8  The Crisis  of Temptation (4:1-11)

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand 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 give His angels charge concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 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 things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him. (4:1-11)

Since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, temptation has been a constant, unrelenting part of human life. Men have tried to avoid and resist it with self-inflicted pain to make themselves uncomfortable and presumably humble, or by isolating themselves from other people and from physical comforts. But no person has ever found a place or a circumstance that can make him safe from temptation.

Throughout the history of the church much has been written and spoken about overcoming temptation. A fifth-century Christian wrote,

Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-543) sought an increase of grace and exemption from temptation by wearing a rough hair shirt and living for three years in a desolate cave, where his scant food was lowered to him on a cord. Once he threw himself into a clump of thorns and briars until his body was covered with bleeding wounds. But he found no escape from temptation. It followed him wherever he went and in whatever he did.

Others have tried to overcome temptation by, in effect, denying it. Jovinian, a heretical fifth-century monk, taught that after a person was baptized he was forever free of the devil’s power and from temptation. Jerome, his most outstanding opponent, wisely commented that baptism does not drown the devil.

In Matthew 4:1-11 one of the most monumental and mysterious spiritual battles of all time is recounted—the personal confrontation between Jesus Christ and Satan. The devil’s temptations directed at Jesus in the wilderness of Judea were observed by no other human being. He was entirely alone, and it is therefore obvious that we could know nothing of what transpired there unless Jesus Himself had told His disciples of it. Here He reveals the victory secret, as it were, of His momentous struggle with Satan.

The encounter occurred immediately after Jesus’ baptism, which, in the terms of His kingship, represented His coronation, His commissioning. Now, after His proclamation as King comes the test of His kingliness. His baptism in the Jordan declared His royalty; His testing in the wilderness demonstrated it. Here Jesus proved He was worthy to receive and to reign over the kingdom His Father would give Him. The One of whom the Father had just said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (3:17), here shows why He was well-pleasing to His Father. He shows that, even in the extreme of temptation, He consistently lived in perfect harmony with the divine plan. Here He first demonstrated His power over hell. His absolute sovereignty forbade Him to bow to the “god of this world,” so He faced the full force of Satan’s wicked deception, yet remained untouched and uncontaminated. Evil at its lowest was overcome by Him, and goodness at its highest commended Him. The combination of both accredited Him as King.

In this struggle of the Son of God with the son of perdition we are given clear and applicable insights into Satan’s strategy against God and His people and also into Christ’s way of victory over the tempter. Side by side we are shown the way of danger and the way of escape, the way that leads to defeat and death and the way that leads to victory and life—in short, the way of Satan and the way of God.

It seems that Matthew had two primary purposes in presenting Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. First, as mentioned above, Jesus’ victory demonstrated His divine kingship, His royal power to resist the only other great ruler and dominion in the universe, Satan himself. Christ here won His first direct battle with His great enemy, and thereby gave evidence of His glorious right and power as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the supreme Ruler of all creation, the only God. By so doing, He sealed His final victory yet to come. Satan’s purpose in the temptations was, of course, just the opposite: to conquer the newly commissioned King, to overthrow the Messiah, and to claim all His royal rights and prerogatives for himself.

Matthew’s other purpose was to demonstrate the pattern found in Jesus’ human victory over sin, a pattern that He longs to share with all who belong to Him. When we face testing and temptation in the same way our Lord did, we too can be victorious over the adversary’s attempts to corrupt us and to usurp the Lord’s rightful place in our lives.

The momentous encounter that Matthew here describes, and from which believers can gain such help and encouragement, may be divided into three parts for study: the preparation, the temptation, and the triumph.

THE PREPARATION

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. (4:1-2)

We learn from Mark that “immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness” (Mark 1:12). The “immediately,” of course, is sequential to the baptism. As soon as Jesus’ baptism was completed, His forty-day wilderness experience began. Mark’s use of ekball (“impelled”) indicates the necessity of Jesus’ temptation. Although the temptations were given by Satan, they were a part of God’s perfect plan for the redemptive work of His Son.

One of the great truths of life, from which even the Son of God was not exempt on earth, is that after every victory comes temptation. God’s Word warns, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). When we have just succeeded in something important, we are invariably tempted to think that we made the accomplishment in our own power and that it is rightfully and permanently ours. When we are most exhilarated with success we are also most vulnerable to pride—and to failure.

