It is written, "You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve"

 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

Yesterday we read that Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.  And John tied 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.  My study bible tells us that to be tempted means to be tested in fundamental areas of faith.  As in Mark's Gospel, the Spirit leads Christ (in Mark's Gospel, it is written effectively in the Greek that the Spirit "throws" Him) into the wilderness after He is baptized, to be tested by a struggle with the devil.  My study bible notes that we who are baptized in Christ need not be defeated by temptations because we are also aided by the Holy Spirit.  It says, "The wilderness is a battleground, an image of the world, both the dwelling place of demons and a source of divine tranquility and victory."

And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.  The subject of today's entire reading is a focus in which Jesus reverses Israel's falling to temptation in the wilderness.  What we note clearly is that temptation or testing is that which seeks to deviate us from loving and serving God, from sincerely seeking and doing God's will in all things.  The Israelites were tested forty years in the wilderness and proved both disobedient and disloyal.  God humbled them by first letting them go hungry and then feeding them with manna to help them learn to be dependent on God (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).  Here in this passage Jesus is tested with hunger for forty days, but He does not sin.  His answers to Satan are from Deuteronomy, and all call for loyalty to God.  My study bible tells us that Jesus fasted to overcome temptation, thereby giving to us an example of our own power and limitations in the face of temptation.   The hunger of His flesh doesn't control Him; instead He controls His flesh.  Our Lord's forty days-long fast is the foundation of the tradition of the Church's forty-day Lenten fast before Holy Week, and also in Church tradition a fast before Christmas.

Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."   In this temptation, we observe that the devil challenges Christ's relationship to the Father.  If You are the Son of God is a direct calling into question what has just been declared by the Father at Jesus' Baptism (see yesterday's reading, above, in which the voice of the Father declares, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."  The devil desires that Jesus should act independently and detach Himself from the will of the Father.   In His divine nature, we say that Christ shares one will with the Father and the Holy Spirit; He has said that He can do nothing of Himself (John 5:30) apart from the Father.  But in His humanity, He possesses free will and at all times must choose to remain obedient to the divine will of the Father.

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.'"  My study bible says that by rejecting the first temptation, Jesus rejects an earthly kingdom and shows us not to pursue earthly comfort in the "food which perishes" (John 6:27).  Adam disregarded the divine word in order to pursue the passions of the body (Genesis 3).  But the New Adam, who is 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, center of Jewish life, and the temple is the splendid temple of Jesus' time, which had been rebuilt and added to by Herod (called also "Herod the Builder" for his splendid projects of which the temple was the grandest and most beautiful), known in its time as one of the architectural wonders of the world.  Note that having seen how Christ had defeated him through the power of the Scriptures, Satan vainly tries to use the Scriptures to put God's power of protection to the test.  (See also 2 Peter 1:19-21.)

Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.'"  Trials and temptations come on their own, my study bible says.  We should never 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 you shall serve.'"  Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.  According to my study bible,  God's Kingdom isn't one of earthly power and possessions.  In the test of the devil, Jesus was being asked to choose worldly power over the Kingdom of God.  The devil is the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31), "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), because the whole world is in his power (1 John 5:19).  Jesus refuses this tempting road of earthly glory, which would in fact have led Him away from His suffering and death for the redemption of the world.  (See also 16:21-23.)   The angels came and ministered to Him, as we too, perhaps unknowingly, are ministered to by angels.

We note that at the end of this series of temptations, the text tells us that the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.  As in a comment above, we note that we also -- although perhaps unbeknownst to us directly -- are ministered to by angels.  This image of Christ being tempted in the wilderness is a great message to us, because it gives us a mirror to our own lives.  We're constantly tempted by all kinds of "worldly" demands, whether they be from the flesh (that is, as something we experience as distinguished from our communion with God) such as Jesus' temptation to satisfy His hunger by using His power in a way that is not in accordance with true holiness nor serving God the Father.  Other worldly demands here mirror our desperate need for control, our own selfishness,  a temptation to worldly aggrandizement and power as reflection of who we are, a temptation even to tempt God and prove ourselves powerful indeed, and a whole host of recognizable worldly images in which we may find ourselves mirrored in tempting visions of what might be.  We are frequently caught up in our anxieties about what we have, about what we might miss, what we might need somehow, and our real fears for safety and security.  Jesus teaches about a kind of temptation of excess anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount, when He says that "sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (6:34).  Our own image in the eyes of others frequently serves as a springboard to temptation of thoughts about needs we don't really have, the desire to impress, and social ambition -- even a social "guilt" that we are "less than" others.  All of these things form temptations because they truly separate us from God, whom we know values humility, sincerity, genuineness, a willingness to love and dwell in communion with God's love.  But what we also have in today's reading is a reminder that there is all kinds of help provided to us should we choose, and truly desire, to find God's way for us through life, and thereby reject the temptations that come so fast and furiously in our lives.  We're bombarded by media images of what we "should" have, "should" look like, "should" attain or achieve or keep as worldly goals and exclusive focus in ways that shut God out of the picture in making a contribution to what are truly good goals for us.  There's now an established understanding that depression is widespread as a result of social media, in which we're showered with images of the great lives others seem to be having, particularly growing among the young (see for example this article, or this one).  These forms of temptation clearly mirror some of the temptations offered by the devil to Jesus.  But the story in today's reading also gives us an understanding that we, too, have help to combat what's not really good for us to dwell upon, the paths we're led down when such temptations become more important than a grounding in true reality.  We have the Holy Spirit also ministering to us and teaching us, Who is "everywhere present and filling all things," according to a traditional Orthodox prayer which is used at the beginning of all religious services or ceremonies (see this page of my blog).  And the angels are indeed ministering to all of us, even though our connection and perception of such things remains in the spiritual bedrock of life, something whose effects we know but may not recognize.  We have help in the Scriptures and in the Church, in the lives of the saints and their living prayers with us -- but especially in anything connecting us to living faith which we may find through literature or directly through friends, a pastor, the prayers of those who will help us.  These we turn to as a very present help indeed (Psalm 46:1).  The Psalms themselves remain through all time such a present help to us, for instance.  All of these sources root us in something more real than the images of fantasy, of what "could be" and the false images that seem to teach us that we are either this or nothing, or failure.  Better to be grounded in what surpasses time in the wisdom of its simplicity and transcendence, that emphasizes the inner heart and true values that form our treasures in heaven (6:19-21), those which give substance to the soul, and comfort and provide us with truth that does not desert us.  Above all, each temptation seeks to take us away from communion with God, from the true source of love, our ultimate confidence and grounding in what makes life good and gives peace.  Let us wish this for ourselves, and seek and find that which may turn away temptation to less satisfying goals, and keep us on the road to what is of more value and stays true to us in the long run and through our lives.  It all comes down to who and what we choose to worship.  It's not that we are always asked to choose to do without, but to put one thing first that informs all other choices.