I. When the first Adam fell, by temptation, from a garden to a wilderness, from abundance to want, from empire to slavery, from heaven to hell; and when by the same steps as he descended, our Lord ascended, the first and second Adam were not individuals; each was a representative man; each was the head of a body; each represented multitudes; each drew with him a vast membership. And as in the one many sank, so in the other many rose. We see, then, a beautiful imagery, or reason, why Christ's temptation should be just what it was, and that it should lie at the commencement of His work on earth. It was to teach us that, as a victorious tempter closed the gates of Paradise, so that tempter, conquered, should be the very reason for those gates unclosing.
II. We must always remember that our Saviour's temptation took place immediately after His baptism. So it lay at the foundation of His ministry. First the outpouring of the good Spirit, and then the assaultings of the evil one. First an unction of grace, and then an unction of discipline. And both essential preparations for after-work.
III. They know little who think that they can avoid temptation by flying into solitudes. Expect Satan when you are alone. Stand in your fullest armour when you are alone. But be assured of this temptations make the Christian. They are the trainings on earth for works of usefulness; and they are the trainings for service in heaven. They humble the man. They prove the grace that is in him, by proving his strength. And they are the best schools for after-sympathy. Therefore no believer has cause to regret his temptations. Rather, it is beautiful to see how, in God's discipline, they mellow the character, and draw out the latent forces. If the very name of wilderness associates itself with Satan, it is associated with Satan's downfall. If he is there, so is his Conqueror.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,11th scries, p. 61.
The baptism of Christ was the culminating point of the spiritual development of His inner life. It was a moment of ecstatic joy, of the highest consciousness of inspiration. We make a mistake, when we think that those forty days in the wilderness were all days of temptation and sorrow. They must have been, on the contrary, days, at first, of peaceful rest, of intense joy.
I. But now we meet the question: How did this become test temptation? To understand this we must recall the two great ideas in His mind; the first that He was at one with the Father that gave Him His perfect joy; the second that He was the destined Redeemer of the race, the Messiah long desired by men. (1) But and here is the point at which suffering and test entered these two voices directly contradicted one another. As soon as Christ turned to the world, with the greeting of His love, He heard coming from the world an answering greeting of welcome, but the ideas which lay beneath it were in radical opposition to His own. The vision of an omnipotent king, and an external kingdom, was presented to His spirit as the ideal of the Jewish people. It came rudely into contact with the vision in His own heart of a king made perfect by suffering, of a kingdom hidden at first, in the hearts of men. It is no difficulty to see the depth and manifoldness of the tests which arose from the clashing of these too opposed conceptions. (2) Christ's humanity was plunged into the deepest sorrow, engaged in the pain of a tremendous struggle against the evil conception formed by men of His mission and His work.
II. The temptation of Christ in the wilderness represents the great law of the history of man's nature that every one of us must, in order to realize our true work and moral position in this world, meet and contend with the powers of evil. Christ is the King by victory of all the warrior-host of God. No truths can be dearer to a human heart than these two the sympathy of the Son of man in temptation; the victory of humanity in the Son of man over evil.
S. A. Brooke, Sermons,p. 251.
I. It was necessary that our Saviour should undergo this conflict, as a part of our redemption. But there can be no doubt that the temptation of our Lord occurred as it did, and has been related as it stands in Scripture, to serve as a model for us, who are still struggling with our subtle foe. And it is of the highest value to us, to trace His conduct under these solicitations, that we may make it our own also, to mark how He handles the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, that we may learn and practise its use for ourselves.
II. Consider the possibility of the temptation. Granted, we may suppose it said, that such a conflict with, and victory over, the tempter was necessary for our Lord; yet how could it in Him assume the form of temptation to sin? Was He not sinless? In answering this question, we must bear in mind, first, how entirely, in our Lord's case, all these solicitations were from without. No motions towards sin can spring up in a person who is sinless. The possibility of the temptation lay in this, that the tempter found in Jesus the same physical tendencies and the same desires which had in our case furnished the inlets to sin. On these he wrought. The enfeebled bodily frame of our Redeemer the challenge to prove His Divine Sonship the subtle use made of the fact that He came into the world to be a King all these seemed to promise success, but all these were tried in vain; for the enemy had nothing in Him.
III. Consider the nature of the temptations. Though they are threefold, yet one ruling idea pervades them all, and it is this, the accomplishing the lawful ends of His mission by unlawful means. The whole was a subtly contrived and consistent endeavour to divert our Saviour from the spiritual course of becoming the Lord of the dead and living, into another and a carnal course; from that path which, steep as it was and unpromising, was the one chosen by Divine wisdom for the salvation of the world, into that which, however it might surely issue in discomfiture and the enemy's triumph, was yet for the present level and alluring. It was a bold and crafty attempt to set aside the true Messiahship of Jesus, and to substitute for it another false messiahship, which might be received by the Jews, and enjoy a short-lived popularity and a rapid access to fame.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 137.