In one of my high school football games we were ahead by some fifty points in the fourth quarter, and the coach was letting everyone play. We were on about the five-yard line, and a touchdown was certain. The coach decided to let a fourth-string runningback carry the ball, so that he could have at least one touchdown to his credit before he graduated the next spring. He easily ran through the hole the line opened up for him, and he scored. As the crowd cheered he turned to wave, but kept running. He hit the goal post and was knocked cold. He was so carried away with his triumph that he completely lost his perspective and his sense of reality. Consequently his victory was short-lived.

At other times success causes us to feel invincible and to let down our guard, and when testings come we are not prepared for them. In the contest between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, the Lord gave dramatic and miraculous evidence that He was the true God and that Elijah was His true prophet. First He sent fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices and wood that Elijah had soaked with water. Then, in answer to the prophet’s prayer, He sent rain to drought-stricken Judah (1 Kings 18:16-46). But within less than a day Elijah was in despair and asked the Lord to take his life. After being courageous and immovable before the 450 false prophets, he shriveled before the threats of Jezebel (19:1-4). From the height of exhilarating victory he quickly fell into deep despair.

No sooner had Israel been delivered from Egypt than Pharaoh came pursuing her with his army. No sooner had Hezekiah left the solemn Passover than Sennacherib came against him. No sooner had Paul received an abundance of revelations than he was assaulted with vile temptations.

And no sooner had Jesus experienced the first great testimony to His ministry than He faced the first great test of His ministry. After being anointed by the Holy Spirit and attested by the Father, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). Jesus now was in full consciousness of His divine mission, and His sacred humanity was filled through and through with the abiding presence and power of God. As never before, He was deeply satisfied as He contemplated the redemptive work He was sent to accomplish. After thirty years of waiting in obscurity He now was fully commissioned to begin His task. Then the devil tried to turn Him away.

One of Satan’s most common scriptural names is the devil, from diabolos, which means accuser or slanderer. Among the many other names given him are: the ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2), the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4), the serpent of old and the deceiver of the whole world (Rev. 12:9), Abaddon and Apollyon, both of which mean “destroyer” (Rev. 9:11), and the tempter, as seen in the next verse of our text (Matt. 4:3; cf. 1 Thess. 3:5).

Many people, including some professing Christians, do not believe in a personal devil. But Satan has never made himself more personally manifest than he did to Jesus in the wilderness. The Lord’s own account shows unmistakably that the opponent He faced was personal in every sense. Satan was so real even to Martin Luther that it is reported that on one occasion Luther threw an inkwell at his adversary.

Having been cast out of heaven by the Lord, Satan’s full fury has ever since been turned against God and His work. During Jesus’ incarnation that wrath was specially focused in all its intensity against the Son and against His divine mission of salvation. The devil’s single purpose is to frustrate the plan of God and to usurp the place of God. He therefore continually attacks Christ and all who belong to Him. He also pursues every effort to keep others from coming to Christ.

The wilderness of Judea is a hot, barren, and desolate area that extends west from the Dead Sea almost to Jerusalem, and is some thirty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide. George Adam Smith described it as an area of yellow sand and crumbling limestone. It is an area of contorted strata, where the ridges run in all directions as if they were warped and twisted. The hills are like dust heaps, the limestone is blistered and peeling, the rocks are bare and jagged, and often the ground sounds hollow (cited in William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], 1:63). Nowhere in Palestine could Jesus have been more isolated or in less comfort.

Satan met Adam in the paradise of Eden, where everything good was provided and nothing harmful existed. Adam lost his battle with Satan while in the perfect situation. The Second Adam met Satan in the desolate, forbidding wilderness, where “He was with the wild beasts” (Mark 1:13) and was without food for forty days (Luke 4:2). Yet what the first Adam lost in an ideal environment the Second Adam won back in a terribly imperfect environment. What better proof can there be that spiritual and moral failure are not caused by circumstances but by the character and response of the one who is tempted?

The temptations did not catch God by surprise. Jesus specifically went there to be tempted by the devil. The Greek peiraz is a morally neutral word that simply means “to test.” Whether the testing is for a good or evil purpose depends on the intent of the one giving the test. When the scriptural context clearly indicates the testing is an enticement to evil, the word is most frequently translated by a form of the English tempt, which carries that negative connotation. The fact that the devil was here doing the testing clearly indicates that Jesus was being tempted, enticed to do evil.

