Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “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 by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” Matthew 4:1–4
What is the hungriest you have ever been? What is the strongest you have ever been tempted? Can you think of a moment when you were more vulnerable than ever in your life? Now imagine experiencing all of these hardships at the same time for weeks on end! This is what Jesus endured in the wilderness as He made preparations for a public life that would be marked with poverty, conflict, disappointment, abandonment, betrayal, and a host of other stresses that would require tremendous strength to overcome.
The temptation of Jesus was not a ceremony in which the immovable God pushed Satan around like an NFL team squaring off against a Pop Warner squad. Whereas God cannot be tempted with evil (James 1:13), Jesus––having now become flesh––was tempted (Hebrews 4:15), and given His unique endowments which were necessary to accomplish heaven’s prerogative, I would venture to say that no other man has ever been tempted even half as strongly as Jesus was. We should also realize that this was not a brief encounter with Satan to be compared to the visits of the ghostly apparitions in Dickens’ Christmas novel; the Greek participle employed by both Mark (1:13) and Luke (4:2) indicates that Satan was relentless, perhaps stretching out his attack over the full forty days. So it was that in the same country where God prepared David for the throne through the hardships he suffered, the Son of David prepared to lead people into the kingdom of heaven.
In his assault against the Son of God, Satan employed every weapon in his arsenal: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:16). Satan had used each of these when he made his first appeal to man in Eden (Genesis 3:6). He showed Eve that “the tree was good for food,” that is, that it would certainly satisfy the physical appetite. He showed her that “it was pleasant to the eyes”––he appealed to greed by offering her something that God had plainly forbidden. He showed her that it was “desirable to make one wise”––she could be so much more if only she would partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. After all, don’t we say that knowledge is power?
Satan’s method had been fatally effective with every other human being...until now! When Satan appeals to Jesus’ flesh and draws attention to His gnawing hunger, Jesus refuses to take the easy way. When he offers Jesus the easy road to dominion over the world, again Jesus chooses to take the toilsome road of suffering. When he offers to give Jesus fame and to show His importance to the masses, He again refuses. But why? What would be wrong with at least taking the edge off a hunger forty days in the making if He was going to fill the stomachs of thousands who had only been fasting for a few hours? What would be wrong with showing His glory to the masses when He is worthy of all glory and honor? Because we needed Jesus to suffer every hardship, and because the gospel was not designed to compel discipleship through outward demonstrations of God’s greatness, but rather through the gentle invitation of God’s love.
It seems to be human nature to take the easiest road to achieving our goals. We want to get rich quick, to win friends and influence people. Jesus had it in His power to do this, but He exercised restraint. The source of His power is still available to all who will accept it: “It is written!” Is His word in your heart (Psalms 119:11)?