Matthew 4:3

And when the tempter came to him.

He chose the hour of weakness for his great assault, the hour of physical exhaustion, after his great spiritual season, the hour when hunger asserted itself most keenly. The tempter always craftily chooses the time when he will beset those he would destroy.

If thou be the Son of God.

Forty days before the voice of the Father from heaven proclaimed: "This is my beloved Son." We cannot know that the full consciousness of his Sonship had come to him until the Spirit descended and this proclamation was made. During the forty days of loneliness in the wilderness it can hardly be doubted that the word from heaven was ringing in his ears. It is with this word upon his lips that the tempter appears. Just what form he assumed we cannot tell, but we know that it is not his policy to reveal himself as the arch-enemy. Probably he now came in the guise of. seeker after truth, as if he had said: "Art thou indeed the Son of God? If so, give. proof, that we may know thou hast then omnipotent power, and thou art now ready to perish with hunger. If thou art the Son, use thy power; command that these stones be made bread. Thus thou wilt provide what thou needest, and will demonstrate to us whom thou art." He came to save others, not himself; to feed others, not himself; to exert his divine power for others, not for himself. There is an insinuation of doubt--"if"--and of distrust that God should let him hunger. It was. call to use his power selfishly, and to assert his Sonship in. vain-glorious way. Abstinence from self-help and the practice of self-denial was the law of his life.