LESSON V.--JULY 31.

THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS.--MATT. 4:1-11.

      GOLDEN TEXT.--He is able to succor them that are tempted.--HEB. 2:18.
      TIME.--A. D. 26, forty days after the baptism of the Lord.
      PLACE.--Supposed to be west of the Jordan, a mountain region called Quarantania.
      HELPFUL READINGS.--Mark 1:12, 13; Luke 4:1-13; Heb. 4:13-16.
      LESSON ANALYSIS.--1. First Temptation; 2. Second Temptation; 3. Third Temptation; 4. Ministering Angels.

INTRODUCTION.

      The Baptism was the inauguration of Jesus in his work; the descent of the Spirit upon him was the anointing for his Christly office; the voice of [213] the Father was the formal acknowledgment of him as the Son of God. He now stood forth as the head of a new race, a new manhood, a manhood in which the human would be permeated with the divine, and all the members of which would be the children of God. But for many reasons it was needful that he be tested and proved worthy. The first Adam, created holy, had fallen before the tempter; the second Adam, in whom the Divine had been incorporated with humanity, must also meet the tempter in conflict, and overcome him.

      The temptations were intended, not for Jesus in his nature as a man, so much as for Jesus in his official station, as the Messiah. God was putting it to the test, or rather demonstrating that Jesus was fully qualified for his office and mightier than the great enemy before whose assaults the human race had fallen and who had virtually the dominion of the world. No one could be mighty enough to deliver our race unless he could vanquish the tempter. This enemy, in assailing Jesus, was seeking to undermine the very foundations of the Kingdom that was to be established, by leading Christ, in some subtle way, into conduct inconsistent with the office to which he had been called.

      I. FIRST TEMPTATION.--1. Then was Jesus led of the Spirit. Mark says he was driven of the Spirit, a phrase that indicates a sudden and forcible impulsion: carried away by an irresistible impulse, our Lord went at once to the desert. Into the wilderness. Tradition has placed the scene of Christ's temptation in that part of the wilderness of Judea (see note on ver. 4) which lies between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, and particularly in the mountain called, in modern geography, Quarantania, from this forty days' fast. Naked and arid like a mountain of malediction, it rises precipitously from a scorched and desert plain, and looking over the sluggish, bituminous waters of the Sodomic Sea, thus offering a sharp contrast to the Mountain of Beatitudes, and the limpid crystal of the Lake of Gennesareth--Farrar. To be tempted. This was the purpose of the Spirit in directing him to this seclusion in the lonely wilderness. He was sent forth for conflict. Christ must be tempted--1. Because it was impossible that one who came to overthrow the kingdom of Satan should not be attacked by the great adversary at the very threshold. 2. It was to test him, whether he was the true Messiah, the real Son of God, qualified for his work of redemption. 3. It was the revealing to him as the Son of man the great work he had come to do. 4. It was to prepare him, by being tempted like as we are, and yet gaining the victory, to "succor them that are tempted." The three great temptations mentioned by Matthew are the three great classes of temptations to which men are now exposed.--Peloubet. Of the devil. Here the existence and personality of Satan are placed before us in the most distinct language. It would be the boldest [214] of all paradoxes to assert that the Scriptures do not teach the existence of an evil power, whom they call the Enemy, the Accuser, the Devil.--Ellicott. It is no more unreasonable to believe in a personal devil than in great bad leaders on earth. To deny the fact of the Devil is to lay much heavier charges of evil on the nature of man than does the belief in Satan.--Peloubet. The term devil is derived from the Greek, and means "false accuser;" the term satan is from the Hebrew, and means "adversary." They are different designations of the same evil power.

      2. When he had fasted forty days and forty nights. Moses and Elijah each fasted for the same length of time. It was no doubt a period of spiritual exaltation, of meditation and prayer. It was a period of preparation for his work, and it is hardly probable that he felt the need of food. When the mind and spirit are intensely excited the needs of the body are forgotten. He was afterward an hungered. At the close of this period nature begins to assert her demands, and hunger was keenly felt.

      3. And when the tempter came to him. He chose the hour of weakness for his great assault, the hour of physical exhaustion, after his great spiritual season, the hour when hunger asserted itself most keenly. The tempter always craftily chooses the time when he will beset those he would destroy. If thou be the Son of God. Forty days before the voice of the Father from heaven proclaimed: "This is my beloved Son." We cannot know that the full consciousness of his Sonship had come to him until the Spirit descended and this proclamation was made. During the forty days of loneliness in the wilderness it can hardly be doubted that the word from heaven was ringing in his ears. It is with this word upon his lips that the tempter appears. Just what form he assumed we cannot tell, but we know that it is not his policy to reveal himself as the arch-enemy. Probably he now came in the guise of a seeker after truth, as if he had said: "Art thou indeed the Son of God? If so, give a proof, that we may know thou hast then omnipotent power, and thou art now ready to perish with hunger. If thou art the Son, use thy power; command that these stones be made bread. Thus thou wilt provide what thou needest, and will demonstrate to us whom thou art." He came to save others, not himself; to feed others, not himself; to exert his divine power for others, not for himself. There is an insinuation of doubt--"if"--and of distrust that God should let him hunger. It was a call to use his power selfishly, and to assert his Sonship in a vain-glorious way. Abstinence from self-help and the practice of self-denial was the law of his life. [215]

