Bread, Battles, and the Bible…How to Overcome Temptation

When Jesus overcame the reptilian temptations in the desert, He did so with a precise and powerful unleashing of Scripture. Where Adam failed in every conceivable way in perfect paradise, Jesus rose victorious in the most inhospitable environments imaginable.  Though Jesus had the ability to turn the stones into bread and satisfy the natural hunger of His humanity, He refused the invitation to such a meal.  Adam chose fruit and was spiritually consumed in death. The Second Adam chose bread and was sustained in life. I suppose you really are what you eat after all.

Every hellish blow that was released by Satan was blocked by Holy revelation.  In response to the devil’s unqualified and unwarranted challenge, Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Jesus was not saying this for Himself, He was saying this for you.  As a matter of fact, He was not being tempted to validate Himself to the devil, the devil knew exactly Who Christ was, is, and will always be.  Christ was suffering in the howling wasteland so that you and I would be able to overcome our own temptations. He modeled the perfect example of the great need we all have in yielding to the Word of God for sustenance and life.

Jesus informed us in that weak and lowly hour that man lives by the Word of God, not just bread. He lives…that’s the idea.  Even as bread sustains and strengthens the natural body, the Word of God sustains and strengthens the spiritual.  But it must be consumed.

Think about it, eating bread is not the same thing as cooking bread.  Eating bread is not the same thing as knowing the ingredients in bread.  Eating bread is not the same thing as serving bread to others.  At some point, the cook must become the consumer if he is going to be naturally nourished. Smelling, touching, seeing, are no substitutes for tasting.  At some point bread must be digested; this is how you “live by bread.”

Spiritually speaking, the same principle applies – the Word of God must get in you, this is the only way you are able to live by it.  Jesus did not say to only read the Word, or learn the Word, or memorize the Word, or quote the Word, or proclaim the Word, or to even know the Word.  He said to “live by the Word.”  You can have a stockpile of bread in your pantry and never taste it…such a scenario will not sustain your flesh.  Beloved, the only way to overcome temptation, rise above the enemy, yield to the Spirit’s call, sustain the spiritual man, and have power to fulfill the assignment ahead is if you are daily consuming and living by the Word of God.  Grab a piece today, allow the Spirit of God to butter it up in your heart and enjoy the life-sustaining, life-changing joy that it brings.  Even if the restaurant is in the desert, the meal is out of this world.