Matthew 4:8, 9 Again, the devil takes him up into an exceeding high mountain, and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; Bushnell observes that the report of the temptation can only have come from Christ himself. "And he simply meant, I have no doubt, in the three temptations recited, to report what appeared to him visionally speaking, or how they stood before his fevered brain. To believe that he was taken up into a mountain so exceedingly high that he could see all the kingdoms of the round world from the top, is fairly impossible. All temptations are but seemings. The devils bait their hook never with truths, always with illusions." Before the mind of Christ a great procession of all the world-kingdoms seems to pass - kingdoms of nations, of learning, of pleasure, of wealth; and the evil suggestion seems to say," That power you are conscious of possessing includes and involves the command of all these world-forces. Use them, then. Be the temporal Messiah that you are expected to be, and that you can be, and then, when your position is gained, you can use it for higher spiritual ends." It is the most subtle form that temptation takes for man. Get a position, anyhow. Get power, anyhow. And then you can use the position and the power for noble ends. It is always Satanic temptation; for if a man gets position and power unworthily, he is damaged and deteriorated in the getting, and so made unfit for the using when he has got. Christ would neither win his power nor use his power otherwise than as God's will should arrange. I. WHAT THE LORD JESUS COULD DO. Seeley says, "The mental struggle is still caused by the question how to use the supernatural power. Nothing more natural than that it should occur to Christ that his power was expressly given to him for the purpose of establishing,, in defiance of all resistance, his everlasting kingdom." Clearly see that Christ's miraculous power placed all the world-forces at his command. He might have used them to found his Messianic kingdom. He would have used them if that had been God's will. It was not God's will, so for him to have used them would have been to serve the devil. This temptation comes to all who are born with genius, who are conscious of power in any direction - Is that genius to be self-ordered or divinely ordered? II. WHAT THE LORD JESUS WOULD DO. Worshipping the Lord God is no mere act of homage; it is the life of obedience to the Divine will; the ordering of conduct by the Divine rule. The powers Christ had could only be used for God's purposes, in God's way. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; |
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