Each of us, probably as we are sitting down to dinner with some friends in a restaurant, has faced the challenge of a varied menu.  Overwhelmed by the options, we find ourselves whispering under our breath, “decisions, decisions, decisions!”

Often in our lives we face choices that are far more crucial.  They point toward career, personal relationships, the use of money and time.  Decisions that touch on our ambition, religious convictions, or how we handle trouble, manage suffering or just plain survive.  These choices usually say much about our ultimate loyalties, the depth of our faith, and the quality of our hope. 

In Matt 4:1-11, Jesus is faced with crucial choices.  We need to remember that the New Testament never considers Jesus more exempt from crucial ethical choices than any of us.  A classical misunderstanding of Christ is that we assume he was programmed always for the right and the good and never faced crucial choices.  Not so!

Jesus’ struggle for faithfulness was no less a battle than yours or mine.  In this passage of scripture, we would be wise to replace the word tempt with test.  Instead of the “temptation” of Jesus consider the “testing” of Jesus.  The idea of this passage is more about challenge than temptation.  It suggests not so much persuasion as it does moral opportunity.  It calls for moral maturity that should challenge all of us.  From every area of life, we observe those making crucial choices.  The 2006 Tour de France drug choices deposed the winner.  Major league baseball plagued with those making crucial choices.  Politics, business world, teenagers - the list goes on. 

George Will writes in Men at Work of baseball umpire Babe Pinelli, who once called out Babe Ruth on strikes.  Ruth reasoned that Pinelli was the only one out of the forty thousand people at the game who couldn’t see that the “last one was a ball, Tomato- Head.”  Pinelli replied, “Maybe so.  But mine is the only opinion that counts.”  In the “crucial choices” of life remember and react accordingly. 

It is only HIS opinion that counts.