Turn in your Bibles to the book
of Matthew chapter four. During the Bible study, Bruce
actually went to the verse that will be roughly the main verse
of what I'm preaching from. of Matthew chapter four, starting
in verse one. It says, then Jesus was led up
by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And
when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward, he was
hungry. Now, when the tempter came to
him, he said, 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 by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds from the mouth of God. I was reading this and
I thought, do we know, do you know how many things we depend
on just in our daily lives, just in our daily lives? I started
listing them out. I promise it's not a very long
list, but it could go further. But we've got cars, we've got
electricity, we've got water that's piped right into our houses,
grocery stores with an easy driving distance so we can get our food,
our supplies. We've got hospitals usually nearby. We've got public roads. There
are so many things that we've built our lives upon. And if
you don't think any of these are vital, I would call them
vital, try losing one. When the power goes out, we're
like, oh, I hope my phone lasts. I hope my phone lasts. Now these
things that I just mentioned, they're real, we can see them,
we can feel them, and our society is built on the premise that
these things will be available almost everywhere you go. That's
how much we depend on. But then you consider, what about
the intangible things that we depend on? The intangible. You
can't touch, you can't feel. We depend on Gravity, actually,
we do. We can't touch gravity, but the
sun's mass pulls against the Earth's and its velocity and
it causes this little blue ball to keep turning and spinning
around on the same circuit annually. We need that. We need to be kept
on the ground. We also depend on a breathable
air. You can't really see it, right?
You can't really see it, but we can observe its effects and
we depend on multiple laws of physics to remain immutable,
remain the way they were when they were first discovered, right?
They've always been there, just we didn't know enough to discover
them, but we depend on those things lest we perish. I mean, we're breathing right
now. We're breathing. All of us are breathing. Our lungs, they draw in the breath,
and it's exchanged with oxygenated blood. Our heart pumps to our
organs, and they keep us alive. All of that we depend on. So where does God fit in? Where does God fit in? Now we
know what the answer is. Believers know what the answer
is. God upholds everything. And you can just stick a period
right after that. Everything. He upholds the foundations of
the earth, to the scattering of the stars, to the turning
of the hearts of men and women. But we don't see him working,
as it were. We don't see him working. Rather,
we don't see God's office, we don't see his hands moving things
around and I'm using hands in that way he uses hands because
it relates to things we can understand. We don't see him causing the
winds to arrive from the north or how a car chooses to quickly
break, right? but everything depends on him
and people everywhere depend on him. The difference between
his people, and I use that term, or yeah, I use that term very
specifically, his people, and those who are not his people,
which he has defined in here, is whose heart acknowledges his
sovereign rule over all and whose heart does not. Whose heart acknowledges
his sovereign rule over all and whose heart does not. The verses
that Jesus is referring to are in Deuteronomy 8.3. This is what
I meant when I said Bruce read it. Deuteronomy 8.3 reads, and
this is Moses. So he humbled you. Who's he? God. God humbled you. Who's you? He's talking to Israel. Allowed you to hunger and fed
you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers
know that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread
alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of the Lord. In other words, Moses was saying,
you thought you could survive on your own if you could just
find food and water, just food and water. You thought that things would
be harder than in Egypt when you were slaves. but that was foolishness and
pride. Instead, the Lord caused you
to know that if you were fed, it was at his word. It was at
his word. If your thirst was quenched,
it was because he said so. If you survived in the wilderness,
it was at all, it was by God's decree. And Moses could have
just as well been speaking to people today. Same words apply. Do you think
you can just eat some food, drink some water, get a paycheck, and
you'll be okay? You'll be okay. You'll live to
see another day. Well, not by those things alone
you won't. That is why we say, if the Lord
wills. If the Lord wills. We live by
the very word of God. Whatever utterance proceeds from
his mouth is how things will be. And we can go to bed and
make plans for tomorrow. We can, and we should. But it's all for nothing unless
the Lord wills it. Does that mean we stop planning?
