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 xci. 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: Matthew 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.Matthew 4:6. Parker, Hidden Springs,p. 361; T. Birkett Dover, Lent Manual,p. 31.