Best Diet Ever
What’s the best diet on the market? That depends on who you ask. You will likely get as many answers as the person you ask. Wikipedia provides what appears to be an endless list of diets which they define as “the sum of food and drink that one habitually consumes.” They list various categories of diets like belief-based diets, calorie and weight control diets, crash diets, detox diets, diets followed for medical reasons, fad diets, vegetarian diets, and other diets. Check it out: List of Diets. It’s exhausting just to peruse the list.
Jesus brought up the concept of diet when he quoted an Old Testament passage to ward off Satan’s first attack on Him after not eating for 40 days and 40 nights (Matt. 4:3–4; Luke 4:3–4). As a man, Jesus was physically hungry (Matt. 4:2), but instead of focusing on Satan’s temptation to miraculously give Himself some food from rocks, He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,’” to highlight God’s best and most nutritious diet of all.
This Scripture in Deuteronomy was a reminder to Israel of God’s tender physical care for His people during the 40 years of their wilderness journey. Particularly, it showed how the Lord had fed them with manna (a white wafer-type substance made with honey that dropped from heaven, like “coriander seed,” appeared like “bdellium,” and called the bread from heaven or the bread of angels).
Moses & Jesus used this miraculous bread to point to the nourishment God provided that was greater than the physical bread and more necessary for life. It was the bread that nourishes our eternal life.
What is this bread?
It is God’s nourishing Word. It is divine (2 Pet. 1:21), true (John 17:17), authoritative (Mark 7:8), eternal (Psa. 119:16), sufficient (2 Tim. 3:16–17), indestructible (Matt. 24:35), complete (Jude 3), productive (1 Thess. 1:5), and life-giving (Jam. 1:18). Our physical bodies only need physical nourishment in this life, but our souls need spiritual nourishment for eternity.
It is God’s nourishing Son. The Lord Jesus Christ. He called Himself the “bread of life” and “the living bread” (Jn. 6:35, 48, 51). He said, “he who comes to Me will not hunger and he who believes in Me will never thirst” (Jn. 6:35). He also said, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life” (Jn. 6:27), and “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and give life to the world” (Jn. 6:32–33).
If you are looking for a good diet (there are countless and do depend on the dieter), go for it, but if you want the best never-fail diet, then feast on God’s Word and God’s Son every single day. It’s “sweeter than honey” (Ps. 19:10). It’s God’s miraculous and heavenly manna that will far outperform and outlive any physical diet you can find and follow.
And never forget these nutritious words: “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8a) because “he who eats this bread (Jesus Himself) will live forever” (Jn. 6:58b).
Pastor Jeff