Luke 4:6,7

All this power will I give Thee

The devil’s bounty

His bounty is treacherous.

(D. Dyke.)

Bounty attractive

Bounty in a master is a great attraction to his service. (D. Dyke.)

Satan’s promises

1. That the very desires of abundance and greatness are in themselves unlawful, though we desire them not upon such conditions as here the devil offers them. We are commanded (1 Timothy 6:8) to be content with mere necessaries, for food and raiment.

2. That the devil in these promises deceives us, and that three ways,

(1) Sometimes not giving all the things promised, but the contrary. Adam was promised to be like God Himself, but how well he obtained it, witness God’s bitter scoff, “Behold, man is become as one of Us” (Genesis 3:1.).

(2) The devil deceives us in his promises, in getting far better things of us, than we have of him. For in these contracts with the devil we make Esau’s pennyworth, sell heaven for a mess of pottage; Glaucus’ exchange, gold for copper. We are as foolish as children that lose their parents and their own liberty, and suffer themselves to be stolen away for an apple. Yea, as the bird that accepts of the fowler’s meat, but buys it full dearly with her own life.

3. That all these things he promises are vain and insufficient to give true content. For

(1) they are inferior unto us as men, much more as Christians. A thing worse than thyself cannot make thee better. Gold and silver are inferior to thee.

(2) They are fickle and fugitive, therefore well shown here in a moment, because they glide away, as the running water, and in representation, because they have no substance, but are mere shadows and vanishing shows.

4. Meditate of the excellent reward of the life to come. (D. Dyke.)

Toleration not donation

Now the devil turns toleration into donation, connivance and permission into approbation, and that which is done at some times and in some places he makes constant and general. This is the trick of devilish liars thus to piece out things by addition. A little truth shall be enough to face out and colour over many lies. (D. Dyke.)

Mortifying the carnal desires

This being so dangerous and prevailing a temptation that hath wounded so many, it must teach us to strengthen ourselves against it. Which that we may do, two main remedies must be used. The first is the mortification of our fleshly members, the eye and the ear of old Adam. If a man should come to a dead man, and promise him never so many kingdoms, and show him never so much honour and glory, he is nothing moved. Now mortification makes us dead men to the world, as blind men to this goodly sight of the Word, and as deaf adders to the charms of this charmer. (D. Dyke.)

Giving; Divine and Satanic

But, on the other hand, what a difference between all other “I will gives” and the “I will give” of Jesus l After the ringing of changes by good Richard Clerke on the tempter’s “I will give,” let the sweet bell-sounds of the Lord’s promise-words rise and swell through your memories--“Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28); “Ask whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it” (Mark 6:22); I will give you the sure mercies of David” (Acts 13:34); “I will give thee a crown of life”; “I will give him the morning-star” I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely (Revelation 2:10; Revelation 2:28; Revelation 21:6). Thus is it also in the Old Testament, in historic book and prophecy and Psalm. (A. B. Grosart.)

Satan offering stolen goods

And before whom could he have told this tale, to be taken in a lie so soon, as by driving this bargain with Christ? As if a thief should steal plate, and offer to sell it to the owner; or a plagiary, filtch a great deal out of a book, and rehearse it for his own before the author. So the tempter had robbed Christ of that honour and majesty which was most properly His own (I mean he robbed Him of it by the blasphemy and falsehood of his tongue), and then brings it to Christ to barter it away for other merchandise. (Bishop Hacker.)

