serving self
And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ” (4:3–4)
The devil’s first approach to Jesus had also been his first approach to Eve—to cast doubt on God’s Word. He asked Eve, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1), causing her to question God’s command. His first word to Jesus was, If you are the Son of God—the Greek conditional phrase assumes that Jesus is indeed the divine Son whom the Father had just proclaimed Him to be at His baptism (3:17). Before he gave the direct temptation, Satan gave this one simply to set up the rest. Satan was hoping to persuade Jesus to demonstrate His power to verify that it was real. That would mean violating God’s plan that He set that power aside in humiliation and use it only when the Father willed. Satan wanted Jesus to disobey God. Affirming His deity and rights as the Son of God would have been to act independently of God.
The first direct temptation in the wilderness was for Jesus to act against God’s plan and to command that these stones become bread. This temptation involved a great deal more than Jesus’ satisfying His hunger. After forty days and nights of fasting, He certainly was hungry and thirsty, and He had the right to have something to eat and drink. The most obvious part of the temptation was for Jesus to fulfill His legitimate physical needs by miraculous means. But the deeper temptation was Satan’s appeal to Jesus’ supposed rights as the Son of God. “Why,” Satan seemed to say, “should you starve in the wilderness if you are really God’s Son? How could the Father allow His Son to go hungry, when He even provided manna for the rebellious children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai? And had not Isaiah written of the righteous that ‘His bread will be given him; his water will be sure’ ” (Isa. 33:16)? You are a man, and you need food to survive. If God had let His people die in the wilderness, how could His plan of redemption have been fulfilled? If He lets you die in this wilderness, how can you fulfill your divine mission on His behalf?
The purpose of the temptation was not simply for Jesus to satisfy His physical hunger, but to suggest that His being hungry was incompatible with His being the Son of God. He was being tempted to doubt the Father’s Word, the Father’s love, and the Father’s provision. He had every right, Satan suggested, to use His own divine powers to supply what the Father had not. The Son of God certainly was too important and dignified to have to endure such hardship and discomfort. He had been born in a stable, had to flee to Egypt for His life, spent thirty years in an obscure family in a obscure village in Galilee, and forty days and nights unattended, unrecognized, and unpitied in the wilderness. Surely that was more than enough ignominy to allow Him to identify with mankind. But now that the Father Himself had publicly declared Him to be His Son, it was time for Jesus to use some of His divine authority for His own personal benefit.
This first temptation in the wilderness implied essentially the same mocking taunt that the crowds made at the crucifixion: “If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matt. 27:40; cf. w. 42–43). It also included the wicked attempt to cause the Second Adam to fail where the first Adam had failed—in relation to food. Satan wanted Christ to fail because of bread just as Adam had failed because of fruit. Above all, however, he wanted to solicit the Son’s rebellion against the Father.
But Jesus had come in His incarnation to do the Father’s will and only the Father’s will; indeed His will and the Father’s were exactly the same (John 5:30; cf. 10:30; Heb. 10:9). He testified, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work” (John 4:34), and on another occasion, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38). In the Garden of Gethsemane, just before His betrayal and arrest, He said, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” and a short while later, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42).
It was that absolute trust and submission that Satan sought to shatter. To have succeeded would have put an irreparable rift in the Trinity. They would no longer have been Three in One, no longer have been of one mind and purpose. In his incalculable pride and wickedness, Satan tried to fracture the very nature of God Himself.
But Jesus, in His incalculable humility and righteousness, answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ” All three of Jesus’ responses to the devil were begun with an appeal to God’s Word: It is written. Even more than David, He could say, “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee” (Ps. 119:11). In quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 to Satan, Jesus declared that we are better off to obey and depend on God, waiting on His provision, than to grab satisfaction for ourselves when and as we think we need it. Moses had originally said those words to Israel as he recounted to her the great love and blessing God had bestowed on her during her own wilderness experience (Deut. 8:1–18).
God’s people are never justified in complaining and worrying about their needs. If we live by faith in Him and in obedience to His Word, we will never lack anything we really need. “And my God shall supply all your needs,” Paul assures us, “according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). Jesus tells us that God knows what we need even before we ask Him (Matt. 6:8). Later in the same discourse He says, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you” (6:33). We are always better off to obey God and to trust in His gracious sustenance than to impatiently and selfishly provide for ourselves in ways that disobey, or in any way compromise, His Word. Underlying our readiness to justify much of what we do is the common but self-centered and carnal notion that, as God’s children, we deserve the earthly best and that it is inappropriate and even unspiritual to be satisfied with anything less. Grabbing or demanding what we think we deserve may be an act of rebellion against sovereign God.
To try to circumvent or modify God’s revealed will not only is unfaithful and fleshly but is based on the false assumption that our physical well-being is our most crucial need, without which we cannot exist. Jesus contradicts that assumption, which is so natural to fallen man. Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. “It is not food,” Jesus says, “that is the most necessary part of life. The creative, energizing, and sustaining power of God is the only real source of man’s existence.”