No. Does that mean we stop praying? No. It means we put our days,
our days in his hands. That's what it means. Do you
know what the opposite of depending on the Lord's will is? I had
to think about this. It's not case, Sarah, Sarah,
or whatever will be, will be. It's not that. The opposite of
depending on the Lord's will is saying, I made this, I did
this. I did that. It is living your life with no
thought of submitting to the will of the sovereign God. Now,
wait a minute, some might say, doesn't the Bible say that whatever
God purposes will be? Yes, it does. Yes, it does. How
does submitting or me submitting or not submitting affect the
outcome of events if God has willed it to happen? This is
not about what will or will not happen. This isn't. It's about your heart. The difference between His people
and those who are not His people are their hearts. God will not have an unwilling
follower. God will not have an untrusting
follower. God will break you down And I
know people don't like to hear that. But this is the chastening
of the Lord. That's what it's referring to.
He will break you down until you fully trust in Him and depend
on Him completely. Now I'll raise my hand first
to say I haven't done that. All the time in all cases, right?
And I wouldn't even say that I'm trying to grab any pride
in what I've done. Saying sometimes I have, no.
I would be like Paul, saying, if I have done anything good,
it's God in me. Well, a little later in Deuteronomy
8, and you can turn there if you'd like to follow along, Moses
warns the Israelites, and this is verse 11, not to forget the
Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, his judgments,
and his statutes, okay? Now why did Moses need to warn them about this? They had so
much proof. Forty years, wandering in the
desert, they had been led by a pillar of fire every night
for forty years. That just doesn't happen. They
had been given manna for food every morning. I think it was
morning. Forgive me if it isn't. That
appeared by miracle too. They had been seen the shining
face of Moses when he had come down from the mountain. They received water from a rock. They were going in to possess
the land which God promised them, a land flowing with milk and
honey. How could they forget? How could
they forget? Were they that lost, that fallen? Moses warned them because they were about to obtain
lands and houses and herds and flocks. In other words, material
possessions, wealth. And having material possessions
and wealth is a quick way to forget about God. It's not the
only way. It is a quick one. And it causes you to forget how
much you depend on God's word. Now Moses told the Israelites
not to forget God when they had plenty. Not to forget who brought
them out of their house of bondage, which is in verse 14. Not to
forget who fed them in the wilderness, lest they say in their hearts,
and this is what he tells them, My power and the might of my
hand have gained me this wealth. I did this. I did this. Do not think that this is a warning
against wealth. It's not. It's a warning that
we are sinful and simple beings and easily lured by wealth, but
many things, many things can cause us to depend, or cause
our hearts I should say, to depend less on God. Now back to our
story in Matthew. I don't claim to know how Satan
operates. And it calls this other being
that is with Christ in the wilderness, the tempter, and then finally
at the end it says, you know, he calls him Satan. So I'm just gonna assume it is. But again, I don't claim to know
how he operates. And maybe he sat. Maybe Satan
sat for 40 days and nights watching Jesus fasting, just hung around.
And then after that 40 days and nights, the first thing out of
his mouth was, I'll bet you're hungry. You probably want something to
eat. What are you going to find in
this wilderness to eat? There's no food here. But you're
not bound like other men, are you? You're the son of God. And you
could say to these very stones to become bread. Wouldn't that
be nice to satisfy your hunger by just saying the word? All you need to do is command
these stones to be bread. You could take a bite of that
savory bread and that anguish in your stomach would be gone. Now was Satan tempting Jesus
to use power? No. No. Was Satan tempting Jesus
to prove that he was God's Son? No. No. Satan was tempting Jesus to stop
trusting in God to provide for him. It's the same thing Moses warned
the Israelites about. He told them that if they obtained
lands and riches, got full bellies, and then went after other gods
to serve them and worship them, that they would forget God. They
would stop depending on him. Then he said that if they forgot
God, Moses said, I testify against you. This is in verse 19 of Deuteronomy
8. I testify against you, Israel. I testify against you this day
that you shall surely perish. And Moses does define what that
means, perish. He said that if you forget God,
God will destroy you as the nations which the Lord destroys before
you. That's what he said to Israel.
