Eating Rocks

 During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” Matthew 4:3

...."Jesus replied, 'I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again.' " John 6:35..."Satan tried to get Jesus to turn stones into bread. With us, he just tries to get us to eat rocks instead." Erwin McManus

If you have any knowledge of Christ's wilderness temptation, you know that Satan's game plan was to get Jesus to step away from the known will of the Father, and he used an array of temptations trying to do so. One of the aspects of His wilderness experience was hunger. It is always in our times of physical and human weakness that the enemy comes and seeks to entice us through our appetites to abandon Him and satisfy them. Being in the desert, there would be an abundance of stones. Bread produced in that day bore a real resemblance to those stones Satan pointed to them and tried to get Christ to assuage His hunger while at the same time proving He was the Son of God. Jesus, steadfast in His faith, simply replied, "Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Later on, after His experience with the Samaritan woman at the well, his disciples urged Him to eat the food they had gathered, as all of them had not eaten in some time. Jesus refused, saying, "I have bread to eat that you know nothing about."

The devil failed to entice the Lord into disobedience. He didn't succeed in getting Jesus to turn stones into bread that He could eat. He constantly failed in every one of his attempts to entice Jesus away from living out the ministry for which the Father had sent Him. However, his success rate against you and I is considerably higher. He's not seeking to try to get us to turn stones into bread. He just wants us to eat the rocks, and never know the riches found in the Bread of Life that is Jesus Christ. The unbelieving exist on a diet of these rocks. They think its bread, but there is no life in them at all. But how can those, for whom the Bread of Life is given, again and again go to the enemy's table.....and eat rocks?

In so many of His encounters with people, Jesus would use the words, "If you only knew." If you only knew who it is who is before you." "If you only knew the life I came to bring you." If you only knew. But too often, far too often, we don't know. And so we end up eating Satan's rocks instead of feasting on the One who is Life and Bread. We're much like the characters in a movie who lay hold of what they believe is a shipment of gold, only to discover later on that all they really had was a load of rocks that had been painted gold. They'd been deceived, fooled, and made fools of. It is always so when the enemy deceives us into eating rocks. The rocks, like those of the Judaean desert, look like bread, and we may even believe that they are bread, but sooner or later, we will discover they are only rocks. He's played us for fools.

Where in your life have you lost your appetite for His bread? Where in your life have you been dining on a steady diet of rocks? Do you know, have you ever known, the food Jesus knew of, but His disciples didn't? That food, that bread, is Jesus. Turn from the rocks you've been deceived into eating, and take hold of Him who is Bread and who is Life. Know the food you were created for. Come to His table. Come now.

Blessings,

Pastor O