No sooner had Jesus been baptized, while He was yet full of the Holy Ghost, than temptation came. Was that a fall? No, temptation is no fall: it is simply the mark of a true humanity; it is the test which brings out what is highest in human nature; it is the measure and gauge of its noble qualities; you may call it the very mark in man of his diviner being.
I. Observe that temptation assailed Christ first on that very spiritual ground on which He stood. "If thou be the Son of God." Two snares beset Him on that ground; two subtle temptations, addressed, the one to the active, the other to the passive, side of His Divine relationship; the one to that sense of power which He derived from His entire union with and trust in God; the other to that very trust from which it sprang. The first was to put forth the miraculous power He possessed as the perfect Son of God, but so as to assert His independence of God, not His trust in Him. "Command that these stones be made bread."
II. We can understand that our Lord was left by the failure of the first assault upon Him in a very high state of blessedness and exaltation, more than conscious of God's favour and more than ever devoted to His will. Now, that very exaltation of spirit is to be turned into a snare. He had planted himself firmly upon the principle of self-renunciation and dependence upon God. Nothing was ever likely to shake Him from that ground. But might not His trust be corrupted into presumption, and His spirit of filial self-surrender into a fanatical throwing of Himself away? This I conceive to be the meaning of the second temptation. In Christ's view it was not all sacrifice that would be pleasing in God's sight, not every form of trust that would prove a childlike spirit, and give Him the title to be called the Son of God. Life was too holy, and God's providence was too holy, to be trifled with, even to produce a great impression.
III. In passing to the third temptation of Christ we are struck at once by the change of ground on which it rests, as compared with the two which preceded it. In both of these it was seen that there were spiritual grounds for the course suggested. The third temptation was a temptation to substitute the material for the spiritual world, to take this, and not the other, for the field of His ambition and the object of His work; to banish from His thoughts, as a mere day-dream, the idea of a God to work for in the world, a God who claimed men for His own, and whom it was His special mission to declare to them. And the bribe held out was worldly power. When the temptation comes to us, as it is sure to come, in one form or other, may we have grace to act upon the instinctive horror which the first notion of it stirs, for the instinct is true that it is devil-worship; may we stand as Christ stood, and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan."
A. Young, Cambridge Review,March 4th, 1885.
The temptations of the devil were all skilfully directed to try the question whether Jesus was so thoroughly one with the Father as He professed to be, and as it was necessary that He should be; whether His Father's business really was the one interest of His heart and the great business of His life; whether His delight in doing God's will was so strong that it could not be overcome by any intense feeling; whether, under high pressure, some discord might not be revealed between Him and the Father.
I. Can He be tempted to use His power for any unwarrantable act of self-indulgence? He is faint and hungry through long fasting, and the craving for food is intense. Though He has no food in His hands, He has ample power of producing it. He has power to turn the very stones into bread. Why should He not use that power? In some way or other this thought is instilled by the devil into Jesus' mind. But Jesus intuitively apprehends that this course is not in accordance with the Father's will. The miraculous power which He has received is a for sign to the world, not a mere convenience to Himself; His miracles are to be symbols of men's deliverance from the thraldom of evil, not mere sources of ease or comfort to the worker. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
II. Baffled here, the tempter tries another device. He cannot tempt Jesus to any act of self-indulgence, but may He not tempt Him to an act of self-display? What if the crowd of worshippers were to see Him descending unhurt from the pinnacle of the Temple? Would not that give them a new sense of the honour in which they should hold Him, and gain for Him an attention not to be otherwise secured? It was a subtle temptation to put self in the centre. Such a course could not but be regarded by Jesus as showing a discord with the Father, as decided, though not as flagrant, as if He had directly disobeyed His will. It was a proposal He never could entertain. Never of His own accord would He plunge into danger to let the world see how God protected Him. He would do His work quietly and steadily, avoiding all display, neither seeking nor desiring the applause of men.
III. But even yet the tempter has not exhausted his wiles. He knows the greatness and the difficulty of the work which Jesus has undertaken; He knows that He has got the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. Inch by inch the Messiah must push His conquests, encountering in each case the natural opposition of the heart, and from time to time the confederate forces of all His foes. Might not the desired result be reached in a shorter way? Satan offers to make over to Jesus his whole power and interest in the world on one small condition. Jesus must do obeisance to him as a sovereign transferring his rights; He must fall down and worship him. "Get thee behind Me, Satan." The immediate possession of the whole world is not for a moment to be dreamed of at the cost of even one act of disloyalty to God. Jesus would encounter ten thousand battles, would spend centuries in pain and disappointment, rather than so much as breathe a thought out of keeping with the claims of the great Lord of all.
W. G. Blaikie, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Lord,p. 74.
The Missionary Trials of the Church.
All who are earnestly striving for the spread of Christ's Kingdom on earth are exposed from the very earnestness of their seeking and striving to one great temptation, the one which really underlies all the three temptations of our Lord, and to which He was exposed all His life long the temptation to promote His Kingdom by means which are not in agreement with that one fundamental law according to which alone it can truly develop itself. That law is the law of conquest by self-sacrifice.
