About this sermon
Deuteronomy 8 calls Israel to remember the wilderness, where the Lord humbled them, let them hunger, and fed them with manna, so they would know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word from the mouth of the Lord. Prosperity in the land would tempt them to forget him and say their own power made them rich. Jesus answered Satan’s temptation with this verse, living by his Father’s word through his trials, and in him believers learn contentment in every circumstance, as Philippians 4 describes.
Sermon transcript
I invite you to turn to the book of Deuteronomy. We’re reading chapter eight this morning. And I do remind you that this is the inspired word of God. We’re also going to be reading a passage from the book of Philippians. We’ll turn there in just a moment. Let’s begin, first of all, in Deuteronomy chapter eight.
All the commandments that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna which you did not know. Nor did your fathers know that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.
Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God. by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today.
Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground. where there was no water. He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do good for you in the land.
Otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify against you today that you will surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you. So shall you perish because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord, your God. And I’ll turn over to me and with me to Philippians chapter four, Begin reading there at verse 10 of Philippians 4, 10 through 20.
But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever my circumstances. In whatever circumstances I am, I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction. You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel after I left Macedonia, No church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, but you alone, for even in Thessalonica, you sent a gift more than once for my needs. Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit, which increases to your account. But I have received everything in full and have an abundance. I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, while pleasing to God. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen. May God bless to our hearing this portion of his word. Let’s pray together. Shall we? Heavenly God. Help us. To be a people who know who love the Lord Jesus Christ. And that we in him, oh God, would know every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And that we would be satisfied, oh God, in him. And that we would bring praise and glory and honor to your name, that whatever we do in word or deed, we would do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to you, Father, through him. We pray, O God, that your word, even today, even now, would have its good effect in us, that we, O God, would be transformed, that we would be the people you want us to be, and that we would delight in it to your glory, to your praise. In Jesus we ask. Amen.
Let me begin very briefly this morning in saying that a number of you over months, perhaps years, have said to me time and again, could you ever give us an outline? And I’ve given you a handout that is an outline of the chapter 8 of the book of Deuteronomy today. It speaks of the pattern of Deuteronomy 8, and it’s more than I could in good conscience try to manage and handle in a sermon today. I’m giving it to you that you can actually take this home and read through this chapter again and refresh your minds. But what I would draw your attention to is the overall structure of the text is showing this parallelism that we call a chiasm.
And so you can see a pattern in the, in the chapter that goes from, if you’ll look above, matches up with the A that is at the bottom. There’s what we might call an A prime at the bottom, or an A with an apostrophe. There’s a B section and a B apostrophe, and those two sections mirror one another. Similarly, a C section that mirrors itself, a D section, and then a central E section, as we call it here. in which we find the words, bless the Lord, do not forget.
And it just so happens that that center section, that E section that stands by itself is at the very center of the passage. And that’s why we call it a callous omit. It centers in and comes to a center in this parallel fashion. I draw your attention to it simply because in short, what we see as the focus of the chapter becomes the sermon title today. lest you forget.
And you’ll see how Moses arranges those words and the spirit arranges those words in the chapter to draw attention to that emphatic comment that is a theme in the book of Deuteronomy, but especially in this chapter. And we hope it will find its way home in this sermon as well. So let’s begin. As we read Deuteronomy chapter eight, It is, of course, impossible for us as New Testament believers to read that chapter without thinking of Jesus and his use of Deuteronomy 8, verse 3.
And he used that verse when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. In fact, it is worth reading the whole chapter eight, especially the first half of the chapter through the eyes and the mind of Jesus. The synoptic gospels all portray the temptations of Jesus as following directly from his baptism, as you know. At his baptism, just Jesus received Affirmation of his identity and mission as the Son of God.
In words that quoted at least two scriptures, Psalm 2-7 and Isaiah 42-1. You’ll recognize them, you needn’t turn there. At Jesus’ baptism, Psalm 2-7 says, I will surely tell of the decrees of the Lord. He said to me, thou art my beloved son, today I have begotten thee.