Yet God often uses Satan’s tempting to evil as His own means of testing for good. What Satan intended to lead the Son into sin and disobedience, the Father used to demonstrate the Son’s holiness and worthiness. That is God’s plan for all of His children. Christians cannot be tempted in a way that God cannot use for their good and His glory. James even tells us to “consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials [peirasmos], knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). That is God’s plan and purpose—to use Satan’s temptations as a means of testing and strengthening our faith in Him and of our growing stronger in righteousness. God allows testings in our lives in order that our spiritual “muscles” may be exercised and strengthened. Whether the testing is by God’s initiative or is sent by Satan, God will always use it to produce good in us when we meet the test in His power.

God never tests in the sense of enticing to evil. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust” (James 1:13). All five of the forms of “to tempt” in those verses are from peiraz, and all five indicate the negative side of testing, the inducement to evil. God never has a part in that sort of testing, but He can and will turn even the worst sort of testing into the right sort, when it is surrendered to His will and power. It is God’s great desire to turn into victory what Satan intends for failure, to strengthen us at the very point where the adversary wants to find us weak.

Joseph’s being sold into slavery by his brothers, along with the false accusations and imprisonment he endured as a slave in Egypt, could easily have driven him to despair and bitterness. Most people, faced with such mistreatment and misfortune, would ask, “Why me, Lord? What have I done to deserve this?” They would seethe over their circumstances and possibly dream of revenge. That, no doubt, was the devil’s desire for Joseph, but it was not God’s. As Joseph told his brothers many years later, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen. 50:20). What Satan and the brothers had intended for evil, God, through Joseph’s obedience, turned to good.

Before the three strong temptation efforts were directed to Jesus, He had fasted forty days and forty nights. We are not told what He did during that period, but He no doubt spent most of the time communing with His heavenly Father. Between His baptism and the temptations perhaps He needed the special preparation of being entirely alone and undisturbed with His Father. Even in His perfect humanity, Jesus needed time for thought and for prayer, as we all do. Moses spent forty years in Midian being prepared to lead Israel from Egypt to Canaan. Between his conversion and the beginning of his ministry, Paul spent three years of preparation in Nabataen Arabia (Gal. 1:17-18).

It seems a great understatement to say that, after Jesus’ long period of fasting, He became hungry. Yet Matthew’s simple and direct words give strong evidence that the story was not manufactured by the disciples or the early church. The writings of virtually every false religion and cult are characterized by exaggeration and overdramatization of events relating to the lives of its founders and key leaders. By contrast, even the most astounding events in Scripture are reported with restraint and simplicity.

Hunger not only makes us physically weak but also tends to weaken our moral and spiritual resistance as well. When we are tired, hungry, or sick we are usually less concerned about other needs and dangers and tend to be vulnerable to anything that might provide relief from our present distress. Satan therefore usually attacks most fiercely in such times of weakness and unpreparedness. Temptations that have been anticipated, guarded against, and prayed about have little power to harm us. Jesus tells us to “keep watching and praying, that you may not come into temptation” (Mark 14:38). Victory over temptation comes from being constantly prepared for it, which, in turn, comes from constantly relying on the Lord.

It is said that a person traveling in tiger country will not be attacked if he sees the tiger before the tiger sees him. Tigers attack from behind in order to surprise their victims, and therefore one of the best defenses against that vicious animal is to face it.

Jesus, though having fasted for over a month, was no less alert to spiritual danger. Because He had spent the time in communion with His Father, even in His weakest physical moments He did not allow Satan to gain any foothold. The accounts in Mark (1:13) and Luke (4:2) seem to indicate that Jesus was in some way tempted throughout His stay in the wilderness. Possibly it was the devil’s strategy to gradually wear the Lord down little by little before confronting Him with the three great temptations that are specifically recorded. But Jesus would not yield to His adversary on even the slightest point.

THE TEMPTATION

And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand 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 give His angels charge concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 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 things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (4:3-10)

Satan is here spoken of as the tempter, one of his descriptive names and titles in Scripture. We are not told what form the devil may have taken on this occasion, but his confrontation with Jesus was direct and personal. They spoke to each other and even moved about together, first to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem and then to a high mountain.

Satan’s first great frontal attack on Jesus Christ as He began His earthly ministry was in the form of three temptations, each designed to weaken and destroy the Messiah in an important area of His mission. The temptations became progressively worse. The first was for Jesus to distrust the providential care of His Father and to use His own divine powers to serve Himself. The second was to presume on the Father’s care by putting Him to the test. The third was for Him to renounce the way of His Father and to substitute the way of Satan.

