This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors.  Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.  He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years.  Deuteronomy 8:1-4

Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman by a well.  The disciples returned from town with groceries and they offered Jesus lunch, but He declined their offer saying, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:31) and “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34).  Jesus focused on spiritual matters and He was full because He had just completed a task ordained by God; however, in that moment the disciples focused on physical matters.  The short episode presents food, hunger and satisfaction relating to our physical and spiritual beings, and Jesus enjoyed spiritual satisfaction while physically hungry.

We need physical sustenance, but we also need spiritual food which involves fulfilling our purpose in and through Christ, and if handled properly, physical hunger enhances spiritual satisfaction.  Jesus contrasts spiritual and physical food, but the concepts date back at least to Deuteronomy which explains that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 

Jesus is the Word, He is the resurrection and the life, through Him we gain wholeness, satisfaction and purpose – we gain life.  But as God delivered the words through Moses over a thousand years before Jesus left heaven and came to earth, God was not asking or expecting the Israelites camping on the Jordan to believe in the Messiah, He was asking them to remember Him and His holy word and His provision, and to continue trusting Him after they crossed the river and entered the Promised Land, and to continue following His instruction on proper living while enjoying physical abundance.  The Israelites relied completely on God to provide their needs each day for forty years in the wilderness, but could they continue trusting and relying on Him after entering the land of plenty?   

Let’s pause and consider that, because it is counterintuitive.  While they were in the wilderness with no means of eating or drinking except through God’s provision, they did not worry about food or water because they knew He would provide.  God was now leading them into the land of milk and honey, the land of plenty, and He urges them to continue trusting and relying on Him, to continue living as His people so that others might come to know Him.  God knows that when they are exposed to plenty, they may forget Him, they may forget that He provides everything, they may forget who they are, they may forget His holy word.  The result of that awful cycle would be that they live in a land of plenty, yet worry and fret about future provision because they lose their trust in the Lord.

How do we prevent that cycle from beginning or stop it after it has begun?  We begin living by God’s holy word which means studying, meditating on, knowing and applying His holy word to our daily lives.  We drink Him in through His holy word and we apply Him while we are out in the world each day.  We allow Him to be the lens through which we experience the world.

The generation that lived in the wilderness were at risk of forgetting, but how should they lead subsequent generations who grew up in abundance, who never experienced the wilderness, to the same humility, faith and trust in God that their ancestors knew because of their wilderness experience?  In the same speech, through Moses, God directs them as follows:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem[b] on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  Deuteronomy 6:4-9

We must know God’s holy word and keep it in the front of our minds so that it might serve as the lens through which we view the world, and we must teach it to our children so they might do the same.  But many forces distract us and we are under attack.  God’s holy word explains that His holy word is a sword against spiritual attack (see Ephesians 6:17), and we see Jesus use the word of God as a sword when He was attacked by Satan.  Matthew records a portion of the episode as follows:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.  The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  Matthew 4:1-4

The tempter, the devil, Satan attempted to get Jesus to doubt His Father’s promises and provision.  Jesus knew God would provide and He also knew that His food was living consistent with God’s holy will and fulfilling His purpose on earth. He needed physical food, but He desired spiritual food more and He knew how to use God’s holy word as a sword against the attacker. 

What distracts you from God’s holy word?  What whispers cause you to doubt God and His promises and provision?

Jesus urges us to trust God, to stand firm on our faith, to stand firm on God’s promises and to never doubt God’s love and provision.  During the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches:

 “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[j] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’  For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But strive first for the kingdom of God[l] and his[m]righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:24-34

Jesus urges us to trust God and His promises and His love and His provision.  If we yield to distractions and listen to the whispers, faith and trust will fade to worry, and we will enter the counterintuitive state of living in abundance yet worrying about whether God will provide.  The cure to this counterintuitive condition is living by God’s holy word, by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  Live in His holy word.  Commune with Him.  Allow Him to live in you.  Allow Him to move from concept to soul-filling reality.  

May you breathe in His holy spirit with each breath.  May you replace worry with trust. Amen.