Satan’s attempted bribery of Christ

There was, let us remember, nothing coarse or common in the suggestion which Satan here brought before the mind of Christ. He appealed to an attribute of man which, though often misdirected and abused, was originally a heaven-born instinct, designed to lift him above all other earthly creatures, viz., ambition and a desire for power. There is by nature something kingly in each human soul. Man was made for ruling. God set him at the first to be a lord in Eden. And, knowing that Christ had come to establish here upon earth that kingdom which the throne of David but faintly symbolized, the tempter spread before His soul a vision of universal dominion, offered Him the sceptre of worldwide sovereignty, with all the glory belonging thereto, adding this promise, “Everything shall be yours, without the Cross, without the cost of pain, or toil, or sacrifice, if you will only make the very slight and harmless, because secret, acknowledgment of indebtedness to me. All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt bend in reverence to receive them at my hands.” Was that vision a mere dream? Was the offer all a lie?
If so, where was the temptation? There must have been at least some truth in it. Think of the political condition of the world at that time. There were many kingdoms, but over them all spread the one consolidating and ruling power of Rome. Her law reached everywhere. Her empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube on the north, and the friths of Scotland, to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. All the tribes and nations inhabiting this immense territory had surrendered their independence and were fused into one political system. Moreover, that empire was tottering towards its fall. It was ready to accept even then a new Leader, even as only a little while later on it did in its helplessness accept the new faith. Can we who know how men have risen from the lowest to the highest worldly positions, doubt the possibility of Christ’s reaching, without supernatural help, the place which Julius Caesar gained? Suppose by skilful management, and by a little concession here and a little there, He had united the three rival factions of Judaea, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians, taking for a basis this last, which was a political party favouring the dominion of Rome. That first step might have led on gradually to the grand result which the tempter showed Him. All this any shrewd and far-discerning man could have thought of as possible. On the other side, and as the only alternative, Christ saw a lonely path, leading through Gethsemane and its terrible agony, and rising, step after step, up to Calvary and its awful Cross. He knows beforehand His rejection and betrayal, the scourging, the mocking, and the borrowed sepulchre. Even now, amid the solitude of the wilderness and its solemn stillness, He hears that bitter, maddened cry, “Away with Him! Crucify Him! We will have a Caesar for our king, and no one else.” That is, He knows that if He now accepts the tempter’s offer, instead of being afterwards rejected by “ His own” nation, He will become their acknowledged king. And beyond those three years of ministry and of conflict which He Himself must endure, He sees at least nineteen centuries during which His Church must fill up that which remains behind of His appointed sufferings, praying meanwhile for the coming of His kingdom. “Save Thyself,” the tempter said, “and spare Thy followers. Take the Crown without the Cross.” It was a proffered bribe. The question was whether Christ should sacrifice principle, or whether He should sacrifice Himself; whether He should reach that end for which He had come into the world by God’s appointed way, or by one easier; in short, whether He should make duty or policy the law of His life. You know the decision and the answer. Nevertheless, let me read it in your ears, for the voice of this very temptation comes often to us all, and therefore the Voice of the Victor is never without its lessons. (E. E. Johnson, M. A.)

Unprincipled success is failure

What looks outwardly like the highest worldly success, may, nevertheless, be the worst kind of failure, because it has been purchased at the price of honesty and principle. It is not so very difficult to gain riches and social position, to secure control over this or that kingdom of earth, provided a man will bend all his energies towards that particular end, and at the same time crush down every conscientious scruple that rises to protest in God’s name against the unrighteousness of the methods he is using. Christ would not march to His kingdom except by a king’s highway, and along an unswerving path of loyal integrity. In the worship and also in the service of God, that is to say, both by making Him supreme, and then, instead of folding our hands, using every power we have in the work to which He calls us, we too can resist the power of him who comes whispering with honeyed, sympathetic voice, “Peer, weary, unsuccessful one let me show you an easier way.” (E. E. Johnson, M. A.)

The temptation to doubt God’s present government of the world

While we maintain most firmly the simple and literal truth of the facts of the temptation as recorded by the evangelist, utterly renouncing the scepticism that would resolve them into oriental imagery; yet we see in them some thing far beyond the mere facts, the absolute truth of which we nevertheless maintain. They are symbols full of meaning, symbols of what was going on all through the human life of the Redeemer, and of the struggle which all must maintain who would follow in His steps. The very order in which they are related is expressive. Beginning, as they did, with a suggestion that He should abuse the high powers with which He was endued, by providing through them for the gratification of appetite now sharpened by long fasting--passing on, when He had triumphed easily over this coarser temptation, to the more ensnaring and alluring bait of promised success through a compromise with evil; and when this also had been thrust aside, seeking to lift up into presumption that most holy soul--what is this but the history of man’s temptation, first amidst the passions of youth, then in the scheming worldliness of middle life, and last of all in the self-confident elation which has caused the fall of many who had hitherto run well?

