The Bible is life-giving.  It is our source of revelation of who Jesus Christ is. This is so important because as we are told, to if you want to know who God is, you have to look at Jesus because He is the revelation of who the Father is.  To know the Father, we look to the Son.  To understand the Son, we look to what Scripture tells us about Him.

The Bible is our light, out guide, our wide, our source of the revelation of God’s truth.  It also helps us to know how we should live.  It is that useful tool, guiding us in life.  I thought about that when I read part of today’s reading.  Listen to what is said in Deuteronomy 8: 3:

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

This passage is Moses speaking to the people before they enter the Promised Land.  It is a promise of the goodness that is to come, but a reminder of the troubles that they faced.  As good as life may be, they do not live by bread alone, but by every word from God. Their time in the wilderness taught them that.

But, where this passage took me was to Matthew 4: 3-4.  Listen to what happens there:

3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

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

We see in this passage Jesus tempted by the devil.  When He faced temptation, what did He do?  He quoted the Bible to him.  When faced with temptation, Jesus knew the scriptures to where He could quote them to fight against the schemes of the devil.

This is one of the reasons why we read the Bible.  Now, there are a lot of reasons.  Wisdom.  Doctrine.  Ethics.  Mission.  Devotion.  So many more.  But here in Jesus, we see something important modeled.  We see an example of what to do when temptation comes.  We can defeat the devil’s plans through our knowledge of scripture, we can fight off temptation, we can remain strong, we can be faithful.

But to do that, we have to know the Bible.  So, today, I want to encourage you to spend time in God’s Word.  And not just today.  But every day.  Read it.  Think about it.  Pray on it.  Listen to it. Talk about it.  Let it become part of the daily fabric of your life.

You will need the power of scripture at some point.  So will I.  We all will.  May scripture, as it was for Jesus, be such a part of who we are, when those times of temptation come, we will be able to stand strong.  May we allow the Bible to become a part of daily rituals.  In doing that, we will know the grace to love our God and love our neighbor.  In that, we will find the grace to resist temptation, whenever it comes.

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