Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. In this case the temptation seems to refer to natural hunger, but the answer of our Lord goes deeper, even to the life itself. I. THE WORDS OF MY TEXT, TAKEN IN THEIR LOWEST SENSE, IN WHICH SATAN PROBABLY UNDERSTOOD THEM, ARE SIMPLY TRUE. Man does not live by bread alone; he needs raiment, shelter, and a thousand other things, not included in bread alone. Man creates nothing. From the grain that springs up after his planting and furnishes "bread to the eater and seed to the sower" to the lightnings of heaven that flash along the lines of His proriding, carrying His messages over continents and under oceans to the uttermost parts of the earth — all, all is of God, the result of His inward thought and His spoken Word, and we are living now, as never before, in all the history of our race, not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. But man is an intellectual being and — II. HIS INTELLECTUAL LIFE REQUIRES MORE THAN BREAD. Nothing satisfies human intelligence but the Word, "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The human mind is so constituted as to recognize every expressed idea of the Divine mind. Take English literature, for instance, and what is there in it that deserves to live and that will live, that does not in some degree express the Divine thought. Take the bad books that are printed — literary garbage, rightly excluded from the mails, and hauled out and dumped with other garbage on waste places. How it shuns the light I Literature can only live, and bless mankind, that has in it the Word of God. Mark the history of our own English literature. It had its rise in the fourteenth century in the translation and publishing of the Holy Scriptures by John Wickliffe. It gathered new life in the times of the English Reformation when the same Word was freely given to the people, and reached its zenith, intellectually considered, in the reign of King James at the hands of Shakespeare and Lord Bacon. Literature lost none of its strength, but became purer in the days of Milton and more religious during the revival period under Whitfield and the Wesleys. Take out of our literature all that is inspired by the Bible and all that expresses the Divine Word in creation, and little would remain worth saving. Yes, man lives by ideas. God's ideas inscribed, it may be, on the unhewn tables of stone that build up the foundations of the earth, or they may wave in beauty on the green banners that adorn its surface, or shine with resplendent glory in the heavens above us, wherever they exist they are God's ideas. The scientist in his deepest researches only discovers them. He is engaged in translating an ancient manuscript, and if he dares to say there is no God he is trying to translate a book that has no author. But the meaning of Christ's answer to the tempter is deeper and broader than this. Man never truly lives until the conditions of his moral nature are met and satisfied. This is a fact too often overlooked by the epicurean and the scientist, and it will remain a fact even after these worthies have exhausted all their resources in trying to prove that man is nothing more than an intellectual brute. III. MAN'S MORAL LIFE REQUIRES MORE THAN BREAD AND IDEAS. Man is as truly moral as he is intellectual and physical. His moral nature can no more be fed on bread than his physical powers can be sustained by pure thought. If in the Divine word provision has been made for the body and the mind it would be a strange and inexplicable oversight if no word has been spoken of sufficient vitality to meet the wants of man's moral nature. And this oversight, if it exists, is all the more grievous from the tact that man's happiness in this life depends absolutely upon his moral condition. (H. O. Cushing.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. |
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