They will be harsh and barren places in life where we will be tempted to transgress God’s word as a way out of our painful and trying conditions, just as Jesus also was tempted. Our “wildernesses”, or the places and circumstances in which our faith is tested, will take different forms and manifest themselves in different ways. Though the devil promised Jesus the kingdoms of the world in this third temptation, they were not his to give, and it was not in his power to give them, because as God’s word tells us in Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, The world, and those who dwell in it.”Īs believers, there will be times in our lives when we will be led, as Jesus was, by the Spirit of the Lord into a “wilderness” of our own difficult and trying circumstances, where we also will be tempted to transgress God’s word. Again, Jesus met the devil’s temptation with Scripture, this time from Deuteronomy 6:13 when He said: “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (Matthew 4:10). Jesus answered this second temptation of the devil, this time quoting Deuteronomy 6:16: “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7).įinally, in his third temptation, the devil used a false promise, an outright lie, to tempt Jesus when he promised to give Him all of the kingdoms of the world if He would bow down to worship him. He taunted Jesus by saying that if He really is the Son of God, then He should throw Himself down off of the high place where they were, because the Scripture says: “He will command his angels concerning You, and On their hands they will bear You up, So that you will not strike Your foot against a stone.” (Psalm 91:11- 12). In his second temptation, the devil cleverly tried to use Scripture himself in an attempt to justify his challenge to Jesus. Jesus responded to this first temptation with a Scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3, when He said: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4). First, he said to Jesus that if He really is the Son of God, then He should command the stones before Him to become bread. The devil’s first two temptations are a type of brazen and arrogant challenge in which he is essentially saying to Jesus that if He really is the Son of God, then He should prove it. After He had fasted forty days and nights, He was hungry, and this is when the tempter came to Him with his deceptions, which included twisting the meaning of Scriptures in an attempt to coerce Him into transgressing the word of God. The Scripture tells us that Jesus was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. In Matthew 4:1-11 we find the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
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