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Matthew Chapter 4

(Overcomer Wu)

In Matthew 4:1-11, we see one of the most monumental spiritual battles of all time is recounted— the personal confrontation between Jesus Christ and Satan. The devil’s temptations directed at Jesus in the wilderness of Judea were observed by no other human being. He was entirely alone, and it is therefore obvious that we could know nothing of what transpired there unless Jesus Himself had told His disciples of it. Here He reveals the victory secret, as it were, of His momentous struggle with Satan.

The encounter occurred immediately after Jesus’ baptism, which, in the terms of His kingship, represented His coronation, His commissioning. Now, after His proclamation as King comes the test of His kingliness. His baptism in the Jordan declared His royalty; His testing in the wilderness demonstrated it. Here Jesus proved He was worthy to receive and to reign over the kingdom His Father would give Him. The One of whom the Father had just said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (3:17), here shows why He was well-pleasing to His Father. He shows that, even in the extreme of temptation, He consistently lived in perfect harmony with the divine plan. Here He first demonstrated His power over hell. His absolute sovereignty forbade Him to bow to the “god of this world,” so He faced the full force of Satan’s wicked deception, yet remained untouched and uncontaminated. Evil at its lowest was overcome by Him, and goodness at its highest commended Him. The combination of both accredited Him as King.

It seems that Matthew had two primary purposes in presenting Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. First, as mentioned above, Jesus’ victory demonstrated His divine kingship, His royal power to resist the only other great ruler and dominion in the universe, Satan himself Christ here won His first direct battle with His great enemy, and thereby gave evidence of His glorious right and power as the King of kings and Lord of lords, the supreme Ruler of all creation, the only God. By so doing, He sealed His final victory yet to come. Satan’s purpose in the temptations was, of course, just the opposite: to conquer the newly commissioned King, to overthrow the Messiah, and to claim all His royal rights and prerogatives for himself.

Matthew’s other purpose was to demonstrate the pattern found in Jesus’ human victory over sin and temptation, a pattern that He longs to share with all who belong to Him. When we face testing and temptation in the same way our Lord did, we too can be victorious over the adversary’s attempts to corrupt us and to usurp the Lord’s rightful place in our lives. The momentous encounter that Matthew here describes, and from which believers can gain such help and encouragement, may be divided into three parts for study: the preparation, the temptation, and the triumph.

4:1

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit—This event appears to have taken place immediately after Christ’s baptism; and this bringing up of Christ was through the influence of the Spirit of God; that Spirit which had rested upon him in his baptism. “To be tempted”—The first act of the ministry of Jesus Christ was a combat with Satan. This shows that there is in fact a battle waging between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. And for the advancement of God's kingdom/the kingdom of the heavens, the battle needs to be fought every step of the way starting from its very commencement.

4:2

And when he had fasted forty days—It is remarkable that Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, previously to his receiving the law from God, fasted forty days in the mount; that Elijah, the chief of the prophets, fasted also forty days; and that Christ, the giver of the New Covenant, should act in the same way. This is a further confirmation that in order for God's kingdom to gain ground and be established on this earth, He needs a people who would travail with Him in prayer. And the most effective and one that demonstrates the urgency and the true fervency of our prayers is a prayer accompanied by fasting, which is what the Lord Jesus did along with Moses and Elijah for 40 days. This is also a proof of their great intimacy in their walk with God; thus on Mt. Transfiguration, we see Moses and Elijah were also there with the Lord Jesus in His glory.

Was not all this intended to also show, that God’s kingdom on earth was to be spiritual and Divine?—that it should not consist in meat and drink, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit? Romans 14:17. Moses, Elijah, and our Lord Jesus could fast forty days and forty nights, because they were in communion with God, and living a life in full dependency upon God.

4:3

Satan is here spoken of as the tempter, one of his descriptive names and titles in Scripture. We are not told what form the devil may have taken on this occasion, but his confrontation with Jesus was direct and personal. They spoke to each other and even moved about together, first to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem and then to a high mountain. His first great frontal attack on Jesus Christ as He began His earthly ministry was in the form of three temptations, each designed to weaken and destroy the Messiah in an important area of His mission. The temptations became progressively worse. The first was for Jesus to distrust the providential care of His Father and to use His own divine powers to serve Himself. The second was to presume on the Father’s care by putting Him to the test. The third was for Him to renounce the way of His Father and to substitute the way of Satan.

Command that these stones—The meaning of this temptation is: “Distrust the Divine providence and support, and make use of illicit means to supply your necessities.”

