There are two things that we may notice before our Lord is tempted of the devil. The first is, that He is most emphatically recognized as the Son of God by His Father; secondly, that He is anointed as man by the Holy Ghost. Now a similar thing is true of the believer, of course in an inferior way. Still, the believer is owned as a son of God, and has the Spirit of God given to him before he becomes the proper object of the enemy's temptations. And this is an important thing to bear in mind—that, strictly speaking, the relation which the sinner bears to the enemy is not as subject to be tempted. He is a captive: he is led by the devil at his will. This is a very distinct thing from temptation; for it supposes a person thoroughly under the power of Satan. We are tempted, when we are out of the enemy's power, and because we are sons of God. Thus you see all men have to do with Satan in one way or another. The mass of mankind are his slaves; but those delivered by the power of God, those who, by grace, are God's children, become the objects of his assault in the way of temptation. It is not so much his power that such have to dread; for when the soul has received Jesus, Satan's power is really null and void; it is completely broken for the believer. And therefore it is that we are warned rather against his wiles. In certain cases there may be the suffering from his fiery darts; but even this is not his power, which is nothing to the believer, while he is looking to Christ: he has only to resist, and the devil will flee from him. If he had really power, it is clear that Satan would not flee. But he has none. He has lost it as regards the soul that has received Christ. But then, while to faith the power of Satan is a thing destroyed in the cross of Jesus, his wiles are a very serious matter; and we ought not to be ignorant of his devices. Now God has been graciously pleased to give us his manner of dealing with our blessed Lord. And that this is intended for our use, and the great pattern and principle of the temptations of Satan, at any time, is clear from many obvious and weighty considerations.
Besides, we know from the Gospel of Luke that, in the case of our Lord, there was a very long-continued temptation of Satan of which we have no details. We are only told the fact that Jesus was tempted of the devil during forty days. But the great temptations, which the Holy Ghost has been pleased to record for us, are those that took place at the end of the forty days. May we not gather hence, that in the temptation of our Lord there were two parts—first, that not common to man, but peculiar to our Lord? For we are subject to no such circumstances as being driven into the wilderness for forty days. But, secondly, we are exposed to such as are given us at the close. The Lord, therefore, casts a veil over the first, and discloses carefully what, in principle, every child of God may be tempted by some time or another. We shall see that these three temptations, presented by Matthew and Luke in a different order, give us an admirable insight into the ways of Satan when he thus assails the children of God. But it is exceedingly sweet to see, that, before Satan is allowed to tempt at all, the blessedness of the Son's recognition by the Father is most fully brought out. And, indeed, it is something akin which renders anyone obnoxious to the hatred of Satan. The enemy is well aware when God converts and quickens a soul hitherto dead in trespasses and sins; and at once he is prepared with his temptations. They need not, of course, come in the same order as our Lord's; but they are, more or less, of a similar character with those which are revealed.
It is clear that the first temptation grew out of our Lord's actual circumstances. He had been all this time in the wilderness without food, and at the end of the forty days He was an hungered. When Moses was without food on the mount for the same time, he was with God, and miraculously sustained. But the wonderful thing here is, that the time was spent with the enemy. None had ever been so, or will be so again. To be all that while in presence of Satan, dependent on God, was the greatest moral honor, though the severest trial, that man had ever passed through. Throughout, the Lord is seen as Son of man, though also as Son of God.
The introductory notice shows us that temptation was going on all the time our Lord was in the wilderness. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Whatever may be the aim of Satan, this is one main part of his tactics—he insinuates a doubt, a doubt of our own relationship with God. “If thou be the Son of God.” Now, search the word of God as you may, never will you find his Spirit leading a soul to doubt. Nor can anything, indeed, be more opposed to His way than sanctioning mistrust of God. And it shows the exceeding subtlety of Satan, that he has actually made the children of God themselves to be his instruments, not only by permitting doubts in themselves, but helping to raise them in others, often in the mistaken plea, that not to be confident with God is a sign of humility, and of a desire to be lowly! But faith says, “We are always confident.” Not that we are to shrink from self-examination: we do find this pressed in Scripture. Thus, in 1 Cor. 11. the believers are evidently exhorted to examine themselves, but not with any idea of producing doubt. On the contrary— “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat;” for the question was about the Lord's Supper. If the right thing were hesitation, it would have been, “let him not eat,” if he does, not find himself as he ought. But supposing he finds that which is wrong within, is he not to eat. Surely he is to look up to his Savior, and cast himself upon that grace which never can fail. To think that there was no resource would be indeed to dishonor Christ, and to deny His truth and love. “My grace is sufficient for thee: my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Such is the word of the Lord. On the strength of His grace, the believer is to examine himself in the thought of going to the table of the Lord. It is not a question whether he is to go or stay away: I do not find this in Scripture. Nor do I find, on the other hand, that, because I am a Christian, it is no matter what state I may be in spiritually. But a man is to examine himself, and so to eat. He is sure to find that which calls for humiliation. It is important for a soul to draw near to God, and to have his light cast upon all that is there. This will give ground for humbling oneself, but never for staying away. Such is what the spirit of God lays down as a general rule for the Lord's Supper. Of course, I am not speaking now of cases of open sin, where the vindication of the Lord's glory is required. These suppose a man's walking in sin, and not examining himself. But I am speaking now of the ordinary walk of the child of God; and what we read there is careful inquiry as to what he finds within himself—but “so let him eat.”
