Fasting: Christ’s Preparation for Facing Satan
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.
Listen to the "Verse by Verse" episode covering this scripture.
Jesus Christ fasted 40 days and 40 nights, as Moses and Elijah had been allowed supernaturally to do when they met with God (Exodus 34:28; 1 Kings 19:8). Jesus would have used this time communicating with and strengthening His relationship with His Father. So when He faced the devil’s temptations at the end of the 40 days, He was physically extremely weak and hungry, but spiritually strong.
As the apostle Paul also noted, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Christ’s focus and priority on the spiritual bread—“every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”—serves as a powerful lesson to us as well (Matthew 4:4).
For more about this temptation, see our “Walk as He Walked” article “Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness: What Can It Teach Us?” For more about the spiritual bread, see “How to Study the Bible.”