1. Many have believed, from his audacious taunt and the silence with which Christ dismissed it, that Satan has, to a great degree, the power to which he here lays claim; they secretly admit, in their suspicions at least, that he does bestow the good things of this life; that in this sense, rather than as being the tyrant over the faction of earthly and wicked hearts, he is “ the prince of this world.”

(1) Mischievous effects of this doctrine. Allow for a moment that the world is in any sense under the dominion of Satan, that it has been committed to him, and the whole scheme of God’s government becomes entangled in hopeless contradiction. Such a thought, admitted even in its lowest degree, must take from the heart its power of striving against sin, and of labouring to relieve the misery around it. Nothing can keep this in vigorous action but the undoubting confidence that we are at every turn really in the hand of a good and holy and Almighty Governor, and that He is now ruling all things, and disposing all things according to His own counsel; angels and men and every created being but carrying out His will; the holy and the just doing it from love; the unholy and rebellious bowed by its irresistible compulsion. Without the living energy to which this thought gives birth, who could strive alone against the multitude of evil doers; and what would there be to redress all the apparent contradictions of the mighty entanglement of this world? We must be entirely certain, in the depth of our hearts, that in all the maze (as it would seem) around us, there is to be traced a wise and a mighty plan, working out its harmonious accomplishment, that the kingdom of the “Stone cut out without hands “ is even now set up; that this world is not renounced by God; that in the Church of the redeemed, each one of us may work with and for God, just as surely as the angels of heaven. For then, and never before, shall we see in every duty an opportunity of service; in every sorrow a messenger of love, and in every threatened peril the fiery squadrons of the heavenly host shielding the true servants of the Highest.

(2) The nature of the fraud here used by Satan. We do not deny that sin is often so far successful as to gain for a time, for the sinner, certain specific objects that he has desired, or that the righteous are often kept bare of those outward good things which the wicked possess; but we affirm that this is not (as Satan would have us believe) because any power is committed to the evil one, or that he is allowed to suspend, even for a moment, God’s righteous government, and so to reward his own followers; but that these objects of men’s desire are given and withheld by God Himself, as a moral governor, upon a strictly moral rule, and in exact accordance therewith; that they are given to the wicked in anger, and withheld from the righteous in love; that they are given by Him, who has appointed certain results to follow from certain causes; who permits, therefore, the activity and the earnestness and the labour of the evil to work out for them those results which activity and earnestness and labour will, through His appointment, in general attain: but that even in giving these He marks the gift with His anger. For even when the particular object is attained, its possession does not bring with it that which the evil man had promised to himself, and which made it desirable in his eyes. He gets it; and it is barren and joyless. And herein is the juggling of the great deceiver. He promised the gift as his reward, and he promised with it the enjoyment of it; but as, even when the end is gained, it is not of his giving, so neither can he give with it the enjoyment of it. God bestows the objects desired, but puts in a sting with the gift, and so the followers of the evil one are cheated.