“If thou be the Son of God.” Our Lord did not look like it. There was nothing of such a character outwardly as to carry necessary demonstration and beat down all question. If it had been so, there would have been no room left for faith at all. Satan takes advantage of the lowliness of our Lord in the place that He took as man. And, indeed, nothing could be more singular than His being found in the wilderness, and, as we read in Mark, with the wild beasts. if He were really the Son of God, Maker of heaven and earth, what a place to be in and led there by the Spirit, after the Father had spoken from heaven and acknowledged Him to be his beloved Son But so it was. And so it is now, in a lower sense, with the children of God. For no matter how much blessed they may be of God, or how truly owned as His sons, and having His Spirit dwelling within them, they also in their measure have their wilderness. “As my Father hath sent me into the world, even so send I you into the world.” Not into some pleasant place where there is no room for trial, but the very contrary. Because we belong to God and to heaven, because we have the Holy Ghost sealing its unto the day of redemption, we have to encounter Satan, but with the certainty that his power is broken, and that his wiles are what we have to resist. This questioning the relationship of Christ with God shows how truly Satan was at work. But the Lord does not pronounce him tube Satan, until open rebellion is manifested against God. When it is mere subtlety, He does not call him Satan. There are two ways in which the enemy is described in Scripture. He is called Satan and the devil. The latter is the term which implies his accusing character and also his wiles; the former refer to his power as adversary.
We must wait, even when we suspect it is the power of Satan at work, before we pronounce it absolutely. For if there is such a thing as the devil tempting, “God also puts a soul to the test, and this may be very sharp. Moreover, even God Himself does not act till a thing is manifest. He shows patience wonderful and most contrary to the haste of man. He comes down to see whether the evil is so great, as in the case of Adam or of Sodom and Gomorrah. But it always remains true, that whatever God may be in other things, quick as He is to hear the cry of His own in sorrow, He is exceedingly slow to judge; and there is nothing that more marks the knowledge of Christ practically and the effect of it in our own souls, than where the same thing is made true in us. Hastiness to judge is man's way, in proportion to his want of grace, because it is not a question of knowledge but of love that lingers over another, unwilling to pronounce till every hope is gone. There might still be hesitation. The rising in the flesh. which looked so threatening, might turn out after all to be only on the surface, and not deep-seated. So here we see patience, even in our Lord's dealing with the adversary. It is only when he thoroughly makes manifest what he is, that the Lord Himself calls Min Satan. Only when he demands the worship due to God alone, does our Lord say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Then Satan instantly flees. But the Lord lets him thoroughly discover himself first. This was divinely wise. Because, although the Lord knew him to be Satan all the time, what pattern would this be for us? The Lord is here the blessed man in the presence of Satan, showing us how we have to carry ourselves in the temptations that come upon us as saints of God.
And allow me to say another word with regard to temptation. In the sense we have it here, it is entirely from without. Our Lord never knew what it was to be tempted from within. He was “in all points tempted like as we are.” But the Holy Ghost qualifies this by adding, “Yet without sin.” It was not merely that He did not yield to sin, but He never had the principle of it—never the least feeling of any thought or wish contrary to God. He never knew sin. It is there that we so differ. We have cause of deep humiliation sometimes, because, besides having to do with the devil without, we have got also an evil nature within, what Scripture calls the flesh, i.e., self, the spring of insubordination and of enmity against God. It is the fountain of unloving, willful, ungodly desires in us; that which naturally never seeks God's will, save only in a spirit of fear; that which says, What will become of our souls if we do it not, but never seeks it as that which is loved, till we are born of God? Even afterward the same wicked principle is still there; but we have a new life implanted of God in our souls, which delights in His will.