      4. It is written (Deut. 8:3), Man shall not live by bread alone. The Lord uses the sword of the Spirit in his reply. The word quoted, found in Deut. 8:3, should be used in its connection, in order to comprehend its force. It is addressed by Moses to the children of Israel, who hungered for bread in the wilderness, and assures them that man may live, not on bread alone, but on whatever the Word of God appoints. In that case God sent manna. So the Son of God in the wilderness need not live on bread alone, nor will he use his power to make bread of stones, but will trust the Father and live on whatever the Father provides. Notice that he does not assert that he is the Son, nor offer proof, but classes himself with men. Hunger is a human incident, and he, as man, shall not live by bread alone. The temptation was to distrust God's providence, under the pressure of want, on the plea that relief by other means might easily be had. The victory was to leave himself in the hands of God, and to declare a perfect trust in the means appointed by the Divine Word.

      II. THE SECOND TEMPTATION.--5. Then the devil taketh him into the holy city. What way the devil took him, whether bodily or in spirit, to the temple we are not told, and it would be in vain to inquire. Whichever be true it was doubtless a suggestion that for the Lord to cast himself down thus, in the holy city, in the presence of the multitudes, would at once establish his mission. On a pinnacle of the temple. The only portion of the temple that seems to answer to the context was the lofty porch overhanging the valley of the Kedron. Josephus says that from the apex to the valley below at this point was 600 feet. The devil's first temptation, like that addressed to Eve in Eden, had been intended to awake distrust in the Father. The second goes to the opposite extreme and asks for such an excess of trust as to provoke rashness. One extreme of sin is to distrust God; the opposite extreme is to refuse to employ proper industry and precautions and to tempt God. One sin is to distrust providence and tile other is to presume upon it.

      6. He shall give his angels charge concerning thee. The devil can also quote Scripture and in, this instance appears in the guise of a very religious [216] personage, but like many perverters of Scripture who profess to be very religious, he is a garbler of the Scripture and in quoting this passage leaves out one very important clause. The passage is in Psalm 91:11, and there reads, "He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." The devil omits the last which limits the promise to those who walk in the ways appointed for them.

      7. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again the Savior replies in the words of Scripture, this time quoting from Deut. 6:16. There is no argument, but a simple reply that shows what is asked is forbidden. Yet those who profess to be religious are sometimes ready to do the very thing Satan asked. The Tyndall "prayer test" was of this very class of sins. When also a man refuses to labor and provide for his family, claiming that the Lord will provide, he tempts (puts to the trial) the Lord. God calls upon every one to exercise all proper precautions and to do all in his own power, trusting in the Lord to supply wherein he fails, and he promises to keep such persons in all their ways. Religious fanatics are often tempters of God.

      III. THIRD TEMPTATION.--In the first two temptations the devil comes as a deceiver, apparently seeking proof that Jesus was truly the Son of God, quoting Scripture, and in religious guise. In the third he throws off the vail and appears as the Prince of this world, the rival of God for the worship of man, and ready to offer every possible bribe to seduce from loyalty to God.

      8. Taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain. From some lofty center he spreads before Jesus a panorama of the kingdoms of this world with all their glory. We are not to suppose that all the kingdoms were literally visible, but they were portrayed in such a way as to be present to the mental eyes. The term "sheweth" does not compel us to believe that they were necessarily seen by the natural eyes.

      9. All these things will I give thee. All disguise is laid aside. Satan claims to be a Prince of the world and the disposer of human kingdoms. Jesus came to be a King but the pathway to the crown is weary, painful, beset with thorns, and wet with tears and blood. Satan proposes an easier way. He will rally the Jewish nation around him, set him on the throne of David, make him the Messiah, King of the world, and have him rule surrounded by human glory if he will only consent to give up his idea of a spiritual kingdom "not of this world," and worship the god of this world by conforming [217] his kingdom to the worldly ideas of Israel. The temptation is to turn away from the path of self-denial, the cross and the tomb, and to establish an outward, worldly dominion.

      10. Get thee hence, Satan. Since the tempter was revealed Jesus rebukes himself severely. The word, "Get thee hence," "Begone," expresses abhorrence of the proposal. The adversary is called by name and bidden to depart. Then his reason is added, in the words of Scripture, found in Deut. 6:13. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. This passage forbids every kind of religious adoration to any other object than Jehovah, whether it be idols, false gods, popes, Virgin Mary, saints or angels. When Jesus permitted worship of himself it was a virtual assertion that he was "God with us."

