New Testament Doctrine: Matthew 4:1-11

The only mystery here is what each of these three temptations represent. There are at least two levels for answering this question. The first level is the background story of False Messianic Expectations. One of my professors in college was a pioneer in this field of study. The source material is difficult to find these days because it’s related to the formation of the Talmud, something Jewish scholars have tried to keep away from Gentile eyes.

In essence, each of these three temptations was the question of just what kind of Messiah Jesus would be. Would He cultivate the existing Jewish leadership by playing up to their perverted expectations, and thus force them to recognize Him as Messiah (a false Messiah), or would He stick with the actual prophesies in Scripture and obey His Father?

The second level is to recognize a pattern to these temptations, and how that pattern fits in with teachings elsewhere in Scripture. It shows up first in Genesis 3:1-6. In particular, Eve was tempted to eat the Forbidden Fruit by three issues: It would fill the stomach like food, was alluring to the eyes, and could make one an expert “like God, deciding what is good and evil” (human boasting to be as capable as God).

The same pattern shows up in 1 John 2:15-17. Those same three temptations are declared as the root of fleshly desires: Lust of the Flesh, Lust of the Eyes and the Boastful Pride of Life. Thus, the Temptations in the Wilderness are the Devil using the basic trio of human fleshly desires to trick Jesus into becoming precisely the kind of false Messiah the Jewish leadership were expecting. It was a list of demands they made to anyone claiming to be the Messiah, and there had been several candidates.

Right after His baptism ritual at the hands of John the Baptist, Jesus was led by His own convictions to face this temptation in His cousin’s old stomping grounds, that rocky desert area on the northwest side of the Dead Sea. He fasted for “forty days” — a common Hebrew expression meaning more than a month, and seldom marking days with any numerical precision. We know today that this was long enough to thoroughly cleanse the body of all toxins, and it’s about this time when the appetite, which goes to sleep after three days, reawakens with a vengeance.

So Satan arrives at that moment and suggests that Jesus could easily assuage His hunger (Lust of the Flesh). Those flat round rocks looked just like the standard pita bread eaten by everyone in the Ancient Near East. The idea was to play up to the fleshly appetites of Jewish leaders in their insistence that the Messiah would turn stones into bread, among other things, to provide for the material comforts of His nation. This particular materialistic expectation went on and on about how the wealth of the world would be transported to Jerusalem at the Messiah’s command.

Jesus’ answer was that the flesh didn’t get a vote in the matter. Everything in human existence must be surrendered to divine revelation. Adam and Eve could have eaten anything in the Garden they wanted except that one fruit, but the Forbidden Tree symbolized the choice to abandon God’s boundaries and to reason out one’s own. We note in passing Jesus used a bit of Hebrew humor to respond, emphasizing that the human mouth was the symbolic problem. It’s not what you put in your mouth that should guide your decisions, but what comes from God’s mouth that directs your path. The food of the soul is the Word of God.

Next, Satan transports Him to the Pinnacle of the Temple, which we believe is that southeast corner of the Temple Plaza, a very high terrace roughly 70 feet (21.3m) above the sloped hillside on which this corner stood. Satan suggested that Jesus jump off so that angels could catch Him and bring Him down safely. And well those angels would, if Jesus commanded it for some valid reason. However, Satan was trying to bring about a spectacle (Lust of the Eyes) that would force the Jewish leadership to acknowledge His divinity. The verse from Psalm 91 that Satan quotes was one the scholars had specifically pointed out, and had said their kind of Messiah would jump off the Pinnacle to announce Himself to them.

Jesus responded by saying that we should not fling a challenge in God’s face, as if His failure to protect us would be an embarrassment to Him and His glory. This was a particular aspect of Talmudic teaching, that by Jewish logic, God was obliged to do certain things to protect His interests on the earth.

It doesn’t matter what high mountain Satan used for his final attempt to derail Jesus’ ministry. The point is that Satan could point out several kingdoms surrounding Judea from several different peaks in that area, and some lands quite far distant, and would have used this as the starting point to cast a false vision of ruling the world (Boastful Pride of Life). It was not a divine rule he offered, but a very human political reign, one that would have eventually ended when God was ready, not when Satan falsely promised. This was by far the most obvious claim Jewish leaders made, that the Messiah would restore their Jewish political independence. More, the False Messianic Expectations would require Him to command the whole Gentile world to come and surrender themselves as slaves to the Jewish people, so that each Jewish household would have its own army of slaves.

All Jesus had to do was swear feudal allegiance to Satan. To this Jesus answered with the most obvious: There is only one God of Creation. We are to swear loyalty to Him and no other. This answer jumps two or three levels above what Satan was talking about at that moment. It’s not that Satan had no control over human politics; it’s that his control was highly limited. Satan served God’s whims when it comes to humanity outside the Covenant, and even more constrained within the Covenant. He was just the agent of temptation and destruction, and nothing he offered was long term, much less eternal.

Nothing good came from eating the Forbidden Fruit. All Satan’s promises were half-truths, at best. And that hasn’t changed since Eden. Satan had managed to make the Jews materialistic enough to reason that God’s eternal promises could only mean human comfort in this fallen realm of existence. The real issue here is that Jesus refused to support that false doctrine. He planned to argue against it from the ancient Hebrew mystical point of view on which the Scripture stands.

Try to keep this teaching in the back of your mind as we move forward with the series. This fundamental concept will come back again and again.