On Bread Alone? Thinking Christian about Deuteronomy 8

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and today we're going to be looking at Deuteronomy 8, 1 through 20. Deuteronomy 8 is probably best well known for its quotation, actually, in the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4, where Jesus cites Deuteronomy 8, 3, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, to resist one of Satan's temptations. And so in context, what we want to kind of explore in this devotional is, what does that mean? What does it mean that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, every word that comes from the mouth of God? Well, number one, I think we need to note the context of the commandments and obedience in 8, 1 and 2. So Deuteronomy 8, 1 and 2 read as follows. 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 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment or not. So the commandments form the context in which we're supposed to understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so what I think we should infer from this is that obedience, obeying the command of God, is a means of living in the world that God's people are to adopt and follow because we privilege it even above physical sustenance. So obedience is necessary because God is going to bring prosperity. He's going to take care of us. And here Moses seems to be pointing to an underlying pattern that Israel is to adopt. The material blessings are not primarily the point of life. And while necessary, they're also fragile. They're brittle. They cannot be pursued or depended upon because they themselves are actually dependent on the Lord. Obedience to every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord is the way that we live into God's blessing. Now, in all of that that I just said, isn't that... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Just prosperity gospel? No, not really. And here's why. We aren't suggesting that God is trading blessing for obedience. It's not a barter system. There's not a quid pro quo relationship where Israel obeys and God blesses. And this is what the, you know, in order to get blessing, God is owed obedience or something like that. It's not that sort of a relationship. It's not a cause-effect relationship that our obedience is ultimately going to require or somehow obligate God to bless us. Instead, I think what we are suggesting is that life is structured by obedience. Consider, for instance, the rather immediate consequences of something like ignoring every stop sign or red light as you drive your car. Chaos will ensue. And it's not that, you know, obeying the stoplights, obeying the stop signs, like following those traffic rules, it is not somehow, you know, a barter for or a trade-off to give us blessing, right? But what it does is it creates an order. So as we're driving on the right side of the road as opposed to the left, unless you're in the UK, you know, as we're driving according to the rules of the road, we're now following conventions that are intended to create an order. They're intended to create a context in which we can reap the positive consequences associated with being able to drive at a significant amount of speed in a rather heavy vehicle without crashing into someone else. If we disobey the rules of the road, we will likely at some point, maybe not immediately, but at some point, we will feel the implications, the negative implications, the negative consequences of disobeying. And so we have to understand that in Israel, obedience was linked to blessing in that way. Obedience was not a consequence. Obedience was the way that we lived into God's order. God is giving Israel an insight into how the actual world is structured, how it all works. And so if you imagine that everyone else, all the other nations, don't even understand that the Lord exists, Israel is in covenant relationship with this God. Everyone else has these other gods that they're following. They don't understand exactly how the world works. It was actually, there was a name given to it, the gods were capricious. And when we say capricious, what we really mean is that the people would pray to these gods, but it was never really clear what the gods wanted. They were always very erratic. And it was because they didn't actually exist. That was one. But also because they couldn't affect things the way that the Lord affected things. Because these gods were idols, any reverence given to them was a misordering of life. And while it paid off on occasion, it wouldn't pay off the same way in every case. And so as we look at what God is giving Israel, what we see is that he's giving them an insight into the order of the universe. That when you put God first, when you obey his commands, when you demonstrate your loyalty to him through obedience. And, you know, later on in Malachi 3, we see, you know, that God calls Israel to test him. And I think when we test God by trusting him, we live into the order of that universe. And so the blessing is almost a consequence of the obedience. We're living into the order of the universe. When we live into that order, we can expect things to go well on a general level. Now, obviously, the world is broken. God's order is not what it was when he established it at creation. There are major problems. There's these deep fissures and brokenness that we see in the world right now. And so this doesn't work perfectly. But what God is pushing Israel to do is to say, look, obey my commands and I will keep you safe on the road. Obey my commands and there will be blessing forthcoming. Israel was to point to and glorify God and obedience became this crucial aspect by which they could do that. They were not to go in and conquer the land through their own military might. Instead, what they are to do is to obey the Lord and wait for him to give them that land. And so for God to be glorified, Israel needed to do what God wanted rather than what they wanted. And in doing what God wanted, God's blessing became a sign. It became a sign to the surrounding nations that Israel's obedient way of life reflected the order God had established. And it reflected that even though that order had been broken by the fall, that obedience was still the best way to live within this world. And so it's not prosperity gospel. In part, we also see that, you know, it's not prosperity gospel because as we move through chapter eight, what we see is that prosperity actually brings danger with it. That prosperity is not the end-all be-all. It's not the final goal of life is to be prosperous, to have everything. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579.