James reminds us that we do not know what we will be able to do in the future, or even if we will have a future in this life. Every person is “just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away,” he says. When planning what we want to do, we “ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that’ ” (James 4:14–15). Like Jesus, the purposes and intentions of our lives should only be the purposes and intentions of our heavenly Father. The guiding principle of His life should be the guiding principle of ours. The central motive of our lives should be to please God and to trust Him to supply everything we need—to follow without reservation Jesus’ command to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” and to believe without reservation that He will provide everything we need (Matt. 6:33). Before He gave that command, Jesus had asked, “Why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith?” (6:28–30).
We can never please God, or even serve our own best interests, by complaining about and demanding what we do not have, or by violating or ignoring His will in order to get something we want. If we persist in disobeying God He may severely discipline us, or even take us off the scene, as John warns in his first letter (1 John 5:16). Ananias and Sapphira lost their lives because they lied to the Holy Spirit by telling the apostles they had received less than they actually did from the sale of some property (Acts 5:1–11). Certain members of the Corinthian church became weak and sick, and several even died, because they profaned the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:27–30).
Even when our disobedience does not reach such extremes, we always suffer when we willfully bypass God’s Word. Following our Lord’s example in the wilderness, no matter how urgent and important a need seems to be, we are to wait for our heavenly Father’s provision, knowing that expedience and self-effort cannot bring good for ourselves, and certainly not glory to God.[1]
4 Jesus’ first reply consists solely of a quotation from LXX Deut 8:3—no further argument is needed. As the first part of Deut 8:3 explains, Israel’s hunger had been a part of the educative process designed by God; it was only after they had experienced hunger that they were fed, in God’s good time not at their own convenience. This was to teach them that there are more important things in life (and especially in the life of God’s people) than material provision. The contrast between “bread” and “every word that comes from the mouth of God” is of course paradoxical: God’s word does not fill the stomach. But it is a question of priority (which Jesus will express in another form in 6:24–33). Obedience to God’s will takes priority over self-gratification, even over apparently essential provision of food. God will provide the food when he is ready—as indeed he will in this case, see v. 11. Jesus’ use of this OT text shows that he understood his experience of hunger as God’s will for him at the time, and therefore not to be evaded by a self-indulgent use of his undoubted power as the Son of God. To do that would be to call in question God’s priorities, and to set himself at odds with his Father’s plan. As God’s Son, Jesus must trustingly and obediently comply with his Father’s purpose (as he has just done at the Jordan, 3:15).
Neither in the devil’s suggestion in v. 3 nor in Jesus’ reply is there any hint of the miraculous provision of bread for others, still less of impressing the crowds by a display of power. In due course Jesus will indeed miraculously provide bread for hungry crowds (14:13–21; 15:32–39), but here there is no crowd, just Jesus alone with the tempter and God. It is Jesus’ filial trust that is under examination, not his messianic agenda.[2]
Ver. 4. It is written.—
The infallible book:—The uses to which it may be put. Christ used it:—1. To defend His Sonship; 2. To defeat temptation; 3. As a direction to His way; 4. For maintaining His own Spirit. How to handle the word:—1. With deepest reverence. 2. Have it always ready. 3. Understand its meaning. 4. Learn to appropriate Scripture to yourself. 5. Stand by the Scriptures, whatever they may cost you. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The Bible a moral defence.—We read that Oliver Cromwell had in his army one regiment—a fine, strong regiment—called “The Ironsides.” They were very religious men. And it was quite the custom for almost every soldier to carry his Bible to battle with him. They used to carry their Bible under their dress; and more than once, in a battle, the soldier would have been shot through the heart but for his Bible. The bullet went through his Bible, or it would have gone through his heart. The Bible saved the heart! (J. Vaughan, M.A.)
The Bible a victorious power:—This is the sickle which cuts down all the tares which Satan sows among the good wheat; this is the ark of God before which all the idols of the Philistines fall flat to the ground; this is the trumpet of Joshua whose noise overturneth the walls of Jericho. (Hacket.) Bread alone.—
The bread of life:—
I. There is that condition of being in which man lives by bread. 1. It represents man as utterly subservient to material necessities. The springs of man’s noblest life are planted in necessity. How beautiful is this requisition for labour! A consequence of this law of effort is mutual service. An awful thing when man is reduced to a mere machine for getting bread. The wickedness of systems which tend to intensify such a condition. Such a man lives for something outside himself—for some interest which bread represents. Living by bread alone he estimates everything by the bread standard.
II. Let me urge upon you the higher life. “Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” “I have bread to eat that ye know not of.” 1. Every good man does not live by bread alone, but by that God from whom it comes. 2. He realizes that he is not a mere instrument, but an end in himself. 3. He has a different standard of valuation from that of the mere bread standard. He thinks of utilities in a larger and nobler sense than other men. He values the true in the light of its truth, and not of its profit. 4. How we live upon traditions, upon the mere say-so of other people, the current of popular conviction, instead of coming and taking the word out of the mouth of God!
