February 22, 2026
Matthew 4:1-11
I think that everyone here knows that I am a songwriter. I started writing music (or should I say started trying to write music) when I was a senior in high school and pretty much all of those early efforts were truly abysmal. I continued writing when I got to college and truthfully, the results weren’t a whole lot better. But when I got to college, I started really learning about how music is constructed and this newfound knowledge gave me the ability to analyze music, to take some of the big hit songs and to see how they were constructed and to find out what made them “tick”; what made them the hits that they were. And so, I bought dozens of books of sheet music across multiple genres and started learning how successful songwriters constructed their hit songs. Lennon and McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Barry Manilow, Paul Simon, Carole King… all of these artists contributed to my understanding of the craft of songwriting and while I have never reached the heights that these giants of the songwriting profession have, through what I learned from them, I have been blessed to write a few songs that have been played, literally, all over the world.
And though none of these songwriters whose music that I studied have a clue as to who I am or how much their work impacted me, I am indebted to each of them because I learned how to write songs by studying the works of those who knew what they were doing and were doing it at the highest level. And regardless of what your discipline is, be it music, or art, or business, or faith, we learn best by learning from those who know what they are doing… and are doing it at the highest level.
Our story today brings us to the temptations of Jesus. Jesus has just been baptized by John. The Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven declared Jesus to be God’s Son, who God loves. And then, immediately on the heels of these miraculous events, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And for clarity, the Greek refers to the devil as διαβόλου (Dee-áb-lows) which the Topical Lexicon describes as “A single, personal, supernatural being who stands in absolute opposition to God and His redemptive purposes. He is neither a mere force nor an impersonal principle but is consistently portrayed as a conscious, strategic adversary with intellect, emotion, and will.”
I think that there may be a tendency to imagine this confrontation between Jesus and Satan as being the physical discussion that the Bible seems to describe. But I think that the idea of a guy with horns, a tail, and a red suit appearing to Jesus in the wilderness actually does a disservice to the depth of the message of this story. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are”. And so, the temptations of Jesus would have been subtle, just as the temptations that plague us tend to be subtle as well. It’s not that Satan appeared to Jesus and conversed with Him, it’s that Jesus had an idea, and that He had to wrestle with that idea in order to determine what His faithful response should be. And just like the songwriter or the artist who studies the works of the masters in order to know how to achieve a desired result, Jesus goes directly to God’s word; no discussion, no argument, no negotiation, just the Word of God, refuting the lies that Satan uses to cast doubt on the goodness or the faithfulness of God.
And so, today I first would like to look at the three temptations of Jesus and help us to understand how each of these temptations spoke more deeply than just the simple acts of miraculous manufacture of bread, or of the protection of angels, or the resisting of a very tempting offer. And then, we need to talk about how these temptations affect us and how we are to face temptation.
In the first temptation, Jesus is starving after fasting for 40 days. I get hungry if I miss lunch! And so, the devil makes his first suggestion. “If (or in the Greek this word can also mean ‘since’) you are the Son of God, why in the world are you hungry when you have the power to turn these stones into bread? After all, if your Father really loves you, he wouldn’t want you to be hungry now, would He? The wording in the Greek indicates the fact that the Devil is neither questioning, nor denying, the Sonship of Jesus. Osborne says, “He is not challenging the truth of [Jesus’ Sonship] but trying to tempt Jesus into using His Sonship selfishly, [centering] on His elevated status rather than the humble path set by God”. [1]
You see, at its essence, this isn’t a temptation about satisfying hunger, it is a temptation about self-gratification. It is every temptation that we ever have when we need or want something, and don’t receive it. And when this happens, sometimes we may go about obtaining what we want in our own way, almost always without regard for how our actions may affect others. In the human pursuit of… stuff, other people may be disadvantaged, marginalized, exploited… Why do we think poverty exists? Or hunger? Or crime? Or discrimination? These things are the collateral damage that is the result of the human pursuit of self-gratification. But God’s plan would never permit these kind of things to happen. God asks us to trust Him that He will provide for our needs and do so in ways that would never harm others. Platt says, “All of us have desires that are built into us, desires that are good – needs in our bodies and cravings in our souls. But God has also created us to look to Him as a good Father, who satisfies those desires. That was the point in the Garden of Eden, wasn’t it? Satan suggested to Adam and Eve that God was withholding good from them, so they decided to fulfill their desire apart from God’s will”. [2] But where Adam and Eve failed, Jesus succeeded. And He succeeded by turning to scripture, responding to the devil that “humanity doesn’t live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”.
