Matthew 4

Today’s Passage: Matthew 4

The heavens have just opened, the Spirit has just descended, and the voice from heaven has just named Jesus the beloved Son. And the very next thing that happens is that the Spirit leads Him out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Do not rush past the order of those two events, because Matthew has set them side by side on purpose. The chapter falls into three parts, and they belong together. First the forty days in the wilderness, the hunger, and the three assaults of the tempter, each one answered not with a display of power but with a sentence out of the book of Deuteronomy. Then, when the devil has gone and the angels have come, the news that John has been arrested, and the withdrawal north to Galilee, to a lakeside town called Capernaum in the old tribal country of Zebulun and Naphtali, which Matthew tells us was written down by Isaiah centuries before it happened. There the ministry opens with a single sentence: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. And finally, four fishermen at their work by the sea, called by name, leaving nets and boat and father where they lay. The chapter closes with the King moving through Galilee, teaching, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing every disease and sickness that is brought to Him, until the report of Him has run all the way up into Syria and the crowds are coming from every direction. The campaign has begun.

As you read, hold this: Where Israel failed in the wilderness the true Son stood, and the King who answered the tempter with the written Word walks out into Galilee to announce that the kingdom of heaven is near.

Matthew 4:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. ³ The tempter came to Him and said, “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” ⁴ But Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Notice first who does the leading. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (πειράζω) peirazō, pronounced pay-RAHD-zoh. Strong's G3985, to tempt, to test, to put to the proof. Peirazō covers a wider field than our English word “tempt.” At its root it simply means to put something to the proof, to test what a thing is made of, and Greek used it for testing metal, testing a ship, testing a man. Scripture uses it both ways, and the difference is entirely in the intent behind it. God tests, in order to bring out and establish what is genuinely there; the devil tempts, in order to break what is there. The astonishing thing about this scene is that both are true of it at once. The Spirit leads Him out to be tested, and the devil comes at Him to tempt, and the one purpose serves the other, because the tempter’s assault is exactly what proves the Son. Take the comfort in that carefully, without softening it. Your trials are not evidence that God has lost His grip, and the enemy who means them for your ruin has never once escaped the boundary God set for him. And there is more comfort still. The same word is used of us, and Scripture says of Christ that He was tested in every way that we are, so the Lord you pray to when the pressure is on is not a stranger to it. He has stood where you are standing, hungry, and He did not fall. by the devil. The same Spirit who had just come down on Him like a dove at the Jordan now takes Him out into that dry country, and the encounter that follows is not an ambush God failed to prevent. It is an appointment. The devil is real and his malice is real, and yet he is not running this scene. He is being permitted into it. Then Matthew gives us the detail that makes the whole thing human: after forty days and forty nights without food, He was hungry. There is no pretending here, no divine insulation from what it costs. The Son of God is standing in the desert genuinely starving, and it is precisely at that point of weakness that the tempter opens his mouth.

And hear what he says. “If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” He goes straight at the words spoken from heaven at the baptism. If. He is not asking Jesus to commit an obvious atrocity; he is asking Him to use what He is to feed Himself, to step out from under the Father’s care and provide for His own need on His own authority. And Jesus answers, not with a thunderbolt, not with a display of who He is, but with a line out of Deuteronomy 8. That is the passage where Moses looks back over the forty years and explains them:

"Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments. He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." Deuteronomy 8:2–3 (BSB)

Now put the two scenes together and let the shape of it land on you. A son in the wilderness, hungry, tested about bread. Israel was called God’s son and brought out of Egypt, and in the desert, hungry, Israel grumbled and doubted and demanded. Forty years there, forty days here. And where that son failed, this Son stands, and stands by quoting the very book that son had been given. That is the point of the whole scene, and it is worth saying plainly: Jesus is walking back over Israel’s road and getting it right. He is not merely resisting a temptation. He is being the obedient Son that no one had ever been, on our behalf and in our place. Praise God for a Savior who went out into the dry country first.

Matthew 4:5–7 (BSB)

⁵ Then the devil took Him to the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple. ⁶ “If You are the Son of God,” he said, “throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command His angels concerning You, and they will lift You up in their hands, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’” ⁷ Jesus replied, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

The second assault comes with a Bible in its hand, and you must not hurry over that. The devil takes Him to Jerusalem, sets Him on the high corner of the temple with the drop falling away beneath, and says: throw Yourself down, for it is written. Then he quotes Psalm 91, a real psalm, given by God, about the safety of the one who takes refuge in the Most High. He has changed his tactic. The first time he said “if You are the Son of God” and asked for a miracle; this time he says it and offers a promise, and the promise is genuine Scripture. Here is what the psalm actually says:

"For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." Psalm 91:11–12 (BSB)

Read the two side by side and you will see what has been done. A clause has quietly gone missing: to guard you in all your ways. The psalm is promising God’s protection over a life that is walking in God’s ways. It is not an insurance policy for a stunt. The devil has taken a true word about the Father’s care of an obedient child and pressed it into an invitation to test whether the Father really cares, which is the opposite of trust wearing trust’s clothes. And notice how Jesus answers. He does not say that Psalm 91 is untrue, and He does not say the Scripture cannot be relied on. He says, “It is also written,” and He gives Deuteronomy 6:16: Do not put the Lord your God to the test. That is the verse that points back to Massah, where Israel ran out of water and demanded that God prove He was among them.

