It also provides a model for how to resist temptation. Satan s testing of Jesus in Matthew 4 should be a warning for Christians in our highly materialistic culture. Satan still uses these techniques today to test the faithfulness of the body of Christ. Matthew tells us that the first temptation Satan uses is to fulfill a perfectly normal bodily need. Satan suggests that He turn the stones into bread, something well within Jesus capabilities.
Believers wrestle with the same suggestion from Satan today.
Satan s temptation is to reduce human nature to what might be called the will to pleasure principal, the idea that sensual pleasure explains all of our motivations and needs. He replaces the will to pleasure view of human nature with a will to meaning view. In his personal struggle to survive a Nazi concentration camp, the psychologist Victor Frankl discovered that when men lost meaning they quickly died. Mankind needs a transcendent reason to continue striving against the struggles that life presents. It is the Word of God that provides the only true foundation for this struggle.