The Wilderness Call (Matthew 4:1)
A Lent Morning Sermon, Day 2
Introduction
Most of us spend our lives running from empty places. We fill every quiet moment with noise, every pause with a scroll, every silence with a podcast. We treat emptiness as a problem to solve. But what if God sees it differently? What if the empty place is not where He sends you to punish you, but where He takes you to reach you?
Today's text opens with a striking sentence. "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." (Matthew 4:1) Notice the verb. Led. The Spirit did not abandon Jesus in the wilderness. The Spirit brought Him there. The wilderness was not an accident. It was an appointment.
This is the heartbeat of Lent. God does not call you into a season of fasting and prayer because He is displeased with you. He calls you there because He wants you close. The prophet Hosea captures this with breathtaking tenderness. God says of His wandering people, "I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her." (Hosea 2:14) The wilderness is where God whispers. The noise of ordinary life drowns Him out. The wilderness strips all of that away, and suddenly the only voice left is His.
Lent is your wilderness. Receive it as a gift.
1. Stepping Away from the Noise
Matthew 4:2 tells us, "After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry." Forty days. No markets, no crowds, no dinner tables, no conversation. Jesus stepped fully away from the rhythms of daily life, and He did it on purpose. Luke 5:16 tells us this was not a one-time event. "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." Withdrawal was a spiritual discipline for Him, not a spiritual emergency.
Most of us have never genuinely tried this. We think prayer means talking to God while the television is on in the background, or while we scroll a feed between verses. That is not withdrawal. That is multitasking with God. Real withdrawal costs something. It requires you to sit with quiet long enough for it to become uncomfortable.
And it will be uncomfortable. This is the truth the text does not sugarcoat. Jesus was hungry. Not symbolically hungry. Physically, genuinely hungry. When you step away from noise, the silence does not feel peaceful at first. Your mind fills with anxiety you usually outrun, with grief you usually postpone, with questions you usually drown out. That internal noise, the kind that only surfaces when everything external goes quiet, is not evidence that you are doing something wrong. It is evidence that the process has started.
Paul writes in Romans 8:26, "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." God meets you in that wordless, uncomfortable place. You do not need to perform. You need to arrive. The first act of Lenten discipline is simply this: stop long enough to be hungry for quiet.
Ask yourself where in your week you can create a pocket of genuine withdrawal. Not a shorter scroll session. Not background worship music. True silence. The wilderness begins there.
2. Hungering for the Word
In verse 3, the devil presents his first temptation. In verse 4, Jesus answers. "It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4) The response is precise. Jesus does not argue. He does not reason philosophically. He quotes Scripture. He was full of the Word, and that fullness was His defense.
Job understood this long before the wilderness. He wrote, "I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread." (Job 23:12) This is not a denial of physical need. Job suffered physically. Jesus was genuinely hungry. Neither man pretended the body's needs were trivial. What they understood was the order of priority. Physical food keeps you alive. The Word of God gives you a reason to live and the strength to stand when everything around you tries to knock you down.
Proverbs 30:5 says, "Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him." The Word is not decoration. It is armor. Ephesians 6:17 calls Scripture "the sword of the Spirit." A sword is useless in a battle if you have never picked it up before the fight starts. The wilderness is not the place to learn your weapon. The wilderness is where you use what you already know.
This is the Lenten challenge for Point 2. Read your Bible daily. Not as a habit to check off a list, but as food. You would not go 40 days without eating. Do not go 40 days grazing on everything the world offers and starving your spirit. When temptation comes, and it will, a mind saturated with the Word responds the way Jesus responded: "It is written." That is not a performance. That is reflex. Reflex comes from repetition. Start today.
Psalm 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." Hide the Word now, so it is already inside you when you need it.
3. Depending on God's Provision
Verse 3 reads, "The tempter came to him and said, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.'" (Matthew 4:3) Read that carefully. The devil was not asking Jesus to do something evil. He was asking Jesus to do something good, for Himself, on His own schedule, bypassing the Father's timing. That is the trap. The temptation was not to sin flagrantly. It was to act independently.
Jesus had the power to turn stones into bread. No one disputes that. The question was whether He would use that power outside of the Father's provision and timing. The devil's message was: "You have the ability, you have the need, do not wait. Make it happen now." That voice is not unfamiliar. You hear it in your finances when you are tempted to take the shortcut. You hear it in your relationships when you try to force an outcome instead of trusting God's process. You hear it in your career when you manipulate a situation rather than wait for the door God is about to open.
Paul's promise in Philippians 4:19 stands as the direct counter to this temptation. "My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus." Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say God will meet all your needs immediately. It does not say He will meet them the way you planned. It says He will meet them. The promise is the provision. The test is the timeline.
Jesus trusted the Father's timeline. He refused to turn the stones into bread. And look at what Matthew 4:11 records at the end of His wilderness trial. "Angels came and attended him." God sent provision. He always does. But He sent it in His time, not on the devil's demand schedule. Waiting on God is not passive resignation. It is an act of trust. It is choosing to believe that the One who promised is faithful, even when your stomach is empty and the stones are right in front of you.
Lamentations 3:25 says, "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him." Seek Him. Wait on Him. Refuse the shortcut. The provision is coming.
Conclusion
The wilderness is not a detour from your spiritual life. It is the center of it.
Jesus went in led by the Spirit and came out in the power of the Spirit. Luke 4:14 records, "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit." The wilderness produced something in Him that the crowd could not. The same is true for you. What God wants to do in you this Lent requires some separation, some silence, and some honest hunger.
Step away from the noise long enough to hear Him. Feed yourself on the Word until it becomes your first defense. Trust His provision even when you feel like you are holding the stones and He is asking you to put them down.
Isaiah 40:31 gives the promise that waits on the other side. "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
The wilderness is calling. Follow the Spirit in. You will not come out the same.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
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