The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

How Jesus Was Victorious:  Mt.3:13 – 4:11

^3:16 After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him, ¹⁷ and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’  ^4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

          Jesus was about to head into a very tough forty days.  Out in the wilderness alone, he would hear, howling in his ears, the voices of his own needs, fears, dreams, and in this weakened state, his worst adversary.  If temptation whispered and crooned and shouted at me for forty straight days, I would certainly slip.  What enabled Jesus to resist those voices?

          Before we resort to saying, ‘Well, it’s because Jesus was divine,’ let’s look at his actual experience.  Right before Jesus headed into that wilderness for forty days, he met with his cousin, John the Baptist, and was baptized.  It was an earth-shattering event, literally.  When Jesus came up from the water, the fabric of this world split open.  Heaven thundered on the earth.  The Spirit of God, normally hidden in the flesh of Jesus, hovered like a dove around Jesus visibly.  Then, the voice of the Father said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’

          Didn’t Jesus already know he was God’s Son?  We might look at this event as perfunctory, as if it were some strange ceremony with no real significance.  But it had enormous significance.  God Himself was repeating the words of Psalm 2, which was the coronation song of the Kings of Israel, where God called the King of Israel ‘Son.’  So for Jesus, God’s declaration inaugurated Jesus’ ‘kingship.’  Jesus was, after all, inaugurating the kingdom of heaven on earth.  He was its king. 

But God wasn’t just reminding Jesus of his responsibilities.  He was reminding Jesus of His love.  Before Jesus started his public ministry, he received his identity from his Father and by His voice.  And Jesus chose to listen to it, meditated on that word, and took it deeply to heart.  His Father’s declaration of his identity as ‘Son’ alone established an identity for him.  How different that is for us.  Sometimes our earthly parents don’t praise us, publicly or privately.  Sometimes their criticisms echo more loudly in our minds than any affirmations.  Whatever the case, our sense of identity is somehow always unraveling.  And as a result, we get confused by all the different voices – TV commercials, friends, competitors, professors, coaches, parents – who want to mold us and give us an identity.  And then there are our own voices internal to us, of fear, lust, anger, greed, pride, etc.  We listen to those voices as well.  That’s what makes us unstable, fearful, volatile, lacking in integrity, unloving, and unjust.

Jesus did not do that.  Jesus was going to endure temptation over the course of his entire ministry like he had never endured it before.  Yes, a lot of it was going to be compressed into forty days in the wilderness.  The devil would taunt him about his identity:  ‘If you are the Son of God,’ do this or that.  But Jesus refused to give into the temptation to prove his identity again.  He didn’t need to prove it, or test God.  God had already spoken.  For Jesus, that was enough.

By no means did the devil’s taunting and tempting end on the fortieth day either.  Yet the voice of his Father was enough for Jesus. 

God calls us ‘daughters’ and ‘sons’ adopted into Christ.  Before we do anything of any significance, God thunders and whispers our identity to us in Jesus.  Before He uses us for any great purpose of His, He declares who we are:  ‘My beloved.’  May that be enough for us as well.