Jesus' Challenge

Let us look into one of the most famous challenges that Jesus had to face while He was on earth.

St. Matthew 4:1-10

1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

Looking at this, we all know that Jesus spoke with all the power of the Holy Ghost, but one thing that we don’t always focus on in this passage is that Jesus was hungry. Satan presented Jesus with the very thing He wanted… food. He hadn’t eaten in forty days or nights, so you can just imagine that He was very hungry. Rather than move away from His faith, Jesus chose to suffer humiliation and even physical hunger in the wilderness.

This says either one thing, either Jesus wasn’t too hungry or He really loved His Father so much that He knew that God would provide for Him even though the enemy was presenting to Him the very thing He wanted.

I can only imagine how proud the Father was of Jesus at this point of His life. You know brethren, this is what God expected of Jesus, because He knew Jesus loved Him. And God does not expect anything less from us than He did Jesus. We too will face (and have faced) a number of opportunities to pursue the things we’ve always wanted and we will be expected to hold the same standard of denying ourselves as Jesus did, if obtaining it means disobeying the Father. We have to fall in love with God so much that we will not want to disobey Him in anything that we say, do, think or even feel.