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Matthew 4:1-25
00:30:19
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into chapter 4.
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to FormLive. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and joining me is one of our Professors of Scripture, Dr. Michael Barber. Good to be with you. We enjoy this Bible study and hope you can join us for this continuation of our Bible study. We're going to pick up with Matthew, Chapter four, and every Wednesday, we're going to be walking through the Gospel of Matthew, and you're welcome to join us. Grab a Bible. We use the Augustan Bible, so you know what version we use, which is the English Standard Version, Catholic edition, which is known for its accuracy, its closeness to the Hebrew and Greek. That's why we like using it especially for our study purposes. And it's what we recommend for our graduate students here at the Augusta Institute as well. So we're going to jump into chapter four of the Gospel of Matthew, and it's the story of Jesus Temptation in the wilderness. Jesus goes out in the wilderness and he fasts and prays for four, 40 days and 40 nights. And of course, this is the passage that the church always gives us to begin Lent, you know, as we do the 40 days of Lent. That's. That's the scene here. So we're going to dive into the temptation of Jesus. But before we do that, Michael, you've been with me in Israel, and I don't know if you've been with me in the Wadi Kelt, which is the traditional place in this valley that's just in the Judean wilderness and goes up to north of the city of Jericho, where Jesus, according to tradition, prayed for the 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. And it would be an appropriate place. I remember taking my first hike down there. There's all kinds of caves down in this canyon, and it's very, very hot. And I remember it was probably about 120 degrees or so. And I climbed down and got into one of the caves. And these are caves that David lived in and hid from when he was being hunted by Saul. This is kind of the places where the Maccabees and others would hide out from the Greeks.
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Lots of cavemen in the old days.
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Yes. And so in these caves, what you would find is incredible shelter. And as soon as I got into the cave, there was shade. And I remember thinking of the psalms, like Psalm 91 in the shelter of the Most High, because once you get that shade, you drop about 20, 30 degrees. It's amazing and remarkable. And thinking of Jesus going in those caves, having refuge from the sun and the heat. And then, of course, at the bottom of The Wadi, you might find water after there had been rain. And Herod the Great actually built an aqueduct through the Wadi Celt to bring water down to his plantations and to his agricultural farms down in Jericho. So anyhow, and then there's one big mountain, right? You get to the end of the Wadi Kelt that overlooks the town of Jericho. And of course, that's going to be the place, according to tradition, the Mount of Temptation, where the devil will take Jesus up on. So if you've ever been to the Holy Land, you've been to Jericho, you've seen the Mount of Temptation, and maybe you've gotten a tour. Sometimes buses will go on the very windy road that goes along part of the Wadi Kelt. It's an interesting place. But being in that area and knowing how incredibly hot it is, you know, I just imagine our Lord, you know, spending a lot of the daytime with that heat in one of those caves, praying and fasting and spending that spiritual time. And the other beautiful thing about the Wadi Kelt in that area in the Judean wilderness is it's so oppressively hot that very few people would go there. So it is a place of solitude and. And silence. And our Lord is led by the Spirit. So let's just pick up with chapter four, verse one. And it's the Holy Spirit that leads Jesus out into the wilderness. That's significant, isn't it, Michael?
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Yeah, it's very important. Jesus isn't going out into the wilderness simply, you know, to participate in some kind of ascetical spiritual Olympics. You know, I think a lot of times people approach asceticism and penitential practices almost as if it's a competition. Right. Jesus isn't going to do this just to demonstrate, you know, how tough he is or something like that. No, he's guided by the Spirit. And this is the same Spirit that came down upon him at his baptism in the previous chapter. He goes out into the wilderness to be tempted to be tested by the devil. And of course, Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and for 40 nights picks up on that theme. We've already mentioned that new Exodus theme, right, where Israel was out in the wilderness for 40 days. And for 40 days.
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A
I'm glad you bring that up, because I think that there is an important allusion here to the Exodus and to this idea of a new Exodus, and it's really triggered by this idea of Jesus is led by the Spirit because Israel. That's exactly the same phrase you get. Israel is led by the spirit for 40 years. In the wilderness. And it's a pillar of cloud by day and a column of fire by night. And Israel goes wherever the Spirit of God leads them through the wilderness. Right. And that's really important to see that echo to Israel and the idea that this is kind of a. You've got the Exodus imagery in the backdrop and very close to the backdrop. It's really the stage for what Jesus is doing because, you know, later on there's going to be readers who will be working, wait a minute, Jesus is led by the Spirit? I thought Jesus was the Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity. Why does he need to be led by the Spirit? That starts to make me uncomfortable. Maybe Jesus is human and he's not divine. And of course, we think of early reader in the early church, Arius, who read it that way, he read Jesus being led by the Spirit. He didn't make the connection to the allusions to the Old Testament and to Israel, that Jesus is the new Israel here and not making those Old Testament allusions to the Exodus and to Jesus being, in a sense, a new Israel. They thought, well, Jesus was led by the Spirit. Therefore the fact that he had to be led by the Spirit, maybe he wasn't really divine. And that's what Arius and Arianism is going to kind of argue, isn't it?
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B
Sure. And on the flip side, you might have people who would see Jesus as divine and so then come to conclude that Jesus wasn't fully human. And so the story of the temptation is also going to underscore the. The reality of his human nature. So we see both natures in the Gospel of Matthew because he's going to
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be really, really hungry after fasting for 40 days and 40.
- [06:25]
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Yeah, it's one of the most. To me, it's one of the most humorous passages in all of Scripture. Jesus was fasting for 40 days and for 40 nights, and afterwards he was hungry.
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You know, Talk about understatement.
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Yeah, exactly right. I'm hungry if I just skip lunch, you know. So here we see Jesus in his weakness again, in humility and embracing the weakness of humanity. The tempter comes to him and asks him the first question, asks him if you are the Son of God. It's interesting. We don't get the sense that Satan really knows who Jesus is here in the narrative. And Aquinas and other church fathers would highlight this. He knows, according to Aquinas, that God is going to do something to redeem the world. But Satan isn't fully sure yet of who this person is he's talking to. Why? Well, because he looks like a human, he's weak like a human. Satan is proud he would be unwilling to lower himself in this way. So it's really hard for Satan to be fully convinced, even he's not even assured, that this is truly the Son of God. If you are the Son of God can command these stones to become loaves of bread. This is going to be the first of three temptations. I think it's important to highlight the way this fits into again, the story of Genesis. If you don't mind, I'd like to just explain this because we've already noted that Matthew is the book of the Genesis of Jesus Christ. You go back to the story of the fall in Genesis 3 and you'll see that Genesis actually tells us why Adam and Eve took the fruit. They say Genesis tells us that the fruit was good for food. It was delicious, it was a delight to the eyes, it was shiny, it was something they wanted to possess. And it was good to make one wise, right? Give you knowledge. And of course, knowledge is power. And so here you have three traps, right? An appeal to sensible realities, sensual, kind of sensual temptation, the sensitive appetite. Then we have our senses, I should say the second thing is we have an appeal to things you can have to possessions, goods. And then third, you have the desire to make one wise to have knowledge. And knowledge is power, really pride and the tradition of the Church. And I explain this, if you don't mind, I'm going to do a shameless plug. But I have a book called what Every Catholic Should Know. And in the last chapter I go through this in some detail, but just to summarize what I explained there, in First John, we have a passage that tries to connect all of sin, all the sins we face, according to Augustine and the other Fathers, to three temptations. And the three temptations are the lust of the flesh, Right? Again, sensible sensual reality, illicit carnal desire, right? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes. I see something, I want to have it. Coveting greed, right? And then the desire to be wise, right? The pride of life in First John, chapter two. So you can read all that if you're interested in first John 2:15 through 17. And John according to Augustine and Aquinas is here summing up all the temptations. All the temptations we face are the lust of the flesh. It's good for food, appeals to sensible appetites. So think about, of course, sexual sins, but also food, gluttony, drink, drug use, drug Abuse, substance abuse, anything that brings you illicit carnal desire or carnal satisfaction. The second is greed, money, possessions, and then finally power. I want to be in control. Jesus is going to be faced with all three of these temptations here in that story. And the loaves are just the first, right?
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Yeah, let's dive into that first one because there's such a richness in the story.
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Great.
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And there's so many layers, as you mentioned here, Michael, the first one, of course, if you are the son of God, I always think one of the things the devil likes to do is to undermine our identity. And so if you are the Son of God, notice what he's trying to do. He's trying to weaken this sense that Jesus connection to the Father. If you are the Son of God, he wants him to question his identity. And that's what the devil wants each one of us to do. He wants, are you worthy of God? You know, the devil is going to say you're not worthy, but we are adopted in our baptism as God's children and the devil wants us to deny that identity. And so anyhow, I think of that. If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. And of course the devil always likes to go where we're weakest, right? He knows Jesus has just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. He's famished from his fast. And the devil says, look, turn these stones to bread, right? And on the surface it's very hard to get somebody who's good or righteous to do something bad. But what the devil's trying to do is to get Jesus to use his authority and his vocation and mission from God, being anointed with the Holy Spirit to use that for himself, right? And of course it's not doing any terrible bad thing on the surface. There's no evil here. He's not choosing an evil, he's just choosing to serve himself and to use his power for himself. But that's exactly how the devil works. The devil will tempt bad people with bad things, but he tempts good people with, with things that will be self serving but not clearly or obviously wrong at first. And that's the subtle temptation of the devil. Just like you got Adam and Eve to take the forbidden fruit, right? And so again, I think there's a subtlety to the devil's work here. And we want to use it just as you highlighted, Michael, to talk about, to look at this as a pattern for how we are to fight the devil.
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That's Right.
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And I think that's an important thing that you were highlighting.
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Right. And one of the key ideas here is that the devil is appealing to our appetite for food. And of course, anyone would say, well, you need food. How can you say that would be a sin to eat food? Well, it's of course not a sin to eat food. Of course God wants us to have sustenance. But recognizing Jesus example here, the church has a long tradition of fasting. Why? Well, because food does bring us a certain amount of comfort. You know, I know when I'm worried about something, I tend to overeat. We go for that comfort food. You know, we go for the Pringles in the pantry.
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If you do that all the time, you'd be fat, Michael. So you don't. You don't eat every time you're worried.
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I know you want too. Well, well, it's not the Pringles, it's the Snickers that get to me, I'll tell you that. But I will say that this is a temptation for, I think a lot of people to find solace, come find food. And the reality is we do that because we lack faith in God. Right? God wants us to trust in him. And so fasting is a way to manifest that. No, I'm not going to allow myself to receive these consolations. Instead, I'm going to put my trust in the Lord. That's what Satan, I think, is trying to undermine here.
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And I love our Lord's response. It is written, and I think Jesus is giving a response to the devil that we can imitate. He goes to the word of God. So he's going to answer the deceptions of the devil with the word of God. In other words, I think one of the things Jesus is teaching us is that God's word in the Scriptures prepares us and equips us to do battle with the devil. You know, God prepares us for this engagement. And so Jesus quotes, he says, it is written, you know, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. That is a quotation from the Torah, one of the first five books of the Bible. From the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3. And so we get that in reflection of Moses, who writes that at the end of the 40 years of wilderness wandering. And so as Moses writes chapter eight, Deuteronomy, he's reflected on the lessons, the spiritual lessons of the wilderness wandering of Israel. And one of those lessons is that man does not live by bread alone. In other Words. You can't fully be satisfied and happy if you have all the food of the world. You know it's not going to satisfy your heart. Right. Satisfying your stomach is not always going to satisfy your heart. And what will satisfy the heart is the food. That is the word of God.
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And so the saints have long pointed out that Jesus gives us a model here. How do we overcome temptation? We go to sacred Scripture. And here's just a moment to just pause, right? There's only one book you can read at every Mass. I love Thomas Aquinas, but we don't read Thomas Aquinas writings at Mass. I love John of the Cross, but we don't read John of the Cross at Mass. There's only one book that we read at Mass, and it's Scripture. Because Scripture is the word of God and the inspired words of God. Right. And so. And words of men, but of course, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus gives us a model here to how to overcome temptation. We turn to Scripture. Maybe we should turn to the second temptation.
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Yeah, let's go to the second one. Because this is so rich, we could spend forever just on one. But then in verse five, we're told that 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 he will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And of course, that's from an important Psalm, Psalm 91. And I love Psalm 91. It's a Psalm for nighttime prayer for. For the Jews in their tradition when it's dark. And of course, the devil stops short. And of course, we know the devil can quote scripture, but he never quotes it contextually because the very next verse is that you shall put your foot on the head of the adder and the serpent.
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And the serpent.
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And the serpent is the devil. Right.
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See, I love this passage because, okay, Satan's going to quote Scripture. There's one passage that he knows from the Old Testament. It's that one about stepping on a serpent. He doesn't like that one. So it's easy for him to remember that passage. Anyway, I find it comical.
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It is comical. But, you know, Jesus isn't intimidated and saying, oh, I can't use Scripture. He goes back to the word of God.
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That's right.
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So let's just, you know, his response, Michael, is, again, it is written. So Jesus goes back to. It is Written to the Scriptures again is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Now, of course, that's going to be from. You want to talk about that passage, Jesus response and the significance. That's going to be from Deuteronomy as well, right?
