Deuteronomy 3:1-3
“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
This week we have been focusing on the trustworthiness of the Bible as we sought to answer the question, ‘Can you trust the Bible?’. So far, we have looked at the composition of the Bible, the reliability of the Bible, the clarity of the Bible, and the authority of the Bible. Today, we look at the necessity of the Bible as captured for us in the above text. As someone has rightly put it, the book of Deuteronomy is a book of obedience. What Moses is doing in the entire book is rehashing the law to the children of Israel and urging them to obey Yawheh. In our text today, He begins with a call to obedience and then goes on to show the reward of obedience – that the Israelites would multiply and possess the land of the promise.
Moses then moves on to inform the children of Israel that their whole wilderness experience was a humbling and testing experience from the LORD, a testing of their obedience. Moreover, Moses argues, God allowed them to go hungry and then fed them with manna in order that it might act as an illustration for them – that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. In other words, in the same way that food is necessary for our sustenance and satisfaction, the Word of God is more – it sustains and satisfies us spiritually. Put differently, the same way one cannot go without food for long is the same way the believer cannot go without the spiritual food, which is the Word of God, for long. The Bible is absolutely necessary for life for it is through it that we get to know Christ and as a result receive everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-4).
Reflections
1. Would you say that you are well fed?
2. What do you need to do in order to prioritise ‘feeding’ on the Word of God?
3. Are you convinced that the Bible is necessary for your faith and life?
