Day 4: Temptation in the Wilderness

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him into the holy city. He 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 will put his angels in charge of you.’ and, On their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’” Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory. He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him. Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”* From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers: Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers for men.” They immediately left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them. They immediately left the boat and their father, and followed him. Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. The report about him went out into all Syria. They brought to him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics; and he healed them. Great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan followed him.

If you’ve been an Orthodox Christian for a year or more, then you’re probably used to the idea of a forty day fast, since we have two of them – the Nativity Fast, in preparation for the celebration of our Lord’s Incarnation and birth; and Great Lent, the period before Holy Week and Pascha. The fasting rules for Great Lent are the most restrictive of the year, except, perhaps, for Great and Holy Friday, when those who are able to do so refrain from eating or drinking from the end of the Matins service on Thursday evening until after the Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning. Those who are unable to keep this rule are encouraged to take as little as possible, and so to participate in this fast. The fasting rules for the Nativity Fast are the least restrictive. It’s a good season for those who like fish! Of course, it’s one thing to say “fast” when we mean, “to abstain from eating certain foods while eating others”; and to say “fast” meaning no food or drink. In all probability, our Lord Jesus did the latter – nothing at all to eat, and nothing at all to drink. Keep that in mind during the next fasting season when that craving for a cheeseburger strikes you!

The desert is a harsh and unforgiving environment, and those who can endure forty days in the desert are rare; and the survivors of the desert are transformed: tougher, stronger, and with an adamant will. The author Leon Uris, in several of his novels about the Holy Land, draws on this image of the desert as a place where men are “forged,” as if by a blacksmith. Frank Herbert used the same imagery and language in his Dune science-fiction novels. In the Orthodox Church, there are many, many saints who went into the desert, and so were transformed: St. Anthony the Great, who did physical battle with demons while in the desert; and St. Mary of Egypt, who was purified by her ascetic labors in the desert – to name just two. It is also clear from the language at times in the Bible that the desert was a place to be avoided; a habitation of demons and unclean things, a source of terror.

If, or how often our Lord did battle with demons, we do not know. We do know that, at the end of this forty day period, the devil came to our Lord, Who was hungry and thirsty, and sought to have the Lord use His powers to turn stones into bread. Two other temptations follow. In each case, our Lord – the Word of God – responds by quoting the Word of God – the Scriptures – and, by doing so, defeating the attempts at the devil to ensnare Him, as Adam and Eve had been ensnared, and so led into sin.

St. John Chrysostom tells us that our Lord entered the desert and fasted so as to give the devil the opportunity to wrestle with Him. He did so immediately after His baptism in order to teach us that we also, after we have been baptized, will have to endure, and struggle against, temptations. Knowing this, we should not be surprised that we are being tempted; and we should not lose our poise, nor the peace of God within us, but to wrestle with the temptations as our Lord did. He makes a point of telling us also that we are most vulnerable when we are alone, as Eve was tempted at a time when she was not with Adam, and as our Lord, alone in the desert, was tempted. The devil is less likely to challenge us when we are with others, and especially with those who share our faith and hope in Christ. The saint also wants us to know the value of fasting as a weapon of spiritual warfare against the devil and against temptations. We are far more likely to yield ourselves to temptation when food and drink are abundant, and we have filled ourselves with all manner of tasty delights. We are also meant to follow the example of our Lord in doing battle, drawing upon God as the source of our strength.

The first temptation is not so much to make stones into bread as it is a challenge: “If you are the Son of God…” Prove it, the devil says, to provoke a reaction. Our Lord’s response tells us that we are to obey the devil in nothing. St. John Chrysostom points out that this applies even when the devil is trying to provoke us into doing something that, on the face of it, would be a good thing. The focal point is obedience. It was the failure of Adam and Eve to be obedient to God that caused them to be cast out of Paradise; and their failure was initiated by listening to the devil. They were no match for his cunning and guile; what makes us think we would do any better?

The second temptation also incorporates the challenge of identity: “If you are the Son of God…” The devil is saying, “You were called a beloved Son when you were baptized; let’s have some proof.” He advances his argument by going to the same source as did our Lord in countering the first temptation; the words of Scripture, saying, “for it is written…” How does our Lord respond? “You shall not test the Lord, your God.” Here St. John Chrysostom tells us that we do not overcome the devil or temptations by some miraculous powers, but by patient self-control and by enduring suffering, doing nothing to prove anything, or to gain any attention or glory. The act of casting down is the work of the devil; the work of our Lord Jesus Christ is to raise us up once more the place from which we had fallen, and He displays His power to the devil and to us, not by jumping off a high place to be carried by angels, but by destroying death and setting free death’s captives.

