The Temptation of Christ
Matthew iv. 1–11
Almighty God, we know that thy Word is true, because it is written in our -own life, and syllable by syllable we live it out every day. There is in the heart of man an answer to the appeal of thy Book: we know what is meant when we come upon the words sin, temptation, pain, and fear; we bless thee that we also know the meaning of the words love, grace, pardon — these are thy heartwords, they come with all the yearning of thy spirit, and they cry unto us and make known unto our souls the gospel of thy pity. We bless thee that we have light upon one side of our life, for we do not deserve it: our sin might have surrounded us with infinite night, and left no room for light on all the way that we take. But where sin abounds grace doth much more abound: thou dost answer death by life: where the devil is strong thou art stronger: more are they that be for us than they that be against us. Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? There is no arm so strong as thine, there is no wisdom so full of light as is the omniscience of God. As for thy grace, it is deeper than the sea, and thy love is higher than the sun. Thus doth rest come into our hearts and peace alight upon our spirits as a dove from Heaven. Enable us amid all sin and sorrow of every kind to fix our eyes upon the uplifted cross and upon the Son of God, then shall the light thereof break upon us like a morning long delayed, and in our souls there shall be all the comfort of thy peace.
We are here, not to keep silence before thee, but to speak of thy goodness and thy mercy, long continued and never failing. Thy rod and thy staff have comforted us, and thou hast enlarged thy house so that we have found it everywhere, in business, in affliction, in service, in waiting. We would dwell in the house of the Lord for ever and ever, and in his temple would we build our nest, yea, by thine altars would we be found at last, so that death shall be but an entrance into Heaven.
We implore thee to take care of us during our remaining days. Hold thou us up and we shall be safe: forsake us not for one instant, for the serpent is vigilant, and the enemy is mighty. Give us the right answer to every temptation, give us the right view of every trial, help us so to number our days as to apply our hearts unto wisdom, give us that holy trust in thy name and grace which no power can shake May our hearts wait upon God steadfastly, with all the constancy of inviolable love, may we look unto God from whom is all our expectation.
Thou hast shot sore at some of us; yea, our hearts are full of thine arrows which are drinking our blood. Thou hast darkened the sunniest room in the house. Thou ba-st taken away our chosen good, thou ha.st turned upside down our supreme earthly delight, thou hast made havoc in the garden, and the place of flowers hath become a wild wilderness. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Thou hast dug the grave in the midst of our home, and instead of the turtle, thou hast sent the mocking-bird to taunt us with strange tones. To some of us thou hast given of the very wine of Heaven, yea thy sun hath smiled upon our roof, our basket and our store thou hast blessed, our flocks and herds are a multitude, and our ground brings forth abundantly. The rivers are full of fish and the air dark with birds, and behold our house is se* upon a rock, and the south wind breathes through every chamber. The Lord sanctify prosperity unto the prosperous, as well as adversity unto those who sit in trouble. Show us that there is danger on the mountain top as well as in the deep valley.
Thou hast granted unto our children health and strength and beauty, and thou hast filled their mouth with laughter, and their mind with sunny hope and dream. In their tongue is found music and in their feet readiness to obey. The Lord spare their lives, the Lord make them better than their ancestors, the Lord baptize them from the heavens with his benediction day by day till old age shall come.
Look upon us, one and all — upon the old man, weary, hardly knowing why; upon the little child, glad with a laughter that is never to perish; upon the busy man with bent back, raking in the dust for that which is of no worth; upon the man of leisure whose idleness is a trial, upon the silent, broken-hearted mother, who cries over her prodigal child and dare not name his name; upon those who have little bread and fear to touch it lest it waste; upon the great man in the fulness of his breadth and power — yea, upon us all, overlooking none, do thou command thine all-enriching blessing, that, according to our years, our weakness, our necessity, and our joy, we may receive of the Lord’s hand.
Help us to forgive our enemies: give us a memory that quickly forgets all injuries and a recollection that clings, with all the tenacity of love, to every deed of kindness and speech of gratitude. The Lord anoint us afresh to his work, the Lord pity our littlenesses and reckon them not as sins against us, the Lord have mercy upon us according to the fulness of his own grace and the infinite work of our one and only Priest and Saviour. Drive back the enemy, break his teeth, disappoint his expectation, and cover him with shame.
Bless our friends who would sympathise with us and cheer us and speak the word of Heaven to us in earthly imprisonment and darkness, and the Lord be with us till the little tale of our life be all told and make us ready for the green churchyard and for the greener heaven. Amen.
Matthew iv. 1-11.
1. Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.
2. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.
3. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
4. 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.
5. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple.
6. 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.