      The three temptations had been met, three times the tempter had been baffled, three times the victory had been won. The first assault had been made through the door of appetite, "the lust of flesh;" the second through vain glory, "the lust of the eyes;" the third through ambition, "the pride of life." All had been met by this shield of faith and the tempter beaten back by the sword of the Spirit.

      IV. MINISTERING ANGELS.-11. Then the devil leaveth him. Luke adds, "for a season," for the defeated enemy was not ready to give up the conflict, was a chief counsellor among the enemies of Christ. When the devil is resisted he always flees. He is bold to attack only those who give him a welcome. Angels came and ministered to him. When he fought off the tempter alone then, after the victory was won, angels came to minister to him. We suppose this ministry was especially to supply him with food. He had refused to command the stones to be made bread but declared his trust in the means appointed by God. The Father now sends his angels to feed him. He had refused to tempt Jehovah, though the Scripture said the angels should bear him up; now the angels are sent to minister to him. Great joy was that to the angels! and it must have been as great to him! In such a state of long, long conflict and trial, how blessed were these visitors from the great world of peace above; their communications how sweet, how rich in assurance! So, between the beasts and the angels, men being wholly away, Jesus gets tokens of sympathy that minister comfort, and help him to compose himself to the opening tragedy of his life.--Bushnell. At the close of the temptation, or possibly after different attacks of temptation during the forty days. Angels were spiritual beings, probably in visible form on this occasion. Alone in the contest, he had these companions after his victory. "Ministered" most [218] naturally means " supplied him with food," as in the case of Elijah (1 Kings 19:5). Others think, "gave him spiritual companionship," to support him.--Schaff. Probably the angels did both.

PRACTICAL AND SUGGESTIVE.

      At the beginning of the Christian life comes the great temptation,--the battle as to who shall rule the soul; its success is conversion.

      The greatest battles of the world are fought on the silent battle-field of the heart; there greater victories are won, greater heroisms done, than at Thermopylæ or Waterloo.

      The whole appeal of Satan, running through all three temptations was: Put forth your power in self-seeking and self-assertion, carry the Jewish nation by storm, and so begin the conquest of the world.

      Satan asks Jesus to be just such a Savior as the Jewish nation expected: a Christ who would feed them with bread miraculously made as Moses did, who would give them wonderful signs, and who would rule as a splendid worldly king.

      The temptations of Christ are an epitome of those that assail us. The tempter still whispers, If he be the Son of God and insinuates doubts; still tempts us not to do our part but to throw all on God; still makes splendid promises of pleasure, of wealth, or of power, if we will only worship the god of this world. To every whisper of the adversary we should reply, Get thee hence, Satan.

      The devil craftily chooses the seasons when he would assail us. Perhaps it may be after a season of spiritual exaltation and he may approach in the name of religion; perhaps it may be in an hour of physical weakness and may make his assault through the door of the flesh. We may be sure he will choose the weakest point at the time of assault.

      After a special manifestation to him of the Divine favor, thou shalt be sure to be assaulted by Satan; when thou hast received the greatest enlargements from heaven, either at the sacrament or in prayer, or in any other way, then look for an onset. This arch-pirate lets the empty ships pass, but lays wait for them when they return richest laden.--Leighton.

      HOW COULD CHRIST BE TEMPTED?--In every act of sin there are two distinct steps. (1) There is the rising of a desire which is natural, and, being natural, is not wrong. (2) There is the indulgence of that desire in forbidden circumstances, and that is sin. Sin is not in the appetites, but in the absence of a controlling will. There were in Christ all the natural appetites of mind and body. He suffered, being tempted, from the force of desire. But there was obedience at the expense of tortured, natural feeling. Remember this; for the way in which some speak of the sinlessness of Christ destroys the reality of temptation, and converts the whole of his history into a mere fictitious drama, it which scenes of trial were represented, not felt.--F. W. Robertson. 'Tis one thing to be tempted.--Eschylus. Another thing to fall.--Shakespeare. [219]

POINTS FOR TEACHERS.

      1. Bring out the era in the life of Christ reached; baptized, inaugurated, anointed, proclaimed as the Son; yet, before he begins, even as the first Adam, he must be tried. 2. Point out where he went. 3. What for and why. 4. Bring out the circumstances of the First Temptation, the fast, the hunger, the craftiness of the demand, the force of "If," the sin had the Lord complied with the demand. 5. Bring out the force and meaning of the Lord's answer, from whence did he quote, what did Moses mean, what did Christ mean 6. Show the underlying principles of each temptation. 7. Point out the wisdom of the Lord's replies. 8. Bring out how the first Temptation was an appeal to appetites, the second to spiritual pride, the third to ambition. 9. Impress that the leading idea underlying all was to be just such a Messiah as the Jews expected. 10. Show how this would have defeated the divine work to which he was called. 11. Show that the Savior was tempted as we are, and how we should follow his example.

Source: Barton Warren Johnson. The Christian International Lesson Commentary for 1887. Des Moines, IA: