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Home » Blog » Answering Critical Questions: Why Did Jesus Fast for 40 Days by Micah Lovell

His defeat of Satan in the desert displayed the power of the sustaining presence of God’s Word in the midst of temptation.
Read: Matthew 4:1-11

The number 40 is used frequently in biblical narratives, especially in the Old Testament. In Genesis 7, the rains fall on the earth for 40 days and nights while Noah and his family wait within the ark. In the book of Jonah, the prophet, fresh from his own deliverance from the belly of the great fish, delivers his message to the Ninevites, declaring that the city will be overthrown in 40 days. Both Moses (Exodus 24:18) and Elijah (I Kings 19:8) fasted 40 days in preparation for a particular mission from the Lord. Perhaps most notably, the Israelites wander in the wilderness outside the promised land for 40 years for their various demonstrations of disobedience.



It is this last use of the number 40 on which we should focus in particular, as it is clear that Jesus is directly responding to it, when, after His baptism, He goes to the wilderness in Judea to fast for 40 days.

The practice of fasting was extremely common in the ancient world, and is still commonplace today as a means of preparation, cleansing, focusing, and penitential prayer. But this is an act practiced by believers who recognize their own sinful nature and their need of mercy and grace. Jesus, however, being sinless, would have no need of penitence. Why then, does He fast?

The Coming Temptation

It seems clear that Jesus is fasting in preparation for His temptation, and through His fasting, He is completing a work which will define the rest of His earthly life and ministry: one wholly in submission to the will of the Father while fully in command of the divinity He owned from eternity past.

There are several parallels to be noticed between the 40 days Jesus spends in the wilderness and the wandering of the Israelites some 1500 years prior to His birth. When the Israelites had no food, God, through Moses, miraculously provided manna for them to eat. But the people still complained, some who directly disobeyed God’s command and demonstrated their lack of faith that God would sustain them just as He always had. Satan tempts Jesus to do the same thing: to miraculously make bread for Himself and satiate His own desperate hunger.

But Jesus responds to Satan on that first temptation, not by doing what He clearly had the power to do, which was to turn those stones into edible food, but by quoting Scripture, demonstrating the faith and trust Jesus had in the Father and His Word. Jesus needed to feed on the Living Bread from God more than He needed physical sustenance in the moment of His temptation.

The temptation and fasting for 40 days were to fulfill what the people of Israel could not do, and likewise, what we cannot do. Jesus’ work puts to rest the idea that any of us can defeat the power of darkness completely alone.