0735. The Temptation

The Temptation

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Mat_4:1).

1. The Intervening Years. Following the slaughter of the innocents and the flight of Joseph, God, in His wondrous Book passes over thirty years of time while Christ was growing to maturity. Only once we get a glimpse of the holy Child. We read of the Lord Jesus at the age of twelve in the Temple in Jerusalem, where with His parents He had gone to attend the Feast of the Passover. During all these hidden years Christ was subject to His parents, living first, as the carpenter’s son and later as Himself, a carpenter.

2. The Voice at the Baptism. Following His baptism, as Christ stood praying, suddenly the heavens were opened, and down through the blue came the word’s of God: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased" (Mat_3:17).

What wondrous vindication of the purposes and. plans of God was this. Four thousand years before the Lord God had said that the Seed should come; and now He proclaimed the Seed, His Son. And the Holy Spirit, in bodily form, lighted upon Him there before them all.

3. The Temptation–Its Significance. It will be impossible for us to set down here a study of the various phases of the Temptation. We can only observe the supreme intent of satan.

First, Let it be remembered that the Spirit led Christ to this historic meeting. Christ sought the devil, more perhaps than the devil sought Christ. Satan might have preferred to have hid himself, in his attacks. This had ever been his wont. This time, however, the Spirit of God forced the issue; made it an open show of strength.

Second, Let us assure our hearts that satan’s real effort was to save himself from the curse pronounced in the Garden. He sought to safeguard his head. If he could, he would swerve the Son of God from His fidelity to God; he would fill His mind with doubt. If he failed in this, he would offer to compromise; he would offer to yield all the kingdoms of the world and their glories, if the Son of God, in turn, would worship him, and concede His Lordship.

Thus, surrounded by wild beasts; after forty days of fasting, the Lord Jesus, in the illimitable power of His Deity, met each cunning strategy of the tempter.

The devil approached Christ from every angle with which he first met Eve; there was subtle insinuation, plausible appeal and brilliant effrontery. But Christ, clothed with an impeccable holiness and an unswervable fidelity to God, quite vanquished him.

It is impossible for us to grasp the bitterness that engulfed satan as the billows of a victorious Christ swept over him. The waters of despair encompassed him; the depths of anguish closed him round about; and the weeds of his defeat were wrapped about his head.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR