GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 4:4
4 Jesus answered him, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’”
Jesus did not ignore the Devil. He answered him by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. We mentioned previously that the accounts of Matthew and Luke are somewhat different, and could present two separate but similar moments during the temptation. Yet Jesus’ answer in each case is the same, quoting the same passage. Just because the Devil comes at us with the same temptation more than once doesn’t mean we need to defend ourselves with different passages of the Bible each time. The verse that was my protection yesterday is still my protection today.
The temptation here was to doubt God’s providence, and this is a temptation that strikes hard at Christian families with children. How will we provide for them? What if one of them has special needs, or becomes sick? This is the real reason that so many people sinfully stay away from marriage, since they are terrified that they will suffer and die of hunger; that they will suffer because they won’t have all of their desires met by God. They don’t trust that God will take care of them, and so they fall into sins against every commandment. They think that if they break the Sixth Commandment and stay unmarried (but secretly enjoy some of the pleasures reserved for marriage) that they will show God who is really in control of their lives. And of course the answer to that is: the Devil is in control of their lives.
Jesus teaches us to trust in God. This is the true meaning of the First Commandment: to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. What would it matter if the whole world were made of bread, and we lived like fat kings in deep caves chewed into the sides of our mountainous Loaf, with broad bready halls and tall bready pillars? What if we sat upon biscuit chairs and laid down on croissant couches? What if our books were all sliced loaves, and even our clothing was made of stitched-together slices? Would we still think that no one fashionable should wear white bread after Labor Day? It wouldn’t matter. We still would need more than all of the bread in the world to live on. We would still need the Word of God.
To be full of bread means to be full of nothing but the present meal. But to be filled with the Word of God means to be filled with the one thing that is needed (Luke 10:42). This is when we are truly at rest, as God commands and invites us to be both at rest and filled with the word of God on the Sabbath Day.
Luther once compared a man to being like Noah’s Ark, with “three chambers” (“upper, middle, and lower decks,” Genesis 6:16). Luther called these three aspects of man, “the sensual, the rational, and the spiritual man” (LW 29:162). In saying this, Luther was centuries ahead of Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego, and Luther was far more accurate. Each of Luther’s “three men” within us is disturbed or troubled either inwardly or outwardly. Let me summarize what he means:
The sensual person within each of us finds rest outwardly when we take pleasure in a thing, but it is troubled when the thing is removed—such as having no bread. The sensual part of us rests inwardly when it has no work to be occupied with, especially in the case of people who think, speculate, or philosophize (this is our sensual reaction to the good work of the rational part of our nature). But the sensual part becomes disturbed inwardly if there is confusion, as with someone who is sad or depressed.
The rational part of us finds rest outwardly when the objects of our experience are pleasant. This rational self is disturbed if they are sad (the maniac reverses these things; the psychotic is unaffected by them). The rational self rests inwardly when we cease from working and have physical rest, but it is disturbed when our spiritual self is disturbed or upset by falling from faith. “This disturbance,” Luther says, “is the most horrible of all, since it is most profound and is very close to hell.”
The spiritual self finds outward rest when the object of faith, which is Christ, remains fixed in our eyes through the Gospel. This self is disturbed along with the rational self when it loses sight of the object of our faith. The spiritual self is especially in danger when faith becomes more important to us than Christ, the object of our faith. We must not rely on faith, but on Christ. The spiritual self that finds inner rest in the word of God is truly at rest, and is lifted by faith into the essential work of God, which is finally to bring us home to eternal life. Luther comforts us: “And here there is no inward disturbance, for this seventh day (the Sabbath rest of eternity) has no evening by which it could pass over into another day.”
Thank God for your daily bread, but desire especially the spiritual food and drink that sustain your faith in Christ and which will bring you to eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota