Jesus' genealogy and virgin birth prove His legal human qualification as Israel's King. His baptism was the occasion of His divine approval. His temptation demonstrated His moral fitness to reign. The natural question a thoughtful reader of Matthew's Gospel might ask after reading God's attestation of His Son (3:17) is, Was He really that good? Jesus' three temptations prove that He was.
"By the end of the baptismal pericope, the Jesus of Matthew's story stands before the reader preeminently as the Son of God who has been empowered with the Spirit of God. So identified, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to engage the devil, or Satan, in conflict in the place of his abode (4:1-11). . . . Ultimately, the substance of each test has to do with Jesus' devotion, or obedience, to God. The intent of Satan in each test is to entice Jesus to break faith with God, his Father, and thus disavow his divine sonship. Should Satan succeed at this, he succeeds in effect in destroying Jesus. In testing Jesus, Satan cunningly adopts God's evaluative point of view according to which Jesus is his Son (4:3, 6)."177
4:1-2 The same Spirit who brought Jesus into the world (1:20) and demonstrated God's approval of Him (3:16) now led Him into the wilderness for tempting by Satan.
"Just as God led Israel out of Egypt and through the waters and into the desert (Num 20.5; 1 Bas12.6; Ps 80.1 LXX; etc., all using anagein[to lead up']), so does the Spirit of God lead Jesus into the desert after he is baptized."178
"According to Hosea 2:14-23, the wilderness was the place of Israel's original sonship, where God had loved His people. Yet because they had forsaken Yahweh their Father, a renewal' of the exodus into the desert was necessary for the restoration of Israel's status as the son' of God. In this new exodus, God's power and help would be experienced again in a renewed trek into the wilderness."179
The wilderness of Judea (3:1) is the traditional site. Israel had, of course, experienced temptation in another wilderness for 40 years. The number 40 frequently has connections with sin in the Old Testament (cf. Gen. 7:4, 12; Num. 14:33; 32:13; Deut. 9:25; 25:3; Ps. 95:10; Jon. 3:4). Jesus experienced temptation in the wilderness at the end of 40 days and nights.
The Greek word translated "tempted"(peirazo) means "to test"in either a good or a bad sense. Here God's objective was to demonstrate the character of His Son by exposing Him to Satan's tests (cf. 2 Sam. 24:1; Job 1:6-2:7).180God evidently led Jesus into the wilderness to demonstrate the obedience of this Son compared with the disobedience of His son Israel (2:15; cf. Exod. 4:22; Deut. 8:3, 5). God tested both His sons "to prove their obedience and loyalty in preparation for their appointed work."181
Fasting in Scripture was for a spiritual reason, namely to forego a physical need to give attention to a more important spiritual need.182During this fast Jesus ate nothing but presumably drank water (cf. Luke 4:2). Moses and Elijah, two of God's most significant servants in the Old Testament, likewise fasted for 40 days and nights (Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9; 1 Kings 19:8). Jesus' fast would have connected Him with these servants of the Lord in the minds of Matthew's Jewish readers, as it does in ours.
4:3-4 Satan attacked Jesus when He was vulnerable physically. The form of Satan's question in the Greek text indicates that Satan was assuming that Jesus was the Son of God (3:17).183
"The temptation, to have force, must be assumed as true. The devil knew it to be true. He accepts that fact as a working hypothesis in the temptation."184
This temptation was not to doubt that reality. It was to suggest that as the Son of God Jesus surely had the power and right to satisfy His own needs independent of His Father. Satan urged Jesus to use His Sonship in a way that was inconsistent with His mission (cf. 26:53-54; 27:40). God had intended Israel's hunger in the wilderness to teach her that hearing and obeying God's Word is the most important thing in life (Deut. 8:2-3). Israel demanded bread in the wilderness but died. Jesus forewent bread in submission to His Father's will and lived.
