GOSPEL.

"ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE, IF THOU WILT FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP ME" (Matt. iv. 9).

THE condition of receiving the kingdoms of the world, as laid down by the tempter, was to fall down and worship him. Devotion to him would secure his reward-a condition generally true. Worship the god of the land, bend your thoughts and endeavours to success in any department of things, and, as a rule, you will succeed.

See what this temptation consisted in. It was a temptation—

I. TO PREFER WORLDLY TO SPIRITUAL POSSESSIONS AND POWERS. The kingdoms of this world and the glory of them to the dominion over men's souls. There is a glitter, a pomp, a sense of importance and power in worldly success, which is very tempting to men. When you are tempted to devote your whole energies and thoughts and dreams to amassing worldly wealth, or gaining worldly honour, or to swerve from the right in order to attain to them, the tempter is plying you with the temptation of

the text.

II. TO SNATCH AT PRESENT SUCCESS BY UNLAWFUL MEANS RATHER THAN WORK IN GOD'S WAY AND WAIT HIS TIME. "The kingdoms," &c., might be His at once. Do not evil that good may come. Do not be like a man grinding his seed-corn, but like the wise husbandman who sows and waits for the former and latter rains, and reaps his harvest in due time.

III. TO SPARE ONE'S SELF THE LABOUR AND SELF-DENIAL REQUISITE FOR TRUE AND LASTING SUCCESS. These kingdoms might be His without the fastings and wanderings and reproaches of life -without the cross and the shame. And ever the servants of God are tempted to evade the labour and the cross that are the conditions of real success, to build upon the sand and with untempered mortar, rather than dig to the living rock and build as for eternity. Prove yourself a workman not needing to be ashamed. "Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forasmuch as ye know that your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord."

THE MOUNT OF ENCHANTMENT.

"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"

(Matt. iv. 8).

WE may learn, without denying in the least the outward and objective nature of this event, how Satan may deftly use states of mental exaltation for effecting his purposes in the ruin of souls.

I. THE FERVID IMAGINATION. This may be excited by pictures or poesy, by art or by science, wrongly used to deprave the heart. Such an imagination sees the whole glory of the world.

II. THE POWERFUL INTELLECT. Some minds, raised mountainhigh above their fellows, are ravished by the sights they see, and grow proud and self-sufficient, and forget God and worship intellect.

III. THE AMBITIOUS WILL. Ambition wrongly directed, desire for rule and for power. The ideal of a vast kingdom, like that of Napoleon, misleads like the will o' the wisp, and destroys. There are various ways of closing the bargain with Satan.

VICTORY OVER SIN
(Matt. iv. 1-11).

THE first Adam yielded to temptation; the second Adam resisted it. Man fell in the first and was raised in the second. The assaults on the second were more powerful than those on the first, because the might of Satan was strengthened by centuries of prevailing power, and the Saviour was surrounded by an evil world. The method of our Saviour's victory over sin is a shining example to us. "Like unto His brethren." Let us follow in His footsteps.

I. THESE TEMPTATIONS OF THE LORD WERE THE BEGINNING OF HIS SUFFERINGS AND OF HIS VICTORY OVER SIN.

1. The temptations in the wilderness had their counterpart in His subsequent life. The devil left Him "for a season." Lifelong trial is the lot of all.

2. The temptations in the wilderness had their counterpart on the cross. The jeer, "If thou be the Son of God," found its parallel in the scoff of the priests, "Let Him come down from the cross if He will." The wilderness gave way to the darkness and desertion. My God," &c.

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3. The wilderness began, the cross finished His sufferings and completed His victory.

II. THESE TEMPTATIONS OF THE LORD WERE OVERCOME BY THE VICTORIOUS POWER OF FAITH AS AN EXAMPLE TO US.

1. There was faith in the Word of God. "It is written."

2. There was faith in the purposes of God. The end He knew. God has a design in all our trials.

III. THESE TEMPTATIONS ENDED IN A VISION OF ANGELS.

OUR LORD'S TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS
(Matt. iv. 1-11).

MYSTERIES and difficulties here which cannot be solved satisfactorily, because Jesus is both God and man.

value of such difficulties:

The apologetic

Introduction.-I. THE NATURE OF THE TRANSACTION.

1. Not visionary or imaginary. The air of reality in the narrative, the moral value and spiritual lessons of the temptation, forbid this.

2. Not a mere inward experience of subjective temptation. arising in Christ's own nature. This inconsistent with the outward personal action of the tempter and with Christ's sinlessness. Probably the tempter assumed for the occasion some bodily shape.

II. WHAT COULD INDUCE SATAN TO DREAM OF SUCCESS?

1. If he knew who Jesus was, he might act in despair, to catch at the faintest chance of doing michief, or to sell his life and power as dearly as possible.

2. If he did not fully know who Jesus was, but only recognised Him as no mean foe, he might feel bound to resent every intrusion on his domain, and judge this "Son of God" to be no stronger than the one he had conquered in Paradise, and try conclusions with Him as with Adam.

