AT LONG LAST, the day arrived. It had been a long time in coming, over forty years since God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt and to the shore of the Red Sea. There, the people panicked, thinking they were trapped between the water in front of them and the might of Pharaoh behind; but through Moses, God parted the water before them. They escaped unharmed, while Pharaoh’s army drowned. It was a defining moment in the history and identity of the people as they began their journey through the wilderness toward the land God promised to Abraham and the generations to follow.

But their gratitude quickly gave way to complaint. They can’t be blamed for wanting food and water; the question was whether they would trust the God who had just saved them through an undeniably miraculous demonstration of his power and care. Their incessant and disobedient grumbling against Moses and therefore against God, unfortunately, had disastrous consequences.

When they reached the Promised Land, the people sent in spies, who returned with good news and bad news. The good news was that the land was everything the people had hoped it would be. The bad news? Other people were living there, and they were really big and scary. Long story short: when they heard the bad news, the people wailed that they wanted to return to Egypt. And for such faithlessness, God kept them wandering the wilderness until the whole generation of the disobedient had died out.

The forty-year lesson in trust was now up. The people stood poised to enter the land. How would they handle this second chance? Would they be faithful this time? Were they ready?

Sort of. That’s why Moses gave them a long sermon reminding them of all that God had done on their behalf. He reminded them of their first failure. He warned them not to forget God, and to love, obey, and fear him only.

Would they remember Moses’ words? They did—sometimes. But seasons of obedience alternated with seasons of disobedience, and eventually, disobedience became the norm. They were exiled from the land of promise, and though a remnant returned, they continued to live under foreign domination.

Why am I reminding you of the lengthy Old Testament narrative? Because all of this is background to Luke’s story of the temptation of Jesus, a story that itself takes place in the wilderness. Jesus would remember and live by Moses’ words, even if others did not.

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MATTHEW, MARK, AND LUKE all have accounts of the temptation of Jesus. Mark’s is very short: only two verses, with little detail. Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts are longer and quite similar to each other, but with interesting differences. Here’s how Luke’s version begins:

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” (Luke 4:1-3, NIV)

And here’s Matthew’s version:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” (Matt 4:1-3)

The New International Version translates Luke as saying that the devil tempted Jesus for the full forty-day period of his fast. But Matthew seems to say that the temptation happened at the end of forty days. Luke’s Greek is a little ambiguous, so it’s possible to read him as agreeing with Matthew. But it’s also possible that both versions are true. While it’s obvious that Jesus would be famished after eating nothing for forty days and nights, that’s not to say that he wasn’t hungry before.

What matters to the story, though, is how Jesus responded to the explicit temptation by the devil after that time. Notice how the temptation is phrased: “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread” (Matthew has the plural “stones” instead of “stone,” but to me at least, that hardly matters). The point is that Jesus is the Son of God, but as a human being, as a son of Adam, he is also weak with hunger. It’s as if Satan were to say, “Look, Jesus, you’re the Son of God, right? You’ve done your bit. Forty days of fasting is as pious as anyone could be. You don’t have to be hungry anymore. You have the power to turn this stone into bread. Heck, you could treat yourself to an everything bagel if you want! Wouldn’t that be great? Surely there can’t be anything wrong with that.”

There was a kernel of truth in the temptation: there was nothing wrong with being hungry. But the setting of the story in the wilderness, together with the way the number “forty” echoes the forty years the Israelites wandered for their disobedience, reminds us that legitimate hunger can tempt us to not trust God. Jesus had been led into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, and one presumes he spent those forty days not only fasting but praying, seeking God’s will. By being baptized, he had accepted the mission the Father had assigned to him, and his forty days in the wilderness completed his preparation.

Thus, even if he had to gasp out the words, Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone’” (Luke 4:4). Matthew gives the more complete quote: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:4).

“It is written,” Jesus says. Yes, but where?

It’s often been said that in responding to the devil’s wiles, Jesus quoted Scripture. True enough, and rightly so. But it also matters which Scripture Jesus quotes. For each of the three temptations in Luke and Matthew 4, Jesus quotes Scripture—and all three quotes are from Moses’ last sermon to the Israelites. This first quote is from Deuteronomy 8:3, and as we’ll see, the other two are from Deuteronomy 6. It was the end of their forty years in the wilderness, and Moses was reminding them of the need to be faithful and obedient.

The son of Adam, in other words, had to get right what the generations before him had gotten wrong. Only then could he be the people’s sinless representative on the cross. He would not, therefore, take the shortcut of using his power as the Son of God to put an end to his human suffering. His need for bread was legitimate, but in that moment, for the sake of the mission, the importance of his obedience to the word of God was greater.

Jesus remained faithful, and as we’ll see, in this and the other two temptations, he showed that he was ready.