Matthew 4:4

Please hear the love in this statement that God has put heavy on my heart:

We don’t need inspirational talks.

We don’t need devotionals.

We don’t need self help books.

We don't need feel good sermons.

We need the Bible. We need scripture. We need Truth.

We don’t need more things that make us feel good, we need something that will save us, restore us, and redeem us from eternal damnation.

I was raised in a church that didn’t even have Bibles for us to read. I didn’t know how important Bible reading was to the Christian faith until I went to college. This book was so foreign to me. Because of my personal experience, I feel like that’s why the importance of reading our Bibles can get miscommunicated or it’s the reason why people don’t necessarily see the importance of it. For me, It was pretty hard to understand the value and urgency with reading my Bible when my church didn’t even have a copy for me to read.

But by the grace of God I have been exposed to the Bible and oh man, it is so sweet. I can speak from personal experience that making daily Bible reading a habit has quite literally changed my life. This book has permanently changed everything in me. It has educated me on who the one true God of the Bible is. It has taught me about the deadliness of sin and the holiness of God. It has taught me the beautiful and everlasting story of redemption. I get to read about Jesus and His immeasurable love for humanity. I get to learn about His ministry and how to live a life reflecting His love. I get to read stories about people just like me who radically encounter God’s love and grace.

I love every part of it. Sitting in the stillness of His presence and meditating on the Truth of His Word. Allowing Him to convict me, humble me, teach me, comfort me. In all that He does, He is so gentle and sweet. I can't help but overflow with the purest of joy knowing that this is my reality. Living every single day for the one who cares so deeply for me and brings me the fullness of joy.

Psalm 34:8 says taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

Psalm 23:6 tells us that surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

By the goodness of the Lord, I can testify to these two verses. I’ve tasted and seen the goodness of God. I’ve experienced His protection and great mercy. The words in these two verses are so far from being hypothetical scenarios or metaphors, they are secure promises spoken by God, and I can testify to that.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

Matthew 4:1-4

This section of scripture is so important, your life quite literally depends on how you respond to these words spoken by Jesus. To give some context, this dialogue took place 40 days after Jesus fasted in the desert. Although Jesus was fully God and sinless, that didn't mean He didn't suffer. At this point, He was probably starving, weak, nauseous, and exhausted. But if we look at verse three, Jesus had an opportunity to cure His hunger pains by turning stones into bread. But rather than fulfilling those hunger pains, He chose to use that as an opportunity to preach humanity's essential and crucial need for the Word of God.

We see in this scripture how imperative the Bible is. Jesus commanded that we are to live on every word that comes from the mouth of God. He stressed the importance of filling ourselves with God’s Word over actual food, meaning that the Bible will bring us everlasting fulfillment, everlasting life, and everlasting nourishment. With this particular passage of scripture, I want to bring up three Truths about what the Bible/scripture is and why it is so essential for us to read.

1. All scripture is breathed out by God.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

The Bible is quite literally God’s spoken word (John 1:1). If Matthew 4 tells us that we need to live on God’s word alone, we need to know our Bibles inside and out and store it in our hearts.

2. All scripture is profitable and richer than anything else you could receive. Continually teaching and convicting. When we treasure the Word of God, we are able to know what is true and false about God.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3:16

3. When you know the word of God, you gain perspective on who God is, and that shapes how you view yourself. When you read your Bible, you are close to the father, being made in the image of Jesus, holy, perfect, and blameless in the eyes of God.

The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip.

Psalm 37:31

have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Psalm 119:11

The Bible is not only crucial for our relationship with God, but it is also so sweet. We were made in the image of God, He knows what our souls are starving for and the Bible is it. God went to great lengths for us to have access to His Word. His Word is perfect, refreshing to the soul, and trustworthy (Ps. 19:7) His word is good, more precious than silver and gold, compassionate, eternal, steadfast, sweeter than honey, a lamp to our feet, something wonderful that gives light and understanding. (Ps. 119: 68, 72, 77, 89, 98, 103, 105,130)

We cannot have a close relationship with Jesus without having a close relationship to His word. It is so important that we are intentional with engaging with the Word of God. We can’t afford to be selective with what we believe about God. We either believe the God of the Bible and everything this book tells us about Him or we aren't serving the God of Christianity. We need to take ownership for the way we live and for what we believe.

When Jesus returns, it will just be you and Him.

And He will either say “well done you good and faithful servant” or “depart from me for I never knew you.”

You are so loved.

Morgan