Take these specific words of Jesus literally and
figuratively. “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that
proceeds out of the mouth of God.” The Bible is profoundly true on many levels.
If we realize that food is mentioned throughout Scripture, recommended,
commented on, given as the essence of God’s blessings to us, (“I have brought
you into a land flowing with milk and honey,” Exodus 3:8) what does “eating by
faith” mean?
Jesus said, “It is written, That man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word of God.” To obey Scripture then is living by the
Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word
was God.” John 1:1-3. This is God, the Word, who created you, created the
world, created the magnificent body you live in, and designed and created your
spirit, soul, and body. All of you needs the Word. Not bread alone, not food
alone, but you need every word of God.
When I decided to accept
the challenge of our son, Zach, “Mom, write about health;” I knew major study
would be involved, but the depth of change in both my views on food and
profound excitement about food in the Bible has given me new purpose. If living
by every word of God is about food, life, and eternity, as I now think it is,
then eating by faith is an important pursuit. For myself, it is a new ambition:
glorify God by living “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
After fasting forty days,
Jesus was hungry. The enemy told Him to do something he could do but Jesus
would not yield to the temptation.
In our current culture,
food has become somewhat of a temptation because so much of it looks like food,
tastes like food and is so easy to reach. With bleached, degermed flour,
bleached sugar, corn syrup, chemicals, additives, “Natural Flavor” and
devitalized, processed, bioengineered “food” we are regularly tempted to
neglect the knowledge and wisdom to eat as we should.
Fast food is the new
“unclean food.”
The Temptation
of Jesus
Mat 4:1 Then
was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the
devil.
Mat 4:2 And when he had
fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.
Mat 4:3 And when the
tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these
stones be made bread.
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
