View Matthew 4 in the note window.
Having thus in grace taken up His position as man on earth, He commences
His earthly career, being led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil. The righteous and holy man, the Son of God, enjoying
the privileges proper to such a one, He must undergo the trial of those
devices through which the first Adam fell. It is His spiritual condition
which is tested. It is not now an innocent man in the enjoyment of all
God's natural blessings, who is put to the proof in the midst of those
blessings which should have made him remember God. Christ, nigh to God as
His beloved Son, but in the midst of trial, having the knowledge of good
and evil, and as to outward circumstances come down into the midst of man's
fallen state, must have His faithfulness to this position fully tried with
respect to His perfect obedience. To maintain this position, He must have
no other will than that of His Father, and fulfil it or suffer it, whatever
might be the consequences to Himself. He must fulfil it in the midst of all
the difficulties, the privations, the isolation, the desert, where Satan's
power was, which might tempt Him to follow an easier path than that which
should be only for the glory of His Father. He must renounce all the rights
that belonged to His own Person, save as He should receive them from God,
yielding them up to Him with a perfect trust.
The enemy did his utmost to induce Him to make use of His privileges, "if
thou be the Son of God," for His own relief, apart from the command of God,
and in avoidance of the sufferings which might accompany the performance of
His will. But it was to lead Him to do His own will, not God's.
Jesus, enjoying in His own Person and relationship with God the full favour
of God as Son of God, the light of His countenance, goes into the
wilderness for forty days to be in conflict with the enemy. He did not go
away from man, and from all intercourse with man and the things of man, in
order (like Moses and Elias) to be with God. Being already fully with God,
He is separate from men by the power of the Holy Ghost to be alone in His
conflict with the enemy. In the case of Moses, it was man out of his
natural condition to be with God. In the case of Jesus, it is so to be with
the enemy: to be with God was His natural position.
The enemy tempts Him first by proposing to Him to satisfy His bodily need,
and, instead of waiting on God, to employ according to His own will and on
His own behalf the power with which He was endowed. But, if Israel was fed
in the wilderness with manna from God, the Son of God, however great His
power, would act in accordance with what Israel should have learnt by that
means, namely, that "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The Man, the obedient Jew, the
Son of God, waited for this word, and would do nothing without it. He was
not come to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. This is the
principle that characterises the Spirit of Christ in the Psalms. No
deliverance is accepted but the intervention of Jehovah at His own good
time. It is perfect patience, in order to be perfect and complete in allthe
will of God. There could be no sinful lust in Christ; but to be hungry was
no sin, yet it was a human need, and what harm in eating when hungry? There
was no will of God to do it, and that will by the word He came to do.
Satan's suggestion was, "if thou be the Son of God, command"; but He had
taken the place of a servant, and this was not commanding: he sought to get
the Lord out of the place of perfect service and obedience, out of the
place of a servant.
And note here the place the written word has, and the character of Christ's
obedience. This character is not simply that the will of God is a rule; it
is the one motive for action. We have a will arrested often by the word.
Not so Christ. His Father's will was His motive; He acted not merely
according to, but because it was, God's will. We delight to see a child who
would run off to something it delights in, stop and cheerfully do its
parents' will when called to do it. But Christ never obeyed thus, never
sought a will of His own, but was stopped by His Father's. And we are
sanctified to the obedience of Christ. Note further that the written word
is that by which He lives and by which He overcomes. All depended here on
Christ's victory, as all did on Adam's fall. But for Christ, one text,
rightly used of course, suffices. He seeks no other: that is obedience. It
suffices for Satan; he has no reply. His wiles are thus defeated.
The first principle of conquest is simple and absolute obedience, living by
words out of God's mouth. The next is perfect confidence in the path of
obedience.
In the second place then, the enemy sets Him on a pinnacle of the temple,
to induce Him to apply to Himself the promises made to the Messiah, without
abiding in the ways of God. The faithful man may assuredly reckon on the
help of God while walking in His ways. The enemy would have the Son of man
put God to the test (instead of reckoning on Him while walking in His ways)
to see whether He might be trusted in. This would have been a want of
confidence in God, not obedience; or pride, presuming on its privileges,
instead of counting on God in obedience.
[see note #12] Taking His place with
Israel in the condition they were in when without a king in the land, and,
quoting the directions given to them in that book to guide them in the
godly path there taught, He uses for His guidance that part of the word
which contains the divine injunction on this subject, "Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God"; a passage often quoted as if it forbade excess in
trusting God; whereas it means not to distrust, and try if He is faithful.
They tempted God, saying, Is God indeed among us? And this Satan would have
had the Lord do.
The enemy, failing to deceive that obedient heart, even by hiding himself
under the use of the word of God, shows himself in his true character,
tempting the Lord, thirdly, to spare Himself all the sufferings that
awaited Him, by shewing Him the inheritance of the Son of man on earth,
that which would be His when He had reached it through all those paths,
toilsome yet necessary to the Father's glory, which the Father had marked
out for Him. All should now be His, if He would acknowledge Satan by
worshipping him, the god of this world. This in fact was what the kings of
the earth had done for only a part of these things; how often done for some
trifling vanity! but He should have the whole. But if Jesus was to inherit
earthly glory (as well as all other) the object of His heart was God
Himself, His Father, to glorify Him. Whatever might be the value of the
gift, it was as the gift of the Giver that His heart prized it. Moreover He
was in the positionof tested man and a faithful Israelite; and whatever
might be the trial of patience into which the sin of the people had brought
Him, be the trial ever so great, He would serve none but His God alone.
