Well, let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, thank You for this day You've made. Thank You for this church. Thank You, Lord, that we can gather together with open Bibles and sing these hymns and worship You and praise You and set our minds upon You. Lord, we ask Your help. In the following moments to come, the Lord asks that you'd help me to feed your sheep with the Word. The Father asks that you'd help me to speak. Lord, like Moses said, he didn't know how to speak, right? But you made the tongue. And like Jeremiah said, he's only a youth, he didn't know how to speak. Lord, You formed him from the womb, and so, Lord, I ask Your help in the same way now. Father, we pray for the Holy Spirit to give life to the Word, and to give life to us, and to open up our minds and our understanding of the truth. Lord, we ask Your blessing on this time to come now, in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to be reading from the Gospel according to Matthew, beginning in chapter 3, verse 13, through chapter 4, verse 4. First, we'll begin with some introduction by looking at the context And then, we'll look at the negative aspect of verse 4, which is where we're going to focus in on. And then we'll look at the positive aspect of verse 4. And then we'll conclude with some application. So, Matthew chapter 3, beginning in verse 13. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him. And He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and coming to rest on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Then Jesus, was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days and 40 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. So the events recorded for us here, the temptation of Jesus are preceded by the baptism of Jesus and His anointing with the Spirit and then immediately followed by the ministry of Jesus, His preaching, His miracles, His casting out demons, His death and resurrection. So it's sandwiched right there between the baptism and the ministry. And it comes to us in all three of the synoptic Gospels. Matthew alone gives us the addendum in verse 4, that man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And this passage is so jam-packed full of types and figures and fulfillment of the Old Testament that it's hard for me to figure out What do I bring out of this? Because there's so much that you could focus on and look at, but I believe that what's important when we come to the temptation of Jesus is that we have in our minds some key moments from the Old Testament. Some key events from the Old Testament. The first one is we should think of Adam in the garden. Genesis chapter three. The first sin man ever committed was in regard to food. Reading in Genesis 2 verse 16, "...the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." So God commanded the man, Adam, in the garden, You can eat of whatever tree in the garden, but don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We go on and we read, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So we have in Genesis, in the Old Testament, the serpent tempting the first man and the first woman to eat. what God hasn't said they could eat. The first Adam was a failure. And the last Adam, Jesus Christ, was victorious. He was a conqueror. The first Adam failed and fell to temptation. The last Adam overcame. Think of the differences between the first Adam and the last Adam. The first Adam was in a garden. The last Adam, Jesus Christ, was in a wilderness. The first Adam could eat whatever he wanted, from whatever tree. The last Adam lived for 40 days. And now think of the similarities The presence of the serpent. The devil's there. They're both being tempted. They're both being tested. I'm calling Jesus the last Adam because that's what we read in 1 Corinthians 15. Thus it is written, the first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Adam is a type of Christ, and Christ is the fulfillment of Adam. Christ is the last Adam who overcomes the temptation of the devil in the wilderness, who conquers the serpent. So that's the first event from the Old Testament we should have in mind, and the second event is Israel's wandering in the wilderness. We can look at Deuteronomy chapter 8. Now this is the passage that Jesus quotes from In verse 4, man shall not live by bread alone. And these words are spoken by Moses to the people of Israel at the very edge of the promised land. He says in verse 2, chapter 8, And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you testing you to know what was in your heart. And that word testing, it's the same word in Greek as tempting. Jesus is being tempted and tested the same way the people of Israel were in the wilderness. Whether you would keep His commandments or not, and He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God." And look again at the similarities. Israel wandered for 40 years, and Jesus fasted for 40 days. Israel was led by God in the wilderness and Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness. And I'm sure many most in here have read 1 Corinthians 10. That the Exodus was a kind of baptism where it says, I don't want you to be unaware that all were in the cloud, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, Paul says to the Corinthian church. The Israelites underwent this kind of baptism into Moses before entering into the wilderness, and that's exactly what is happening to Jesus here in Matthew chapter 4, and you can turn back there. Jesus is fulfilling all that the Old Testament pictured of Him beforehand, Jesus Christ is appearing as the Son of God, as the last Adam, as the true Israel who overcomes a temptation and passes the test that those who came before Him failed. Jesus Christ appears as the Son of God to destroy the works of the devil. And here, that's exactly what He's doing. He's come to pass the test. And it's a weighty test. So, let me point out three things real briefly from the context before we enter into verse 4 more specifically. First, Jesus Christ became a man. He was a real man. With flesh and blood like you and me, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God was manifested in the flesh. We read in verse 2, He was hungry. How could God get hungry? It was because He became a man. And as a man He hungered. And as a man He thirsted. We read that in John 4. As a man, he was tired. He asked for a drink of water. And as a man, he was really tempted and he was really tested. And it's precisely because he was tested that he can sympathize with us as people, as human beings. Hebrews 4. 