At the outset of His earthly ministry, Jesus Christ was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.
This is a familiar story to many of us but there is greater significance that we can glean from this event in Christ’s life beyond what we learned in Sunday school.
The Gospel of John does not mention Christ’s temptation in the wilderness and Mark only mentions it briefly. The two main accounts of the temptation are found in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. As we examine this event and its significance I will draw primarily from Matthew’s account and use it as the main text while making occasional reference to Luke.
Led Into the Wilderness
The first thing we should note in the text is the timing of Christ’s temptation: this happened immediately after Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. This was also the occasion when the Spirit of God descended on Jesus and a voice spoke from Heaven saying “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
This should be noted for two reasons:
First, it is after the victorious moment of baptism that Christ is led to the wilderness. We should be aware of this in our own lives. The moments of victory in our faith are not an indication that the wilderness has been banished forever. In fact, it may be that the wilderness is imminent.
Second, Christ is baptized with the Holy Spirit at His baptism. Luke, the author of Acts, uses a phrase in the beginning of Luke 4 that he uses regularly in Acts: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit,” (cf. Acts 2:4, 4:8, 7:55, 13:9, etc.) This filling of the Holy Spirit is what compels Christ to enter the wilderness.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Matt. 4:1
The Spirit leads Christ into the wilderness. Now, we must note carefully that the temptation comes from the devil. It did not come from God. God does not tempt anyone (Jas. 1:13). However, the Spirit does lead Christ into the wilderness.
The temptation of Christ brings up many complex theological questions about God and temptation. We don’t have space to examine those questions here. (And for that matter, I don’t know that I can begin to examine them without further study.) But here it is enough to acknowledge that Christ, the Son of Man, is facing His own serpent here in the wilderness.
Drawing again from Luke’s account we should note that the immediately-preceding context of Christ’s temptation is not His baptism (as it is in Matthew’s Gospel) but rather is His genealogy. Luke’s genealogy works backwards from Christ all the way to the very origin of Man. Verse 38 of chapter 3 reads: “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” The very next words are those quoted above from Luke 4:1 about Jesus, “full of the Holy Spirit”.
This placement of the genealogy by Luke is not arbitrary. Matthew begins His Gospel with a genealogy and, in a way, so does John. A person’s genealogy seems best placed at the beginning of their biography but Luke waits three chapters to introduce it. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is to use context to highlight the significance of ch. 4 and the temptation of Jesus. Just as Adam was the first Man and the representative of the human race, so Christ is the last Adam, the final federal and covenantal head of the human race (see Rom. 5:12-21). And just as Adam fell in sin because of the devil’s temptation, so now Christ has the opportunity to be the “better Adam” by resisting the devil.
Fasting
Matthew 4:2 states the obvious: “And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”
Of course he was! Christ was not a superhuman. He was a human like you and me. Fasting had actual consequences for Him. If He did not eat, He would get hungry. However, this long period (forty days and nights) almost seems like a superhuman feat. I believe this kind of fasting can only be accomplished with favor and strength from God. But this does not mean that only God in the flesh can complete this kind of fast. Moses and Elijah both completed a fast of this kind through the strength that the Lord gave them.
In Deuteronomy 9 we read about Moses’ forty-day fast:
When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water.
Deut. 9:9
In 1 Kings 19 we read about Elijah’s implied forty-day fast:
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.
1 Kings 19:4-8
Both of these Old Testament saints fasted in the wilderness for forty days and nights. For a Jew well-versed in the Scriptures, the audience to whom Matthew wrote, this would have been significant. It would have set Jesus Christ aside Moses and Elijah, the human representatives of the “Law” and the “Prophets”. In Matthew 17, these two figures reappear in connection with Christ.
The forty days and nights may also be a foreshadowing of the judgment of God that Christ bore at the cross. When God judges the world with a flood, the judgment persists for forty days and nights (Gen. 7:4). The nation of Israel wanders the wilderness for forty years because of their disobedience and unbelief.
On a very practical level, we see that Christ prepared for obedience through fasting. He fought temptation, as we will see, with the word of God but He also fasted radically in this moment of wilderness suffering.
Hunger
Of course, as we have noted, this fasting leads to hunger. And this is where the devil makes his move in an attempt to take advantage of Christ’s physical weakness.
The tempter’s first strike is aimed right at Jesus Christ’s stomach:
And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
Matt. 4:3
Here we are faced with the sometimes uncomfortable truth that Jesus Christ had human urges. They were not sinful urges but they were urges nonetheless. He was hungry. No doubt, He wanted bread. And here the devil, that serpent of old, uses the same trick he used centuries earlier in Eden. Genesis 3:6 tells us that upon the devil’s tempting, Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes…she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband…and he ate.”
Adam and Eve’s sin involved their entire bodies but the Scripture in particular seems to highlight their eyes and their stomachs as compelling elements. Paul tells the Philippians that the enemies of the cross are those whose “god is their belly” (Phil. 3:19). Hunger, and human urges in general for that matter, are not wrong. But we must be aware that they are often the doorway through which temptation charges.
Christ does not waver. He responds with Scripture:
But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Matt. 4:4
Here, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3. Jesus Christ knew His Bible. Now, of course, it was the word of God and He was the Word Himself. But we must not think that Christ’s human nature took a long break over the decades when He prepared for His ministry, relying on His divine nature to do all the work. Christ is the perfect example of a human who read and obeyed the words of God. We may tend to think that Christ’s divine nature made His life easy. But we forget that He was made in every way like His brothers, without sin (Heb. 2:17-18). This wilderness temptation was not easy.