SERVING SELF

And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” (4:3-4)

The devil’s first approach to Jesus had also been his first approach to Eve—to cast doubt on God’s Word. He asked Eve, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1), causing her to question God’s command. His first word to Jesus was, If you are the Son of God—the Greek conditional phrase assumes that Jesus is indeed the divine Son whom the Father had just proclaimed Him to be at His baptism (3:17). Before he gave the direct temptation, Satan gave this one simply to set up the rest. Satan was hoping to persuade Jesus to demonstrate His power to verify that it was real. That would mean violating God’s plan that He set that power aside in humiliation and use it only when the Father willed. Satan wanted Jesus to disobey God. Affirming His deity and rights as the Son of God would have been to act independently of God.

The first direct temptation in the wilderness was for Jesus to act against God’s plan and to command that these stones become bread. This temptation involved a great deal more than Jesus’ satisfying His hunger. After forty days and nights of fasting, He certainly was hungry and thirsty, and He had the right to have something to eat and drink. The most obvious part of the temptation was for Jesus to fulfill His legitimate physical needs by miraculous means. But the deeper temptation was Satan’s appeal to Jesus’ supposed rights as the Son of God. “Why,” Satan seemed to say, “should you starve in the wilderness if you are really God’s Son? How could the Father allow His Son to go hungry, when He even provided manna for the rebellious children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai? And had not Isaiah written of the righteous that ‘His bread will be given him; his water will be sure’” (Isa. 33:16)? You are a man, and you need food to survive. If God had let His people die in the wilderness, how could His plan of redemption have been fulfilled? If He lets you die in this wilderness, how can you fulfill your divine mission on His behalf?

The purpose of the temptation was not simply for Jesus to satisfy His physical hunger, but to suggest that His being hungry was incompatible with His being the Son of God. He was being tempted to doubt the Father’s Word, the Father’s love, and the Father’s provision. He had every right, Satan suggested, to use His own divine powers to supply what the Father had not. The Son of God certainly was too important and dignified to have to endure such hardship and discomfort. He had been born in a stable, had to flee to Egypt for His life, spent thirty years in an obscure family in a obscure village in Galilee, and forty days and nights unattended, unrecognized, and unpitied in the wilderness. Surely that was more than enough ignominy to allow Him to identify with mankind. But now that the Father Himself had publicly declared Him to be His Son, it was time for Jesus to use some of His divine authority for His own personal benefit.

This first temptation in the wilderness implied essentially the same mocking taunt that the crowds made at the crucifixion: “If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matt. 27:40; cf. w. 42-43). It also included the wicked attempt to cause the Second Adam to fail where the first Adam had failed—in relation to food. Satan wanted Christ to fail because of bread just as Adam had failed because of fruit. Above all, however, he wanted to solicit the Son’s rebellion against the Father.

But Jesus had come in His incarnation to do the Father’s will and only the Father’s will; indeed His will and the Father’s were exactly the same (John 5:30; cf. 10:30; Heb. 10:9). He testified, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work” (John 4:34), and on another occasion, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38). In the Garden of Gethsemane, just before His betrayal and arrest, He said, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” and a short while later, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42).

It was that absolute trust and submission that Satan sought to shatter. To have succeeded would have put an irreparable rift in the Trinity. They would no longer have been Three in One, no longer have been of one mind and purpose. In his incalculable pride and wickedness, Satan tried to fracture the very nature of God Himself.

But Jesus, in His incalculable humility and righteousness, answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” All three of Jesus’ responses to the devil were begun with an appeal to God’s Word: It is written. Even more than David, He could say, “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee” (Ps. 119:11). In quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 to Satan, Jesus declared that we are better off to obey and depend on God, waiting on His provision, than to grab satisfaction for ourselves when and as we think we need it. Moses had originally said those words to Israel as he recounted to her the great love and blessing God had bestowed on her during her own wilderness experience (Deut. 8:1-18).

God’s people are never justified in complaining and worrying about their needs. If we live by faith in Him and in obedience to His Word, we will never lack anything we really need. “And my God shall supply all your needs,” Paul assures us, “according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). Jesus tells us that God knows what we need even before we ask Him (Matt. 6:8). Later in the same discourse He says, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you” (6:33). We are always better off to obey God and to trust in His gracious sustenance than to impatiently and selfishly provide for ourselves in ways that disobey, or in any way compromise, His Word. Underlying our readiness to justify much of what we do is the common but self-centered and carnal notion that, as God’s children, we deserve the earthly best and that it is inappropriate and even unspiritual to be satisfied with anything less. Grabbing or demanding what we think we deserve may be an act of rebellion against sovereign God.

