“Basic Christianity, Part 52” by Romans
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We are continuing in our Series, “Basic Christianity.” Tonight, we are continuing in the review and examination of our Christian walk, as a facet of Basic Christianity. We are going to continue our acrostic review of the phrase, “By Growing in Grace,” in regard to our following in the steps of Christ. For the word “By,” we have covered thus far the letters B and Y. And, we completed all the letters in the words “Growing” and “In.”
Three weeks ago, in spelling the word, Grace, “G” was for “Go to Church,” two weeks ago was the letter “R” for “Redeem the Time,” last week, we covered the letter A which stood for “Abstain From All Appearance of Evil,” from 1 Thessalonians 5:22 which stated in so many words, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” Tonight we advance to the next letter in the word, “Grace,” namely “C” which stands for “Conquer Temptation:”
For this admonition, we will look at one event, The Temptation in the Wilderness, as recorded in two parallel Gospel Accounts: Matthew 4 and Luke 4. Based on availability, we will be tapping into the various comments of Matthew Henry, and the Sermon Bible for Matthew Account, and Alexander MacClaren for Luke's Account.
Before we look at the actual account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness in the beginning of Matthew 4, we would do well to remember that chapter breaks were added to the original manuscripts. These breaks and other additions that translators added to the manuscript did more harm than good. We'll discuss these in a future Discussion. The end of Matthew 3 includes information that introduces Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness, so let's start where the story begins, at Jesus' baptism:
Matthew 3:16: And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: 17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Now, Matthew 4 continues as evidence by the first word, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God...
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.”
We'll begin with Matthew Henry's observations: “Heaven is opened to receive him, when he has finished the work he is now entering upon... The heavens were opened when Christ was baptized, to teach us, that when we duly attend on God's ordinances, we may expect communion with him, and communications from him.
To explain and complete this solemnity, there came a voice from heaven, which, we have reason to think, was heard by all that were present. The Holy Spirit manifested himself in the likeness of a dove, but God the Father by a voice; for when the law was given they saw no manner of similitude, only they heard a voice (Deuteronomy 4:12);
and so this gospel came, and gospel indeed it is, the best news that ever came from heaven to earth; for it speaks plainly and fully God's favour to Christ, and us in him. (1.) See here how God owns our Lord Jesus; This is my beloved Son. Observe, [1.] The relation he stood in to him; He is my Son.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, by eternal generation, as he was begotten of the Father before all the worlds (see also Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:3); and by supernatural conception; he was therefore called the Son of God, because he was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35); yet this is not all; he is the Son of God by special designation to the work and office of the world's Redeemer.”
In his first temptation, the devil is fully aware of Jesus' identification as The Son of God. Matthew Henry continues, “We have here the story of a famous duel... the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, nay, the serpent himself; in which the seed of the woman suffers, being tempted, and so has his heel bruised;
but the serpent is quite baffled in his temptations, and so has his head broken; and our Lord Jesus comes off a Conqueror, and so secures not only comfort, but conquest at last, to all his faithful followers. Concerning Christ's temptation, observe, I. The time when it happened:
Then; there is an emphasis laid upon that. Immediately after the heavens were opened to him, and the Spirit descended on him, and he was declared to be the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world, the next news we hear of him is, he is tempted; for then he is best able to grapple with the temptation.
Note,
1. Great privileges, and special tokens of divine favour, will not secure us from being tempted. Nay,
2. After great honours put upon us, we must expect something that is humbling; as Paul has a messenger of Satan sent to buffer him, after he had been in the third heavens.
3. God usually prepares his people for temptation before he calls them to it; he gives strength according to the day, and, before a sharp trial, gives more than ordinary comfort.
4. The assurance of our sonship is the best preparative for temptation. If the good Spirit witness to our adoption, that will furnish us with an answer to all the suggestions of the evil spirit, designed either to debauch or disquiet us. Then, when he was newly come from a solemn ordinance, when he was baptized, then he was tempted.”
At this point, I am going to switch to Alexander's MacClaren's Commentary on Luke's Account of the Temptation as it is recorded in Luke, Chapter 4: “THE TEMPTATION: If we adopt the Revised Version’s reading and rendering, the whole of the forty days in the desert were one long assault of Jesus by Satan, during which the consciousness of bodily needs was suspended by the intensity of spiritual conflict.
Exhaustion followed this terrible tension, and the enemy chose that moment of physical weakness to bring up his strongest battalions. What a contrast these days made with the hour of the baptism! And yet both the opened heavens and the grim fight were needful parts of Christ’s preparation. As true man, He could be truly tempted; as perfect man, suggestions of evil could not arise within, but must be presented from without.