15 says, for we do not have a high priest in me and our temptations because of what he underwent being tempted as a man. He's a high priest who knows what it is to be tempted. So the second thing is that the temptation of Jesus, the testing of Jesus was real! It was a real test. I just recently, two weeks ago, I finished a year-long program for paramedic school. It was a whole year of school and it was, honestly, it was one of the hardest years time-wise and just, it was a real challenge. And to get to the end of that, I had to pass many tests. And I thought, you know, I've been through a whole year long of school. I've come to the end. I thought, surely they're just going to hand me an easy test for the final. It's just going to be a breeze. You know, I've been through a year of school. You know, just give us all an easy test and let us, you know, kind of just walk out and that's it. It's already been a year. And let me tell you, that was not how it was. That test was hard. That test was a challenge. And we had to take several tests. We had the practice final, and then the actual final. We had to do skills final. And then we had to take a national test. And you start seeing people failing the tests. I mean, it's like they're dropping like flies next to you. You're like, oh, man, that guy didn't pass. Oh, they didn't pass. And you start to feel the weight of it. Like, this is a real test here. There's a lot on the line. And it was like, you fail this test, you get one retest. You fail the retest, that's it. You wasted the year, you got to go through the whole program again. You really felt it. And that's what you'd expect here in this passage is, here Jesus Christ has come. He's become a man, he's come to the earth, he's just been baptized gloriously and filled with the Spirit. And what's the first thing the Spirit leads him to do into the wilderness? Forty days without food. Forty days alone with God to be tempted by the devil. It wasn't a piece of cake. It was here He was tested before His ministry. This is Jesus appearing in the wilderness to bind the strong man, as He says in Matthew chapter 12. He's facing the devil. If He's about to cast out demons and conquer, He's got to go head to head with the ruler of this world. And there's no indication in any of these verses that Jesus ever wavered in the face of temptation. The third thing from the context we want to look at is that Jesus as the last Adam, and as a real man, shows us the place of Scripture in Christian life. He shows us the place of Scripture in the Christian life. Three times Jesus is tempted, and three times, what is His reply? It is written. It is written. It is written. And we want to focus in on verse 4. It is written, Jesus says. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So first, what man does not live by, that is, man does not live by bread alone. God has willed that we get our life by eating and drinking. But man is more than just flesh and blood. We've got a soul. We've got a spiritual aspect to us. We need more than just food to really have life. The Reformation of the Church brought us in the Protestant tradition, the five solas. Who knows the five solas? What are they? Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone, and the glory of God alone, right? Well, here we see the devil has his sola, Bread alone. And I don't think the devil cares how many of those solas we believe so long as he can get us to believe bread alone. That man lives by bread alone. And this is the lie used by the devil in the beginning, just repackaged, represented to Jesus in a new way. Command these stones. to become loaves of bread. Come on, you've got the power Jesus, do it! Do it! You're hungry? It's been 40 days? Just command the stones. We know later Jesus turned, He multiplied the bread. He multiplied those loaves of bread and He fed 5,000 people. Why not do it right here? Just say the word, command the stones, But it was a test to see would Jesus rely on His Father's provision, on what God had given Him? Or would He take matters into His own hands? And if Jesus is going to fulfill what the Israelites had to fulfill, and what Adam was to fulfill. He needed to not use his own power and his own strength to do a miracle. He needed to rely on God and undergo this testing, this period of fasting in the wilderness, to fulfill the law. And the law said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus wasn't relying on his own strength. to create this bread. He was relying on his father's provision in the wilderness. And it's important for us to remember that this was a lesson that the people of Israel had to learn in the wilderness. They had to learn to rely not on bread, but on God. Deuteronomy 8 again, that passage which Jesus quotes. I'll read it in verse 2. You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know." God is teaching them that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So here's a question. How