To try to circumvent or modify God’s revealed will not only is unfaithful and fleshly but is based on the false assumption that our physical well-being is our most crucial need, without which we cannot exist. Jesus contradicts that assumption, which is so natural to fallen man. Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. “It is not food,” Jesus says, “that is the most necessary part of life. The creative, energizing, and sustaining power of God is the only real source of man’s existence.”

James reminds us that we do not know what we will be able to do in the future, or even if we will have a future in this life. Every person is “just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away,” he says. When planning what we want to do, we “ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that’” (James 4:14-15). Like Jesus, the purposes and intentions of our lives should only be the purposes and intentions of our heavenly Father. The guiding principle of His life should be the guiding principle of ours. The central motive of our lives should be to please God and to trust Him to supply everything we need—to follow without reservation Jesus’ command to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” and to believe without reservation that He will provide everything we need (Matt. 6:33). Before He gave that command, Jesus had asked, “Why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith?” (6:28-30).

We can never please God, or even serve our own best interests, by complaining about and demanding what we do not have, or by violating or ignoring His will in order to get something we want. If we persist in disobeying God He may severely discipline us, or even take us off the scene, as John warns in his first letter (1 John 5:16). Ananias and Sapphira lost their lives because they lied to the Holy Spirit by telling the apostles they had received less than they actually did from the sale of some property (Acts 5:1-11). Certain members of the Corinthian church became weak and sick, and several even died, because they profaned the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:27-30).

Even when our disobedience does not reach such extremes, we always suffer when we willfully bypass God’s Word. Following our Lord’s example in the wilderness, no matter how urgent and important a need seems to be, we are to wait for our heavenly Father’s provision, knowing that expedience and self-effort cannot bring good for ourselves, and certainly not glory to God.

TESTING GOD

Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand 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 give His angels charge concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (4:5-7)

Having failed to induce Jesus to use His divine powers to serve His own self-interests and thereby rebel against the will of His Father, Satan proceeded to tempt the Son to put His heavenly Father’s love and power to a test.

By some means the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. The location and form of the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem has not been identified with certainty. It must have been part of the reconstruction ordered by Herod the Great and most likely was on the eastern side of the Temple, overlooking the Kidron Valley. The pinnacle may have been the roof that extended out over Herod’s portico. Josephus reports that the drop to the valley floor was some 450 feet. According to early tradition, James, the head of the Jerusalem church, was martyred by being thrown from that portico.

Still hoping to undermine Jesus’ relation to God in His divine sonship, the devil again introduced his temptation with the words if You are the Son of God. “Prove to yourself and to the world that you are the Son of God,” Satan taunted, and throw Yourself down.

In the first temptation a need (lack of food) already existed; in the second a need was to be created. To make the temptation more persuasive, the devil quoted Scripture, as Jesus had just done. Quoting Psalm 91:11-12, he said, for it is written, “He will give His angels charge concerning You”; and “On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.”

With that subtle and clever twist, the tempter thought He had backed Jesus into a corner. If Jesus lived only by the Word of God, then He would be confronted by something from the Word of God. “You claim to be God’s Son and You claim to trust His Word,” Satan was saying. “If so, why don’t you demonstrate your sonship and prove the truth of God’s Word by putting Him to a test—a scriptural test? If you won’t use your own divine power to help yourself, let your Father use His divine power to help you. If you won’t act independently of the Father, let the Father act. Give your Father a chance to fulfill the Scripture I just quoted to you.”

For Jesus to have followed Satan’s suggestion would have been, in the eyes of many Jews, sure proof of His messiahship. According to William Barclay, that is exactly the sort of proof many purported messiahs of that day were trying to give. A man named Theudas led a group of people from the Temple to the Jordan River, promising to split the waters. After he failed, no one listened to him anymore. An Egyptian pretender claimed he would lay flat the walls of Jerusalem, which, of course, he was not able to do. Tradition holds that Simon the magician (see Acts 8:9) tried the very feat with which Satan tempted Jesus: jumping off the top of the Temple—for which he lost his life as well as his following (The Gospel of Matthew [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], 1:69).

