1. The First Temptation: Stones Into Bread (Remastered)

The First Temptation: Stones Into Bread

R.J. Rushdoony

Let us begin with prayer.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee again mindful that because our times are in thy hands and thou doest all things well, thou art our strength and our refuge, a very present help in times of need. We thank thee that in thee, we can face all our tomorrows in confidence, and so, our Father, we come. Bless us by thy word and by thy Holy Spirit, and grant us thy peace, In Jesus name, amen.

* * *

Our Scripture is St. Matthew 4:1-4; The First Temptation of Christ.

“Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

As we have analyzed the society of Satan, we have seen that basic to the society of Satan is the insistence that not man, but God must change, that in the society of Satan, man confronts God with an ultimatum and says; “Be converted to our way of life! Be converted to our will, to our demands!” In the society of Satan, therefore, not man but God must change, and God must serve and glorify the creature, and man’s demand is for a paradise that is characterized simply by plenty, and abundance, a material abundance. This is what man demands; `’Give me my heart’s desire, all the things materially that I crave and hunger for, and then I shall be happy.” And yet, the very results of this world’s own studies indicate that there is nothing that leads to greater unhappiness among men than the fulfillment of their desires.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, by no means a trustworthy guide, has nonetheless recognized that plenty leads to destructiveness, both societal and personal. That when man gets what he wants, instead of being happy, he becomes so thoroughly unhappy that he becomes destructive; destructive of his own life and of the world around him, and even among men who are moderately well-off. A common characteristic of our world today is what has been called; ‘Sunday neurosis,’ an inability of man to face himself, to be alone, to rest. The sickness of man is due to the purposelessness of his life. He associates life with bread, with economics, with satisfaction of his material wants, and having these things, he finds himself progressively more and more unable to live.

When Adam and Eve were tempted, they were in paradise. By succumbing to the temptation of Satan, they changed the world from a garden to a wilderness in which sin and death have ever since ruled, and thus it was fitting that our Lord should be tempted in the wilderness, and by withstanding, as the second Adam, the temptation of Satan, he began the recreation of paradise. Paradise Regained, Milton quite property termed the victory of Christ over Satan. Christ was in the wilderness, and the Tempter came to him and said, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread,” and the first half of that statement is a very interesting one in itself. “If thou be the Son of God.” “If,” conditional, probable, possible, not certainly. “If thou be…” implying doubt. Moreover, more literally, the statement reads not “the” but “a.” “If thou be a Son of God…” In other words; “If you are one Son among many, “I am a son,” said Satan, “and others are sons of God. We are the true sons of God as it were. We know what the kingdom should be. God the Father has grown a little bit foolish with age, and we, the true sons, know what the kingdom should be. If thou be a son, if you are ready to join our ranks as one of those who understands and knows what the true kingdom should be, then prove that you are of this circle. Command that these stones be made bread.”

After all, if you have miraculous powers, why not use them? People are starving all over the world, and what kind of a savior are you if you’re going to let people drop dead of hunger in China, and India, Africa, and Europe, all over the world? How can you call yourself a son of God when you permit these things to go on?

“If thou be a Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”

Satan’s concept of the kingdom is, in part, economics; he’s a social reformer. Gain instantaneous acceptance by giving the people what they want, give them a social gospel. Men in every age are demanding a satisfaction to their material wants. They are hungry. They feel the pressure of the debt collector. Their income is limited, and they face a perpetual rat-race as they try to keep up with the growing inflation, and at the very time that Satan was tempting Christ, Rome was inflating its currency and the whole Empire was feeling the impact of a false prosperity, and a creeping inflation.

“Here are real problems,” Satan said. “Do you mean to say you’re going to bypass all of these real problems? Real problems of real people? Do you mean to say you’re going to let them drop dead in the streets, of hunger, and you don’t have a program for them? Prove you are the Messiah! Be the Messiah, the kind of Messiah Israel wants. Then, you truly belong to the inner circle of those who understand. Then you’re one of the enlightened sons of God who truly have a capacity for ruling.”