"The impact of Satan's temptation is that Jesus, like Adam first and Israel later, had a justifiable grievance against God and therefore ought to voice His complaint by murmuring' (Exod. 16; Num. 11) and ought to provide for Himself the basic necessity of life, namely, bread. Satan, in other words, sought to make Jesus groundlessly anxious about His physical needs and thus to provoke Him to demand the food He craved (cf. Ps. 78:18). In short, the devil's aim was to persuade Jesus to repeat the apostasy of Adam and Israel. Satan wanted to break Jesus' perfect trust in His Father's good care and thereby to alter the course of salvation-history."185
The wilderness of Judea contains many limestone rocks of all sizes and shapes. Many of these look like the loaves and rolls of bread that the Jews prepared and ate daily.
Jesus' response to Satan's suggestion (v. 4) reflected His total commitment to follow God's will as revealed in His Word. He quoted the Septuagint translation of Deuteronomy 8:3. Its application originally was to Israel, but Jesus applied it to everyone and particularly Himself. By applying this passage to Himself Jesus put Himself in the category of a true "man"(Gr. anthropos).
"Matthew here shows that Jesus is not God only, but an unique theanthropic person, personallyqualified to be King of Israel."186
Everyone needs to recognize and acknowledge his or her total dependence on God and His Word. Jesus' real food, what sustained Him above all else, was His commitment to do the will of His Father (John 4:34).
In this first temptation Satan's aim was to seduce Jesus into using His God-given power and authority independently of His Father's will. Jesus had subjected Himself to His Father's will because of His mission (cf. Phil. 2:8). It was uniquely a personal temptation; it tested Jesus' person.
4:5-7 The setting for the second temptation was Jerusalem. Matthew referred to it with a favorite Jewish term, "the holy city"(cf. Neh. 11:1; Isa. 48:2; Dan. 9:24; Matt. 21:10; 27:53). This suggests that the temptation would have national rather than solely individual implications. Satan took Him to the highest point of the temple complex (Gr. hieron), not necessarily the topmost peak of the sanctuary. It towered over the Kidron Valley far below.187Some of the Jewish rabbis taught that when Messiah came to deliver Israel He would appear on the temple roof (cf. Mal. 3:1; John 6:30).188
"Jerusalem was considered the center of the nations, with lands around her,' the center of the world,' whose inhabitants dwell at the center of the earth' (Ezek. 5:5; 38:12; . . .). Thus when Jesus stood on the pinnacle of the temple, He was, theologically speaking, at the center of the world. From that vantage point the Messiah most naturally could claim the nations as His own and rule them with a rod of iron . . ."189
Again the devil granted that Jesus was the Son of God. Satan quoted the Septuagint version of Psalm 91:11-12 appealing to the authority that Jesus used, namely God's Word (v. 4). He omitted the words "to guard you in all your ways."Many expositors have assumed that Satan wanted to trick Jesus with this omission, but his free method of quoting was very common. Many New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament in the same loose way.
Probably Satan wanted Jesus to demonstrate His trust in God in a spectacular way to challenge God's faithfulness. He misapplied the Scripture he quoted. The Psalms passage refers to anyone who trusts in God. That certainly applied to Jesus. The verses promise that the angels will uphold such a person as a nurse does a baby (cf. Num. 11:12; Deut. 1:31; Isa. 49:22; Heb. 1:14). God had revealed Himself most particularly at the temple throughout Israel's history. Therefore what better place could there have been to demonstrate the Son of God's confidence in His Father's promise?
Jesus refused Satan's suggestion (v. 7) because the Scriptures forbade putting God to a test, not because He questioned God's faithfulness to His promise. Satan tempted Jesus to test God. Israel had faced the same test and had failed (Exod. 17:2-7; cf. Num. 20:1-13). It is wrong to demand that God prove Himself faithful to His promises by giving us what He has promised on our terms. The proper procedure is simply to trust and obey God (Deut. 6:16-17).
"Testing is not trusting."190
Jesus refused to allow Satan to applya valid promise so it contradicted another teaching in God's Word. "On the other hand"or "also"(Gr. palin) has the sense of "not contradicting but qualifying."191Jesus as a man, voluntarily under the authority of God's Word, proved to be faithful to its spirit as well as to its letter.
4:8-10 The high mountain to which Satan took Jesus next is traditionally near Jericho, but its exact location is not important. It simply provided a vantage point from which Satan could point out other kingdoms that surrounded Israel.
