Introduction
The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus, our great high priest, was tempted in every way like us, yet without sin (Heb 4:15). The fact that our High Priest understands what it means to be tempted by sin like we are is meant to comfort us. But, to be honest, it’s hard for me to picture Jesus going through the same temptations I face, and that’s partly because the Gospels don’t show Jesus as being constantly tempted by sin. They don’t depict Jesus walking around, seeing a beautiful woman and feeling tempted, or finding an unattended bag of money and feeling the urge to take it for himself. Instead, the Gospels focus on one specific moment in Jesus’ life when he is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and tempted by Satan.
But the problem is that those temptations, at least on the surface, don’t seem like the kind you and I face every day. Satan isn’t tempting me to walk outside and turn stones into bread. Satan isn’t taking me to the top of a tall building and telling me to throw myself off. And Satan isn’t exactly whispering in my ear to worship him. Although maybe he is, and we just don’t realize it. We’ll get back to that.
What I want to do in this sermon is revisit each of the three temptations with fresh eyes and look beyond the surface. Because on the surface, they are directly connected to Jesus as the Son of God—the one who has just been declared God’s beloved Son at his baptism. But beneath that, there is something much more universal, something more relatable to all of us. Beneath the surface, we discover the kinds of temptations everyone faces every single day.
The First Temptation
And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:3–4).
You’ll notice in v. 2 that this temptation occurs after forty days and forty nights of fasting. Matthew explicitly states that Jesus was hungry. The temptation here isn’t to perform magic. Instead, it’s for Jesus to satisfy his needs through his own power and will, rather than trusting in God’s provision.
Observe how Jesus responds to Satan. His words are a quote from Deut 8:3. Moses is recounting Israel’s forty years in the wilderness and states:
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut 8:3).
Manna was how God provided for his people, but it wasn’t always readily available. In Exodus, when God first provides manna, he instructs them to take only enough for each day, requiring them to trust in his provision. When they try to take more, it spoils and rots.
When the people grew tired of God’s provision and demanded meat, God sent so much quail that they became sick of it. This led to a “very great plague” that killed many people. Their cravings overwhelmed them, and they buried so many people there that they named the place Kibroth-hattaavah, which means “the Grave of Cravings” (Num 11:34).
Manna wasn’t just about God feeding people; it was a test. As Deuteronomy states, he allowed the people to hunger and provided manna with specific rules so they would learn to trust in God’s provision and care for them.
“Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” here is not God’s commandments but the word God speaks of ongoing care and provision for his people. The hunger and the manna together are meant to teach the people to trust in God rather than be driven by their own cravings, their own strength, or to think they had provided for themselves by their own means.
For Jesus, using his own power and choice to satisfy his needs—simply turning stones into bread—would have been committing the same sin for which God punished Israel in the wilderness.
The first temptation, at its core, is to rely on our own power and strength to meet our needs instead of trusting in God’s loving provision for his people.
The Second Temptation
Then the devil took him to the holy city and 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 command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt 4:5–7).
The devil notices what Jesus is doing. Jesus quotes the Hebrew Bible to him, so now he’ll quote it back to Jesus. Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy. Satan quotes from Psalm 91. The temptation here is to act contrary to what God actually wants for his people because someone—or something—has told you that what you’re doing is “biblical.”
Let me be clear, because this is important.
The devil’s argument could rightly be called “biblical,” especially in how people use that term today. He is quoting the Bible to make a point, trying to persuade Jesus to do something that goes against God's will. That’s why I mentioned in Adult Catechesis the other day that from now on, when someone says their position is biblical or wants to share with me the biblical stance on X, I’ll assume they’re lying, wrong, or both. The Bible is far too complex, diverse, and written over far too many years, centuries, and millennia to claim a biblical position on something just because someone pulls out one verse and expects everyone to agree.
People often do this: they select parts of the Bible that seem to support their cause for reasons unrelated to the Bible itself, then claim their view is biblical and argue that all good Christians ought to support it—and them.