“If thou be a son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”

“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Even as our Lord spoke, there were those false messiahs around him. In the capital of Rome, the Caesars were offering bread and circuses, controls, subsidies, inflation, pouring their every effort into economic salvation for Rome. Their concept of economic salvation was the welfare state, the ‘Great Society’ of Rome, and our Lord answered by quoting Scripture. His answer to every temptation was, “It is written…, It is written…, It is written…”

In this instance, he quotes from the books of Moses; referring to Deuteronomy 8:2-3 and Exodus 16:4. The reference is Exodus is to manna, and Moses, in declaring that; “...man shall not live by bread alone…,” was commenting upon the incident in the wilderness with reference to manna. Israel had left Egypt through the power of God. God had delivered them. He had confounded the power of Egypt, destroyed Egypt, destroyed the army of Egypt in the Red Sea crossing, taken care of them miraculously, and the moment they faced a problem, they began to complain against God, and against Moses. “We’ve been led out here in the wilderness to starve to death,” and God gave them manna, and he declared that he gave it; “That I may prove them whether they will walk in my law or no.” Manna was given by God in the wilderness to teach his providential care, and to produce faith, and as a rebuke to them. “To humble thee,” God said, to teach faith, to teach them that their every step was in the hands of God and they were totally dependent upon God, that they had been delivered by God from Egypt every step of the way, and how dare they distrust him now. He was able to cause the heavens to open up and food to rain upon them. Could they not have faith in such a God? But they refused to have faith.

The purpose of manna was to bring them to an acceptance of faith as the principle of relationship with God, to recognize the omnipotence and the power of God, that the God who can do this can do all things, and this is a principle we, too, must accept. The God who gave his only begotten Son to die for us, can also care for us, and it’s no problem to him. When he has already made the supreme sacrifice of the death of his only begotten Son, it is no great task for him to minister to our little needs, but Israel took not faith but manna, bread, as the basis of a relationship, and demanded more manna and less faith, and this, in the end, became Israel’s fate. In manna, not in God. In economic fulfillment, not in the creator.

Thus, The Apocalypse of Baruch declared;

“The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousandfold, and on one vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster shall produce a thousand grapes, and each grape shall produce a cor of wine.” 1

This was their dream of the world when the Messiah came. The Book of Enoch said;

“18 And then shall the whole earth be tilled in righteousness, and shall all be planted with trees and be full of blessing.

19 And all desirable trees shall be planted on it, and they shall plant vines on it: and the vine which they plant thereon shall yield wine in abundance, and as for all the seed which is sown thereon each measure (of it) shall bear a thousand, and each measure of olives shall yield ten presses of oil.” 2

In other words, when the Messiah comes, our wildest dreams will be fulfilled. We will rule the world. We will have no problems, and our vineyards will be so lush that every berry of grape will give thirty-six gallons of wine. Now, that’s the kind of world the Messiah will give us; not faith but manna.

This same dream, incidentally, crept in among Christians in all kinds of millennial expectancies, and Paul warned Titus against these Jewish fables in Titus 1:14. This was the Jewish expectation after the first feeding of the multitude. Our Lord created out of one small boy’s lunch enough food to feed a vast multitude of men, plus many women and children, and we are told by John in his sixth chapter that the multitude sought to take him by force and compel him to be king. “This is the kind of king we want, one who can produce food out of nothing. This kind of king can give us cradle-to-grave security. This kind of king will usher in the Great Society just by saying the word, this is our man,” and they sought by force to make him king, and he rejected them and rebuked them, and declared he wanted no part of them nor would he be their king, because he said; “Ye did eat of the loaves and were filled.” Ye worship not me but your full stomachs, not God but economics, and they struck back at this rebuke and retorted, John 6:31; “Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” In other words; “Moses fed us forty years in the wilderness. Now, you’re acting high and mighty, and independent of us, and what have you done? Just fed a crowd once. Who are you to exalt yourself above us?” And Jesus answered in John 6:48-51;

“I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

The Israelites in the desert had the fulfillment of economic dreams and they died in the wilderness, an apostate generation. God abandoned them, and saved out of them only Caleb and Joshua, and what is there in economics? “I offer the bread of life of; myself. Salvation from sin and death, and I offer it on my terms. You seek to make me king, but you cannot make me your king.” Men cannot command God, man cannot choose God. God chooses him. This is the wickedness of some revivalism which tells people that salvation is their choosing God, when Christ says; “Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you,” and we are here today because God has chosen us, has regenerated us, has worked in our hearts and made us delight in Him and in His Word. It is His doing, His saving, His choosing.

Jesus Christ, as that perfect savior, as very man of very man, and very God of very God, refused to give unto them manna, bread, and He refuses to give us manna, bread, economics, paradise on earth apart from himself, because it is a poor substitute for Himself, and it leaves us still in sin and in death.

