Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Matthew 1-2
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 4:4
Jesus (quoting Deuteronomy): It is written, “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
No doubt you’ve heard someone use the first of those words as part of a joke at some time or other. “Man does not live by bread alone. He needs some peanut butter or ice cream or pie or fill in the blank to go along with it.” When words become familiar it’s easy to use them the way we want to make them mean whatever we want. But what purpose did Matthew have in recording these words of Jesus?
First, we need to remember that Jesus is both fully God and fully Man. Do I understand how? Absolutely not! But I believe completely Jesus is one with the Father and Spirit, yet He became flesh, completely Man, one of us for a period of time to become the perfect sacrifice for our sins. If you’ve read my bio, you know I’ve been a minister a long time, so it’s easy for me to believe Jesus is God. But I think those of us who know He is God, part of the triune Godhead, sometimes forget the human side of Jesus.
These words remind us of His humanness. Jesus felt the hunger of His forty-day fast. Some would like to think because He was God He could breeze through those forty days without a problem and just go about His business. I don’t think that is true. I think Jesus went through the same process of discipling Himself in the habits of the Jewish faith as all of the Father’s faithful followers. I believe in Jesus’ humanness, He memorized scripture and sometimes struggled with learning the long Hebrew passages, especially the genealogies in Chronicles.
I think Jesus fasted often as the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish leaders recommended as a spiritual discipline, but the physical hardship in doing so still causes real physical and mental pain. Jesus endured it as a spiritual discipline. He knew fasting and spiritual discipline comes from taking charge of His humanness and mastering it. He refused to submit to those pangs of hunger in a way that disobeyed those scriptures He memorized as a child. He knew who He was because He saw in those same scriptures the prophecies fulfilled in His life and the stories His mother told Him about the angel that announced His birth. The shepherds who visited His feeding trough crib. The wise men who brought Him gifts. The rush to Egypt and the lack of children His age across the region.
All those memories Mary pondered in her heart, she shared with her son, Jesus as He grew. He too, pondered them. But He also matched them with the scriptures He learned and disciplined His body to obey God, His Father’s commands. Jesus set aside the throne of heaven to live alongside us. I wish sometimes we could read and learn from His early habits and disciplines. I think from these few words, though, we can capture two habits that were very important to Him.
Jesus made fasting a habit. This forty day fast was not His first fast. He was familiar with the practice and fasted often as a spiritual discipline to ready Himself for the mission His heavenly Father had for His human side. He used those times of fasting to become master of His body, not the other way around. Jesus understood pain and suffering. He knew sleepless nights and hunger. He knew poverty and hard work to just get by in the eyes of the world. Jesus mastered His humanness just like He asks us to do. He did it the same way we can, through practiced disciplines…every day.
Second, Jesus absorbed the scriptures. He knew them. He memorized them. He knew what the Father meant by each word, each sentence, each paragraph and section because He studied them. Jesus made the scriptures a significant part of His life so that when the temptations of life came and His humanness wanted to take an easy way out, He could lean on those scriptures to help Him through the temptations without falling to them. He asks us to do the same.
We can use those few words to start of quick joke, or we can use them like Jesus did. Are you disciplined enough to let the scriptures keep you safe from the snares Satan sets in front of you? Remember the second half of Jesus’ answer to the Devil are so much more important the first. Don’t forget to use them. “Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.”
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