Just as the 1^st step of man's temptation (with Adam) involves the matter of eating/sustenance; here too the Lord's 1^st temptation involves the matter of sustenance. Satan is trying to instill in us the question about the adequacy of God's faithfulness in supplying our needs, and to tempt us to take steps independent of God or contrary to God's plan to supply our own needs.

The first direct temptation in the wilderness was for Jesus to act against God’s plan and to command that these stones become bread. This temptation involved a great deal more than Jesus’ satisfying His hunger. After forty days and nights of fasting, He certainly was hungry and thirsty, and He had the right to have something to eat and drink. The most obvious part of the temptation was for Jesus to fulfill His legitimate physical needs by miraculous means. But the deeper temptation was Satan’s appeal to Jesus’ supposed rights as the Son of God. “Why,” Satan seemed to say, “should you starve in the wilderness if you are really God’s Son? How could the Father allow His Son to go hungry, when He even provided manna for the rebellious children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai? And had not Isaiah written of the righteous that ‘His bread will be given him; his water will be sure’” (Isa 33:16)? You are a man, and you need food to survive. If God had let His people die in the wilderness, how could His plan of redemption have been fulfilled? If He lets you die in this wilderness, how can you fulfill your divine mission on His behalf?

The purpose of the temptation was not simply for Jesus to satisfy His physical hunger, but to suggest that His being hungry was incompatible with His being the Son of God. He was being tempted to doubt the Father’s Word, the Father’s love, and the Father’s provision. He had every right, Satan suggested, to use His own divine powers to supply what the Father had not. The Son of God certainly was too important and dignified to have to endure such hardship and discomfort. He had been born in a stable, had to flee to Egypt for His life, spent thirty years in an obscure family in a obscure village in Galilee, and forty days and nights unattended, unrecognized, and unpitied in the wilderness. Surely that was more than enough ignominy to allow Him to identify with mankind. But now that the Father Himself had publicly declared Him to be His Son, it was time for Jesus to use some of His divine authority for His own personal benefit.

4:4

It is written (ãÝãñáðôáé)

The perfect tense. “It has been written, and stands written.” The first recorded words of Jesus after this entrance upon his ministry are an assertion of the authority of the Scripture, and that though he had the fulness of the Spirit. When addressing man, our Lord seldom quoted Scripture, but said, I say unto you. In answer to Satan He says, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” This is not only stressing that we need to seek spiritual food more than our physical food, but also to point out where the main source of our spiritual sustenance is to be derived from – God's Word.

4:5-6

Still hoping to undermine Jesus’ relation to God in His divine Sonship, the devil again introduced his temptation as it were: if You are the Son of God... “Prove to yourself and to the world that you are the Son of God,” Satan taunted, and throw Yourself down.

In the first temptation a need (lack of food) already existed; in the second a need was to be created. To make the temptation more persuasive, the devil quoted Scripture, as Jesus had just done. Quoting Psalm 91:11-12, he said, for it is written, “He will give His angels charge concerning You”; and “On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.”

With that subtle and clever twist, the tempter thought He had backed Jesus into a corner. If Jesus lived only by the Word of God, then He would be confronted by something from the Word of God. “You claim to be God’s Son and You claim to trust His Word,” Satan was saying. “If so, why don’t you demonstrate your Sonship and prove the truth of God’s Word by putting Him to a test—a Scriptural test? If you won’t use your own divine power to help yourself, let your Father use His divine power to help you. If you won’t act independently of the Father, let the Father act. Give your Father a chance to fulfill the Scripture I just quoted to you.”

For Jesus to have followed Satan’s suggestion would have been, in the eyes of many Jews, sure proof of His Messiahship. According to William Barclay, that is exactly the sort of proof many purported messiahs of that day were trying to give. A man named Theudas led a group of people from the Temple to the Jordan River, promising to split the waters. After he failed, no one listened to him anymore. An Egyptian pretender claimed he would lay flat the walls of Jerusalem, which, of course, he was not able to do. Tradition holds that Simon the magician (see Acts 8:9) tried the very feat with which Satan tempted Jesus: jumping off the top of the Temple—for which he lost his life as well as his following.

4:6

Cast thyself down—Our Lord had repelled the first temptation by an act of confidence and trust in the power and goodness of God; and now Satan solicits him to make trial of it. Through the unparalleled subtlety of Satan, the very means we make use of to repel one temptation may he used by him as the groundwork of another. This method he often uses, in order to confound us in our confidence.