In the second temptation, the devil tells Jesus again that if, or since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple because scripture promises that God will protect you. The devil was referring to the northeast corner of the temple mount where from the top of the wall to the Kidron Valley below was a drop of about 500 feet, Josephus described that height as “dizzying”. If Jesus had jumped from that height and landed lightly on His feet, it certainly would have garnered some attention. But God’s plan for Jesus to be made known did not involve a spectacular display of His power. Instead Jesus relied on reaching people through loving care on a one on one basis.
And like stones to bread, this temptation is about more than just attracting attention. This is a temptation to question whether God is really present and active in our lives. The temptation is to ask God to prove Himself. Jesus’ temptation story closely parallels the story of the Israelites traveling in the wilderness for forty years, and in Exodus 17 there is a story about the Israelites complaining because they didn’t have water. Of course, God provided when Moses stuck a rock, causing water to gush forth from the rock, but before God provided the water, the people had asked, “Is the Lord among us or not?” And truthfully, when you are human the temptation to ask this question can arise a LOT. There are so many times in our lives when things aren’t going our way that we may want to ask God where He is. And you know what? That is perfectly OK. It’s something the writers of the Psalms did all the time. What isn’t OK is to demand from God proof of His existence, or of His provision, or of His protection. Jesus’ simple response to the devil came from Deuteronomy 6:16. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”. If we truly trust in God, then we have no need for Him to prove Himself.
In the third and final temptation, the devil takes Jesus to a high place and in a moment, shows Him all the kingdoms of the world and all of their earthly glory and offers it all to Jesus if Jesus will bow down and worship him. And we need to think about this temptation for just a minute because God has already promised Jesus that all of this will be His, so what exactly is it that the devil is offering to Jesus? Well, God’s path to Jesus’ glory goes through the cross. Jesus knows that He will have to suffer horribly and face an excruciating death on the cross. And that Jesus’ glory will come as a result of His redeeming of humankind through His death. What the devil is offering is the glory without the sacrifice.
How often do we face the temptation to cut corners? To take a shortcut or to compromise on some key issue in order to accomplish what we need to accomplish? This is such a common temptation that it actually has its own axiom, “The end justifies the means”. So much of humanity is perfectly OK with choosing morally questionable ways of achieving what it believes to be a good result. But God calls us to follow Him, to trust that His ways are right and just, and to honor and obey Him in all that we say and do. “Worship the Lord your God and SERVE Him only”, Jesus said. No cut corners, no shortcuts, no rationalizations, just devoted service.
Now, at this point we may just be thinking “how are we to go about doing all of this?” And the answer is: we won’t. We are going to be tempted and at times, we are going to fail. And the point of today’s story is NOT for us to try to memorize scripture so that we can defeat Satan just like Jesus did, we can’t defeat Satan. We can’t live without succumbing to his lies and his temptations. But the Good News is that we don’t have to, because the victory over sin and death has already been won by Jesus. And it’s not a matter of following His example so that we can overcome temptation; it’s that through following HIM we are forgiven of those failures and reconciled to God. Jesus has already defeated Satan, and Satan knows it. And so, Satan does what he can to try to interfere in our relationship with God by creating doubt in us. Does God really love us? Is God really present and active in our lives? Will God really see to it that our needs are provided? Does God really have our eternal best interests at heart? And even though every one of us knows in our hearts that each of these things is true, it doesn’t mean that, when things sometimes become difficult, we won’t be asking these very questions. But when we do ask these questions, we, as believers, know that we can turn to Jesus for strength and forgiveness not only because He has promised us strength and forgiveness, but also because we know that He has experienced every temptation that we have, and we know that He understands on a deeply personal level the extent of the difficulties that life sometimes throws at us, the depth of the grief that will sometime befall us, and the challenges that we face as Satan uses temptation to try to derail our faith.
My dear friends, though sin remains and will continue until the day that our faith becomes sight, don’t let the lies of Satan discourage you. God has forgiven us and tells us truthfully that as far as the east is from the west, He has removed our sins from us. And all that remains for us to do is to love Him and to serve Him with all of our hearts.
[1] Grant R. Osborne, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Matthew, Pg. 132
[2] David Platt, Exalting Jesus in Mattthew, Pg. 69
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