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HIS TEMPTATION
Mk. i. 12, 13; Mt. iv. 1-11; Lk. iv. 1-13.
Throughout His ministry, as will duly appear, Jesus was wont, ere taking any momentous step or facing any ordeal, to seek some quiet retreat where He might commune with His own heart and take counsel with God. And even so now, when He was called to embark on His redemptive mission, He withdrew from Bethabara with its thronging multitude and betook Himself to the wilderness, that rugged waste of barren mountains west of the Jordan infested by wild beasts and lawless brigands. There He remained for forty days, “being tempted by the Devil.” (Cf. Mk. i. 13; Lk. x. 30) It was a spiritual experience. There was no visible apparition of the Tempter : else there would have been no temptation. For it is because they are presented as counsels of prudence and policy that his allurements are entertained. Were they recognised as his personal overtures, they would be instantly rejected.
So it was with Jesus. For Him as for us temptation was a spiritual experience. On the threshold of His ministry He was confronted by a perplexing problem. He was the Messiah, and He must win the people’s faith. In those days certain expectations prevailed regarding the Messiah, and if He ran counter to these He would hardly win recognition ; and thus arose the question what attitude He should adopt toward the popular ideals.
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The dominant expectation was that the Messiah would be a mighty King of David’s lineage, who would arise and crush the heathen oppressor and reestablish the ancient throne in more than its ancient splendour; and it is significant that all the numerous pretenders to Messiahship in those latter days assumed the role of national deliverer, inciting the indignant people to rebellion against the imperial government. That course inevitably occurred to the mind of Jesus as He contemplated the task which lay before Him. Indeed it might seem that no other was possible; for who would believe that He was the Messiah unless He fulfilled the universal expectation ? Nor was it in truth an impracticable course. Was it not written of the Messiah that He would be a mighty Conqueror, “breaking the nations with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” ? (Ps. ii. 9) And had He presented Himself in this character, He would have won an immediate and enthusiastic response. For the nation was ready for revolt. It was groaning under an intolerable tyranny, and recently the party of the Zealots had arisen—a confederacy of desperate patriots pledged to truceless enmity against Rome and eager to renew the Maccabean struggle for independence. He had but to proclaim Himself the Promised Deliverer, and thousands would have rallied to His standard. For any other it might have been a wild enterprise foredoomed to failure (Cf. Mt. xxvi. 53); but He had the hosts of Heaven at His command, and His triumph was assured. It seemed the inevitable course, but could He pursue it ? It was the path of violence, and “violence," said one of old, “belongeth not to God." It is the [ p. 38 ] Devil’s way, and if He chose it, would He not be doing homage to the Devil ?
As He pondered this question. He found Himself on a lofty height, perhaps the crest of the mountain which overhangs the Plain of Jericho. Thence He beheld a wide prospect. The Holy Land lay beneath Him with the lines of its highways reaching beyond the horizon toward Egypt, Arabia, Babylonia, Syria, and the western sea-gates to the Isles of Greece and Imperial Rome. A vision of “all the kingdoms of the world”—that world which He had come to win— arose before Him; and the Tempter whispered to His soul: “All these I will give you and the glory of them, if you fall down and do me obeisance.” Yes, that was indeed the condition, and He instantly rejected it. It was to establish the Kingdom of Heaven that He had come; and a kingdom built on violence is not the Kingdom of Heaven.
Another Jewish expectation in those days was that the Messiah would be a worker of miracles, and would attest His claims by “signs and wonders” (Cf. Jo. vii. 31); and this role also was assumed by every pretender to Messiahship. Josephus tells how one Theudas in the reign of Claudius assembled a multitude in Peraea and promised that if they would follow him, he would, like Joshua of old, divide the Jordan before them and they would pass over on dry ground and march in triumph to Jerusalem ; and how in the time of the Procurator Felix another adventurer (Cf. Ac. xxi. 38), an Egyptian Jew, promised his dupes that, if they accompanied him to Mount Olivet, they would behold the walls of Jerusalem fall at his command like the walls of Jericho at the blast of Joshua’s trumpets.
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It was indeed a just expectation. Jesus was well assured that the power of God would support Him in His ministry; and the idea presented itself to His mind that here lay an opportunity for attesting His Messiahship and winning the nation’s faith. Those uplands commanded a distant prospect of Jerusalem and her Temple, and He thought how at the approaching Feast of the Passover the city would be thronged with worshippers from near and far. What if He took His stand on “the Pinnacle of the Temple”—that lofty battlement overlooking on the one side the sacred court and on the other the dizzy depth of the Kidron Valley—and in view of the multitude of spectators precipitated Himself thence? Surely, according to the ancient promise, He would be sustained by angel hands and carried securely to the pavement beneath (Ps. xci. 11,12). So startling a miracle would attest His Messiahship and win Him at the very outset the faith of the Jewish world.
Instantly there flashed into His mind that divine admonition to the Israelites of old : “Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Dt. vi. 16); and it revealed the thought as a suggestion of the Tempter. It is indeed faith’s privilege to confront with serene confidence whatever ordeal God may appoint, but not to run uncalled upon needless and reckless adventures, fondly trusting that He will interpose.
For forty days He continued in the wilderness, and it is written by St. Matthew that “He fasted” all the while and by St. Luke that “He did eat nothing.” (Mt. xi. 18) They mean alike ; for is it not written of John the Baptist that “he neither ate nor drank," signifying merely that his ascetic fare was [ p. 40 ] the natural products of the wilderness ? And so it was with Jesus those forty days. His only food was the sparse berries which He gathered, and His only drink the water of the gushing springs.
So long as His mind was occupied with the vexing problems of His ministry, He remained oblivious of physical need; but now that these were solved, He felt the pangs of hunger and craved food. His eye lighted on the lumps of limestone littering the mountainside, and the thought came to Him that He might by the power of God convert one into a loaf of bread. Perhaps He might, for with God everything is possible ; and did He not ere long turn water into wine at a wedding-feast, and afterwards multiply five loaves and two little fishes into a plenteous meal for a multitude of hungry folk ?
Yet He promptly dismissed the thought. Perhaps He could have done it; but it would not have been a miracle : it would have been magic, a trick of legerdemain, outraging the natural order. It is characteristic of our Lord’s miracles that they were never violations of natural law but rather accelerations of its operation. “He it was,” says St. Augustine, “that made the wine that day at the wedding in those six water-jars who makes it every year in the vines. For even as what the attendants put into the water-jars was turned into wine by the Lord’s operation, so what the clouds pour forth is turned into wine by the same Lord’s operation.” And again : “He multiplied the five loaves who multiplies the seeds sprouting in the earth, so that a few grains are sown and the barns are filled. But because He does this every year no one wonders. It is not the insignificance [ p. 41 ] of the act that removes the wonderment, but its constancy/’
It should, moreover, be considered that no miracle of our Lord was ever wrought on His own behalf ; and this not merely because He cared for the needs of others and had no thought of His own, but because His miracles were never mere works of compassion. They were attestations of His divine mission, and they were wrought that men might believe in Him and through Him in the Father who had sent Him (Cf. Jo. ii. 11, xi. 42). For merely temporal good no miracle should ever be required, since God is supreme, giving or withholding as seems to Him most meet, and it becomes us ever to bow before His sovereign will, trusting His providence and accepting His appointments.