Matthew 4:1-4 Not by Bread Alone
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: January 17, 2019, Matthew 4:1-4
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
(Understanding the Text) Matthew seems to have left his introductory evidence phase temporarily to focus on the story. However, this story still connects back to using the scriptures in understanding and dealing with everything in life. (NOTE: I was wrong when I said that Matthew had left his introductory evidence phase. The whole wilderness experience is Matthew pointing out that the Messiah succeeded where Israel had failed.)
(Revelation of God) During Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit came upon Him in a new way, and began directing Him about where to go and what to do. Jesus was God, but He had somehow separated Himself from His Godly powers when He became man. Before this, He was God in character but not God in knowledge. He had to learn about Himself through observing nature, other humans, and reading the scriptures. He had to make sense of the broken world He lived in compared to the unbrokenness inside of Him. He had to deal with a sinful mother and father who tried their best but were still part of this broken world in a way that He wasn’t. On the other hand, He would have felt a connection to His own creation that no other human shared. The only place that He could have made sense of this was through the scriptures. He had several keys that no one else had when He read the Old Testament. He knew that He was the Messiah. No one else looked at the scriptures looking for themselves and their destiny in the Messianic passages. Secondly, His sinless nature made Him see the events described in the Old Testament from a clearer perspective. He would not have glorified the battles of death and would have looked with compassion at the falls into sin of His champions and felt frustration at the refusal of His people to choose a path of life. Third, He would have felt the falseness of the rabbis’ common interpretations as they did not match up with His own character, so He would have dismissed their interpretations and looked at the Old Testament with fresh eyes. In the process, His life and destiny were revealed to Him; however, day-to-day activities were not in the scriptures, just the framework and destination.
For knowledge of day-to-day decisions, Jesus needed something more. Before this the Spirit was with Him as with other men, convicting of right and wrong, enticing to a certain path, but not directing Him. Now, with Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit was in charge and one passage says that it drove Him into the wilderness. I imagine clearer understanding was unfolding within Jesus’ mind as He reconnected with Himself (Spirit & Father) more strongly. He would need to get away from people to have the privacy for that communion. It would make sense that His instinct would be to head from the river Jordan out into the wilderness surrounding it. It took forty days to become refamiliarized with Himself. The time would have felt like an eternity to me because I would look at it from the standpoint of how long before I can eat, but I doubt if Jesus was even aware that He was not eating as He communed with Himself (Spirit/Father). However, the time came when that communion no longer dominated His whole focus. Then, He realized that He was very, very, very hungry and looked around for food.
(Understanding the Text) Satan had been observing and trying to assess what was happening. He recognized power when someone had it, so he knew that Jesus now had power to perform miracles that He had not had before. Satan must have figured that this could be a weakness and went for this area before it could settle in and become commonplace. “You’re hungry. No problem. You have the power now to do miracles. Just use it to turn these rocks into bread and your problem is solved.” It seems that Satan was trying to see if Jesus now had His creative power back. This is a power that Satan does not have.
(Revelation of God) Jesus’ instincts told Him that there was a problem with using His creative power in this way. There was a selfishness about the act that smacked of not trusting His Father to provide food for Him. There was an “I do it myself” and “I use the Spirit for what I want” attitude that was foreign to Jesus’ nature. Jesus knew it was wrong and answered with logic from the scriptures. “Man does not live by bread alone.” This hunger was extreme, but there were more important considerations than His body. “But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” It was more important to trust the Father to provide than to provide for yourself. Jesus was declaring that He trusted the Father to provide for His needs, and He would wait on the Father’s direction with regard to His hunger. The Spirit had not directed Jesus to change the rocks to bread, so Jesus would not do it. Jesus would not operate independently.
(Application / Prayer) Satan was trying to split the Godhead up from the close communion that they had just shared for forty days. He tries to break up any holy unity he sees among Jesus’ followers also. I need to be aware that Satan hates unity among believers, and guard against his temptations to judge and be selfish. He has succeeded in this with two of my beloved church family. Not only did they leave, but their leaving made us doubt our unity. Satan succeeded with another sister-in-Christ temporarily. He is working on each of us in a weak area drawing us away from each other. We must resist his temptations and draw closer to each other through our love of Jesus. How can we do this? Through the word of God, yes, but also through our relationship with Jesus. Resisting evil is not only through head knowledge that something is not right, but also through heart knowledge that makes the temptation abhorrent. I need to allow Jesus to draw me so close to Him that it transforms me so that I find the temptations presented to me inexplicable; for example, it just wouldn’t make sense to me to judge someone, or to break a commandment, or to be self-righteous, or to not react in love. I pray for that transformation because in my own weakness, I will cause disunity among my fellow Christians and myself.