And combine that with the thought of Isaiah 42.1, which says, behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.
Psalm 2.7, Isaiah 42.1. And I’m asking you to think of the baptism of Jesus. When the heavens open, And a voice is heard, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And the Spirit is poured out upon Jesus and comes down and lights upon Him like a dove. And that glorious declaration from heaven will end those affirmations that are compiled and compressed in that revelation that God the Father makes of God the Son.
The burden of Messianic Sonship and the mission of an obedient, suffering servanthood that flow from those two combined texts, led Jesus from his baptism, from this glorious moment of affirmation, into a period of intense suffering immediately thereafter in the temptation in the wilderness. Having been affirmed the Son of God, the one in whom the Father is well pleased, Immediately the spirit drives him into the wilderness where he will be sorely, sorely tested.
A period of intense wrestling with the future that lay before him. It is hardly surprising that Jesus turned in that temptation in the wilderness to the opening chapters of Deuteronomy. For the resources that would undergird the orientation of his life and to the doing of the will of His Father God. Surely that business of orienting one’s life to the will of God is what is at the heart of these early chapters in the book of Deuteronomy. And such a thrust of life is clearly seen in Jesus Christ.
That unlike Israel, He was obedient. He kept the commandments and the statutes. He was faithful and true to the Lord’s commandments in everything, in every circumstance. Always do we see Jesus doing the will of the Father. And especially and emphatically so when he faces the temptation of Satan in the wilderness and when he faces the cross. Unlike unfaithful Israel, Jesus is devoted to the will of God, unwaveringly so, even in drinking to the dregs the cup of suffering that is set before him. Our passage in Deuteronomy 8, in fact the whole of Deuteronomy, would have been familiar to all devout Jews.
And the Lord Jesus must have known these words by heart His earthly life, as you know, was marked by humiliation and trial, from his lowly birth to his horrendous death. Though we might be tempted to think otherwise, his life was not easy. Yes, he’s the son of God, but he is fully man, and he suffers at every turn as a man. Truly he was God’s beloved son and he was the suffering servant whom God had promised and appointed for his people.
Immediately after this dramatic signal experience of the Holy Spirit coming down upon him at his baptism and prior to the beginning of his public ministry proclaiming the kingdom of God, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness And there he was severely tested. After 40 days utterly without food, he was desperately hungry. There is no doubt that the Gospel writers intend us to notice in those 40 days the significance of Jesus, the son of God, spending 40 days in the wilderness, facing similar privation as what we would read of Israel in its 40 years in the wilderness. Here they are focused in the person of Jesus in these dramatic 40 days.
And thus does the devil invite Jesus to do a miracle. No doubt, Satan’s repeated insinuation. You know the words. At the wilderness temptation. Satan saying, if you are the Son of God. Hear it? If you are the Son of God. We’ve just had this affirmation at his baptism. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And Satan’s immediate temptation. If you are the Son of God. And that insinuation was intended to induce in Jesus the same spirit of testing, of proving God somehow, demanding that God show as Israel had done again, that had so characterized Israel in the wilderness, testing God.
Why isn’t God giving us food? Why isn’t he giving us water? Why isn’t he doing those kinds of things that we expect and demand of him? Well, here is Satan inducing Jesus to do something similar. Put your God to the test. Show me, show us that you are the son of God. Why not turn those beautiful brown stones of the Judean desert into fresh, warm loaves of bread? So that you, Jesus, might satisfy your natural hunger immediately.
According to Satan, if he did so, it would prove that he is God’s son in his ability to do such a thing, as the voice from heaven had so clearly declared at his baptism. Jesus was not simply invited to transform stones into bread. It went much deeper than that. The devil confronted him with the temptation to doubt God’s Word, if you are the Son of God. That if, that casting a doubt upon God’s Word recalls the first temptation in the garden, doesn’t it? Did God really say, are you really the Son of God, you see? Even as Satan had tempted Adam and Eve in the garden.
