Matthew 4:3

Matthew 4:3

I. The first recorded trial of our Saviour connects itself no doubt with His recent fast or extreme abstemiousness of forty days. He was afterwards an hungred. "If Thou be the Son of God," said the tempter, "command that these stones be made bread." "Devote," in other words, "the first exercise of those Divine gifts and miraculous powers, with which Thou art endowed, to the supply of the bodily and material necessities." Before expending this miraculous faculty in the most direct, and normal, and habitual service of the Heavenly Father, why not inaugurate its exercise by employing it for the first time in creating a treasure, easily convertible into bodily supplies, that can at all times be conveniently resorted to, and which shall place Himself and His indigent followers in a position independent of the sordid cares of life, and keep the Divine work from being checked or choked by the miserable anxieties of material existence?

II. And yet, if we may without irreverence for a moment imagine the Saviour to have listened to that suggestion, He would have deranged thereby the whole economy of the Kingdom of God. The power with which He was gifted, or which rather He brought with Him from the throne of God, was sufficient, and no more, for the purpose of effecting His sublime mission upon earth. In visiting this earth the Redeemer laid aside not only His Divine glory, but His Divine power also, except so much of it as was needed for effecting works of mercy upon other people. For Himself He never permitted the smallest employment of that mysterious faculty, for the supply of one fragment of bread, nor of one cup of water, nor for the assuagement of one throb of pain. To have placed Himself in a position of superhuman security against the wants and infirmities of human nature; to have reserved for His own personal behoof a fund from which every want could be easily supplied, would have been to place Himself outside the circle of humanity. It would have been to defeat, to neutralize, to cancel that profound and that sublime self-sacrifice which constitutes the essence and heart of Christianity.

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 252.

Spiritual Temptations.

I. The danger of spiritual temptations is that they do not look like temptations. They do not look ugly, absurd, wrong. They look pleasant, reasonable, right. The devil, says the Apostle, transforms himself into an angel of light. If so, then he is certainly far more dangerous than if he came as an angel of darkness and horror. Our worst temptations sometimes look so exactly like what is good, and noble, and useful, and religious, that we mistake the evil for the good, and play with it till it stings us, and we find out too late that the wages of sin is death.

II. How shall we get to know these temptations? The root of them all is pride and self-conceit. Whatsoever thoughts or feelings tempt us to pride and self-conceit are of the devil, not of God. The spirit of pride cannot understand the beauty of humility, and the spirit of self-will cannot understand the beauty of obedience; and, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that the devil could not understand our Lord. The temptations were clearly meant to tempt our Lord to pride. Whenever we, in like manner, are tempted to do or say anything rash, or vain, or mean, because we are the children of God; whenever we are inclined to be puffed up with spiritual pride, to fancy that we may take liberties which other men must not take, because we are the children of God, let us remember the words of the text, and answer the tempter, when he says, "If Thou be the son of God, do this and that," as our Lord answered him. If I be the child of God I must behave as if God were my Father. I must trust my God utterly, and I must obey Him utterly. I must do no rash or vain thing to tempt God, even though it looks as if I should have a great success and do much good thereby. I must worship my Father in heaven, and Him only must I serve. My business is to do the little, simple, every-day duties which lie nearest me; and then, if Christ will, He may make me ruler over many things, and I shall enter into the joy of my Lord, which is the joy of doing good to my fellowmen.

C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and Other Sermons,p. 65.

I. Where was the evil of the thoughts which the tempter placed before Jesus? And why would our Lord (if He had given heed to them) have yielded to that spirit which He came to conquer? (1) "If Thou be the Son of God." It is not, then, certain that He is the Son of God. That voice from heaven, the seal of His baptism, the descent of the Spirit, were not sufficient to prove Him so. He must get some other evidence of it than this. You see here is distrust. But what is the life of the Son of God? It is the life of faith, the life of trust. In the act of proving Himself to be the Son of God He would have renounced the name. (2) "If Thou be the Son of God command." He was to use His power, and He was to show Himself a son, by showing what He was able to do. But the life of the Son of God was the life of obedience. (3) "Command that these stones be made bread." Here was an exhortation to do something for Himself, to use the power wherewith He had created the world for the satisfaction of His own wants. But the power of God, the power which goes forth from the Father and the Son, the power which breathed life into all things, is the power of love, the power of diffusing blessedness. If our Lord had used His creating power for Himself, He would have been giving up this life of love which He had as the Son of God.

II. The answer. Our Lord would not separate Himself from the creatures which He had formed, He would speak as if He were one of them. His answer was as much as saying, "My glory, as the Son of God, shall consist not in the power that I use over these stones to make them bread, but in the power that I have received to go through whatever my people have gone through in all past time, so that men of every age shall own in Me one who has perfectly entered into their feelings and undergone their trials, and has cheerfully endured whatever My Father has been pleased to lay upon them."

III. If by this answer our Lord made Himself one with us in our humiliation, and claimed for us the privilege of being one with Him in His blessedness, He also teaches that we are partakers in His temptation.

F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons,p. 154.

References: Matthew 4:3. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 9; M. H. Hutchings, Mystery of the Temptation,p. 69. Matthew 4:3; Matthew 4:4. Ibid.,p. 104.