does eating manna in the wilderness teach you you don't live by bread alone? They're eating this bread from heaven. So how does eating that bread teach them, you don't live by bread, but you live by every word that comes from the mouth of God? Look again if you're there. Verse 3 says, He fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. In fact, manna means, what is it? They didn't even know what it was. They said, what is this manna? This manna was God's miraculous provision for the Israelites. And they didn't know what it was. None of their fathers knew what it was. They had no idea what this was. It was a new thing that God was doing with the Israelites in the wilderness. They didn't have some point of reference that they could understand what was happening. They were forced to rely on God and His provision. In essence, they had to live by faith in what God would provide for them. They weren't relying on their own understanding. Oh, I know what this manna stuff is. I know how this works. But God was teaching them a lesson. He's teaching them, you don't live by bread alone. You live by God's miraculous provision, God's supernatural power. The Word of God is representative of God's upholding supernatural power. It was God who gave them the manna in the wilderness. So, these words echo in our ears just so much of a reminder of how poor man is. Man shall not live by bread alone. Mankind searches for satisfaction in everything under the sun. He tries to fill himself, satisfy himself with anything and everything other than God. Job, people, other people, money, success, or houses. We look around at the rates of depression, suicide, drug abuse, and we know that bread alone can't satisfy. Bread alone, in essence, can represent everything that man can get by himself, and in his own power, and in his own strength. In essence, the same temptation has come down from the cross. Don't be so hard on yourself. Take matters into your own hands. Why are you waiting and relying on God? And all of us are faced with this same temptation. We can either trust in our Father's provision for our life, or we can try and live by bread alone. But Jesus teaches us in the wilderness, Bread alone does not satisfy. That brings us to the positive aspect of the verse. What man does live by. Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We have before us in this room, most of us, a Bible. The Bible is 66 books, 39 in the Old, 27 in the New, 39 before Christ, 27 after Christ, 40 authors, one divine author written over a period of 1,500 years. The Bible is God's Word. God has willed to give us a Bible. He's willed to give us Scripture. To preserve His Word in written form. And our possession of the Bible means this. God has spoken. By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host. He spoke and it came to be." The Word of God created the universe. The Word of God sustains the universe. That's Hebrews chapter 4. And it's by the Word of God we're born again. That's James chapter 1 and 1 Peter. We heard that in the children's Sunday school. It's by the Word of God, James says, the Word of God is able to save your soul. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save your soul. The godliest people throughout the ages have loved and treasured the Bible more than even their necessary food, more than silver and gold. Job 23.12 says, I've not departed from the commandment of His lips. I've treasured the words of His mouth more than my portion of food. Jeremiah said, Your words were found and I ate them. And Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart. For I am called by Your name, O Lord, God of hosts. Psalm 119, the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Your word is a light to my feet and a light to my path. 2 Timothy 3 says, But as for you, continue in what you have learned, and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it. Now from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scriptures breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. If we would be saved, we've got to know the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. If we'd be blessed, we've got to meditate on the Word of God. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. If we would be encouraged, We've got to read the Scriptures. Romans 15 says, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. If we'd be sanctified, we've got to know the Bible. Sanctify them by Thy truth. Jesus said, Thy Word is truth. If we'd be wise, then we've got to be doers of the Word. A wise man is the one who hears the words of Jesus and does them. He's the one who builds his house on the rock. Have you never read, Jesus said? You do err because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. Don't think that I've come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but I've come to fulfill them, Jesus said. That's Scripture. That's the Old Testament. So there is a central place of Scripture and the Word of God in the Christian life. George Mueller was a man who read the Bible, he estimated, 200 times by the end of his life. When he was about 71 years old, he said this, Now in brotherly love and affection, I would give a few hints to my younger fellow believers as to the way in which to keep up spiritual enjoyment. It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue. that the Scriptures be regularly read. These are God's appointed means for the nourishment of the inner man. Consider it and ponder over it. Especially, we should read regularly through the Scriptures consecutively and not pick out here and there a chapter. If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately, for the first four years after my conversion, I made no progress