Jesus knew that the voice from heaven at His baptism was absolutely true and completely dependable. He had known from His youth of His unique relationship with the Father, and the voice from heaven that had just spoken confirmed it. He was God’s Son, and if He was, then He could certainly trust His Father.
With that seemingly innocent suggestion that Jesus turned stones to bread, the devil was inviting Jesus to doubt both God’s word and God’s nature. And Jesus refused to doubt God’s word. God had said clearly and unmistakably, you are my son whom I love. Jesus knew that so to be so, and so refused to do anything that might suggest that the saying needs some further support or visible evidence. It’s true. There was no need whatever to prove it. If God had said it, then that was enough.
Moreover, Jesus refused to doubt God’s nature. If he had referred to Jesus as his beloved son, then God must certainly have been his caring father. The destiny of ministry and sacrifice which he had prepared for his son, God would hardly let him die in the desert. When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his father to supply the food. But if not, he would not even so adopt the devil’s suggestions. Had God really meant what he said, even in the scriptures?
It was the same trick that Satan had played on Adam and Eve with such tragic success. If God could feed the Israelites, why be hungry now, Jesus, when a miracle, a simple miracle would solve the problem and at the same time prove who you are and God’s willingness to hear your request. But Jesus sees through Satan’s temptation to the reality of God’s testing. This is a test. This is a proof of who Jesus is, even in his performance of the work.
In its Deuteronomy 8.2 sense of test of what was in Jesus’ heart.
Would he live by the word and will of God? Would he be covenantally faithful and obedient where Israel had failed? Well, for Jesus, that ancient word of Deuteronomy pierced the fog of Satan’s confusing question and confirmed Jesus on the pathway of true sonship, of filial obedience, that led ultimately from the baptism through the wilderness to Gethsemane to the cross. Yes, God cared for his son just as he had fed and clothed his people in the wilderness centuries earlier. He sometimes led them to be sure through adverse experiences so that they might realize how much they needed him. When Jesus was hungry in the Judean desert, he quoted those familiar words from Deuteronomy.
He answered the devil’s doubt of God’s word by quoting verse 3, chapter 8 of Deuteronomy, the very word that the enemy rejected. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Beloved, this was time and again Israel’s test. and Israel’s failure. For them, the Word of God, we often know, was not enough. They wanted more. They wanted proof.
Listen carefully to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy chapter 8. As we have read in the earlier chapters, again here in chapter 8, Moses again exhorts Israel to keep the commandments that it might go well with them in the land which the Lord had promised them on oath to their forefathers. We see that in verse 1. And we’ve heard it time and again already in the book of Deuteronomy.
All the commandments, verse one, that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. I’ll just by way of a side note, when you go home this afternoon, you can look at how the parallel with that first verse matches up with a later verse in the chapter.
We’re not going to try to work out all of those complexities in the sermon. all the commandments I’m commanding you today, you be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, that you can go in and possess the land, which the Lord swore to your forefathers. Again in verse six and seven, therefore you will keep the commandments, emphatic here, keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. Conversely, verse 11, our center passage, our center text says, beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I’m commanding you today. And again, in verse 18 and following, that same theme of remembering, of doing, not forgetting, but you shall remember verse 18, the Lord, your God, for it is he who gives you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord, your God, and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify against you today that you shall surely perish. lest they be like the nations which perish. Verse 20, Israel is warned again, listen to the voice of the Lord your God.
This emphatic recurring exhortation to remember the Lord and to do and to keep his commandments. is reinforced in this passage by a reminder of the 40-year stay in the wilderness, of the way in which the Lord had led them through that wilderness, how he had showed himself faithful.
These 40 years were important, God is saying through Moses here, for pedagogic regions, that is, in other words, the way of teaching Israel, pedagogy. This is God’s way of teaching. This was meant, he says, to humble Israel, to test them and to discipline. And he says it not only once, he says it twice in this passage in our parallels. These 40 years were there for a reason.
