THE WORLD’S TEMPTER

“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; and sayeth unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”—Matthew iv. 8-9.

Temptation is a seduction: meaning to allure or entice one to evil. It is submitting a proposition which carries with it inducements of pleasure or gain. The mind that accedes readily and willingly to an act is not tempted. A temptation is a clash of wills, one being superior to the other if the contest results in a yielding. The word embodies the idea of an elastic—“stretched to the snapping point.” If there is no response, no struggle against desire—it is not a temptation. The Master was very man as well as very God; yet strange as it may seem—He was really tempted, and just as we are.

Our purpose in this discussion is not to analyze the different phases of our Lord’s temptation—the tests to which He was subjected,—but we wish to emphasize one thing: He was tempted. The appeals came from His old time enemy; His rival for supremacy. He was not taken unawares; the facts were clearly before Him, just who and what it all meant—yet He was tempted. The diabolical assault did not cease until His threefold nature was “stretched to the snapping point.” It came from an inferior being, and for sake of illustration, had the scheme succeeded, the Sun of righteousness would have gone down forever. Not only would the great plan of human redemption have proved abortive, but Satan would have snatched the sceptre from the hand of the Anointed One and shouted his victory in the face of God. We are amazed to think of the only Begotten being near the yielding point in the presence of the fallen Lucifer, but the Book says He was tempted.

Some may contend that He could not have yielded; all the while He was conscious of divine security. This conclusion forces another untenable proposition: If He could not have yielded, His humanity was not real, but veiled in His divinity; the temptation was only a shadow. We insist that as a man Jesus was tempted; He could have called to His aid supernatural intervention, but He did not. The issue was met as every man must meet it; it was manhood that conquered. Had He yielded, both manhood and divinity would have become subservient to the enemy. “Fall down and worship me” was the proposition.

Now we wish to make a few deductions from our Lord’s temptation. Whatever includes the greater includes the lesser—a fortiori. Natural man reached his highest expression in Jesus of Nazareth; He was God’s exponent of human perfection. There were no weaknesses, no lack of pose or symmetry; His penetration and judgment of others were absolutely accurate. From the beginning He had known the Evil One who faced Him. Now, with all those perfect endowments, the record says He was tempted. The ingenuity of Satan was sufficient to bring out all the resources of the Son of God. Here was the greatest, wisest, purest and strongest man that ever walked upon the earth—susceptible, influenced, strained to the “snapping point,” when attacked by the Tempter. What will be the inevitable fate of you and me, dear reader, whenever he selects us as his victims?

The unmistakable teachings of the Word are that every temptation to which man is or ever has been subjected came fresh from the seething caldron of the pit. The student of human conduct has observed universal adaptability of all temptation. A great sagacious intelligence seems to be managing personally, through his cohorts, this campaign of promising propositions. There are some who can be incited to commit horrible crimes, such as murder, incendiary, born perhaps with vicious tendencies, but this class is comparatively small; others are susceptible to deeds of milder character. It would matter little to an army approaching a fortification where or how the attack should be made if the walls at every point were weak and crumbling. No time is spent in reconnoitre and playing for position; but if the battlements be strong, a faulty place must be located if there be one. Satan rarely ever blunders in laying his temptations; he is a most skillful strategist. As the world’s tempter he reveals an ingenuity that is truly astounding; it should cause the bravest heart to shudder once the eyes are opened to the source. Knowledge of his approaches, marches, countermarches, advancings, and retreats—all with a specific object—ought to be a great breakwater.

A writer gives us a striking word picture of Satan’s methods: “As the enemy who lays siege to a city finds out the weakest portion of the wall, or the best spot to batter it, or the lowest and safest place to scale it, or where the intervening obstacle may be easiest overcome, or where an advantage may be taken, or where an entrance may be effected, or when is the best time, or what is the best means to secure the desired end, so the arch-deceiver and destroyer of souls goes about, watchful, intent upon ruin, scanning all the powers of the mind, inspecting all the avenues to the heart and assailing every unguarded spot. Sometimes he attacks our understanding by injecting erroneous doctrine; sometimes our affections by excessive devotion to things we love; sometimes our wills by strengthening them in wrong directions; sometimes our imaginations by vain, foolish, trifling thoughts; and sometimes our feelings by too high or too low excitation.”

Some one has called Satan and his subordinates not omnipresent, but “shifting imps.” They swarm the air, invisible, because they are spirit, watching for opportunities to edge their way into the hearts of mankind. They are shifting position, always to a point of least resistance. Like a current of electricity, always flowing from a point of higher potential pressure to one of lower, if points are connected by a conductor. The metallic substances from which the current starts and towards which it flows are called “electrodes,” and are always of different potentiality. The current passes from the one of higher to the lower. Man in his own strength is the lower, and unprotected by the Spirit of God cannot resist the evil currents flowing from Satan continually.