Testing God
Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
Matt. 4:5-6
It appears that Satan wisens up here and realizes that preying on Jesus’ human urge of hunger is not a sufficient strategy. Instead, he strikes deeper: at Christ’s trust in His Father.
In Genesis 3, Satan comes to Eve with a question of doubt: “Did God really say?”
Against Christ, Satan comes with Scripture itself. He quotes from Psalm 91:11-12. Does he take this Scripture out of context? Perhaps, but not likely. Psalm 91 is a song of God’s protection and refuge for the righteous. It seems reasonable to believe that the Psalmist means these verses to refer to God’s spiritual and physical protection of His beloved.
Unlike in Eden, now Satan comes with a challenge: “God really did say! Are you going to trust Him?”
How often this temptation comes upon us as well! We are tempted to flirt with foolishness and danger with the assurance that we are “trusting God”. God is worthy of our trust but that does not disqualify wisdom. We ought not be jumping off roofs and quoting Scripture to justify it. While Satan does not appear to take Psalm 91 out of context or falsely re-interpret its meaning, he does twist its use to challenge God rather than trust Him.
That is why Christ responds by once again quoting Deuteronomy, this time Deut. 6:16.
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Matt. 4:7
It is not sinful to trust God’s bold promises in Scripture. It is sinful to use God’s own word to challenge His goodness and sovereignty.
The Kingdoms of the World
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Matt. 4:8-9
In Matthew’s account, this is the final recorded ploy of the devil. Luke mentions it second in his account. I do not believe there is any reason to get in a fuss about the numbering of these temptations. Perhaps, Matthew recorded them in chronological order. He uses the Greek word tote (then) in v. 5 and palin (again, once more) in v. 8. Luke only uses the term kai (and) so he does not seem to commit to a chronological reading. Perhaps Luke reports the temptations out of order to make a greater parallel with the temptation in Eden where Satan
- questions God’s word and strikes at Eve’s trust, (v. 1)
- questions God’s goodness and His plan for humanity, (v. 5)
- entices Eve by preying on her urges (v. 6).
In Luke’s account of Christ’s temptation the order is reversed:
- Satan tempts Christ to feed His hunger, (v. 3)
- Satan tempts Christ to abandon God’s good plan for the Kingdom of God, (vv. 5-7)
- Satan tempts Christ to test God and challenges Christ’s trust in His Father (vv. 9-11).
The devil parades all the kingdoms of the world before Christ and promises them to Him upon the condition that Jesus worship him.
One glaring question enters our minds here: how can Satan promise the kingdoms of the world to the very God-Man who owns them already?
Of course, it is not as if the devil has dominion over the kingdoms of the world apart from divine authority. He has not “wrested” control away from the Lord of Hosts. But there is a sense here where God has “delivered” the kingdoms of the world into Satan’s hand since the early days of history.
The Apostle John records Jesus referring to the devil as the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11). Paul uses the term “god of this world” to describe the devil in 2 Cor. 4:4. There is a sense that God “deputized” the devil to rule the nations before Christ’s death and resurrection.
So were these nations, these kingdoms of the world, the devil’s to give to Christ? In some sense, no, and in some sense, yes. Luke tells us that the devil declared that the glory of the kingdoms “has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.” God is the ultimate sovereign over the nations. He is the ruler of the kingdoms of Earth. But prior to Christ’s death and resurrection, the nations were still in the clutch of Satan, authorized by God.
In the Old Testament, God promised to deliver the kingdoms of the world over to His anointed one (Pss. 2:6-9; 22:28; 110:1-2, 5-6). There is a promised triumphant reign over all kingdoms and nations as that lies ahead of Christ as He stands in the wilderness facing temptation. It is not a matter of whether He will receive the glory of the kingdoms of the world. It is a matter of how.
Satan’s offer is by far the easier and more pain-free of the two options ahead of Christ. On the one hand, all He must do is worship Satan and all the nations will be His, the promise will be fulfilled. On the other hand, Christ will have to walk the Calvary road to a painful and shameful death in order to win the nations. In this moment of pain and seeming defeat, He will draw the nations to Himself (John 12:32).
Christ knows the road ahead. He knows the valley He must walk through on the way to His ascent as sovereign ruler of the nations. Satan is offering the “easy way out”. But once again, Jesus Christ rebukes Satan and parries with Scripture:
Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
Matt. 4:10-11
This final time, Christ uses the words of Scripture to rebuff the devil. And He quotes again from Deuteronomy (6:13 and 10:20). While it may be a coincidence that Christ uses the words of Deuteronomy, I don’t think it is. And this leads us to our final conclusion about how we can apply this passage in Matthew 4.
I Have Hidden Your Word
Psalm 119:11 says “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”
The great antidote to temptation and the devil’s schemes is a heart filled with God’s word. After all, how does a young man keep his way pure? “By guarding it according to your word.” (Ps. 119:9)
While Jesus was fasting and praying for forty days and nights, He was hiding away God’s word in His heart. The book of Deuteronomy is concerned with preparing a wilderness people for their entrance into the promised land. This is, of course, only speculation on my part, but I wonder if Christ was meditating deeply on the words of Deuteronomy during His time in the wilderness. Perhaps this explains why He quoted so frequently from a small portion of the Old Testament (Deut. 6-10) during His temptation in the wilderness.
I don’t know that for sure. But what I do know for sure is that Christ used Scripture to combat temptation. And that great sword of the Spirit is just as available for us today. As we are faced with temptations each day, let us store up God’s word in our hearts and guard our way according to His word.