The test, the trial, the wilderness experience wasn’t just a bad joke. It was God dealing with his people to discipline them, to show them that they did not live by bread alone. but by that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. In contrast to the promised land, the wilderness was the place where the Lord had tested Israel.
Verse two, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. Of course, this is a human way of speaking. For God knows the heart. He knew what was in Israel’s heart even before Israel lived out their days in the wilderness.
His testing is not designed to find out something he doesn’t know, but rather to bring out into the open that which is hidden for his own glory and for his people’s good. And so what is revealed time and again in the testing of Israel? grumbles, complaints, fault finding, disobedience, chasing after other gods, time and time and time again.
Of those trials, those hardships that the people were made to endure, verse three especially mentions specifically the lack of bread, the common staple, so that they were very hungry, to be sure. And instead of giving the bread of the normal type, the Lord gave them manna, something unknown to them. You didn’t know it, your parents didn’t know it. Compare verse three with verse 16, again in our parallelisms. The emphasis that the manna was something that the Israelites and their fathers did not know, characterizes the manna as unfamiliar, therefore something other than what they would have desired. This wasn’t what they were looking for after all. Something less desirable than a normal loaf of rye bread or a cucumber down in Egypt. Again, this was something not that they were looking for, but it was God’s wisdom in providing them what He did.
And He fed them in verses 3 and 16. He fed them in the wilderness, which expresses their experience of God’s care in a place where they could not provide. God provided in a way they did not expect, they did not know. And He cared for them through these trials of hunger. Through times of fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground when there was no water, we read of his care in the midst of them.
And God wanting to teach to them the meaning of that statement that Jesus quotes in the wilderness, man does not live on bread alone, but on everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. The intent is apparently that in this instance it was the manna that came down from heaven that came, as it were, from the mouth of the Lord, the manna. That is, it came into being through the word of his power. He spoke it into existence for their benefit, the creating, the sustaining power that emanated from God himself, their God, who brought them out of Egypt, who fed them with a manna they did not know.
The general import of this pedagogy is to teach them that the Lord is their God and that they must trust in their God. Not in anything created, not the bread of their own producing, but only in their creator, their redeemer. During those 40 years in this eighth chapter, again, we read those 40 years, their clothes did not wear out, their feet did not swell from all the walking. God brought water for them out of the rock of Flint.
Undoubtedly meant to be understood also these things collectively as a miracle of God’s power and grace and care. Hence, these things are mentioned alongside the manna I fed you, I kept your shoes from wearing out, I kept your feet from swelling, I kept you on the way beyond your ability to provide for yourselves.
And thus does verse five draw the conclusion, as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord has disciplined, had disciplined Israel in the wilderness, teaching Israel to trust in the Lord and to trust in the Lord alone. Israel must know this in their heart and therefore they must keep the commandments of this God. This was the purpose of the father’s discipline of the loving discipline put upon them of the instruction that Israel would know and that they would remember that they would know and that they would remember and that they would obey the God they know and remember him for their his kindness is toward them. And where Moses is taking us in this argumentation and taking Israel is that in remembering what God did for them in the wilderness, a recognition that herein lay an inherent danger in the possession of the promised land.
In contrast to the wilderness, the promised land is a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing forth in fruitful valleys and hills, bringing forth wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates and olive oil and honey. And the areas were rich with iron and copper. And so it would be that when the people ate and were satisfied, and they were living in good houses that they did not build, and their houses and their flocks multiplied, and their precious metals were abounding, the danger would be that this people would become self-congratulatory. We did it! We can do it! And complacent, trusting their own power and their own accomplishment, and what?
