Matthew 4:1-11 (1st Sunday in Lent) – February 22, 2026

Introduction

We begin Lent in the wilderness.

Just days before, many of us will have heard the invitation of Ash Wednesday: remember that you are dust. We stepped into a season marked by prayer, fasting, reflection, and repentance. The liturgical color has shifted. The alleluias have quieted. The church slows down on purpose.

And once again, the lectionary brings us here, to Jesus in the wilderness.

In years past, this text may have been framed as a lesson in resisting simple temptations. Or as a call to spiritual discipline. Or as a dramatic scene of cosmic confrontation.

This year, you might consider a slightly different emphasis.

Rather than asking, “How do we resist temptation like Jesus?” we might ask, “What kind of Messiah is revealed here, and what kind of people are we being formed to become?”

Lent may not be about proving our strength. It may be about remembering who we are.

Narrative Context

The lectionary drops us back at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

In Matthew’s narrative flow, Jesus has just been baptized by John. The heavens open. The Spirit descends like a dove. And a voice declares: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Nothing public has happened yet. No sermons. No healings. No disciples.

And next the Spirit leads him into the wilderness. The Spirit leads him.

Jesus is not wandering off course. He is not spiritually lost. He is led. The wilderness is not outside of God’s will; it is exactly where Jesus is supposed to be.

Matthew is careful in how he structures these opening chapters. Baptism. Wilderness. The calling of disciples. The Sermon on the Mount. The authority of Jesus is being established before he ever stands to teach.

But how does this scene establish authority?

Not through spectacle. Not through domination. Not through triumph.

Authority is established through trust.

What is Actually Being Tempted?

Each temptation begins with the same phrase:
“If you are the Son of God…”

That conditional clause is critical.

The tempter is not primarily challenging whether God exists. The tempter is challenging what it means to be God’s Son.

If you are the Son of God, use your power to satisfy yourself.
If you are the Son of God, prove it dramatically.
If you are the Son of God, take control of the kingdoms of the world.

The devil is not tempting Jesus with small indulgences. He is tempting him with misdirected vocation.

Satanic Force

It may be too far a stretch to say that Matthew is using Satan merely as a metaphor. The text presents a real adversary. And yet, within the narrative of the Gospel of Matthew, Satan also functions representatively. He embodies a way of being in the world that stands in direct opposition to the kingdom Jesus proclaims.

Satan is not simply a cartoon villain. He is the voice of isolation, self-preservation, spectacle, and domination.

Stones into Bread

Jesus is famished. This is not theoretical hunger.

“Command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

On the surface, it seems harmless. Why not eat? Why not relieve suffering? But, to turn stones into bread would be to sever Jesus from the web of human interdependence.

Bread is communal. It requires seed, soil, rain, labor, harvest, grinding, kneading, baking. Bread presumes farmers and millers and bakers and shared tables.

To manufacture bread from stones would alleviate hunger, but without dependence (on land, on labor, on neighbor, on the daily provision of God). It would make Jesus self-sufficient.

Satan’s first offer is not indulgence. It is isolation.

You don’t need anyone.
You don’t need the slow work of community.
Take care of yourself.

In a culture that prizes independence above all else, that temptation still hums beneath the surface.

But Jesus refuses. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Life is not sustained merely by consumption, but by trust and relationship.

The Pinnacle of the Temple

The second temptation shifts location to the pinnacle of the temple, the religious center of Israel’s life.

Here, Satan quotes Psalm 91. Using faith language to justify risk. “He will command his angels concerning you…”

If the first temptation was about self-sufficiency, this one is about spectacle.

Prove it.

Perform a miracle so undeniable that no one could question you. Throw yourself down. Let God catch you. Imagine the crowds. Imagine the headlines.

Religious life can quietly slide into this trap. Faith becomes something to display rather than to trust. God can be used as a tool for our performance.

But Jesus refuses to turn trust into a test. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” He will not manipulate the Father for public approval.

The Messiah in Matthew’s Gospel will not be built on spectacle. He will not coerce belief through stunts.

Authority, again, is rooted in trust.

