A Word from the Mouth of God

A few verses from Matthew chapter 4, starting at verse 1. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. And afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And Jesus was not just quoting scripture at the devil. Nothing wrong with doing that.

But it's important for us to see that Jesus was living those words. Behind this tremendous ministry of life, all the needy ones who came to him was a man who was utterly and totally dependent upon his Father, God, for living bread, for a word that is alive, that's going to help him day by day and hour by hour. The words that I say to you, he says, I speak not of my own authority, but the Father who dwells with me, he does the work.

I can do nothing on my own authority. I speak as the Father has taught me. I can do nothing on my own authority, he says.

As I hear, I judge. This is God the Son, but truly now a human being. And as a man, he is living a life that is an example of how we are to draw our life from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And before we talk about those life-giving words of Jesus that raised the dead and opened the eyes of the blind and set the captives free, we have to first understand the source of this life-giving tongue was an ear that was open to the mouth of God, from Isaiah 50. Morning by morning, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear.

Jesus knows that if he's going to have anything at all for these needy people who are surrounding me constantly, he's going to have to get a living word from the mouth of his Father. Be not silent unto me, O God, lest that thou be silent unto me, I become like them that go down into the pit. And while Jesus is moving out among people and they're constantly pressing him for help of every kind, little do they realize that this man is all the time walking on the very edge of exhaustion.

It's like having a tremendous budget and an almost zero bank balance. Whatever he's going to give to people that's going to be life, he's going to have to get fresh from the mouth of his Father. And this is the thing that distinguishes the walking dead from the people who are alive with the life of God.

The sons and daughters of the living God are people who live not by bread alone or by money or by success or by spiritual platitudes or by their little spiritual gymnastics that they perform, but by a word that comes hot from the mouth of God. And to get a word directly from God's mouth is a very simple thing. You don't have to learn some deep spiritual secret.

All that you need is to be utterly and totally conscious of your need. There was never a man or a woman who walked this earth who was more desperate for a word from the mouth of God, more conscious of his need of that than Jesus. He lived by every word that proceeded from the Father's mouth because he knew that there was life nowhere else.

Now, if we're having trouble getting a living word from God ourselves and you can't get that secondhand, it's only because we're not nearly as desperate as the Lord is, the Son of God for a word from his Father. The way it goes on in our minds most of the time is, you know, we may not express it this way, but basically it's like this. It would be nice to get a word from God directly and alive, but if I don't, life goes on.

I get my three meals a day. I eat and drink and buy and sell and enjoy my pleasures. No wonder nothing happens.

Now, why is it that the Son of God, who knows where he comes from and where he's going and is without sin, is constantly desperate to get a word from his Father, so much so that he gets up early in the morning, sometimes stays up all night long, secretly, while we, who are so confused about who we are, corrupted with sin down to our toes, feel no particular pressure to get something directly from the Father's mouth? The answer is simple. Jesus had taken up his cross and had now exposed himself to the anguish of the real world. Having done that, he's now surrounded by people who are hanging on him, crying to him in desperate need, and as these needs pull on his life, he has to have a living word from his Father, and so he cries out for it.

He becomes the man in his own parable, pounding on the neighbor's door for bread at midnight, cries out to his Father for a living word, and gets it. The Father speaks to him, quickens him, and so that the words Jesus speaks become spirit and life to those who hear. He now has a word of good news for the poor, a word of sight for the blind, a word of deliverance for the captives.

The words that I speak to you, Jesus says, they are spirit and they are life. Lord, to whom shall we go, says Peter? You have the words of eternal life, the words of eternal life. His word was with authority, with power, because he lived himself by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God.

So when will we get to the place where we start getting a living word from the Father directly, each of us? You can't get that from some clergyman, some professional spiritual person. You can only get that directly from God. When will this happen? It will happen when you and I take up our cross and follow Jesus out there into the real world of anguish and sin and pain.