7. Jesus said unto him. It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
8. Again, the devil talceth him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth. him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
9. And saith unto him. All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
10. Then saith Jesus unto him. Got thee hence, Satan; for it is written. Thou Bhalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
11. Then the devil leavethhim, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
“Then.” That word indicates a point of time. It will be interesting to fix that point with some definiteness. We like to know under what circumstances great events transpire. Sometimes we want to know not only the fact, but the atmosphere which surrounded it. You do not see any event in its proper altitude, relationship and colour, until you take in the circumstances leading up to it or surrounding it. When therefore I read, ‘’’’Then was Jesus led «p,” my mind anxiously inquires, When? Herod wanted to know what time the star appeared; what wonder if we want to know what time the devil appeared? To find the answer to this inquiry you must go back to the chapter whose exposition we have just completed. “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: and lo, a voice saying. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” Such are the violent alternations of human experience, baptized and tempted, approved of God and handed over to the devil, standing with a grand inaugural sign upon our heads on the river’s bank and then driven as with whips and scourges into the wilderness to fight life’s determining battle.
Do not question the validity of your baptism because it was succeeded by a fierce temptation. Do not say you must have been mistaken when you thought the dove descended from heaven and alighted upon you, otherwise you could never have been subjected to this succession of thunder-storms. Read the life of your Lord and Master, and find from that life that our relationships to God seem, in their outward aspects, to change suddenly and even vitally. You are a son of God, standing on the bank of the river, and you are just as much a son of God when tormented and vexed by all the forces of hell in the wilderness. Your sonship does not depend upon your moods and feelings. You are a child of God, whatever may be your momentary relationship, either to Heaven, earth, or hell. God is not variable, his elections are not so many opportunities of recalling his decrees. Be sure of your adoption into the family of God, and then leave yourselves to be operated upon by all the discipline which is of heavenly appointment, for it works only to the maturing and the cleansing of your soul, and the ripening and sanctification of your redeemed powers.
Jesus Christ was a son when the dove alighted upon him, and he was a son when the devil set his whole force of genius and subtlety to bear upon the citadel of his faith.
Cheer thee, then, despondent soul, for God can make the wilderness blossom as the rose.
“Then was Jesus led up.” We speak sometimes of temptation as if it were an accident of life: we forget the words “led up.” These words indicate that temptation is part of a plan, it is a step in the succession to a better life. Sometimes we delude ourselves with the foolish imagination that if we step very softly, we shall get past the serpent’s nest without the serpent hearing us, we shall elude the devil, we shall play a trick upon him, and when we are miles off we will laugh at him as an enemy that overslept himself, whose leaden ears were sealed in sleep, so that he did not hear us when we passed him in velvet slippers. Take no such mean and unworthy view of life. Life itself is temptation. To e, is to be nearly lost. To be here at all is to be in the devil’s hands, in senses which will appear as the exposition advances.
Understand that you ave to be tempted. The wilderness is not a sphere lying a thousand miles from your course, into which you may go if you are disposed to undertake perilous adventure. Your eye is fixed on Heaven, and right across, from sea to sea, lies the wilderness, and you cannot escape it. I do not speak of wildernesses and temptations and devils as if they were parts of a universe over which God had put imperfect control. The Lord sitteth upon the circle of the earth and upon the very height of Heaven, and the devil is his slave, chained with iron and with bits in his savage mouth, and beyond his chain he cannot go. Do not speak with bated breath to me about this matter of temptation, as if it were possible for me to sneak into Heaven. I must be assailed, tried, tormented, vexed, thrown down, battered, stamped on, and if I have not passed through experiences of this kind, the whole priesthood of Christ has been lost upon me, and if there be no experiences of this kind to pass through, then the cross of Christ is an exaggeration of remedial measures, and there was no need for the heart of the Son of God to burst in pity or in sacrifice. Count it no strange thing when temptations befall you; to be finite is to be tempted, to be a fraction instead of a whole number is to have in you the unrest of incompleteness, and the strange restless spirit that says, “Try to complete yourself, for the fraction may become an integer.”
From this point of view, then, temptation is part of the divine scheme. The devil is under the control of God. Why there should have been a devil, I cannot tell; I only know that we owe the shadow to the light, and I further console myself in moments of impious intellectual ambition with the thought that I am of yesterday and know nothing, and that there is a time coming for deeper study, for further and completer investigation. These mysteries are not to be solved here and now; I accept them as mysteries, and I accept them with the less hesitation because they tally with my inmost consciousness, with experiences known to the human heart, altogether apart from religious convictions of this or that particular theological kind.
“Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,” and when the tempter came to him, he said three things. The tempter has only three things to say; the tempter’s programme is short and shallow; beyond those three things he has never advanced one step. He is not a genius of infinite resource; he is not an assailant that may surprise us with dazzling originalities — his temptations are stale, I can weigh them in scales and assign their weight; I can measure them and tell you their circumference, I know where they begin, and how they operate, and how they close. He, the devil, is not the subtle and ever-fertile genius which we have vainly imagined him to be. He has three great clubs with which he endeavours to smite you; I can give you their names, their size, and their whole capability.
Let us then hear what the devil said, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” This was an appeal to immediate necessity. The devil comes to us in a spirit of benevolence; he shrinks into as little devil as possible and says, “You are hungry; if I could make bread for you I would, but I am only devil, blamed one, bearing the stigma of the universe; if I could have brought you bread all this distance I would have done so, but if you are the Son of God, you must have power to work miracles — turn these stones into bread,” The devil addresses himself to the appetite of the moment, to the supreme impulse of the passing time. Whatever you want most, he is willing to supply — at what expense will presently appear.
Observe his benevolence, and observe how harmless was the temptation. It was hardly a temptation at all. What harm could there be in making bread in a moment of hunger? The suggestion was marked by the most obvious pertinence and excellent good sense. After forty days and forty nights of abstinence, you must be suffering pangs which none can fully understand; therefore make bread for yourself, and satisfy the importunate and lawful appetite which now maddens you. You know that temptation — you know the voice which softens itself into a tender wheedling and says to you, “There can be at least no harm in this.” And there may be no harm in certain words, in themselves considered, but there may be great harm in accepting the suggestion of the devil. If it were possible for him to preach a gospel to us, there might be infinite risk in accepting it at his lips, for they are pledged with a thousand oaths to do another kind of work, and if he have stolen into this service, he has a purpose in it approved of his own soul, and therefore which should excite in us suspicion and alarm.
The next thing the enemy said to Christ was, “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written. He shall give his angels charge concerning thee.” He comes now to develop our faith; he appears with the sacred mission of endeavouring to show us how to become more reliy gious than ever. Was there ever such a devil! He shows us how we may be more pious than we ever hoped or expected to be, by throwing ourselves about, by entering into engagements as pious and all-trusting acrobats. His motto is — Presume upon God, test his strength, bring him the opportunity of showing what he means by his promises. And in levelling this temptation at the heart, he takes care to surrourd himself by circumstances which might substantially aid his malign puipose. He took Christ to the holy city and set him on a pinnacle of the Temple — surrounded him by external religion in order to persuade him to dethrone an interior loyalty to God. As if the devil had said,” This is the holy city; within its confines God will permit no lapse of his promise to take place. This is the Temple, and a pinnacle of it, and in connection with his own chosen sanctuary, he will allow no spiritual tragedy to take place. Do not suppose I should tempt you to anything evil in this holy city, and whilst we are standing on the topmost point of the most sacred house under the
sun
This was an appeal to the Son of God to be presumptuous, to force meanings into the divine word which the divine Spirit never intended to convey, to force God into situations which he never intended to be occupied. Do you know the subtlety and force of such suggestions? Do you know what it is for men to get themselves almost purposely into trouble, that they may put the divine word to its fullest stress? Do you know what it is to shut the eyes, to lower the head and to run straight against a granite rock, and then to blame God for not softening it into a cloud through which you could thrust your head with ease? Let those answer the pungent inquiries who are best acquainted with their soul’s own history.
The third thing the enemy said, and this ends his programme, was, “All these things — namely, all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them — will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” It was the temptation of bribery; it was the temptation addressed to every instinct which is in every human heart to turn much into more; it was a ‘short and easy method of becoming rich — the direct cut to rulership; it was the simplification of all the intricacies and complexities and difificulties of ordinary life. It was a blade that cut the knot, and made the way short and simple.
Beyond these three things the devil has never got. I pause now to look at them, with a view of finding in the temptations the true character of the tempter. If we are to know a tree by its fruits, so we may know a tempter by his temptations. In very deed the devil has said nothing bad here, taking the mere letter in its littleness. “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, and put God to the test. All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Given such evidence, to find out by fair induction what the devil is.