2. Concluding applications of this truth.

(1) Warning. Which of us is not oftentimes tempted to believe this lie of Satan? Who is not tempted, by doing evil, or by enduring evil, or by winking at evil (all different forms of worshipping the evil one) to seek for some advantage which will (as it seems) be held back from him if he walk straight on along the narrow path which leads unto life? Who has not had a place to gain in the life-race, steps to make good in the world-struggle, a family to push, a fortune to better, a powerful friend to gain or to keep, some weak point to cover by a falsehood, or some simulated virtue to make shine in the eyes of others? And who has not known, if he searched his heart at such a time, the flattering voice of expediency, and the grating harshness of truth? I ask you, in the sight of God, how have you acted at such times? How are you acting now when they arise? Take up this thought in its simplicity, without doing away by artifice its strength, and then try your lives by it; try by it your daily conduct, whether in the shop, family, counting-house, senate, or wherever your lot may be cast. God’s rule follows you into every act of every day; His sentence of anger or of approval is ever pronounced, ever executed. No one sin can prosper in God’s world. That which flatters the most is commonly in the end the keenest torturer of him who yields to it.

(2) Encouragement. Christian man I this God is your God for ever and ever; He shall be your guide even unto death. He is your Father, if you be a true and earnest believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is comfort for you in every trial; in the midst of the world’s sorrow, here is joy. You must be truly happy, for God is with you; you must be truly rich, for you possess all things in Him. This thought reverses in an instant every earthly calculation. (Bishop S. Wilberforce.)

The devil’s bargain

As it was proposed to Christ at the opening of His ministry, so mostly is it offered to men’s acceptance in the opening of their youth. Practically it was the same bargain that was made with our first parents in the garden.

I. A TEMPTING BARGAIN.

II. A DECEITFUL BARGAIN.

1. In the quantity.

2. In the quality of the article purchased.

III. A DEAD BARGAIN. Consider--

1. The sin of it.

2. The humiliation of it. (T. Whitelaw, M. A.)

Satan’s offer

Are men and women ever tempted in this way, and in our day? I think so.

1. There is the danger generally of pursuing legitimate ends by unlawful and unrighteous means.

2. The temptation to pious frauds, the suppression, misrepresentation, or obscuring of the truth in the supposed interests of religion.

3. With regard to our own personal salvation, the idea that there is some royal road into the glories and blessedness of the eternal kingdom. (Gordon Calthrop, M. A.)

Two mountain scenes

The offer was empire, and the price was worship. Jesus Christ said “No,” and came down from the mountain as poor as He was when He was taken up. So much, you say, for throwing away the great opportunities of life. But read again Matthew 28:16, “The disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them … And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” Put these two mountain scenes together. (J. Parker, D. D.)

A plausible lie

“For that is delivered unto me.” One of the additions made by Luke to our knowledge of the temptations is the monstrous assumption of power and royalty on the part of the tempter. There is something fearful in the language which he uses--God had never given over the power to Satan. “Thine,” we truly confess in our prayer to our Father in heaven, “is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” It was a lie, such as might have been expected to proceed from the “ father of lies.” Yet there was sufficient appearance of truth to make the lie plausible. Anybody looking upon the world would say, especially at the time of the Temptation, that the power and glory were acknowledged by general consent to belong to the prince of evil. Thank God that it is not so, and thank God that Jesus Christ came into the world to prove how false Satan’s words were, and to claim the power and the glory wholly for God His Father. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)

The bait of worldly prosperity

A literary angler in the lochs of Scotland was wont to catch trout in a singularly suggestive fashion. The bait consisted of a pellet made of chloroform paste. No sooner had a trout taken one of these pellets into his mouth, than it fell into a sweet sleep. All efforts at escape were prevented; it could instantly be drawn to the shore. Prosperity acts similarly upon many. They are lulled to spiritual slumber, and easily become Satan’s prey. If that is a man’s peril, what worse can happen to him than so-called success? (G. T. Coster.)

Satanic fascinations

Not unlike this is the experience sometimes of many Christian brethren. Those who are of a fervid temperament and lively imagination, can tell of similar fascinations. The adversary is the readier to practise them upon persons of this description, because their natural love of excitement and the vividness of their sensations seem to promise him a surer triumph; indeed, he is often far too successful in bearing their spirits up to his enchanting heights. For this purpose he commonly employs some outward means. These he will gather, for instance, from the fine arts, as they are everywhere abused to worldliness and the pleasures of sin. Thus at one time it is a beautiful picture, at another the witcheries of poetry, at another, the sweetness of melody, or the sublimity of musical composition, whereby he dissolves their spiritual firmness. Sometimes, if only some sweet mazy melody softly undulating from a distance, be listened to, as one sits musing in the solitary chamber, his sorcery may prove successful. (Dr. Krummacher.)

