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This reply of Jesus to the first temptation specially recorded as addressed to him by Satan is a quotation from Deuteronomy 8. - part of the language spoken by the lips of Moses, but dictated by the Spirit of God for the admonishment of his people. The words occur in that impressive review which Moses took of the career of the people whom he had led like a flock through the wilderness, when now the time was approaching for those wanderings to cease, and for the entrance into a land flowing with milk and honey. In the review Moses makes particular reference to the apprehensions the people had suffered under of starvation amid their hunger in the wilderness; and he distinctly says God had permitted them to suffer hunger for the purpose of "humbling them, and proving them, and of knowing what was in their heart." A lesson, however, was to be learnt, not merely from their hunger, but also from the way in which it was to be removed. When they should have first felt right well what hunger was, they were to be fed with a food which they knew not, nor their fathers before them. That unknown food was to teach them that human life does not depend exclusively on the known and seen, the touched and tasted and handled, but on the Word, the sovereign Word, of God; or, as it is more fully expressed elsewhere, "on every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." This new food was in a double sense unknown, and the object of wonder to them; for they knew neither how nor whence it came, nor what it was when it had come. Perhaps it may seem rather remarkable that Jesus should put away and promptly reject the temptation by a mere quotation, and one found in such a comparatively humble connection. But we must remember, on the other hand, that it was little enough of a quotation, really speaking; it was little else than his own original language - Moses rather the person who quotes. Meantime Jesus honours the Bible, reminding us how it is a storehouse of truths and principles, the application and practice of which it is ours to find. The temptation of Jesus is one of the deep things of his life, of Scripture, and even of our world. There is something in it which at present we fail, and are sure to fail, to compass. Be it so. There is also much in it that we can compass; much fraught with spiritual instruction and practical service for us. Else it would not have been here, and in the very foreground of three out of the four Gospel narratives. There is often a little confusion in some people's minds as to the phrase, "a man is tempted;" for it does confessedly sometimes mean that a man feels working guiltily within him the temptation presented to him. But otherwise it strictly means, simply that the matter of temptation has been presented to him, been tried upon him, to its utmost power to influence or fascinate has sought to bewitch him; yet, perhaps, though it charmed never so wisely, charmed all in vain. It is in this latter sense only that Jesus "was tempted." Whatever could smile after the manner of a tempting would smile on him; whatever could frown would frown; whatever could have the remotest chance of making his heart's perfect rectitude tremble but one moment like the needle to the pole, hovering one moment uncertain, tried its most subtle, but utterly in wain. Open as the heart of Jesus was beyond any other to all love, goodness, kindness, pain, it also resented more immediately and more thoroughly the faintest touch and impress of evil than any other nature. This immediate resentment of the challenge of evil was what kept the soul of Jesus so free from a finger-mark's impress or soil; while some, detracting thereby from the meritoriousness of Christ's victory over temptations, have assumed that, because he resisted so immediately, it was the symptom of a stoical absence of feeling! Jesus Christ had just submitted to the baptism of water, and received that of the Holy Ghost. He was now to receive the baptism of temptation, while in no far distance awaited him that of blood and untold agony.

(A) Notice in the attack of this, the first of the three recorded temptations, that -

I. IT PURPORTED TO BASE ITS FORCE AND PLANT ITS ATTACK, IN FAITH OF THE WEAKNESS THAT LURKS IN BODILY APPETITE. Jesus was prepared, presumably, not to resist and conquer, but rather to yield, by reason of being "a-hungered," and, if the expression be allowable, fiercely so. Compare the essence of this temptation with that presented to our first parents, which rested not on hunger, but on the attraction of indulgence and inviting, luscious food; again, with that of Esau; and with that of the Israelites.