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Exactly. Yeah. And so here is again another quotation from that section of Deuteronomy that the first quotation is from. Moses is telling Israel on the plains of Moab before they go into the promised land. Here's how you failed for four years. This is what you should have done, right? And so as Moses is giving these lessons, Israel, one of the things he tells them is, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test, especially when he's testing you. Right? God is testing you in the wilderness, and you are not being faithful and trusting in him. You know, I'd like to just go back to this for a second. We talked about those three temptations, the lust of the flesh. One of them is pride, right? Wanting to be number one, wanting to assert yourself, what the catechism calls self assertion contrary to reason. And so here we see Satan tempting him. Throw yourself down. God will raise you up. You know, he will demonstrate who you are. Assert yourself as the Son of God. Jesus turns down that temptation to pride and to put himself first. So again, Jesus is overcoming temptations that we are familiar with, right? The lust of the flesh, the lust of. And the pride of life. These are things that we're encountering every day.
- [18:57]
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I love how he goes back, as you mentioned, back to that same section of deuteronomy in chapter 6, verse 16, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And that's also echoing back to a story. And Moses is looking backwards to the story of Israel. You know, of course, you know, the first temptation is worth mentioning. You know, change these stones into bread.
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And.
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And that was a temptation when Israel had no bread in Exodus, chapter 16, leaving Egypt, and they panicked when they had no bread, and they rebelled and failed to trust God. And God gave them manna, right? And now the second temptation of Jesus again, this temptation to cast yourself off from this great height. And Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 16. And this is reflecting on, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And that happens in Exodus chapter 17 at Massah, or also known as Meribah, where the place of testing, where Israel puts God to the test when they run out of water. And so you've got these three tests of Jesus are, in a sense, echoing Back to Israel, leaving Egypt during the Exodus. And Israel is tested, in a sense, by the devil. And they're tested without bread, they're tested without water, and they failed those two tests. And here we see Jesus being faithful. He is, in a sense, the new Israel, and he is being a faithful son to the Father. And so these. And it's interesting that Jesus in the wilderness is reflecting on the passage that Moses reflected on, on the spiritual lessons of Israel in the wilderness.
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That's right.
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I don't think that's accidental, right?
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No, it's not. And it's also not accidental that there's this motif of Jesus as the son of God. Because of course, in Exodus, Israel is my firstborn son. So we're.
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Exodus 4:22, I think.
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What did I say? No, Exodus 4:22.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Yeah.
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I think it's Exodus 4:22.
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Yeah, yeah. In Exodus 4:22 is my firstborn son. Yeah. Among the nations. So Jesus is the firstborn son who's in the wilderness, who succeeds where. Not only where Adam failed, but, but also where Israel failed. And of course, we get Jesus quoting from scripture again. And I love what you just said. Satan tried to take scripture away from Jesus by citing it, right? Jesus doesn't go for that. Jesus doesn't fall for that trap. Don't let Satan try to take scripture away from you. Be like Jesus, Continue to go back to scripture. And then let's go to the third. Let's go to the third one then.
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Go ahead.
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And so then he take the devil, took him to a very high mountain and. And showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, right? Their splendor. What is this? It's the lust of the eyes, right? These are the things that glitter. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you fall down and worship me. So here we have the temptation of worshiping Satan. For what purpose? For wealth, for possessions, for those kinds of things. Jesus says to him, begun before you
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give that solution that Jesus is going to give. I just want to highlight too, this is where the Antichrist does succumb. So the Antichrist, the one who's not Jesus, he will take the devil's temptation of taking all the kingdoms and power
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of the world, right?
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And so for the sake of glory and power of this world, and Jesus is willing to give that up, you know, and so it's an interesting temptation, but I just. I just wanted to highlight that.
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No, it's very important. It's also important too that Jesus will not worship Satan. And he quotes from, of course, the Old Testament. You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Now that's a really interesting passage because we're going to see throughout the Gospel of Matthew, people fall down and worship Jesus. Now, the Greek word there that's used for worship, pros kineo can have a range of meaning. You can worship a king, give homage to a king. In fact, you see that in First Chronicles, Be reverential. Right, yeah. There are other instances where it doesn't refer to divine worship, but within the context of Matthew's gospel. Now, okay, now we gotta look at the way that term is used in Matthew. Because of Matthew 4, we recognize that the word is especially linked to divine worship. And so this is huge implications. Now going back, thinking about the story of the magi, they came and they worshiped Jesus. And then going forward, we're going to see the apostles and disciples fall down and worship Jesus as well. So it's, I think, quite significant.
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Yeah, no, I think they're exactly right. And I think one of the things that might surprise people is Jesus doesn't question the devil's ability to offer these
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things oh, so good.
