Son. And as we read in the ninth chapter of Hebrews, it was through the eternal Spirit that Christ offered himself without blemish to God, the Father. This offering of God is what is proclaimed through the offerings of the Temple and through the elements of communion where Jesus offered up his very self, his very body offered up, his very blood poured out, because this is his who he is, the God who simply must give. This giving of our God is what stokes our passion. We rejoice that he gave his Son for us. We are amazed at the Spirit that is given upon us. Yet we want more than for God to give to us. We desire passionately to become like this God, givers in our own right, givers who give and give no thought about how how they give, or how much they give, just giving with utter abandon just like God. We know that God alone is worthy to give ourselves completely to because he alone found us to be worthy to give himself completely to, to give all of himself, for us. So, yes, we pray, God, come and be our consuming passion; be for us our one desire, so we might be for you, as Paul puts it, a living sacrifice, because as he explains this is just the only logical worship in light of the great mercies of God.

         You see, God has always wanted to bring people to this place, this place where the people who searched for life might find it. The poor who cry out to God for help are to have their prayer answered by those who pray the prayer that their Lord has taught them. These are the ones who ask their Heavenly Father to give them to be the fitting substance, the exact provision for what is needed for the next person in need, to be for the next person what they consider to be their, “bread”. Day by Day, as we enter into what Jesus has done for us, as we remember how his body was broken, for us, how his blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins of the many, we are to be aware of this new life that we have now entered, the very life of God which is marked by sacrificial giving. As the bread, which represents the body of Christ, is lifted from the Lord’s table, so too we too ask the Lord to take hold of us, to lift us up out of this world. Jesus then takes and blesses the bread, and we remember that in our relationship with the Father we are blessed with life in his eternal kingdom. Jesus then takes the loaf and he breaks it, and so too our wills must be broken for only in this way can we, like the bread, be given in the manner of Jesus, for the life of the world.  This is the logical worship, this offering of ourselves, the very reason we inhabit the Father’s house with praise and our hearts pulsate with life and love. No, longer are we able to stand by unmoved by the plight of the lost, and lonely, the hurting and the hungry. As the Father gave Jesus, we cry, “Father, give me!” Give us Father, to be just what is needed right now to bring light and life, wholeness and healing in the world right where we are at!” I really believe that this is what those folks were praying as the sun was setting that fateful Pentecost day. And I believe that God most assuredly, was answering that prayer. I mean, doesn’t it sound like God was doing his own summer of love thing there in downtown Jerusalem? Sure it does! But Luke wants us to be absolutely certain that this selling all that we have and holding all things in common only happens with a lot of prayer, a lot of worship, a lot of trips to the Lords Table, a lot of intense Christian fellowship, day by day. Yes, it can happen because it did happen but it only happened because the early church became consumed in their passion for what had been promised to them in the Lord’s Prayer. So, yes, we can keep praying this petition like we have always prayed it, asking to be given bread but what if we instead asked our Heavenly Father to give us, this very day, to be for someone else just what they needed today to get through life? Father, yes, please, give us, today! Amen!