He shall give his angels charge, etc.—This is a mutilated quotation of Psalm 91:11 or taken out of the context. The clause, “to keep thee in all Thy ways,” Satan purposely chose to leave out. That God has promised to protect and support his servants – this is not in dispute; but, as the path of duty is the way of safety, they are entitled to no good when they walk out of it. Furthermore, it is never safe to walk outside the will and sphere of God. Thus Satan also left out verse 9, “Because you have made the Lord, who is my Refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place.” We can say that the protection promised in verses 10-11 is predicated upon verse 9, which states clearly that we need to hide in God as our Refuge and abide in Him as our Dwelling place. To step outside that sphere of God by acting independently of Him is to step outside His will and His protection, thereby nullifying the promise in verses 10-11. Therefore, it behooves us to always make the Most High God our eternal Dwelling.

4:7

Again (ðÜëéí)

Emphatic, meaning on the other hand, with reference to Satan’s it is written (v. 6); as if the Lord Jesus is saying, “the promise which you quote must be explained by another passage of Scripture.” There lies in it the secret of our safety and defense against all distorted use of isolated passages in holy Scripture. Only as we enter into the unity of Scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains itself, are we warned against error and delusion, excess or defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, ‘It is written again,’ must be of continual application; for indeed what very often are heresies but one-sided, exaggerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body and complex of the truth, without the balance of the counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due place, coordinated with other truths or subordinated to them; and so, because all such checks are wanting, therefore they are not truth any more, but errors and twisted truths at best.

4:8-10

Satan now drops his pretense and makes one final, desperate effort to cause the Lord Jesus to stumble and sin against God. He finally reveals his supreme purpose: to induce Jesus Christ to worship him. He had first suggested what Jesus ought to do for Himself. Next he suggested what the Father ought to do for Jesus. Now he suggests what Satan could do for Jesus—in exchange for what Jesus could do for him.

We are not told what very high mountain it was to which the devil took him. The significance, however, lies in the fact that this location gave a vast view of the earth. But the view extended far beyond what physical vision could perceive from any vantage point, no matter how high. By some supernatural accommodation the devil showed Jesus the glories of Egypt—its pyramids, temples, libraries, and vast treasures. He showed the power and splendor of Rome, with its mighty empire spread over the known world. He showed great Athens, magnificent Corinth, and of course wondrous Jerusalem, the royal city of David, and more—all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.

As God’s own proclaimed King of kings, Jesus had a divine right to all kingdoms, and it was to that right that Satan appealed in this last temptation. “Why should you have to wait for what is already rightfully yours?” he suggested to Jesus. “You deserve to have it now. Why do you submit as a Servant when you could reign as a King? I am only offering you what the Father has already promised.” Perhaps he reminded Jesus that God had said to the Son, “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession” (Ps. 2:8).

But Satan was offering the world to Jesus on his own corrupt terms, not God’s. That which the Father promised to the Son because of His righteous obedience, Satan offered to the Son in exchange for His unrighteous disobedience. God’s plan in testing the Son was to prove the Son’s worthiness to inherit and rule the world. Satan’s plan was to draw the Son away from that worthiness by enticing Him to grab the kingdom the Father promised to give Him. Instead of enduring the long, bitter, humiliating, and painful road to the cross—and the even longer wait in heaven for God’s time to be completed—Jesus could rule the world now!

Satan always comes at us in that way. He suggests that the world of business, the world of politics, the world of fame, or the world of whatever our heart desires can be ours—if only…! We can get what we want; we can fulfill our lusts and our fantasies; we can be somebody. All we must do to get those things of the world is to go after them in the way of the world—which is Satan’s way.

4:11

When Jesus said, “Begone,” the devil left Him, because he had no choice. The Lord gives all of His children the power to resist Satan. “Resist the devil,” James assures us, “and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). As he did with Jesus, Satan will not long stay away from us; but with every temptation God “will provide a way of escape” (1 Cor 10:13). For every temptation Satan leads us into, a way out is provided by the Father.

Satan’s temptations failed, but God’s testing succeeded. Jesus’ responses to the tempter were, in essence, “I will trust the Father; I will not presume on His Word; and I will not circumvent His will. I will take the Father’s good gifts from the Father’s own hand, in the Father’s own way, and in the Father’s own time.” Thus the King was accredited by the severest test.

After Satan left, angels came. How much better is the ministry of angels than the deceptions of Satan. At Jesus’ baptism the Father acknowledged Jesus’ worthiness by proclaiming, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Now the Father acknowledges Jesus’ worthiness by sending angels to minister to Him. At any time during His wilderness experience Jesus could have asked for and received the aid of “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53). But He waited for His Father to send them in His Father’s time.

From the whole we may learn:

In this struggle of the Son of God with the son of perdition we are given clear and applicable insights into Satan’s strategy against God and His people and also into Christ’s way of victory over the tempter. Side by side we are shown the way of danger and the way of escape, the way that leads to defeat and death.

