‘Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil’ Matthew 4:11

For thirty years, I would have preached about the temptations of Jesus on the first Sunday in Lent, and would have had cause to reflect on them on many other occasions, and not once in all that time did I ask the question, ‘who is telling this story?’

Of course, the Gospel reading around the world today will be the story of the temptations as told by Saint Matthew, but how many preachers will pause and say, ‘hold on, who is telling this story?’ I know I never did.

It can’t have been Matthew who was the original narrator, because Matthew wasn’t there. If the writer of the Gospel is the same Matthew who was the tax collector who was called to follow Jesus, then he doesn’t come into the story at all until Jesus meets him at the roadside one day.

The story of the temptations is told both in Saint Matthew and in Saint Luke by a narrator, but there was no-one there who could have been the narrator.

Jesus is alone, the wilderness experience is one of isolation and loneliness. There was no-one with him, no-one to keep watch when he slept; no-one to whom to talk during the moments when, being human, he felt vulnerable; no-one to encourage him when he felt a sense of the darkness that would lie ahead of him. There is only Jesus.

And if there is only Jesus, then the story of the temptations that will be read today must be a story told by Jesus himself. And if the story is one told by Jesus himself, then the points that are being made in the story are the points that Jesus himself wants to make.

What I remember from listening to sermons and reading commentaries through the years is that many people sought to interpret the story of the temptations in their own way. Interpretations of a story that came from Jesus himself were placed side by side and preachers would draw their own conclusions.

If the story of the temptations is a story that Jesus taught to his followers shouldn’t those who seek to follow Jesus take to heart the points that Jesus makes?

The principles that Jesus sets forth are simple ones, they are not ones that need to be unnecessarily complicated.

‘Man shall not live by bread alone,’ seems an obvious piece of wisdom.

Life is about more than what we consume, what we own, what we possess. In a society obsessed with monetary wealth and material possessions, it may not be a popular thought. People may devote their whole lives to having more and more and Jesus would shake his head and ask them where the meaning is, where is the spiritual element in their lives? If people have no more than material things, then they are not living their lives to their full and they end their lives with nothing.

‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test,’ says Jesus when challenged to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple.

It is a hard temptation to refuse, it is hard sometimes not to challenge God, not to be tempted to put it up to God. If God does this, or God does that, then we will respond. It asks questions about what sort of God in whom people believe if they think that they can bargain as if they were bargaining with a trader in a street market.

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,’ says Jesus when offered all the power in the world in return for compromising with the devil.

Compromise is the easiest temptation to which to succumb. To set aside principles can become a habit, eventually there are so few principles left that Christians become indistinguishable from anyone else. Ideas of truth and integrity get lost in an easy adjustment to the materialism and the dishonesty of the contemporary world. The Christian faith becomes a ‘spirituality,’ a pick and mix assortment of what is convenient for people. The notion of worshipping God and serving only him becomes an option.

The Gospel reading is Jesus’ account of facing down temptation. It sets forth in plain terms what is his response to those temptations. It challenges those who claim to follow his example.