Let us now study the temptations in the light of that inquiry. Let us look at both sides of the wedge. Given the thin end of the wedge, to find out the thick end. That can be easily done with these paragraphs before us, thus. As he would have turned stones into bread, so he would turn bread into stones; and that is what he means to do. He begins innocently, benevolently: “Turn these stones into bread;” and having obeyed him in that particular, he makes a precedent of that obedience, and by-and-by he will say, “Now turn this bread into stones.” That is what he wants to do with every one of us — wants us to turn our virtues into vices, wants us to turn our prayers into presumptions, wants us to turn our religion into profanity and blasphemy. No worth of character deters him; he would take your dear little child and make an imp of his own of that beautiful soul; he would take all the bread of heaven and make a stone of it; he would diabolize the very Deity himself. That is the thick end of the wedge. He believes in processes of transformation; but his is a transformation that operates in both ways — namely, turning stones into bread and turning bread into stones. Beautiful soul, with thy high dreams and sacred purposes and noble impulses, the devil would turn all these high excitements and forces of thine into ministries which would serve his own kingdom.
Then with regard to the next temptation. As he would have risked a life on the pretence of trusting God, so he would risk God on the pretence of saving life. That is the thick end of the wedge. He is always tempting God to do from his point what he tempted Christ to do from a lower point. He tempted Christ to risk his life to put God’s word to the test, he tempts God to save life that he may lose himself. Thus the devil is continually blaming God for the inequalities of human life. He is perpetually sending challenges to heaven, saying,” If thou art almighty, why permit these social monstrosities, rebellions, poverties, wars? If thou art almighty, why not by a fiat put an end to the lake of fire and the whole region of devildom, and reign over a universe uncut by a single grave — unblasted by a single sin?
This is precisely the temptation which was levelled against the constancy of Christ. Said he to Christ, “Risk yourself to save a life.” The infidel has no weapon that he deems longer, stronger, and sharper than this go THESE SAYINGS OF MINE.
challenge to God to prove his almightiness by deposing and destroying the devil. If the whole question were to be determined within four-and -twenty hours, if God’s eternity were an affair of one round of the clock, there might be some little force in this temptation and blasphemy. But God operates by a long circuit; we cannot tell what he is doing in the secret places of the universe; we hear but a very little of his voice, the full thunder of it would break the listening ear. I am creature, not creator, child of a day, not the inhabitant of eternity, so I would quietly and lovingly wait till God’s processes are brought to their culmination.
Look at the third temptation. As the devil offered kingdoms in return for worship, he knows whoever receives the worship actually holds the kingdoms! This is the subtlest of all the temptations. Give a sentiment for property; bow the knee for a crown; fall down before me and say, “Thou art my God,” and I will give thee kingdoms and dominions, vast and innumerable. Who would hesitate to pay down a sentiment for a nation, who would hesitate to change a god, if by a theological transmutation an empire could be purchased? We are cautioned to beware of sentiment; we are told certain objections are sentimental, we are put on our guard against emotion. Religion has been watered down into a sentiment, and I protest against the infamous dilution. Religion is a conviction, an obligation, a constraint of the soul, an allegiance of the faculties which make me man. It is not an evaporating tear, it is not a transient, dying sigh, it is my life, translated into its highest speech.
Observe how the benevolence of the devil is shown at last to be utter selfishness. “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” To worship is to give; whom I worship I serve. If I worship God and keep anything back from him, my worship is blasphemy. If I love the cross and hold anything back from its outstretched arms, I am a mocker and no saint. We seek not yours, but you — having jva we have yours! We only give where we love. The benevolence of the devil i/is a fraud, the generosity of the devil is a lie. My young friend, the devil never gives anything good that he promises; you fall down and worship him, and then call upon him for the kingdoms and he will not give them. Show him the writing, recall the oath, and he will mock thee, and with leering eye, look, and with a mocking, taunting voice, say, “I am not i’ th’ vein.” I challenge any man in the world to show me that he ever got anything good at the hands of the devil.
The three temptations, then, are now before us, and the character of the devil, as suggested by these temptations, is also before us in rough outline. The devil has no other temptations. He appeals to your dominant appetite, he asks you to make God your servant, always to be at your beck and bidding, to give you a good harvest, and a fine income, and plenty to eat and drink and abundance of possessions. He says, “Trust him to that extent, force him to the keeping of his word, and ask him, if the harvest is bad, what he means by sending you a bad harvest when you were praying for a good one. Tax him to his face with his promises, and compel him to keep them.” And then, last of all, he says, “Give up everything for the world, give up your prayers and your hymn-singing, and all your religion, for more mud, and more mud, and more mud — have all the mud and have it for next to nothing, for an inclination of the head, for a bending of the knee, for one loyal remark.” No other temptation has Satan to level at your hearts. He may vary the form, he may change the manner and expression, but centrally and substantially his programme is written in this text, and every man can prove it for himself, and know the measure and the force of every syllable of it.
Thus the devil delivers a threefold knock on the door of the heart. What answers Christ will make when he opens the door, we shall see in our next exposition.