To Jesus, prayer was more important than the air He breathed, the food He ate and the water He drank. Life on earth is important and should be sustained. Spiritual life is infinitely more important. Look at Jesus’ first mission after His baptism:
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, He was hungry (Luke 4:1-2).
The children of Israel had lost in a desert battle-ground like this. Instead of praying, they had complained. Instead of trusting God’s word, they had listened to their doubts. On the other hand, Jesus kept on winning battles against temptation, whether beside Jordan’s waters or in the desert’s wasteland. Why? He used the righteous weapons of fasting, prayer and the word of God. While the devil circled and attacked, Jesus’ forty days in the desert were spent with His Father.
When Jesus had eaten no food for forty days, the hunger must have been almost overwhelming. His fleshly body was like our fleshly bodies. To Satan that was an opportunity worth exploiting. He said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). Most of us would have jumped at the idea. “Food! It’s so important for the strength to live and to work.” Jesus valued the spiritual far more! He answered from the Scripture that God had given the Israelites in the desert:
It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).
Jesus knew that life—real life—is not a matter of the body’s health and food. Even the best physical life is weak and soon ends. What really counts is spiritual life from the eternal Father, life that never dies. God had given no word for Jesus to use His miraculous powers selfishly. Turning stones to bread could go against God’s will in this matter. Just as bad, it would be acting as if man can give himself life. Jesus would rather starve than join in the lie that man can have life that is independent of God. Man lives by the words of God!