All the Kingdoms

The final temptation makes the stakes unmistakable. From a very high mountain, Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

“All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Satan offers authority, but not the kind that comes through cross-shaped obedience. This is military might. Political domination. Conquering power. The kind of kingdom that crushes enemies and secures borders through force.

Worship me, and you can rule.

It is not a stretch to say that here Satan embodies the obsession with control. The drive to dominate. The belief that the world is changed primarily through coercion and force.

Jesus refuses.

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

Notice the inversion. Satan offers kingdoms through worship. Jesus speaks of worship leading to service. The Messiah in Matthew’s Gospel will rule by serving, not by crushing.

Satan Returns

This is not the last time this voice appears in Matthew.

In chapter 16, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah. It is a high moment. A turning point. But when Jesus begins to speak of suffering and death, Peter pulls him aside. This cannot happen. This is not how being the Messiah works.

And Jesus responds: “Get behind me, Satan.”

The adversary’s voice is not always external. It can come from those closest to Jesus. It can sound protective. Reasonable. Even loving.

Do not suffer. Do not lose. Do not descend.

Six days later, on another mountain, at the Transfiguration, Jesus is revealed in glory. Peter again speaks up, this time wanting to build dwellings, to preserve the glory, to stay in the luminous moment.

And once more, a voice interrupts. As at the Jordan. As before the wilderness.

“This is my Son, the Beloved.”

The declaration of belovedness brackets both wilderness and mountain.

Before the testing.

Before the descent toward Jerusalem.

The voice remains steady. Belovedness gives Jesus strength for what’s ahead.

In this light, Satan in Matthew functions as more than a one-time adversary. Satan represents every attempt to distort the “sonship” into self-preservation, spectacle, or domination.

And that distortion is not confined to cosmic evil. It appears in political systems, religious institutions, and even well-meaning disciples.

The wilderness reveals what kind of Messiah Jesus will be.

Not self-sufficient. Not spectacular. Not domineering.

But faithful. Trusting. Obedient to the voice that calls him Beloved.

And perhaps that is where Lent invites us to linger. Not on our ability to resist temptation, but on the persistent invitation to trust the voice that has already named us.

Preaching Possibility

Many of us may want to reduce Lent to giving up chocolate or coffee. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving something up. But the temptations in this text are not about small comforts. They are about the stories that shape our lives.

The temptation to isolate and secure ourselves.
The temptation to turn faith into performance or proof.
The temptation to equate power with domination.

Those are not seasonal struggles. Those are daily liturgies.

We are catechized every day into self-sufficiency.
We are discipled into spectacle.
We are formed by systems that assume control is the highest good.

That is why this text belongs at the beginning of Lent.

The wilderness exposes the scripts we have absorbed.

And here is the crucial move for preaching:

This is not a call to try harder. It is a revelation of who Jesus is for us.

Where we isolate, he remains in solidarity.
Where we perform, he trusts quietly.
Where we grasp for control, he refuses domination.

The point of the wilderness is not that we must succeed as he does. The point is that he succeeds where God’s people stumbled, where Peter falters, and where we repeatedly struggle to remember.

The good news of this text is not, “Be stronger.”

It is, “Christ has been faithful.

And that faithfulness reshapes us.

Because if belovedness precedes performance for Jesus, then it precedes performance for us.

Before you fast.
Before you repent.
Before you improve.
Before you fail again.

You are named.

In a world obsessed with earning, proving, securing, and dominating, that is radical news.

Lent then becomes less about spiritual heroics and more about unlearning the lies.

Unlearning that we are alone
Unlearning that faith must be flashy.
Unlearning that power must crush.

The wilderness reveals what kind of Messiah Jesus will be and therefore what kind of kingdom we belong to.

A kingdom of community, trust, and service.

The wilderness does not create our belovedness.
It reveals whether we will trust what has already been spoken.

And perhaps that is the invitation this Lent.

Not to prove anything to God.

But to trust that the voice that named Jesus at the Jordan and on the mountain now names us, and calls us to follow him into the wilderness, down the mountain, and along the long road of love.