III. The point of the most fearful temptation is when men are tempted to sacrifice the interests of the higher life to the claims of the lower. You may lose fortune but gain goodness; you are made one with Christ. (E. H. Chaplin.)
Literally true that man does not live by bread alone:—Do we think of the bread alone when it is placed on our tables? Are we not reminded from whence it comes—what wondrous mysteries have conspired to bring it there—the fair sunlight that shone upon the soil—the heavenly dew that moistened the earth—the mysterious processes of nature that brought forth, “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear?” Does man live by bread alone, or by Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, which conspire in the wondrous loom of nature to weave the result and form the agency by which we get that bread? (Ibid.)
Mentally, man does not live by “bread” alone:—Sometimes people go to a rich man’s house and wonder that he pays so much money for a picture. The money they think might bring in interest or might be applied to purposes of utility, and they consider it a waste to expend five or ten thousand dollars for a work of art. Little do they imagine how that picture enriches and refines that man’s soul, elevating it to a higher conception of all beauty; how it enables him to understand why the swamp mists become festoons and upholsteries of glory before the setting sun; why the grass is green, the heavens blue, and the rolling waves of the sea are interlaced with threads of sunlight; because, viewing them as proceeding out of the mouth of God, he comprehends them, and says, “The money that I have given for it, that could not make me richer, because it perfects me, and helps form me for an end.” (Ibid.)
The poverty of the “bread” standard of life:—He discerns as much the glory of God in the miniature world revealed in a single drop of water, as in a great planet. One man is overawed by the solemn aspect of the mountain, and the glory of the forest waving with the breath of the summer breeze. Another wonders how many hundred acres of land there are and how much timber in it. That is all the universe is to him. So the characters of men are revealed according to their standard of valuation; and, I repeat, if a man’s life is wholly down to the bread standard of life, he sees merely the material interests of this world. (Ibid.)
Life in nature needs varied elements for sustenance:—It is like saying that a tree cannot live merely upon water. It needs other elements which the rich earth must give. (Phillips Brooks.) Every word.—
Man’s spiritual food:—I. Man has a spiritual as well as a corporeal nature—a spiritual nature which requires food. II. The Word of God is the true food of the soul of man. It is spiritual food adapted to man’s spiritual nature, and also to its condition as guilty and impure. (Studies for the pulpit.)
Word of God compared to food:—
I. The propriety of the metaphor. As it is essential to the life of the soul, and the source of strength.
II. Its peculiar characteristics. Heavenly and Divine, superabundant, endless variety, gratuitous bestowment, universal communication.
III. Our duty with respect to it. We should thankfully receive it, believingly feed upon it, grow and improve by it, constantly apply it. (Dr. Burns.)[3]
Nevertheless, he withstood the temptation: 4. But he answered and said, It is written,
It is not by bread alone that man shall live,
But by every word that comes out through the mouth of God.
Note the expression, “It is written,” not only here in verse 4 but also in verses 7 and 10, every time with a reference to the same book, Deuteronomy, which, as is clear, Jesus regarded not as “a pious fraud” but as the very Word of God. Other passages that give expression to Christ’s exalted view of Scripture are Luke 24:25–27, 44–47; John 5:39; and 10:35. For him the Old Testament Scriptures, as interpreted by himself, were evidently the ultimate touchstone of the truth for life and doctrine, the final court of appeal for the reason.
The first quotation is from Deut. 8:3. It pictures Moses reminding Israel of God’s tender care for his people during the forty years of the wilderness journey. Particularly, it shows how the Lord had fed them with manna, heretofore completely unknown to them and their fathers, that he might teach them “that not by bread alone does man live but by everything proceeding out of the mouth of Jehovah does man live.”
What Jesus means, therefore, may be paraphrased as follows: “Tempter, you are proceeding upon the false assumption that for a man, in order to appease hunger and keep alive, bread is absolutely necessary. Over against this erroneous idea I now declare that not bread but the creative, energizing, and sustaining power of my Father is the only indispensable source of my, and of man’s, life and well-being.”
The expression “every word that comes out through the mouth of God” refers to the word of his power. It is God’s omnipotence exercised in creation and preservation. It is his word of effective command; for example, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. 1:3); “By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made” (Ps. 33:6).
On the part of Jesus this reply to Satan’s advice was an expression of filial confidence in the Father’s care. Certainly the One who, when there was no bread, had provided manna, and who just a moment ago had said, “This is my Son … with whom I am well pleased,” would not fail his Beloved in this hour of trial![4]
[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1985). Matthew (Vol. 1, pp. 90–93). Moody Press.
[2] France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew (pp. 130–131). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publication Co.
[3] Exell, J. S. (1952). The Biblical Illustrator: Matthew (pp. 34–35). Baker Book House.
[4] Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew (Vol. 9, pp. 227–228). Baker Book House.
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