Since it’s Mother’s Day, I want to start with a question for the moms here. How many of you agree with this statement? “Children have amazing self-control.” Now how many of you disagree?

The truth is, most children struggle to control their impulses. They have big feelings. They have big desires. And very often their impulses win the day. Self-regulation is something children have to learn as they grow.

And in fact, psychologists have developed a test to see where kids are in this process. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called the marshmallow experiment.

They leave a child alone in a room with a single, tantalizing marshmallow in front of them. They can choose to eat it right away. But if they wait for 15 minutes, they can get two marshmallows. Let’s take a look.

I’m proud of him. That kid was fighting for his life!

Now, we can laugh at kids struggling with self-control, but in reality, what they are experiencing in kid form is actually something we all struggle with. Overcoming our impulses.

It is difficult to set our desires aside for something greater. And when we read Scripture, it becomes clear that at its core this struggle is really a matter of life and death.

Welcome back to our series “Follow me,” a deep dive through the gospel of Matthew.

As we’ve talked about, Matthew was the most widely read, copied, and preached-from book in the early Church. People died to protect this book and pass it on. And for good reason.

It is a discipleship manual - some of the most clear and challenging teachings for what it means to follow Jesus.

It’s also a kingdom manifesto - full of provocative, “upside-down” ideas, like “the last will be first,” “the poor are blessed,” “to live in Jesus means dying to yourself.”

Finally, it’s a story of fulfillment. Matthew works hard to show us how Jesus fulfills the grand narrative of redemption from the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament).

And this is the theme we’ll be exploring today. Fulfillment. Our passage is Matthew 4, all about Jesus being “tested in the wilderness.”

Now already, if you’re familiar with the Hebrew Bible, as Matthew’s original readers would have been - already you can hear echoes of an earlier story, where the Israelites were tested in the wilderness.

If you go back and read the book of Exodus, you’ll see that after God rescues his people from slavery in Egypt, he takes them through the waters of the Red Sea, and leads them into the wilderness.

There they are tested by hunger and thirst. And the question is, will they trust God to provide for them or will they take matters into their own hands? Let’s just say this: They consistently fail their test.

So. Egypt. Water. Wilderness. Testing.

Guess what happens in Matthew’s story of Jesus. God rescues Jesus and his parents from King Herod by bringing them through Egypt. Then Jesus goes through the waters of baptism, as Amy showed us last week, and then he is led by the Sprit into the wilderness to be tested.

The parallels are obvious. The big question for Jesus, though, is this: Will he be able to do what the Israelites never could? Let’s pray, and then we’ll find out.

Let’s read the story.

Matthew 4:1-4

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry. During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

We’ll stop here for a moment and talk about it.

First, 40 days. This number is really significant in the Bible.

For example, both Moses and Elijah went hungry in the wilderness for 40 days. But even more importantly, the people of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years.

You can see all these narrative layers stacking up as Jesus fulfills them all.

Now, hunger is an important component of this story. For one thing, hunger can easily override our self-control. Just think of all those kids struggling not to eat the marshmallow. Our guts can easily overpower our brains.

So the Devil, or the Satan, or the temper (he’s called all three things in this story) - the adversary of God’s purposes - decides to hit Jesus where it hurts.

“Hey, you’re hungry. Eat something! If you’re the Son of God, take matters into your own hands.”

In response, Jesus quotes a passage from the Old Testament about bread. But there is more going on here than Jesus just pulling a verse out of context to prove a point.

He’s quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, where God is speaking to the Israelites at the end of their wilderness wanderings.

Deuteronomy 8:1-3

Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today… Remember how the LORD your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna… He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

You see, this verse that Jesus quotes is not just about hunger. It’s about trust.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, God provided something called manna for them to eat. It was like bread they could pick up off the ground.

But manna, by its very nature, required significant trust. This was God’s command to them: Take what you need for today. But if you take more than you need for one day, it’s going to rot.” They had to trust that God would give them exactly what they needed each morning.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” as Jesus prays later in Matthew.

So this back and forth here with the tempter is about more than just Jesus’ physical needs for nourishment. It’s about fundamental trust in God’s commands. In God’s “Word.”

“Do I trust God to take care of my needs? To nourish me? Or do I take matters into my own hands? Do I eat the marshmallow? Or do I wait for what God has promised me?”

Well, Jesus passes the first test. He doesn’t follow his gut. He follows the heart of God.

Let’s keep reading.

Matthew 4:5-7

Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’” Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the LORD your God.’”

So for this second test, the devil takes Jesus up to the highest point of the temple. We don’t know exactly how tall this was, but it was likely somewhere around 150 feet.

“If you’re the Son of God, jump!” He says. I mean, surviving a fall from a 15-story building into the middle of the crowded temple courts would be an easy way for Jesus to prove his identity as the Son of God, right?

It’s a fast track to a successful mission.

But we know that that’s not the way Jesus truly proved his identity and authority. It wasn’t through cool acrobatic stunts or miracles or calling down lightning from heaven. He proved who he was through self-sacrifice.

It was through his crucifixion and his resurrection from the grave. Magicians can do cool tricks. Only the Son of God can defeat death itself for the sake of humanity.

Nevertheless, the devil tries to get Jesus to take a shortcut. This time he even quotes scripture to do it. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Yet again, Jesus’ response is a quotation from Deuteronomy about testing God. Here’s the full passage:

Deuteronomy 6:16

You must not test the LORD your God as you did when you complained at Massah.

The name Massah literally means “test” because that’s what the Israelites did to God when they ran out of water. They tested him.

Yet again, we see Jesus fulfilling the story where the Israelites had only failed. He didn’t take a shortcut. He didn’t test God. He trusted in Him even to the point of his own crucifixion.