He must know our temptations if He is to help us in them, and He must ‘first bind the strong man’ if He is afterwards ‘to spoil his house.’ It is useless to discuss whether the tempter appeared in visible form, or carried Jesus from place to place. The presence and voice were real, though probably if any eye had looked on, nothing would have been seen but the solitary Jesus, sitting still in the wilderness.
I. The first temptation is that of the Son of man tempted to distrust God. Long experience had taught the tempter that his most taking baits were those which appealed to the appetites and needs of the body, and so he tries these first. The run of men are drawn to sin by some form or other of these, and the hunger of Jesus laid Him open to their power-if not on the side of delights of sense, yet on the side of wants.
The tempter quotes the divine voice at the baptism with almost a sneer, as if the hungry, fainting Man before him were a strange ‘Son of God.’ The suggestion sounds innocent enough; for there would have been no necessary harm in working a miracle to feed Himself.
But its evil is betrayed by the words, ‘If Thou art the Son of God,’ and the answer of our Lord, which begins emphatically with ‘man,’ puts us on the right track to understand why He repelled the insidious proposal even while He was faint with hunger. To yield to it would have been to shake off for His own sake the human conditions which He had taken for our sakes, and to seek to cease to be Son of man in acting as Son of God.
He takes no notice of the title given by Satan, but falls back on His brotherhood with man, and accepts the laws under which they live as His conditions. The quotation from Deuteronomy, which Luke gives in a less complete form than Matthew, implies, even in that incomplete form, that bread is not the only means of keeping a man in life, but that God can feed Him, as He did Israel in its desert life, with manna; or, if manna fails, by the bare exercise of His divine will.
Therefore Jesus will not use His power as Son of God, because to do so would at once take Him out of His fellowship with man, and would betray His distrust of God’s power to feed Him there in the desert. How soon His confidence was vindicated Matthew tells us. As soon as the devil departed from Him, ‘angels came and ministered unto Him.’ The soft rush of their wings brought solace to His spirit, wearied with struggle, and once again ‘man did eat angels’ food.’
This first temptation teaches us much. It makes the manhood of our Lord pathetically true, as showing Him bearing the prosaic but terrible pinch of hunger, carried almost to its fatal point. It teaches us how innocent and necessary wants may be the devil’s levers to overturn our souls. It warns us against severing ourselves from our fellows by the use of distinctive powers for our own behoof.
It sets forth humble reliance on God’s sustaining will as best for us, even if we are in the desert, where, according to sense, we must starve; and it magnifies the Brother’s love, who for our sakes waived the prerogatives of the Son of God, that He might be the brother of the poor and needy.
II. The second temptation is that of the Messiah, tempted to grasp His dominion by false means. The devil finds that he must try a subtler way. Foiled on the side of the physical nature, he begins to apprehend that he has to deal with One loftier than the mass of men; and so he brings out the glittering bait, which catches the more finely organised natures. Where sense fails, ambition may succeed.
There is nothing said now about ‘Son of God.’ The relation of Jesus to God is not now the point of attack, but His hoped-for relation to the world. Did Satan actually transport the body of Jesus to some eminence? Probably not. It would not have made the vision of all the kingdoms any more natural if he had.
The remarkable language ‘showed . . . all . . . in a moment of time’ describes a physical impossibility, and most likely is meant to indicate some sort of diabolic phantasmagoria, flashed before Christ’s consciousness, while His eyes were fixed on the silent, sandy waste. There is much in Scripture that seems to bear out the boast that the kingdoms are at Satan’s disposal.
But he is ‘the father of lies’ as well as the ‘prince of this world,’ and we may be very sure that his authority loses nothing in his telling. If we think how many thrones have been built on violence and sustained by crime, how seldom in the world’s history the right has been uppermost, and how little of the fear of God goes to the organisation of society, even to-day, in so-called Christian countries, we shall be ready to feel that in this boast the devil told more truth than we like to believe.
Note that he acknowledges that the power has been ‘given,’ and on the fact of the delegation of it rests the temptation to worship. He knew that Jesus looked forward to becoming the world’s King, and he offers easy terms of winning the dignity. Very cunning he thought himself, but he had made one mistake.
He did not know what kind of kingdom Jesus wished to establish. If it had been one of the bad old pattern, like Nebuchadnezzar’s or Caesar’s, his offer would have been tempting, but it had no bearing on One who meant to reign by love, and to win love by loving to the death.
Worshipping the devil could only help to set up a devil’s kingdom. Jesus wanted nothing of the ‘glory’ which had been ‘given’ him. His answer, again taken from Deuteronomy, is His declaration that His kingdom is a kingdom of obedience, and that He will only reign as God’s representative. It defines His own position and the genius of His dominion.
It would come to the tempter’s ears as the broken law, which makes his misery and turns all his ‘glory’ into ashes. This is our Lord’s decisive choice, at the outset of His public work, of the path of suffering and death. He renounces all aid from such arts and methods as have built up the kingdoms of earth, and presents Himself as the antagonist of Satan and his dominion. Henceforth it is war to the knife.