Today, our hearts cry out too often for bread, for manna, for an economic answer, not for life. Too often they cry out for material things instead of more faith, more of Christ in us, and the Scripture tells us concerning material things that our Father in heaven knows that we have need of all these things, and that certainly we need them, and our Lord, in the temptation did not deny them. He said; “Man shall not live by bread alone.” He needs bread, but he cannot live by bread alone, “...but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” This is the essence of man’s life, this is the certainty, the assurance. “Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” and our Father in heaven, as a loving Father, will not give us a stone for the true bread, Jesus Christ, nor will he give us the false bread that perishes to keep us from the true manna, Jesus Christ. The hope of the world is not in economics, not in solution to social problems met with bread and economic security, but Jesus Christ.

We had, after all, the solution to the economic problems in this country, did we not? We established it as a free country, under a Constitution that was thoroughly Christian, and we had as ideal a situation as the world has seen since the Garden of Eden, but as men left Jesus Christ, they turned what was the nearest thing to paradise, into a country polluted and perverted, and if suddenly the clock were turned back, and all the conditions of the 1830’s again prevailed, in two or three year’s time, it would be no different than now, men, being what they are.

We, as Christians, are denied our cry for help at times that we might be weaned from the manna that perishes, and be fed on the true manna, Jesus Christ, and even as we often deny our children things that they passionately desire, because we know what is best for them, so our God often denies us things we passionately desire because he knows what is best for us, and knows that our eyes must be first fixed there where our true joys are to be found, even in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore, we need to give heed to the words of the Apostle James;

“Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials. For ye know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that it may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing…”

And we, in these days, are indeed undergoing that trial of faith, that we might recognize that the answer to the future is not in economics, but in Jesus Christ, and in every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, that when we have that foundation, Jesus Christ, and then build in terms of that, by the Word of God, we have the answer to the problems of capital and labor, the problems of money, the problems of family, all of man’s problems, because the every Word of God speaks clearly, plainly, and powerfully concerning all these things.

Therefore, let us summon men and let us turn ourselves more and more, day by day, unto Jesus Christ, who declares himself to be the manna

“...which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give as my flesh which I give for the life of the world…I am the bread of life… Lord, ever more give us this bread.”

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast fed us with the true manna, Jesus Christ, and that in Him we have victory over the power of sin and death. In Him, we have the assurance that Christ, having died for us, will do yet more and care for us. Teach us, therefore, to cast our every care upon Him, knowing He careth for us. Give us grace to walk in the confidence that He who began a new creation, that is victory over Satan, will make all things new, and His is the victory, His kingdom shall prevail. Our God, we thank thee. In Jesus’ name, amen.

* * *

Any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience] Recent translations have extensively changed the wording in the gospels, for example. How do you account for such radical changes, Dr. Rushdoony? i

[Rushdoony] Yes, quite a change, and the reason for these drastic changes is simply this. For centuries the church has used, every branch of the church, the received text. Now the received text has been abandoned and they are going to defective and wastebasket manuscript texts for all these new readings. As a result you can expect almost any kind of reading, very often senseless variations from the text as well as verses left out. These modern translations, because they are uniformly based on anything but the Received Text, are defective.

Now, what is the received text? It is the text that was accepted by the Early Church, accepted by the orthodox churches and all the Eastern churches, or the Roman Catholic church, by the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the Episcopalians, everywhere in Christendom was accepted until the end of the last century and it was accepted because it was the standard text, it had always been the established text.

Behind it also is a question of faith, do we believe that God, having given us an inspired and infallible Word will not them protect the transmission of that? And the church has believed that. Now the principle is “anything but this Received Text.” In other words, there must be something wrong with this text precisely because the church has accepted it all this time “so we’ve got to go to all these defective manuscripts,” and any time they have variation, “we can be sure it’s the truth, because the church couldn’t have the truth, the church couldn’t keep it.” There’s a diabolical premise in all of this which has to be challenged and the sad fact is that this diabolical premise now is being incorporated into all the translations used by the church everywhere. And that’s why, for example, you can go to the older translations; whether they are the Douay or the King James or any others, and you will find that in all the translations say, before 1870, there is a basic similarity. Occasionally there will be a difference, but it is a difference that is theological, depending on the ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, and the way they translate a particular word — they are agreed as to the original, no difference.

For example, the King James translates ‘repentance’ and the Douay, ‘penance,’ they don’t disagree as to what the word is in the Greek, they say it’s this word, identical. But now of course, they do not agree that there is a text to be translated, so what they are doing is to reconstruct a text and they say, “This is what Mark, or Matthew, (although they don’t believe Mark or Matthew wrote those gospels, that’s another point) this is what the Gospels originally said, we have reconstructed it on the basis of these defective manuscripts, and on the basis of our thinking and our reasoning.” This is substituting something imaginary for something that the church, for 1,900 years approximately, and before that, with regard to the Old Testament, for another 2,000 years, has accepted, and I say again it is diabolical.