Forgetting the Lord their God. No, Israel, Moses is saying, you must not forget lest you forget and the wrath of God be poured out on you. Israel was to remember the Lord their God who enabled them. They must not forget lest they turn aside from the true and the living God and chase the idols of the peoples around them. The true and the living God who had spoken by whose word they live. who had led them out of Egypt, who in the wilderness had protected them, who had cared for them, tested them, yes, disciplined them, apart from whom they would have perished.
And many did perish because of unbelief. It all comes back to the covenant, a call to remember the God of the covenant, the covenant that comes to its consummate expression in the word. that proceeds from the mouth of God, the word that became flesh. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who according to the covenant became man for our redemption and beloved therefore be reminded today of the father’s love that he gave his only begotten son to undergo the superlative trial and discipline of the Lord. And he did so faithfully to submit himself to the most abject humiliation, determined in everything to keep the commandments, to do the will of the Father, to accept the torments of the trials that were put before him, even drinking to the dregs of the cross, unto the death and the curse of the cross, that as many as would trust in him, you know the love of God, would not perish. but have everlasting life.
We offer today this exhortation. Lest you forget. That apart from that word. That word made flesh. That son of God, that perfect son of God. Lest you forget. That apart from him, you can do nothing. Israel, are you listening? Apart from Him, you can do nothing. Apart from Him, you most assuredly will perish. You might have all the bread in the world, but apart from Him, you perish. But that’s why we read Philippians 4 today. Because I want you to hear the word of the apostle. I want you to hear the word of an apostle who reminds us that we have learned Christ. We’ve been taught by Christ. We have been taught in Christ. In him and in the preaching of Christ’s word, we have learned. We have learned, beloved.
Listen to Paul. We have learned in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. whether we’re in the wilderness or whether we’re in the promised land, whether we’re in prosperity or whether we’re in the dregs. We have learned, says Paul, as Paul himself is teaching us, he has learned that we have learned in whatever our circumstances we find ourselves, whether humble means or in prosperity, whether times of being filled or going hungry, whether having abundance or suffering need, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. That’s what Paul says about himself, but he’s saying it for your benefit, beloved. Apart from the word, you perish. But we do not live by bread alone. We live by every word, that word which proceeds from the mouth of God. And by that word, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
And as Paul concludes this Philippians four passage we read in round verse 20, it is God who most surely not only for Paul, who most surely shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To him be the glory forever and ever, Paul says.
As I was thinking of the sermon title, and this is a little addendum to the sermon, I know it’s late. This has been a week in which we’ve been told time and time and time and time again, we must not forget. We must not forget what? Well, we must not forget the images of the planes crashing into the towers. We must not forget our Constitution. We must not forget our military men on the field.
Well, this is a sermon about something else. We can have all of the military power. We can have all of the peace and security. We can have the highest towers in the world, but apart from Jesus, we perish. And that’s what we have to preach to this nation. That’s what we have to preach to all the nations. And that’s what we have to be content to know and believe and embrace, you see, that whatever the circumstances, good economy or bad, war or no war, economic wealth or the dregs of poverty, we know that in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, we can do all things through Christ. who strengthens us, because we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that has proceeded out of the mouth of our God, even that word that became flesh for our redemption. I trust you’re with me and take encouragement in these things today. Let’s pray together. Our Father, we are the new Israel. We are that new people, not the grumblers, the complainers, those who live in constant anxiety.
But we are those who have learned and are learning, O God, in Christ, that whatever our circumstances, whether we abound or are abased, whether we are in poverty or in prosperity, that we have Christ, we have everything. and we can do all things through him who strengthens us. We think of the one who endured the trials of the wilderness, who would not be tempted, who would not turn aside at the word of the evil one who cast doubts upon his identity. But we know who he is, and we believe who he is, and we trust who he is, oh God. And we will not be afraid. We will not be turned aside either.
As we look to that one who drank the cup of suffering at the cross for us, who would not turn back, who would not be undone, who would not be turned aside by any voice, by any man, we recognize our power is in him, and we trust in him. And we live, we really live in Jesus, in whose name we pray.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.