Let’s begin this morning with a familiar Old Testament reference. After Israel crossed the Red Sea, but before they came to Mount Sinai, they began complaining about their leaders and their lack of tasty food and abundant water. “Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.” “And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
The Lord’s daily provision of manna followed Israel from the wilderness of Sin to Sinai, then up to the borders of Canaan and out into the wilderness of Arabia. For forty years, six days a week, Israel found, collected and ate this miraculous food. It was wilderness food, miraculous food, perfect food, graciously provided by the munificence of God. And then fifteen hundred years later “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” Perhaps it is nothing but a curious coincidence – but very likely wherever Christ was when this temptation began, Israel had once been close to the same place, picking up manna in order to feed their hungry families. That is not the only thing which ties these two events together.
So the body of our Lord Jesus was probably very, very hungry when Satan approached Him. The wicked one reminded Him of His need and pointed out an easy solution. “If thou be the Son of God (and we both know that you are) command that these stones be made bread.” Do you suppose that a millennium and a half earlier, there had actually been manna resting on these very same stones? It’s not important, but that is a possibility.
Christ’s reply has become famous. If you don’t have it memorized, you probably could with very little trouble – and you should. “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” What was it that Jesus said to Satan, and what should it mean to us?
Perhaps another Biblical illustration might help us to grasp this. Think about the patriarch Job. Was Job a better man at the beginning of the Book of Job or the end of the book? Without a doubt as the first scenes open, Job is not only a righteous man through the grace of God, but an honorable, moral, and outwardly righteous man in everyone’s eyes. “The LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” The same Devil who is attacking Christ here in our scripture, was primed to attack godly Job about 2,000 years earlier. And Jehovah permitted Satan to do his absolute worst toward the man. He lost everything, except his life and the dung hill upon which he sat. He lost his wife and family, his wealth and his health, his friends – and very nearly his faith. But to make a long illustration short, by the end of the book, he was far better off than he was at the beginning. Because his soul was more important than his body and the things that he had gathered around himself. And the same is true of us as well.
We could make a point that Job’s trials were comparable to Jesus’ forty-days and nights of fasting. But as his disasters reached their lowest point, the Lord stepped in and revealed himself. “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” With this fresh perspective upon his Saviour, God’s physical blessings on Job were redoubled. “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days.”
One of the lessons to be learned from studying Job is that through the loss of his every physical joy, he was blessed spiritually beyond his wildest dreams, and eventually the physical things were restored. We could very well make the same kind of application from what the Lord Jesus was saying. But that was not His intent. Christ was talking about more mundane things, and yet even the mundane in this case is really important.
Just as Jesus was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil, Israel was deliberately humbled and permitted to go hungry to make them understand that Jehovah is God. To say that Jehovah is God, is to say that there is nothing that He cannot do – except sin. If God had chosen to fill the bellies of Israel for forty years without ever giving them anything to eat – filling their mouths – it would have been so. If the Lord had given them chicken or quail to eat every night, it would not have been a problem to Him. If He had decided to simply skip those forty years, and in the blink of an eye He took Israel from Passover Day 1491 to Passover Day 1451 BC, it wouldn’t have been any less trouble to the Almighty than to make a cloud pass from before the sun. God is not limited in any way – by adversaries, or by difficulties, or by apparent impossibilities.
There are several Greek words translated “word” in the Word of God. “By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The most well-known, the most blessed, and in some ways the most important of those words is “logos.” The Lord Jesus is called the “logos” of God – He is the living word. John 1 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” If this was the word that Matthew used, then we might be more inclined to spiritualize what Jesus said. But that was not the word he used.
“It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every utterance, speech, word and command that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” When Jehovah spoke and said that manna would feed the millions of Israel for forty years, that was the way that it was. Creation cannot argue against the Creator, saying that this, or that, is impossible. Nothing is impossible with God. And if the Holy Spirit should tell Christ Jesus to spend a second forty days with no food at all, then as far as Christ was concerned that was the way that it would be, and there would be no problem.