Sensationalism has always appealed to the flesh, and many people are willing to believe almost anyone or anything as long as the claims are accompanied by fantastic happenings. Jesus warned that “false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). But such dramatic signs, even when they are from God, do not produce faith; they only strengthen the faith of those who already believe. The many miracles by which God provided for Israel in the wilderness drove many of the people to presumption and greater disbelief. Jesus’ miracles only hardened the opposition of His enemies. He declared that “an evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign” (Matt. 12:39; cf. 16:4). When Jesus was dedicated in the Temple as an infant, Simeon “said to Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed’” (Luke 2:34). Jesus Himself was the greatest sign ever given by God to mankind, yet, as Isaiah had predicted hundreds of years earlier, He “was despised and forsaken of men” (Isa. 53:3; Luke 18:31-33).

Those who acclaimed Jesus only because of His miracles and impressive words later turned against Him. When the crowd from Galilee, astounded by Jesus’ multiplying the bread and fish, tried to make Him king, He would have nothing of it (John 6:14-15). Those who scattered their garments before Jesus and waved palm branches in His honor as He came into Jerusalem did so because He had raised Lazarus from the dead (John 12:13, 17-18). A short while later Jesus hid Himself from the Jerusalem crowd, about whom John says, “But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him” (John 12:37). Demanding sensational proof is not evidence of faith but of doubt. To long for the visible sign, the big miracle, the dramatic proof is nothing but masked unbelief. It is the farthest thing from faith.

Jesus would have no part of cheap, faithless sensationalism. He therefore replied to Satan, It is written, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” For those who believe in God, it is more than evident that He already has proved Himself. Jesus did not need to prove to Himself that His Father cared and protected, and He knew that the Father’s care and protection could not be proved to others by any means but faith.

For at least two reasons Jesus refused to take part in a spectacle such as throwing Himself off the Temple roof. First, any sensationalism inevitably is frustrated by the law of diminishing returns. People are never satisfied. They always want one more sign, one more miracle, one more show. To have maintained His influence over the people by the use of miracles, Jesus would have had to produce greater and greater sensations. Because the natural, carnal heart can never be satisfied, this year’s miracle would have become next year’s bore. His followers would only have been lovers of sensation, not lovers of God.

Second, and more significant, no matter how noble and important we may think our reasons are, to test God is to doubt God. And to doubt God is not to trust Him, and not to trust Him is sin. That, of course, is what Satan wanted Jesus to do. To induce Jesus to sin, if that were possible, would shatter His perfect holiness, and therefore shatter His divinity and man’s hope of salvation. Had Jesus put His Father to such a test, He would have separated Himself from His Father and perverted the divine plan of redemption—the very purpose for which He had come to earth.

Not only that, but to have tested the Father by putting Him under pressure to provide by extraordinary means, especially a means of Jesus’ own choosing, would have been for the Son to put His judgment and will above the Father’s—which He would never do (Matt. 26:39,42; John 5:30; 6:30; etc.). It would also have questioned the Father’s gracious providence and love. How much more should we, mere creatures who are so imperfect, never place our will or judgment above God’s. To live recklessly and carelessly, and then expect God to bail us out when we get into trouble, is to presume upon his grace.

Those who willingly put themselves in the way of danger and temptation often end up blaming God when harm comes from their foolishness. When the Lord confronted Adam about his eating the forbidden fruit, Adam’s response was to blame God even more than he blamed his wife. “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). It was true that Eve gave Adam the fruit, but because God gave Eve to Adam, the primary blame was God’s—according to Adam’s perverted logic. Our need is not to prove God’s faithfulness but to demonstrate our own, by trusting Him both to determine and to supply our needs according to His own will.

God expects us to take risks, any risks necessary, in order to obey His will. When we risk our prestige, our money, our lives, our families, or anything else to fulfill the Lord’s calling, we can rest confidently in His divine provision for all that we need—if we accept the truth that only He knows what our needs really are. But when we take risks simply to fulfill our own ambitions or to put God to the test, He gives no promise on which we can rest.

WORSHIPING SATAN

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 things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (4:8-10)

Satan now drops his pretense and makes one final, desperate effort to corrupt Jesus. He finally reveals his supreme purpose: to induce Jesus Christ to worship him. He had first suggested what Jesus ought to do for Himself. Next he suggested what the Father ought to do for Jesus. Now he suggests what Satan could do for Jesus—in exchange for what Jesus could do for him.

