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. Next, Jesus is tempted with a formula for instant status . Satan suggests that He perform a miracle that would surely convince the Jews that He is their Messiah. He should throw Himself down from the temple. His survival will be just the right sign needed for the Jews to recognize Him.