Luke 4:9

I. The spirit of temptation here presents himself in the character and with the accents and demeanour of an ally who desires nothing so ardently as the establishment of Messiah's kingdom in its integrity, and is ready with a proposal to accelerate, nay, precipitate its inauguration, and to insure its unanimous reception by mankind. Here at Jerusalem let the Son of Man perform a wonder that shall at once compel the homage of mankind from the topmost pinnacle of the Temple, which from the loftiest escarpment of the city climbs sheer up into the sky; let Him launch Himself into the air, let Him plunge down to the very bottom of the abyss of the ravine of Jehoshaphat. Then let him alight unharmed. Would not this be a suitable, a proportionate, an appropriate, an effective inauguration of the kingdom of Christ upon earth? We ask

II. Was the Saviour's mission of such a kind that an abrupt act of conspicuousness and of power would be likely to promote it? Is it conceivable, in short, that there was the smallest taint of ambition in the project of the Saviour? If so, then the expedient suggested by the evil one might have had some affinity with such a purpose. But if his purpose were something at the farthest possible distance from all this; if it were to give a new commandment to mankind, namely, that they should love one another; if his purpose were one which required a far longer time for its disclosure and development than the exhibition of a prodigy, it was indispensable that he should drain the cup of affliction to the dregs, and so step by step ascend to the culmination of suffering upon the Cross; and then, and not till then, and by this gate of tribulation, but by none easier and none other, enter finally into an exceeding glory. This was the prodigy, this was the portent, this was the self-manifestation that Messiah was predestined to achieve before the sons of men. The Saviour is come to gain mankind, not by His power but by His love. He is come, not to claim the surrender of conscience and intelligence, not to substitute arbitrary rule for inward convictions of duty. To have exposed the Gospel to such influences at its outset would have been, as Satan knew, to ensure its extinction; it would have been asking tyranny to be the nurse of freedom; it would have been inviting falsehood to be the guardian of truth; it would have been hiring death to rock the cradle of intellectual and spiritual life.

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 275.

References: Luke 4:9. W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice,p. 32.Luke 4:14; Luke 4:15. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 67. Luke 4:14. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 73.Luke 4:14. Expositor,1st series, vol. iv., p. 430. Luke 4:16. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 401; E. Paxton Hood, Preacher's Lantern,vol. iii., p. 720; J. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. ii., p. 1; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 60. Luke 4:16. W. Hanna, Our Lord's Life on Earth,p. 122.Luke 4:16. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 131.Luke 4:17; Luke 4:18. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 19. Luke 4:17. Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 358.

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