Jesus now goes to do battle with the devil. The battle is not to be engaged between two equals, but between the Almighty Creator and the devil. He might be the most powerful created being, but he is no match for the Son of God. Jesus is to be tempted in every way as we are and yet remain without sin.
In this temptation we see the work of Satan to cloud the field with his lies. When the tempter came to Eve in Genesis 3, he did the same thing. He carried out his propaganda campaign. Yet in this case, unlike Eve, Jesus counters each of the devil’s lies with the truth of the Word of God.
The temptations Satan brings against the Lord Jesus are lies that are held commonly enough among many today, even within the churches of God. This passage shows how we can be deceived by the tempter if we do not have knowledge of the Word of God. As the Lord says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Notice he says, “My people.” Not the heathen, not unbelievers, but “my people.” But the lies that Satan uses are unmasked as Jesus speaks the truth of the Word of God to him. And since Satan does not deviate far from his usual attacks, if we can understand his schemes and believe God’s truth, we have ground from which to fight him.
I. The Temptation over Bread
The first temptation we see Jesus encountering is that over bread. It starts simply enough. Jesus had gone without food in the desert for forty days and nights under the Holy Spirit’s direction. Just as this Spirit-led fast is coming to a close the devil comes to Jesus to entice Him to sin by making some bread. In verse 3 Matthew writes, “And the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’”
A. The lie: Fulfill physical appetites without regard to the will of God
The lie found in Satan’s words in this temptation is “Fulfill physical appetites without regard to the will of God.” Satan was implying that since Jesus was the Son of God (the “if” is not questioning but assuming), He should be able to do whatever He desires, whenever He desires, for whatever reason He desires (especially if the reason is simply the fulfilling of natural physical desires). But the purpose for which Jesus came was to fulfill the will of His Father. He was not operating on His own agenda but on His Father’s. What Satan was intimating was that legitimate physical appetites (hunger) should be fulfilled without regard to the will of God. But simply because Jesus was the Son of God and had a legitimate physical appetite did not mean that He was free to fulfill it apart from the will of God. If the will of His Father, for another purpose, was to keep Him from fulfilling those legitimate physical appetites, then it would be sin for Jesus to do so. The fulfilling of those appetites must take into consideration the will of God rather than the appetite itself.
You might ask, Dave, how can you say that you should override physical appetites? After all, we are physical creatures, right? We operate on physical principles, don’t we? These appetites were given to us by God, were they not? Yes, we operate on physical appetites. But we don’t operate on physical appetites alone.
An example of this came about in our family last week when the kids had the stomach bug. Now you might think that I am coldhearted or mean, you might want to call DCYF, but I did not allow Timothy to eat for most of a whole day. He asked for food at supper time. He told me how hungry he was. He asked properly, with all the pleases and manners that a father could wish to hear. But I said no. Adamantly I said no. I even forced him to stop stealing sips of water from the sink. Not only did I do this with Tim, but with Josiah and Theresa. Don’t you think it was difficult to do this to my little daughter? But I knew that if I acquiesced to their legitimate physical appetites, they would have been worse. I knew once they disgorged the contents of their stomachs that I had to encourage them to quell the desire to fulfill their natural appetite to eat.
What about other physical appetites? There are times when our physical appetite for sleep is felt for many reasons, but the time to fulfill that need may not be appropriate. When I had the mid-watch on my ship, I often felt the appetite for sleep coming upon me, but it was not an appropriate time. How did I know it was a time that I needed to stay awake? The Uniform Code of Military Justice told me so. You may experience the appetite for sleep while you drive, but you had better not succumb to it then.
There are times, because of our fallen condition and the events that take place in such a world, that our physical appetites cannot be rightfully fulfilled. Perhaps in a perfect world prior to the fall of Adam and Eve, we would only have an appetite to eat when we were supposed to eat. Maybe our appetite for sleep would only come about when it was time to go to bed, instead of an hour after lunch or twenty minutes into your pastor’s sermon. Perhaps sexual desires would only be stirred up by our spouse and only at the right time.
