Matthew 4:10

Matthew 4:10

It was by this time evident that our blessed Lord was not to be tempted to either distrust or presumption. But what if He were once more tried, with a temptation which should coincide with the direction of that path itself? How if He could be induced, in the fulfilment of His mission on earth, to take a shorter and less toilsome way than that on which He appeared to be entering?

I. Desperation made the tempter bold. He dares to aim at winning the Prince of the Kingdom of Light to be a vassal of the kingdom of darkness. Strange as are the promise and the assertion, still stranger is the condition annexed, "All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." Here spoke the true character of him who fell through pride, and through exalting himself against the Most High. Satan stands forth impiously exulting in his name as God's adversary, and vaunting his rebellion against Him. No longer, therefore, does Jesus condescend to answer the fool according to his folly, or condescend to deal with his offer or his assertions, but meets him with, "Get thee hence, Satan." Yet not relinquishing even now the sword of the Spirit, He adds for our profit and to complete His testimony to His own position as the Son of man, placed under obedience to the Father, "For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

II. There are many blessings, many advantages even of a temporal kind, within our reach and forming legitimate objects of our desire. But such things are often offered us from objectionable quarters and on objectionable conditions. In such cases the Christian's duty is plain. First, he must never be so carried away with the pursuit of the world's advantages as that his better reason should be overcome; but he must be watchful and temperate in all his desires, knowing that this is not his rest, but that he looks for another country, even a heavenly. This being secured, he must, in the temperate and lawful pursuit of worldly advantage, take heed that he receive nothing on conditions which touch his allegiance to his heavenly Father.

H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 184.

Culture and Temptation.

I. Education meaning by that the putting into the hands of any being, or class, a power, a knowledge, before unattained can have no force to abolish temptation or to diminish its strength. All it can do is to remove the recipient from one stratum of temptation to another. Temptation is inducement to sin; and sin is not vice. Sin is the failure to do our duty, whatever that duty be, to God. Cultivation creates new responsibilities; and, therefore, while it lessens the hold of certain temptations, continually brings us into the presence of new ones. Culture brings its own temptations; shows new paths by which to "crawl away from heaven," as well as new avenues to that kingdom. Education is worthless as a moral discipline, till it has developed in the ripening intellect the conviction that in the worship of God that is not the lip-service of religious ceremonial, but the devotion to His glory and kingdom is its reasonable service, its privilege not less than its bounden duty, the only true fulfilment of its God-given purpose. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

II. As our Lord's life is the pattern of every life, so is His temptation the type of every temptation presented to every man born into this world. He (I use the phrase with all reverence, deliberately) was a man of culture. "And it came to pass, that after three days they found Him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing and asking them questions; and all that heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers." Such a being was He on whom the tempter had to exercise His influence. "Fall down and worship me," he said, "and everything shall be yours." The reply which the Saviour made is still the only safe, the only complete and all-embracing, reply. The kingdoms of the earth are good, but for a soul, which came from God and returns to Him there is but one living, lasting satisfaction, and that is the kingdom of heaven. The end of all education, the end of all religion, is the bringing of a soul into harmony with perfect righteousness.

A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church,p. 225.