These
Stones
John the Baptist was not your typical
pulpiteer adorned in a three-piece suit, who enjoyed fried chicken for
Sunday dinner. Rather he had “his raiment of camel's hair, and a
leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild
honey” (Matthew 3:4). As he embarked upon his preaching
ministry in the wilderness of Judaea, throngs from Jerusalem, Judaea
and regions round about Jordan came to be baptized of him, confessing
their sins (3:5-6).
It was just a matter of time until
“many of the Pharisees and Sadducees” showed up to check out what was
happening on THEIR turf (3:7). A modern-day, seminary-trained preacher
might have thought: “Well glory! The KEY to winning the nation is
winning over its religious leadership. It looks like we’re almost
there.” Well, it wasn’t in John’s nature to follow the latest,
best-selling Church growth manual. When he saw them show up, he
exclaimed: “O generation of vipers [venomous snakes], who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?” (3:7).
These guys were proud of their
NATIONAL pedigree, and thought that entitled them to some SPIRITUAL
standing. It’s like John read their minds: “And think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God
is able of THESE STONES to raise up children unto Abraham” (3:9). In
other words, if all God was interested in was drawing a crowd, he could
accomplish that by turning these stones into children; the implication
being, it might easier to turn these rocks into children than turn your
stony hearts into pliable receptacles for the TRUTH!
Satan was an invisible by-stander to
these wilderness events, and no doubt took notes regarding John’s
‘stones-to-kids’ claim. After John baptized Jesus, he spent forty days
fasting in the wilderness, and “was afterward an hungered” (4:3). The
verb “hungred” means “to be famished to the point of craving.” If Jesus
was at 10% or less body fat when he began his fast (and that’s a
distinct possibility), his body was in a world of hurt at the end of
forty days. The stage was now set for the first of three
temptations.
So with note pad in hand, Satan
approached Jesus with this challenge: “If thou be the Son of God,
command that THESE STONES be made bread” (4:3). What Satan tempted
Jesus to do was actually LESS miraculous than John’s ‘stones-to-kids’
claim. If God was able to by-pass the ‘conception-to-birth’ process,
surely it would no problem for him to perform a lesser feat in
by-passing the ‘seed-to-harvest’ process. Jesus responded: “It is
written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (4:4).
Satan mistakenly assumed Jesus was
living a one-dimensional life, that being ‘famished’ would provide the
perfect venue to appeal to his natural instincts for physical survival.
While Jesus was physically famished, he had experienced NO LACK of
spiritual bread in the second dimension. In other words: “Satan, my
body may be FAMISHED due to fasting, but my spirit is FULL of the bread
of TRUTH, upon which I’ve been feasting these last forty days!”
There’s a lot for us to learn from
THESE STONES. There is perhaps no greater tragedy in this world than
for an individual to be famished in spirit for lack of the bread of
truth when EVERY WORD of it is readily available in thousands of
bookstores across our land. In addition, every child of God should be
determined to feed upon those WORDS every day of their lives in order
to sustain life in the second (and most important)
dimension! text
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