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A
And later on, Jesus will refer to him as the prince of this world. Right. So the devil has some kind of authority over the world and over the kingdoms of this world that are in rebellion with sin against God. And the devil has influence over these kingdoms and the power. And I think the devil's temptation is, look, you want to be a messiah, you want to be a great leader of the world, I'll make it easy for you, I'll give you that. Because the devil knows if he gives Jesus that, he'll give him all the kins of the world. But now Jesus as the Messiah will not be leading them towards God, but in a deeper rebellion from God's plan. Right. And so it's a great temptation. But you have to understand that the devil has an authority. He has an influence, and he still has that authority and influence, you know, and only from those who are baptized in a state of grace do we break from his authority and his influence. And we have to keep fighting to be free from him.
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Yeah. One of the major themes is that Jesus is pronouncing or declaring the kingdom of heaven. It's not a kingdom of this world. Right. And Caesar and Herod and all the rest have no claims on this kingdom, which comes from an entirely different realm. Right. It's the in breaking of the heavenly and of course the inverse as you said is true. Right. So if Jesus refuses Satan, what we're recognizing is other people have not. And so this raises questions. Where did Herod get his power? Where does Rome get its power? Right. There's a subtext here, I think, that we would do well to pay attention to, and that is the people who are the leaders of Israel in the story are cast in opposition to Jesus. They're not just working with Caesar. If they turn and reject Jesus, they're actually working with the evil one himself. So what we have in Matthew's Gospel is going to be a cosmic battle, of course, cosmic proportions.
- [25:55]
A
And of course, Jesus response is the ultimate response. Right. Because what's going to liberate us from the power of the devil, the prince of this world, is worship. And that's why liturgy is so powerful and important. You know, when you think of the Church, it doesn't have armies, and many have mocked it as being irrelevant for that.
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B
Yes. How many divisions has the Pope?
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A
Has the Pope? Exactly. Napoleon's famous question. And, you know, the. But worship and liturgy is exactly what liberates us. And so Jesus says, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. And that idea of serve goes back to the Exodus. This idea of worship and serve goes back to the whole story of the Exodus. Because Pharaoh, remember, won't let Israel go in Exodus chapter 5, to go and serve me, let my firstborn son go that he may serve me. And that word for serve in Hebrew, avad, can mean to worship. And that's what God wants Israel to do, to go to the wilderness and worship and serve him. And Pharaoh doesn't want God's people to do liturgical practice of worshiping the God of Israel. And because why doesn't Pharaoh want that? Because here we see Pharaoh, who has this power, is under the influence of the evil one who is jealous. He doesn't want people to worship God. And so that's the great battle. And it's interesting, I think the church is most free and liberated from the influence of the devil when she is worshiping with a pure heart, when she is practicing liturgically. It is our service of God in the liturgy. In fact, the word liturgy is the Greek word which means a public work or service. So it would be the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word avad, to serve or to work in terms of this idea of liturgical work. And so, anyhow, I just want to highlight, Jesus ultimately is going to banish the devil. Be gone. And the way we banish the devil is. Is through proper worship.
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B
That's right. Absolutely.
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We only have a couple minutes left, Michael. So in the last minute, how would you, what do you want to.
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I would just say where Adam fails, where Israel fails, Jesus succeeds. And that is an important lesson for all of us. We are able to enter into a new creation. We can be remade. We have a savior. We have Jesus himself who teaches us by his actions. And Matthew 3, 4, and then in Matthew 5, we're going to see, he's going to spell it out in his own words in the Sermon on the Mount.
- [28:21]
A
That's a perfect crystallization of this. And I think that what you're going to see is this Bible study is so fun to have this study with you. We're going to have a question and answer time. Look for those emails that will go out for a zoom webinar that Michael and I will do to answer your questions. We'll do that a few times over the next couple months. And we want to give you an opportunity to make this interactive. We hope this Bible study, as well as any of our forum programs, is enriching and blessing you. I want to thank all of you who are part of our mission circle that support us with a simple gift of $10 or more a month. Many of you, thousands of you, are helping to support our ministry that allow us to do this and enable us to make this available to the world. We're so grateful for you and we invite anybody who hasn't joined our mission circle to look into the mission circle and there's special benefits of that. We want you to become part of our active community. It's a very special mission partner community that joins us. And I hope that this study has enriched you and we want you to learn from these Bible studies, learn from the word of God so that you're armed and equipped to fight the temptations of the devil and to be free. May the Lord bless you as you do these studies. And, and I want you to realize too, that, you know, get a good Bible and join us on these Bible studies. Right? And if you don't have a Bible or you want to get a new one, we recommend the Augustan Bible. You can get it at Catholic Market. It's an excellent translation and it's a translation that I really love. I know, Michael, you use it now in your classes and your teaching, but keep the word of God close at hand so that you'll be able to repel all the temptations of the devil. God bless you.