As long as we're trying to save our lives by insulating ourselves from all the problems, we will lose our lives in spiritual death. But when you take hold of your cross and follow Jesus out into that troubled world, you will instantly find yourself surrounded. By people who are going to pull on you as if they're the drowning man and you're the life ring, going to be crying to you for help, calling on you for a word of hope, pressing you, pushing you all the time after you, believing that you have the answer.

And you say to yourself and to God, I have no answer. Here they come to me and I have nothing to set before them. And now you're in the position where you have to go to the Father.

Lord, give me something for these people. Be not silent unto me, lest thou be silent unto me. I become like those that go down into the pit.

Oh, Jesus, I don't know what's going on. You've got to help me. And now you're beginning to taste the desperateness of the Son of God as he cries out to the Father for bread.

Now, because somebody has come to you and you have nothing to set before them, you begin to ask and seek and knock. And as you do, God speaks. Your ear opens and you really begin to hear a word from him.

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord has opened my ear and I was not rebellious.

I turned not backward. Now, the word that we will hear from God may not come as a voice in the night that the ear can actually pick up. Rarely will it be anything like that or a blinding vision or earthquake or wind or fire.

But somehow, absolutely, there will come a word that you know came from God. And that word will quicken not only you, but the people who are pressing on you for help. And you will find that you have what they need now to your own amazement.

Every single time we cry out to God in desperation because we have to have something to feed the hungry ones who come to us, we get something. Every time. And the Spirit of the Lord will be upon you because he has anointed you to preach good news to the poor and bring deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.

But, and this part is often left out of the story and it's important for us to see it. The price of being able to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God is that you will carry a cross the rest of your life. Just as Jesus carried a cross.

The price of being able to have a word in season, a word from God for those who are weary, is that you will from then on begin to carry in you the stigma of Christ. And the ones who hate him will hate you. And there's no getting away from that.

And it's significant that in this passage in Isaiah, the very next verse that follows, the one I just read, shows us this. Let me read. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious.

I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

There will be smiting and shame and spitting on you. Just as surely as you cannot live in such a way that you serve both God and man. It's also true that you cannot have a word from God for those who are weary and at the same time have the admiration of the rest of the world.

In order to live under the power of the word of God, you are also going to live under the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ. The world is no more going to make a celebrity out of you than it made one out of Paul or Jesus himself or Peter. There's no guarantee.

I don't care how many gospel groups will tell you there is. There is no guarantee that you're going to become rich or famous or popular. The only guarantee you have, and get this, is that you will have a word from the mouth of God day by day that will be more than money could buy, that will be life.

And you will have a word for those weary and troubled and sick, one to come to you, that will be life for them. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted 40 days and 40 nights.

Afterward, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Hungry as Jesus was for bread, he was hungrier for a word hot from his father's mouth. And it was that hunger that drove him all the way to the cross where he became bread for the world that you and I are going to eat today. If you really want a living word from the father's mouth, allow yourself to be drawn by the spirit of God this day in this place, under the shadow of the cross.

Let yourself be drawn under the shadow of the cross and you will begin there to experience trouble, sick, needy, disturbed people pulling you in 10 different directions. Your phone will ring. Three people will try to talk to you at the same time.

There just won't be time enough in the day to take care of what needs to be done. And you in desperation will cry to the father for bread. And your ear will open and you will begin as never before to hear him speak to you.

The Lord has given me the tongue of those that are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious.

I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

Lord, we hear you calling us to pick up our cross, deny ourselves and follow you every day. And Lord, we hear your promise of such marvelous things as we do. Help us now to say goodbye to all the goodies that have distracted us and that are as empty as the wind.

And help us this day to yield as your spirit brings us again under the shadow of Calvary. Help us to take hold of our own cross, to lay the mess of our present life down at your feet and to be lifted up into a life of giving and giving and serving and spending that will be filled with your presence forever. We ask it for your mercy's sake.

Amen.