That's what he said. What was God's charge to Israel when they
went into the land to possess it? Remember what it was. It
wasn't just find a spot, build a house, make a farm. Dig a well. It wasn't that. There was some
work to be done first, and it was gruesome work. The charge
was destroy all the nations which resided there utterly and totally. That was their promised land.
He said, God, God said that he would do that
to Israel if they forgot him and stopped trusting in him.
Now we know how all that turned out. Again and again, Israel
forgot God and tried to depend on something else or someone
else. They even wanted a king because
they didn't want to trust in a God they couldn't see. They
said, these nations that surround us, they all have kings. They
go out into battle with them. Why can't we have that? Sometimes, when they went wayward,
God would allow them to be consumed by the surrounding nations. Other
times he would show them mercy. And what is mercy? Unmerited
favor, unmerited. And when he showed them mercy,
he would send a prophet or a judge or a ruler. And through that person, he would
provide their rescue. But Israel keep on forgetting
God. So much so that he called them
backsliding Israel. He'd bring them up, they'd slide
right back. Then, in the fullness of time
and as promised, as promised, Jesus arrived. He was born an Israelite, but
was unlike them in heart and in spirit. Instead of forgetting
his God and not depending on Him. He came to do His Father's
will, as it says in John 6 verse 38. And He did this from His
birth. From His birth. You and I can't
claim that. Take a look at our text in Matthew.
It says the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. You talk
about doing your Father's will. Why did the spirit lead him into
the wilderness? Says it right there. It wasn't
to find a lost sheep. It wasn't to heal a blind beggar.
It wasn't to prophesy to a crowd. It wasn't to heal the sick. It
wasn't to cast out a demon. None of the things for which
he became famous for later. It says the spirit led him into
the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Talk about trusting in God. If I knew that someone was leading
me to the devil, I'd run away as fast as my legs carry me. And I know God has Satan on a leash, but
that doesn't mean I want to go near those teeth. But Jesus went everywhere the
Spirit told him to. And this is a nice little adverb,
he went willingly. Willingly. He willingly went
into the synagogues where his enemies were. You wouldn't
think so, but churches are a great place to find the enemies of
God. Willingly into the house of a tax collector. Oh, the religious
folk did not like those, and I think most people didn't like
those. Willingly into Pilate's court. Willingly. He even told Pilate that. Willingly
bore tremendous abuse to his body. Willingly dragged his cross to
Golgotha. Willingly. willingly took our sin upon himself. Willingly died. Remember, he said his life was
his to put down and his to take up again. So if he did die, it
was willingly. He willingly suffered God's wrath. willingly. All for one purpose, to willingly
bring the ones God gave him into glory. Do you know how willingly Jesus
went around this earth? First of all, you've got to think,
where was he first? Where was he first? He had a
throne up in heaven. He condescended first to be made
a man. Jesus could have refused any
one of those mockers and abusers and the ability to draw breath. He could have. He could have refused them the
ability to strike him or to pull his hair out. He could have refused
them to nail his hands and feet to a board. And that's how willingly
he went. That's how submissive he was
to his father's will. Obedient, Paul says, even to
the death of the cross. Jesus Christ depended on God
for everything. And He was obedient to God's
will in everything. Now Satan tempted our Savior
as if He were a man. As if He were a man. But He was
not just a man. He was the Son of God Almighty.
And what is God? What is God? This is not profound. Jesus tells us in John 4, God
is spirit. God is spirit. How do you worship
God if God is spirit and we are flesh? Jesus says that he must
be worshiped in spirit and truth. Do you know what feeds the spirit?
Full circle here. Every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God. That's what feeds the spirit.
Do you know what feeds the stomach? I think we all do. Bread will,
but that's the maximum it can do. That's the most. Bread cannot feed your spirit.
And if you let bread fill your stomach too much, you might become
like the Israelites. After they took possession of
the land, when they got rich and they stopped depending on
God, as they filled their bellies. They were like Esau. He says, I have enough. I have
enough. Jesus Christ's primary interest
was not to satisfy the hunger in his stomach. His primary interest
and his purpose was to wait on the word of the Lord to provide. So I pray we depend on him. And if we do, here's the promise.
Here's the promise. Our spirits will always be satisfied. Always. Bruce, would you close
this please?