Ok. One final test to go.

Matthew 4:8-11

Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”

“Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say, ‘You must worship the LORD your God and serve only him.’” Then the devil went away, and angels came and took care of Jesus.

To understand this third test, it’s helpful to remember the grand storyline of the Bible, especially the Old Testament.

In the story, God creates humanity to rule creation as his representatives. But instead of ruling this world, we end up being ruled by it.

Specifically, we become addicted to ourselves. We do whatever seems right in our own eyes. We sin. Whether it’s through pride or violence or greed or lust, we bow to the spiritual forces and temptations of this world and give them power in the process.

It’s like in the marshmallow test of life, we always take a bite. Humanity seems utterly incapable of rising above our selfish appetites and doing what God desires.

By the time Jesus comes on the scene, humanity is so hopelessly enslaved to sin that the devil - the adversary, the deceiver - is called the “ruler of this world.”

We gave him his power because we trusted in ourselves, not in God. That’s the story.

So now we come back to Jesus in the wilderness. Satan is basically saying, “Look, Jesus. The people of earth have already bowed to me. They’ve given me power. If you join them - bow to me as well - I’ll give all their kingdoms to you.”

Again, it's a moment of deep testing for Jesus, just like the Israelites in the wilderness.

And as we know from Exodus, they failed. While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law, the people got antsy. They couldn't wait.

So they made a golden calf to bow down to. God’s chosen people gave power to the things of this world just like everyone else.

But where the Israelites failed - where humanity failed - Jesus succeeds.

He quotes Deuteronomy again and declares that his priorities are in line. “I bow only to God. Not my will, but his will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.”

This is a powerful moment in the gospel of Matthew because until now God’s grand narrative of redemption for humanity has met failure after failure.

But now it’s beginning to be fulfilled. Through Jesus, who did what the Israelites could not. Who showed his followers what it looks like to live in complete trust of our Creator.

Jesus passed his test because his heart was fully surrendered to God.

DISCIPLESHIP

So there you have it. Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is fulfilling the story of God’s redemption. Now that he’s passed his test, it’s time for his ministry of redemption to begin. That’s what we’ll talk about next week.

But before we move on, I want to take a moment to talk about you. Because a I said earlier, Matthew is not just a story of fulfillment. It’s also a discipleship manual.

If we follow Jesus - if we’re his disciples - then our job is to model our lives on him. And that includes his posture in the wilderness.

So, with that in mind, I want to ask you a few questions to help you gauge your own progress in this.

First, as we just saw, Jesus refused to bow to the tempter, and instead gave his worship only to God. So here’s the question:

Who do you worship?

Now, that might seem like an easy question to answer, because, “Hey, I’m a Christian. Obviously I worship God.”

But take a moment and dig a little deeper. Because worship isn’t just about singing songs at Church. It’s about power. Are there any other forces in your life which exercise control over you?

What about money? Or lust? What about alcohol, or drugs? Are they in control?

Does your rage call the shots when you’re seeing red? How about your need to feel safe and secure? Is your entire life driven by your kids? What about YouTube or Facebook?

I could go on and on. There are many, many things in our lives asking for our focus - our reverence - our worship. We follow the path they mark out for us. This is the human condition.

Which means there is an invitation here for us to model our lives on Jesus, who showed us the way out of our slavery to sin:

Matthew 4:10

“You must worship the LORD your God and serve only him.”

Who/what do you worship? Think about that this week.

In the second test for Jesus, the devil quotes Scripture at him. But as Jesus immediately demonstrates, the tempter is misusing the Bible for his own ends. So I’ll ask you this:

How well do you know the Word of God?

What I mean is, are you familiar with God’s desires? Do you understand his heart for the world? Have you internalized the teachings of Jesus?

Because the truth is, people can and do misuse this book for their own ends. Pulling verses out of context, they can make the Bible say whatever they want it to say. Give me 5 minutes on TikTok and I’ll give you a dozen examples.

How do you combat this?

By doing the work.

By reading or listening to Scripture and studying it.

By praying the Psalms.

By discussing the Bible in Christian community.

By listening to Spirit-led teaching and spending time with things like the Bible Project or Between Sundays - gracechurch.us/podcast

Jesus had the words of Scripture woven deep into his soul, and he was ready when the tempter tried to misuse them.

Now, hear me say this: You don’t have to be a Bible expert.

But if you know the stories of God’s faithfulness in Scripture, if you’re familiar with the teachings of Jesus, if biblical themes of love, and justice, and life are part of the fabric of your subconscious, you will be far better prepared to respond like Jesus when you hear people claiming to speak for God.

Jesus himself said it best.

John 8:31-32

You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

If you want to remain faithful to his teachings you’ve got to start by knowing what they are. So how well do you know the Word of God?

Because at Grace Church, we are passionate about helping you develop deep biblical roots. But we can’t grow them for you. That’s your job.

Finally, the first test Jesus goes through is all about bread. Of course, Jesus makes it clear that it’s really all about trust.

Matthew 4:4

“People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

So my final question for you today is this: What fuels your life?

What gets you up in the morning? Is it food? Or success? Or fame? Or money? Are you driven by your appetites? Are you taking matters into your own hands?

Or is your life fueled by the very heart of God? Are you nourished by walking in line with his intentions? By trusting in him even when you’re in the wilderness?

Because look. You can follow your gut. Do whatever seems right in your own eyes. Eat the marshmallow on the plate. That’s your choice.

But if you wait on the Lord - if you trust in him - what awaits you isn’t a second marshmallow; it’s a five-course meal.

What fuels your life? Because Jesus showed us the truth: when we’re in the wilderness it is the Word of God that will show us the way to abundance.