We are not told what very high mountain it was to which the devil took him. The significance, however, lies in the fact that this location gave a vast view of the earth. But the view extended far beyond what physical vision could perceive from any vantage point, no matter how high. By some supernatural accommodation the devil showed Jesus the glories of Egypt—its pyramids, temples, libraries, and vast treasures. He showed the power and splendor of Rome, with its mighty empire spread over the known world. He showed great Athens, magnificent Corinth, and of course wondrous Jerusalem, the royal city of David, and more—all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.

As God’s own proclaimed King of kings, Jesus had a divine right to all kingdoms, and it was to that right that Satan appealed in this last temptation. “Why should you have to wait for what is already rightfully yours?” he suggested to Jesus. “You deserve to have it now. Why do you submit as a Servant when you could reign as a King? I am only offering you what the Father has already promised.” Perhaps he reminded Jesus that God had said to the Son, “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession” (Ps. 2:8).

But Satan was offering the world to Jesus on his own corrupt terms, not God’s. That which the Father promised to the Son because of His righteous obedience, Satan offered to the Son in exchange for His unrighteous disobedience. God’s plan in testing the Son was to prove the Son’s worthiness to inherit and rule the world. Satan’s plan was to draw the Son away from that worthiness by enticing Him to grab the kingdom the Father promised to give Him. Instead of enduring the long, bitter, humiliating, and painful road to the cross—and the even longer wait in heaven for God’s time to be completed—Jesus could rule the world now!

Satan always comes at us in that way. He suggests that the world of business, the world of politics, the world of fame, or the world of whatever our heart desires can be ours—if only…! We can get what we want; we can fulfill our lusts and our fantasies; we can be somebody. All we must do to get those things of the world is to go after them in the way of the world—which is Satan’s way.

That, in essence, is what the tempter always promises. He promised Eve that by eating the forbidden fruit she would not die as God had warned, but that, in fact, she would become a god herself. “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Gen. 3:4-5). He tempts each of us in the same way. “Why set your standards so high? What’s the use? You can get what you want by cutting a corner here and shading the truth there. Why wait for heavenly reward, when you can have what you want now?” When we set our hearts on money, prestige, popularity, power, or selfish happiness, we are doing exactly what Satan wanted Jesus to do—put self first and God last. Self-will is Satan’s will and is therefore by definition the opposite of God’s will, which is for us to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33). Abraham sought what God promised in his own self-styled act with Hagar, and tragedy resulted. It always does.

Satan is a counterfeiter. He offers what seems to be the same as what God offers, and his price is much cheaper.” God wants you to prosper, doesn’t He?” Satan asks. “Well, I’ll give you prosperity a lot sooner and for a lot less. Just turn your head a little at questionable practices. Give in when it’s advantageous; don’t be a prude; follow the crowd. That’s the way to success.” The basic argument is always a form of the idea that the end justifies the means.

But Satan is also the father of lies. What he really demanded in the wilderness was Jesus’ own soul: All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me. Satan had rebelled against God in the first place because he could not tolerate being second to the Trinity. Here, he thought, was his great opportunity: he would bribe the Son to worship at his feet. Satan’s price is always immeasurably more than he leads us to believe.

And what he gives is always immeasurably less than he promises. For Jesus to have given in to this third temptation would have brought the same ultimate result as His having succumbed to either of the other two. He would have disqualified Himself not only as King but as Savior. The statement of those who mocked at the foot of the cross would have had to have been reversed: “He saved Himself; others He cannot save” (see Matt. 27:42). Instead of redeeming the world He would have joined the world. Instead of inheriting the world, He would have lost the world. The Christ would have played the antichrist, and the Lamb would have become the beast.

As before, Jesus’ reply was from Scripture, and is again from Deuteronomy. Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only,’” The tempter’s last proposal was so preposterous that Jesus dismissed him with Begone, Satan! The devil had stepped beyond all bounds in proposing such unutterable wickedness. Because Satan’s present power is only by God’s permission, when the Son commanded him to leave, Satan had no choice but to obey. Therein Christ demonstrated the very sovereign power Satan wanted Him to misuse!

If the Son of God would not compromise even the least important truth in the universe, He would surely not compromise the greatest: that God, and God alone, is to be worshiped and served. Jesus had heard enough from the enemy. Though Satan would be back as soon as he had “an opportune time” (Luke 4:13), for now he was forced to leave.

Jesus will inherit the kingdom in God’s time, and we will inherit the kingdom with Him (Matt. 5:5; 25:34; Rom. 8:17; James 2:5). In the eternal, heavenly state all the universe will be ours! Who would want to sacrifice that for the deceptive, disappointing, and short-lived imitations Satan offers?