"The placement of Jesus on the mountain of temptation, where He refused to acknowledge the devil's authority,' is deliberately juxtaposed to the mountain (Matt. 28:16) of the great commission,' on which He later affirmed that all authority' in heaven and on earth had been granted to Him (28:18)."192
Luke's wording suggests that Satan presented all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus in a vision (Luke 4:5).193This temptation would have universal significance, not just personal and national significant as the first and second temptations did.
Satan offered Jesus immediate control over all the kingdoms of the world and the glory connected with reigning over them (v. 9), something that God would give Him eventually as the Messiah.194In the will of God, Jesus would achieve universal rule (Ps. 2) but only as the Suffering Servant who would have to endure the Cross first.
God's divine authentication of His Son (3:16-17) drew attention to both Jesus' Davidic messiahship and His Suffering Servant role. This temptation consisted of an opportunity for Jesus to obtain the benefits of messiahship without having to experience its unpleasant elements. To get this, however, Jesus would have to change His allegiance from God to Satan. This involved idolatry, putting someone or something in the place that God deserves. Later Peter suggested the same shortcut to Jesus and received a sharp rebuke as Satan's spokesman for doing so (16:23).
This was a legitimate offer. Satan had the ability, under the sovereign authority of God, to give Jesus what he promised (cf. 12:25-28; Luke 10:18; Eph. 2:2). Israel, God's other son, had formerly faced the same temptation to avoid God's uncomfortable will by departing from it and had failed (Num. 13-14). This third temptation, like the other two, tested Jesus' total loyalty to His Father and His Father's will. Had Jesus taken Satan's bait He would have been Satan's slave albeit a world ruler.
"Jesus was in effect tempted to subscribe to the diabolical doctrine that the end justifies the means; that, so long as He obtained universal sovereignty in the end, it mattered not how that sovereignty was reached . . ."195
For a third time Jesus responded by quoting Scripture to His adversary (v. 10). He banished Satan with the divine command to worship and to serve God alone (Deut. 6:13).
4:11 Having resisted Satan's attacks successfully the enemy departed temporarily (cf. James 4:7). God sent messengers to assist His faithful Son. The Father rewarded the Son with divine assistance and further opportunity for service because Jesus had remained faithful to Him.
Many have observed that Satan followed the same pattern of temptation with Jesus that he had used with Eve (Gen. 3). First, he appealed to the lust of the flesh, the desire to dosomething apart from God's will. Second, he appealed to the lust of the eyes, the desire to havesomething apart from God's will. Third, he appealed to the pride of life, the desire to besomething apart from God's will (cf. 1 John 2:16).
"Approaching Jesus three times in Matthew's story, Satan urges him to place concern for self above allegiance to God."196
"All three of the tests are variations of the one great temptation to remove His Messianic vocation from the guidance of His Father and make it simply a political calling."197
Each of Jesus' three temptations related to His messiahship: the first to Him personally, the second to the Jews, and the third to all the nations (cf. 1:1). The twin themes of Jesus' royal kingship and His suffering servanthood, which combined in the name Immanuel, "God with us"(1:23), were in tension in the temptation. They remained in tension and created conflict in Jesus' ministry as it unfolded.
"In the first temptation Jesus does not denythat He is hungry and able to make bread; in the second, He does not denythat He is the Son of God, and under special protection; and in the third, He does not denythe Kingdom or dominion which is to be given to Him, but only rejects the modeby which it is to be obtained. As observed, if such a Kingdom is not covenanted, predicted, and intended, the temptation would not have any force."198
"In this pericope [4:1-11] we encounter a theme that is vital in the theology of the Gospels. The goal of obedience to the Father is accomplished, not by triumphant self-assertion, not by the exercise of power and authority, but paradoxically by the way of humility, service, and suffering. Therein lies true greatness (cf. 20:26-28). In fulfilling his commission by obedience to the will of the Father, Jesus demonstrates the rightness of the great commandment (Deut 6:5) as well as his own submission to it."199
In the first major section of his Gospel, Matthew showed that Jesus had all the qualifications to be Israel's Messiah--legally, scripturally, and morally. He was now ready to relate Jesus' presentation of Himself to Israel as her King.
