The Gospel of the Kingdom - Matthew - Round One

Text: Matthew 4:1-4 – “ Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted^[a] by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

As we study the three temptations, we can view them as three rounds in this battle. We will look at the First Round today. So, we start with the Temptation.

Jesus is facing the devil – in the Greek diabolos –  which means the false accuser, the slanderer. Matthew isn’t too specific when He is tested. However, Mark fills in some of the details. Mark (1:13) says He was tested the entire 40 days.

 The account in Matthew covers the three main areas that we face in our temptations – physical, mental, and spiritual. These will correlate to the Temptation in the Garden to Adam and Eve. John tells us about this in 1 John 2:16 – “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.” These three things are the three temptations of Christ. Adam and Eve faced them in the garden and failed. We are going to see that He faced them and won.

This first temptation comes when Jesus is at His weakest point physically. Notice the “if” – begins by questioning. This was Satan’s tactic in the Garden, and He still uses it with us. He seeks to get us to doubt God and His Word. He tries to get us to doubt our salvation. He tries to get us to doubt God’s ability to help us defeat him.

Satan is basically saying for Jesus to show that He was who He said He was by performing this miracle. Change the stones into bread. Jesus was hungry, would it have been wrong for the Son of God to change rocks into bread? Only if it was not the Will of the Father. Jesus was to totally trust the Father. In other words, Satan was questioning the trust that Jesus had in God’s plan.

Was the needs of His flesh more important than what God had set forth for Him. Are our fleshly desires more important than God’s Will for us?

So, we see the triumph in verse 4.

He gives the answer by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 – “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

He is setting forth the pattern for us –

• ·      He knew the Scriptures
• ·      He used the Scriptures to resist the temptation. 

The world around us seeks to get us to focus on the immediate physical needs and issues. God teaches us to focus on Him, and all this will fall into the proper place.

So, He triumphs over the “lust of the flesh” – “the tree was good for food.”

He triumphs over physical temptations.

But, as we know, Satan doesn’t give up – he moves into the next round tomorrow in our study.