In our verse by verse study of Mark we are presently in Mark 1:12-13; where we see that God the Holy Spirit led Jesus out into the desert wilderness area to be tested by Satan for 40 days.
In order to get more detail on the testing we are presently looking at the parallel passage in Matt 4:1-11; We left off in Matt 4:3;
We see here that Satan, the tempter, came and said to Him " if (first class condition)] you are (if you are always) the Son of God (and you are) command that these stones become bread.
In verse 2 we saw that after 40 days of fasting Jesus' humanity is very hungry and it would be very easy for the Son of God to turn stones into bread to solve this problem for Himself.
But turning the stones into bread would mean that He was depending upon His own volition and upon His own divine power rather than the power of the indwelling Spirit and the and plan and will of the Father so the relationship of the humanity of Jesus to the indwelling Holy Spirit and his subordination to the Father is being tested.
Jesus is being tempted to do a right thing in an wrong way that is apart from the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word in violation of the plan of the Father.
Jesus is being tempted regarding the sufficiency of the grace of the Father for His daily needs. We face the same issue today. The Father's provision is grace. The issue is grace versus works. Dependence on the Father or dependence on ones self.
Must Jesus grab for Himself by turning stones into bread or can He wait for the Father. He knows that the Father's purpose for Him is to go to the cross and even though He has gone without food for forty days he knows that He will not die until He goes to the cross because that is the Father's plan.
This a test to see if He has the patience in the suffering to wait for the Father's plan to work out or is He going to jump out ahead of the Father's plan?
The issue for us is do we have the patience to wait for the Father's plan to develop in our lives under the principle of Pivot Power or are we going to jump out ahead of it with Political Power?
This presents the test of faith-rest. The question is are we going to trust the Father or are we going to do it ourselves?
The Father will not permit the humanity of Christ to starve to death. The scriptures of the Old Testament describe exactly how Jesus is going to die. The entire chapter of Isa 53; Genesis 3:15, and all of the Levitical offerings presented the cross.
Jesus Christ is prepared so He knows the Old Testament. He has been fasting, which means He has been thinking about the Old Testament scriptures, and He knows that there is no scripture that says that Messiah will starve to death in the desert.
This has tremendous application to us: Can we depend upon the plan of the Father for our lives or do we have to jump out ahead and do it ourselves with human viewpoint thinking?
The potential issue here though is that if we do not know doctrine you have nothing to believe and you do not have enough faith (doctrine) to use the faith-rest technique.
This temptation brings up the question; if God doesn't open the door so that you can see what you need to do very soon, are you going to force it to happen by reverting to the cosmic system.
This test presented Jesus Christ with this same temptation... should He force it to happen Himself or wait on God and His timing.
Matt 4:4; "But he answered and said" - "he answered" is an aorist active participle, "said" is an aorist active indicative, and when you put them together you have an idiom which means he told him off.
He gave him a dogmatic answer, an answer that couldn't have had greater power. He simply gave him scripture. For forty days He had been living on the Word and now He is ready for the devil.
Apparently in His mind He went through Deuteronomy because He quotes from Deut 8:3; He gave Satan a dogmatic answer: "It is written" perfect tense, it is written in the past with the result that it goes on forever.
The Word of God "lives and abides forever." Passive voice: the Bible is written and contains the thinking of God.
The principle that comes from this is that victory with pivot power comes through the Word. The Word is the object of the faith-rest technique; the Word is the basis for true spirituality; living in the Word is maximum knowledge of doctrine and occupation with Christ can only comes through the Word.
If we do not know the Word we do not know Christ because the Word is the thinking of Christ. 1Cor 2:16; the word translated "mind" is the Greek word "nous" that refers to the left lobe of the soul where one's thinking and understanding occurs.
Matt 4:4; Deut 8:3;"Man shall not live by bread alone" remember that Deuteronomy is the book that describes the walk of the people of Israel in the land God gave them.
"Man shall not live" indicates that it takes more than mere physical survival to be alive, and to be truly alive is to be alive to God. Our life relationship with God on this earth is by means of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the living Word.
Jesus Christ pioneered and established this pattern He had the indwelling Spirit, He was filled by means of the Spirit, and consequently He indicated that just having food, clothing, shelter and clothing, the necessities of life isn't living.
Man is not really living apart from a relationship with God and so man is not going to live by bread alone. But the word "alone" also adds that along with the spiritual you must also have the material so this means that you must also eat to survive in the physical body.
Our relationship with the Lord however must come first. Matt 6:33; Food is necessary to sustain physical life but without spiritual life the physical life is meaningless because physical life without spiritual life is to be walking in death. Rom 8:6;
We see from this that bread or physical food is necessary for physical life but bread is simply a detail in man's dependence upon God because it isn't the food but the promise from God's Word that guarantees the provision of food that matters.
Food and shelter can be taken away from us in a moment of time but we don't worry about it because we keep on having the unconditional promises of God that abide forever that He will continuously supply all of our needs.
When the time of testing comes it isn't just what is conveyed in the written Word that matters, it is what you have taken out of the written Word and transferred into your own thinking and believe that really matters. Heb 10:38;
Matt 4:4; "but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" "proceeds out" is the present active participle of the Greek word "ekporyooomahee" that means it keeps on coming out. It is dative case, so it is a dative of advantage that means that it is to our advantage to have the Word of God in our stream of consciousness.
We see there that in His resistance to the temptation our Lord Jesus did not rely upon His deity, He relied upon the Word of God and He resisted temptation through His recall of Word of God under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
This is the principle of divine versus human viewpoint and presents us with the concept that all spiritual victory is directly related to the Word of God, so the believer's ability to have spiritual victory is based upon their capacity to properly deploy the Word into their experience. 2Tim 2:15;
We see from this that reliance on the Word and promises of God rather than the word and promises of man is the pattern for spiritual victory because all spiritual victory is related to the immutable Word of God. Mark 13:31;
Jesus never put His own power or His own works above or on a level with obedience to the Father's plan. To rely on the power of the Spirit was the Father's plan for Jesus Christ during his first advent so in obedience to the Father's plan He relied upon the power of the Spirit when he used the Word.
Jesus' strength was in the Word of God not in a miracle that He could perform. Reliance upon God and fulfilling the plan of God depends upon knowing the Word of God. The believer can only become spiritually self-sustaining by feeding on the Word and converting the Word into strength. Heb 4:12;