There are those today who say, “My body is a temple.” When they are saying this, they are not speaking in context of the Word of God that says the body of the believer is the temple of God’s Holy Spirit and accordingly we should seek to avoid sin in our body. What people mean when they say that phrase, however, is “their body is their idol.” They will do what they want with it. It usually comes in the context of treating it right. But what someone declares is, “Don’t tell me what to do with it.” They are especially saying, “God, don’t you tell me what to do with it. I’ll do what I think is best for it.” This is exactly the opposite of what the Word of God means by the statement and falls into this realm of the devil’s lie that I should fulfill my physical appetite without regard to the Word of God.
But this thinking that our appetites are just natural physical drives that should tell us what to do and when to do it will drive us to be abused by them. When our natural physical appetites are simply something to fulfill rather than something with which to glorify God, we live for ourselves. The end of this type of thinking is very gross behavior, and if you don’t see that the lie that is portrayed is a lie, you will come to this result.
If your desire to eat is not placed under the truth of the Word of God (which we will get to), then the desire to satisfy that craving will lead you to all kinds of excesses. You will be thinking of food for the mere satisfaction of it or the idea that it will satisfy you. Those thoughts will drive your appetite and you will seek to fulfill it. The lie “to fulfill physical appetites without regard to the will of God” will cause you to eat excessively, to lust, if you will, for food. Your body will suffer the consequences of binging. It may include uncontrollable weight gain, purging, and things like these in which the physical appetite has become the god of your world. The appetite has corrupted itself into a monster that is now your god.
The reason this happens is that in neglecting the spiritual aspect of our lives, the vacuum created in the place where Christ should be causes a longing (an appetite if you would use that term). And when we have this craving, we mistake it for a physical appetite and think that fulfilling that physical appetite will satisfy the spiritual appetite. In other words, you enter into idolatry whenever you think that satisfying yourself with a physical appetite will quench your spiritual appetite. This is why it leads to excess. Trying to satisfy your appetite for the Lord Jesus by substituting something else is like drinking salt water when you are thirsty. The Scripture says that God speaks to each of our hearts and tells us, “Seek my face.” When we respond to that and say, “Your face O Lord I will seek” then God will satisfy us.
Here is another physical appetite. Sleep, living for a little more sleep, does not satisfy your heart. It causes you to desire more sleep and become even more tired. You become lazy and the desire to fulfill your appetite produces in you all kinds of slothfulness. An uncontrolled attitude toward sleep does not produce a rested feeling, but restlessness and laziness, and it leads to poverty and theft.
If you believe the lie that our physical appetites should be fulfilled without regard to the will of God, then you will run down the road to death in immorality. If you think that sexual appetites should be fulfilled because you are simply a physical endowed with these then you will find yourself freely thinking immoral thoughts. Adultery is what Jesus calls these thoughts (if you lust for a woman in your heart you have committed adultery). I hope you see that in all of these examples there is a ramping up of these appetites. They are physical appetites on steroids: there is no controlling them. Think salt water again. It is not what you need to satisfy you. These adulterous thoughts lead to a pursuit of pornography. They further lead to a desire to fulfill yourself sexually. Whether that means masturbation or other immoral practices, it increases to violent behavior. It produces aggression instead of gentleness. It leaves a person in an isolated condition unable to genuinely communicate with others except on a level of lewdness, a world of double meanings, and immoral inferences.
The lie doesn’t appear to be much of a lie at the beginning, but the end of it is death. However, if you only look at its end you may not see that you are taken in by it as well, for our sin nature has a great way of disguising the fact that you are holding on to a lie that says you should fulfill your appetites.
There is something incomplete about this discussion as yet. First, not everyone taken by this lie follows it to its extreme. There are many content to follow it in moderation. Second, every one of us has been taken in by this lie. Our flesh is good at covering up this fact and can even make it look like the opposite (stifle physical appetites WITHOUT regard to the will of God). Paul said in 1 Timothy 4 that demonic doctrines that will arise will consist of commandments that people not marry or eat meat. You could actually stifle physical appetites by the power of the flesh, all without regard to the will of God. So perhaps you, in your flesh, were gloating that you are not at all like the people I described above, when in fact you are. You are just like them because you are operating on the same principle.
There is a third and most important issue that will complete the discussion about our appetite, but I want to conclude with this because what I say next will build upon how I finish.
What are we to do?
When we recognize that we are allowing ourselves to focus on our physical appetites without regard to the will of God, we need to put it off by confessing our sin, acknowledging it before God, and renewing our mind with the truth that Jesus espouses here to counteract Satan’s lies. The sin is not in the fulfillment or suppression of the physical appetites but in doing it without regard to the will of God. So then how do we know? Again, it is by renewing our mind in the truth that Jesus speaks.
