Do you have Christ's hunger?

³And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. ⁴But 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. -- Matthew 4:3-4

I love the book of Matthew. It is my favorite Gospel account. For many reasons, I enjoy reading it. It is the most Jewish of the Gospels, and it blends the two Covenants together so beautifully. Also, the author of the Gospel is a forgiven turncoat who was redeemed to be one of the original apostles. Furthermore, the book records five extended discourses by Jesus. We read Jesus' words; we hear His sermons.

But today, let's look at the record of Jesus' first temptation. Notice the devil comes to Him as He is fasting and tries to get Him to make bread out of stones. There are a lot of applications and implications in these two verses, and many knowledgeable and capable Bible teachers can pull many diamonds out of these verses. But right now, let's just look at Jesus' answer.

It is subtle. Do you see it? How do we live? What keeps us alive? Is it bread alone? We are kept alive by God's word! The words of God keep us alive. That is certainly the point in Deuteronomy 8:3, the source for Jesus' quote. Let us ask ourselves, do we eat bread to stay alive, or do we rely on God's word? Are we striving and working and sweating to eat bread, or do our lives revolve around God, whose words truly keep us alive?

Jesus used the image of eating as an illustration on many occasions, but there's an interesting parallel in John's Gospel. We remember the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus spoke to her while the disciples had gone to buy bread. She is one of the first converts, and the interaction between her and Jesus is one of the greatest accounts in the Gospels.

After the woman leaves Jesus to go tell her friends she has found the Messiah, the disciples express their concern that Jesus has had nothing to eat. So we pick up in John 4:31, "³¹In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.
³²But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
³³Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?
³⁴Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."

Notice, it can be true that the tempter and our closest friends may sometimes be in league together. In both of these passages, Jesus was tempted to look away from His primary purpose to fulfill His physical needs. Both times He refused.

This exchange, though, is very interesting. Jesus tells the disciples that He has meat (or food) they don't know about. The disciples, obtuse as always, are trying to figure out who fed the Messiah. I have to imagine Jesus was a bit frustrated at their lack of understanding. Think about it. The disciples had been pursuing the matter of finding bread, while Jesus was pursuing the matter of saving a sinful woman.

Jesus has to spell the situation out for the disciples just as He did for Satan. There's something more important than food. Don't miss what Jesus says in verse 34. His sustenance is found in doing the will of God. That's where He gets His provision. Of course He still needed to eat, but His hunger was not for food; it was for the will of God the Father to be fulfilled. And what is God the Father's will? What has Jesus just been doing and what is He about to do in the following verses? He is saving souls! In the verses prior, He is redeeming an adulterous woman; in the verses to follow, He will redeem many who believed by her testimony.

Do you hunger with Christ's hunger? Is the redemption of the lost what you long for? Or are you with the disciples, spending your energy finding bread? What sustains you, doing the will of the Father or doing the will of the stomach? Do you recognize that you live because of God's words, or do you long for your next meal?

May we learn to hunger as our Savior did! May we long to see God's purpose fulfilled even as we long to fill our bellies!