So here is the lesson, and it is one of the most useful things in the whole chapter. A verse can be quoted accurately and still be made to say something God never said, if it is torn off the shape of the whole. And the answer to a text pressed out of its shape is never less Scripture. It is more of it, rightly held. Jesus does not retreat from the written Word into some private inner sense of what God is like; He meets a fragment with the whole, and the whole wins. That is why a believer reads the Bible entire, and reads it in its context, and reads it in the company of the saints, so that when someone hands you a verse that has been quietly trimmed you will feel the missing piece. The One who wrote it all knew what He had written. Learn it the way He answers it, and the fragment loses its power.

Matthew 4:8–11 (BSB)

⁸ Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ “All this I will give You,” he said, “if You will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰ “Away from Me, Satan!” Jesus told him. “For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’” ¹¹ Then the devil left Him, and angels came and ministered to Him.

The last assault drops all pretense. No more “if You are the Son of God,” no more borrowed Scripture. From a very high mountain the devil spreads out all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he names his price: fall down and worship (προσκυνέω) proskyneō, pronounced pross-koo-NEH-oh. Strong's G4352, to worship, to fall prostrate before. Proskyneō is a picture word before it is a religious one. It is built from a verb meaning to kiss toward, and it described the eastern custom of falling to the ground before a king and doing homage, the body’s whole posture confessing who is greater. Greek writers used it of subjects prostrating themselves before the Persian throne, and Jews and Greeks alike understood at once what it meant when a man went down like that. The New Testament uses this same word both for the homage men wrongly offer to creatures and for the worship rightly given to God alone, and Matthew is especially fond of it, because his Gospel is full of people falling at Jesus’ feet. The wise men do it in chapter two. A leper, a ruler, a mother, the disciples in the boat, the women at the empty tomb, all of them do it, and the Lord never once tells them to get up and stop. Set that beside this scene and the weight of it comes home. Here the tempter asks for the one thing that may never be given to anything that is not God, and Jesus refuses it absolutely, “serve Him only.” And the same Gospel that records that refusal shows us, again and again, men and women on the ground before Jesus Christ, and heaven does not object. me, and all of it is Yours. Understand what is actually being offered, because it is a real offer and not a joke. The kingdoms of this world do belong to Jesus by right, and they will be His. What the tempter is selling is the crown without the cross, the whole world handed over at once with no Gethsemane and no nails in it, in exchange for one moment on the ground before the wrong throne. Every shortcut ever offered to a human soul is a version of this one, and it always costs the same thing.

And the Lord ends it. “Away from Me, Satan!” There is no debate, no examining of terms, and there is a lesson in the speed of it. Then, a third time, Deuteronomy: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. That is the ground under everything. It is the first commandment and the great confession of Israel, and it is the thing the golden calf broke in the very wilderness this scene is echoing. Notice again that Jesus, who could have crushed the tempter with a word of His own, chooses instead to stand exactly where any believer stands, on what God has written. Then the devil left Him. And then, quietly, the sentence that ought to make you glad: angels came and ministered to Him. The Father did send angels, after all. Not at the tempter’s dare and not to prove a point at the temple’s edge, but in His own time, to a starving Son who had been faithful. He always does keep His word. He simply does not keep it on the devil’s schedule.

Matthew 4:12–17 (BSB)

¹² When Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, He withdrew to Galilee. ¹³ Leaving Nazareth, He went and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴ to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ¹⁵ “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— ¹⁶ the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” ¹⁷ From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

The voice in the wilderness has been shut in a prison, and the Light steps out into the open. Matthew tells it without drama: Jesus heard that John had been imprisoned, and He withdrew to Galilee. Then He leaves Nazareth, the hill town where He grew up, and settles in Capernaum on the lakeshore. Any traveler would have called that a small provincial move. Matthew calls it prophecy coming true. He reaches for Isaiah, and the words he quotes were spoken over the very first Israelite territory to be ripped away into exile, the northern tribal lands of Zebulun and Naphtali, overrun by Assyria and left in darkness for seven hundred years. Here is Isaiah’s own wording:

"Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those in distress. In the past He humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future He will honor the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned." Isaiah 9:1–2 (BSB)

