From the archives of Oral Roberts
Matthew 4:1–10 NKJV tells the story of Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. Verse 2 says, And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Jesus was fully God and yet He was fully man. In His human body He was subject to the same feelings we have, such as hunger and fatigue.
Jesus has been in the desert forty days and nights without food. He was not merely doing without food, but He was committing Himself and His time to God, so that He might fortify Himself for the onslaughts of the devil that He knew were coming.
At His weakest point, the devil came to Jesus and said, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread” (v.3). It’s important for us to know that the tempter always comes. And he comes whether we’re prepared or not ― even at times when we’ve been seeking God the most.
Jesus answered him by saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (v.4). This is the first of three times that Jesus answered the devil’s temptation by saying, “It is written.” He depended upon the Word of God as well as His faith.
When the devil came against Him, Jesus used the same two weapons to overcome temptation that God provides for us today: first, the Word of God, “It is written”; and second, His faith in God.