because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole, with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. Then my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I've been doing this for 47 years. I've read through the whole Bible about a hundred times. That's when he was about 70. And I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more. So, take it from him, reading the Bible 200 times in a lifetime. God's appointed means for nourishment of the inner man. Man lives by every word which comes from the mouth of God. And there's such a need in our day, and always, through all time, To have personal communion with God, personal encounter with the Lord and His Word. It's common, and we see it, that people consume much second-hand food. That is, their food's been chewed, digested by somebody else, and given to them, rather than eating for themselves. Food from the Word of God. There's a need for personal communion with God. Personal eating of the Bible. You realize no one, no one person on this earth today has a monopoly on God. There's only one person who has, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. It used to be, in the Old Testament, if you wanted to hear from God, you had to go to the prophet, or you had to go to Moses, you had to go to the man of God, somebody who had special access to God that you didn't have. And there's still many people who think this way, they think, if I've got to have an encounter with God, I've got to go through a pastor, I've got to go through a priest, But we live in the age of the Spirit. We live in the age of the New Covenant. What does it say in Joel? It says, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. We live in an age where there is a unique access to the Word of God that didn't exist in the Old Testament. You remember what Jesus said about John the Baptist? He said, "'Truly I say to you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John the Baptist, but whoever is least in the kingdom of God is greater than him.'" Why would that be? I believe it says, "'The privileges that you and I have as a believer in the kingdom of God are greater than that of John the Baptist.'" John the Baptist greatest among those born of women, Jesus said at the time, because he could point to Jesus. That was his privilege. The other prophets, they had types, they had shadows, but John the Baptist had Jesus Christ in the flesh. He could say, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He had that privilege. He had Jesus Christ in the flesh, but John did not have what we have. John was gone before Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. John was gone before we had a full Bible. John didn't have a full Gospel. He didn't have a full Bible. He didn't have Christ crucified, buried and risen from the dead. These are the privileges that we have. They're greater than any other period in human history. And are we availing ourselves of these privileges that God's given, availing ourselves of the access to the Bible, the access to God that He's given us that's uniquely great. So, if we live by the Word of God, we should avail ourselves of the privilege of having the Word of God. in conclusions and applications. We ought to read our Bibles every day. We ought to be people of one book, the book of God. We ought to have a practice of reading the Bible through cover to cover. Consistently, repeatedly, we should strive to know, to be familiar with the Bible. We should look for Christ in the Bible when we read. There is a caution, there isn't an error you can fall into. Jesus said, you search the Scriptures because you believe that in them you have eternal life, but it's they that bear witness about me. So let the Bible lead you to Christ and find Him in the Bible. We ought to have a practice of private devotional reading of the Word of God and secret prayer. And I personally am a strong advocate of making it the first thing you do in the morning. is to get alone with the Lord and read the Bible. I remember when Don Kern visited San Antonio and he was telling me about Al Martin traveling around as an itinerant pastor preaching to preachers and Al Martin said he didn't find but 15 or some ridiculously small number. He said 15 men who read the Bible devotionally. All they did was study theology. All they did was read it professionally to make sermons. But they didn't read it devotionally. We ought to read it devotionally. What is God saying to me? What's here that God wants me to see and know? How's the Lord actually speaking to me in the Word? And then finally I'd say this. There are 828 languages that have no Bible translation even in progress. I found these statistics with Wycliffe Global Alliance. I don't know. You can check the numbers somewhere where you want. But 828 languages with no work in progress on a Bible translation. That amounted to 67.6 million people with not even anybody working to give them a Bible. These are people without a language close enough for them to learn. And then there are 145 million that still need translation work to begin. So they have people who are yet to begin working on it. But the point is there are millions, hundreds of millions of people who have no Bible. That means they don't have Christ. That means they're lost. What can we do to get the Bible to them? And in the meantime, avail ourselves of the privileges of having the word of God that gives us life. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for this time here this morning Lord, we pray that the Lord's Supper would be sweet, set our minds upon Christ. Help us to remember him, to remember you, Lord Jesus, how you gave your life, shed your blood. Your body was broken for us. Lord, we ask your blessing on the rest of this fellowship. In Jesus' name, amen.