IN the garden of Eden man was surrounded by everything that testified to “the goodness of God.” Through heeding, however, the voice of the deceiver, he sinned, and, by that one sin, opened the flood-gates to what has proved to be the deluging torrent of evil and sorrow, sin and death.
In the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we find the arch-enemy of God and man again upon the scene; not this time in the garden of God’s planting, but “in the wilderness,” where Jesus was “with the wild beasts” (Mark 1:13), and where everything spake of hunger and solitude.
Ah! subtle foe! His object was the same, though his tactics differed. He knew too well that such a question as “Hath God said?” was not the weapon wherewith to meet Him, who, from all eternity, was Himself “THE WORD” (John 1:1).
God had just borne witness to Him (Matt. 3) with the words, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” In seeking, therefore, to weaken the authority of that word, and to allure Him from His position before God, of dependence and obedience, the devil approached Him with an, “IF Thou be the Son of God, command...,” “IF Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down....”
In Genesis, the woman added to God’s word; in Matthew’s Gospel, the devil took therefrom (compare Psalms 91:11 with Matthew 4:6; also Revelation 22:18, 19).
Audacious “IF”! How many a time, and in how many varied ways, has it since then been echoed and re-echoed by the infidel mind.
But Jesus was and is the Son of God. As a shaft, therefore, from the quiver, He drew from the very Pentateuch itself that, concerning which He asserted, “It is written.” Can we wonder, therefore, that the Books of Moses, since that day, have become special objects of the virulent attacks of Satan?
“If Thou be...!”— Again, at a later period, when the malignant foe marshalled all the hosts of evil around the cross of Jesus, the “Despised and Rejected of men,” we hear repeated from the cruel lips of the poor dupes of the adversary the same awful taunt, “IF Thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
Did He “come down from the cross”? No! Blessed be His name! He remained. “That bitter cup, He drank it up”— He “gave His life,” and “died for the ungodly.” He did not “come down,” but He was “taken down,” and “laid... in a sepulcher.” And the grave attested the fact that Jesus really died.
He had come from the glory with good news for ruined man, and He went to the cross where He glorified God by meeting the whole question of sin and sins. God, therefore, hath “highly exalted Him,” and “hath made that same Jesus both LORD and Christ.” And now that the Saviour adorns the Father’s throne, a bright and glorious “IF” (God’s “IF”), accompanied by words of wonderfully tender grace, which the Holy Ghost has caused to be inscribed upon the pages of inspiration, illumines the horizon of this dark world for perishing sinners — that, “IF thou shalt confess with thy mouth the LORD Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
“The heavens are opened now!
Sound it through earth abroad!
And we, by faith, IN HEAVEN behold
Jesus, the Christ, OUR LORD.”
N. L. N.