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 shall you 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 the Baptist 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 thus it 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.   To be tempted, my study bible says, is to be tested in fundamental areas of faith.  As in Mark's Gospel, the Spirit leads -- or rather, literally in the Greek, "throws" -- Jesus into the wilderness after His baptism, so that He is tested by a struggle with the devil.  We remember that we who are baptized in Christ are also aided by the Holy Spirit, and so need not be defeated by temptations.  A note reminds us that the wilderness is a battleground, an image of the world.  It is both the dwelling place of the demons and a source of divine tranquility and victory.

And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.  A traditional reading of this text gives us Jesus reversing Israel's falling to temptation in the wilderness.  The Israelites were tested for forty years in the wilderness.  They were proven disobedient and disloyal.  God humbled them by first allowing them to go hungry and then feeding them with manna, teaching dependence upon God (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).  Here, Jesus is tested for forty days, but He doesn't sin.  All of His answers to Satan are from Deuteronomy, and all of them call for loyalty to God.   Jesus fasted to overcome temptation, which gives us an example of our own power and limitations in the face of temptation.  The hunger of His flesh doesn't control Him; rather, he is the one who controls His flesh.  Christ's fast for forty days is the foundation of the traditional forty-day Lenten fast before Holy Week.

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.'"  Here the tempter challenges the Lord's relationship to the Father.  If You are the Son of God is a way to call into question the declaration of the Father's voice at Baptism (see Saturday's reading, above).  The impulse presented by the devil to Jesus is to act independently and to detach Himself from the will of the Father.  In Christ's divine nature, He shares one will with the Father and the Holy Spirit --- He can do nothing of Himself (John 5:30), separate from the Father.  But in His humanity, Jesus possesses free will and must always choose to remain obedient to the divine will of the Father.  By rejecting this first temptation, Jesus is rejecting an earthly kingdom, and He shows us not to pursue earthly comfort in the "food which perishes" (John 6:27), my study bible notes.   It says that while Adam disregarded the divine word in order to pursue the passions of the body (Genesis 3), here the New Adam (Christ) conquers all temptation by the divine word, which gives human nature the power to conquer Satan.

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.'"  The holy city is Jerusalem.  As Jesus has defeated him by using Scripture in the first temptation, Satan tries to use Scripture to put God's power of protection to the test (see also 2 Peter 1:19-21).  My study bible explains about our own lives that trials and temptations come on their own; we should never choose to intentionally expose ourselves to danger in order to test or prove God's protection.  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."    Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan!  for it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only shall you serve.'" Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.  The kingdom of God isn't about earthly power and possessions.  In this test, Jesus is being asked to choose worldly power over the kingdom of God.  The devil is called the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31),  and also "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4) my study bible says, because the whole world is in his power (1 John 5:19).  Jesus refuses the road of earthly glory, which would lead Him away from His suffering and death for the redemption of the world. 

My study bible mentions, in the last note mentioned above, that in rejecting earthly glory, Jesus determines His road to the Cross, "His suffering and death for the redemption of the world."  This forty-day fast in the wilderness would mark the model for the early Christian monastics (and indeed remains the model for ascetic practice),  a movement which began in the deserts of Egypt in the immediate centuries after Christ.  To enter into the wilderness was to face temptation, to do spiritual battle, to live a calling to God that demanded every aspect of one's choices and being in dedication to the Lord.  Our modern spiritual struggles are no less significant and important, and no less mirrored in today's reading.  Jesus faces temptations that involve His security, His dependency upon God alone, and the social struggle for recognition and validation in the eyes of the world.  In a modern context, we might plainly see how such struggles shape our own kinds of temptations.  Where does our own security come from?  On what do we base our impulses for it?  Dependence upon God is not a modern image of the rugged individual nor of the great genius with his or her own personal "superpower" nor natural talents or intelligence who may beat the world in a game of competition.  To face up to the image we present to the world is to take on the great challenge of true personal identity.  Do we find our own worth and value given to us in our faith and in our communion with God, or is it based on what the world will tell us about ourselves -- our own reflection in the eyes of others (similar to the Greek myth of Narcissus)?  These are just a tiny handful of reflections of the temptations in today's reading.  I'm certain if one thinks about them, they reflect all kinds of powerful ways in which we as individuals may be tempted every single day.  In modern life, we find that quite famous and successful people, who seem to have the world by a string, are depressed and suicidal.  Where does self-worth come from?  Where does joy?  Where does meaning?  Each of these questions is reflected in today's reading, and emphasizes the strength and power and dependency upon God in the struggle of living our lives with a kind of dignity or inward strength that transcends a "worldly" sense of where we are and who we are.  Modern images pervade our lives in ways our ancestors could not have imagined, and technology focuses us more than ever on what is happening "out there" and our place in the images in the eyes of others.  And yet, depression and even suicidal impulse seem to accompany and correlate directly to social media use among the young, according to some modern studies.  (Some results suggest it is the type of interaction or internet use that determines the outcome, which tells us once again the role that choice and refusal of temptation plays in our well-being.  It is not a bad idea to combine restriction of social media into a type of "fast," as many are choosing to do.)   In today's reading, Christ faces head on the temptations the world will offer us, the types of temptations we all face in varied and myriad and individual forms in our lives.  As far away as the text may seem with its images from 2,000 years ago, we may frequently find ourselves in a wilderness of our own, without the support of those who'd remind us of God's love, in an environment in which survival of the fittest seems to be the only demand or restriction, in a life where we're shown dazzling images of the things everybody else seems to get -- reflected in the lies and temptations of the devil for worldly kingdoms.  We may even find ourselves subject to misleading interpretations of Scripture that point us in the wrong direction, away from a more time-honored approach that has given value to generations of people.  What we know from Christ is the importance of facing the fact that everything isn't going to come to us by following a magical sort of thinking, that life offers to us struggles of our own.  We need our dependency upon God in ways that run subtly and deeply beneath the surface of the images life will show to us.  We always need timeless values to help us, and God's love -- in which we may participate and share with one another -- really is the measure of all things. It is the well-being of all human beings that most concerns Jesus.  In the image of the Cross, He teaches us each to take up our own, and that the struggle against the dictates of the world and for the love of God is real and transcendent and lasting.  Most of all, we need to know that we have the help that ministers to us as did Jesus in the wilderness, and to call upon that help in our lives.