Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God

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.'"

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, 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 shall give His angels charge over you,'

and,

'In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me."  Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan!  For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"  Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

- Matthew 4:1-11

On Saturday, we read that Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.  And John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?"  But Jesus answered and said to him, "Permit it to be so now, for this is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."  Then he allowed Him.  When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.  And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

 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.   My study bible tells us that "to be tempted is to be tested in fundamental areas of faith.  As in Mark, the Spirit leads, or 'throws,' Jesus into the wilderness after His baptism to be tested by a struggle with the devil.  We who are baptized into Him need not be defeated when temptations come along because, like Jesus, we are aided by the Spirit.  The wilderness is a battleground, a picture of the world, at once the abode of demons and a source of divine tranquility and contemplation."  Of today's entire passage, there is another helpful note:  "Jesus reverses Israel's dallying with temptation in the wilderness.  The Israelites were tested 40 years in the wilderness, during which they were disloyal and disobedient.  So God humbled them by letting them go hungry, then feeding them with manna, all to help them realize their dependence upon Him (Deut. 8:2-3).  Jesus is tested with hunger 40 days, but He does not sin.  Jesus' answers to Satan are from Deuteronomy, and all of them call for loyalty to God:  we are to live by that which God commands.  Contrary to the opinions of His detractors, in His messiahship Jesus actually fulfills the Law.  He is the loyal and obedient Son who triumphs over temptations."  Of the forty day fast, my study bible teaches that Jesus' fasting is to overcome temptation, which gives us an example of our own power as well as our limitations.  It says, "The hunger of His flesh does not control Him; rather, He controls His flesh."  This forty day fast of Jesus is the foundation of the tradition of Lenten fasting in preparation for Holy Week, a spiritual preparation for the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.  Fasting is meant as a discipline that gives us a parallel to resisting temptation, to cultivating awareness of our choices and strengthening the power of choice, and understanding our freedom to say no to temptation, to sin.  We are not children of impulse, but "rational sheep."

Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."    My study bible says that here the devil challenges Jesus' relationship to the Father.  Jesus has just come from His baptism in the Jordan by John, in which the Voice declared, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."  Here He's tempted to abuse His power and act independently of God the Father's will.  A note tells us:  "In His divine nature, the Son shares one will with the Father and the Spirit.  He can do nothing of Himself (John 5:30).  He has no operation that is distinct from His Father's.  But in His humanity He possesses 'free will' and at times must choose to remain in communion with His Father, to be obedient to the divine will."

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.'"  In His rejection of the first temptation, Jesus essentially places all source for His power and His kingdom into the hand of God.  It is a spiritual kingdom, which affects everything else as all has proceeded from God.  My study bible says that He has rejected "a kingdom based on materialism, earthly well-being, the 'bread which perishes' (see John 6:1-40)."  The old Adam succumbed to temptation, the new Adam conquers temptation, "that He might give our nature power to conquer the Adversary."

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, 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 shall give His angels charge over you,' and, 'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"  Jerusalem is the holy city.  My study bible says that "Satan puts God's power of protection to the test.  Will Jesus depend on spectacular signs and self-aggrandizement, or will He humbly submit to persecution, humiliation and death according to the Father's will?"  After tempting Jesus to use His relationship for strictly personal gain, now Jesus is tempted  to prove He is Son by testing God's protection.

Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"  My study bible says, "God's Kingdom is not one of earthly spectacle and fame.  Therefore we should never expose ourselves to danger just to test whether God is going to 'protect' us.  To do so is to tempt the LORD."

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me."  A note here tells us:  "God's Kingdom is not one of earthly power and possessions.  In the devil's offering of the kingdoms of the world, Jesus was being asked to choose worldly power over the Kingdom of God.  The devil is 'the ruler of this world' (John 12:31; 16:11), 'the god of this age' (2 Cor. 4:4), because the whole world is in his power (1 John 5:19)."

Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan!  For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"  Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.  My study bible says, "Jesus refuses to take a road that would lead Him away from the path of suffering and death for the redemption of the world.  Jesus says simply, away with you, Satan -- a command rather than a rebuke."

The very first thing that happens in Jesus' life after the baptism (which both confirms His status as Son and also begins His public ministry) is to be "thrown" into the wilderness by the Spirit in order to be tempted.  In some ways, it would help us to see that we are in a similar situation.  Our baptism confers the help of the Holy Spirit, and we are told that the Spirit has been poured out upon the world, in some sense so that we, too, are equipped for this battle.  There's no doubt that we are tempted in many ways in our lives, day in and day out.  But if we look at Jesus' specific temptations, we'll see their relationship to us.  We may not be the Son of God, but nevertheless we feel similar temptations:  there are temptations to misuse our power and abuse others who may need our help or be at our mercy, or those who depend upon us.  There is temptation to call ourselves special in some sense, especially because of our faith, and to lose that faith because our lives are not perfect.  This is false thinking, and it's a way to deny God with a point of view that has at its heart the premise that this world and all its material values are the one thing that counts in life.  To discount struggle and even suffering for the cause of Good is surely to deny the presence of a spiritual life at all.  To declare that faith is not worthwhile is surely temptation when, for example, people treat us poorly in response to our love and forgiveness.  Finally, the worship of the material life, and a material-minded approach to life is a false trap, one that assures both dependency and disappointment.  If we really need a kind of worldly validation to say that we are somebody, instead of the faith that teaches us our worth -- with or without all the "kingdoms of this world and their glory" -- then we are surely lost in a trap of constant need for those things, a constant need for a validation that is fleeting at best, and terrifyingly false or deceitful when these things leave us or we lose them.  Jesus has called this "the deceitfulness of riches" in explaining the parable of the Sower.  If we look at addictions of any kind, we can see this pattern:  something that seems like a treasure but which sucks up all the life we can give it and takes as much of our own as it can.  The examples of those who would do anything for worldly kingdoms also abound in the Gospels, such as Herod Antipas' wife who uses her daughter to demand the head of John the Baptist on a platter.  Her stark choice is an example of alienating oneself from God and God's Kingdom, the power of choice illuminated.  When we think of temptation, the modern world may seem to say that we needn't bother to resist all the things on offer, but truly we have to look around at the failure to use power wisely and its results in our world.  Bullying in schools, using the internet to facilitate even suicides, is just one small example of a misuse of power available to us through modern material life.  The capability that powerful weapons give modern states is a shockingly potent example on a much larger scale, including the threats from contamination that may come back to haunt us all.  Fasting has been a tool for centuries to teach us how to choose, about our capacity to say no, and really it's a discipline meant to be used for fasting from sin.  We all need not face the rigors of fasting that Jesus did, but we do need to face life with the model of His example.  Baptism confers upon us a great and tremendous gift; if we are reborn in Spirit we understand that we are given a powerful capacity for choice.  As human beings we are all endowed with God's capacity for choice in us, our "free will."  Temptation will say that we subject ourselves to suffering when we deny sin, but Jesus has taught us that we are to seek first the kingdom of God, and then all else is added unto us.  Here, His responses to the tempter are clear:  we put our steps and our lives in order.  There is one thing that is most needful, and everything else must follow that.  To live by "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" is to use all our resources in accordance with the way we are taught to do so, for the ultimate sake of love.  Can we take Jesus' example seriously in our own lives?