Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus Faces Up To His Future In The Wilderness (4:1-11).

The most momentous moment of His conscious life to date having taken place, Jesus will now have to face up to what it involves. For having been:

· Anointed with the Holy Spirit as set aside for the sacred purpose of bringing in God's salvation and judgment (Matthew 3:11).

· Named as God's own Son, and as God's beloved (Matthew 3:16).

· Declared to be pleasing to God and as walking within His good pleasure (Matthew 3:16), with the responsibility of saving people from their sins, as His name reveals (Matthew 1:21).

And having received the Holy Spirit in a way never known by man before (visibly and ‘bodily', with all that that signified), Jesus now has to face up to what His future holds. With God having broken into the world in a new way in Him He must now face up to what will follow.

In order to do this He goes aside into the wilderness, as John had done, and fasts for forty days and forty nights. The wilderness was the place where a man could get alone with God, as Moses and Elijah had done before them. Both therefore saw it as a place where they could commune alone with God. The purpose of fasting was to keep the mind from distractions, and throughout this time spent in prayer and fasting many thoughts would pass through His mind, for He had to consider how best to fulfil His calling and how He should go about it. Very conscious of the unusual powers that He possessed He had to think out what His approach was going to be. He had to ask Himself, ‘What would be the best way to win men to God and to establish the Kingly Rule of Heaven over men's lives?'

That He was tested throughout the whole of this period we need have no doubt, and Mark confirms it (Mark 1:13), for such testing in thought will always face the one who does his thinking with the possibility of bad as well as good alternatives in front of him. But towards the end, weak and hungry, there were two or three ideas which clearly kept forcing themselves into His mind. And the detailing of the three tests described may well be intended to indicate the whole range of testing, for three regularly indicates completeness.

Luke gives a very similar account, so that both are apparently based on a common tradition received from Jesus Himself, but whether they themselves received it in written or oral form we do not know.

However, while both cover the same three tests, each centres on a different test with which to end the series, depending on their viewpoints. Matthew's stress up to this point has been mainly on the kingship of Jesus, and he thus finally centres in on the temptation to rule the world by responding positively to the Devil as the temptation that best fits his emphasis, thus focusing on kingship. In Luke the Temple had witnessed to Jesus from the beginning. Thus Luke centres in on making a spectacular display in the Temple, and by that means winning religious support, for the Temple has been one of Luke's themes, and had welcomed Him as a boy. In fact, of course, both temptations would persist with Him until the end of His period in the wilderness as His mind flashed from one thought to another, and the chronology was finally thus unimportant, except for emphasis. On the one hand the question was, should He seek political authority by political means, and side with the civil authorities? By this means He could, with a little help in the right places, achieve worldwide power and success in a very short time. Or, on the other, should He major on impressing the religious authorities and seeking their support? Aligned with them His influence would rapidly reach throughout the land, and after that throughout the Dispersion (the Jews scattered around the world). Both would thus appear to be possible ways of reaching His goal.

But as He considered the matter further He would recognise that the one would require compromise with the Roman state, and in the end with the Roman gods, while the other would require the giving of spectacular signs (‘the Jews seek after signs') and would require compromise with the ways and teachings of the religious leaders with which He did not fully agree. He would have to bend to their will. He would not be acceptable otherwise. Thus neither could even be considered as a viable option.

Living in Galilee He would probably not be fully aware of the antagonism that there was among these leaders, and to begin with He may well have had an idealistic view of all the religious leaders, especially of the Chief Priests, who were responsible for God's holy Temple, and of the Teachers in Jerusalem who were so honoured countrywide, and whom He had rarely come across at all, apart from on His visits to the Temple for the feasts, when they had given Him answers to His questions as He grew up and learned more and more. On the other hand He would certainly have been aware of the resentments of His own Galilean people about them. But He might well have felt those to be a little over-exaggerated, and possibly too nationalistic. For Judaea did not look with favour on Galilee, nor Galilee on Judaea.

