He was tempting Him, not to eat, but to pride – to show that He was capable of feeding Himself.
When I was a little girl, my father did some work for a very very rich Jewish man. This man, who has since passed away, may God rest his soul, had lived in Europe during World War Two and had experienced the Holocaust.
He would recount stories of how he survived the periods of hiding to escape the Nazi regime. One of the stories that he told was about was the story about how this man managed to eat while he was in hiding and unable to leave his hiding place… And while the man was in hiding for weeks at a time, he became so hungry, that he would catch cockroaches and other insects that crawled around him and would eat them because the hunger was so overwhelming.
And I have often reflected on that story, because it seems so terrible a thing to lower oneself to such an act as that – eating bugs off the floor in order to survive – and the dignity of the human becomes completely lost in one’s survival. Now, I in no way judge this man for having done this in order to survive. In fact, I admire him for being able to survive such harrowing circumstances and still continue to contribute to the world in a meaningful manner.
But it also reminds me of the time that Christ spent in the desert when He was tempted during a period of forty days and forty nights, because the FIRST temptation was to appease His hunger…
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, ‘If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’’” (Matthew 4:1-4).
And without skipping a beat, Christ rejected the food. And He did this – not because the food was a bad thing – it certainly was not. In fact, later in the Gospels, when the disciples were hungry, Christ allowed them to harvest grain on the Sabbath and eat it and admonished the Pharisees for their cruelty in being unwilling to bend the rules and allow hungry men to eat on the Sabbath…
But He rejected the food because the Evil One was trying to use the food as a way of proving Christ’s power. He was tempting Him, not to eat, but to pride – to show that He was capable of feeding Himself.
And I have been reflecting on that today. Because it seems to me that this same old sin of pride is always there – beneath every act of defiance against the Holy Will of God. And there is no excuse for it – not even hunger. And today, I think that it is important that I just think about that a little bit…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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