I. First, there is the trial of the wilderness. The first temptation is a proposal to preserve the human life of Jesus by means of His Divine power; that is, to preserve it by violation of that law of His Kingdom which forbade Him thus to save Himself. Had He clone thus He would have refused the Cross.
"Man doth not live by bread alone." This is the martyr spirit of the Church. In this spirit the early Church conquered the world. Thus beneath this banner of the Cross her warriors went forth to victory, and it was not until the wilderness trial had ended that her missionary zeal abated, her first love grew cold, and she left the heathen half won, the uttermost parts of the earth unclaimed for her Lord.
II. Let us follow our Lord from the wilderness to the temple, from lowliness to prominence, from weakness to power, from fear to security. As in the wilderness the region of the natural the temptation was mainly to the flesh, here in the region of the spiritual the temptation is altogether to the spirit: "Cast Thyself down, for angels shall bear Thee up."
The history of the second temptation is written at large in the history of the visible Church. The pinnacles of success, the high places of spiritual triumph, are giddy and slippery places. Ever as our Churches grow will grow their difficulties from these sources. False doctrines, heresies, schisms have yet to be encountered. The struggle of the earlier Church is for existence; as she grows, her trial is to order her life aright.
III. The tempter's offer in the third temptation was nothing less than the surrender to Christ of all the power he had possessed and all the glory he had usurped the power to rule men, the glory of the empire over the beings whom God had made in His own image. It was this empire not merely material but moral over the kingdoms of men, that the tempter offered the Son of man.
And ever from that hour the tempter tries, by the same temptation, the souls of Christ's disciples. Truly it is possible for any of us to have some larger portion of the world if we will only pay the devil's price for it. And it would seem as if the temptation to compromise with the devil for the possession of God's world is the great temptation of Christian Churches and Christian nations in these latter days.
Bishop Magee, The Gospel and the Age,p. 57.
The life of Jesus is the example of His people. What He did, we must do; what He suffered, we must suffer. As Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of Judæa, to be tempted of the devil, so are we led by the same Spirit through the wilderness of this world, and all our life here is a tempted life.
I. It was after He had partaken of two great means of grace, Baptism and Fasting, that Jesus was tempted. Great spiritual blessings are often followed by very severe temptations.
II. The three kinds of temptation which were offered to our Lord correspond very closely with the enemies with whom we all have to fight; the flesh, the world, and the devil.
III. Try to encounter the devil's attack with the weapon of Holy Writ. There is written down what a Christian's duty is; hold fast to that.
IV. Do not willingly put yourselves in the way of temptation. As says an old writer, "Do not shout in the ear of a sleeping temptation." When it is the Holy Spirit who leads us, however severe our trial may be, God will, with the temptation, provide a means for our escape.
H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 140.
I. All good men who had ever been in the world had believed that they were in some way or other united to One whom they could not see. They were good and right and true, so far as they trusted in Him, and guided their steps by the light He gave them. But every man knew that there was something in him which hindered him from exercising this trust, something which said, "Thou canst live without it." Each man was fighting with himself, fighting with his own evil inclinations; it seemed as if he had nothing to do with his neighbours; it seemed as if the desire to resist was one that no one else could possibly share in. Every one was alone in this war, and yet it was the common war, the war of all mankind.
II. What fight could our Lord have to fight, seeing that the very thing which all other men had been contending with in themselves was not in Him? Do you not see that He would be able to feel fully what each one had felt imperfectly, that He was fighting the commonenemy fighting an enemy who was entirely separate from Him, who was the most entirely unlike Him, and who, therefore, was assaulting Him more directly than he had ever assaulted any other being? He that was perfectly separate from sin would see down to the root of each particular sin, and would know that it was this which was seeking to destroy Him, and which He was come to destroy. His conflict, therefore, would be with the very spirit of selfishness, and division, and disobedience. This is the awful battle which you hear of in the Gospel of today.
III. Our Lord's fast was not to gain anything for Himself, but to maintain a glory which belonged to Him; to fit Him for engaging with His enemy; to fit Him for going about doing good. Even so must it be with His disciples. When they fast it must not be to obtain a privilege, but to realize one which God has freely bestowed on them; not to save themselves from temptation, but to preparethemselves for it; not to separate themselves from others, but to fit themselves better for helping others.
F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons,p. 142.
References: Matthew 4:1 W. H. Hutchings, Mystery of the Temptation,p. 1; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,vol. i., p. 146; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 51; E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion,p. 200; C. A. Fowler, Parochial Sermons,p. 61; J. M. McCulloch, Sermons,p. 95; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 344; H. Wonnacott, Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 59; vol. xvi., p. 72; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 91; J. C. Jones, Studies in St. Matthew,p. 70; E. G. Charlesworth, Church Sermons,vol. i., p. 46; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 20; H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons,p. 1.Matthew 4:1; Matthew 4:2. E. B. Pusey, Parochial and Cathedral Sermons,p. 391; H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation,p. 77.