The world possessed by Satan

Who can number the hundreds of millions whose souls he secures in his manifold chains, in the bands of sin and ignorance, in countless spiritual prisons and cells, under Mohammedan imposture, or in pagan idolatry; in the strong delusions of the Talmud, or under the dogmas of the seven hills; in heaven-defying rationalism, pantheism, or atheism. Surely, without any arrogant claim, Satan might say, “All this is mine!” For the little which is not his, the “lodge in the garden of cucumbers,” the “worm Jacob,” the despised handful of Israel, is, as compared to the giant domains of this prince of fallen angels, but as a drop to the ocean. What is there in the whole world that the devil has not usurped for the extension and establishment of his kingdom, and made subservient, especially in the present age, to his infernal plans? Are not most of our pulpits and professional chairs still his? May not the same be said of the greater part of our public journals and newspapers? Are not our assemblies, associations, and clubs chiefly devoted to his service? And which of the sciences or of the fine arts is exempt from perversion to his interests? Almost everything in the world has he contrived to draw by little and little into subservience to his cause. Who deals out poetry in that deluge of romance and comedy which inundates the world with millions of infidel falsehoods and unholy ideas? Who is the invisible manager and conductor of those sensual operas, elysian concerts, and other entertainments, whereby music, that gift bestowed to praise withal the perfections of Jehovah, stands prominent as the destroyer of souls, because it is now made to breathe subtle poison into human hearts? Who is it that has stationed his camp behind the ramparts of modern philosophy, and aims from thence to inflict the most wicked and deadly blows on the gospel of peace? Who is it that has schemed and palmed upon Christendom that fashionable modern religion sweetened with effeminate taste, and spiced with lax and godless morality, which lulls people into a deep spiritual slumber, from which but too late the thunder of judgment will awaken them? From whom does all this originally proceed but from the father of lies, the old serpent, the dragon of the bottomless pit? Nor let us be surprised that he even speaks of “giving” what is certainly within the compass of his power. (Dr. Krummacher.)

The flesh and Spirit in conflict

“God made all things,” saith Lactantius, “to set two armies in array”--the flesh and the Spirit; sense and reason; man whom He made after His own image, and the prince of this world. And therefore He hath mixed, as it were, an appearance of good with that which is evil, various and delectable pleasantness in the things of this world, that by those fair allurements in show there may be a possibility of inducement into that evil which is not seen: and He hath blended an apparency of evil with that which is good, that, by those sorrows and labours which are distasteful to the eye, there may be a possibility in us of refusing that good which is covered with such horror. But the present pleasure He checketh with fear of punishment, and the present horror and sharpness He sweetens with hope of reward; that we may see more with our mind than with our eye; that when our sense would join with evil because of its colour, our reason may fly from it because of its smart; and when the flesh declines goodness because it is irksome, the spirit may embrace it because it hath the promise of a reward; that when the devil speaketh fair, we may shut our ears, because we know his words are as swords; and when God nails us to the cross, we may bless His name, because He means to crown us. (A. Farindon, D. D.)

Gifts Satanical

There are gifts Satanical as well as gifts Divine; and the world has always abounded with persons who have owed their enjoyments, treasures, honours, titles, and rank, to Satanical ministration or superintendence. For our great adversary has always his pay and his prize-money in readiness for any who will follow his banner, and he has various methods of handsomely remunerating their zeal in his service. (Dr. Krummacher.)

