This year I have been greedy; I have two books to read and reflect on through lent. I guess unsurprisingly they both use the passage of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness.
Both books gave me plenty to think about, but for today I want to go back to the passage. I read through Matthew 4.1-13 slowly. It’s a passage I’ve heard and read more times than I can count, so I wanted to make sure I really read it rather then assuming I knew the passage.
The thing that struck me most was what the tempter says to Jesus. He says, “If you are the Son of God, then…” Immediately before being sent to the wilderness, Jesus gets baptised and God calls out from heaven, saying “This is my Son, whom I love.” 40 days later, this is the first thing the tempter attacks. “If you are the Son of God, prove it.”
I wonder how often we are tempted to question God? Or how often we doubt our own identity as God’s children? How often does the world try to tell us something different from what God tells us? And when any of these things happen, how do we know what to believe, or who to trust?
Jesus pushes back by quoting from his religious text, what we now know as the Old Testament. Hungry and weary as he might be from 40 days in the wilderness, he chooses to trust in the sacred texts, and in the God they reveal, the God he knows.
It can be tempting at times, easier and more attractive, to listen to those voices, the ones that encourage us to doubt God or ourselves. It can be simpler to trust the voices of the world. That little question, if, can lead us down unhelpful paths.
I don’t know if I would have had the strength that Jesus did, to not give into temptation and instead to choose to trust God. The good news is that Jesus did resist, and in doing so showed us the way.
My encouragement for you (or maybe challenge) as we embark on Lent 2026 is that God’s word is trustworthy and reliable. In the bible, we have a gift to help us through the hardest times, words that reveal who God is, stories that tell us of Jesus’ example. So maybe set aside a little time each day and read the bible. Spend some time in one book, read it slowly and see what God prompts in you. And when those ‘ifs’ come calling, you might just find, like Jesus, that you have an alternative to rely on.
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