II. SATAN APPEARS IN ORDER BY HUNGER TO TEMPT TO EVIL DISTINCTLY. When God tempted the Israelites by hunger, he did not tempt by evil, for hunger is not in itself any evil in the sense of being sinful; nor did he tempt to evil, for he would have been infinitely more pleased that the end of that tempting should have brought honour and confirmed strength to the people. But in the present instance, while it is not Satan who makes Jesus "a-hungered," it is he who comes, in the day of Jesus' fierce hunger, to attempt what worst thing he can get out of that hunger.

III. THE POINT OF THE TEMPTATION LAY IN SUGGESTING AND SOLICITING THE SATISFYING OF A PERFECTLY INNOCENT APPETITE, BUT IN A MANNER AND BY A METHOD UNWORTHY OF JESUS. At the first blush of the thing, the evil feature in the temptation may not seem so patent. But the unerring eye unveils it at once.

1. Christ can do things which he nevertheless won't do. It is a reminder for us all that we have no right always to do the thing for which we may have the resources of abundant might. It is like a man saying, as men often have said, with as infinite wrongness to their own soul as supreme complaisance, that "he has a right to do what he likes with his own money" - a speech most infidel! We have no right to do what we "like," but only what's right!

2. Not only can Jesus do things he won't do, but also he won't do for himself what he will do for others. He can make stones bread; he can make stones cry out; he can make the stones of the temple walls utter forth his praise; he can out of stones raise up children to Abraham. But he will not command stones to become bread for himself; this, doubtless, the reason, that he will let faith, and patience, and bodily endurance, and the highest style of trust, have each its perfect work. Not to do so is to him, clearly and distinctly, sin.

3. When Satan now tempts Jesus through the appetite of the body, natural and innocent as the appetite was, there was something yet more natural to him, viz. to wait - to wait with trust; to wait, with perfect trust and perfect filial love, the great Father's time. He well knew him who fed Elijah by the raven; who fed also ravens and sparrows at all times; and for his feeding would he wait, Had Jesus on this occasion fallen back on his power for the behoof of himself, he might as well have done so again, and then again and again. No longer would he have been suffering Man for and amongst us suffering men! No longer patient Man amongst us impatient; pattern Man amongst us who so needed such a Pattern! No longer would he have been One learning sympathy by fellow-experience and the sharing of our lot and our weakness! No; all the contrary; not a day but would have distanced him further from us, and increased most decisively our sense of isolation from his majestic self. We should have felt overpoweringly how absolute our inability to be "like him." Painfully a-hungered, then, as Jesus was, the temptation was powerless, rebounding as the arrow from the rock; his strong fortitude builded partly at least on this foundation, "Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

(B) Notice in the answer of Christ to this, the first of the three temptations - .

II. THE SOURCE OR SECRET OF THIS DECISIVE PROMPTNESS. It was one simple and very imitable thing. It was the living, speaking Word of God that was in Christ. He knew that Word by memory, and in all the faith and love of his heart. And he knew it, not as a dead letter, but as a working, useful, trusty force.

III. THE METHOD OF THE ANSWER.

1. By the barest statement, and that in quotation, of the fallacy that the question of bread was a supreme question in man's life, he scouts that fallacy at once off the ground. It becomes ludicrously dwarfed to its just proportions, and it takes not a moment to do it. "Man lives not by bread alone."

2. By one suggestion of the right direction in which to look, he lays bare the very basis of the truth in that matter. Not only so, a whole vista of truth and thought seems to stand revealed. The creative, paternal Word seems to be heard proclaiming itself in its manifold, myriad tones of thoughtful, providing, loving care. And the omens of its future utterances seem to be caught. Whatever we may think of our lives, and however little; however we may estimate, misestimate, use, misuse, or fail to use them; we live subject to "every word of God." The breathing of God is on our life. How will that Word some day reverberate in all our inner ear, and in all its new-born power to hear, which now finds in but our outer ear echoes often so hollow! Let us now open our most listening ear to it. Its burden is hope, promise, mercy, and eternal life. - B.

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KJV: And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

WEB: When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.