To be right is to be rich

How, then, as to the truth of the doctrine that to be right is to be rich? To test that doctrine ye; must get into the very heart of the sufferer himself. He will show you the compensations of a righteous life; he will tell you how sweet is the bread eaten in secret, how holy and all-comforting is the approval of a good conscience, and how infinite is the independence of the soul whose trust is in God. In such a case the poverty is wholly on the outside; the soul is clothed in more than purple and fine linen, and is rich with more than gold. Outside, things are rough enough undoubtedly; the storm does not spare the roof, nor do the rags keep away the biting wind, yet somehow the man who is right has a quiet and thorough mastery over the circumstances which fret and vex the mere surface of his life. The king is within. The fountain of his joy is not dependent on the clouds, but on “the river of God, which is full of water.” “The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” (J. Parker, D. D.)

Satan’s bid for the soul

A story is told of Rowland Hill, the eccentric preacher. Lady Ann Erskine was passing by in her carriage, and she asked her coachman who that was that was drawing such a large assembly. He replied that it was Rowland Hill. “I have heard a good deal about him,” she said; “drive up near the crowd.” Mr. Hill soon saw her, and saw that she belonged to the aristocracy. He all at once stopped in the midst of Ms discourse and said, “My friends, I have something for sale.” This astonished his hearers. “Yes, I have something for sale; it is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Is there any one here that will bid for her soul? Ah, do I hear a bid? Who bids? Satan bids. Satan, what will you give for her soul? ‘I will give riches, honour, and pleasure.’ But stop. Do I hear another bid? Yes, Jesus Christ bids. Jesus, what will you give for her soul? ‘I will give eternal life.’ Lady Ann Erskine, you have heard the two bids--which will you take?” And Lady Ann fell down on her knees, and cried out, “I will have Jesus.” The devil lies when he promises, but Christ always keeps His word.

Sold to the devil

Laura Phillips, “a pretty and well-educated young woman,” committed suicide in Omaha the other day. She took blood from her own veins, and wrote with it the following note, which was found on her pillow: “I, Laura Phillips, hereby sell my soul to the devil, in consideration for which he agrees to give me wealth, beauty, and the power to overcome all my enemies.” She left a comfortable home in Iowa three years ago, and went step by step into the slough of degradation. (Newspaper.)

The soul sometimes sold for the smallest things

It does not require a devil to tempt you. The smallest thing can tempt. As poor John Bunyan said once, something kept tempting him to sell Christ. If he stooped to pick up a pin the voice said, “Sell Him for that! sell Him for that!” And men sell their honour for things as cheap. A pin will do it; a sweet smile; a fair face; the ruby wine; the love of money. All, for what has not a man sold his soul! (George Dawson.)

Satan a tyrant though he may seem a parasite

When we are once sure, Satan is a tyrant; till then, he is a parasite. There can be no safety if we do not view as well the back as the face of temptation. (A. B. Grosart.)

Wrong moral conditions cannot be productive of happiness

Look at the price required for the supremacy offered to Christ--“If Thou wilt fall down and worship me”! But consider what it is to worship at the wrong altar! It is to debase the affections, to bring the best energies of the soul under malign influence, and to forfeit the power to enjoy the very things which it is supposed to purchase. Worship expresses, though it may be feebly, the worshipper’s supreme ideal of life; if, therefore, it be offered to an evil spirit, the whole substance and course of life will be deeply affected by the error. What if the very act of false worship disqualify the soul for relishing any supposed or undoubted joy? Offer a man long draughts of the choicest wines if he will first drench his mouth with a strong solution of alum, and what are the choicest wines to him then? They cannot penetrate to the palate, they are absolutely without taste, and they mock the appetite they were meant to gratify. So, if a man put his moral nature under false conditions, and create anarchy between himself and the principle of eternal righteousness, no matter what fortune or honour may accrue to him, his power of serene enjoyment is gone, and he becomes burdened and plagued by his very successes. This will be the first point insisted upon by the moralist; in the plainest words he will say, “The promise is very great, but it is a lie to begin with, and the man who sells his soul to get it will soon find that he is neither more nor less than a dupe of the devil.” (J. Parker, D. D.)