There are many good things that God will give us even in this life. No one desires our happiness more than our heavenly Father. “If you then, being evil,” Jesus says, “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” (Matt. 7:11). We can have the happiness God gives; why should we settle for the cheap substitute Satan proffers? We can have the success of living righteously and pleasing our heavenly Father; why should we settle for the brief and disappointing successes sin produces? By God’s grace we can have the peace that passes understanding; why should we settle for the cheap satisfactions that everyone understands but that will soon pass?

THE TRIUMPH

Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him. (4:11)

When Jesus said, “Begone,” the devil left Him, because he had no choice. The Lord gives all of His children the power to resist Satan. “Resist the devil,” James assures us, “and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). As he did with Jesus, Satan will not long stay away from us; but with every temptation God “will provide a way of escape” (1 Cor. 10:13). For every temptation Satan leads us into, a way out is provided by the Father.

Satan’s temptations failed, but God’s testings succeeded. Jesus’ responses to the tempter were, in essence, “I will trust the Father; I will not presume on His Word; and I will not circumvent His will. I will take the Father’s good gifts from the Father’s own hand, in the Father’s own way, and in the Father’s own time.” Thus the King was accredited by the severest test.

After Satan left, angels came. How much better is the ministry of angels than the deceptions of Satan. At Jesus’ baptism the Father acknowledged Jesus’ worthiness by proclaiming, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Now the Father acknowledges Jesus’ worthiness by sending angels to minister to Him. At any time during His wilderness experience Jesus could have asked for and received the aid of “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53). But He waited for His Father to send them in His Father’s time.

We are not told what the ministry of the angels included, but surely they brought Jesus food to satisfy His hunger. We know they could not have been in the presence of the Son of God without offering Him worship. And certainly they could not have come from heaven without bringing strengthening words of assurance and love from His Father.

Satan tempts us in the same basic ways he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. First, he will try to get us to distrust God’s providential care and to try to solve our problems, win our struggles, and meet our needs by our own plans and in our own power. Second, he will try to get us to presume on God’s care and forgiveness by willingly putting ourselves in the way of danger—whether physical, economic, moral, spiritual, or any other. Third, he will appeal to selfish ambitions and try to get us to use our own schemes to fulfill the promises God has made to us—which amounts to trying to fulfill God’s plan in Satan’s way.

Those three ways are reflected in 1 John 2:16—”For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” The temptation for Jesus to turn stones into bread was to fulfill “the lust of the flesh” by using His divine powers for selfish means. The temptation to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple was to fulfill “the lust of the eyes” by showing off to the world and seeking fame through sensationalism. The temptation to grab immediate control of the kingdoms of the world was to satisfy the “boastful pride of life” by yielding to Satan’s power and will.

The story is told of a man who was trying to teach his dog obedience. He would take a large piece of meat and put it in the middle of the floor. Each time the dog attempted to take the meat the man would swat the dog and say, “No.” Soon the dog began to associate the swatting with the word no and learned to stop simply when the word was said. When meat was placed on the floor the dog would not look at it but rather at his master, waiting for his word of approval or denial.

That is essentially the message God teaches in this passage: “When temptation comes, don’t look at the temptation but at Jesus Christ. Keep your eyes on His example and do what he did. Look at the ways He was tempted and at the way He resisted, and learn from Him.” The writer of Hebrews, perhaps with Jesus’ wilderness temptations particularly in mind, tells us, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Even more encouraging is the earlier declaration: “For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:18).

Jesus has been there before us; He has met the worst Satan can give and has been victorious. More than that, He is eager to share that victory with His own people when they are tempted. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

We can have victory over temptation only by resisting in the way that Jesus resisted—by holding with complete obedience to God and His Word. Jesus endured temptation to the very limit of Satan’s power, and He resisted to that very limit. He did not in the least degree allow temptation to develop into desire, much less into sin (cf. James 1:13-15). He did not think the matter over or give it any consideration. He simply stood firmly in His Father’s will and said no!

We find help against temptation, just as we find help for everything else in the Christian life, by “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2). A hurdler soon learns that if he looks at the hurdles as he runs, he will trip and fall. From start to finish he looks only at the goal, and when he does that the hurdles are cleared in stride as each one is encountered. Keeping our eyes on our Lord Jesus Christ is our only hope of conquering temptation and faithfully running “with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).