The churches in the South used this argument with slavery, saying that God supported it because of the curse of Ham. Segregationist churches did the same during the civil rights movement, claiming that God made separate nations and wanted them to remain separate. White supremacists do this. Christian nationalists do this. Liberals do this. Republicans do this. Democrats do this. Everyone does this, and it makes me want to scream:
Get your hands off my Bible, Satan!
Just because the Bible mentions angels guarding your path doesn’t mean you should jump off a building. Just because Paul doesn’t condemn slavery doesn’t mean it’s right to own people made in the image of God. Just because the Bible talks about different nations and peoples doesn’t mean we should forget that we’re all descended from the same man and share the same blood. Just because the Bible advocates submission to the government doesn’t mean it’s okay to stay silent while people seeking a better life for their families are rounded up and treated like animals and criminals—something that’s happening now in Minneapolis to our diocesan brothers and sisters from Myanmar, who came here because their own government was murdering them, burning churches, and destroying orphanages.
The people quoting Scripture to justify the evil, fear, anger, and hatred in their hearts aren’t being biblical; they’re being satanic.
And to be clear, I am not talking about those who might misunderstand something in the Bible because they haven’t been taught to read it properly. I’m sure I misunderstand things all the time; I just don’t know which parts I’ve misunderstood. I’m talking about the people who should know better—the ones who hold themselves out as leaders and yet still weaponize God’s Word as a tool for their own agenda, making the Bible say in one verse what it clearly rejects in all others. That is how Satan uses the Bible, not how Christ used it, nor how those who worship Christ as Lord should use it.
The second temptation, at its core, is to act in a way inconsistent with Scripture while using Scripture to justify our actions and agendas.
The Third Temptation
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matt 4:8–10).
The first draft of this sermon at this point just said: “Do I actually need to say anything?”
But I will.
Daniel 7 says of the Son of Man:
And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed (Dan 7:14).
Jesus is that Son of Man. He famously said that he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many—because he is that Son of Man. All the kingdoms of this world and all their glory will one day rightly belong to him, as they do now. But the path from the baptismal water to that moment is not the path of pursuing power by worldly means.
Instead, the path Jesus walked involved befriending sinners and tax collectors, being kind to people who regarded him as an enemy, loving those rightly condemned under the law, forgiving those who wronged him—even those who nailed him to a cross—and ultimately sacrificing his own life for others’ good. If there is a Christian way to power, that’s it, and it’s the only path available to us as disciples of Jesus Christ. If you think I’m wrong, go read Philippians 2.
Self-sacrifice is the only way to achieve glory for Christians, yet we are constantly bombarded with temptations to gain power through other means. And I dare say all those temptations to pursue power differently—in ways that don’t resemble taking up our cross, loving our neighbors as ourselves, or doing unto others as we would have them do unto us—can all be summed up in a few words:
“All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matt 4:9).
If we worship Jesus instead of Satan, then there is only one path for us to follow in this life, and it is the path Jesus walked before us. All other paths are the devil’s temptation for us to gain power, privilege, prestige, and prosperity through Satan’s methods rather than by taking up our cross and following Jesus.
Yes, these temptations have a unique flavor because they are temptations for Jesus. But at their core, they are temptations we all face every day: the desire not to trust in God’s provision, the urge to manipulate God’s Word for our own ends rather than submit to it, and the temptation to pursue power, privilege, prestige, and prosperity—the kingdoms of this world and all their glory—apart from the cross of Jesus Christ.
We constantly fall into these temptations. We try to rely on ourselves instead of trusting God’s provision. We manipulate Scripture to suit our purposes instead of submitting to Christ’s authority. We seek power through any means other than a self-sacrificial cross.
In that regard and in many other ways, we are not so different from Israel in the wilderness.
But Jesus is.