due to the ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The thing we'd ever want and more. And so we read in Deuteronomy 8.11, Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up, you will become proud, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you to do good to you in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day. Now in that section of Deuteronomy 8.11 through roughly 18, what we're seeing there is the dangers of prosperity. That prosperity is not the end-all be-all of life. That getting things can actually be just as problematic as not having things. And in fact, what we see is that obedience is the common factor across all of these situations. That even in the wilderness when God is testing Israel, and we see this referred to in that passage that I just read, that as they're being tested, what are they supposed to do? Well, they're supposed to obey God's command. And so when you have the prosperity, when you reap the blessings of obedience, don't forget to continue obeying. Obedience is the underlying dynamic that allows that prosperity to happen. It isn't give a tithe of $10 and get tenfold in return. It isn't the more you give, the more you get. That's not what it is. That's not it. That's prosperity gospel stuff. What Deuteronomy 8 is teaching us is that obedience is our best and only strategy for living in a broken world. That if we want to overcome sin, if we want to live into the blessing that God has for us, if we want to work with God to build his kingdom, if we want to point to and glorify God, we can't become focused on the prosperity that he provides. We can't neglect the giver and focus on the gift. We always have to look beyond the gift to see the giver. That is what Deuteronomy 8 is teaching us. That is the real meaning of this phrase, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. This is why Israel was tested in the desert. This is why they were tested in the wilderness. Because God wants them to understand that his word underpins all things and that even in scarcity, he can provide for them with the manna. And in prosperity, the danger becomes us forgetting that God cares for us, us forgetting that there is a giver of these good gifts and claiming that it is our power that has gotten us all of these blessings. And so we have to keep in mind this underlying understanding of obedience, this underlying understanding that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Because ultimately, it is not about our labor. It is not about our effort. It is not about our power and strength. What it is, it is about what lies behind that power and strength. We always have to remember that. It is not about denying our capacity, not about claiming weakness or being falsely humble or something like that, but it is about recognizing the source. It is about understanding that God is trying to do something through us, give us something by empowering us, and that in empowering us, he wants us to not forget that he is there. All the things that we have around us, all the things that we've been given, all God is really asking us to do is to continually acknowledge him as the giver of those gifts so that we do not neglect him, push him to the side, diminish him, marginalize him, kick him to the side of our lives. When we do that, we are not recognizing that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. We are actually trying to live on bread alone, and that will never work. And so once we understand the complex relationship really between obedience and blessing, once we can distinguish it from prosperity gospel and aberrant teaching that are just completely false, what we realize is that obedience is our way of leaning into God's order. And as we lean into God's order, we are blessed so that, not because of, but so that God's name may be glorified. I don't exactly know of a perfect analogy for this. It's difficult to know. But I know this. I do a lot of weight training. And so in the weight room, you know, there's this understanding that, you know, most of the exercise physiology, exercise science, is in a fairly new stage. There's new research coming out all the time. We see new ideas coming out. But we also know that there have been bodybuilders and athletes and coaches and personal trainers who have understood how to go about building muscle. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. an increasing human performance over the years, even without this research. And so what you end up with in the physical training realm is really something similar, I think, to what God is trying to get Israel to understand, is that there is a sense in which you don't have to understand how everything is working. You just have to recognize that it works. And if you continually disobey the rules, let's say, of what works, you're very likely not to get the results that you want. And I think that's a general idea. Now, can there be additional understanding of God's revelation? Can there always be growth? Can there always be a deepening of our understanding of who God is and what God desires? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, what we're always doing is we're trying to obey God's word. We're trying to recognize that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so I think like Israel, we need to remember that by obeying, we need to remember God by obeying God. And in the Old Testament, you know, when we read, forget and remember, this is not something that just doesn't cross our mind, right? It's not as if the Israelites have amnesia and they've completely forgotten about God, like Yahweh who? That's not what it is. This remembering and forgetting is usually linked to action. And so there are times when we see in the Old Testament where God remembers the covenant. And what that means is, is not that, oh God, it slipped God's mind that I made a covenant with Israel. My bad. I'm sorry I forgot you guys. What it means is that God is now prepared to act on that covenant, that he is now going to take action on behalf of Israel in relation to the covenant. And this is the same thing here. When we forget God,

not that he is not, you know, we have no cognizance of God in our minds. It's not as if he's been erased from our memories or we pushed him so far back that we just, you know, kind of ignore him or whatever. But when we forget God, what we're really doing is we're saying, look, we know that God exists. We understand what he wants us to do. We simply don't want to do it. And so we are going to push God to the margins of our lives, and we are going to decide to make our own choices and do our own thing, and it doesn't really matter what God has told us. When we remember God, we do the exact opposite. We say, it doesn't matter what situation we're facing at this moment. It doesn't matter how odd it seems to obey. We're going to go ahead and obey. I love, you know, the legislation about the year of Jubilee. I did my dissertation on the Sabbath commands, and so I ran into the year of Jubilee at one point. But if you look at that year of Jubilee legislation, what you find is that God is a necessary element of that legislation. God is not asking Israel. He's not prescribing this to Israel because there's some sort of weird agricultural innovation that Israel is going to discover and it's just going to work all the time. That is a divinely empowered practice. If you wanna take a year of Jubilee, you've got to have sufficient food to get you through basically three years, and God promises to supply that food. This is now not about, you know, prosperity. This is not about buying weird jets or sitting in golden chairs. This is about giving what is needed across that three-year period and no more. This is about making sure that Israel has the sustenance it needs to survive across those three years, and God promises to do that, and it is a consequence or in order to empower obedience. God is asking Israel to do something. He's saying, look, you don't need to worry about how this is going to work because I'm going to give you this much food in this year and it'll get you through. Don't worry about it. Just trust me. And so as we think about these ideas and thinking about what it means then to say that we do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, we are saying that obeying God will open up opportunities for blessing and the building up of his own kingdom beyond anything we could ever ask or think. That's what obedience really is. That's what we understand obedience to be. That's how it works. And so as we think about this passage and we look at this passage, we consider this passage, what it should do for our decision-making for the way that we view ourselves in the world is it should lean us toward obedience. It should remind us that obedience is always the strategy we want to pick. And if obedience is not the strategy we're going to pick, we know that we're headed in the wrong direction because man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Hey, hopefully you enjoyed this episode and we'll catch you on the next one on Thinking Christian. Thanks a lot. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Praying Christian women, the podcast that brings Christian women together to talk about the deep questions about prayer that we're all thinking, but sometimes afraid to ask. Hi, I'm Jamie Hampton, and my podcast partner, Alana Terry, and I would absolutely love for you to join us as we discuss what it means to be a woman of prayer in the 21st century. This podcast will be your go-to for biblical encouragement, inspiration, and practical tips to equip you with the tools you need to live out a more passionate, powerful prayer life. Tune in now at lifeaudio.com or your favorite podcasting app.