For us the lessons are plain. We have to learn what sort of kingdom Jesus sets up. We have to beware, in our own little lives, of ever seeking to accomplish good things by questionable means, of trying to carry on Christ’s work with the devil’s weapons.
When churches lower the standard of Christian morality, because keeping it up would alienate wealthy or powerful men, when they wink hard at sin which pays, when they enlist envy, jealousy, emulation of the baser sort in the service of religious movements, are they not worshipping Satan?
And will not their gains be such as he can give, and not such as Christ’s kingdom grows by? Let us learn, too, to adore and be thankful for the calm and fixed decisiveness with which Jesus chose from the beginning, and trod until the end, with bleeding but unreluctant feet, the path of suffering on His road to His throne.
III. The third temptation tempts the worshipping Son to tempt God. Luke arranges the temptations partly from a consideration of locality, the desert and the mountain being near each other, and partly in order to bring out a certain sequence in them. First comes the appeal to the physical nature, then that to the finer desires of the mind;
and these having been repelled, and the resolve to worship God having been spoken by Jesus, Luke’s third temptation is addressed to the devout soul, as it looks to the cunning but shallow eyes of the tempter. Matthew, on the other hand, in accordance with his point of view, puts the specially Messianic temptation last.
The actual order is as undiscoverable as unimportant. In Luke’s order there is substantially but one change of place-from the solitude of the wilderness to the Temple. As we have said, the change was probably not one of the Lord’s body, but only of the scenes flashed before His mind’s eye.
‘The pinnacle of the Temple’ may have been the summit that looked down into the deep valley where the enormous stones of the lofty wall still stand, and which must have been at a dizzy height above the narrow glen on the one side and the Temple courts on the other. There is immense, suppressed rage and malignity in the recurrence of the sneer, ‘If Thou art the Son of God’ and in the use of
Christ’s own weapon of defence, the quotation of Scripture.
What was wrong in the act suggested? There is no reference to the effect on the beholders, as has often been supposed; and if we are correct in supposing that the whole temptation was transacted in the desert, there could be none. But plainly the point of it was the suggestion that Jesus should, of His own accord and needlessly, put Himself in danger, expecting God to deliver Him.
It looked like devout confidence; it was really ‘tempting God’. It looked like the very perfection of the trust with which, in the first round of this duel, Christ had conquered; it was really distrust, as putting God to proof whether He would keep His promises or no.
It looked like the very perfection of that worship with which He had overcome in the second round of the fight; it wag really self-will in the mask of devoutness. It tempted God, because it sought to draw Him to fulfil to a man on self-chosen paths His promises to those who walk in ways which He has appointed. We trust God when we look to Him to deliver us in perils met in meek acceptance of His will.
We tempt Him when we expect Him to save us from those encountered on roads that we have picked oat for ourselves. Such presumption disguised as filial trust is the temptation besetting the higher regions of experience, to which the fumes of animal passions and the less gross but more dangerous airs from the desires of the mind do not ascend.
Religious men who have conquered these have still this foe to meet. Spiritual pride, the belief that we may venture into dangers either to our natural or to our religious life, where no call of duty takes us, the thrusting ourselves, unbidden, into circumstances where nothing but a miracle can save us-these are the snares which Satan lays for souls that have broken his coarser nets.
The three answers with which Jesus overcame are the mottoes by which we shall conquer. Trust God, by whose will we live. Worship God, in whose service we get all of this world that is good for us. Tempt not God, whose angels keep us in our ways, when they are His ways, and who reckons trust that is not submission to His ways to be tempting God, and not trusting Him.
‘All the temptation’ was ended. So these three made a complete whole, and the quiver of the enemy was for the time empty. He departed ‘for a season,’ or rather, until an opportunity. He was foiled when he tried to tempt by addressing desires. His next assault will be at Gethsemane and Calvary, when dread and the shrinking from pain and death will be assailed as vainly.”
Of the Account in Matthew 4, the Sermon Bible tells us, “I. One cannot help thinking and wondering why this temptation should take place, and though all the reasons cannot be known, some of them we think we can see. We know there is a devil. Perhaps the most clever of all Satanic schemes is that in which he persuades men that he does not exist.
What would suit a general better than to persuade the troops he is seeking to destroy that he is a mere creature of the imagination, that all the stories told about his being seen are mere inventions, and that, therefore, there is no need to take any precautions?
II. If Christ had not been tempted, we should have heard the old mocking laugh of Satan, as when God spoke of Job, "Thou hast set an hedge about him." If Satan had not been worsted in the struggle how cleverly would he have insinuated that the Saviour was not perfect. Satan cannot now say that Christ is untried.
III. Then, it has been proved that a man can resist sin in its strongest forms, for it was not as God that Jesus was tempted, but as the Son of man. It was the human nature that was tempted. Where would be the force of reasoning in Hebrews 4:13 if we are to believe that it was the Divine and not the human which fought and won the battle?
IV. As we read the story of the temptation, we cannot but be struck with the ignorance of Satan concerning Jesus. He did not understand Him. Let us not lose sight of the fact that the arch-enemy is not omniscient. He learns quickly, but there are many things he has yet to learn. Besides, he, like bad men, is ready to think that every one is as bad as himself. The fact is, Satan cannot appreciate goodness, and makes as many mistakes as ever.
V. Jesus has taught us the use of the Bible in self-defence. The Captain of our salvation girded Himself with the sword of the Spirit. It is useless to expect to conquer without the heavenly brand. You will be mortally wounded if you are not able to parry the strokes of the enemy.
Search out the meaning of God’s word, and what you know, use. There was great vehemence in the words of Jesus. He was not content to parry the stroke; He cut with the edge of His blade. And the wounds He made have not healed to this day. T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 55. References: Mat_4:1-11.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 57; vol. ii., p. 419; vol. viii., p. 68; T. Collins, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 248; R. C. Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 1; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 96; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., pp. 44, 161; A. Macleod, Talking to the Children, p. 21; Parker, Inner Life of Christ, vol. i., pp. 99, 109; A. M. Fairbairn, Expositor, 1st series, vol. iii., p. 321; J. J. Murphy, Ibid., 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 312; G. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons, p. 126. Mat_4:2.—J. Keble, Sermons from Lent to Passiontide, p. 44; W. H. Hutchings, Mystery of the Temptation, p. 32.
I. Our Lord was carried from the wilderness to the holy city. Understand by this how all our circumstances in the world may be changed, and yet the tempter be with us still. Hundreds of men have gone out into the desert thinking that in that way they should escape temptation, but it has found them out.
The spirit of evil has shown them that they do not escape from him by escaping from men. Then they have run back into the holy city; they have thought that they were exposed to danger because they were away from the ordinances of God. But there, too, they have found there was no security; it has only been a change from "Command these stones to be made bread," into "Cast thyself down from hence."
II. Consider what was the particular temptation of our Lord when He was brought into the holy city. I have no doubt that when our Lord was reflecting on the iniquities of the holy city, the devil suggested to Him the thought, "What avails it to be a Jew, to be a citizen of God’s city, a member of the holy nation, when holiness and purity and unity have utterly deserted it? If Thou be the Son of God set an example of throwing away these vain privileges." Precisely this temptation is presented to all of us this day.
III. Understand next from this history of our Lord’s second temptation that we are not to plead love to our brethren as any excuse for going out of God’s way or doing work which He has not set us to do. Our Lord was urged to cast Himself down from the Temple, that He might convince the Jews of their unbelief.
He who urged Him to it wished Him in that very thing to commit an act of unbelief. Thousands of such acts have been committed by men who thought that they were honouring God and helping their brethren. They were doing neither: To be working together with God is our highest honour. When we are not doing this we cannot be working any good to ourselves or to any other man.
F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 171.
I. It was a master-piece of Satan to take Christ to the Temple. There was the spot which God loved best in the whole earth, that He had fenced around with most special and jealous care. It had been the scene of the most glorious manifestation of Jehovah. And because of all this Satan bore our Saviour thither. What spot so proud, of earth, on which to rear his trophy?
II. The object of the second temptation was a proud and ambitious display of supernatural power. It was an act of self-aggrandisement, done in a false confidence, for an apparent good; and the word which would sum up the whole would be presumption. Presumption is the expectation of an end without the means, an ungrounded hope of a Divine interposition, an abuse of a privilege, a departure from a general law for a selfish end.
III. In quoting a verse from Psalm 91. Satan does as he is ever wont—he destroys the force of the promise by making it vague. And where there is no accuracy there never is power. He omitted the four words "in all thy ways." The promise is only to thy way.
IV. It is evident that the tempter had no power to cast Christ down from the Temple, or to force Him to take the flight; but he plies his argument, and then he says, "Cast Thyself down." There is no sin which is not voluntary. Those points—where the power to do, or the power to forbear, still lives—are sometimes very small. But they are the crises of every man’s moral history.” J. Vaughan, Sermons, 11th series, p. 69. References: Mat_4:5-7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 689; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 377; F. W. Farrar, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 296; Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 151; H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, p. 25; W. H. Hutchings, Mystery of the Temptation, p. 141. Mat_4:6.—Parker, Hidden Springs, p. 361; T. Birkett Dover, Lent Manual, p. 31.”
This concludes this Evening's Discussion, “Basic Christianity, Part 52.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on September 29th, 2020.
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