The wilderness temptations according to Matthew 4

As we enter the season of Lent on Sunday, the lectionary for the First Sunday in Lent in Year A is of course Matt 4.1–11. The epistle for this Sunday is apt: Paul’s contrast in Romans 5.12–19 between the power of Sin and Death at work for those who are ‘in Adam’ contrasted with the power of Grace for those who are ‘in Christ’. You can see the video discussion of that passage here (and linked at the end of this article), and the video discussion of Matt 4 here, and also linked at the end.

It is worth noting that the lectionary and seasonal arrangement of the 40 days (46 calendar days minus the feast days of Sundays that exempt us from lenten discipline) corresponding to Jesus’ testing in the desert, then leading straight into Easter, does something quite odd. For Jesus, the days of testing and discipline then led into a time (three years according to the Fourth Gospel) of fruitful and powerful ministry, culminating in cross and resurrection, whereas in the calendar, this middle season is postponed till after Easter.

Perhaps part of the reflection here is that Jesus’ ministry (in healing, teaching and deliverance) is anticipatory of the victory of Easter, and is only released to us by the power of the resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, so this re-ordering does have theological value. And, as we shall see, Matthew does make connections between the time of testing and elements of the Passion narrative later in his gospel.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, Felix Just, on his Catholic Resources page, includes a helpful table of comparison of the three Synoptic accounts of the temptations:

This is helpful in both highlighting common themes drawn out by the three gospel writers, but also in highlighting different emphases.

A common theme is the tension between the apparent power of Satan, and the sovereignty of God in the whole event. Mark expresses this rather brutally—the Spirit ‘throws’ or ‘drives’ (ballo) Jesus into the desert—where Matthew and Luke are a little more measured. But all three are also clear that Jesus was not alone, contrary to some readings of this narrative, and also contrary to the rather miserable hymn I remember from school days, Lead us Heavenly Father, lead us, which included the lines:

lone and dreary, faint and weary,
through the desert thou didst go

The temptations might not have been a bag of laughs, but Jesus is not depicted as ‘lone and dreary’; in Mark he is ministered to by angels and the wild beasts, and Luke is clear that he goes ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and with the words of his Father’s blessing ringing in his ears, and returns for ministry ‘in the power of the Spirit’ (Luke 4.14). In Matthew, the sequences of tests builds to a triumphant climax where Jesus dismisses Satan forcefully, captured I think rather nicely in the painting above by Félix-Joseph Barrias, a forgotten 19th C painter who taught Edgar Degas.

Matthew’s account, in its opening, holds together the two forces at work in this incident more clearly than either Luke or Mark. For these others, the Spirit throws or leads Jesus into the desert, and he meets testing there. But in Matt 4.1, the Spirit leads Jesus (literally, ‘led up’, that is, up from the river Jordan) with the clear purpose of his testing by Satan. Although Satan appears to have freedom and power, this whole episode is actually firmly placed under the sovereignty of Jesus’ loving Father.

This influences how we might translate the verb peirazo. Although the traditional translation characterises this as the ‘temptation’ of Jesus (perhaps under the theological influence of ‘he was tempted as we are yet without sin’ Heb 4.15), elsewhere in Matthew the verb is used in the quite different sense of Jesus being ‘tested’ by human opponents (Matt 16.1, 19.3, 22.18, 35)—so we should probably understand in this way here as well. For Matthew, this aligns Jesus’ 40 days with the (roughly) 40 years of Israel in the wilderness, where God ‘tested’ Israel (ekpeirazo) to ‘see what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments’ (Deut 8.2).

Mark does not even mention question of fasting in his summary account. Luke (perhaps writing for those less familiar with the biblical discipline of fasting?) emphasises the human reality that he ate nothing and so was famished; but for Matthew this is a period of ‘forty days and nights’ drawing his customary parallel with the experience of Moses (Ex 24.18, 34.28, Deut 9.9) of supernatural provision. Given Matthew’s interest in Elijah along with Moses, there is also likely an echo of Elijah’s time in the wilderness in 1 Kings 19.8. Surely the statement ‘He was hungry’ must rank as the greatest understatement in the New Testament!

Jesus’ opponent here is described using three different terms: ‘devil’ (v 1); ‘the tempter’ (v 3); and ‘Satan’ (on Jesus’ lips, v 10). He is later described as ‘Beelzebul’ (‘Lord of the flies’) in Matt 12.24, and ‘the Evil One’ in Matt 13.19. The Old Testament refers to this figure in different ways (notably in 1 Chron 21.1, Job 1–2 and Zech 3.1–2), but without this developed sense of Satan as the cosmic opponent of God and his people. This idea developed in the intertestamental period, and it was a Jewish understanding that the early followers of Jesus continued. The gathering together of the diverse OT titles, and basic characterisation of Satan as the ‘accuser’ (the meaning of satan in Hebrew and diabolos in Greek) is found in Rev 12.7–10).

Some interpreters have suggested that these three tests were related to Jesus’ Messianic agenda: was Jesus going to quickly gather the crowds by impressive displays of divine power? But that thesis fails on two counts. First, Jesus does indeed perform ‘signs and wonders’ in his ministry, and this does indeed gather ‘great crowds’, which is one of Matthew’s distinctive emphases. Second, the language of testing here has no audience in view other than Jesus himself. In fact (both in Luke and Matthew), the first and second (for Luke, first and third) tests rest on the challenge: ‘If you are the Son of God…’ This both looks back to the word of affirmation of Jesus by the Father at his baptism (Matt 3.17) but also anticipates the test all the way to the cross, and Jesus’ obedience to death, in the taunts of the crowd (Matt 27.40).