He is the faithful Son who succeeded where Israel failed, where Adam failed, and where we fail daily. He walked the path of self-sacrifice all the way to the end—not for his own glory, but for ours. That is the good news at the heart of this wilderness story.
Lent isn’t meant to make us better through sheer human effort, but to turn us back to the One who has already passed every test we couldn’t, and who offers us, in his great, infinite, ever-expanding mercy, a share in the victory he alone has won.
Amen.
Life Group Guide
Introductory Prayer
Heavenly Father, as we gather today to study your Word and learn from Jesus’ example in the wilderness, we ask you to open our hearts and minds to what you want to teach us. Help us honestly face our own struggles with temptation and see how Jesus’ victory can become ours. Guide our discussion and encourage us as we seek to follow you more faithfully. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Ice Breaker
What’s one food you could eat every day for a week without getting tired of it, and what’s one food you think you’d grow sick of after just a few days?
Key Verses
Matthew 4:1-11
Deuteronomy 8:3
Psalm 91
Daniel 7:13-14
Philippians 2:5-11
Questions
Fr. Michael mentions that Jesus was tempted ‘in every way like us.’ How does understanding the deeper meaning of these wilderness temptations help you connect with Jesus’ experience?
In the first temptation, Jesus chose to trust God’s provision rather than meet his own needs through his own power. What are some areas in your life where you struggle to trust God’s provision instead of relying on your own strength?
The sermon warns against using Scripture to support our own agendas instead of submitting to God’s will. Can you think of examples where you’ve seen this happen or where you might have been tempted to do so yourself?
Jesus responded to each temptation by quoting Scripture from Deuteronomy. How can we better prepare ourselves to face temptation by knowing God’s Word?
The third temptation involved pursuing power through worldly methods versus choosing the path of self-sacrifice. What does it practically look like to follow the ‘path of the cross’ in our daily lives?
Fr. Michael mentions that we ‘fail these temptations constantly.’ How does knowing that Jesus succeeded where we fail change how you view your own struggles with temptation?
Israel failed the test in the wilderness with the manna, but Jesus succeeded. What lessons can we learn from both Israel’s failure and Jesus’ success about trusting God?
The sermon emphasizes that Lent isn’t about improving ourselves through human effort, but about returning to Jesus who has already achieved victory. How does this outlook influence your approach to spiritual disciplines or personal growth?
Life Application
This week, identify one area where you’ve been trying to fulfill your needs through your own effort rather than trusting in God’s provision. Practice surrendering this to God daily through prayer, and look for ways he might be providing for you that you hadn’t noticed before. Also, when you’re tempted to use a Bible verse to support something you want to do, pause and ask yourself: ‘Am I trying to make Scripture fit my agenda, or am I willing to let Scripture shape my heart and actions?’
Key Takeaways
Jesus’ wilderness temptations reflect the daily struggles we all encounter: trusting our own strength instead of God’s provision, twisting Scripture for personal gain, and chasing worldly power rather than choosing the path of self-sacrifice.
Using Bible verses to support our own agendas while ignoring the broader message of Scripture is a satanic approach to God’s Word, not a Christian one.
The only Christian way to achieve power and glory is through self-sacrifice and taking up our cross, following Jesus’ example of serving others.
Jesus succeeded where Israel, Adam, and we have failed. He is the faithful Son who passed every test we could not pass.
Lent isn’t about trying harder on your own, but about turning back to Jesus, who gives us a share in his victory through His mercy.
Ending Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank you for walking the path of temptation before us and showing us the way to victory. We admit that we often fall short where you succeeded - relying on our own strength, twisting your Word to fit our desires, and seeking power through worldly means instead of sacrificial love. Help us remember that our hope doesn’t rest in our ability to overcome temptation but in your perfect victory on our behalf. As we leave this place, strengthen our trust in your provision, deepen our commitment to your Word, and guide us to follow your footsteps of self-sacrificial love more faithfully. Thank you for your mercy that covers our failures and your grace that grants us a share in your triumph. In your holy name we pray, Amen.