But although the temptations of our Lord, which we have here, were from without, still Satan adapted them to the circumstances in which our Lord then stood. He had been forty days without food, and the first word, therefore, of the tempter is, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 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.” Our Lord refers to the chapter of Deuteronomy, that alludes to the manna, the daily food of Israel, which involved dependence upon God, and showed that Israel did not need the resources of the world to sustain them. They did not require some rich country to supply them out of its abundant harvest; neither did they depend upon gold and silver. Israel, before they had a land to cultivate and the means of gathering from it, were taught alone with God. In the wilderness, where He had brought them out as His first-born son, He puts them to the proof; and the way of it was, whether they were content with God and with the fare that God provided for them day by day. Alas! they were not.
Here the scene is entirely changed. It is a man in the wilderness, but Satan is there, and not God. In spirit He ever dwelt with His Father; for even when on earth he was “the Son of man which is in heaven.” He combined thus two things in His own person. Day by day there He was, the man dependent upon God for everything. And this was the first great temptation of the devil; the appeal to His earthly natural wants. It was no sin to be hungry; but it would have been a sin to have distrusted God because of the desert place. Did not God know that there was no bread there? and was it not his Spirit who had led Him there? Had God told Him to leave the wilderness, or to make the stones into bread? He would not use His own power, independently of the word of God. And it is the constant mark of the way in which the Holy Ghost energizes in the children of God, that they do not use miraculous power for themselves, nor for their friends. if we look at it in the New Testament, we find Paul working miracles and using the power of God to heal the sick around. But was it ever used for his own circle? On the contrary, Paul leaves Trophimus sick at Miletus, and shows about him all the anxiety of one who might never have had power to heal the body. When Epaphroditus was sick, we see the exercise of a faith which knew that the will of God, and acquiescence in it, was worth a thousand miracles. Miracles had not in themselves the high character of exercising the soul in dependence upon God. To obey God, to submit to Him, to have confidence in Inn, is that which human nature is incapable of. Power alone never reaches so high. Therefore, in the case of our Lord Himself, we never find that He puts His works of might on a level with obedience. Nay, He even speaks of His disciples as those who should do greater works than He Himself had done. Great as had been His own works, He makes known to the disciples themselves that they were to do greater. But obedience was what characterized Christ: this never was found in a mere child of Adam. Here, in the face of Satan, our Lord finds His strength, not in mere miracles, or in any provision that He might have made for Himself, but in the word of God. Hunger might have legitimate wants, but here He was tried in presence of Satan, and He will not step out of the trial, till it is over; He will not shift His circumstances or lift one finger for Himself; He waits upon God. “Man shall not live,” He answers, “by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” It was God's word that had led Him there, for the Holy Ghost always acts by this. He would not leave the wilderness till God Himself intimated as much to Him. This completely set aside Satan's temptations. But more: it brought out the real secret of living in dependence upon God day by day. For it is not a question here of imparting divine life, but of how we live when we have received it; and the food of the new life is the word of God. Of what immense importance does not this show it is to be growing in the knowledge of the word of God, and having that word as our household bread day by day, not merely reading it as a task, or formal duty, but as it is indeed the divinely suitable provision for the child of God! It is good for every one to study it, because he needs it, because it is in every way for the good of the soul day by day to read it intelligently, heartily, as those that receive it from God Himself. And God does not give that which the heart of man cannot take in, but what is adapted to our daily wants. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
This, then, is the answer of our Lord to the first temptation. Why should He turn the stones into bread? He hung upon God's word; His Father had not told him to do it; He could wait. So should it ever be with us. Where we have no clear expression of the mind of God, it is always our place to wait till we have. Sometimes it will show our weakness that we do not know the mind of God, and this is distasteful to us. Restlessness would like to go somewhere or do something? but this is not faith. Faith shows itself in waiting for God to manifest His will.