Jesus’ response to the first test (as for the others) is to cite Scripture, offering a well-rehearsed model for all his followers. It is notable that all three of his citations come from Deut 6–8, the passages following the central confession of Israel that ‘God is One’, the Shema (Deut 6.4). (It has been suggested that the three temptations followed the structure of the Shema in corresponding to the ‘heart, soul and strength’ with which we are to love God—but this is not entirely convincing.) These are the texts which orthodox Jewish boys still need to learn by heart and recite at their bar mitzvah. Jewish Matthew records a fuller section of the verse than gentile-focussed Luke.

The first part of Deut 8.3 (which Jesus does not cite) sets the context of the test as teaching Israel that there are more important things than material provision—even in relation to the apparently essential question of food and drink. Jesus’ unrealistic practice here surely shapes his apparently unrealistic teaching that closely follows in Matt 6.25–34; Jesus expects us to learn the lessons of trust that he has learnt. There is a strange ironic pun in this saying: rather than live by what goes into our mouths and thus our stomachs, we live by what comes out of God’s mouth, but goes in to our ears and thus our hearts. (There is a complementary bodily irony in Jesus’ teaching about what makes someone clean or unclean in Matt 15.11—not what goes into the mouth which then enters the stomach, but what comes out of the mouth which arises in the heart).

In both the second and third tests, the devil ‘takes’ or ‘transports’ Jesus to a high mountain, then to the temple in Jerusalem. Although this is the usual word that Matthew uses, for example, in Joseph taking Mary in Matt 2.13 and Jesus taking his disciples with him in Matt 17.1, we don’t need to interpret this as a literal journey. Apart from anything else, it is physically impossible to see ‘all the kingdoms of the world’ from any vantage point, so we should consider this as an exercise of the imagination, as indeed many film renditions of this episode suggest (compare Ezekiel’s visionary trip to Jerusalem in Ezek 8.1–3). For this reason, there is no need to try and identify exactly where the ‘pinnacle’ (pterygion) of the temple is. You can still sense, in Jerusalem today, the vertiginous drop from the corner of the Temple Mount into the Kidron Valley below, and in Jesus’ day it would have been even further; to fall from there would mean certain death.

If Jesus can cite Scripture, then so can the devil! James concurs with the narrative claim made implicitly here: it is possible to know Scripture and know doctrine (James 2.19) but not ‘know’ God in trusting relationship. Jesus is here not disputing the truth of Ps 91.11, but is disputing the devil’s use of it. When does looking to God’s provision and care cross over into making God our servant, so that he answers our prayers as a response to our demands on him, rather than as an answer to trust for his provision? The citation of Deut 6.16 looks back to the episode of Exodus 17.1–7, where Israel crossed just that line.

The sequential markers in Matthew (‘then’ v 5 and ‘again’ in v 8) suggest that this was the original order of the tests, which Luke has altered to emphasise the importance of Jerusalem as the climax of Jesus’ loyalty. But for Matthew and Jesus, and again reflecting the Shema, the test underlying all the other tests is this one: whom do we really worship? Here, Satan’s mask falls away, and all pretence at ‘biblical’ justification disappears from view. There is no sense of unwarranted hubris on Satan’s part in the claim he makes; he is repeatedly described in the NT as ‘the ruler of this world’ (e.g. John 12.31, 2 Cor 4.4, Eph 6.11, 1 John 5.19, Rev 12.9–17) which means that it his real power that Jesus overcomes in these tests, as a sign pointing to the real victory of the cross which releases the real power of the Spirit to effect real victory in the lives of Jesus’ followers.

There can be only one answer for Jesus: that we should ‘worship’ (the meaning of ‘fear’ in Deut 6.13) the Lord our God. Jesus summarily dismisses Satan with the same wording that he dismisses the suggestion of Peter that he should avoid suffering in Matt 16.23.

When eventually Jesus is able to claim on another mountain that ‘all authority has been given to me’, it will be as a result not of kowtowing to Satan but of suffering in obedience to God’s purpose, and then it will be all authority not only on earth but also in heaven, an authority which the devil was not able to offer (Matt 28.18). (R T France, NICNT, p135)

Though Luke comments explicitly that Satan will return ‘at the opportune time’, we can see implicit hints of this in Matthew’s later narrative. In the meantime, Matthew tells us, ‘behold’ angels come and minister to him, using his characteristic idou to communicate the suddenness of the change, as Satan departs, and the angelic aid promised in Ps 91.11 comes to him in God’s timing and with his provision.

Two final things are worth noting. First, the only way that we could have this narrative (assuming it is not simply imagined) is to note that (here and elsewhere) Jesus must have been ‘in the unfortunate habit of regaling his disciples with his personal experiences of God’. Perhaps this is not a bad habit for any leader to adopt.

Secondly, the temptations of Jesus are often preached as though they were moral examples for us to follow: we should go into the desert; we should face our demons; we should quote from Scripture; and so on. But to preach in this way is in danger of missing the most important thing in preaching: not to put ourselves in the narrative as if we were the most important subject, but to note what God is doing and what God has done. The focus for all three gospels writers is that Jesus has undone the failures of both Israel and Adam; when we are incorporate into Jesus, we are incorporated into this victory, and we share in it by grace rather than by our own efforts. That does not mean, as we face temptations and challenges this Lent, we can avoid the challenge of discipline and effort. But we face these things knowing that Jesus conquered them, in the power of the Spirit, and that the same Spirit is God’s gift to us, and it is his presence that brings victory and enables us to be ‘more than conquerors’ (Rom 8.37; compare Rev 2.7 and parallels).

Jesus is here not so much a model for us to follow, but a saviour for us to be rescued and secured by.

Join Ian and James as they discuss this text, its interpretation, and the implications for preaching and discipleship.