B. The truth: God’s Word must hold preeminence in your life
What is this truth? Now we come to it. The truth with which Jesus countered Satan’s lie is that God’s Word must hold preeminence in your life. In verse 4, “He answered and said, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”’” Jesus quotes Moses in Deuteronomy 8. There Moses writes, “You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna…that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus quotes from this passage that speaks about the Lord leading the Israelites in the desert for forty years after Jesus was led in the desert for forty days? This passage speaks about how the Lord let the Israelites go hungry and then fed them, the very same way that His Father has let Jesus go hungry and will shortly feed Him. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus quotes from a passage that says the purpose for which God did this was to test Israel to see what was in their hearts, whether they would listen to the Word of God, when the reason Jesus was there in the wilderness was to test Jesus to show to the world what was in His heart (that He would obey the Word of God). And Jesus quotes from the passage to apply it to His life and to show us that even He, the Son of God, needed to live by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.
This is the truth that Jesus spoke to counteract the devil’s lie: God’s Word must hold preeminence in your life. When it comes to our physical appetites, we are not just physical beings who only have concern for this life. We are spiritual beings created in the image of God, living in a physical body that sometimes has appetites we are not meant to fulfill because they would conflict with the Word of God and the work of the Spirit of God in our life. We are not animals. We have not come from animals. We were not created as animals. We have been made in the image of God and have the privilege and blessing to respond to the Word of God through the Spirit of God.
So let’s look at this truth displayed for us. In 1 Corinthians 10:31, the apostle Paul writes, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Our appetites need to be under the guiding principle of the Word of God that whatever we do should be to honor and praise God. This means that our eating and drinking must be done with the glory of God as our objective. It is when we set up the Word of God as preeminent (having the first place) in our lives that we see He satisfies us, regardless of whether we have our physical appetites met or not. If we set ourselves to put the will of God first in our lives, we will learn contentment in all situations, not just when we can satisfy our appetites, because our greatest appetite (the appetite for God) will be satiated. In Philippians 4:12, the apostle Paul addresses this situation. Writing from prison, he says, “I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
How then do we hold the Word of God as preeminent in our lives?
– You have to read it. Begin to read it. Set time aside to look at it. Make it a daily priority.
– You have to think on it – time
– You have to memorize it
– You have to apply it – This is what Jesus was doing.
The passage Jesus quotes speaks directly to His own life. “The Lord led Me into this desert, the Lord is testing Me, the Lord will feed Me, the Lord is teaching me that I need to rely on everything in the Word of God and not just look to meet my physical needs.”
I want you to understand this most important issue and take it home with you and allow it to produce fruit in you. Satan seeks to get us to focus on our appetites apart from the will of God. He desires that you neglect the Word of God as preeminent in your life so that you will not focus on the primary reason the Lord has saved you. If he can get you to forget about directing your heart toward the will of God, he will keep you from bringing the gospel to others. “I don’t want to say anything to this person about the Lord now because they might be interested and I’ll miss my opportunity to eat lunch. I’m hungry and if I don’t eat now, I won’t be able to eat until supper.” When we don’t repent of the lie, Satan stifles our opportunity to bring others the gospel. When we don’t renew our minds with the fact that we are to live, not on bread only, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, we miss the opportunity to share the gospel.
Do you remember Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman? He actually used His physical appetites to produce an opportunity to share the gospel. He said to the woman, “Give me a drink and I’ll give you living water.” When His disciples returned from the town with food they encouraged Him to eat but He said He couldn’t because His Father’s will (to share the gospel) was His food. And because of this He shared the gospel and the entire town came to faith in Him.
Use your physical appetites to share the gospel, and use your needs to share the gospel. I can think of two occasions last week God gave me to give out a gospel tract because I allowed the kindness of others to not prevent me from seeking to meet their needs. I was at a store where they had samples. The lady offered me a sample and I said, “You were kind enough to offer me something; I want to be kind enough to give this to you. It will tell you how to get rich.” And I did the same thing with a sales associate who helped me find something. When you are focused on the will of God first instead of your appetites first, He will supply both for you. He will let you carry out His will and He will meet your needs. “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”