The next temptation was not a personal one, but connected with religion, us the first had been in respect of bodily wants. We shall find that the order is different in Luke. But here, the second temptation mentioned, is what I may call the religious temptation. The Lord had said that man should “live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The devil then takes Him up into the holy city, sets Him upon a pinnacle of the temple, and founds his temptation upon that very point in our Lord's answer—the word of God. He says, as it were, Here is a word of God for you: “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.” Very true. It was God's word, and evidently spoken of the Messiah. But what was Satan using it for? He says, “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down; for it is written, &c.” That was making a move without God—doing something by oneself. Scripture did not say, Cast thyself down, because God has given His angels charge concerning thee, lest thou shouldst dash thy foot against a stone. The Lord would not turn aside from Scripture, because Satan had misused it. He shows us, in the most instructive way, that we are not to be moved from our stronghold because it may be turned against us. Our Lord does not enter into nice distinctions, nor analyze what Satan had said, but He has given us that which ought to be, if I may so say, the standard mode of dealing for every Christian man. There are those who might have spiritual discrimination to see that Satan was perverting the Scripture which he quoted; but many might not. The Lord takes a broad ground in dealing with the adversary. he stands upon what each Christian should know and feel, and this is, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” He cites a plain positive word of God which Satan was destroying by the use he made of Psa. 91. Now that is the strength of a believer who may have to do with one that reasons subtlety from Scripture. “It is written again.” He can appeal to that which is palpable and clear. It will be found that, where a person systematically misapplies Scripture, he destroys some fundamental principle of the word of God. Whatever is false is contrary to some plain passage of Scripture. Now this is a great mercy. The believer holds fast to what is sure: he will not quit what he does understand for something that he does not. He may be perplexed by what the adversary is producing and may only have a sort of suspicion that he is wrong. But he may say to himself, I never can give up what is beyond a doubt for that which I do not know. In other words, he holds the light and refuses the darkness.
It is thus, it seems to me, our Lord deals with Satan. He could at once have set him aside on grounds of reasoning and have shown the perverted end to which Satan was applying Scripture; but He rather deals with him on moral grounds, which every Christian is capable of judging. Do I find a scripture used for the purpose of making one disobey God? At once I take my stand on, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” What is meant by this? I am never to doubt the Lord will be for me. If I do anything to prove Him, to see whether He will be for me, this is at once unbelief and disobedience. It is an allusion to Israel's history again and another quotation from the book of Deuteronomy. Indeed our Lord quotes every answer to the temptations, as has been long ago remarked, from the book of Deuteronomy. You will find in Ex. 17 that the Israelites tempted the Lord by asking, is He among us or not? That does not mean that they provoked him by idolatry or refusal to do His will. It is not a question there of open sin, but of unbelief of His goodness and presence—unbelief, in a word, of God's being for us. This is exactly what our Lord pleads. Cast myself down in order to find that the Scripture is true and that the angels will bear me up! I do not need to do such a thing. I am very certain that, if I were cast down, the angels would be there to sustain me. If you have a person whom you suspect of dishonesty on your premises, you may perhaps be disposed to test him in some way or other. But who would think of testing one that he had full confidence in? Now that is exactly the meaning of our Lord's answer. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” His soul resented the idea of trying God, to see whether He would sustain Him. God might try Him; Satan might put Him to the test; but as to His tempting the Lord, as if the Lord his God required to be put to the proof, whether He would be true to His word—away with such a thing!—He would not hear of it for a moment. The Lord still insists upon this—perfect confidence in God. Such is the full expression of it.