So the Lord Jesus was telling Satan to forget that idea of making stones into bread, because the Word of God had not given Him that permission. In other words God’s will, God’s command, God’s word is more important than bread. Here was part of the problem with which Job was struggling so many years earlier. Lurking under his God-given salvation, and hiding behind his undeniable godly character, was a hint of pride and a touch of self-importance. While his friends were accusing him of hidden sin, which he knew was not true, he couldn’t understand how God could withhold his blessing, since he was such a good guy.
And even though Satan thought that he was in control of Job’s life – at least 98% of it – he was mistaken. Jehovah had spoken and given the Devil permission to strip away everything from Job – except his life. There were many reasons for giving Satan that word – that permission. For example, it was to show us the intrinsic impotence of Satan. The Devil tried his best to destroy God’s saint, but the Lord proved that to be impossible. What a great lesson there is in that – Satan’s victory over us is not a forgone conclusion. Eventually God demonstrated His omnipotence, by restoring everything to poor Job. God can do anything He chooses. A great many of the wonderful characteristics and attributes of God were magnified before Job. And then there are the millions of saints have been strengthened in their trials by watching and listening to this momentous Old Testament battle.
The Lord’s will, the Lord’s word, the Lord’s command, are far more important than our earthly lives. Christ had the power, but He didn’t have the permission to make those stones into bread. You and I have even less power, but we often seem to think that we have more permission to alter the command of God. Foolish thought.
But Christ Jesus’ reply was a declaration of His confidence in His Father and His “word.” I think that it is kind of hard to talk about our Saviour’s faith – as if He was only one of us. Jesus’ faith in His Father, was based on an eternal relationship which was so close and incomprehensible that comparison to anything which we might possess is impossible. And yet, there was still a kind of faith that Jesus had in God. Whether we can grasp that or not, the lesson to us is still there.
Christ was telling the Devil to leave Him alone, because He was going to trust God, and not His own abilities. How often are we faced with choices similar to this? How many times in the past have we chosen to follow our own ideas rather than submitting to the Lord? There have been those occasions when our lies would solve some problem. But to lie would be to disobey the will of God, and it would rob us of the opportunity to trust the Lord to supply the solution. Have you ever found a wallet full of money, but with the owner’s name and phone number in it? I have, and the tempter suggested that I keep the cash. But that would have been theft. “Man shall not live by cash alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Have you ever met someone in desperate need, but to help them would temporarily hurt or weaken yourself? Have you ever been tempted to cheat on something? Satan was enticing the Saviour to cheat on the will of God.
And then there is the greatest attempted cheat of them all. Just about everyone thinks that he is worthy of citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Just about everyone thinks that he is good enough for eternity in Heaven and escape from judgment. We think that none of us are sufficiently wicked to deserve eternity in the Lake of Fire. And for 6,000 years now Satan’s demons have been whispering into people’s hearts – “Hey, you are the son or daughter of a good Christian mother, you are going to be just fine.” Or he has been saying, “you can exchange your church attendance for citizenship papers.” “Command that these tithes and offerings become heavenly manna.” Satan’s ambassadors have been telling people that wine and wafers can be miraculously changed into the blood of Christ – like stones into bread. Satan has been highly successful in convincing people that the water of baptism can be changed into something strong enough to wash away sin. But the Holy Spirit, along with the Lord Jesus remind us, “It is written, Man shall not live by such things as these, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
God’s Word says that everyone of us are hopelessly and desperate wicked and sinful. God has declared that He alone can cleanse us from that sin. He has said that when we think that anything coming from us can turn sinners from dead stones and children of the Devil into children of God, then we have been listening to Satan.
There is only one solution for man’s sin – it is the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. A sacrifice was needed – required by God – don’t argue the point, because it is a Biblically universal doctrine. Only with the blood of God’s ordained sacrifice, can sinners like us be cleansed of our sin. And the sacrifice that I am talking about is what the sinless Son of God shed on the cross of Calvary. Repent before God – recognize and repent of your sin before God. And put your trust in what Christ did in His death, as the only remedy for your sin. Believe that Jesus died specifically for you and your need. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”