LIVING BY EVERY WORD WHICH GOES OUT THROUGH GOD’S MOUTH
P. Picq
I thought of this scripture in connection with what our brother has just said about the word of God. It is a very remarkable thing that the Lord answered the tempter by quoting the Scriptures and by quoting this particular scripture that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which goes out through God’s mouth”. It is a verse about which I think sometimes and I should like to grasp the scope of it in my soul, that is, to consider the Scriptures as being by the Holy Spirit’s power, the word which goes out through God’s mouth. It is an extraordinary fact that we have the Scriptures and I often wonder for myself whether I give them the place which they ought to have. Not, as our brother has said, that we do not respect the Scriptures; we think of them as the inspired word of God; but do they have for my soul that value and that power that every word which goes out through God’s mouth should have?
I read this verse because it came out through the mouth of the Lord Jesus. Certainly it had been written in the book of Deuteronomy and the Lord Jesus did not need the Scriptures to answer Satan, but He used the Scriptures, and that, I believe, is something quite remarkable.
He was, speaking with all reverence, in a very testing situation; He had been tempted during forty days by the devil (see Luke 4: 2). In those days He did not eat anything, and after that He hungered, and at that precise moment the tempter drew near and said to Him, “If thou be Son of God, speak to this stone that it become bread”. Think a little: if the Lord Jesus had been an ordinary man He would have immediately failed, on the one hand by demonstrating what He was capable of doing, and on the other hand by satisfying His own need. I think we have to take care to protect ourselves from these two things; not that we have in ourselves the power which was in the Lord, but to protect ourselves from the desire that might be found in us, whether to show what we might think we are capable of doing, or to do something to satisfy our own need, that is, to change our circumstances to some little extent, or to change whatever might come upon us.
But the Lord Jesus simply takes this place as Man in entire submission to, and entire dependence upon God. He hungered; it was real; “Having fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he hungered”; then just at that moment the tempter approached Him. The temptations in the wilderness are certainly unique to the Lord Jesus, but I think the devil uses against the saints the same principle by taking advantage of conditions of weakness, or of circumstances which might wear us down, or bring us low, in order to make us sin and in order to turn us away from God, when it is just at that moment that the word of God ought to be our strength. We have been impressed recently by a remark of Mr. Darby in the preface to
‘The Irrationalism of Infidelity’ (Coll. Wrtgs. N.S. Vol. 6, p.5) in which he puts in its right place what the word of God is, what the Bible ought to be to the believer, and what it was for him. He says, ‘Did heaven and earth, the visible church, and man himself, crumble into nonentity, I should, through grace hold to the word as an unbreakable link between my soul and God. I am satisfied that God has given it me as such. I do not doubt that the grace of the Holy Spirit is needed to make it profitable, and to give it real
authority in our souls, because of what we are; but that does not change what it is in itself. To be true when it is received, it must have been true before it was so’. (Because of the value of this reference it has been quoted here more extensively than it was when the word was given—Ed.).
We have lived through days of much shaking, have we not, in the testimony and in our families—and what remains for us? Well, we might say, nothing remains, and yet there remains for us one of the most inestimable blessings which could ever be for men—the word of God. I wish for myself, and for each of us, that we might simply not only read it, but read it whilst laying hold of its value and its power for our souls as being “every word which goes out through God’s mouth”.
Word in meeting for ministry, Valence, France
18 January 1983