This temptation, which is the second in Matthew, Luke gives as the third. Why is this? Surely we ought not to read Scripture as if such differences were not intended to suggest inquiry. We have to take care that we do not misinterpret Scripture; but Scripture is meant to be understood. I say of these different orders in which the temptations are put, both are right, both are inspired of God. If they were both intended to give the temptation exactly as it took place, it is clear they are not right, but God had a much higher object. God wrote for out instruction, caul God has been pleased, in the different gospels, to put the facts in the way that is most instructive. Matthew simply gives the temptation. historically, as it took place. Therefore in Matthew we have notes of time. “Then the devil taketh him up,” &c. In Luke there is no such thought; it is simply “and the devil,” &c. This word at once prepares us for it. It is clear, there were these different temptations, but Luke puts them so as not to tell us the order in which they occurred. This is a general remark, true of the whole Gospel of Luke, that he habitually departs from the niece order of fact, to give an arrangement suited to the design which he had in view. As a whole, the Gospel of Luke is characterized by putting the facts of our Lord's life in an order that suited the doctrine He was teaching. Thus you will find in Luke, that even the genealogy of our Lord is not given in its regular place; there is a departure from the mere natural series, and there is, instead, a moral order. Take the case of the Lord's prayer: Luke puts that in a totally different place from Matthew, who gives it in the grand discourse commonly called the sermon on the mount; and, as prayer formed a most important part of the new principles the Lord was bringing out, so it formed one of the grand subjects of the Lord's discourse. Luke reserves that prayer till chapter xi., because our Lord is showing us there the grand means of spiritual life, how it is to be kept up and sustained in the soul. And he shows us this from the history of Martha and Mary. (Chap. 10) Why was it that Jesus approved of the path and walk of Mary rather than of Martha? It is not that He did not love them all, nor was it that Martha was not fall of personal love to the Savior, and that her heart was not true to Him. But there was an immense difference between them. What and why was it? Luke gives us the moral difference. When Martha was all busied with what she could do for the Lord, to show her love to Him, Mary was occupied with the Lord Himself—seated at His feet, listening to His word. The one was full of what she could do for Christ; the other, full of Christ Himself, and nothing that she could do was of the smallest consequence in her eyes, compared with Christ Himself. Thus we find, in another instance, Mary breaking the alabaster box to anoint the feet of Jesus, an action little accounted for by others; yet what she has done, should be recorded throughout the whole world. Our Lord brings out in Luke this great point—the word of God, the waiting upon Jesus, being the first great means of strengthening the new and spiritual life; and, therefore, immediately after this account of these sisters, you have the request of the disciples to be taught how to pray. It really took place long before; but they are put together in that special form by Luke in order to show the connection of the word of God with prayer.
So in the temptation, Luke departs from the order of fact and gives us the moral sequence. Matthew simply names events as they took place. Luke puts them in the order of magnitude, and rises from the natural trial to the worldly one, and then to the religious temptation. For it is perfectly plain that the temptation by the word of God, was much harder for one who valued that word above everything, than that which merely appealed to natural wants or to worldly ambition. Therefore, Luke keeps this temptation to the last. In Matthew it is not so, but we have, in the third place, the temptation by the world. “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Here at once the devil was manifest. The very idea of presenting any object of obeisance and worship between the soul and God, was at once to detect that he was either the devil himself or an instrument of the devil. The Lord, therefore, at once pronounces him “Satan.” “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” If it had been an apostle, it would have been just the same. If such an one had been so completely led away as to hint such a thing, the Lord would have said “Satan” all the same. Is not this most solemn for us in dealing with Christians even, who may have become for the time the instrument of Satan? The Lord did not hesitate on one occasion to say “Satan” to Peter himself, and yet he was the chief of the twelve; the first in dignity among the apostles of the Lamb. And yet our Lord Himself, after He had put more honor upon Peter, and given him a new name, does not hesitate to say “Satan,” as much to Peter as to the enemy himself. All this brings out an important principle for our own ways in having to do even with a child of God.
In answering the third and last temptation, our Lord still confines Himself to the book of Deuteronomy. Why? Because Deuteronomy is the book that regards Israel after they had completely failed under the law, and when God brings in the new principle of grace, and shows not the mere righteousness of the law, but that which is of faith. This is the reason why the Apostle Paul also quotes from Deuteronomy, for the same purpose. It is the book that indicates the place of obedience, when it is no longer a mere question of observance under the law. The Lord Jesus is here taking that very place. He is not showing what He could have done as a divine person. As such, He would have taken ground where we could not follow Him. But throughout this temptation He takes the posture that becomes us, and all that desire to follow Him. The only thing right and becoming for a godly man, in meeting temptations, is the ground of the obedience of faith; one who stands in the confidence of what God is in His goodness. The Lord would on no account swerve from what was the due and comely place for a godly man in Israel. If a person was godly, his place was to confess and to be baptized with the baptism of repentance. Our Lord at once finds Himself with such, though in His case it was the fulfilling of righteousness; while with us it is the acknowledgment of sin. He who alone could have taken His stand upon legal righteousness, takes it as in every way vindicating God, not upon the mere righteousness of man. Satan may put temptation before Him in every form; but it is of no use. His only care is to vindicate God, and never to arrogate anything to Himself.
I believe that the principles brought before us in this chapter are of the greatest possible importance for the children of God. The few remarks I have made may help to direct souls to the value, practically, of these temptations of our Lord for guidance in our own path. I therefore commend the whole subject to the attention of the reader, as one that, although it may have come before us many a time, and we may have often meditated upon the practical value of it, may still claim our thought, and our prayerful study.