Luke 4:3

‘And the Devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread.”'

The Devil (or as Matthew puts it, ‘the Tempter') then indicates one of the small white round stones that must have looked very much like bread and suggests that He command it to become bread. Note that the very temptation depends on Jesus' confidence that He can do so. It assumes that Jesus was even at this stage aware of His total potential.

Note the subtle ‘if'. Was Jesus really the Son of God, was He sure that He had what it took to fulfil His Messiahship? Why not make a little trial of it now, and feed Himself at the same time, thus making it clear to Himself that He did have these special powers which He had never yet used? After all, he may have pointed out, God had provided Elijah with angel food in the wilderness, thus it could be no sin to feed on miraculous food in such a situation, for His forty days were over. Now He could well take the time to see to His own needs.

While no Messianic reference is specifically made here it may well point to the fact that some time during the forty days a previous temptation mooted earlier had been to provide bread in a similar way for the hungry. One of the expectations of the Messiah was that like Moses He would provide ‘bread from heaven', He would provide a ‘Messianic banquet' (compare Isaiah 25:6). This comes out in that later as a kind of Messianic sign Jesus does multiply bread for a crowd (Luke 9:12), as Elisha had done before Him (2 Kings 4:42). These last incidents reveal that it was not the miraculous provision of food that was wrong, but the doing it for the wrong reason, either in order to obtain popularity and a following, or in this case for His own selfish purposes. It suggests that the Devil clearly knew what He might be intending to do in the future and suggested that in these particular circumstances He would be justified in doing a little practise in advance and feeding Himself, just as Elijah had been fed by angels. This would then bolster His belief that He was the Son of God, and do Himself a good turn at the same time. Thus the temptation was that He do ‘the right thing' for the wrong motive. There is no greater temptation than that.

That we need to bring in the Messianic reference comes out in that otherwise the temptation would have been rather foolishly naive. Playing tricks with stones would hardly be a temptation. It was only if it was linked with the most sacred possibility in the future that it could be represented as almost legitimate. ‘You will be doing it then, why not do a little practise now, and give yourself confidence for the future?'

We will note as we consider these temptations that each of them was offering a quick fix to a Messianic problem. Here Jesus was hungry. By a quick fix, using His powers as the Son of God, He could set that to right in an instant. The next stage would have been the quick fix that would have solved the world's hunger (how could He refuse to offer to the world what He had taken for Himself?). But would the world's need have been satisfied? The world would still have continued on with its inner hunger, and with no one to satisfy it. In the next temptation He will be offered a quick fix to taking the world under control, but without remedying its greatest need, deliverance from sin. And then He will be offered the quick fix which will win over the whole of Jerusalem, but to what purpose? To be a seven day wonder. No wonder Jesus, guided by the Spirit, resisted them.