III. HOW IS OUR LORD'S TEMPTATION COMPATIBLE WITH HIS

DIVINE NATURE AND PERFECT SINLESSNESS? An insoluble problem arising from the peculiar constitution of His person. Two truths to be held though we cannot harmonise them

1. That His temptation implies the possibility of His sinning. 2. That it was impossible for Him, being the person He was, to sin. Temptation not inconsistent with sinlessness. Christ had the posse non peccare as well as the non posse peccare. He could not sin because He would not.

IV. THE TIME AND PLACE OF THE TEMPTATION. Fresh from His baptism; under the impulse of the Spirit; in the wilderness, far from haunts of men; for forty days, in fasting and subsequent hunger; and among the wild beasts. In the wilderness, into which man had been driven from Paradise, Christ takes up man's battle. The fasting and the forty days significant in that the battle was one against sin. The impulse of the Spirit indicates that the temptation was a preliminary testing

of Christ's prowess for the great battle which was to be fought

on the cross.

Lessons.-1. Expect strong temptations soon after unwonted. spiritual joys.

2. Let spiritual joys prepare for and support in the strong temptations.

3. Beware of a loneliness and inactivity which give the tempter advantage. Monasticism. Monasticism. Luther in Wartburg.

4. We are only safe in temptation when the Spirit leads us into it for gracious ends.

FIRST TEMPTATION, TO UNBELIEF (vers. 3, 4).

I. CIRCUMSTANCES. These were favourable.

1. Our Lord's patience might have been worn out.

2. He might have been off His guard after resisting long and successfully for forty days.

3. He was hungered and felt the keenest pangs of healthy appetite.

II. THE TEMPTATION ITSELF was

1. Craftily adapted to Christ's physical needs.

2. Subtly veiled in its grossness.

3. Based on His recent experience at His baptism.

4. Double-edged, as either (1.) expressing Satan's doubt of Christ's Sonship, and seeking to insinuate it into Christ's mind, or (2.) an admission on Satan's part of Christ's Sonship, and an appeal to take advantage of it. Either way it is a temptation to distrust; in the one case, of God's truth; in the other, of God's goodness.

III. THE TEMPTATION REPULSED.

1. Christ sets the question of Sonship aside as irrelevant to Satan's proposal.

2. Takes up His position as a man whose duty and privilege it was to live on God's promises of extraordinary supplies where ordinary were withheld.

3. Will not break His gracious connection, formed with man for man's salvation, by acting as Son of God for His own comfort, but will identify Himself with man in all man's responsibilities.

4. Will not anticipate the due and seemly operation of His divine power in His mediatorial glory, through which His gospel is to become a means of material and physical blessing to men.

(1.) The tempter does not spare in times of weakness and emergency. (2.) He often appeals to our past history and experience to give point to his temptation. (3.) He takes advantage of the demands of our most innocent natural appe

tites, and our noblest and purest sympathies and ambitions. (4.) He makes much of "daily bread," and how to give us that with least trouble and most abundance. Temptations to theft, gambling, sinful trades, communism, all spring from his asking us to turn stones into bread. (5.) We must meet him as men whose duty it is to live on God, and whose faith does not rest in the visible and material, but in the invisible and spiritual.

SECOND TEMPTATION, TO PRESUMPTION (vers. 5–7).

Matthew and Luke differ as to order, Matthew giving the order of time, Luke giving that of place.

I. INCIDENTS OF THE TEMPTATION.

1. Nature and extent of Satan's power over Christ's body. Not necessarily a literal carrying (cf. Matt. xvii. 1, xxvi. 37), though that would not be inconsistent with our Lord's personal dignity, any more than other things which He suffered, or the temptation itself.

2. The scene. Pinnacle of the accessible from the courts below. free from the tempter's presence. tempted in the Temple.

Temple. A giddy height,
The most sacred place not
The Lord of the Temple

II. ESSENCE OF THE TEMPTATION. 1. Satan makes a rapid change of front. Failing to get Christ to distrust, he tries to get Him to presume on the love and faithfulness of God and His promises.

2. A temptation to anticipate Messianic homage by a bold venture, instead of waiting patiently on God's time and way.

3. A temptation addressed to high principle and spiritual feeling and lofty faith, and inviting unwarrantable exercise on misapplied Scripture.

III. THE TEMPTATION REPULSED.

1. Christ parries the thrust by presenting the full and true Scripture doctrine. (1.) Exposes the falsity of the application of Satan's quotation. (2.) Balances its teaching by other and counter truths.

2. Christ returns Satan's thrust, forbidding his presumption in daring to tempt the Lord his God.

(1.) The proper use and application of Holy Scripture. (a.) Danger of isolated fragmentary quotations and single texts is to be met by balancing, qualifying, and explaining Scripture by Scripture. (b.) Know Scripture intensively as well as extensively. (2.) One victory over Satan gives no exemption from fresh assaults, but may even suggest and provoke these. (3.) We must not provoke the Lord by presumption in going into danger without the call of duty.