Luke 4:9-12

TEMPTED THROUGH PRESUMPTION

‘And he brought Him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple.… Jesus answering said … Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’

Luke 4:9

I. This temptation came to Christ when He was on a high and holy place.—He was tempted to presume on God’s protection. In every duty that God requires of us, and in every path that Providence maps out for us, we shall have the Divine protection; but if we turn aside or go our own way we have no promised protection. Christ repelled the tempter with the written Word.

II. Christ would not cast Himself down from—

(a) His religious privileges.

(b) The authority of Scripture.

—Rev. Canon Duncan.

Illustration

‘The pinnacle is none the less dangerous because it happens to be “the pinnacle of the Temple.” To stand on a high place in God’s house, to minister to the great congregation, is very honourable, but it is a responsible and perilous position, from which not a few fall. Well did the builders of our old cathedrals and churches carve their grinning fiends and demons, clustering around the roofs and towers of those holy places, for churches and holy places have often been the scenes of the devil’s greatest victories. When men have escaped the temptations of the devil everywhere else, they have been met and overcome in the temple. As St. Augustine says, “Even in the harbour ships are broken, and from the temple men fall.” Look into Church history. Whence all this heresy and schism, this bitterness and strife, this pride and worldliness? Whence, but from the temptations of the devil?’