Luke 4:7

TEMPTED THROUGH THE WORLD

‘If Thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be Thine.’

Luke 4:7

I. The spirit of the world.—When our Lord was offered the kingdoms of the world in return for an 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. Yet 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 methods, and the ambitions which might without harshness or exaggeration 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 must contract no contamination from an alliance with sin, or by a coalition with anything that deserves the name of worldliness.

Illustration

‘Satan has no more ready, potent, or successful instrument of assault upon the personal religion and Christian usefulness of the believer than the world. Failing, in the case of our Lord, to secure homage and worship by the presentation of worldly blandishments, he plies his arts with His followers, wounding the Lord in the person of His disciples. The world, that had no attraction for Christ—save only its redemption—alas! constitutes one of the most seductive temptations of the Christian. Satan is constantly presenting it in endless forms of attraction, wearing as many disguises and backed by every species of argument. There is not a ruse he does not employ by which to bring the world to bear upon the Christian. The eye delighting in beauty, the ear ravished with sounds, the taste delicate and dainty—“The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life”—are so many media through which the attractive power and ascendancy of the world attain an easy conquest in the mind of the Christian.’