Matthew 4:4

Matthew 4:4

I. God has appointed, under all ordinary circumstances, that we should sustain life by the secondary means of earthly food; but where He has placed man under special bonds of duty, and pointed out before him a course of action higher and nobler than the mere sustaining of the body, He can and will nourish him in this course of duty; or even if it should in its fulfilment wear out and bring to dissolution this physical frame, He can and will provide for that man's true life in a better and more exalted sense. His real life, his real sustenance, is not to be found in bread alone, but in God's appointment, God's service, that which cometh out of the mouth of God. What a noble example have we of such a spirit in our blessed Lord! He came into the world to serve the Father, with a definite path of duty marked out before Him. Though He was the Son of God, He submitted Himself to hunger and pain, to tears and sorrow, to insult and rejection, rather than for one instant transgress the limits which He had marked out for Himself. He lacked the bread of the world, but it was that He might feed the world with the bread of life. He was deprived of the comforts of this world, but it was that He might be the Everlasting Comforter of this world's mourners. By His rejection of all unworthy and secondary means of attaining His end, and following simply His Father's will, He showed us that man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

II. The tempter comes to each of us, and tries to make us swerve from our true work into selfish and worldly courses. We have not, it is true, supernatural power to abuse, but we have each of us talents, faculties, worldly means, to be laid out on this our work. And the temptation comes to us in this form: Take thy talents, take thy faculties, take thy worldly means, lay them out for thyself. These are our temptations, and it is for us to remember that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 152.

I. Since man has a complex nature, his life must inevitably be a failure in so far as he neglects to bring that nature in its entirety to the greatest possible perfection. For this it is necessary that the lower principles be guided and controlled by the higher. Neither the narrow desires of sense, nor the wider and more comprehensive desires, such as love of wealth and power, are to be eradicated; but their original character of independence is to be changed. Complete self-development requires that we regard our nature as a whole estimating at their proper value all its various elements, and using them according to their respective characters of subordination and supremacy.

II. But further, complete self-development requires that we remember the next life as well as the present. It is imperative on us all to remember that the "grave is not our goal," and that our life on earth is but an elementary stage in our existence. Though there is not required from us any irrational rejection of pleasure, there is required from us the reasoning and reasonable rejection of it where it would be incompatible with our complete all-round development. Though there is not required from us any hypocritical profession of contempt for the world in which we live, there is required from us serious reflection upon the fact that we carry latent within us "the power of an endless life." Though we should not ignore, nor attempt to destroy, the lower elements of our nature, we should and, if we would be perfect, we mustsubdue them, and press them into the service of the Spirit.

A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil,p. 135.

This text offers an answer to the question, How shall we live? It strikes out in a sentence a theory of living. Satan, as the prince of this world, announces his theory, and tries to win Christ's assent to it: "Man lives by bread and by bread alone." Christ replies, "Man lives not by bread, but by God. Man lives by God's gifts, only as God is behind them. Man's real support is not in the gifts, but in the Giver."

I. What is covered by this word "bread"? It covers the, whole visible economy of life, all that range of supplies, helps and supports upon which men usually depend to keep themselves alive and to make life comfortable and enjoyable. The world's commonly accepted theory is, "By these things we live. We cannot get on without them." Now I am not blind to men's natural and pardonable anxiety about such things. Food and garment and home are parts of God's own economy of life in this world; and Christ Himself says, "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." The Kingdom of God includesbread; and hence, in the Lord's Prayer, immediately after the petition, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done," comes the prayer for daily bread.

II. If our Lord had yielded to this first temptation, He would have committed Himself to the bread theory as the law of His Kingdom, no less than of His own life. He would have said, by changing the stones into bread, "As I cannot live without bread, so My Kingdom cannot thrive so long as men's worldly needs are unsupplied. My administration must be a turning of stones into bread. We know that this has not been Christ's policy. He abjured it in this answer to Satan. This is what Christ asserts, that society no less than man as an individual trulylives only as it lives by dependence on God. Social prosperity is based on righteousness. Man lives by God's gifts, but not by the gifts only by bread, but not by bread alone.Bread is nothing without God. Bread gets all its power to feed from God. Bread points away from itself to God. Bread has a part in the Divine economy of society, but it comes in with the Kingdom of God, under its law and not as its substitute.

M. R. Vincent, God and Bread,p. 3.

The Food of Man.

I. Consider what it is for which consciousness and the best experience of our race unite in saying that the immediate advantage and pleasure of the senses must be surrendered. Jesus described it to His tempter as "the word of God." And the word of God includes two notions one of revelation and one of commandment. Whenever God speaks by any of His voices it is first to tell us some truth which we did not know before, and second to bid us do something which we have not been doing. Every word of God includes these two. Truth and duty are always wedded. There is no truth which has not its corresponding duty. And there is no duty which has not its corresponding truth. He, then, who lives by the word of God is a man who is continually seeing new truth and accepting the duties that arise out of it. And it is for this, the pleasure of seeing truth and doing its attendant duty, that he is willing to give up the pleasures of sense, and even, if need be, to give up the bodily life to which the pleasures of sense belong.

II. In consciousness and in experience man finds the witness of his higher nature. But consciousness and experience both of them are weak in all of us. Here is where the revelation of Christ comes in. Christ is both the Revealer of a man's life to himself and the Revealer of the world's life to all of us. It is when Christ is in you that the highest motives become practically powerful upon your life. We think of Christ as the Liberator. But we do need to know what the character of the liberation which He brings us is. He wants to awaken your dead conscience, and to quicken into life and aspiration the apparently dead and depressing experience around you, so that you shall feel in yourself the response to higher motives, and recognize in all history the loftier and more spiritual possibility of man. That is true liberty. It does not cast the lower things away. Man shall live by bread, but not by bread alone. The things that supplied the lower wants are not thrown away, but they are used no longer to enslave and bind, but simply to sustain and steady, the life which moves now under spiritual impulse.

Phillips Brooks, Sermons,p. 265.

References: Matthew 4:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1208; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 259; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 27; C. Short, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 261.