And then there was the question of the common people. How best could He influence them? His Father had anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, giving Him, even as a man, powers that were hardly conceivable. The question was how should He use them in the fulfilment of His task? What was He to do with them? He had lived all His life in a remote Galilean town, although no doubt moving about Galilee and especially visiting the populous towns along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But His experience of life on a wider scale than that may well have been limited to the feasts. He had therefore much to think about. He was not quite just the honest country boy coming to town, and He was certainly learned in the Scriptures, but He was far from being ‘worldly wise'. On the other hand, as His first venture at purifying the Temple revealed (John 2:14), He would catch up very quickly with situations, although at that time it should be noted that it was the market atmosphere which interfered with prayer that upset Him. It was only later that He became aware of the blatant dishonesty that resulted in the second ‘cleansing' of the Temple that would take place at the end of His ministry (Matthew 21:12).

And gradually as He thought matters over in the wilderness, things began to fall into place. As He wrestled with His own thoughts, and with the thoughts that were constantly being fed into His mind by the Tempter, He finally formulated His plan. He would first support John the Baptiser, and once John ceased his ministry He would go about proclaiming that the Kingly Rule of God was now here and that men must respond to it. He would show them the ways of God in truth, establish God's Law in their hearts, and build up a community which would be the basis of a new Israel. And because He was aware of the needs of the people around Him, and because He knew that the Scriptures had promised a time of healing when the Coming One arrived, He would heal those who came to Him, while ensuring that His preaching of the word aalways took precedence. Hopefully they would all then respond to His teaching (consider His grief when Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum did not - Luke 10:13). And then if the political and religious leaders also responded to His teaching, He could build on from there. But He realised that central to His ministry must not be compromise, but must be the proclamation of the whole truth of the word of God (Mark 7:13) and of the Kingly Rule of Heaven (Matthew 4:17). It was that on which all had to be built. To rely on any other method would be to fail in His mission.

We may, however, see another aspect to His testing which was probably in Matthew's mind. In chapter 2 Jesus had come out of exile in Egypt on behalf of His people, because in their hearts they themselves had failed to ‘leave Egypt', and it was now to be His responsibility to break those ties with ‘the spirit of Egypt'. Thus in the account that follows He may be seen as enduring again Israel's time of testing in the wilderness, when they too had been tested about their futures, as He was being tested now, and had had to choose the way in which they should go, and had failed. And it is significant in this regard that all the verses cited by Jesus come from the Book of Deuteronomy, which is connected with Moses' summary of that time in the wilderness. Now, like them, He must on their behalf face up to similar temptations in the wilderness, with the same weapons that they had had at their command. And He must succeed. It was only by going through the whole human experience without sin that He could be fitted for His task of finally delivering God's true people. This in fact explains the very personal nature of the first temptation. It was precisely at the point where Israel had constantly failed, the need to trust God and obey His word especially when assailed by physical desires for food and water, that He was first tempted.

Analysis (4:1-11).

a Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered (Matthew 4:1).

b And the Tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread” (Matthew 4:3).

c But he answered and said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

b Then the devil takes him into the holy city, and he set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and says to him, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge concerning you,' and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest it happen that you dash your foot against a stone' ” (Matthew 4:5).

c Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not make trial of the Lord your God' ” (Matthew 4:7).

b Again, the devil takes him to an extremely high mountain, and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and he said to him, “All these things will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:8).

c Then says Jesus to him, “Get you hence, Satan, for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve' ” (Matthew 4:10).

a Then the devil leaves him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him (Matthew 4:11).

Note that following the patterns used in the Pentateuch threefold events are treated in sequence within a chiasmus (see for example our commentary on Numbers 22:15; Numbers 22:41 to Numbers 24:13). In ‘a' He goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil, and hungers, and in the parallel the Devil leaves Him, having been defeated, and the angels minister to Him. And then follows a threefold pattern of attack and riposte, (b and c) with Jesus each time citing Deuteronomy.