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Stay Hungry
Brian Mashburn
November 15, 2009
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Know What You Live On
"The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Mt 4:2-4)
God sent Jesus to save man by becoming man. If Satan could get Jesus to act like God while he was a man, he would no longer be man, and could no longer save man.
So, when the tempter asked Jesus to use his God-power to satisfy his human hunger, Jesus basically said, "First of all, man doesn't operate like that, and neither will I, because my Father sent me here to be human. Second, man doesn't need bread to live, even when he's hungry, near as much as he needs to listen to and obey God. And that's what I'm going to do. Jesus decided to satisfy his need to follow God over his need to satisfy his physical hunger.
Do you do this?
When you feel an all-too-human hunger of any sort, do you just feed it as quickly as you can? Or do you listen to God, making sure you aren't satisfying that hunger all too soon, or in all the wrong ways?
Back in Deuteronomy 8 (the text Jesus used to deflect the attack of the devil in the wilderness) we find that hunger is not our cue to feed ourselves, it is our reminder that we need God, and that He is the one who feeds us.
Yes, food is from God. But so is hunger (Deut 8:3), and we should be willing to partake of the latter as readily as the former. He has intentions for you within it. He knows better than us when that hunger has served it's purpose, and we short circuit that purpose when we take it upon ourselves to gratify our hunger.
Man does not live on satisfying hunger alone. But on obeying everything that God speaks to Him.
This is additional motivation to pray before every meal. Not just to be grateful. If Jesus whispered a prayer of thanks for the bread he ate before God wanted him to eat it, and that he acquired in a way that God told him not to, it would have still been disobedient.
Perhaps before we satisfy any hunger (for food, influence, power, money, sex, friends, escape, fun), we should stop and pray, asking, "Am I trying to live on this rather than on Your Word, Lord?"
"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."