MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY BREAD ONLY

When these words were quoted by the Lord Jesus, He was in the wilderness and hungry, the very situation described here in the experience of the people of Israel. When Satan said, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread’, he was challenging the principle by which Christ lived; a tempta­tion to use His divine power independently of the Father’s will. The very temptation indicates that Satan’s desire is ever to draw men from living in submission to God’s will and in dependence upon Him. Not only did the Saviour quote these words, He lived according to them; cf. John 8. 28; 10. 18; 12. 49; 18. 11.

The importance of living according to God’s word, v. 1, was a lesson Israel should have gleaned from their time in the wilder­ness, and, in verses 2-3, Moses recalls three things from that period. He speaks of the Pathway, of ‘all the way which the Lord thy God led thee’, v. 2, a path in which they were divinely led, but in which the Lord ‘suffered’ them to hunger, v. 3. This was a reminder that the path of the righteous can, at times, be fraught with many difficulties, Rom. 8. 35, 36. The Purpose of these diffi­culties was two-fold. First, that God might know their heart, using those trials to ‘humble’ them, to bring them to an end of themselves, and in those circumstances to test their obedience and faith, v. 2. Secondly, those trials were permitted that they might know God, learn their dependence upon God, and so live in obedience to Him, v. 3. Though times of trial can be very pain­ful and difficult to bear, these verses teach us that they are always with a view to our spiritual profit. The Provision was that they were fed with manna, v. 3, and their raiment ‘waxed not old’, v. 4. All around them was a wilderness, with nothing to sup­port life, but they found God to be sufficient to meet their needs; cf. 1 Tim. 6. 8. We need have no doubt that if God permits trials to come into our life, alongside the difficulties He will provide the resources to enable us to face them that we might learn our need to live according to God’s every word.

May we so value God’s word that we can say with Job, ‘I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food’, Job 23. 12.