Sit with where God chooses to begin. Not in the temple courts, not among the scholars in Jerusalem, but in the mixed, half-despised borderland where the road runs through and the Gentiles crowd in, the ground that had been in the dark longest. That is God’s habit, and He has not changed it. Then comes the first sentence of the public ministry, and it is short enough to carry in your pocket: “ Repent (μετανοέω) metanoeō, pronounced met-an-oh-EH-oh. Strong's G3340, to repent, to change the mind and turn. Metanoeō is made of two pieces, meta, meaning after or a change, and noeō, to think or perceive, so its plainest sense is to change one’s mind. But do not let that shrink it into a mental adjustment, because behind the Greek stands the Hebrew shuv, the prophets’ word for turning around, and that word is about a whole life reversing direction. This is not merely feeling sorry. A man can be very sorry indeed and never turn. Nor is it merely turning over a new leaf, since the change begins in the mind and the heart, in what you actually now believe about God and about yourself, and the changed walking follows from it. John had demanded fruit in keeping with it, and Jesus takes up the identical call. And notice the reason attached to it here. Not “repent, because you are wicked,” true as that is, but “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” The summons is grounded in good news. The King has come. That is why turning is urgent and also why it is safe, because the One you are turning toward is not standing there with folded arms; He is the One who came looking for you. Repentance is not the price of His welcome. It is what His welcome produces. , for the kingdom of heaven is near.” It is word for word what John had been preaching, which tells you the forerunner had got it right. The King has come, so the kingdom is not a distant hope any longer; it has arrived at the door. And the only fitting response to a King standing at the door is to turn around.

Matthew 4:18–22 (BSB)

¹⁸ As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ “Come, follow Me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” ²⁰ And at once they left their nets and followed Him. ²¹ Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Jesus called them, ²² and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him.

It is an ordinary working morning on the lake. Two brothers are throwing a net into the shallows, and further along two more are sitting in a boat with their father, mending the tears from the night’s work. Nobody is looking for a prophet. And Jesus walks up and says, “Come, follow Me (ἀκολουθέω) akoloutheō, pronounced ah-ko-loo-THEH-oh. Strong's G190, to follow, walk the same road behind someone. Akoloutheō meant to walk the same road with someone, to accompany, and in ordinary Greek it was used of a servant attending his master or a soldier in the train of his commander. It carries the idea of going where the other one goes. In the Gospels it becomes the standard word for discipleship, and that is significant in itself, because a rabbi’s pupils in that world did in fact follow their teacher about, living alongside him, learning as much from how he spoke to a beggar as from what he said in the synagogue. But there is a difference here you should not miss. Ordinarily a young man chose his rabbi and applied to be taken; here the Rabbi walks up to working fishermen and chooses them. And the object of the verb is never a doctrine or a movement. It is always a Person: follow Me. Matthew will use this word again and again through his Gospel, of crowds and of the Twelve, and later of a road that leads up to a cross, where Jesus tells anyone who would come after Him to take up his own cross and follow. The word never stops meaning what it meant on the lakeshore. It means going where He goes. , and I will make you fishers of men.” Look closely at the shape of that sentence, because everything is in it. The initiative is entirely His; He saw them, He called them, they did not apply. The demand is His own person, follow Me, not a program or a cause. And the promise is that He will do the making: I will make you fishers of men. They are not told to become anything by their own effort. They are told to come with Him, and He will turn them into something they could never have made themselves. That is still exactly how it works.

And they went. At once, Matthew says, and then immediately, and he lets you feel the cost in the details he leaves lying there: the nets dropped where they were, the boat, and the father sitting in it. Be careful here, and do not turn this into a general principle about walking away from your work. Scripture does not tell most believers to abandon their trade, and it has a great deal to say about honest labor and about honoring a father. What happened on that shore was not a lifestyle decision. It was the summons of the King, spoken to four particular men who were to be apostles, and the only right answer to a King is obedience without haggling. That is the thing to carry away. When the Lord Jesus makes His will plain to you, whatever it costs and whoever it inconveniences, the answer is yes, and the answer is now. These men did not know what the years ahead held. They knew who was calling. That was enough.

Matthew 4:23–25 (BSB)

²³ Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. ²⁴ News about Him spread all over Syria, and people brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering acute pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and He healed them. ²⁵ Large crowds followed Him, having come from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Matthew closes the chapter with a wide shot, and it is a summary of everything the ministry is about to be. Three things, and they hold together. He is teaching in their synagogues, going where the people already gathered around the Scriptures and opening them. He is preaching the gospel of the kingdom, announcing good news, that God’s reign has arrived in His own person. And He is healing every disease and sickness among the people, which is the kingdom made visible, the reign of God pressing into a broken world and driving the ruin back. The word and the work say the same thing. Matthew does not soften the list of what was brought to Him either. Various diseases, acute pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, the paralyzed. Every kind of misery in that countryside was carried out and laid down in front of Him, and the sentence at the end of it is very short: and He healed them. Not most of them. Not the promising cases. Them.

So the news runs. Up the roads into Syria, down the lake to the Greek cities of the Decapolis, south to Jerusalem and Judea and across the Jordan, until large crowds are converging on a carpenter from Nazareth. And here, at the end of the chapter, is where you should stop and look back at where it started. Forty days alone in a desert, hungry, with nobody watching but the tempter. No crowd, no miracle, no proof offered, only a hungry Son holding to what His Father had written. That obedience in the empty place is what stands underneath all this. The King who could not be bought with the kingdoms of the world is the King now walking through Galilee giving Himself away to the sick and the tormented for nothing.