Word For Today Test, Are You Eating Stones or Bread?

Word For Today

Test, Are You Eating Stones or Bread?

God supplied daily bread to the Israelites in the wilderness

God supplies daily bread to you and I

The test is will we daily go out and get it

Will we struggle in our heart or humble our hearts

It would have been hard to make the stones into bread

Jesus chose the better way, live on the daily Word of God

If God were to test you to see what was in your heart, how you think

Would He find you struggle to make bread of stones

Or, humbly looking to the Word of God for your bread?

What are you eating, stones or bread?

Test, Are You Eating Stones or Bread?

You may remember Jesus, after a 40

day fast, was taken into the wilderness

where He was tempted by the Devil.

Jesus was hungry and Satan tempted Him.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

Jesus made this quote…

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Matthew 4:1-4

Jesus is not pulling a verse out of context

but revealing the context of Deuteronomy 8.

Deuteronomy 8:1 says…

Be careful to follow every

command I am giving you today.

Follow every command or word.

Jesus’ 40 days of fasting is compared with the

40 year wilderness journey of the Israelites.

Like Jesus, the Israelites were tested.

The test was…

 “To teach you that man does not live on bread alone

 but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”

Deuteronomy 8:3

For 40 years God took His

people through the wilderness…

“To humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart,

whether or not you would keep his commands.

Deuteronomy 8:2

We know the story…

 God gave them manna to eat every day.

This manna came from heaven.

 It was bread that they did

not know or their ancestors.

Tests are to reveal the answers.

If you are testing something,

 you are doing the test to find out

the integrity of what you are testing.

When we put our well in,

 we had the water tested to

see what was in the water.

The 40 years for the Israelites and the 40 days

of Jesus was a test to see what was in their heart.

 

You might say water is water, but if you get

water from the ocean, the water will have salt in it. 

As rain water falls from heaven and travels through

the earth it picks up minerals and other things.

One neighbor may have a well

with sulfur, another with iron.

Why? Because water mixes with other things.

As we need to test water to see what is in it,

 we need to test the heart to see what is in it.

Our hearts, our minds like water pick things

up as we travel through the earth.

The wilderness is a great place to test our hearts.

The wilderness was a place where food was removed.

The Children of Israel complained when they got hungry.

God knew they needed food to nourish their bodies.

We all need food.

 God’s people were not tested to

see how good of hunters they were.

Or, how much they knew about agriculture.

The test was to see what

they knew about their God.

 

The first thing we need to take

note of is God humbled them.

All of us, even Jesus in His 40

days of fasting, was humbled.

Humility opens the door of learning.

Note the manna came every day.

Jesus quotes…

        

“Man does not live on bread alone but on every

word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” 

Jesus passed the test.

 In His heart was not survival.

It was not getting his next meal.

But God’s Word.

All of us have wilderness experiences.

The key is what satisfies.

God supplied daily bread to

the Israelites in the wilderness.

God supplies daily bread to you and I.

The test is…

 Will we daily go out and get it?

Will we struggle in our

heart or humble our hearts?

It would have been hard 

to make the stones into bread.

Jesus chose the better way…

Live on the daily Word of God.

If God were to test you to see what

was in your heart, how you think…

Would He find you struggle

to make bread of stones.

Or, humbly looking to the Word

of God for your bread?

  

Scripture Reading

Matthew 4:1-4 NIV

4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" 

Deuteronomy 8:1-5 NIV

8:1 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. 2 Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.