and having fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he hungered.
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And the tempter coming up to him said, If thou be Son of God, speak, that these stones may become loaves of bread.
God has just called Jesus His beloved Son. Now, hungry after forty days in the desert, He hears a suggestion that opens with "if" and sounds harmless.
One writer puts the two moments side by side:
The devil always sows doubts of the Divine Word. Compare Matthew 3:17 with Matthew 4:3 and 6, and see how clearly this comes out. God has just said, "This is My beloved Son." At once the devil says twice over, "If You are the Son of God." The little word "if" is a great favourite with the devil!
Satan uses the same tactic on believers, and it can hide behind humility:
Whatever Satan's aim may be, this is one main part of his tactics. He slips in a doubt — a doubt about our own relationship with God. "If You are the Son of God." Now, search the word of God as you may, never will you find His Spirit leading a soul to doubt... it shows how deeply subtle Satan is. He has made God's own children his instruments. They allow doubts in themselves, and they also help to raise doubts in others. They often excuse it by saying that a lack of confidence with God is a sign of humility, but that plea is mistaken.
That word "if" works in two directions:
You may look at that word "if" in two ways. It casts a doubt on His relationship to God. Or it gets Him to act on the fact of that relationship... "If you are really God's Son, command this stone to become bread." That is: God has kept you hungry. Now your opportunity has arrived. Take yourself out of God's hand, for you are able to make those stones into bread and satisfy yourself. As far as we can tell, the Lord Jesus had performed no miracle up till this moment, but Satan had a true idea of who He was.
Nothing in the suggestion looks wicked:
The power was His. The need was real. The hunger was sinless. Why, then, should He not use His power and make the stones of the ground supply His needs? The suggestion is so simple and plausible. It seems to fit so well with the truth of what He was. And it is so natural for us to use what power we have to meet our own needs. So to any of us it might naturally seem to be no evil suggestion at all — no temptation. But it was.
Satan asks Him to command. His refusal rests on the place He had taken as man:
What subtlety! For did He not have divine power and the right as the Son of God to use it? But He had become man, and man's place was to obey... He might have said, "I am God." Then no rebel creature would have stood up against Him. But there would have been no example for us. He overcame by keeping the place He had taken as man, and that was to obey.
His obedience was not grudging:
He never had a will to wish to go the other way... It was as though He said, No, I am a servant, I cannot command, I obey... The Father's will was His motive for everything.
The attack came from outside Him. There was nothing inside to answer it.
He had no sin whatever. It was not only that He never sinned, but that He had no sin; and this makes all the difference possible... In His nature as man there was no evil for the devil to work on. There was evil outside Him.
Two earlier tests stand behind this one. The first is Eden:
Satan tried to triumph over the Seed of the woman as he had triumphed over the first man. But he found that He was quite another kind of Man... the garden of Eden was very different from the desert in which Jesus was hungry after fasting forty days. Adam ate of forbidden fruit to be as gods, Jesus refused to satisfy His hunger without a word from God.
The second is the nation fed daily in the desert. His reply reaches back to that history:
Our Lord refers to Deuteronomy. He points to the manna, the daily food of Israel, which meant depending on God... He had brought them out into the wilderness as His firstborn son. There He put them to the test. The test was this: were they content with God, and with the food He provided for them day by day? Sadly, they were not!
- Doubt first. The tempter opens with "if," aimed at a relationship God had just announced. He uses the same word on believers.
- Doubt aims at independence. The invitation is to step out of God's hand and meet a real need by feeding Himself.
- Independence hides in harmless things. The hunger was sinless. The power really was His. That is why the suggestion looks like no temptation at all.
- Obedience answers it. Having become man, He would not command where His place was to obey. The Father's will decided everything.
- Victory where others fell. Adam failed in a garden of plenty. Israel failed on daily manna. The Second Man, hungry in a desert, would not move without a word from God.