First. No man, howsoever holy, is exempted from temptation: for God manifested to the flesh was tempted by the devil.

Secondly. That the best way to foil the adversary, is by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, Ephesians 6:17.

Thirdly. That to be tempted even to the greatest abominations (while a person resists) is not sin: for Christ was tempted to worship the Devil.

Fourthly. That there is no temptation which is from its own nature, or favoring circumstances, irresistible. God has promised to bruise even Satan under our feet.

One of the great truths of life, from which even the Son of God was not exempt on earth, is that after every victory comes temptation. God’s Word warns, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). When we have just succeeded in something important, we are invariably tempted to think that we made the accomplishment in our own power and that it is rightfully and permanently ours. When we are most exhilarated with success we are also most vulnerable to pride—and to failure.

At other times success causes us to feel invincible and to let down our guard, and when testings come we are not prepared for them. In the contest between Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, the Lord gave dramatic and miraculous evidence that He was the true God and that Elijah was His true prophet. First He sent fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices and wood that Elijah had soaked with water. Then, in answer to the prophet’s prayer, He sent rain to drought-stricken Judah (1 Kings 18:16-46). But within less than a day Elijah was in despair and asked the Lord to take his life. After being courageous and immovable before the 450 false prophets, he shriveled before the threats of Jezebel (19:1-4). From the height of exhilarating victory he quickly fell into deep despair.

No sooner had Israel been delivered from Egypt than Pharaoh came pursuing her with his army. No sooner had Hezekiah left the solemn Passover than Sennacherib came against him. No sooner had Paul received an abundance of revelations than he was assaulted with vile temptations.

And no sooner had Jesus experienced the first great testimony to His ministry than He faced the first great test of His ministry. After being anointed by the Holy Spirit and attested by the Father, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). Jesus now was in full consciousness of His divine mission, and His sacred humanity was filled through and through with the abiding presence and power of God. As never before, He was deeply satisfied as He contemplated the redemptive work He was sent to accomplish. After thirty years of waiting in obscurity He now was fully commissioned to begin His task. Then the devil tried to turn Him away.

Satan tempts us in the same basic ways he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. First, he will try to get us to distrust God’s providential care and to try to solve our problems, win our struggles, and meet our needs by our own plans and in our own power. Second, he will try to get us to presume on God’s care and forgiveness by willingly putting ourselves in the way of danger—whether physical, economic, moral, spiritual, or any other. Third, he will appeal to selfish ambitions and try to get us to use our own schemes to fulfill the promises God has made to us—which amounts to trying to fulfill God’s plan in Satan’s way.

Those three ways are reflected in 1 John 2:16—“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” The temptation for Jesus to turn stones into bread was to fulfill “the lust of the flesh” by using His divine powers for selfish means. The temptation to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple was to fulfill “the lust of the eyes” by showing off to the world and seeking position and fame through sensationalism. The temptation to grab immediate control of the kingdoms of the world was to satisfy the “boastful pride of life” by yielding to Satan’s power and will.

The story is told of a man who was trying to teach his dog obedience. He would take a large piece of meat and put it in the middle of the floor. Each time the dog attempted to take the meat the man would swat the dog and say, “No.” Soon the dog began to associate the swatting with the word no and learned to stop simply when the word was said. When meat was placed on the floor the dog would not look at it but rather at his master, waiting for his word of approval or denial.

That is essentially the message God teaches in this passage: “When temptation comes, don’t look at the temptation but at Jesus Christ. Keep your eyes fixed on Christ. Do not trust the outward circumstances and the easy way out, but continue to depend on Him fully – the essence of trust/faith.” We find help against temptation, just as we find help for everything else in the Christian life, by “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2). A hurdler soon learns that if he looks at the hurdles as he runs, he will trip and fall. From start to finish he looks only at the goal, and when he does that the hurdles are cleared in stride as each one is encountered. Keeping our eyes on our Lord Jesus Christ is our only hope of conquering temptation and faithfully running “with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). The writer of Hebrews, perhaps with Jesus’ wilderness temptations particularly in mind, tells us, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). Even more encouraging is the earlier declaration: “For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted” (Heb 2:18).

Our Lord Jesus has been there before us; He has met the worst Satan can give and has been victorious. More than that, He is eager to share that victory with His own people when they are tempted. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13).

We can have victory over temptation only by resisting in the way that Jesus resisted—by continuing in perfect trust in and complete obedience to God and His Word. The Lord Jesus did not in the least degree allow temptation to develop into desire, much less into sin (cf. James 1:13-15). He did not think the matter over or give it any consideration. He simply stood firmly in His Father’s will and said no!