Something for lunchtime

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And 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,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

[Matthew 4:1-4 ESV]

A very familiar passage, and I was NOT reading that passage today but this one:

“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

[Deuteronomy 8:1-3 ESV]

Very interesting:

Jesus	Israel
Led by (Spirit of) God into wilderness	Led by God into wilderness
40 days	40 years
hungry	hungry
being "tempted by the devil"	being "humbled" and "tested" by God
refused to supply for Himself	received supply from God

I suspect that Jesus had been thinking about this passage as he sat there, out in the wilderness, hungry. It was on the tip of his tongue when the devil came along. He may well have been hanging onto hope that just as God had supplied for His people back then, He would supply for Jesus now. (Of course, God did so, when the time was right.) Pretty cool!

The other two verses He quoted are from Deuteronomy chapter 6, specifically verses 16 and 13. Draw what conclusions you may from that... maybe He had spent a few days meditating on that passage as well.