Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. If this is your first time here, hey, thank you a ton for checking this out. I hope you find it interesting and engaging and useful. We are going through the book of Matthew, but that doesn't mean you have to go back and start from the beginning if you don't want to. Just jump in with us here, see what you think of it. If you do find it interesting, you can go back and check that out whenever you want, or we can just cruise forward from here. If you've been hanging around with me doing this thing for a while, um, hey, glad you're back. Thanks for letting me be a part of the rhythm of your weekdays as we cruise through the book of Matthew. So to reset it for everybody, we're in Matthew chapter four. We're looking at the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. He is just freshly an adult in the narrative of Matthew. We've seen his first adult thing happen in Matthew chapter three. It's his baptism. The whole Trinity shows up to celebrate and affirm Jesus. And then that same Holy Spirit that shows up in the form of a dove at his baptism flips around, and in the very next passage, Matthew chapter 4, leads Jesus out into the desert to face temptation and testing at the hands of his chief adversary, the devil. And the first of those temptations, once again, goes like this The tempter came to him and said, If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, It is written, man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God, and that's Deuteronomy 8.3. Before we get on to the next temptation, which I think we'll probably do tomorrow, I never know. Before we get on to that, though, I want to flesh out this whole bread thing just a little bit further, because I think Jesus is drawing on language that we hinted at in our last conversation, but that I want to make sure we've really got dialed here before we move on. So I want to look back and then I want to look forward a little bit to make some sense of this. Okay, so looking back, once again, that whole God providing bread thing isn't just a metaphor or an imagined image. It's a thing that actually happened while his people were unfaithfully wandering around in the desert unsure of whether God would actually deliver, which was nuts because when that was going on in the aftermath of the Exodus, they had just seen incredible, miraculous, break the laws of time and space kind of crazy stuff. Yet, hey, like maybe we can empathize with these guys a little bit. Faith is hard. It's weird because you're used to the rules of physics, and I suppose even if we did see something crazy and incredible, like a sea parting or frogs ranning from the sky or all the other things that happened miraculously associated with the Exodus, still you get a few days, weeks, months, years past that, and you're used to normal stuff again. I don't know. It's tough. The supernatural is tricky, it's hard. We don't see the supernatural being reaffirmed to us all the time. And we do have the natural being reaffirmed to us all the time. Some people would say, get over it. I would say, hey, if if that's difficult for you too, then I empathize. This is a this is a hard thing about being a person of faith, a person of belief. And so, whatever the case, uh, the people in the wilderness kind of fail a test that frankly, I probably would have failed too. They got hungry, they got lonely, they weren't sure what God was doing, they got grouchy because they were hungry. I can get grouchy when I'm hungry, and they complained about stuff. And ultimately, God provided bread from heaven. He provided quail, just shouldn't be out there in the middle of the desert, but here comes all of these animals for people to eat. And he miraculously, as we discussed, even provided water when people were thirsty, even though Moses kind of did that on his own terms, according to the account in the book of Numbers. I sounded Irish there. A carding. I don't know even what that is, but whatever the case. The bread thing, then, would have been something that everyone in the original audience, and hopefully everybody in this audience as well, would quickly have conjured when Jesus says that man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. If God can make bread rain from the sky, he can meet your needs. He will meet the needs that need to be met. But the the manna is a metaphor for nourishment that comes from God by God's presence, or to use the term that the Bible uses in both the Old and New Testament, the word of God, meaning not just God saying stuff, but God interacting in this physical reality. God interacting within the boundaries of the natural, communicating with us who exist within the boundaries of the natural in all kinds of different ways, including provision. Ultimately, what Jesus is saying is that God is God of provision. God is the one who takes care of needs and ultimately sustains all of this stuff, keeps it from spiraling into insanity and chaos. So, on one level of meaning here, there's the obvious, the word of God, every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. This is indisputable, real, true stuff. That's what it's held out as being. Everything else in life is an advertisement, it's a sales pitch, it's propaganda, it's manipulation, it's emotional lack of clarity or neediness, and you have to sift through all of that and try to figure out what the motives are behind it. The idea biblically is that here's this one thing that is just actual and real and true, and it's the word of God, and that is different than any other kinds of words or spoken truth. So that is the overt level of meaning, the symbolic secondary level of meaning that everybody would attract with is this idea of God as provider, and that he does that in all kinds of ways, including physically just making bread rain out of the sky one time. I think that provision of manna, the bread during the aftermath of the Exodus, is something that is echoed. It's like poetry, it rhymes, when we get into the New Testament and Jesus being the bread of life, Jesus laying down his life as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity. So we get that. I'm in Psalms. That's that's not even the right book of the Bible, Matt. Wait for it. Found it. Uh starting in verse 