Luke 4:7

Luke 4:7

I. When Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world in return for an almost trivial act of homage, in His mind the proposal would assume the aspect of an expedient for advancing His kingdom, with the policies and prudences and compromises of this world; an expedient which must have been as fatal to the kingdom of the Gospel as any monstrous coalition between good and evil, between life and death. For surely we must look for something more considerable, as lying behind, and signified by that momentary act of homage to which the Saviour was invited; we can hardly contemplate a ceremonial and bodily prostration as being the first and last of what was proposed. By falling down and worshipping the spirit of the world I understand, lowering the ideal of Christ's intended kingdom, and enlisting in its favour, and employing as agents in its extension and maintenance, the passions, the appetencies, and ambitions which might without harshness or ambition be included in the word "worldly-mindedness."

II. Our Lord does not hesitate in His answer. He replies, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Thou shalt make Him no more co-ordinate than subordinate with any other object of worship. The Gospel of grace shall either triumph in all its purity over the sin that is in the world, or in all its purity it shall retire from the conflict, and regain its native heaven. It shall contract no contamination from an alliance with sin, or by a coalition with anything that deserves the name of worldliness. Might we but in every temptation to compromise the interests of truth and love, those two pillars on which leans the temple of Christ within the heart of man, remember that any arrangement, any compromise, any friendly understanding between the spiritual and the anti-spiritual is a dishonour to the Spirit. It is letting an enemy with many comrades into the fortress in the disguise and under the pretext of friendship, who will not be long before he does the work of a traitor upon the garrison who have been so disloyal to their King as to invite his alliance.

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 262.