Yes?

[Audience] Along the same line, would you comment on Martin Luther commenting on alterations of scripture way back in his day. He referred church to the Old Testament alterations, if I remember correctly, it was in his Table Talk.

[Rushdoony] I’ve read Table Talk. I don’t recall that. Table Talk isn’t always accurate, you know, because the Table Talk was made up of notes of various students, and we do know that, very often, they garbled things, because they did not take the notes down at the time, they took them down from memory at a later date. And the thing was a little amusing, Katie, was boarding these students, and they were coming there and trying to get free lectures. At the university they had to pay so the thing to do was to ask Dr. Luther at the table a question and get him to talk and get a free lecture that way. Then they would hurry to their room and take notes on it, and sometimes their notetaking was a little garbled. So, whenever we quote anything from the Table Talks, we’ve got to make sure it’s verified by other things elsewhere in Luther’s writings.

[Audience] Along the same lines, some people say, “Well, you don’t take the text of the Bible literally, do you?” I wonder if you could comment on that? I would take it literally, except where common sense makes it impossible…

[Rushdoony] Right. When we say that we accept the literal text of the scripture, we accept it in the sense in which it was intended, and we cannot allow people to say that figures of speech and similes are to be taken in a crudely literalistic sense, no one does that in their everyday speech. Do you use figures of speech and similes continually? Analogies, and so on? And we do take the text of scripture literally in the sense in which it was intended. There are no problems in that sense, the problems are in the imagination of the critics.

Yes?

[Audience] I think I ran onto something in Genesis that parallels this. We always have the argument that Jonah could not have been swallowed by a whale, and reading the footnote, it said that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, where it was a prepared, a prepared fish, a true translation would be “a prepared fish,” a fish that was prepared by God that did swallow Jonah. Now, why is it that we jump to the conclusion that it was a whale all this time…?

[Rushdoony] Of course, it’s in our day that there is doubt concerning the story of Jonah because we’re a little remote from the day of the whalers when many a sailor was swallowed by a whale or a large shark. A book was published of such incidents some years ago, it wasn’t too common, but it did happen every few years to some Yankee sailors. Because in those small whaling ships of a century ago, a huge shark or a huge whale could knock over the boat and take down a sailor in one gulp, and because there would be air in the stomach they would live and sometimes the whale or fish would be caught, killed, and the sailor was again back on its ship safely. I recall reading one account by a seaman who was over two days inside of one whale. He said the odor was rather distressing and it was exceptionally hot there, just suffocatingly hot, but apart from that, he was not in any pain or distress, and he lived quite a long life after he was recovered. It was quite a start to those who recovered him a couple of days later because they had no idea that this was the particular whale that had swallowed him.

Now, as I say, this sort of thing has happened to more than one American seaman in the past, and in this instance God especially prepared a fish to receive Jonah and keep him until Jonah came to repentance and prayed that prayer out of the belly of the fish and then was rescued by God.

Yes?

[Audience] When Christians try things and they don’t work out is this a lack of faith, or a wrong faith?

[Rushdoony] Yes, I know what you mean. This is a very, very false kind of faith, and there are various names that have been given to this kind of movement throughout the church history. There are several groups today that follow this kind of thinking. Penialism  is one, which in some parts of the country right now is having quite an impact. Basic to it is the fallacy that we are not people, and we have no right to do any independent thinking under God, that our redeemed mind and conscience is incapable of doing anything so that every moment we have to look for special leadings from God. Well now if it’s a matter of special leadings and you have to look at the results to see what the answer is, maybe if you cheated and it worked out, that was the leading of the Lord because it succeeded. You’re looking then, not to God but you’re looking to results, and you’re saying, “This is the leading of the Lord.” Well, then in terms of the leading of the Lord, the Communists are way ahead. God has been leading them a lot better than He has us, but the essence of the matter is this. God does not give leadings apart from His word, and these people are continually looking for special signs and special revelations, but we have a finished revelation, the scripture and God, having redeemed us, expects our mind and our conscience to move in terms of His word.

Now, He doesn’t promise that every time we do anything in terms of His Word and in terms of faith we’re going to prosper, because Paul could have then said, “It isn’t the leading of the Lord for me to work in Europe, because I was getting such results in Asia, thousands of converts over there, and here in Europe I’m getting tossed into jail in every town, and I’m just getting a handful of converts, and look at those Corinthians! Why, you couldn’t imagine a worse congregation than that, this isn’t the leading of the Lord. I’d better go somewhere else, go back to Asia.” But no, God had called him there and he knew it wasn’t the results, but his responsibility that should guide him, and of course, we are a product of Paul’s mission to Europe because when God sent him there, He didn’t have the immediate moment in mind, He had the whole future, and in terms of the future, it was to be Europe, not Asia. And so from the success of Asia, he was sent into the defeats of Europe, because even out of those defeats, some real foundations came.

Now, this is the fallacy of these people, they’re going to have to follow the leading of the Lord in everything, in other words, they’re going to look for signs. I know one man who was very much taken with this kind of movement for awhile, and he felt every little thing he did he had to pray about and feel led to do it. Well, finally, when he was out feeding his chickens, (he was a farmer) he was trying to figure out what was the leading of the Lord as to how many pans full of corn or feed he was going to feed the chickens, and it ended up he wasn’t getting his work done, and the chickens weren’t getting fed, and it was an awful mess. And he came to one day and he realized, “Well, God saved me, and he saved my mind, too, and he gave me a mind to use and hands to use, and it’s for me to act in terms of God’s Word, and not to look for all these special leadings.” Now, we can feel God’s blessing as we do His will, sometimes in the face of defeat, and sometimes with great success, that’s a different matter. We can feel providential openings so that sometimes, as we go to a place, we find that God has closed certain doors and others are open, but that’s a different thing fromdepending on leadings, supposed miraculous leadings, and trusting in God’s blessing upon our responsibility according to His Word.

Does that answer your question?

[Audience] Yes, I think a lot of it really profanes the name of the Lord, doesn’t it?

[Rushdoony] …you’re looking to events to be a kind of another Word of God, and there’s only one Word of God, the scripture.

Yes?

[Audience] Could you comment on the idea of the reality of man’s choices within the framework of predestination?  ii

[Rushdoony] Yes. In the question of choice; we definitely have a choice, but ours is a secondary will. Now God is the first cause and the first will, we are secondary causes, and our will is a secondary will. So the ultimate choice is in all things with God, but this does not take away the reality of secondary causes. In other words, you are a secondary cause and I am a secondary cause, and our will is a secondary will, we didn’t make ourselves, we didn’t create the conditions of our life, everything was ultimately created and determined by God, but we are nonetheless real persons, and our wills are secondary wills.

Does that clarify it?

[Audience] But we do have a right or an obligation, I’d say, to choose between good and evil, and if we are again chosen by God, then we can go along with our choice of good…

[Rushdoony] Yes. Moses said, “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve.” So that the secondary choice is real, but we cannot presume to be making the first choice and this is what Israel was trying to do with Christ: “The decision is in our hands, not in yours.”

Yes?

[Audience]  Would you say that we should choose that God’s will be done? Now, we heard a sermon this morning which leads me to ask you this, and then God takes us into his kingdom?

[Rushdoony] No, the very choosing that we do comes as a result of God’s grace in our hearts, so that when we say “yes” to God, it is because He has already implanted the grace in our hearts. To use and old, old term that goes back to St. Augustine, this is prevenient grace, grace that goes before the act, before our act of choice. There is a line in an old hymn that goes something like this the gist of it is, “I could not say yes to thee, O Lord, had thou not said yes first of all to me,” very crudely stated.

One more question?

Yes?

[Audience] You’re not saying that we should not call on God for guidance?

[Rushdoony] Definitely we should. At all times we should prayerfully call on God for guidance but we should not ask God to give us a special leading to do something that our common sense should tell us to do.

Now to give a very simple and crude illustration, we don’t have to ask God for guidance as to whether we should steal or shouldn’t steal. His Word has given us the guidance there. “Thou shalt not steal.” But sometimes we face a very difficult choice between two things that are good. Then we can call on God to give us wisdom and He’s promised to give us wisdom. Now, we don’t, in such a case, say, “Now, Lord, give me some special sign that I should choose between these two,” because we can’t ask for revelations, but we can ask for wisdom to make a choice. Then we have this protection, Romans 8:28 says that, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose,” so we can’t lose whichever choice we make because even if it turns out to be a rather unsuccessful course that we’ve chosen, God makes it work together for good to us because we are His, you can’t lose. That’s the marvelous thing about being a Christian, you cannot lose, it’s all going to add up for good to you — in this world and in the world to come supremely.

1. Rev. Canon R.H. Charles. The Apocalypse of Baruch. London: SPCK, 1918, 53.

2. Charles, R.H., ed. (1913). Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Vol. 2, p. 195). Clarendon Press.

i. Question added due to an over-long question and less clear audio.

ii. Question added due to unclear audio.