Matthew 4

From Jesus being tempted in the desert to the calling of the first disciples, this chapter covers a lot of ground. Let's look at those separately.

I've wondered before if I could handle temptation the way Christ did in the desert, and when I wonder about that I often think that His temptation was something separate from any temptation that I've ever faced. If you look closely at the passage, though, I think you realize that it's really just the same stuff that everyone faces.

Jesus was tempted to try and satisfy His own inner hunger by making bread for Himself. We are tempted much the same way in our society today. Rather than feeding on the word of God, we feed on the spirituality of our society, the emotions of our congregation, or the euphoria of doing something "good." Many times it's easier for us to make our own food that tastes good to our senses but doesn't provide any real spiritual nourishment rather than feasting on the word of God even when it challenges areas of our life.

Jesus was tempted to give up and see if God is really there. How many times have we asked God to do this that or the other if He's really there? We might say something like, "You'll heal my child if you're really there." As if God is going to pander to our whims just to prove His existence, we are tempted to forgo perseverance in favor of testing God. We might even go so far as to do something stupid and then blame God for not protecting us. Jesus was tempted to jump off of the temple. Basically, He was tempted to commit suicide to prove that God exists. And what if He did that and God let Him die? Would that mean that it was God's fault? No. It would mean that Jesus made a bad choice. It's the same with us.

Finally, Jesus was tempted with fortune and fame. The most alluring of all things to most people is money. All Jesus had to do was turn from God and He would have all the kingdoms of the world. You might think that that was no temptation at all since Jesus is God and God is ruler of everything already, but I don't think Satan was really offering Him a kingship. I think Satan was offering Jesus the people. He was saying that all of these kingdoms will believe and follow you if you worship me. If you do this one wrong thing, it will cause so many right things to happen that it will more than balance out. That's the temptation. We could take a shortcut to the final ending, and the ends will justify the means.

I think that the cool thing here is that you would be hard pressed to find a temptation in your life that can't be boiled down to one of these three things. We want to feed ourselves spiritually because it feels good. We want to test God to see if He's real. We want to justify our actions by having a good ending.

So, once Jesus had dealt with all of those things He'd seen everything that Satan had to offer and turned it all down. At that point, He was ready to start preaching the Gospel. At that point, He was ready to call the disciples.

In the past, when I've read about the calling of the disciples, I always thought of it as a hard decision for the Peter, James, John, etc. Recently, though, I've learned a little more about the society back then, and I think that it was no choice at all. When we look at it from our perspective it seems that these men gave up their livelihoods to follow Christ and that they basically became homeless nomads. We look down on that because our society doesn't value men being disciples of a teacher.

In their society, however, all young men were sent to rabbinical school and then systematically weeded out as they got older. To get to the point of being asked to be a disciple of a teacher was one of the highest honors that the men could achieve. The rest settled for work as fishermen, carpenters, etc. So, here's a group of guys that washed out of rabbinical school. Their dreams are shot and they've settled for a lesser life when along comes a teacher who asks them to be His disciples.

Of course, they are immediately going to jump at that chance. It would be about the same as Donald Trump walking up to me and saying, "Hey, come work for me, and I'll teach you everything I know about business." Of course, the Donald isn't quite the same as Jesus, but sociologically it's the same deal. These guys just got bumped a few rungs back up the ladder. There was no doubt about how they would respond.

The question for us today is not whether we would give up our jobs and become homeless, but whether we recognize, as the disciples did, the amazing opportunity that is offered to us when Christ says, "Walk with Me, and I'll teach you everything I know about the Father." Are you willing to change your life for that kind of education?