After his baptism, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, and was longing for isolation with his heavenly Father, to converse with him about the secrets of his salvational ministry on earth, for the Son did nothing of himself, but what the Father showed him. This converse with his Father in the wilderness of our world was so important to him that he did not care for food and drink, for the communion with God makes even the desert a paradise. The Holy Spirit, at all moments, directed the thoughts of the Son and his conversation with God, and sealed the beginning of his ministry, while he prayed and fasted for forty days and nights in his isolation in the wilderness.
The wicked devil stole into holy place of Jesus with the aim of finding out a weak point in him, to snatch him from the communion of his Father, and abolish the cross and the redemption of the world. The evil one found no gap to attack Christ but his hungry body. Therefore, he opened the eyes of the hungry Son to the millions of stones around him, and inspired him to create bread out of them. The devil believed in the authority of the Son, as the Creator of the universe, who is able to change the matter into something else.
However the poison of the devil was in the question and not only in the purpose of the temptation. The evil one did not say, "you are the Son of God", but "if you are the Son of God do so and so" putting Christ’s sonship and the Father’s fatherhood in question, as if he were not certain, and in need of a proof. However, the Son realized the voice of the genius deceiver. He did not want to win the world through bread, but chose the way of the cross.
Jesus hit the devil with the word "it is written" though he was able to compose another expressive and indicative word, but he humbled himself under the previous revelation of God, showing us that man lives essentially by the word of God, for this word confirms to us our communion with the Holy One. Christ humbled himself too much and called himself a true man who needed daily bread to live, and needed more the word of God, which is the spiritual nourishment of the soul.
Did you realize how Jesus triumphed over the devil? He did not doubt his spiritual sonship, nor did he obey the voice of the tempter, but refused to satisfy the world with performance of good deeds and exciting miracles, and chose to listen to the written word of God as the only way to continue in eternal life. Dear brother, do not listen to the thousands of voices in our world, and do not give up to the aims of mankind, but read every day the word of God attentively. Do not fall into temptation, for this is the heavenly nourishment, which gives you the power to overcome the devil. Blessed are you, if you appoint five to fifteen minutes every morning and every evening to pray and to read in the Holy Bible. Then you will enrich yourself spiritually, and be sanctified by your humility, knowing that there is no solution to the problems of our world but in the cross of Christ who leads us into communion with God, the Father, and establishes us more firmly in him.