Matthew 4:1-4

 ¹ Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. ³ Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” ⁴ 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.’ ”

Commentary

Vs. 1 “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

The Lord Jesus having submitted Himself to the Will of the Father and been baptized by John, and thus the Holy Spirit descending upon Him, is now led up by the same Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (vs. 1). Now this testing of Christ precedes His Ministry. That said no one should ever try to emulate what took place here; for this is a very specific testing of God’s Son (according to the Will of God) by the devil for a very specific purpose. And so though God may permit the testing of our persons in various ways and too various degrees at different times, no one should either attempt to enter into such a battle with the devil, nor should they ever draw a parallel between the Lord Jesus Christ and themselves and what took place here. For Temptation the Lord Jesus Christ was called upon to endure here is unique to Himself.

Vs. 2 “And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.”

Now the Lord Jesus Christ’s fasting for forty days before His first encounter with the devil is not for the strengthening of His Person but the weakening. Literally Jesus took Himself to the point of physical starvation, the implications of which are staggering given what Jesus is about to face, for if He fails in any area of temptation the devil will have supplanted God the Father in His Life.

Vs. 3-4 ³ Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” ⁴ 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.’ ”

Notice that the devil comes to Jesus as a tempter when Jesus is at His weakest, tempting Him to move His trust away from obeying God and back onto Himself, by saying ““If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” Now Satan the tempter knows that Jesus is the Son of God, and so his saying as much to Jesus is not so much too question the authenticity of Christ’s Person, but rather he is subtly prompting Jesus to alleviate His serve hunger pains by listening to him rather than God who by His Spirit is sustaining Him. And so Jesus rather than disobeying the Father and listening to Satan and turning the stones to bread as He has the power to do, only replies to him by quoting Scripture, specifically the Scripture taken from passage in the Law where Moses declares to the Israelite's how God tested and sustained them for forty years in the Wilderness so that they would learn that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (See Deut. 8:1-5, vs. 3).

Again Jesus as the Captain of our Salvation is being tested here (in our place) to prove not that He is the Son of God, but that He can and will overcome each and every temptation that the devil could bring to Him. For only the Lord Jesus Christ will prove Himself to obey the Will of the Father, even unto death if necessary. Therefore only Jesus could be trusted to take on this monumental task of being qualified to restore to humanity all that was lost to us when Adam the first man God created, and whom He set over His creation, brought sin into all of His creation when he disobeyed the Will of God by giving in to the promptings of the devil by listening to his wife and eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (see Gen. 3). Therefore what takes place here is not for Christ’s sake as much as for ours. For if Jesus yields to any temptation by the devil than all of creation would lose any and all means of redemption and reconciliation with God.

Scripture Quotations

The New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.