5, it says, Every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. So again, this idea that unlike all other words which are to be tested and evaluated and taken with a grain of salt because they all have motives and angles to them, this is the measuring stick of truth. If there's actually a God who actually says stuff and is actually always right and is actually the maker of all things and operates outside of the physical world, he's righter than anybody else. And disagreeing with that proves us a liar. Two things I ask of you, O Lord, do not refuse me before I die. Keep falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. It's almost like uh a precursor to that serenity prayer idea. I don't know if you guys are to the point yet where you've figured this out. I mean, there's just these epiphany moments in life, right? Like one is the uh people I love will die. People I love are getting older. And then the next epiphany moment is I will die. I'm getting older. What the heck? And then usually the next epiphany moment is maybe I can make it feel better with stuff. No, I can't make it feel better with stuff. And so I I don't know where you're at on that continuum, but I I feel like I'm gradually figuring out all of those things or getting to that point myself. And this is a proverb written by somebody who understands who God is and where God ranks, and understands their position of need and has some sense about what is actually needed in this life and in this world, and there's a dependency developing there in the hey, you be the provider, you be the arbiter of truth. So both of those themes, like the whole truth thing in verse five and six, and then it closes out with the provision thing, but give me only my my daily bread. So looking backwards, we see that bread theme, meaning a lot more than just, nah, God will feed me. Um, and looking forward, we see the same because it's almost like Jesus is hearkening back to what just happened in that temptation in Matthew chapter six and the ultra hyper famous Lord's Prayer, when he says, Give us today our daily bread. Well, this whole Lord's Prayer thing, which we will break down at length, but a little preview, this idea that God is, again, provider, you are king, you are master of this kingdom, we ultimately cannot care for ourselves. This theme, give us our day uh excuse me, give us today our daily bread, is then expanded upon in verse 25 of Matthew chapter six, when Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you'll eat or drink, or about your body, what you'll wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or reap or stow away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them? Are you not much more valuable than they are? Who have you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow? They don't labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of these. So if that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith? So don't worry, saying, What do we eat, or what do we drink, or what do we wear? For the pagans run after all those things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. When we get to that passage, we'll break down some of the obvious concerns that we should all have about that. Like, wait, should I just do nothing? We'll get there and we'll break it down. For now, we'll let that question sit and instead just note that Jesus, by going through this temptation, is qualified to say that. If he's like some rich trust fund kid who's never suffered a day in his life, or he's some rich politician who knows everybody we ought to go to war with and everything we ought to do, but he's never actually had a job or done anything, like that discredits people who say stuff like that. Jesus has been tempted. You ever been hungry for 40 days and then offered bread at the low, low price of the souls of everyone else? Like, whoa, that's a big deal. Well, no, I haven't, and probably you haven't either, but Jesus has, and he passed that test, which means that of anybody ever, he's qualified to say, hey, get some perspective on the stuff thing. Get the perspective on where the provision comes from thing. And I understand that this is gonna strike the ears of somebody who's like wholeheartedly in, yeah, Jesus is the real deal. I'm here because I want to celebrate that and understand it better. It's gonna strike your ears very differently than it's gonna strike the ears of my friends who are listening here who are like, uh, I'm not in, or maybe I'll be in someday, but right now I don't know. Or frankly, I got hurt by all of this and I'm kind of mad about it, and it still intrigues me, but I don't think there's a God behind it. I get that that hands-off trust God mentality is gonna sound really appealing to the person who's all in, and it's gonna sound really not appealing to the person who is hurt, or just in a place of healthy, rational skepticism. Again, we'll game all of that out as we go along. What I'm doing here is saying this is what I believe the text is driving at. There is more meaning here that the original audience would have caught and then Jesus and that Jesus intended than just no, I'm not gonna take your bread because I can live on the word of the Lord. There are a ton of implications there, and we're still not done breaking it down, but I'm gonna move ahead into these next two duels, these next two sets of maneuvers in the sword fight between Jesus and the devil before we come back and look at all of this in the larger context. Thanks so much for entertaining this stuff with me. Hey, thanks a ton to everybody who supports the program as well at patreon.com slash the TMBH podcast. Uh, at Sant Y'all Enamel Pins and uh picture of my family. I don't know if everyone got them. I got a few back in the mail. So if you gave me your address and it didn't work and you still don't have one, uh, you might want to reach out via Patreon or whatever, because we did get a few of the addresses you entered rejected by the United States Postal Service. So, whatever the case, thank you all for being here, whether you support the program or not, whatever. I'm just thrilled that we get to do this together. And let's do some more of it, Mignana. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10 minute five hour podcast. Catch you soon,