Matthew 4:4

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.

Jesus' answer to temptation was, "It is written ... it is written ... and again, it is written!" Fortunate are the Lord's followers when they are able to meet every crucial test of life with a like response. This places the highest stamp of approval upon the Bible. It is simply unthinkable that the Christ of God would have relied upon a merely human and fallible book in his encounter with the Prince of Evil. Jesus' use of the Scriptures in this situation plainly marks them as the words OF GOD! Indeed, in this very verse, this principle is dogmatically asserted, "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Man shall not live by bread alone, etc. ... This has a wealth of significance. Mere physical existence apart from the true life of the spirit is not really LIFE (John 10:10). The quotation Jesus used in this reply is from Deuteronomy 8:3. The Christian should receive as his never-to-be-rejected authority in spiritual matters, the word of God, the word only (Matthew 8:8), every word (Matthew 4:4), and nothing but the word (Matthew 15:9). Note the three places of these temptations, the wilderness, the temple, and the high mountain. The extremes were employed by Satan in a strong effort to win this encounter. Having lost the first round, Satan switched both the scene and the approach. Since Christ trusted the Father, Satan would try to make that very trust the basis of sin, presumptuous sin. The scene is also changed from the roaring wilderness to the sacred precincts of the temple, indicating that there are peculiar temptations to sin in close proximity to faith.