The first temptation was an attempt to exploit “the belly” – our desire for ease and comfort, and food and drink with which to satisfy ourselves. The second temptation was an attempt to exploit our desire for glory and honor and recognition. The third temptation attempts to exploit our desire for wealth, for its own sake, or for the sake of other things or pleasures that wealth enables us to obtain. The Lord is offered the wealth of the world if He will worship the devil, who presents himself as if the world God created had been his to bestow. Our Lord replies by commanding the devil to leave; God alone is to be worshipped, and no one else. Having failed, the devil withdrew, and angels came and ministered to the Lord – presumably, with food and drink for Him after His fast.

All three passages cited by our Lord in His battle with the devil are drawn from the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy means, “second law”; not in the sense of a replacement for the first, but a retelling of the Law that God had given to Moses on Mount Sinai. At that time, Moses spent forty days (fasting) atop the mountain, being given the Law by God. Now, as the people of God were about to cross the Jordan River and enter into the land promised by God to Abraham and his descendents, Moses is teaching them the Law for the last time, as he will not be entering the land, because he had disobeyed a command God had given during the Exodus. Speaking of how God had led them through the desert to test them and try them and to find out what was in their hearts, Moses said:

He humbled you, and allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. (Deut. 8:3)

At the second temptation, our Lord quotes Deuteronomy 6:16: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God, as you tempted him at Massah.” Massah is the name given to a place where the people of the Exodus camped, but had no water. They complained to Moses, and demanded that he give them water. Moses responded by asking why they quarreled with him, and why did they want to test God? In part, this situation has its roots in an earlier confrontation when the people, hungry, complained, saying, “If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death." (Exod. 16:3) The Lord acted in this way:

Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days. (Exod. 16:4-5)

The Lord put His people to the test at that time; now, at Massah, the people put God to the test. It is as if they are saying, “You gave us food; now give us water.” The miracle of the manna was not enough to convince them that God would provide for all their needs. When we are faced with temptation, we are to remember that, as God was with His people as they left behind the land in which they had suffered as slaves to come to “a land flowing with milk and honey,” as God had promised, so will He also be with us and provide what we need as we make the journey from this world, in which we were slaves to sin and captives of death, to the kingdom of heaven, where we will once again live in the intimate presence of God. (The events at Massah are found in the 17th chapter of the book of Exodus, if you want to read it for yourself – not a bad idea!)

The third temptation is met by a quotation from Deuteronomy 6:13 – “You shall fear the Lord your God; and you shall serve him, and shall swear by his name.” Now, you will undoubtedly have noticed that there is an apparent inconsistency between what is written in Deuteronomy and what St. Matthew has written. “Fear” isn’t the same as “worship.” What’s going on? Something interesting! If you look at the Hebrew text for the passage from Deuteronomy, the word used there means “fear” – but not fear in the sense of “terror.” Rather, as the Psalmist says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 110:10); and which the author of the Book of Proverbs quotes, and enlarges upon. However, St. Matthew would, in all probability, not have been quoting from the Hebrew text; rather, he would be quoting from the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (what we Christians call the Old Testament) from Hebrew into Greek. Here again, a different word in Greek is used when comparing St. Matthew’s text; but the difference is significant in that the intermediate work in the Septuagint actually transitions from the Hebrew word, “fear,” to the word St. Matthew uses, “worship.” The word found in the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy has the meanings, “to fear, be terrified” – touching the word in Hebrew; and also, “to reverence with fear and respect toward God.” (The same word is used in Ps. 110.)

It’s late, this is long, and most of the rest of the text is certainly clear. The last portion I want to point out is that, with St. John the Baptizer imprisoned, our Lord takes up the message His cousin had been proclaiming. He tells His listeners, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Indeed: the One Who will open the way for us to enter that kingdom is now in our midst.

To close, let me invite you to listen to a podcast prepared by a friend, Reader Steve Robinson. Posted today, he reflects on time he is spending at a monastery as he is there helping them to drywall and refinish their chapel, which is Steve’s craft – and let me tell you, he does excellent work. His podcast, posted today, is about marriage and monasticism; but he also spends time talking about the desert. This chapter’s setting in the desert, and what Steve has to say, are congruent; his podcasts are worth taking the time to listen. I recommend that you do so by going to his website, Steve the Builder. You should also check out his blog, Pithless Thoughts, and his other podcast (with Bill Gould), Our Life in Christ. Bookmark these sites. You’ll want to go back!

Scripture texts are taken from the World English Bible.