All Christians are familiar with these famous words from Jesus in Matthew 4 as he rejects the temptations of the devil. Jesus had been fasting for 40 days and nights, and with understatement Matthew says, “he was hungry.” So Satan, called “the tempter,” knowing the power Jesus has tells him since he’s so hungry, why doesn’t he just tell the stones to become bread, which he should easily be able to do if he’s the Son of God. Jesus is having none of this.
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 8 where Moses is telling the Israelites they need to “follow every command” Moses is giving them specifically so they “may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath” to their ancestors. He tells them the Lord was testing them in the wilderness to humble them, causing them to hunger and then feeding them with manna, a food nobody had ever seen before. He did that specifically to teach them “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Notice the connection between living on “every word that comes from the mouth of God” to being blessed by God. God’s will for his people is that they “may live and increase” and enter his land of promise. We might metaphorically see this land as God’s kingdom rule Jesus brought to earth and our entering into it as God through his Holy Spirit saves us from our sins. But the key phrase in Moses’ exhortation is “possess the land.” When we possess something we own it, we live it, we experience and enjoy it. The only way to fully live and increase and possess the blessings of the Christian life is living on God’s word. Every word of God specifically to and for us has been inscripturated in what we call our Bibles, which in our day makes it very easy to live on.
As my kids were growing up, and I still do it as they’re adults, I would push this metaphor to help them understand why daily spending time in God’s word is so important. It is no coincidence that Moses and Jesus, God himself, compares his word, the communication that comes from his mouth, as food. Try living without food. It’s not easy. If you do it for too long, you die. Which is why we think about and obsess over food all the time. It’s a requirement for our continuing to exist. Why don’t we do that with God’s word, our Bibles? Simply, we don’t believe that. I want to try to convey here why we should.
The Transformational Power in The Word of God
We often refer to our Bibles as “the word of God,” the phrase itself coming from that word. The whole is a representation of its authority in our lives and over the world, visible and invisible, while each word is its living, practical power in our lives to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. Many of us are familiar with this passage in Hebrews 4:
12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
If we eat God’s word, daily live on his every word, it’s going to reveal our deepest thoughts and attitudes, and bring them into conformity to God’s way of doing life, so we may live long and increase and possess the land. In other words, be blessed. An Old Testament passage that captures this without reference to the word is in Psalm 139:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
I would suggest that praying this without daily meditating upon God’s word will never allow us to truly live in the way Jesus is using the word, specifically quoting Moses and referring back to live long and increase and possess the land. If we truly want our lives blessed, in good times and bad, in joy and suffering, then it can only come in two-way communication with our living and Savior God, Scripture and prayer.
Jesus is also revealing something to us in his encounter with Satan about the spiritual reality Paul writes about in Ephesian 6:
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
We’re not talking about mere psychology here, about learning good ideas and putting them into practice. We’re involved in a mystery, a spiritual reality, one we can’t comprehend, but in which we are involved nonetheless. The dynamic of God’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit within us means as Paul lays out in that passage, we can put on the full armor of God and, as he says, “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” How we change, become different people, is not because of our will or choices or determination or discipline, but because of God. The power of transformation is in his hand, but all of those things are required. It’s fascinating to me as I look back in my life that I finally learned this liberating truth that living the Christian life is ultimately not up to me, but is a supernatural work of God in my soul.
Learning How To Live on Every Word That Comes from the Mouth of God
Back when I was in my 40s I went through a bit of a dry spiritual time, for a lack of a better way to put it. We still went to church every Sunday and I still brought my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I continued to defend the Christian faith every chance I got, including to our children, but had an encounter in 2009 that made me realize I wasn’t very good at it. I look back at this time as the beginning of my realization that I had been trying to live on bread alone, but I had no idea that’s what I was doing. I don’t remember how much or often I was reading my Bible, but I know it wasn’t daily. I am sure I was severely spiritually malnourished. I call it my plausibility insanity phase where Christianity, even though I believed it true like I had most of my life, just didn’t seem as real to me as it once did.
The change to becoming the full on Jesus Freak I am today started when I got a new car in 2009 that had an auxiliary jack. I decided I was going to start studying and learning apologetics again so I would get better at defending the faith. I bought a little MP3 player and started downloading recordings from talks and podcasts, which were just starting to grow at the time, and listened to those in the car or on EarPods when I was taking my daily walk. Somewhere around this time we also started attending a church called Christ Church of Oak Brook (we lived outside of Chicago), and in early 2012 we decided to become members. As a requirement we had to write a short overview of our testimony, and when I read that today I don’t recognize that person. I’ll quote from that letter:
When I first became a Christian my faith was so dynamic and fresh and exciting. After 10 years or so went by it seemed like any relationship goes after a period of time, not as intimate and real. I continued to go to church as our family grew, read the Bible and prayed here and there, but it was nothing like those early days. I suppose every relationship can’t always be novel and exciting, where it moves into a type of maturity that requires love that takes a decision and commitment. God doesn’t always seam “real,” but I can’t help but believe in a living God who is actually there. Creation compels me to continue to believe; I can understand why some people find believing in God and the veracity of the Christian faith hard to accept, but both the evidence for Christianity and the creator God always amaze me, and brings me real joy.
But it would be nice if I could capture more of those early days when God seemed so real, when my faith fired my imagination and drove me to seek God with all my heart.
I did capture those early days and I’m going to share my “secret” with you right here, right now.
Reading the Bible and Praying Every Day Changes Everything
At some point in 2012 I guess I’d gotten tired of this spiritual malaise, the plausibility insanity, and one day made a commitment to God that no matter how I felt, every morning I was going to read the Bible and get on my knees and pray. That, as I look back on it, changed everything; I’ve been doing it every day ever since, if not always praying on my knees. When the writer to the Hebrews says God’s word is “living and active,” he means it! I know it’s just ink on a page (or pixels on a screen), but there is power in them through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. It’s a mystery how we “live on every word that comes from the mouth of God,” but that is the only way we can truly live. The Apostle James tells us how we can make this powerful dynamic a reality in our lives (James 1):
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
First, we are to look intently. It means, to look “in a fully engaged or determined way that shows strength of purpose.” This isn’t mere browsing like you’re looking over the news of the day; it’s serious business. Next, we are to “continue in it,” meaning do it consistently and persistently. Since we don’t eat food every once in a while, we should not eat God’s word only once in a while. That’s the whole point of the metaphor. And lastly, we are to do what it says. If we do this, James is telling us, we’ll know a freedom from the bondage to sin and meaninglessness, and that God will favor us, we’ll be blessed. That means as difficult and challenging as life can be we can have a life full of meaning, hope, and purpose. Life will actually make sense, instead of being a meaningless cosmic joke because all we are is atoms in motion, so much lucky dirt.
At church during the services we’ve been reading a couple questions from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and recently we read question 90 which builds on the exhortations of James:
90. How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?A. That the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.
Have you ever read a story or seen a movie about a lost or hidden treasure that someone will move heaven and earth to find? That treasure is in our Bibles, and for those “who receive it with faith and love,” it will pay temporal and eternal dividends. Going back to the exhortations of Moses to the people of Isarael, if we do what James and the Westminster Divines say, treat our Bibles and God’s word as the precious, life giving resource they are, we will be able to truly “live and increase and enter and possess the land the Lord promised.” This land, this abundant life is what Jesus died to give us, the eternal, forever, spiritual, God-life, on this earth, in this fallen world, even in our fallen bodies living among fallen people.
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