But if the devil carries temptation, sin, to the utmost, and shews himself
to be the adversary (Satan), the believer has the right to cast him out. If
he comes as a tempter, the believer should answer him by the faithfulness
of the word, which is man's perfect guide, according to the will of God. He
does not need to see through everything. The word is the word of Him who
does, and in following that, we walk according to a wisdom which knows
everything, and in a path formed by that wisdom, and which hence involves
absolute trust in God. The two first temptations were the wiles of the
devil, the third, open hostility to God. If he comes as the open adversary
of God, the believer has a right to have nothing to do with him. "Resist
the devil, and he will flee from you." He knows he has met Christ, not
flesh. May believers resist if Satan would tempt them by the world,
remembering it is Satan's domain in fallen man!
The believer's safeguard, morally (that is, as to the state of his heart)
is a single eye. If I seek only the glory of God, that which presents no
other motive than my own aggrandisement, or my own gratification, whether
of body or mind, will have no hold upon me; and will shew itself in the
light of the word, which guides the single eye, as contrary to the mind of
God. This is not the haughtiness that rejects temptation on the ground of
being good; it is obedience, humbly giving God His place, and consequently
His word also. "By the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of
the destroyer," from him that did his own will and made it his guide. If
the heart seeks God alone, the most subtle snare is discovered, for the
enemy never tempts us to seek God alone. But this supposes a pure heart,
and that there is no self-seeking. This was displayed in Jesus.
Our safeguard against temptation is the word, used by the discernment of a
perfectly pure heart, which lives in the presence of God, and learns the
mind of God in His word,
[see note #13] and therefore knows its application to the
circumstances presented. It is the word that preserves the soul from the
wiles of the enemy.
Observe also that, consequently, it is in the spirit of simple and humble
obedience that power lies; for where it exists, Satan can do nothing. God
is there, and accordingly the enemy is conquered.
It appears to me that these three temptations are addressed to the Lord in
the three characters, of man, of Messiah, and of Son of man.
He had no sinful desires like fallen man, but He was an hungered. The
tempter would persuade Him to satisfy this need without God.
The promises in the Psalms belonged to Him as being made to the Messiah.
And all the kingdoms of the world were His as the Son of man.
He always replies as a faithful Israelite, personally responsible to God,
making use of the Book of Deuteronomy, which treats of this subject
(namely, the obedience of Israel, in connection with the possession of the
land, and the privileges that belonged to the people in connection with
this obedi nce; and this, apart from the organisation which constituted
them a corporate body before God).
[see note #14]
Satan departs from Him, and the angels come to exercise their ministry
towards the Messiah, the Son of man victorious through obedience. What
Satan would have Him try God about, He has fully. They are ministering
spirits for us also.
But how profoundly interesting is it to see the blessed Lord come down, the
Son of God from heaven, and take-the Word made flesh-His place among the
poor godly ones on the earth, and, as having taken that place, owned of the
Father as His Son, heaven being opened and opened to Him as man, and the
Holy Ghost coming down and abiding on Him as man though without measure,
and so forming the model of our place, though we were not yet in it; the
whole Trinity, as I have said, being first fully revealed when He is thus
associated with man; and then, we being slaves to Satan, going in this
character and relationship to meet also Satan for us, to bind the strong
man, and give man through Him this place also: only for us redemption was
needed to bring us where He is.
John being cast into prison, the Lord departs into Galilee. This movement,
which determined the scene of His ministry outside Jerusalem and Judea, had
great significance with respect to the Jews. The people (so far as centred
in Jerusalem, and boasting in the possession of the promises, the
sacrifices, and the temple, and in being the royal tribe) lost the presence
of the Messiah, the Son of David. He went away for the manifestation of His
Person, for the testimony of God's intervention in Israel, to the poor and
despised of the flock; for the remnant and poor of the flock are already in
chapters 3, 4 clearly distinguished from the heads of the people. He thus
really became the true stock, instead of being a branch of that which had
been planted elsewhere; although this effect was not yet fully manifested.
The moment corresponds with John 4.
We may remark here, that, in John's Gospel, the Jews are always
distinguished from the multitude (called the people in the Gospels). The
language, or rather the pronunciation, was entirely different. They did not
speak Chaldee in Galilee.
At the same time this manifestation of the Son of David in Galilee was the
fulfilment of a prophecy in Isaiah. The force of that prophecy is
this:-although the Roman captivity was far more terrible than the invasion
of the Assyrians when they came up against the land of Israel, there was
nevertheless this circumstance which altered everything, namely, the
presence of the Messiah, the true Light, in the land.
We observe that the Spirit of God here passes over the whole history of
Jesus until the commencement of His ministry after the death of John the
Baptist. He gives Jesus His proper position in the midst of
Israel-Emmanuel, the Son of David, the Beloved of God, acknowledged as His
Son, the faithful One in Israel, though exposed to all Satan's temptations;
and then at once, afterwards, His prophetic position announced by Isaiah,
and the kingdom proclaimed as at hand.
[see note #15]
